Act 1, Scene 7: “Turbo Lawnmower”

TRL backs the Volvo T5 station wagon from the driveway. The T stands for turbo, which gives TRL a measure of denial that he is driving a Family Car. No longer the brute 8 cylinder hand-me-down black Lexus sedan that was traded in once the Lexus started needing significant repairs and TRL and S knew they were having a baby (though before they knew they were having twins). TRL can tell people he has a turbo car, and he can hammer down on the metal and feel a nice burst of power. But it is still a station wagon, afterall, and not even a German-made station wagon, at that.

Every time he backs out of the driveway, he runs over a strip of grass. The car is angled into the medium-sized garage, and somehow, in trying to avoid both the sides of the garage and the cement stair outcropping, the car ends up going over part of the front door walkway and a strip of grass edging the driveway. TRL flattens it every time. Today is no different.

TRL wonders if he is passively pissed at the grass because it is dying in the hot sun, and he is tired of watering it.

TRL wonders if he is repressed over having to pay Matt the local high school lawn boy $36 every ten days to keep the damn lawn manageable. Or the $600 cost for edging, weeding and mulching. TRL had never heard of “mulching” before moving out to SB, and now he could recite the six kinds of mulch available locally and why one was better than the other. And why one may want to put rocks under the mulch nearest the house. And create drainage paths. This was taking up space in TRL's brain.

So perhaps that is why he is running over the grass, he thinks.

He stops at the end of the driveway and gazes forward. Another patch of lawn flattened. He considers: maybe if he drove over the entire lawn he wouldn’t have to pay to have it cut.