THE GOLD FISH: Together Then (2.2)

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Oh for the love of Christ, thought Mr. Charles bitterly. Joan about to cut the grass, and here he was sitting on his porch reading the paper like a goddamned idiot. Talk about being asleep at the wheel.

If only he’d been more vigilant, used the 20-20 vision God gave him, he would have noticed the minute Joan exited the house with the rake and clippers and beaten a hasty, if not cowardly, retreat. But no, he’d been too caught up cursing the latest Vietnam debacle, and hadn’t clocked her presence. And now it was too late. Barbie was rounding the corner with the mower, leaving him with the most mortifying and cringeworthy option: pretending he didn’t notice.

God how he hated it when Joan cut the grass. The fact that she did it at all incensed him. Filled him with rage actually. Because while Joan struggled and sweated over that goddamned unmaintained mower, Don was inside the house doing god knows what. Or god knows nothing, more like. How an able bodied man could sit idly by and let his wife do all the difficult household chores was beyond Mr. Charles.

Mr. Charles had tried to stop Joan from moving the lawn. Offered his help. Many times. Too many times to count. But she always refused. He had learned that the better strategy was to simply become scarce when it was lawn cutting time. It saved them both the embarrassment.

He ducked down further behind his newspaper.

As Barbie approached, Joan stood and flicked her cigarette into the bushes. “You can trim and rake,” she said to Barbie.

Mr. Charles couldn’t help but silently ponder this statement. Pondering was, as previously established, his default state. He noticed that Joan didn’t ask for help. No. Her request was phrased as an unassailable truth. Like there was no question that Barbie would be her de facto helper -- after all, she always was -- but what’s more, Joan’s phrasing implied Barbie would want to help. “You can trim” was said with the same tone as one might say, “You can have some ice cream.” He had to admit, it was pretty crafty.

Semantics and rhetoric in language fascinated Mr. Charles. There was such power and devilish creativity in what was said, and more intriguingly, what wasn’t said. Detecting and decoding hidden meanings and subtext was a constant delight to him.

It wasn’t, however, the only reason Mr. Charles took note of Joan’s statement. It had snagged in his brain because the request -- let’s face it, a disguised command really -- was just so antithetical to his own experience. Throughout Mr. Charles’s own childhood, his parents, whom it’s important to note were both of average height, rarely asked him or commanded him to do anything. Or if they did, their requests were made in a cloying, overly solicitous tone that put his teeth on edge. They would have said something like, “Dearest Charlie, if it’s not too much trouble OR if you have nothing better to do AND you think you can physically handle it, could you, would you, mind terribly helping with the lawn work?”

Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but that’s what it felt like. And between-the-lines reader that he was, he couldn’t help but feel his parents’ polite deference stemmed from some misguided and unending guilt over his achondroplasia. That somehow, the gene mutation that caused his dwarfism -- and somehow managed to skip his older brother -- was something his parents felt they could’ve prevented. And that their negligence was so egregious, they had to forfeit asking anything of him. Which was ridiculous and annoying because there was absolutely nothing they could have done. It wasn’t their fault, for chrissakes. Mr. Charles harbored no ill will towards them or anyone else, for that matter. He just wished they would move on and treat him with the same nonchalance and benign neglect as they did his brother. Because if they couldn’t ever forget his dwarfism, how could he? Hold on. Forget was the wrong word. He had no interest in forgetting an essential part of who he was. He just didn’t want to dwell on it every goddamned day and have it color every goddamned thing he did. It honestly wasn’t that big of a deal.

It was down this rabbit hole of rhetoric, parenting styles, and identity that Mr. Charles’ brain raced while Barbie gathered her courage and ventured to her mother, “can you pay me?”

Behind his newspaper, Mr. Charles’s raised an eyebrow. This was new.

 Joan frowned. “What?”

“For helping, I mean. I’m trying to earn some money for... um, sewing supplies. You know, so I can make that coat into something.”

Now it was Joan’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Oh really?”

“Uh huh.”

“Sewing supplies?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, Coco Chanel. I’ll give you 50 cents.”

“That’s all?”

“Either that or nothing.”

“I’ll take it.”

“Thought you might.” Joan handed Barbie the clippers and headed off towards the mower.

Barbie tried not to look too pleased. It wasn’t even noon and she had 3 dollars already! But she knew better than to gloat. That would only send her mother into high alert. Make her suspicious. No. It was better to keep a poker face -- now there was a thing she’d learned from her father -- and focus on the task at hand. She tamped down her feelings and focused on Joan, who grabbed the mower’s pull cord and yanked hard.

Nothing happened.

Joan tried again. Nothing.

Behind his newspaper, Mr. Charles closed his eyes and prayed to the lawn-mower-starting-gods.

On the third try, the mower’s engine roared to life. Joan breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Jesus,”

Which was, again, Mr. Charles’s identical reaction from behind his newspaper.

Joan proceeded to cut the flat patch of grass between the curb and the sidewalk, while Barbie followed in her wake with the clippers. So far, so good. But Mr. Charles didn’t relax. Couldn’t relax. He knew this was the easy part. Joan -- may God forgive him for saying so -- had neglected the lawn for too long, and it was overgrown. The tough part would come when she tried to push the mower up the slope. The slope was minor, mind you, and probably only eight feet in length, but it was steepish, especially for a petite woman.

Joan backed up slightly to get running start and charged up the hill like General Picket at Gettysburg. And just as Mr. Charles had feared, about half way up, the mower stuck in the long grass, its back wheels leaving the ground. With nowhere to go, Joan dodged sideways and let go of the mower, which headed straight for Barbie who was clipping the sidewalk edges below. It missed her by inches.

“Jesus Christ on a stick,” burst Mr. Charles. He stood up, abandoning his pretense. “Joan? Hon? Lemme help you with that. That grass is awfully long.”

Barbie, unfazed by her close call with the mower, was fazed by this particular interaction. Like Mr. Charles, she was well aware of her mother’s reluctance to accept help, which was annoying. Her mother was always eager enough for her help, why wouldn’t she accept it from Mr. Charles?

But as predicted, Joan refused. “Nope. I got it.”

She resettled herself, backed up again, and using more force this time, successfully completed the row. With new confidence, she started a second row. But once again, the mower got snagged, and her Keds slipped in the slick grass. She fell to her knees.

“Sonofabitch!” she cried, raising her hands to stop the mower from overtaking her.

Mr. Charles spat out his pipe, tossed his paper aside, and started down the steps. “That’s it!”

“No. I can do it.” Joan got to her feet and dragged the mower back down the hill. “I just went too fast.”

Mr. Charles advanced on her and grabbed the mower’s handle. “You can also cut your goddamned foot off! For the love of all that’s--” He paused to collect himself before saying something he might regret. Then continued evenly with what he hoped was the right measure of sternness and supplication. “Joan. Let me help you.”

Barbie watched dumbfounded as Mr. Charles and her mother played tug of war with the mower. This was bonkers, she thought. Her tiny mother and the slightly shorter, but way sturdier, Mr. Charles were practically nose-to-nose, in what her father would have called a Mexican standoff. She felt like she was watching a movie!

Mr. Charles pulled on the handle again. “Give me that now.”

Joan shook her head. “No.”

A movement in the second floor window caught Barbie’s attention, and she lifted her eyes to it. Peeking out from behind the shade was Don’s dim but unmistakable form. Seeing him there, knowing he was watching, filled Barbie with fierce annoyance. Hold on, that wasn’t quite right. It was another feeling, equally strong, that she couldn’t quite identify or name. Of course, years later she would come to know the feeling as shame, but at this moment she could only identify what lay underneath. It was dawning on her, with more and more certainty every day, that the way her father operated in the family wasn’t normal. It was unusual. Unnatural. Wrong. And it was really starting to piss her off.

A bark of laughter escaped Joan. “Jesus Christ Almighty,” she exclaimed to Mr. Charles, the absurdity of the situation suddenly hitting her. “Look at us. The blind leading the blind.”

Mr. Charles snorted and raised his eyebrows. “Together then?”

“Oh alright. Together. If only to...” Joan glared at him in mock outrage. “shut... you... the... hell... up.”

Mr. Charles chuckled. “Deal.”

Barbie stood there, mouth agape, as her mother and Mr. Charles pushed the mower up the hill, the two of them side-by-side, giggling like a couple of schoolgirls. She glanced back up to the window to see if Don was also witnessing this incredible scene, but the window was empty.

Next → And You and I (2.3)