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Chapter 9 --All the really awkward things in this story happen at neighbourhood parties; also I've revised the name of their house's previous owner)
It’s the last day of school. Miss Wertham has brought a cake, but first her pupils have to clean out their desks and take down the drawings and projects that have accumulated on the classroom walls over the course of the last term. Anna gingerly holds her pressed flowers on cardstock as some of the petals come unglued and twirl to the floor. Danny Bell has won the right to use the big push broom and he races proudly about the four walls of the room, sweeping up everything in his path. Enid jumps out of the way as he scoots by and nearly knocks over the textbooks stacked on Miss Wertham’s desk, but the teacher has given up on scolding anybody for today.
Afterwards everyone walks home loaded down with exercise books, pencil cases and rolled-up pictures. When she reaches her front porch, Anna sets down her school things, stretches in relief and declares to her mother:
“Third Grade is finally over and I don’t have to go back for months.”
“Why are we going this way?” she asks her father when, home from work later that afternoon, he remembers he was supposed to pick up a bottle of milk and hadn’t, and asks if she wants to tag along to the store. “It’s just up the street.”
Just thought we’d take the scenic route, Walt starts to say, but he stops himself. That explanation will only work once.
“I don’t want you going near those mushrooms,” he tells his daughter truthfully, adding with more prevarication: “They might – well, they might be poison.”
“I’m not going to eat them,” says Anna.
“I know, but you might... brush against them by accident as you cross the line. They might burst. Please just stay back from them, honey. They’ll shrivel up and disappear in a few days anyway.”
They reach and return from the store without further incident, and Walt feels almost relaxed at the sight of the house that’s become home very quickly. He’s still in awe of plants, but Mrs. Rigby’s garden has not rebelled at or suffered from its new management. Walt hasn’t tried burying any fish in the soil, and he’s still hardly touched the garden hose, but the lawn and the shrubs are a palette of lush greens, the herb garden and tomato-vines in the backyard are thriving, and the creepers shrouding the front porch have bloomed and turned out to be honeysuckle.
“Guess you and your missus have green thumbs,” had been Joe’s judgment when Walt shrugged off his compliments with an air of embarrassment. “Some people just have the knack.”
There’s another neighborhood party that weekend— Hilde supposes she and Walt will soon have to step up and host one themselves, though her heart sinks at the prospect of them having to finally complete the unpacking and hide or throw out the drifts of cardboard boxes— more so than at having to come up with a supply of hors-d’oeuvres, for there are always recipe-books, and someone once showed her how to carve a swan from an apple, which makes up for a lot.
This particular shindig is a backyard barbecue hosted by Daphne and her husband Evan, who has turned out to be the gardener who warned Walt about the aggressive nature of mint. He’s cooking meats (not lamb, Walt notes, or what would he use to season it?) on a small charcoal grill gaily decorated with a plaid design around the sides. Other folks mill about in a happy burble of chat, and several children weave in and out among the adults’ legs, chasing each other.
Three small boys sprawl on their stomachs beside a lawn chair, gravely moving toys through the cropped grass. Daphne’s husband glances down at them and pauses. Walt sees him cough and blink rapidly, notices the white-knuckle grip on the barbecue fork, and crosses the yard to join him.
“Evan,” he murmurs. “That’s your name, right? I didn’t quite catch it before at Betty and Joe’s.” Evan, still coughing, turns at the sound of his voice. “We talked about gardening, remember? You warned me that mint is just a weed with good publicity.”
With this tid-bit to recall his memory, the man nods and his face relaxes into a smile.
“Why don’t I take over grilling duties for a bit, Ev?” Harvey has come up behind Walt. “You get Walt a beer, and show him those glass frames you built for the cucumbers.”
Walt pats Evan’s shoulder gently and follows him round the side of the house.
“Sorry ‘bout... that," Evan says. "It’s a new barbecue– I’d never used one before— and I guess I don’t hold up well to all the smoke. Just started getting to me, you know?
” “It happens,” says Walt. He’s uneasy around flames himself, except for his pipe. His pipe: “Ought I to have left my pipe at home?” he asks.
“Oh, tobacco is different from the smell of burning meat. Blue Ribbon?” Evan asks, pulling out a couple of bottles from a tin bucket.
Walt accepts.
“I’ve checked the herb garden,” he tells Evan. “Free of mint. Mostly marjoram, thyme and rosemary, far as I can tell from checking the stuff against the gardening book. Course neither Hilde nor I can cook for beans-- I don’t even think we can cook beans—so the herbs aren’t much use to us, except as decoration.”
Evan laughs.
“Anyhow,” Walt continues, “you were going to show me those cucumber frames Harvey mentioned?”
“They’d replaced the sash-windows at my work,” Evan says, “and they let me keep the old ones. Just had to add a frame to the side of the house and fit’em into it.”
He gestures proudly at his handiwork. The cucumber-vines within do seem to appreciate their miniature hot-house. He takes another swig of his beer.
“Only trouble is,” he says, “just like you with the herbs, we don’t know what to do with all the cucumbers we grow. Daphne has a basement full of jars of gherkins, and I keep giving bushels of ‘em away to the neighbors, but even they have their limits. I’ve a mind to leave a crate of them on somebody’s doorstep and run.”
He slaps Walt on the back, a little harder than he intended, perhaps.
The guests gathered by the barbecue hear a tinkling crash and a frightened yell from Evan. Several come running to investigate, the small boys at the forefront, clutching their toy cars. Joe, who’d been talking to Harvey about the finer point of grilling things on skewers, catches two of the children as he sees what has happened.
“Stay back! Stay back kids, there’s broken glass. Walt, you okay?”
Evan’s hand is pressed to his mouth and his face is white, but Walt is awkwardly scrambling to his feet.
“It’s all right, it’s— don’t worry. I’m sorry about your cucumber frame, Ev.” He gingerly pulls a curved, foot-long shard from the front of his sports shirt. “So much for this shirt,” he laughs weakly, turning to Evan just as the latter crumples and begins to topple.
Joe helps Walt catch Evan, who is taller than either of them. They stagger away from the shattered cucumber frames with him draped over their shoulders. Daphne has appeared through the crowd and takes charge of her husband. Her gushing mannerisms have dropped and she’s suddenly all quiet competence.
“Walt, what about you?” asks Harvey. Walt shrugs, glances down at his slashed but unbloodied clothes. Hilde has arrived. She stops first by Evan but seeing that Daphne has things well in hand, continues to Walt’s side.
“I heard him crash through the glass,” she asked. “What happened?”
“It was Walt who fell through the glass,” says Joe. “Can’t believe you didn’t sever an artery, Walt.” Walt examines his shirt again. He’s beginning to look worried, but he shakes his head.
“Just lost my balance,” he insists quietly. “This shirt’s cut up, but the glass seems to have missed me.” Hilde frowns and begins undoing his buttons. “Careful, hon.” The front of his t-shirt is scored, with another slice of glass still snagged in the stretchy fabric, but still there is no blood, no apparent damage to Walt. He squirms.
“Hold on, hadn’t we better do this in the house? These people don’t want to see me bare-chested.”
“Do you keep the first-aid kit in the bathroom, Daphne?” Hilde asks as she leads Walt towards the back door.
“The kitchen.”
“I’ll send someone back out with it.”
“No need, Ev’s not physically hurt, and he’s already coming round.”
In Daphne’s kitchen, beneath a little embroidered sampler that reads BLESS THIS HOUSE, Hilde finds a well-stocked kit of bandages and other supplies; all quite unnecessary to the situation. Everyone else is still outside, reassuring Evan, but Walt drops his voice to speak:
“I know what you’re thinking. A fall through glass like that, I ought to be slashed to ribbons,” Walt says. “Or at least pretty sore.”
“Why do you yearn after injury?”
“I don’t. But it’s strange—” Walt scratches his head. “I can’t recall the last time I was hurt. I don’t believe I ever have been hurt. Which seems statistically unlikely, especially since… well, there was a war, you know.” He gives Hilde a wan smile and she nods brusquely as she examines his upper body. It’s true there’s not a scratch or a bruise on him. His bare skin, now that he’s peeled off his undershirt, is smooth and undamaged; the muscles beneath feel normal. She palps Walt’s torso and abdomen. Everything seems to be in place, warm and well-knit as always.
“That tickles.”
“I don’t know what to say.” She looks up at his face and those blue eyes meet hers, their expression a little graver than usual:
“Honey, I don’t think I can wait six months for an answer from the Department of Public Records. I’m pretty sure I know what it’ll be anyway. I’m going to go into the city Monday morning and show the Bureau of Motor Vehicles what passes for my driver’s licence and ask them to explain why it’s blank.”
“Daddy?!” Anna bursts into the Hansens’ kitchen and Walt snaps back to amiable nonchalance:
“It’s all right, baby, just a little fall. Let me get my shirt back on and we’ll go check on poor Mr. Hansen, I think I gave him a scare without meaning to.”
As he pulls on his white t-shirt and leads their daughter back outside, Hilde finds the kitchen bin and disposes of the big glass shard she’s still holding. Its edge has left a cut on one of her fingers, not deep and so thin as to be visible only be the fine brush-stroke of blood.
She washes her hands under the tap and returns to the barbecue.
It’s the last day of school. Miss Wertham has brought a cake, but first her pupils have to clean out their desks and take down the drawings and projects that have accumulated on the classroom walls over the course of the last term. Anna gingerly holds her pressed flowers on cardstock as some of the petals come unglued and twirl to the floor. Danny Bell has won the right to use the big push broom and he races proudly about the four walls of the room, sweeping up everything in his path. Enid jumps out of the way as he scoots by and nearly knocks over the textbooks stacked on Miss Wertham’s desk, but the teacher has given up on scolding anybody for today.
Afterwards everyone walks home loaded down with exercise books, pencil cases and rolled-up pictures. When she reaches her front porch, Anna sets down her school things, stretches in relief and declares to her mother:
“Third Grade is finally over and I don’t have to go back for months.”
“Why are we going this way?” she asks her father when, home from work later that afternoon, he remembers he was supposed to pick up a bottle of milk and hadn’t, and asks if she wants to tag along to the store. “It’s just up the street.”
Just thought we’d take the scenic route, Walt starts to say, but he stops himself. That explanation will only work once.
“I don’t want you going near those mushrooms,” he tells his daughter truthfully, adding with more prevarication: “They might – well, they might be poison.”
“I’m not going to eat them,” says Anna.
“I know, but you might... brush against them by accident as you cross the line. They might burst. Please just stay back from them, honey. They’ll shrivel up and disappear in a few days anyway.”
They reach and return from the store without further incident, and Walt feels almost relaxed at the sight of the house that’s become home very quickly. He’s still in awe of plants, but Mrs. Rigby’s garden has not rebelled at or suffered from its new management. Walt hasn’t tried burying any fish in the soil, and he’s still hardly touched the garden hose, but the lawn and the shrubs are a palette of lush greens, the herb garden and tomato-vines in the backyard are thriving, and the creepers shrouding the front porch have bloomed and turned out to be honeysuckle.
“Guess you and your missus have green thumbs,” had been Joe’s judgment when Walt shrugged off his compliments with an air of embarrassment. “Some people just have the knack.”
* * * * *
There’s another neighborhood party that weekend— Hilde supposes she and Walt will soon have to step up and host one themselves, though her heart sinks at the prospect of them having to finally complete the unpacking and hide or throw out the drifts of cardboard boxes— more so than at having to come up with a supply of hors-d’oeuvres, for there are always recipe-books, and someone once showed her how to carve a swan from an apple, which makes up for a lot.
This particular shindig is a backyard barbecue hosted by Daphne and her husband Evan, who has turned out to be the gardener who warned Walt about the aggressive nature of mint. He’s cooking meats (not lamb, Walt notes, or what would he use to season it?) on a small charcoal grill gaily decorated with a plaid design around the sides. Other folks mill about in a happy burble of chat, and several children weave in and out among the adults’ legs, chasing each other.
Three small boys sprawl on their stomachs beside a lawn chair, gravely moving toys through the cropped grass. Daphne’s husband glances down at them and pauses. Walt sees him cough and blink rapidly, notices the white-knuckle grip on the barbecue fork, and crosses the yard to join him.
“Evan,” he murmurs. “That’s your name, right? I didn’t quite catch it before at Betty and Joe’s.” Evan, still coughing, turns at the sound of his voice. “We talked about gardening, remember? You warned me that mint is just a weed with good publicity.”
With this tid-bit to recall his memory, the man nods and his face relaxes into a smile.
“Why don’t I take over grilling duties for a bit, Ev?” Harvey has come up behind Walt. “You get Walt a beer, and show him those glass frames you built for the cucumbers.”
Walt pats Evan’s shoulder gently and follows him round the side of the house.
“Sorry ‘bout... that," Evan says. "It’s a new barbecue– I’d never used one before— and I guess I don’t hold up well to all the smoke. Just started getting to me, you know?
” “It happens,” says Walt. He’s uneasy around flames himself, except for his pipe. His pipe: “Ought I to have left my pipe at home?” he asks.
“Oh, tobacco is different from the smell of burning meat. Blue Ribbon?” Evan asks, pulling out a couple of bottles from a tin bucket.
Walt accepts.
“I’ve checked the herb garden,” he tells Evan. “Free of mint. Mostly marjoram, thyme and rosemary, far as I can tell from checking the stuff against the gardening book. Course neither Hilde nor I can cook for beans-- I don’t even think we can cook beans—so the herbs aren’t much use to us, except as decoration.”
Evan laughs.
“Anyhow,” Walt continues, “you were going to show me those cucumber frames Harvey mentioned?”
“They’d replaced the sash-windows at my work,” Evan says, “and they let me keep the old ones. Just had to add a frame to the side of the house and fit’em into it.”
He gestures proudly at his handiwork. The cucumber-vines within do seem to appreciate their miniature hot-house. He takes another swig of his beer.
“Only trouble is,” he says, “just like you with the herbs, we don’t know what to do with all the cucumbers we grow. Daphne has a basement full of jars of gherkins, and I keep giving bushels of ‘em away to the neighbors, but even they have their limits. I’ve a mind to leave a crate of them on somebody’s doorstep and run.”
He slaps Walt on the back, a little harder than he intended, perhaps.
The guests gathered by the barbecue hear a tinkling crash and a frightened yell from Evan. Several come running to investigate, the small boys at the forefront, clutching their toy cars. Joe, who’d been talking to Harvey about the finer point of grilling things on skewers, catches two of the children as he sees what has happened.
“Stay back! Stay back kids, there’s broken glass. Walt, you okay?”
Evan’s hand is pressed to his mouth and his face is white, but Walt is awkwardly scrambling to his feet.
“It’s all right, it’s— don’t worry. I’m sorry about your cucumber frame, Ev.” He gingerly pulls a curved, foot-long shard from the front of his sports shirt. “So much for this shirt,” he laughs weakly, turning to Evan just as the latter crumples and begins to topple.
Joe helps Walt catch Evan, who is taller than either of them. They stagger away from the shattered cucumber frames with him draped over their shoulders. Daphne has appeared through the crowd and takes charge of her husband. Her gushing mannerisms have dropped and she’s suddenly all quiet competence.
“Walt, what about you?” asks Harvey. Walt shrugs, glances down at his slashed but unbloodied clothes. Hilde has arrived. She stops first by Evan but seeing that Daphne has things well in hand, continues to Walt’s side.
“I heard him crash through the glass,” she asked. “What happened?”
“It was Walt who fell through the glass,” says Joe. “Can’t believe you didn’t sever an artery, Walt.” Walt examines his shirt again. He’s beginning to look worried, but he shakes his head.
“Just lost my balance,” he insists quietly. “This shirt’s cut up, but the glass seems to have missed me.” Hilde frowns and begins undoing his buttons. “Careful, hon.” The front of his t-shirt is scored, with another slice of glass still snagged in the stretchy fabric, but still there is no blood, no apparent damage to Walt. He squirms.
“Hold on, hadn’t we better do this in the house? These people don’t want to see me bare-chested.”
“Do you keep the first-aid kit in the bathroom, Daphne?” Hilde asks as she leads Walt towards the back door.
“The kitchen.”
“I’ll send someone back out with it.”
“No need, Ev’s not physically hurt, and he’s already coming round.”
In Daphne’s kitchen, beneath a little embroidered sampler that reads BLESS THIS HOUSE, Hilde finds a well-stocked kit of bandages and other supplies; all quite unnecessary to the situation. Everyone else is still outside, reassuring Evan, but Walt drops his voice to speak:
“I know what you’re thinking. A fall through glass like that, I ought to be slashed to ribbons,” Walt says. “Or at least pretty sore.”
“Why do you yearn after injury?”
“I don’t. But it’s strange—” Walt scratches his head. “I can’t recall the last time I was hurt. I don’t believe I ever have been hurt. Which seems statistically unlikely, especially since… well, there was a war, you know.” He gives Hilde a wan smile and she nods brusquely as she examines his upper body. It’s true there’s not a scratch or a bruise on him. His bare skin, now that he’s peeled off his undershirt, is smooth and undamaged; the muscles beneath feel normal. She palps Walt’s torso and abdomen. Everything seems to be in place, warm and well-knit as always.
“That tickles.”
“I don’t know what to say.” She looks up at his face and those blue eyes meet hers, their expression a little graver than usual:
“Honey, I don’t think I can wait six months for an answer from the Department of Public Records. I’m pretty sure I know what it’ll be anyway. I’m going to go into the city Monday morning and show the Bureau of Motor Vehicles what passes for my driver’s licence and ask them to explain why it’s blank.”
“Daddy?!” Anna bursts into the Hansens’ kitchen and Walt snaps back to amiable nonchalance:
“It’s all right, baby, just a little fall. Let me get my shirt back on and we’ll go check on poor Mr. Hansen, I think I gave him a scare without meaning to.”
As he pulls on his white t-shirt and leads their daughter back outside, Hilde finds the kitchen bin and disposes of the big glass shard she’s still holding. Its edge has left a cut on one of her fingers, not deep and so thin as to be visible only be the fine brush-stroke of blood.
She washes her hands under the tap and returns to the barbecue.
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Date: 2019-08-20 01:49 am (UTC)From: