A Lady Under Siege

8

Betsy watched through the window of the deck door as her mom and dad moved from the kitchen into the living room.

“Make her buy you a pony.”

She turned. Her neighbour, the man Derek, was in his back yard watching her.

“Don’t look at me,” Betsy said angrily.

“Suit yourself.”

He had a wrench in his hand, but the fence prevented her from seeing what he was working on. He bent down out of sight. She could hear hammering, metal on metal, then cursing. Then more banging, and a grunting noise, the sound a man makes when he can’t get a bolt to let go of its nut. “F*ck it,” she heard him mutter. Then, “Good enough.”

Then he appeared again, looking at her from over the top of the six-foot fence, as if he were standing on a chair. “Come over here, would you?”

She stood still. She had an urge to run back inside the house, but even at the tender age of ten she had her pride, and didn’t want to be dismissed as a child, they way her parents had just done. She wanted to stand her ground. He watched her, waiting for an answer. She stared back at him.

“Cat got your tongue? What’s your name, anyway?”

She almost said it, then didn’t.

“Sorry, didn’t realize you were a mute,” he said.

That got her back up. “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” she retorted, dressing the words in a child’s snobbery.

“And why’s that?”

“My mother doesn’t like you.”

“Whatever. I’m difficult. Difficult to like, impossible to love, or so I’m told.”

Betsy began to walk in tight circles on the wooden deck. Certain boards underneath her feet made different creaking sounds. She could play them like music. She stopped and looked at him.

“How come you never go to work?”

“Is that your question, or your mother’s? I don’t work. I don’t have to.”

“Everyone has to work,” she told him.

“Wrong. That’s what they want you to think. I have a little nest egg and I dole it out carefully. You can get by on almost nothing if you don’t worry about appearances. I call it creative indolence, or shabby happiness. I’m living it.”

“It sounds weird,” said Betsy.

“I disagree. I think the world is weird, and I’m the sane one. I’m centered, and consistent—compared to me, most people are bipolar.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s just a label. The whole world is bipolar, you see it within five minutes of turning on a TV. Two hundred people incinerate in a hideous plane crash, then zooooop, next second, you’re supposed to worry about how white your smile can be! Everyone’s expected to have the psychological resilience or appropriate brain chemistry to pull constant complete 180s on our emotions, well screw that, I can’t do it. I stay home, quarantine myself from the craziness, right? Stay above it. Stay high, you know what I’m talking about? I’m talking about alternate states of consciousness, which is meaningless to you because you’re still a child, and your consciousness is still growing, it’s elastic and malleable and unformed. Someday when you’re older you’ll go, ‘Shit, my consciousness is so f*cking formed it’s gone stale, I wish I had an alternate,’ which is why grown-ups love alternate states of consciousness.”

“You shouldn’t swear.”

“Sorry. What’s your name again?”

“Betsy.”

“That’s old-fashioned. Heavens to Betsy.”

“More like to hell with Betsy’s all I hear,” she said.

Derek laughed. “That’s pretty sharp. But don’t pity yourself. You’re young and nimble, sweet and petite. Look at me. By comparison I’m old, slow, slovenly, and overweight. I should be complaining, not you.”

“You are complaining.”

“Good. Order has been restored. Now listen up. I want you to come down to the middle of your lawn, and stand just opposite me here. C’mon, you’ll like it!”

She kept her arms stiffly at her sides to show her reluctance, but she did as he asked. He stepped off the chair he had been standing on, and disappeared behind the fence. She could still hear his voice.

“Are you facing the fence?”

“Yes.”

“Close your eyes,” he said.

“No!” She giggled nervously.

“Come on, Betsy. For the full effect you gotta close your peepers for a sec. Are they closed?”

“Yes.”

“Keep ’em closed.”

“They’re closed.”

Her ears were assaulted by a burst of unhappy metallic scrapes and squeals, and un-oiled springs stretching and straining.

“Keep ’em closed!”

“They’re closed, they’re closed!”

“Okay, open ’em!”

She saw the fence, and in midair above it, Derek suspended as if weightless for an instant. Then he fell to earth, or at least fell out of sight behind the fence, and the unseen springs shrieked again, and he shot back skyward to new heights, then fell again, and rose, fell, rose, and fell, again and again. For good measure with each rebound he attempted some kind of goofy pose—hands on hips, or thumbs in ears, or biceps curled like a body-builder. The whole thing was so unexpected that Betsy, entranced, giggled delightedly. Then suddenly he flew dangerously off kilter and sideways skyward, a panicked grimace on his face. “Oh shit,” he muttered, and plummeted down out of sight. She heard a soft thud as he hit the earth.

Betsy rushed to the fence and tried to peek through the cracks. A knothole gave the best view—she saw a weathered trampoline, its skin stretched tight by equally aged springs, hooked to a base that might once have been painted blue.

“You like it?” Derek asked. He was back on his feet, dusting himself off, looking a bit woozy.

“I love it,” she squealed. “Where did you get it?”

“It’s amazing what people throw out in the trash,” he replied. “It’s perfectly good, except where it’s broken. Not broken. Bent a little, I should say. Would you like to try?”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“My mom would freak and have a heart attack and die.”

“From a little old trampoline?”

“No, from me going to your yard.”

“No no, don’t worry about that, my dear. The toy is for you—I brought it home specifically with you in mind, because I’ve seen you wandering aimlessly around your patch of perfect lawn over there. You’re like some poor little waif in a children’s book praying for an imaginary friend to come along. Here’s my advice—keep hopping on this little number and chanting I think I can I think I can, next thing you know, you’ll be in orbit with the space shuttle. Or at least you’ll get some exercise, get the kind of colour in your cheeks all boys and girls your age and ethnicity should have. A girl like you should be ruddy-cheeked and ready to ride a balloon to the moon, right?”

“I guess so,” she said. She wasn’t sure what he had in mind.

“Stand back,” he said. “Way, way back. In fact, go up on the deck.”

She did as told, and from there she could see him work. “See these planks?” he asked. “They’re two by tens, twenty-four feet long. Almost impossible to find such a thing anymore. People say my back yard is just junk, well I say look again.” He took the two planks and leaned them against the fence on a sloping angle, so that their midpoint was on top of the fence, like the midpoint of a teeter-totter. Grunting and cursing from brute effort, he slid the base of the trampoline onto the planks, then up the planks— with more grunting—until the whole thing teetered atop the fence. Then with a last Herculean push the planks tottered over, and the trampoline lumbered down them onto Betsy’s side, crash-landing in a flowerbed of yellow Lion’s Bane and purple Foxglove.

“Don’t wreck the flowers!” Betsy screamed.

“Too late for that,” he muttered. He climbed the stepladder against the fence and looked over to examine the damage. “It’s barely touched them,” he said proudly. “No harm, no foul—and more importantly, the brilliant part is, the thing looks absolutely level, perfectly placed for you to test it out. Climb aboard!”