Threading Beads

 

He started bitching the moment she walked in the joint.

And she had a coffee in her hand, too.  In both hands, actually.  One for her, one for him.  Hers was old--he could tell by the opened lid and the multiple lipstick smears around the edges.  In comparison, his cup was in pristine condition, unsoiled by human hands. A medium regular Irish Cream from Hazelnut's.

Of course, he could tell this, but he still maintained his bitch face.  He couldn't help it.  The two oldest kids were outside and the youngest was in his arms, trilling and squirming, and he just had to convey his frustration to, well, someone. Her, actually.  She was his wife, after all.  It was her job to put up with him.

She recognized the face at once, and the smile she had previously worn fell down a notch. "What is it?" she asked.

"I know it's because I have to go to work tomorrow," he began.

"Yes?"

"I wish I had another week off."

"But you don't."  She walked over to the kitchen table and placed the coffees down.

He frowned and followed after her. "It's just...today was just an awful day. Kyle was up fifteen minutes after you left for work, and I swore I was going to hold him less today, and I broke my promise, and then Ashley woke up and wanted to play Santa Santa--"

"Santa Santa?"

"It's this game we have.  She has this elf cap I put on--you know, the one Carly gave us--"  He held out the baby to her as if she had won a Kewpie doll in a game of chance.  She took him in her arms without giving it a second thought.  "All her Barbies and stuffed animals sit on my lap--I'm Santa--and they tell me what they want for Christmas, and then Ashley--she's my assistant--helps me to wrap up a bunch of her toys in newspaper. Then we sit on the couch and pretend it's a sleigh and drop off the presents.  Did you really want to know all this?"

"Unh--"  She shifted legs uncomfortably.  She had put off going to the bathroom since about a half an hour before she left work.  She hoped this wasn't going to take too long. 

"Then Happy started getting hyper, and chewing all the presents, so I had to put him on his leash. But that only made him more hyper, so I started to bring him down to the cellar.  I didn't realize until I was halfway off the deck that all the neighbors were getting a mighty nice view of me in my orange shorts and the elf cap."

"Oh!"

"He kept yapping, of course, but the distance does help, just a bit.  Then your mother dropped by with Anna, and decided to actually come in, and made faces about how messy the living room is, and Kyle started getting fussy at that time, so all I could do was nod and stick a bottle in his mouth."

She sat down and crossed her legs. This wasn't going to be a short one.

"After she left, Anna offered to take Happy out for a walk with Ashley.  And I thought, Great, maybe Kyle would fall asleep after his bottle and I can start to actually clean up around here.  But then we started to look around for clothes for Ashes to wear, which isn't that easy if you're forced to search in that pit that she calls a room. It was even harder to find sneakers.  Then once we found that, I needed to brush her hair.  Now you'd think that wouldn't be so hard, wouldn't you?"

She sighed and touched Kyle's tiny chin.  His blue eyes, clear and untroubled as a winter sky, gazed steadily upward at her. "But you couldn't find a hairbrush, could you?"

"NO!"  He spat out the word like a gunshot as she rose from her chair and started to travel around the room, absently picking up toys from underneath a lamp, a children's book from on top of the desk.  The house got so messy while she was away at work.  She glanced over at her husband from time to time to throw him a beacon--she was still listening. He continued on, working himself into a lather, an almost maniacal gleam in his eye. "Couldn't find one, at least!  I looked all over.  I mean, I went all over the house, into every single room, over and over again.  And then over and over again. Anna helped me look, but she couldn't find one, either.  After ten minutes, I didn't care if Ashley went outside with a headful of snakes! But then I thought about the neighbors seeing my Santa dance before and I couldn't do it."

She stopped by the stereo system and started rummaging through a pile atop the tape deck. Yeah, there it was.   She worked hard to suppress a grin.  "Umm, Matt..."

"And you know what the worst thing was?"  he exclaimed.  "The worst thing was that I just knew you would have found a brush in five seconds! So why can't I do the same thing?  Why do I have to end up brushing her hair with the doggie brush and trying not to feel guilty about it?"

She fished out a green hair brush from underneath a set of bongos and walked towards him.  He stared at the discovery dully, not surprised by it, in fact, expecting it.

"I can't stand it," he mumbled, hunched over the kitchen chair, one hand to his mouth, working on a fingernail.  "I just can't stand it." 

"Look, I really have to go to the bathroom, can you hold Kyle for me?"  She was unable to wait any longer.

He nodded, sat back, and opened up his arms to take his son.  Kyle fussed over being taken away from Josie, his arms and legs flaying akimbo like an unmanaged puppet on a string. And he thought, See?  Even my son doesn't want anything to do with me.

"By the way, I bought you a coffee," she called out as she unbuttoned her pants and headed for their bedroom.  "Don't bother to thank me or anything."

"Oh."  He watched Kyle, who mood had broken like the sun, his attention now focused on reaching out for an empty two liter soda bottle.  Matt moved him forward so he could grab it.  It must be nice to forget about things so easily, as children can.  One minute they're sweating and fussing, then it's as if the previous second had never existed.  If only I could ditch this blue mood like a coat headed for the Salvation Army.

His gaze fell upon the coffee in front of him.  It did look good.  But how to...hmm, this might take some work. How to...?  Hmm...

Holding his son with one arm, he tried to open up the cup with the other hand.  Hnrh.  He picked at the plastic cover's perforated opening with his thumb while holding down the lid with his index finger.  Oh...oh...Dammit!  Placing too much stress on the lid, it flicked off in its entirety, skidding across the table, clack clack clack.  A small puddle of coffee formed around the base of the cup.

Well, screw it.  It's open, isn't it?  He checked to make certain that Kyle was secure in his arms and then lifted the cup to his mouth.  He savored the taste.  The coffee had cooled sufficiently, so he took a deep sip, juggling the Java between each side of his mouth.  The coffee attempted to entice him, to soothe him.  He could feel a desire to abandon his inky mood into the polluted puddle surrounding his coffee cup...

He stopped, mid swish.  From a distance, he could hear what sounded like a high pitched yelp.  He put the cup down slowly.  Then he heard a cry, closer now.  A human cry.  One of his?  Then the yelp again, ever closer, high pitched--unmistakably Happy's high shriek.  Then he recognized a deeper, lower pitched bark, and now, the screaming again, nearby, practically outside the front door.

"Bonkers, no!  Bonkers, NOOO!"

Yelpyelpyelpyelpyelpyelp!

"Bonkers--"

Yelpyelpyelp!

"Rrrrf."

"---No!!"

It was Anna's voice.  She was bordering on the hysterical. He bolted upright and started to head for the front door.  "Josie!" he called out, but she was exiting the bathroom even before the words were out of his mouth.

He threw open the door.  Anna stood at the bottom of the steps, patches of red blotching her fair face.  Next to her, Bonkers, a boxer, stood. The next door neighbor's dog, a big, stupid, lump of an animal, in his opinion, one of the ugliest breeds known to man.  He towered over poor little Happy, who was roughly five times smaller than him.  Happy cowered underneath him, whimpering in a tone that better resembled a woman's high pitched cry than that of any animal.

It didn't appear as if Bonkers had bitten the smaller dog yet.  Matt didn't think Bonkers was viscous, although his features and his gruff bark did give one that impression.  He was more playful than anything, an overgrown puppy with a brain in his head the size of a chestnut.

Anna stood nearby, wanting to save Happy, but too scared to get in the way.  In the background, Matt could see his other daughter, Ashley, oblivious to the drama that was unfolding, making alligator pies in her sandbox and talking to an imaginary playmate.

"Stay back, Anna," he called out.  He wasn't thrilled about the whole thing, but he was going to have to take care of the situation.

He handed Josie the baby and pushed the screen door open.  Bonkers stopped for a moment, looking up at him with coal-black eyes.  Happy inched a bit away. Bonkers immediately refocused his attention on to the smaller dog. He barked furiously and lifted his hind legs into the air, crouching his brown head down to touch Happy's butt with his wet nose.

"Daddy!"  Anna cried out, placing her thin arms up to her freckled face.

"Don't worry."  He moved down and reached out for Happy, deliberately avoiding any contact with Bonkers, who jumped back and then looked up at him quizzically, his tiny curl of a tail wagging in overdrive.  Quickly, Matt ran up the stairs with Happy shoved under his arm like a football.  He dropped his dog to the ground and pushed him through the door.  The idiotic animal resisted, apparently desiring a rematch with his larger proportioned opponent, putting on a ridiculous show of bravado in an effort to save face.

Marlene, Bonkers' owner, chose that moment to make her way towards their house, apparently suddenly realizing that something had been going on.  She sounded full of apologies.  Matt turned and put on his best political smile.

"No sweat, Marlene!"  he called out.  "Dogs will be dogs!"

He started back into the house.  "I saved the doggie, can you deal with the neighbors?"  he asked Josie as he started for the bedroom.

 

###

"There's a big crawly thing!"

"Yeah, that's pretty big, all right."

She pushed the rock to one side.  "But no ants," she frowned.  The wind blew her curls to and fro, like seaweed on the shore.

He patted her curls down with his hand.  "It's still kind of cold out for ants, Ashes." With his other hand, he reached over to put the rock back where it belonged.

She thought about that for a moment.  "It's too cold for the ants?"  she asked, her lazy eye slightly turning inward.  He loved those eyes.  Chocolate brown as a bar of Hershey's.

"Just a little."

"So where do they go?"

He thought about that for a moment.  Where do they go?  He wished he had paid more attention to Biology in High School.  It had always been one of his worst subjects.  All he remembered vividly was a disastrous frog dissection (his had babies) and his lab partner singing "Let's take a trip down the Anal Canal." 

They really should provide you with warnings about these sort of situations on the first day of the course, while you're collecting the textbooks and receiving a class outline, he concluded. Nothing too complex. Something simple and to the point, like: "Warning! You will receive a pop quiz on this material fifteen years from now!  Learn it now or feel like an idiot in front of your kids!"

"Well, that's a good question, honey.  Where do they go?  Um, I think they have houses deeper underground, and spend their winters sleeping. They live in, um, little ant condos."  Or something like that.  God help any of his kids in Science and Nature.

"But it won't be winter any day now," Ashley said confidently.

"No, it's pretty nice out."  It was January, but due to El Nino, the weather was in the forties.  A lazy breeze floated out and about, occasionally chilling his cheek and reminding him that this was supposed to be the middle of winter.  Still, other times, the sun would shine through the clouds and remind him of what was to come. However, during the past half hour, the clouds had started to gather and the moments of basking in the sun had grown fewer and farther between.  

The mood that had enveloped him like a heavy coat was still with him, but he was trying hard to mask it for Ashley.  For some reason, he always went out of his way to mask those things for her, more so than the other two children.  He wasn't certain exactly why.  She was his second child, with an air of confidence that always made her look before leaping and a disposition that could change like the weather.  No fierce thunderstorm could ever compete with one of Ashley's frowns.

So he sat there, absently looking for crawly things, while at the same time, in another pocket of his brain, he continued to marinate in his black mood.  If only he could blindside it as if it were a creepy crawly hiding under a rock, expose it to the light of day, and shoo it away--away, mood, begone!

"Daddy?"

"Yeah, sweetie?"

She placed a brown rock down and stood up.  "I don wanna play rocks any more I wanna play Guzbupsgaim that Anna has."

"You want to play Anna's Goosebumps game?"  Repetition was the key with Ashley.  It was sometimes difficult to understand exactly what she said, so regurgitating the last sentence or so usually put you on a level playing field.

"Yes."  She started to make her way towards the cellar.

"Don't you think it might be a good idea to put the rocks back where you found them?"  She shook her head and opened up the cellar door.  Well...better that he put them back in their proper place, anyway.  He guessed.

Oh, and damn it.  He spotted a plastic cup nestled inside the corpse of a long deceased ivy, undoubtedly dropped when Ashley and Anna were playing picnic earlier that day. Slobs.  He lifted it up, checking first for bugs inside.

He finished reuniting his rock group and headed after Ashley.  She was already down at the bottom of the stairs.  They had an unfinished cellar, and, owing to the season, it was barely possible to navigate a straight line from one end to the other.  Everything hibernated down in the cellar during the winter.  The lawnmower, the deck chairs, the kids' pup tent (which he hadn't bothered to take apart this year--Anna had begged him to play in it "one more time" downstairs, and he had not since secured the necessary ambition to deconstruct it after that), all the bikes (a few of which were more than a little rusted), old books, the Christmas decorations (just returned to the cellar three days ago.)  And Ashley, making her way through the piles.

The games were all stacked against the back wall, resting atop a concrete indentation painted blue.  They had dozens of games, or two dozen, at the very least, stacked half-hazardly, in various shapes, sizes and colors.  Saved By the Bell, Life, Mall Madness.  Ashley moved to an old desk that had been set underneath the stacks.  She started to climb on top of it to select her game.

"No, wait!"

She stopped and looked at him.

"Let me get it for you.  Goosebumps, right?"

She nodded, her honey brown curls bobbing up and down.

He stared grimly up at the imposing pile and sighed.  "You sure you wouldn't settle for Chinese Checkers?"

She shook her head.

"Why not?  It's really fun.  It's got marbles!"

She glared at him, her thick brown eyebrows merging into a straight line.  "No.  I want Guzbumpsgaim and I don't want Neez Checkers! Mnh!"  She stuck out her tongue.

"Well, since you asked so nicely..."  He shrugged, and swatted her on the butt.  "Move out of the way..."

He moved over towards the game pile and climbed on top of the desk, the cup from the garden still in one hand.  The Goosebumps game was located in the middle of the left hand pile.  At one point there had been three neat stacks, with the big boxes on the bottom, the small ones on top.  It irritated him to realize those days were long gone.   They...he...had gotten lazy in his attempts at keeping the game stacks straight, just as he...they...had gotten lazy about a lot of things.

He reached for the game, one arm handicapped by the cup. He started to pull it out from the pile.  Ashley looked on disinterestedly and stuck a finger up her nose.

Suddenly, the top games started to wobble precariously. He stopped, waiting for the movement to die down.

She took her finger out of her nose, growing impatient.  "Daddy!"

"All right! Hold on!"  He pulled at the game again, a strong tug.

Like a teetering house of cards, the three piles started to lean to the left.  Oh, shit.  He pushed the Goosebumps game back, trying to steady the boxes.  He threw the plastic cup to the ground in order to use both hands.  The game caught on the edge of another one, causing a group of boxes to splinter off in the opposite direction.

"Daddy?"

"Ashley, go upstairs quick!" he shouted.  "Get your Mommy down here right away!"

She started up the stairs quickly.  He stood on top of the desk, his body as rigid as possible, his head tilted back, his arms outstretched, trying to support as many games as he could, not daring to breathe, for fear of disrupting the delicate balance he had established.  He prayed for Josie to come down into the cellar and save him.  He closed his eyes, saying a little prayer, that he could keep it together long enough to--

"Ah!"  he whimpered.

The games buckled forward and brushed past him, banging against his waist, then against the desk and his legs, then to the floor.  Boxes flew open, exposing cards and pieces, which fluttered in the air, scattering behind the desk, and behind the blue file cabinet to the right, and across the rug.  In the wake of the explosion, the surrounding area was littered with a sea of colored papers, small plastic tokens, dice, a metal shoe from a Monopoly game, playing boards, marbles.

He dropped his hands to his sides and jumped off the desk, fighting the urge to scream out in frustration.  He should have known something like this was going to happen, after the way the morning had gone!  It just figured, didn't it?  There was just no way to get a break every now and then, every action led to an inescapable downward spiral, it was all just too much! All too much to take.

He looked around at the thousands of items scattered around him and contemplated the prospect of sorting and organizing that awaited him.

And then he slumped down to the ground, resting his back against the desk.

"There is no use crying over spilt game pieces," he shouted aloud, although there was no one around to hear him. .

But he felt like crying. Laughing, too.

As if on cue, Ashley appeared at the top of the cellar steps.  Alone.  She had a cookie in her hand and wore a chocolate smear across her mouth.

"Mommy's feeding Kyle,"  she said.  "She wants to know if it's 'mergency."

"Not any more," he groaned.

She made her way down the stairs.

He took a good look around.  Well, at least the Goosebumps game was intact.  It had fallen upside down atop the desk. He lifted his body up and reached over to grab it.  "I've got your game right here..."

She moved towards him, chewing on the cookie and scanning all the scattered items.

"We can pick everything up later.  You want to play your game first?"

She moved to his side and bent down to examine one of the boxes.

"Ashley?"

She turned his way.  "Daddy!"  she said, beaming.  "Can we play with this?"

He examined the box in her hands and groaned.  A jewelry making kit.  Figures.  One of the top boxes on the pile--practically the top box.  Everything could have been averted had she just chosen it to begin with.

"I thought you wanted to play Goosebumps," he protested, valiantly trying to justify his labors.  "I thought that's why I went through all of this."

"No. I want to play joolry!"  She grinned, leaned forward excitedly, twisting her hands together. "Can I please make a necklace?"  She smiled with her teeth clenched together and practically shook, as if frozen to the spot, as if an electric current were passing through her.

Well.  How badly had he really wanted to play Goosebumps?

"You want to make a necklace, huh?"

"Yeah.  Can I?"

He threw down the game and reached for the jewelry kit, which was mostly still intact.  He started to lift back the cover.

"I think so..."  He reached in and withdrew a snarl of blue plastic string from a pile in the box.  He started to unsnag a strand, contemplating the possibilities.  "Yeah.  I think I can do this.  I think I'll need to knot the end first, though...Let's just sit down on the floor and take a look..."

His clumsy fingers struggled to knot the end.  He had never been exactly what you would call an Arts and Crafts wizard.  He recalled in fifth grade, his art teacher once played a piece of classical music and instructed the class to draw whatever came to mind.  And he had taken her literally, filling the page with scribbles of whatever came into his head--grass, a fence, a smiling baby, a piano, a pig, a dancing couple.  All over the canvas in a chaotic jumble.  Everyone else had drawn single images--pastoral scenes, possibly a woman riding horseback. And his had gone down terribly, greeted with snickers and hoots.  The teacher wrinkled her nose, said "How interesting," and moved on to the next one.

There. All knotted.

"Now, what do you want on your necklace?"  He pointed to the multi-colored beads in the box.

She selected an orange object that resembled a star. 

"This," she said.  But then she noticed a little red boot.  "And this, too!"

"Hold on, I'll get both on," he laughed.

She grabbed for a blue bead.  "Then I want this!"

"Hold on! Hold on!"

It was strange.  He couldn't explain it.  For some reason, as he placed the beads on the string, as he fumbled and pushed to get the plastic pieces lined up in a row, for some reason--for some inexplicable reason...it was as if all of the pressures and frustrations he had experienced during the day were melting away.  He found himself becoming excited by the necklace he was constructing, interested in the form it was taking, in the coordination of colors and sizes and shapes.  Each clink of a bead seemed to somehow take a large boulder off of his shoulders, until pound for pound he was left feeling, well...

Feeling what he probably should have been feeling all along, even if he was surrounded by game pieces and tokens, and he still didn't know where his very special hairbrush was upstairs; feeling pretty darn lucky, actually, in spite of all the petty nuisances in his life, and even the bigger problems, like the bills that they owed, and how they were ever going to make ends meet. 

He felt as if he were intoxicated, yet no alcohol had touched his lips. He felt suspended in a moment, sitting on the cold cement floor of the basement threading beads with his child, and wishing that he could capture the feeling in a bottle to uncork and slowly savor it for years to come.

Outside, he heard a crash of thunder.  He looked up towards the door to the cellar.  The clouds had finally managed to take over the blue sky.  It was dark out now.  Rain was just beginning to fall to the ground in a steady stream. 

He glanced down at Ashley and realized she had stopped picking beads.  She was staring out at the rain as well, her eyes wide, her mouth in a frown.

He touched her hand.  "What's the matter, honey?"

She looked up and impulsively moved to grab him and give him a big hug.  He kissed her lightly on the top of her head, patting her back, feeling her tiny shoulder blades.

"I'm scared, Daddy."

"Of what?"

She dug her head deeper into his chest.

"The monster."

The monster?  Where had that one come from?  Oh, the storm.  The thunderbolt. He thought about it some more. The monster.

"So am I, honey," he whispered.

He held her a bit longer, cherishing the comfort only a small child--his child--could bring.  Then he looked down at the string of beads he had dropped to the floor.

"You know, I think we're almost done with this necklace.  Just a few beads more..."

She pulled away.  "Then can I try it on?"  she asked excitedly.

He nodded and swung down to pick out those final beads, laboring over his final selections.  They had to be just right. A great deal of effort had been placed into this necklace, after all. No sense in screwing it all up just as he'd almost arrived at the finish line.

He was grateful his black mood had passed as quickly as the storm had broken.

But he still wished he had another week of vacation.

 

 

   

 

                                                                                    April 15, 1998