The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank (10 page)

All that is left is a stack of postcards no one mailed.

You know something? Now that I've read them, I didn't realize we had such a good time.

I wonder if Eunice and Lester could get off her cusp for a couple of weeks next year. . . .

SUPER MOM!

A group of first-graders at Ruby Elementary school were asked by their teacher to draw a portrait of their mother as they saw her.

The art was displayed at an open house.

Some mothers were depicted standing on a sailboat. Others were hauling groceries, cutting grass, or talking on the telephone.

All the mothers had one thing in common. They were pregnant.

In the suburbs, pregnancy wasn't a condition, it was the current style. Everyone was wearing a stomach in various stages of development—whether you looked good in one or not.

I frankly felt I was too short for pregnancy and told my husband so. A lot of women looked great when they were expecting. I was always the one with the hem that reached down to the ankle in the back and up to the knees in front and I forever dribbled things down my stomach. Usually, I went into maternity clothes at two weeks and by the ninth or tenth or eleventh month my drawstrings wouldn't draw and my mirror talked back to me.

Sometimes, I'd sink into a chair in my fifth month and couldn't get out until the ninth month of labor/or the chair caught fire—whichever came first.

The preoccupation with motherhood was the only thing we had in common. From then on, mothers were divided into two distinct groups: the Super Moms and the Interim Mothers.

The Super Moms were faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a harsh laxative, and able to leap six shopping carts on double stamp day. She was a drag for all seasons.

Super Mom was the product of isolation, a husband who was rarely home, Helen Gurley Brown, and a clean-oven wish. There was a waiting list for canonization.

The Interim Mothers were just biding their time until the children were grown. They never gave their right name at PTA meetings, hid candy under the dish towel so the kids would never find it, had newspapers lining the cupboard shelves that read, “malaria stops work on the canal,” and secretly believed that someday they would be kissed by an ugly meter reader and turned into Joey Heatherton.

There were no restrictions in Suburbian Gems. Super Moms were free to integrate at any time they wished and when one moved in across the street, I felt the only decent thing to do was welcome her to the neighborhood.

The moving van hadn't been gone a minute when we saw her in the yard waxing her garden hose. I walked over with my nine-bean “trash” salad and knocked on the door. Her name was Estelle. I could not believe the inside of her house. The furniture was shining and in place, the mirrors and pictures were hung, there was not a cardboard box in sight, the books were on the shelves, there were fresh flowers on the kitchen table, and she had an iron tablet in her hand ready to pop into her mouth.

“I know things are an absolute mess on moving day,” I fumbled.

“Are people ever settled?” she asked, picking a piece of lint off the refrigerator.

Then she waltzed in the children and seeing one lock of hair in her son's eyes, grimaced and said, “Boys will be boys!”

If my kids looked that good I'd have sold them. , “Hey, if you need anything from the store, I go every three hours,” I offered.

“1 shop once a month,” she said. “I find I save money I licit way by buying in quantity and by planning my meals. Besides, I'm a miser with my time. I read voraciously—right now I'm into Gather and I try to go three or four places a week with the children. They're vrry aware of contemporary art. Now they're starting the romantics. Could I get you something?” she asked softly. “I just baked a chiffon cake.”

I felt my face break out.

“The doctor said I have to put on some weight and I try desperately ... I really do.”

I wanted to smack her right across the mouth.

Frankly, what it boiled down to was this: Could a woman who dyed all her household linens black to save time, find happiness with a woman who actually had a baby picture of her last child?

The Interim Mothers tried to get along with Estelle, but it wasn't easy. There was just no getting ahead of her. If the Blessed Mother had called Estelle and said, “Guess what, Estelle, I'm expecting a savior,” Estelle would have said, “Me too.”

She cut the grass, baked her own bread, shoveled the driveway, grew her own herbs, made the children's clothes, altered her husband's suits, played the organ at church, planned the vacation, paid the bills, was on three telephone committees, five car pools, two boards, took her garden hose in during the winter, took her ironing board down every week, stocked the freezer with sides of beef, made her own Christmas cards, voted in every election, saw her dentist twice a year, assisted in the delivery of her dog's puppies, melted down old candles, saved the anti-freeze, and had a pencil by her telephone.

“Where is Estelle?” asked Helen as she dropped by one day.

“Who knows? Probably painting her varicose veins with crayolas to make them look like textured stockings. I tell you that woman gets on my nerves.”

“She is a bit much,” said Helen.

“A bit much! Would you trust a woman who always knows where her car keys are?”

“I think she'd like to be your friend.”

“It wouldn't work.”

“You could try.”

“You don't know what you are saying. She's so ... so organized. They're the only house on the block that has fire drills. Take the other day, the school called to tell her Kevin had been hurt. Do you remember what happened when the school called me when my son flunked his eye test?”

“You became hysterical and had to be put under sedation.”

“Right. Not Estelle. She calmly got her car keys off the hook, threw a coordinated sweater over her coordinated slacks, put the dinner in the oven on warm, picked up that pencil by the phone, wrote a note, went to school to pick up Kevin, and drove him to the emergency ward.”

“So—you could have done that.”

“I'm not finished. In the emergency ward, she deposited Kevin, remembered his birth date, his father's name, and recited their hospitalization number from memory.”

“I remember when you took Andy to the hospital.”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“What was it again the doctor said?”

“He wanted to treat my cracked heels.”

“That's right. And you had to write a check for a dime to make a phone cull.”

“Okay. 1 remember.”

Actually, Estelle didn't bother anyone. She wasn't much more than a blur . . . whipping in and out of the driveway each day. I was surprised when she appeared at my mailbox. “Erma,” she asked, “what's wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” I hedged. “Why?”

“Be honest with me. I don't fit into the neighborhood. Why?”

“I don't know how to explain it,” I faltered. “It's just that. . . you're the type of woman you'd call from the drugstore and ask what you use for your irregularities.”

“All I want is to be someone's friend.”

“I know you do, Estelle, and I'd like to help you, but First, you have to understand what a friend is.”

“Tell me.”

"It's sorta hard to understand. But a friend doesn't go on a diet when you are fat. A friend never defends a liusband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday by saying, 'At least, he's not one to carouse around at night.'

"A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend— and he's a priest.

"A friend will babysit your children when they are contagious.

“A friend when asked what you think of a home permanent will lie. A friend will threaten to kill anyone who tries to come into the fitting room when you are trying on bathing suits. But most of all, a friend will not make each minute of every day count and screw it up for the rest of us.”

From then on, Estelle, neighborhood Super Mom, began to change. Not all at once. But week by week, we saw her learning how to compromise with herself. At first, it was little things like buying a deodorant that wasn't on sale and scraping the list of emergency numbers off the phone with her fingernail.

One morning, one of her children knocked on my door and asked to use our bathroom. He said his mommy locked him out.

The next week, Estelle ran out of gas while making the Girl Scout run. A few days later, she forgot to tie her garbage cans together and the dogs dragged TV dinner boxes all over her lawn for the world to see.

You could almost see her image beginning to crumble. She dropped in unexpectedly one afternoon and leaned over the divider to confide, “I have come to the conclusion there is an after-life.”

“An after-life?”

“Right. I think life goes on after the children are grown.”

“Who told you that?”

“I read it on a vitamin label.” "

“What are you trying to say, Estelle?”

“I am trying to tell you that I am going to run away from home. Back to the city. There's a life for me back there.”

“Don't talk crazy,” I said.

“I've tried to be so perfect,” she sobbed.

“I know. I know.”

At that moment, one of Estelle's children ran excitedly into the room. “Mommy! Mommy!” she said wildly, “I was on the side using a toothpaste with fluoride and I only have one cavity.”

Estelle looked at her silently for a full minute then said, “Who cares?”

She was one of us.

THE VOLUNTEER BRIGADE

Crossword Puzzle

ACROSS

14 nine-letter word syn. with frozen dinners, pin in children's underwear, laundry in refrigerator, five-hour meetings, no pay, no health benefits, causing head to hurt a lot.

DOWN 3 six-letter word meaning same as nine across

ANSWER

P

I

G

VOLUNTEER

0

N

'I Am Your Playground Supervisor'

One evening, the phone rang and a voice said simply, “We have not received your response to the mimeographed request that we sent home with your son.”

“What request is that?”

“We need you for playground duty at the school.”

“Please,” I begged, “don't ask.”

“Is this the woman who protested paid potties in airport restrooms by throwing her body across the coin slot?”

“You don't understand,” I said.

“The woman who made Christmas tree centerpieces out of toilet tissue spindles and macaroni?”

“Don't. . . ” I sobbed.

“Is this the freedom fighter who kept them from building a dairy bar in front of the pet cemetery with a flashing sign that read, custard's last stand until the free-way?”

“I'm only human,” I sobbed. “I'll report Monday to talk about it.”

On Monday, I met with Mrs. Rush, the homeroom mother. “Mrs. Rush,” I began, “there are several reasons why I cannot volunteer for playground duty, not the least being I have not had my shots.”

“Your old ones are good for three years,” she said mechanically.

“I see. Then I must tell you the truth. I aim expecting a baby.”

“When?”

“As soon as my husband gets home.”

“Do you have any more excuses?” she asked dryly.

“Yes. I'm a registered pacifist.”

She shook her head.

“How about, 'I'm a typhoid carrier'?”

“I'm afraid all those excuses have been used before,” she said. “Do you realize that only four mothers returned their mimeographed bottoms?”

“That many?” I asked incredulously.

“One mother is unlisted, one had a transportation prob-loin, and the third one was a bleeder. We couldn't take the chance. That left you. Here is a mimeographed page of instructions. You will report Monday and good luck.”

Slowly, I unfolded the yellow, mimeographed sheet. It hald a picture of a mother with the countenance of St. Francis of Assist. At her feet were a group of little adoring children. A bird was perched on her shoulder. I smiled hesitantly. Maybe playground duty wasn't the hazard the women rumored it to be.

The first day I opened up my mimeographed page of instructions:

“PLAYGROUND DUTY CONSISTS OF STROLLING AMONG THE CHILDREN AND WATCHING OUT FOR FAIR PLAY.”

A group of boys parted and I began to stroll. I felt like a stoolie strolling through San Quentin between Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart.

“What are we playing today?” I asked cheerfully.

“Keepaway,” they chanted, as they tossed an object over my head.

“Boys! Boys!” I admonished. “Put Miss Manieson down. She's only a sub and doesn't understand how rough little boys can play. If you want to play keepaway, I suggest you use a ball. Come on now, I mean it. I'll give you two minutes to find her glasses and return her to her classroom.”

“We don't have a ball,” they whined.

“Perhaps these nice boys here could share,” I suggested.

“You touch that ball,” said a boy who looked thirty-five years old, “and you'll wish you hadn't.”

“Look,” I said, returning to the boys, “why don't all of you play a quiet game. Let's ask this little fella over here what he's playing. He's sitting there so quiet.”

“He's quiet because an eighth-grader just tied his hands behind his back and took his lunch money!” said a small, blond kid. “Who wants to play Rip-off?”

On Tuesday, I went to the principal, unfolded my mimeographed sheet and said, "I should like to talk about rule no. 2: Here, A first-aid clinic is maintained in the

SCHOOL FOR CUTS, BRUISES AND OTHER MINOR ACCIDENTS."

“What seems to be the problem?” she asked.

“I feel they really should have some provisions for the kids too.”

“We'll discuss it,” she said coldly.

Wednesday was one of the coldest days in the year and I figured there would be few children on the playground. I was wrong. “Boys! Boys!” I shouted, “you must not push or shove. It says right here on my mimeographed sheet, 'shoving and undue pushing is not permitted.”

“We're not shoving and pushing,” they said, “we are keeping warm.”

“If you keep any warmer, I will have to suspend you from the playground for three days.”

“Who says?”

"My mimeographed orders say, that's who. Read this:

'A PLAYGROUND SUPERVISOR'S ORDERS ARE TO BE OBEYED THE SAME AS THE TEACHER'S.' "

He wiped his brow. “You had me worried there for a minute.”

“Is it my imagination,” I said, “or do I sense you have done something with Miss Manieson?”

“She's only a sub,” they grinned.

“Today's sub is tomorrow's birth-control militant,” I reminded.

“So, who are you to tell us what to do?”

“I am your playground supervisor,” I said, squaring my shoulders.

“So?”

“So, how would you like to go to a nice school where they make license plates?”

“And how would you like to go ...”

I grabbed my mimeographed sheet out of my pocket, and read, “A playground supervisor should dress SENSIBLY. SHE NEVER KNOWS WHICH AREA SHE WILL BE ASSIGNED NEXT.”

As I read the lips of the class bully, I had the feeling I was dressed too warmly for where I had been ordered to go-

Wanda Wentworth, Schoolbus Driver

Wanda Wentworth has been retired for about ten years now, but they talk about her still.

No one commanded the entire respect of the suburban populace more than Wanda Wentworth who held the record for driving a schoolbus longer than any other woman in the entire school district. . . six weeks.

Every morning, fearless Wanda crawled into a school-bus and dared do what few other adults would attempt:

turn her back on eighty school children.

In the beginning, it had been a job for men only. Strong men who could drive with one hand and pull a kid in off the rearview mirror with the other. Who knew that Robbie Farnsworth could disguise his voice as a siren and liked to kill a little time by pulling the bus over to the side of the road. Who could break up a fight between two kids with bad bananas.

And then, along came Wanda. She had read an ad for drivers in the Tattler:

WANTED

DRIVER FOR SCHOOLBUS

SEE MAGNIFICENT SUNRISES AND SUNSETS

ENJOY THE LAUGHTER OF CHILDREN AT PLAY

BE A FULFILLED VOLUNTEER ORPHANS PREFERRED

Few of us saw much of Wanda after she took the job. I saw her only twice: one day in the dentist's office (she had fallen asleep in the chair) and another time in the supermarket when I got a bad wheel and she whipped out her tool kit and fixed it.

“How are things going on the bus?” I asked.

“Terrific!” she said. “There's nothing to it. You just have to be strict. Let them know you mean business.”

I looked at Wanda closely. Her right eye rolled around in her head—independently of her left one.

“I don't allow no cooking on the bus,” she said, “even when they have a note from home. Now, I know a lot of drivers who don't mind small fires, but I say if you want a hot meal, put it in a thermos.”

“I think you are absolutely right,” I said slowly.

“Another thing,” she said, spitting on her hair and trying to get a curl to stay in the middle of her forehead, “all notes from home have to be legit. They come up with all kinds of stuff. 'Please let Debbie off at the malt shop. Eric is spending the night at Mark's house. Wait for Lillie. She has to get Marci's nail polish out of her locker.' Any time I see a note written on stationery with a pencil or a pen, I know it's a fake. Mothers only write with yellow crayons on napkins.”

“You are very wise.”

“They're not dealing with any dummy,” she said. “Like games. I don't allow any games on the bus.”

“You mean they're not allowed to play count the cow or whip out an Old Maid deck?”

“Nope. They get too excited. We tried playing Blind Man's Bluff one day and those little devils spun me around so fast I nearly hit a tree with my bus. I just laid it on them after that. Absolutely no more blindfolding me while the bus was in motion. Actually, the time goes pretty fast,” she said, folding her lower lip into a crescent and biting on it with her teeth until it bled. “By the time I pick them up and they punch everyone on the bus, and open their lunches and eat them, and make their homework into gliders and sail them out of the window, and open the emergency exit in traffic, and take off their boots and leave them under the seats, and unravel the mittens their mothers put on them, and yell obscenities at the motorists passing by, we are at school.”

“It sounds like it really has its rewards,” I smiled nervously.

“Oh it does. Did you hear that Tim Galloway won first prize in the science fair? He rides my bus. As a matter of fact he constructed a weather station using parts he stole off my dashboard while I was having the bus 'gassed up.' ”

“That's wonderful,” I smiled, “but I still don't know how you hung on for six weeks. That's longer than any other person in the history of the school. How did you do it?”

“These little gems,” she said, patting a bottle of pills in her coat pocket.

“Tranquilizers?” I asked.

“Birth control,” she smiled, swatting at a fly that wasn't there.

Ralph Corlis,

The Coach Who Played to Lose

In the annals of Little League baseball, there was only one man who made it to the Baseball Hall of Shame five seasons in a row. That was Ralph Corlis.

Ralph was an enigma in suburban sports. He brought his two sons to a housing development two years after his wife died, and together they hacked out a life for themselves. They planted a little garden, built a little racing car in the garage, and on a summer evening would go over to the ballfield and watch the kids play ball under the lights.

It was after the third or fourth game that Ralph began to take note of the thirty or forty kids on the bench who wore the uniform, but who rarely played the game.

“What do those kids do?” Ralph asked his sons.

“They watch the team play ball.”

“For that they have to get dressed up in full uniform?”

“Oh no,” said his son, “they go to all the practices, work out, run, field, catch, pitch, and do everything the team does . . . except play.”

Ralph thought a lot about the bench warmers and one day he approached several of them and said, “How would you like to join my team?”

When Ralph was finished, he had enough for five teams and sixteen benches. The first night they met on a piece of farmland donated by a farmer.

“This is first base,” said Coach Corlis, dropping his car seat cushion on the ground, “and this is second,” he continued, dropping his jacket, “and I see there's already a third base.”

“But. . . it's a pile of dung,” said one of his players.

“So, don't slide,” said Ralph.

“Do you want to see me pitch?” asked a tall, lean, athletic boy.

“No,” said Ralph. Then turning to a kid two feet tall who could scarcely hold the ball in his hand, he said, “You pitch today.”

At random he assigned a catcher, basemen, infield and outfield, and said, “The rest of you—relax. On this team, overyone plays.”

You cannot imagine what an impact a team where “everyone plays” had on the community. Word spread like a brush fire.

One night Coach Corlis answered his door to discover a visit from three other coaches.

“Hey, what a surprise,” said Ralph. “Come in.”

“What's your game?” asked one of the coaches.

“Baseball,” said Ralph.

“You know what we mean,” said one of the other men. “What are you trying to prove? Playing every boy who goes out for the team. How many games have you won?”

“I haven't won any,” said Ralph. “I didn't think that was very important.”

“What are you, some kind of a loonie? Why would you play a game, if not to win?”

“To have a good time,” grinned Ralph. “You should have been there the other night when Todd Milhaus slid into third.”

“Unfortunately, losers don't draw crowds,” smirked the third coach.

“Oh, we don't want crowds,” said Ralph. “Adults just mess things up for the kids. I heard at one of your games that a mother threw a pop bottle at her own son.”

“And he deserved it,” said the first coach. “He should have had his eye on second base. That kid has the brain of a dead sponge.”

“He's pitching for me tomorrow,” said Ralph.

“Look,” said the second coach, "why don't you let the boys go? What do you want with them? They're not even

winning.“ Ralph thought a minute then said, ”It's hard to explain, but kids go all through their lives learning how to win, but no one ever teaches thorn how to lose."

“Let's get out of here, Bert,” said the third coach.

“Wait a minute,” said Ralph. “Just think about it. Most kids don't know how to handle defeat. They fall apart. It's important to know how to lose because you do a lot of it when you grow up. You have to have perspective—how to know what is important to lose and what isn't important.”

“And that's why you lose?”

“Oh no. We lose because we're too busy having a good time to play good ball.”

“You can't talk sense to a man who won't even sell hotdogs at a game and make 13 cents off each dog.”

Ralph Corlis's team racked up an 0-38 record the very first season. The next year, it was an even better 0-43. Parents would have given their right arms to watch the team play, but they were not permitted to view a game.

All eighty of the players used to congregate at a drive-in root beer stand and giggle about their contest. When there was criticism it was from themselves. The important thing was that everyone was sweating.

In the annals of sandlot baseball, there had never been another team like it. They had lost every game they played and they did it without uniforms, hotdogs, parents, practice, cheerleaders, lighted scoreboards, and press coverage.