Chapter 26: Despair

Ted and his father were in the garage working on the lawnmower. Ted held the blade in the vise while his father turned the screw that closed the vise. Once he was satisfied with how tight the blade was being held, he stopped. Ted let go of the blade and stepped back. Daryl reached over to his workbench and picked up the file. Handing it to Ted, he said, “Okay. Let’s see you sharpen the blade.”

Holding the file at forty-five degrees, Ted ran the file down the length of the blade just like he had watched his father do on the other end of the blade. After taking a couple of strokes, he asked, “Why are we sharpening the blade?”

“So it cuts the grass rather than tearing it,” Daryl answered with a smile. He watched how Ted used the file and nodded his head in approval.

“How often should it be sharpened?”

“Once a month or so,” Daryl answered.

“Oh,” Ted said. He tried to remember if he had ever seen his father sharpen a mower blade, but couldn’t. Confused, he said, “I’ve never seen you do it before.”

“Well, I usually do it once a season,” Daryl answered.

Ted worked with the file until there was a nice edge on the mower blade. Stepping back, he asked, “How’s that?”

Looking over the blade, Daryl answered, “Pretty good. Let’s put the blade back on the mower.”

A comfortable silence settled over the two men while they worked. Daryl stepped back and watched while Ted tightened the nut that held the blade onto the shaft. He said, “Your grandfather used to own a lawn care company. When I was your age, it was my job to take care of his mowers. Every week I sharpened the blades on four lawnmowers. Once a month, I changed the oil. At the end of the season, I rebuilt each engine.”

Ted looked at lawnmower and asked, “Could you show me how to rebuild the engine on this mower?”

“I’ve got a better idea. How about we find an old mower and you can fix it up,” Daryl suggested.

Inside the house, Shirley stood at the front window with her arms crossed over her chest. She was still dressed in her night gown and robe even though it was early in the afternoon. It was just too much effort to dress. She didn’t have anywhere to go and no one who would notice anyway.

Frowning, she watched the two men working in the garage. When Daryl patted Ted on the back, she swore her son grew an inch. Shaking her head, she didn’t understand how she had become the villain in the house. Daryl was sleeping in the guest room and Ted had talked to her only once since ‘The Morning.’ That was how she thought of the day Daryl had moved out of the bedroom.

“It’s not fair. Daryl didn’t care that Ted was hurt,” she said for the thousandth time. There was no one to hear her complaint. Watching her son, she asked, “Why does Ted take his side?”

When the pair turned around, she could see their faces. They were laughing about something, but she didn’t know what could be funny. Nothing was funny anymore. She held the top of her robe closed and watched while they put the lawnmower away. She said, “I wonder if I’ll ever find anything funny again.”

She stepped away from the window and went into the kitchen. Her kitchen, her hide-away from the rest of the world, was no longer a happy place. The past ten days had been pure hell for her. She wondered how Daryl and Ted could be happy. It defied all reason as far as she was concerned. They should both be as miserable as she was.

Looking around the kitchen, she wished that she was cooking something. There was no need to cook that day. They had been invited over to a barbecue that evening at the Anders’ house. She didn’t want to go, but it was the only thing that Ted had asked her to do since ‘The Morning.’ Shaking her head, she said, “There’s no way that we can hide our marital problems.”

She sat down at the kitchen table and opened the yellow pages. She read the names of the marriage counselors over again for the tenth time trying to decide if they should make an appointment. She didn’t want to do it, but she was beginning to get desperate. Every attempt that she made to explain her position to Daryl ended with him staring at her and then walking out of the room. Maybe a marriage counselor would make him listen.

Her tears threatened to return. Looking down at the surface of the table, she said, “It’s not fair. He didn’t care that Ted was hurt.”

She slammed the telephone book closed and stared at the wall. She wondered how everything fell apart on her. Her tears made good on their threat to return. Sobbing, she covered her face wishing that it would all come to an end. If only he would admit that he was wrong, then everything could go back to how it had been.

The problem was that he didn’t want it to go back to how it used to be. He wanted something more and that just confused her. As far as she was concerned, their roles were well defined. She was the wife and he was the husband. She cooked, cleaned, and raised Ted. He provided for the family and took care of the house.

She didn’t understand his insistence that they should work to have a better sex life. She frowned while trying to figure out what he meant by that. She wondered if he had suddenly turned into some kind of pervert who wanted nothing more than kinky sex all of the time. The idea sent a shiver of disgust down her spine. After all, the whole point of sex was to have a baby and keep a man healthy. With birth control, the only thing that made sex necessary was to keep the man healthy.

Cathy was seated by the pool waiting for Sam to arrive. The sense of disappointment in her family life had been slowly growing over the past week or so. She felt that she wasn’t appreciated in the manner that she deserved.

From the way her mother talked, a person would think that she was a slut driven by hormones. She knew the truth! Her mother was the one who was a slut. She’d heard her mother begging her father for sex in the kitchen. It had been the most disgusting thing she’d ever heard. That hadn’t been the first time her mother had lost control. There were still the stains from the sweet and sour sauce in the dining room. If anyone had a problem with hormones, it was her mother.

She couldn’t blame her father for being a man. Her mother had begged and he had responded. Everyone knew that men didn’t have control. That didn’t soften the disgust she felt at the grunts he had been making. Just thinking about her parents doing it made her feel dirty.

She was very disappointed in her father. As far as she could tell, he didn’t love her. It was true that he said the words to her but only after she had practically begged him. She felt that he was just saying it to get her to be quiet. If he loved her, he would say it without her asking him.

Although her feelings towards her parents were enough to depress her, she felt that her brother was a glory hog. They were all making a big deal out of him getting a driver’s license and he was eating up the attention. She had expected him to keep his head, but he had disappointed her.

Sam would be coming over soon. That was the bright point in her miserable existence. He loved her. She knew that because he said it over and over. She felt that such attention deserved its reward and Sam was going to get rewarded during the barbecue. The timing was perfect.

Harry knocked on the entrance to the den. Looking up from his desk, Greg said, “Come in, Harry. What’s up?”

“I’m just worried about tonight,” Harry said.

“Don’t be worried. All we are doing is having a barbecue. If they choose to talk to us about their problems, we’ll offer what little advice we can. Putting expectations on it won’t help,” Greg said.

“I know. We went to Karate lessons yesterday and Ted was really down about the situation with his parents,” Harry said.

“How did the lessons go?”

“We did a few exercises. Then we all stood in a line and punched the air. It wasn’t exactly what I expected,” Harry answered with a negligent shrug of his shoulders. The fact was that he had been very disappointed with the lesson.

“Give it some time,” Greg said sitting back in his chair. He gestured to his other chair and said, “Have a seat.”

Harry sat down and said, “I guess. It just wasn’t what I expected.”

“Look at it as a chance to do a little exercise, visit with your friends, and meet new people,” Greg suggested.

“I didn’t think about it that way,” Harry answered. He had hoped that after the first lesson he would know how to defend himself. Perhaps his expectations were unrealistic.

“Tell me a little about Ted.”

“You know that he’s a year younger than I am. I’d have never talked to him without the attack taking place, but I find that I like him. He’s smart. I mean, he’s real smart. He reads a book every week and I’m not talking trash novels. He reads classics, history books, and science books,” Harry said. Half the time, Ted was talking about books of which he had never heard. Curious, he had purchased one of the books and started to read it. It was a pretty good book and explored ideas he had never considered.

“He reads a lot,” Greg said nodding his head.

“Yes.”

“What else do you know about him?”

Harry frowned a moment and then said, “He’s a nice guy. I mean, he doesn’t hate anyone. Being small and smart he gets picked on at school, but he doesn’t hate anyone. There are a number of people who he avoids, but he doesn’t hate them.”

That observation impressed Greg. He hadn’t thought Harry knew to make that kind of distinction. It also made him reassess his opinion of Ted. His first thought had been that Ted was desperate for friendship. Even if that was the case, he felt that maybe the friendship would be of benefit to his son.

He said, “That’s nice.”

“The other day we were talking about responsibility. Ted says that his father really believes that it is important for a man to step up to his responsibilities. When I told him about how I felt after getting my driver’s license, he really understood what I was talking about. He said that his father took him hunting years ago. While sitting in his tree stand, he said that he realized that he was holding a weapon that could kill people as easily as deer. The weight of the responsibility of holding that gun had come crashing down on him. I understood what he meant,” Harry said.

Smiling, Greg said, “I guess that inviting him out to hunt with me won’t work to intimidate him should he get interested in Cathy. He’ll accept the offer and I’ll end up trudging through the woods wondering how I ended up out there.”

Harry laughed at the image of his father tramping around the woods. It took a moment for the image to clear itself out. He said, “You don’t have to worry about that. Cathy is pretty stuck on Sam.”

“I haven’t had too much of a chance to talk to Sam. What do you know about him?”

That was a question that Harry didn’t want to answer. He looked around the den taking in the bookcases, the entertainment center, and the desk. In a way, the room reflected the character of his father. Conservative in a way and modern in another way while remaining comfortable.