Read Stories for Boys: A Memoir Online
Authors: Gregory Martin
Stories for Boys: A Memoir (15 page)
Mark donated a yellow slide which had once been connected to a five foot high playfort that he’d torn down a few years before. I attached the slide to the six foot high deck of the treehouse. I didn’t think the one foot difference would matter much. But early tests involving my real children proved otherwise. Gravity took on new meaning for them. No bones were broken. I built a stand which raised the bottom of the slide eighteen inches off the ground. This was better. But the yellow slide is still not without peril. There is a steep learning curve to sticking the landing, especially for toddlers.
Evan and I hung a pulley to a branch of the desert willow, just off the deck of the treehouse. We ran a thin, nylon rope through the pulley and connected it at the bottom to a pale blue Easter basket. The basket is light so if it falls on someone’s head, it won’t crack their skull open.
ONE AFTERNOON, NOT long after I built the treehouse, I came home from work and the house was strangely quiet. Evan was playing with magnets on the living room rug. Christine was standing with her arms crossed in our bedroom, staring at the wall.
Oliver had yelled at her. She always took Evan’s side. Where was Oliver? She didn’t know.
I had an idea where Oliver might be. I went out the back door into the yard and climbed the ladder up into the treehouse. I ducked inside the doorframe and sat next to him. He didn’t look angry, which was what I expected. He sat cross-legged, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.
“You look pretty sad,” I said.
He didn’t answer. He put his hand on my arm. I have a small mole on the inside crook of my elbow, and he found it and started worrying it with his index finger. He had been doing this since he was a baby. I didn’t particularly like the way it felt, but he’d been doing it so long, it was too late to stop him now. I’d never called his attention to it.
Oliver looked tired. He and Evan had been staying up too late, sometimes past ten, talking in their bunkbeds, giggling, goofing around. Last night Oliver was telling Evan that you don’t want to join the army if your name is Will. Sooner or later, the captain is going to say, “Fire at Will.” Evan got the joke immediately. He was still repeating, “Fire at Will” and giggling after Oliver had fallen asleep.
We sat together quietly for awhile. The sun had gone down. The backyard was in shadow, and it was dark under the roof of the treehouse.
Finally Oliver said, “I felt like just going away, but I decided to come up here.”
NO DISCUSSION OF the treehouse could be complete without mentioning chihuahuas. Our neighbors to the north have three chihuahuas, and they bark their collective yippie-dog ferocious bark whenever anyone even thinks about climbing up the ladder to the treehouse. Evan discovered that if he blew bubbles out the window of the treehouse so that they floated lazily over the stuccoed wall, this would render the chihuahuas apoplectic.
Subject:Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008Hi Greg,I hope everyone is well in your household by now. I had a bad bump on my nose about 3 weeks ago that is well healed, but was really ugly for a while. I was helping my friend fix a piece of plastic corrugated roofing that had pushed through the carport from the weight of two feet of snow when the ladder slipped out from under me and I dropped straight down onto a plastic trash can. Luckily the lid was on it or I probably would have cut my nose severely. I had a big scab for about two weeks. I’m fine now, thank goodness.My life appears to have settled out a bit and getting more comfortable. I have met a couple of other people that are just good friends to hang out with on weekends. This is much better than sitting at home alone watching TV or playing games on the computer.I had laser surgery on my right eye today to clear off a small film of cells that have grown on my artificial lens. I am surprised at how much difference it made in my vision after the dilation wore off. I will have the left eye done next Thursday.MomMom is continuing to decline. I know from my own work with people with her condition that she has nowhere to go but down. I just hate to see it. When I saw her last June, she was so frail and had such a weak voice and I had to cry when I got off by myself. The thought has occurred to me that someday you may have to see your Mom and I in just such a condition. It was a sobering thought. I didn’t like it very much. I suppose you could say you have already seen me in worse condition. I personally would hope that it never happen again.Enough of that. I would like to try to fly down for a weekend sometime when it is convenient for you and the family. I haven’t seen Christine and the kids in too long a time. I hope I can get an invite.Will close for now. Love you all very much.Dad
Invitation
I WANTED TO INVITE MY FATHER TO VISIT. I WANTED TO see him again, and I wanted Christine and the boys to see him. But I balked. For days I didn’t respond to my father’s email. I didn’t understand my reluctance. Hadn’t I just built a treehouse? Wasn’t I all better? A week went by. I knew this wasn’t okay. Even though I could easily explain (lie) that I just hadn’t checked my email in a while, I knew that my father would be checking his email regularly for my answer, and each day that passed with no response would confirm his fear. On some level I must have known that seeing my father again, in my own home, and that my children seeing him again, would mark a change in the nature of our relationship, an acceptance on my part of things as they were, an acceptance of him that was more than words. The end of one time, and the beginning of another.
Not just acceptance but one more step towards forgiveness.
The poet Richard Hugo wrote, “No two hurts are the same and most have compensations / too lovely to leave.”
Oliver, Evan, and I spent the night in the treehouse. New Mexico nights in the middle of March are not warm. There was still lots of snow in the mountains. Concerns about hypothermia were dismissed. We’d survive. We had sleeping bags rated to fifteen degrees. We had air mattresses and pillows. We had winter hats and flannel pajamas. We had books and headlamps. I snuck up candy bars, using the pulley basket. I said, “Now, whatever you do, don’t tell mom.”
“MOM,” Evan screamed. “MOM! Come. You’ve got to come.”
Christine came out into the backyard. She looked pretty in the glow of light from the kitchen.
“You’ll never believe what Daddy did,” Evan said.
“What did he do now?” Christine’s hands were on her hips.
“He snuck us candy bars. Using the PULLEY BASKET!”
“It’s true,” I admitted.
“I’m going to have to spank your Daddy,” Christine said, and she went back into the house.
“Thanks a lot, Evan,” I said.
“You knew I would tell,” Evan said.
“I thought you might.”
I told the boys a story, one of my originals, about Trixie the Adventure Cat, her roommate Bobo the Dog, and the alley rats, Max, Perkins, and Raoul. Trixie and Bobo lived in a modest bungalow. Out in the alley lived Max and his notorious gang. Max and the rats were always sneaking into Trixie’s house, stealing things, playing pranks – causing mischief and mayhem. Tonight, Trixie and Bobo were trying to get to sleep in their brand new treehouse, but the alley rats kept making ghostly noises from somewhere below. A note was mysteriously pulled up to Trixie and Bobo in the pulley basket. Beware.
Evan said, “I’m scared. I think I heard something. I want to go inside and sleep with Mommy.”
I told Evan it was time to be brave. He could do it.
Evan must have heard something in my voice, because he said, “Okay, Daddy. I can be brave.”
After the story, after the boys had gone quiet and were settled in their sleeping bags, I sat up and said, “I want to ask you guys something.”
They looked at me, their eyes shining in the dark.
“What do you think about Grandpa coming to visit?”
They both said, “Yeah!” at once. Evan said, “Do you think Grandpa would want to spend the night in the treehouse?”
“I don’t know if he’d go for that,” I said.
“That’s okay,” Evan said.
The stars came out. The boys fell asleep. I stayed up for a long time listening to all the night sounds near and far – Rocky wandering the yard below, unable to climb up the ladder and join us, his collar and tags jangling softly; planes in the distance flying south toward the airport; the train blowing its horn as it passed through downtown.
Subject: RE:Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008Hi Greg,Thank you for the invitation to come for a visit. I have already told my boss that I will be off for the trip. I’ll let you know about the flight times as soon as I know something. I’m really looking forward to seeing you all again. It has been too long since I’ve seen Christine and the boys.Thanks so much for your very supportive remarks. I cannot express how warm it makes me feel to know that you can continue to accept me under very different circumstances. I am beginning to not feel so isolated. It is nice to have friends that I can call just to chat and visit socially. I am reminded of how social I was a long time ago. For the past more-than-several years, I have only had social friends who were related to your Mom’s work friends. As more time goes by, I feel sure I will become very comfortable with my social environment and have a much more active life outside the house.About the tree house, I really do wish I could have been there for the construction. It was a lot of fun for us to see you playing in our yard with your friends. From a practical point of view, it was a real plus to know exactly where you were, as well. Also, I hope you will share your plans for the kitchen remodel with me. As you may remember, I was the top designer/salesman in the kitchen-bath design department for all of Hechinger’s 126 stores when we were in Northern Virginia.With luck, I might be able to offer some practical suggestions for the space you have and about the specific features you may want.I’ll close for now. Love you very much.Dad
First Person Plural
MY FATHER CAME TO VISIT FOR A LONG WEEKEND OVER Evan’s fifth birthday, in April. In the days before he came, I felt strangely fragile, almost sick to my stomach with nerves. When the boys and I picked him up from the airport, they threw themselves into his arms, laughing and shouting and talking at the same time, and he picked them up and bear-hugged them, and it was as if something broke open inside my chest, and I had to walk away for a minute because tears were streaming down my face. We drove home together in the car, then walked to the park with the boys. Later we sat at the kitchen table together and ate dinner. But I didn’t know how to talk to him – not around the boys, not in those moments when we would find ourselves alone together. I didn’t know how to tell him how awful those grudge-filled months were when we didn’t talk to one another. I didn’t know how to acknowledge this to myself, much less to him, without self-pity, without lacing my words with blame and bitterness. I didn’t want him to be forever defensive and apologetic. And so, contrary to my character, during those four days of my father’s visit, I was mostly quiet.
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