Ebberly

     When the doorbell rang for the first time Doris listened from her bedroom hide away.  She knew how stubborn her son could be.  Despite the reputation she’d get for not responding (whoever heard of such a thing - inviting children to a birthday party and then not letting them in!) she stood her ground.

    She had, however, underestimated the resourcefulness of pubescent boys.  The second to arrive suggested to the first that they go ‘round back, whereupon they discovered both Jason and his intention to remain aloft indefinitely.  They posted a lookout at the front gate to direct all comers to the rear and, one by one, climbed the tree to offer their presents.

    Jason kept the smaller gifts with him, a Swiss army knife with a multitude of blades, a bendable flashlight that could wrap around a tree limb and a paperback detective novel.  The rest he sent back down with their donors to be set on the breakfast room table where refreshments aplenty could be found.

    The birthday party was a huge success.  The unsupervised boys grilled burgers, wieners and finally marshmallows without any of the mishaps that adults would portend.  They fed Jason, fetched him a few items he requested from his room and the garage, threw the paper plates and cups in the trash bag set out for that purpose and left, unbidden, at a reasonable hour.  

    Some time later Jason’s older sister banged through the front door with the youngest Ebberly in portage. "Mom, I’m home." Margaret called needlessly.  Without waiting for a reply she ripped some hot dogs from their wrappers and threw them on the still warm grill.  Soon, she and the youngest Ebberly settled in the grass under the tree with wieners and sodas.  "Don't lick the mustard off your hot-dog, Billyum.  It’s not polite."

    "But I don’t like mustard...  Where’s that water coming from?"

    A trickle of yellow water landed a few feet from them, splattering softly on the grass.  Margaret looked up into the branches of the tree.  "Too much to be a squirrel," she conjectured, wondering whether it even could be a squirrel.

    "It’s Jason," Billy yelled.  "Jason’s peeing on us."

    "I am not.  I didn’t come anywhere close." The protest would have held more weight had the speaker’s voice not broken in the middle of the word ‘anywhere’, beginning with a youthful lilt and ending with a mournful baritone.

    "Your voice breaks backwards." Margaret accused.  

    "I can’t help it.  I had to go to the bathroom."

    Billy jumped to his feet, knocking over his soda in the process.  "You can’t say that.  It’s a nonsequitur.’

    "Just because its a nonsequitur doesn’t mean he can’t say it.  Obviously he can, as he just did."

    Margaret addressed herself to the tree top, "Why don't you come down and use the toilet like a normal person?"

    "I’m not coming down.  Ever."

    "Until you get hungry."

    "Never."

    "Let’s chop the tree down." Billy suggested.

    Margaret eyed the tree trunk appraisingly.  "Too thick.  It’d take forever.  Besides, who actually cares if he comes down, anyway?"

    Billy thought a moment, then called to his brother.  "Can I have your room?"

    "Sure." The answer came without hesitation.

    It was this very lack of hesitation that struck fear into the heart of Doris Ebberly, who had been keeping a watchful eye on her children from an upstairs window.  If Jason was going to give up the attic room he had argued for for so long he must be very, very serious about his new abode.  She sighed.  She had always known her children couldn’t be perfect forever.  But hope springs eternal, especially in a mother’s breast.

    Father’s breasts are an entirely different matter.  Hugo pushed through the front door at six-thirty, cross and hungry.  He settled in at the dining room table, helped himself to hefty portions of pork and sauerkraut and then glanced inquiringly at the empty chair to his left.  "Where is Jason?"

    His wife ladled gravy on her mashed potatoes.  "In the backyard."

    Hugo raised an eyebrow.  "Doing what?"

    Doris shrugged.  "He’s up in the tree."

    "And he’s not coming down," Billy piped in.  "Never.  And he says I can have his room.  Can I sleep there tonight, Dad? Huh?"

     "Don’t be ridiculous, Billy.  Margaret, go tell Jason dinner’s on."

    "I told him," Doris said.  "He won’t come down.  I asked him to come down, and he won’t."

    "What’s the matter with you?" Hugo shouted.  "Insist! Insist that he come down."

    "I tried, dear.  It didn’t work."

    "Geeze." Hugo ripped off the napkin he’d tucked under his collar and threw it on the table.  He tore through the kitchen and bellowed Jason’s name as the back door slammed behind him.

    "Jay-son’s in tro-uble.  Jay-son’s in tro-uble." Billy chanted.

    "Would you like some peas?" Doris asked Margaret.  She indicated the Fiesta Ware bowl.  "I got it yesterday at the antique show at the mall.  I wish I could have gotten a yellow one to match the kitchen, but the pink is nice, too, don’t you think?"

    "Peas would look better in yellow," Margaret decided.  "The pink will be good for cauliflower, though.  Or squash.  Squash would be good."

    "I hate squash," Billy objected.

    "So do I," Hugo called from the kitchen.  "I hate squash with a passion." He came back to the table, his face like thunder.

    His wife smiled at him benignly.  "Yes, Dear, we all know your opinion on the subject of squash."

    "And marrows," Billy added.  "We both hate marrows."

    "You’ve never had a marrow.  You don’t even know what one is." Margaret passed the peas to her father.

    "Jason isn’t coming in then?"

    Hugo stiffened.  "I told him he’s to stay in that tree all night.  I told him not to bother coming down until morning.  We’ll see how long he can last once it gets dark." He hunkered down over his plate and stabbed at his boneless pork.

    Margaret thought her father must have been a caveman in a former life.  She could picture him squatting by a fire, a joint of wild boar in one hoary hand and a gnarled club in the other.  Her mother, she decided (as long as such decisions were being made), must have been a bird.  Not huge, like a raven, nor delicate, like a hummingbird, something in between.  A pretty, brightly feathered bird with very precise domestic habits.  A bit flighty, maybe, and prone to forgetting where she’d left her eggs on occasion, but well meaning.

    She stared down at Billy.  A brat, she thought – no, that was this incarnation.  She went through her mental list of animals, but nothing seemed to fit.  A book, she decided.  A large book with all sorts of useless, yet amusing information.  But the sort of book with a purpose, one that was trying to sell you something.  That would be Billy.  You couldn’t actually be reincarnated as a book, she realized, so she changed the game a bit.

    "If I weren’t me," she asked those assembled.  "What would I be?"

    "If you weren’t you? How could you not be you? You mean if you were somebody else?"

    Her mother wasn’t getting it.  "No, I mean what else could I be.  Like you, Mother, you could be a beautiful bird."

    Doris smiled.  "And so could you, dear, a very beautiful bird."

    Margaret gave up.  She might as well be living alone.  Probably she was living alone.

    After dinner she went out back and stood at the foot of the tree.  "Are you still up there?"

    "Yep"

    "What are you sitting on? It can’t be comfortable."

    "It’s not bad.  Tyrell helped me tie a blanket around a big limb."

    "Do you need anything? Water? Food? Anything?"

    "Unh unh… Thanks, Meg."

    "Jason, if dad were something else, an animal or something, what would he be?"

    "Tyrannosaurus Rex."

    Margaret laughed.  That was even better than a caveman.  "And Mom?"

    There was a pause.  "A peacock, I guess.  But not so vain."

    Margaret nodded, though she wasn’t sure that Jason could see her.  "And Billy?"

    "An otter, maybe.  Always playing.  But an otter with a gimmick.  An entrepreneurial otter, if there is such a thing."

    She couldn’t believe how alike their answers were.  "And me.  What would I be?"

    "Our mother."

    Later, in her room, Margaret considered Jason’s analyses.  He had been so right-on with everyone else. How could he be so wrong about her? Their mother indeed! She was nothing like her mother.  Her mother skimmed over really important things and spent all her time worrying about things that didn’t really matter, like the pink bowl.  A yellow bowl would have matched the white kitchen with the sunflower tiles, but once inside the cabinet who would know what color it was? Yet Margaret would bet anything that her mother had seen the pink bowl, decided she wanted a bowl, spent at least an hour searching for a yellow one and finally settled for the pink.  Who knows what she had been looking for originally? Not a bowl, Margaret guessed. #

    "How was your day, dear?" Doris hung her slip on the back of the bedroom door.  "Did Mr.  Karachzyk agree to your proposal?"

    Hugo grunted.  "Said he’d consider it.  Consider it! What the hell is there to consider, that’s what I’d like to know.  I don’t know how that man pisses in the morning without someone to tell him to do it."

    "Well, at least he’s considering it.  He didn’t just shoot it down."

    Hugo grunted again.  He raised the window screen and leaned out.  "You’re gonna fall out of that damn tree, Jason.  Come down from there."

    "I won’t fall.  I’m tied on."

    "You’re a damn fool." He slamed the window.  "How did we manage to raise such a damn fool?" he asked his wife.  "The other two are okay.  I don’t know what went wrong with that one." He took a sip of his bourbon.  "I think I like the old brand better," he announced.

    "All right.  I’ll go back to the store in Chesterton.  They have a better selection." Doris finished her Glen Livet.  "I’m going to bed, dear.  I’ve had a hard day, what with Jason and walking from one end of the fairground to the other - twice - after that bowl.  I never did find the cranberry scoop I was after." She looked at her husband.  "Jason will be all right, won’t he?"

    Hugo nodded.  "Unless there’s lightening, he’ll be fine.  Don’t worry, he’ll come down before morning.  You’ll see.  He’ll come down because I told him not to." He tapped his head with an index finger.  "You have to keep one step ahead of them."

    "Yes, dear, beans in their ears."

    "Right," Hugo agreed, although he didn’t have a clue what beans had to do with anything."

    Doris stretched out on the king-sized bed.  She didn’t know why she’d thought of beans in your ears but she knew Hugo had totally forgotten the play they’d seen together so long ago.  It had been an off-broadway production, she remembered.  Hugo had seemed to enjoy it at the time but you couldn’t drag him to the theater these days.

    Moonlight streamed through the window.  Something about the whiteness of it reminded Doris of the white message board on the refrigerator door.  Tomorrow was word day.  Jason had never missed a word day entry.  He would come down, she was sure.  He would come down and write his word on the message board.  Satisfied, she clutched her body pillow.  She need not worry about her son.  He would be down in the morning.