Act 2, Scene 32: “The Long, Brown Slide”

In SB, you haul your own garbage. Mostly, anyway. You can pay $25 a month to have a private garbage company – Tidy Town - come around and empty your garbage bin once a week. And that’s what TRL and S elected to do. They were not going to drive to the town dump every week with a trunk full of rotting garbage. It just did not seem like a good use of time.

But they did pay their $25 to the town to use the town dump to dump everything that Tidy Town would not haul away. Which includes leaves, grass clippings, boxes, bottles, anything recyclable, in fact. And anything else that a household would need to get rid of. Old lights the electrician has pulled down from the ceiling. Lumber falling off the back porch. Oddly shaped pieces of metal found in the basement. The evil hose that leaked everywhere.

TRL had started raking the seven tons of leaves that had blanketed his yard, suffocating the green grass and, according to his friend G who has been a homeowner for years and years, would render the lawn a mud bowl if not soon removed. So TRL started raking. And raking. And raking.

He made a small dent in the front yard and had 14 bags of leaves to prove it. And now he needed to get rid of these leaves. In the back, as he had done at his house growing up, was not an option for there was no forest in the back of TRL and S’s house. Just the neighbor’s backyard. And TRL felt sure the neighbor would notice.

So he stuffs the bags into the back of the Volvo and aims for the dump, a vast wasteland of waste. This was an industrial dump – trucks from all over the region hauled garbage of every make and model here – but SB had a little section for itself. It was on a slight hill, with a great view of the undulating mounds of land fill, the huge metal crushing machines, the scary corrugated metal warehouses where refuse went in one form and came out in a totally new form. There were things here that could hurt a man.

The SB elevated section also afforded a perfect olfactory platform to sample the day’s offerings. Animal, vegetable and mineral all vied for rotting attention. It also offered an anthropological look into the lives of the inhabitants. Old mattresses, lawnmowers, chairs and sofas sat around. As did an abundance of discarded plastic childrens’ toys. And tons of magazines and newspapers. TVs, fans, air conditioners. Tennis rackets and enough beer bottles for a good spring break weekend. This was a town living high on the hog.

The day was cold, below freezing for the first time this year, and TRL brings the car next to a giant mountain of leaves. He plucks the bags from the car, rips them open and adds his small contribution of dried tree cover to the mound. On his way to put the plastic bags in their own receptacle, TRL begins to slide. A long, long slide on something frozen and brown. He waves his arms and weaves, but manages to stay upright. Which is a good thing because he sees the brown was leaking liquefied garbage which had made its way from the bottom of a rancid-smelling dumpster to where TRL now stood. It was tundra garbage, barren and frozen. And TRL had almost gone over head first and licked it like a popsicle no company would ever market. In the city you don’t have to go to dumps. Every 10 years there is a garbage strike and the dumps come to you. Out here in SB, every other week was an occasion to make the journey to the land of refuse.

Act 2, Scene 31: “Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That”

At some point, all fathers of sons face the same question in reaction to a child’s behavior: does it indicate that he is gay? Now if the father is gay, then perhaps it is asked with hope and pride. And if the father isn’t gay, no matter how liberal and open and unrepressed he is, he will not be thrilled with the prospect. Not because there is anything wrong with it. But because a father wants his son to be like him: to share in his interests, which extend to sports, or hobbies, or world viewpoint, and girls. To be able to get to the age when he can share a beer with his son at a bar, he can put his arm over his shoulders and he can say Look at the hooters on that one. It’s a heterosexual guy thing.

Now C has worried TRL a bit. He is so sweet and really takes care of E. When E is thirsty, C will share his water. When E falls, C will come up and hug E. These are wonderful things, and TRL is proud of C for being like that. But is C being too sweet? Too, well, maternal? TRL is aware that it is his own bias and neurosis and projections that he is dealing with, but the emotions are real nonetheless.

So when TRL and S go over to a friends house and E plays merrily with their 4 year-old daughter but C takes no interest in her, this worries TRL. But what really scares him is bath time. TRL walks into the bathroom as S is bathing C and E. E is on his belly, fake swimming. C is sitting on top of the drain, a big smile on his face.

He likes having his butt over the drain, says S.

Fuck, mutters TRL. Does this indicate that he is gay?

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Act 2, Scene 30: “Turkeylurky Day”

The boys arrive home after an invigorating day at daycare. And what do they have to show for their little labors? Why, Handprint Turkeys! The images of C and E’s little hands with a few strokes of magic marker turned into lovely four-feathered wild turkeys.

Beautiful, gushes TRL.

But there is more. A printed message comes with each little gobbler, signed by the artists themselves, or if not by their actual hand (which would still have been wet from the paint), then at least by a teacher.

This isn’t just a turkey
As anyone can see.
I made it with my hand,
Which is a part of me!
It comes with lots of love
Especially to say –
I hope you have
A very happy Thanksgiving Day!

Love, C&E,
and S & TRL

Act 2, Scene 29: “The Deal”

S regularly sifts through the deals on Craigslist looking for things that might be useful or fun for the boys. She missed out on a killer indoor/outdoor jungle gym: by the time she showed it to TRL, it had already been spoken for. So when she found a plastic play tunnel/slide that looked perfect for the basement play area, she had TRL send an email immediately. They were the first to respond, and for $50 it could be theirs.

S and TRL had been sprucing up the finished basement, getting it ready for the guys to play in, especially during the long, cold winter. It now had a couch, posters, lots of toys, a clean rug and bright lighting, and even a 25 year-old vintage table top video game – Time Pilot – that TRL had swiped from his college house senior year. Now C & E would presumably have little interest in the Time Pilot game, and when they were of the age to have an interest they would want an Xbox or the like, no doubt, but for TRL this piece of nostalgia made the basement his, also. And this was important. The hallmark of living in suburbia was having a finished basement. Nobody in the city had a finished basement. A city basement was a dark spider-ridden place for boilers, garbage, and occasionally laundry machines. But in suburbia it was an extension of the manly instinct to occupy a den, to embrace the safety of one’s cave. To have a second refrigerator, store additional food, create closets for extra boxes, make a work space. And, at some point, create a safe haven for one’s teenagers to play loud music, drink Jack Daniels, do bong hits and watch videos. At least that’s the teenage dream. TRL did not know how he would feel in 15 years, but for now the basement would be a safe and warm place for C & E to run around, ride their miniature bikes, do art projects, dance to music, and soon, slither through a tunnel and whip down a slide. And at night, it would be a place for TRL to come down, maybe play a game of Time Pilot, and reminisce. It would be his man cave.

The exchange was set: Saturday morning, 10 am, at a sporting goods store where the husband worked. Ask for Arthur.

TRL set out with directions and after some false turns found the strip mall with the laundry, Chinese restaurant, hair salon, deli, and the sports store. He walks in and scans the place for Arthur. He pictured him as 40, fat, with graying hair and an avuncular way about him. TRL didn’t know why, maybe he was looking for his own Uncle named Arthur, the 20 years-ago version.

A pimply kid with bad posture approaches.

Can I help you?

I’m looking for Arthur, replies TRL. He felt like a cop, a private eye, or a mobster.

The kid nods to a 30-something year-old wiry black-haired guy explaining how to choose a hockey stick to a mom and her three sons.

I’m TRL, he says. Here for the thing.

Right, replies Arthur. Why don’t you meet me out back, at the white Tahoe.

TRL nods knowingly. The deal was on.

He brings the Volvo around the back of the strip mall and pulls in-between the Tahoe and a dumpster. He gets out and waits. And then starts worrying.

Maybe he was going to be knocked off. Maybe this was some weird game these people played. Perhaps he was going to be kidnapped.

He looks in the back of the Tahoe and sure enough, there is the plastic tunnel/slide. It is smaller than in the photos.

TRL goes back and leans against his car. It is cold outside. He wishes he had a cigarette even though he doesn’t smoke: it just seemed like the thing to do.

Finally the back door opens and out comes Arthur. He pulls the tunnel/slide from his car.

It’s missing some of the things, Arthur says, pointing out where a play phone and blocks had been. We couldn’t find them.

How about I give you $40 then, TRL says, sensing an opportunity to prove to S that he could bargain with the best of them.

Arthur shrugs. That seems fair, he says.

They put the tunnel/slide into TRL's car and exchange the money. It felt like a drug deal. Which was thrilling for TRL. Which told him a lot about the level of excitement in his life.

He thanked Arthur and headed for home, excited about the prospect of putting the tunnel/slide into the basement as the crowning object to a fun space for the kids.

$40, OK, that’s OK, says S once she sees the tunnel/side. But without the other stuff, I would have talked him down to $25. I mean who knows how much this thing cost new, maybe less than $40 she says. It’s smaller than I expected.

All day, S makes fun of TRL for paying as much as he did. I would have talked him down to $25, she repeats on several occasions.

TRL goes from feeling like a player and mensch to a shmuck. Did he get ripped off? Was it a deal gone bad? Did he wind up with oregano instead of Thai Stick? Such are the emotional ups and downs on the baby toy buying circuit.

Act 2, Scene 28: "Evil Neighbor II"

The neighbor across the street is a nutty, neurotic, work-at-home web developer, and a stand-up guy. He and his wife R have a 4 month-old boy. Next door, to the right, is the new now Evil Neighbor. The one who blows leaves onto TRL’s lawn. He will be dealt with. Next door, on the other side of the house, is Retired Baby Boomer neighbor. A husband and wife team who keep their house up nicely, get visits from the kids and grandkids, are living the good golden years before they become the not-so-good brown years (nursing home life) prior to descending into the black years (eternity).

And then there is the mystery house. Next to N, diagonally across the street from TRL, these people are the Ghost Neighbors. The drive incredibly fast into their driveway and hurry into the house. They turn off all the lights on Halloween (making them the Antisocial Very Bad Indeed Neighbors). They never came over to introduce themselves when N moved in, and didn’t congratulate him on the birth of his son.

One day, S and TRL are pushing the boys in the jogging stroller and go by the house as a car comes in. TRL and S wait for the car door to open to say hi and introduce themselves. But the guy picks up his cell phone and sits talking, or at least, thinks TRL, pretends to talk. He then slithers out of the car with the phone glued to his ear and heads straight for the front door. He doesn’t make any indication that S or TRL or their absolutely adorable children exist. These people suck.

And TRL now has a theory. He is taking a short walk in the early evening, going past the Ghost Neighbors house when a car flies in. TRL stands at the head of the driveway, forcing a hello. A man, or maybe a woman,– it is dark and happens so fast – emerges from the car and runs to the front door, quickly opening it and sliding in. This person is avoiding TRL. The lights in the house oddly remain off. What is going on, thinks TRL?

And then he decides: these people are in the witness protection program. It is the only reasonable explanation for their ugly antisocial behavior. For while there were many, many neighbors TRL never met while living in various apartment buildings in NYC, that was to be expected. When one is living stacked in small boxes one on top of the other, a certain privacy is necessary. It is urban decorum. But out here in the suburbs, people are supposed to be friendly. It is a selling point. And neighbors are supposed to be helpful. Neighborly. It’s where the word comes from. And yet these people were anything but. So they must be in the witness protection program.

Or, thinks TRL, maybe they are ghosts.

Act 2, Scene 27: “They Grow Up So Fast”

Gorging on boxes of PediaSure? QVC teddy bears showing up on the doorstep? A thousand red bibs with the fire engines print arriving in the mail? What will he choose?

All are for the taking if C activates his Platinum Power Capital One Visa offer which came in the mail for him.

He will have 0% APR on his purchases for one full year. Free online account services. Sixteen card designs to choose from.

A very nice opportunity for a 20 month-old. A complete lifestyle upgrade. Major baby bling.

All within his reach. If he can only learn to read. In one month, when the offer expires.

Act 2, Scene 26: “Mommy and Mean Class”

TRL hauls C & E to the weekly morning music Mommy and Me class. But they are a few minutes late because C refuses to put on his jacket and E refuses to take off his pajamas. It is their Zen yin/yang program to drive TRL nuts.

TRL walks into the hallway to the class. The gym door is closed. TRL puts down C & E, takes off the diaper bag strapped to his back, takes his shoes off and begins to remove C & E’s shoes, hats and jackets. C now refuses to take his jacket off. He starts screaming his displeasure.

TRL opens the gym door. 14 mommies and their kids are in a circle, singing as they raise and lower a colorful parachute. TRL hears the teacher call out Hi C & E as he tries one more time to coax C into letting him take off his jacket. As he is doing this E walks towards the door to the gym and trips headfirst into the doorframe. TRL hears the sudden intake of the collective breath of 14 mommies, and then E starts wailing. TRL rises and picks E up to comfort him. He stands facing the lynch mob of angry moms. He is holding a screaming E in his arms and trying to hold the hand of a squirming crying C attempting to wriggle back into the sleeve of his jacket. Bad man, bad man, TRL sees in the mothers’ eyes. Mommy and Mean class for TRL.

Act 2, Scene 25: “Blow Back”

The new neighbors move in. And no Dodge Magnum stationwagon appears. Only a minivan and Buick. All is well.

S delivers homemade Toll House cookies to welcome the newbies to the neighborhood. TRL and S meet the 5 year-old boy and 2 year-old twin girls. Together with C & E and the three month-old across the street, they now have their own neighborhood daycare center.

TRL shakes hands with Al. They good naturedly check each other out. Al works from home. So does TRL! So does N from across the street, TRL informs Al. The men now have their own little office park. A real neighborhood infrastructure is being created.

And then several days later, sabotage. TRL is working in his office upstairs. He hears the high whine of a leaf blower. He looks out the window. Al’s head is bobbing behind the tall green fence that separates the properties. And then TRL sees leaves being kicked up and over the fence. Onto TRL’s property. Can’t be helped, decides TRL. He is a kind man, after all, and wants to give his new neighbor the benefit of the doubt.

But the leaves are now coming from under the fence. Al is blowing the leaves off his property and onto TRL’s lawn.

TRL seethes. This is a declaration of war. An undercover war, like the US funding of the contras.

TRL muses over payback. Throwing weed seeds over the fence to take root in the Evil Neighbor’s lawn? Erecting an addition to the fence to raise it 20 feet high? Channeling the chipmunk tunnels toward the neighbor’s backyard, rendering it the Vietnamese Cuchi tunnels of suburban living? This violation of suburban etiquette demands a response. This shall not stand, mutters TRL.

Act 2, Scene 24: "Door-to-door Extortionists"

It finally happened. The Boy Scouts came a knockin'. TRL was working upstairs when the Nanny calls from outside.

There’s some people to see you, she says.

It sounds ominous. Was it religious people trying to sell him on their God? Was it the IRS? The FBI? The Elks?

TRL goes downstairs and opens the front door. It is a neighbor with her three sons.

Want to buy chocolate bars? She smiles.

TRL looks down at the youngest boy, a shy 8 year-old in a cub scout uniform.

What are you selling? TRK asks.

The boy mumbles something.

You can tell him, the mother says.

Candy bar, he answers.

For what? TRL asks.

Outs, he says.

Outs? TRL repeats, wondering if the scouts are outing potentially gay members and taking up a collection to do this, or perhaps, in a decidedly more liberal bent, are deciding to come out as a group.

Scouts, the boy clarifies.

Oh, scouts, says TRL. Kind of odd timing, selling candy a week after Halloween, he tells the mom as he forks over five dollars for five chocolate bars. He will add them to the collection of ten pounds of Hershey minis still lying around the house from the anticipated trick-or-treater deluge that never occurred.

As he takes possession of the bars, he can feel his belly growing larger.

We’ll be selling through January, answers the mom. We’ll be back in a month, she adds, and waves goodbye.

TRL has been hooked, tacitly committed to buying more chocolates from the Scouts. And who knew what was around the corner. The Girl Scouts? Indian Guides? The High School Marching Band? Bad submarine sandwiches? Poor car washes? More unwanted candy?

In the city, you were hit up by the homeless, whom you could choose to ignore or toss some spare change to. Out here, organized kids were doing the hard sell, and TRL was sure they kept a list of who was naughty to them and who was nice.

Act 2, Scene 23: "The Season of the Rake"

And you will have lots and lots of leaves, it will be measured in feet, so proclaimed Jeff the Tree Guy.

And thus is came about.

The grass is no longer visible. Instead, TRL has a brown and yellow leaf carpet surrounding the house.

And acorns, also. By the bushel, raining down from the Heavens. TRL is considering importing squirrels to do the gathering job that the domestic squirrels obviously weren’t keeping up with. American squirrels have grown fat and lazy.

So have, it seems, the American people. Nobody rakes anymore. Everybody straps on a gas-powered leaf blower to their back. It sounds like the Indianapolis 500 in the neighborhoods of SB.

And kids can’t even be induced to rake the lawn for extra spending money. The kid who cuts the lawn wants $100 to rake the lawn. $60 if TRL does it himself: he would then suck up the piles of leaves using a vacuum attachment to his huge industrial lawn mower. The problem is that any kid interested in raking the lawn is interested because he started a business doing it. No longer are there youths interested in some manual labor for an extra few bucks. They rather virtual rake on some Internet game, or study up so they can get the grades to land the summer internship at John Deere.

So TRL and S head out to the lawn to rake. TRL knows the deal. He used to rake the lawn as a kid. It takes a long time. And lots of effort. And the leaves just cover things up again the next day.

But S hasn’t raked before. She starts off with enthusiasm and glee.

And then she gets a blister.

And then after an hour’s work she looks up and realizes most of the lawn is still covered in leaves.

And then the wind kicks up, scattering leaves back onto the grass from the mighty piles that have built up. It is Sisyphus blowing leaves up the hill. And S finally cries: We have to move back to the city.

To the land of infinite pavement. To where leaves are regarded as colorful displays for trips up to New England. Or quant pictures in children’s books. Or something you press into paper during a Mommy and Me educational arts and crafts project. But never a chore.

Act 2, Scene 22: "Daddy Break"

TRL takes C & E to a music Mommy and Me class. He looks around and sees he is the only daddy. And he sees lots of single moms. Sure, they probably have husbands, but they are alone here, and for TRL the entire toddler gym room is one big pick-up joint, a very cute theme bar. He can’t help this, it is entwined in his DNA. He feels wolfish. As the music starts and the teacher tells everyone to put their hands in the air and shake it all around, TRL is looking around and wants to desperately do the hokey pokey with all these lovely mommies.

Do they moms know this about him? Is he being obvious? He is providing encouragement to C & E, complimenting them on their dance moves, but he is also eyeing the cute women, looking at their shaking, bending bodies. Is he actually drooling, he wonders? He wipes his mouth. Mommy and me, indeed.

Act 2, Scene 21: "Night Shift"

TRL watches as the leaves build up around the yard. But he doesn’t care. Not yet, anyway, because he knows more will fall. Lots more. But S feels differently.

Are you going to rake today? She prods.

Too busy today, replies TRL.

So a few hours later, S asks again. It is her style. And her feature that most closely resembles TRL’s mother’s personality. Which doesn’t sit very well with TRL. So he ignores the nagging.

S comes home from work: can you rake tonight?

Tonight? TRL replies incredulously.

You’re busy?

Ahh, it’s kind of dark out, he points out.

Use a flashlight. What about the headlamps we have for camping, S suggests, referring to the miner-style flashlights that strap around one’s head.

I’ll rake later this week, responds TRL.

OK, fine, I’ll go out tonight and rake, says S.

She had used the nuclear option: threatening to take it upon herself to do something outrageous because TRL wouldn’t do it in a reasonable time.

OK, OK, fine, screams TRL. He goes around the house, throwing on all outside lights to illuminate the lawn. He storms into the garage, pulls out his very fine recently purchased ergonomically-designed leaf rake, and commences dragging it across the grass at 11pm at night. Little piles of leaves begin to form over the dark lawn. He feels like the protagonist in Close Encounters of the Third Kind crazily driven to build a dirt mountain.

And he also finds it strangely cathartic.