Chapter Five
“It’s… WAKE UP TIME!”
Audible groans emitted from the mountain asleep beside me. Grubbing out eleven hours of Greek and then a Sunday School lesson involving the cosmos till one o’clock in the morning, interrupted only by an episode of Portlandia… and a 6:30AM wake-up call…
“Puck. Not now… It’s too early… Go back to your room.”
He tried. I guess he really did. He managed to only return for updates every twenty minutes for the next 90.
“Look what I found in the basement, Mom! It’s a rolling thing!”
My brain was muggled somewhere between a tyrant king Rob Lowe donned in drama rental shop red velvet cape lined in ermine with matching cardboard-and-glue crown, and remembering where I was. So it probably shouldn’t have surprised me that maybe another twenty minutes later, I felt the metal webbing of a naked paint roller “massaging” my back, deeply too.
“It’s the WAKE UP MACHINE!”
It woke up something. Probably the muscles that were only just now sore after pumping the sliding exercise machine in Theodore’s and Gloria’s basement four days earlier with Puck as weight after repeated extortions of, “Pull me, Mama! Pull me!” So I got up and tried to oversee another hour before The Bear could join us. It’s not so difficult. Strawberry yogurt, banana, biscuits with blueberry jam… If Puck had these three items every morning for the rest of his life, I think he’d be happy.
We were soon involved in a tornado of activity in the tomato soup room. The Greek blue bed was coming on a truck at some point in the day, and we had to move things around while the going was good. I switched on “The Incredibles” soundtrack to inspire. When you shift things, things get moved that you haven’t been able to move in awhile and then you get to fix other things that need to be fixed or things that need to be cleaned. So I – for maybe the first time since Puck was two – got to wash the mirror on the antique vanity behind the LCD flat screen that we never used because we don’t have television anyway. We gave it to Francis. I rubbed down the old glass face, screams of protest from the squeak of glass cleaner on toddler fingerprints.
When the truck backed up the hilly driveway, Puck lunged for Crackers to forestall the inevitable clash of cold nature with feline fear. The topaz eyes weren’t as wild this time, though. She nestled against Gloria’s leather jacket while Theodore and The Bear lugged in the separate pieces of the monster bed. Apparently tomato soup and Greek seas go together pretty well…
“Come take a look at the colors in here, Gloria,” Theodore teased her. “I think they look great!”
And she agreed. It probably had more of a Mexican look than anything else. She was busy helping Puck couch-hunt, too…
“I used to do this with my friend back in high school. It cost forty cents to go bowling, so we’d dig for coins in the cushions.”
I guess I forget about the zoo of Legos, marbles, almonds, petrified raisins, and other items of forgotten interest.
“Oh! An M&M,” Gloria retrieved the chocolate circle, still intact.
Puck stared at it for a moment…
“I’m hungry.”
The bed was hilarious. It hit the top of my rib cage. Like some fanciness in a German castle from the 1500’s requiring a utility ladder to ascend. [We decided to remove the box spring.] A solid blue beast. And it would probably last us till we died in our sleep 70 years later. Here’s hoping… The endeavor had been a success.
Gloria added more meat to the stew back at the Silverspoon abode, and popped yeast rolls into the oven. The radio droned with an organic botanical talk show – woman calling in wanting to get rid of moss in her lawn; don’t know why she would. Puck munched a handful of walnuts, grazing Gloria’s thick volume of Farside. Two new hackysacks in moss green and pumpkin orange sat on the arm of the dark red chair. Kitts had knit them for him before she went back to Texas.
A gray afternoon warmed by the gas fire and chilled by the knowledge that the Texas Rangers had extended an offer to Lance Berkman. Which he did, indeed, accept, confirmed an hour later… A lot chilled, actually… I don’t like change so much. But I couldn’t read news articles about that all afternoon. Puck had a glass bowl of stew to finish, still, when it was already past three o’clock. He needed cheerleading. He was pretty distracted watching America’s Funniest Home Videos on Netflix with the rest of the family who didn’t really care about baseball as much as I did. Still, I was pretty out of sorts about the whole deal, as out of sorts as a mom donned in Cardinals red can feel on a cold, gray January day when her favorite player signs to another team in the opposite league, ten hours away. The rattle of marbles on the old Wahoo board from Gloria’s and Puck’s game scattered my thoughts more. Puck cajoled me into the next round. Nothing like a dimple-grinned five year-old to chase the baseball blues. Literal blue, in this case. And a little sparkling cider.
The Bear was happy, anyway. He finally got his Titanic of a bed. And no more headaches. He photographed the final result to text to Gloria. I guess you just can’t go wrong with experienced wood-working, solid lumber, blue paint, and a yellow bedspread. I capped off the night with another glass of sparkling cider and one more chapter in the far, and strange world of Korea. The Bear laughed beside me; he’s good not to make too much fun. Crackers attacked shreds of bacon leftover from Friday night. She’s more of a carnivore than I realized. Dragged the slice right off the china plate printed with flowers and a deer’s head, gnawing it. I wasn’t so happy with Arlington, Texas, that evening.