The wise man reads both books and life itself.
Lin Yutang
ePub
A4Juli: The Yard
I
’d never been embarrassed by where we lived before. I’d never looked at our house, or even our sideof the street, and said, Oh! I wish we lived in the new development—those houses are so much newer,
so much better! This is where I’d grown up. This was my home.
I was aware of the yard, sure. My mother had grumbled about it for years. But it was a low
grumbling, not worthy of deep concern. Or so I’d supposed. But maybe I should have wondered. Why
let the outside go and keep the inside so nice? It was spotless inside our house. Except for the boys’
room, that is. Mom gave up on that after she discovered the snake. If they were old enough to adopt a
snake, she told my brothers, they were old enough to clean their own room. Matt and Mike translated
this to keep the door closed, and became quite diligent about doing just that.
Besides the yard, I also never really wondered about the money, or the apparent lack thereof. I knew
we weren’t rich, but I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. Anything you could buy, anyway.
Matt and Mike did ask for things a lot, but even though my mother would tell them, No, boys, we just
can’t afford that, I took this to mean, No, boys, you don’t deserve that, or, No, boys, you don’t really
need that. It wasn’t until Bryce called our home a complete dive that I started really seeing things.
It wasn’t just the yard. It was my dad’s truck, my mother ’s car, the family bike that was more rust than
steel, and the fact that when we did buy something new, it always seemed to come from a second-timearound
store. Plus, we never went on vacation. Ever.
Why was that? My father was the hardest-working man in the world, and my mother worked for
TempService doing secretarial jobs whenever she could. What was all that hard work about if this is
where it got you?
Asking my parents whether we were poor seemed incredibly impolite. But as the days went by, I knew
I had to ask. Just had to. Every day I’d ride home from school on our rusty bike, pull past the broken
fence and patchy yard, and think, Tonight. I’ll ask them tonight.
But then I wouldn’t ask them. I just didn’t know how.
Then one day I had an idea. A way to talk to them about it and maybe help out a little, too. And since
my brothers were working at the music store that night, and nobody was saying much of anything at
the table, I took a deep breath and said, “I was thinking, you know, that it wouldn’t be hard to fix up
the front yard if I could get some nails and a hammer and maybe some paint? And how much does
grass seed cost? It can’t be that much, right? I could plant a lawn, and maybe even some flowers?”
My parents stopped eating and stared at me.
“I know how to use a saw and a hammer—it could be, you know, a project.”
My mother quit looking at me and stared at my father, instead.
My father sighed and said, “The yard is not our responsibility, Julianna.”
“It’s… it’s not?”
He shook his head and said, “It’s Mr. Finnegan’s.”
“Who’s Mr. Finnegan?”
“The man who owns this house.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “What?”
My father cleared his throat and said, “The landlord.”
“You mean we don’t own this house?”
They looked at each other, having some private wordless conversation I couldn’t decipher. Finally my
father said, “I didn’t realize you didn’t know that.”
“But… but that doesn’t make sense! Aren’t landlords supposed to come and do things? Like fix the
roof when it leaks and clear the drains when they’re plugged? You always do that stuff, Dad. Why do
you do it when he’s supposed to?”
“Because,” he sighed, “it’s easier than asking him for help.”
“But if—”
“And,” my father interrupted me, “it keeps him from raising the rent.”
“But… ”
My mother reached over and took my hand. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry if this is a shock. I guess we
always thought you knew.”
“But what about the yard? Why keep up the inside but not the outside?”
My father frowned and said, “When we signed the lease, he assured us he would fix the fences, front
and back, and plant sod in the front yard. Obviously that never happened.” He shook his head. “It’s a
major undertaking, and fencing is not cheap. I can’t see putting that sort of investment into a property
that’s not ours. Plus, it’s the principle of the thing.”
“But we live here,” I whispered, “and it looks so bad.”
My father studied me. “Julianna, what happened?”
“Nothing, Daddy,” I said, but he knew I was lying.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered, “tell me.”
I knew what he’d say if I told him, and yet I couldn’t not tell him. Not with the way he was looking at
me. So I took a deep breath and said, “The Loskis have been throwing my eggs away because they
were afraid they’d have salmonella because our yard is such a mess.”
My father said, “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” but my mother gasped, “What?” Then she cried, “Did Patsy
say that?”
I looked down. “No, Bryce did.”
“But it must’ve been a family discussion! A boy doesn’t come up with that on his own…!” My mother
looked for all the world like a doe waiting to be shot through the heart. She covered her face with her
hands and said, “I can’t go on like this! Robert, things have got to change. They’ve just got to!”
“Trina, you know I’m doing the best I can. I’m sorry about the yard, I’m sorry about the situation.
This isn’t the picture I had for my life, either, but sometimes you have to sacrifice for what’s right.”
My mother looked up from her hands and said, “This is not right for our family. Your daughter is
suffering because we won’t fix up our own yard.”
“It’s not our yard.”
“How can you say that? Robert, wake up! We have lived here for twelve years. It’s not temporary
anymore! If we ever want to have a decent place with our own yard, if we’re going to help the kids
through college or do any of the other things we’ve promised each other, we’re going to have to
move him into government care.”
My father let out a deep sigh and whispered, “We’ve discussed this so many times, Trina. In the end
you always agree that keeping him at Greenhaven is the right thing to do.”
I wanted to say, Wait! What are you talking about? Who are you talking about? But the conversation
was flying so fast and furious that I couldn’t seem to break in, and it wasn’t long before they were
bickering so badly that it was almost like I wasn’t there.
Then in the back of my mind, it clicked. Everything clicked. It was my dad’s brother they were talking
about. My uncle. David.
To me Uncle David was only a name. Someone my parents had explained to me, but not someone I’d
ever actually met. And even though I knew my dad visited him, I never knew exactly when. He never
talked about it.
Dad also thought we shouldn’t talk about Uncle David to others because David was retarded. “People
jump to conclusions,” he’d told me. “They assume that, by association, something must also be wrong
with you. Trust me, I know.”
So we didn’t talk about it. Not at home, not with friends. It was almost like there was no Uncle David.
Until now. Now he felt larger than life, and I could tell from their argument that he was the reason we
didn’t have our own house; he was the reason we didn’t have nice cars or fancy things. He was the
reason there always seemed to be a cloud of weariness hanging over my parents.
Why did I have to bring up the yard in the first place? I’d never seen my parents fight like this. Ever. I
wanted to grab them and say, Stop it! Stop it! You love each other! You do! But I just sat there with
tears streaming down my face.
My mother stopped suddenly and whispered, “We should not be doing this in front of her!”
“I’m sorry, Julianna,” my dad said, then reached over and held my forearm. “Don’t cry. None of this
is your fault. We’ll work it out, I promise we will.”
My mother tried to laugh through her tears, saying, “We always have, and we always will.”
That night my parents came into my room and talked to me, one at a time. My father talked about his
brother and how much he loved him and how he’d promised his parents he’d always take care of him.
My mother talked about how much she loved my father for his strength and kind heart, about dreams
and reality, and the need to count your blessings. And she made me cry all over again when she kissed
me goodnight and whispered that of all her many blessings, I was her best and brightest.
I felt sorry for my father. I felt sorry for my mother. But most of all I felt lucky for me that they were
mine.
And in the morning, as I rode my rusty bike out the driveway to school, I promised myself that when I
got home, I’d tackle the yard. Rented or not, this was our home, and I was going to help make living
here better.
As it turns out, this was easier thought than done. First it took me half an hour of rummaging through
the garage to find a hammer and a box of nails, a saw, and some pruners. Then it took another half
hour of standing around to figure out just where to start. The actual yard was just clumps of weeds,
but what about the bordering shrubs? Should I dig them up, or prune them way back? Were they
shrubs, or just overgrown weeds? And what about the fence? Should I knock it down, or rebuild it?
Maybe I should take out the front end entirely and use the wood to fix up the sides.
The longer I looked around, the more I felt like forgetting the whole thing. Why bother? It wasn’t our
property. Mr. Finnegan should be the one making repairs.
But then I remembered my mother ’s words from the night before. Surely, I thought, a few bushes and
some dilapidated wood couldn’t stop someone’s best and brightest blessing! Surely not!
And with that, I picked up the clippers and got to work.
Half an hour later I was keeper of the knowledge that one bush equals many branches, and that the
volume of a bush increases exponentially as it’s cut and tossed into the middle of a yard. It was
ridiculous! Where was I going to put all this stuff?
Mom came home and tried to talk me out of my mission, but I’d have none of it. Oh, no-no-no! I’d
already pruned two bushes down to a respectable size, and before long she’d see– the place was going
to look just dandy.
“You didn’t get that stubborn streak from me,” she said, but came back outside with a glass of juice
and a kiss for my cheek. Good enough for me!
By the end of that first day, what I’d made was a big mess. But if chaos is a necessary step in the
organization of one’s universe, then I was well on my way. At least that’s what I tried to tell myself
when I flopped into bed that night, dead tired.
And the next afternoon I was busily expanding the chaos of my little universe when I heard a deep
voice say, “That’s quite an undertaking, young lady.”
The man standing on our sidewalk was Bryce’s grandfather, I knew that much. But I’d only ever seen
him outside one time. All the other times I’d seen him had been through windows– either one in their
sitting room or one in their car. To me he was just a dark-haired man behind glass. Having him
appear on my sidewalk was like having someone from TV step through the screen and talk to you.
“I know we’ve seen each other from time to time,” he was saying. “I’m sorry it’s taken me over a year
to come introduce myself. I’m Chester Duncan, Bryce’s grandfather. And you, of course, are Julianna
Baker.”
He stuck out his hand, so I took off my work glove and watched my hand completely disappear inside
his as we shook. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Duncan,” I said, thinking that this man was way bigger than
he looked from the sitting-room window.
Then the strangest thing happened. He pulled his own work gloves and a pair of clippers from a back
pocket and said, “Are you pruning all of these to the same height?”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, yes. That is what I was thinking. Although now I don’t know. Do you think it
would look better to just take them out?”
He shook his head and said, “They’re Australian tea shrubs. They’ll prune up nicely.” And with that,
he put on his gloves and started clipping.
At first I didn’t know what to say to this man. It was very strange to be getting his help, but from the
way he was acting, it was as though I shouldn’t have thought a thing of it. Clip-clip-clip, he went, like
this was something he really enjoyed doing.
Then I remembered what Bryce had said about our yard, and suddenly I knew why he was there.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, throwing his clippings into my pile. “Did I cut it down too far?”
“N-no.”
“Then why the look?” he asked. “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just thought you might
like a little help.”
“Well, I don’t. I can do this by myself.”
He laughed and said, “Oh, I have no doubt about that,” then got back to clipping. “You see, Julianna, I
read about you in the paper, and I’ve lived across the street from you for over a year now. It’s easy to
see that you’re a very competent person.”
We both worked quietly for a minute, but I found myself throwing the clippings into the pile harder
and harder. And before long I couldn’t stand it. I just couldn’t stand it! I spun on him and said, “You’re
here because you feel bad about the eggs, aren’t you? Well, our eggs are perfectly fine! We’ve been
eating them for nearly three years and none of us have gotten poisoned. Mrs. Stueby and Mrs. Helms
seem in good health to me, too, and the fact of the matter is, if you didn’t want them, you should’ve
just told me so!”
His hands fell to his sides and he shook his head as he said, “Eggs? Poisoned? Julianna, I have no idea
what you’re talking about.”
Inside I was so angry and hurt and embarrassed that I didn’t even feel like me. “I’m talking about the
eggs that I’ve been bringing over to your house for more than two years– eggs that my chickens laid
that I could’ve sold! Eggs that your family has been throwing away!” I was shouting at him. Shouting
at an adult, like I’d never shouted at anyone in my entire life.
His voice got very quiet. “I’m sorry. I don’t know about any eggs. Who did you give them to?”
“Bryce!” My throat choked closed as I said his name again. “Bryce.”
Mr. Duncan nodded slowly and said, “Well,” then went back to pruning his bush. “That probably
explains it.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed. “The boy still has a ways to go.”
I just stared at him, not trusting myself with the words sizzling on my tongue.
“Oh, he’s a very handsome boy, there’s no denying that,” he said with a frown. Then he snapped a
branch and added, “The spitting image of his father.”
I shook my head. “Why are you over here, Mr. Duncan? If you don’t think I need the help and you’re
not feeling bad about the eggs, then why would you do this?”
“Honestly?”
I just looked at him, straight in the eye.
He nodded, then said, “Because you remind me of my wife.”
“Your wife?”
“That’s right.” He gave me a little smile and said, “Renée would’ve sat up in that tree with you. She
would’ve sat there all night.”
And with those two sentences, my anger vanished. “Really?”
“Absolutely.”
“She’s… she died?”
He nodded. “And I miss her terribly.” He tossed a branch into the heap and chuckled. “There’s nothing
like a head-strong woman to make you happy to be alive.”
The last thing in the world I expected was to become friends with Bryce’s grandfather. But by
dinnertime I knew so much about him and his wife and the adventures they’d had together that it
seemed like I’d known him for a very long time. Plus, all his stories made the work seem easy. When
I went in for the night, the bushes were all pruned back, and except for the enormous heap in the
center of the yard, things were already looking a whole lot better.
The next day he was back. And when I smiled and said, “Hi, Mr. Duncan,” he smiled back and said,
“Call me Chet, won’t you?” He looked at the hammer in my hand and said, “I take it we’re starting on
the fence today?”
Chet taught me how to plumb a line for the pickets, how to hold a hammer down on the end of the
handle instead of choking up on it, how to calculate an adjusted spacing for the pickets, and how to
use a level to get the wood exactly vertical. We worked on the fence for days, and the whole time we
worked we talked. It wasn’t just about his wife, either. He wanted to know about the sycamore tree and
seemed to understand exactly what I meant when I told about the whole being greater than the sum of
its parts. “It’s that way with people, too,” he said, “only with people it’s sometimes that the whole is
less than the sum of the parts.”
I thought that was pretty interesting. And the next day during school I looked around at the people I’d
known since elementary school, trying to figure out if they were more or less than the sum of their
parts. Chet was right. A lot of them were less.
Top of the list, of course, was Shelly Stalls. To look at her, you’d think she had everything, but there’s
not much solid underneath her Mount Everest hair. And even though she’s like a black hole at sucking
people in, it doesn’t take them long to figure out that being friends with her requires fanning the
flames of a wildfire ego.
But of all my classmates, the one person I couldn’t seem to place was Bryce. Until recently I’d have
said with absolute certainty that he was greater—far greater—than the sum of his parts. What he did to
my heart was sheer, inexplicable magic.
But inexplicable was the operative word here. And as I looked across the room at him during math, I
couldn’t help feeling crushed all over again about how he’d thrown out my eggs. What kind of person
would do that?
Then he looked my way and smiled, and my heart lurched. But I was mad at myself for it. How could I
still feel this way after what he’d done?
I avoided him the rest of the day, but by the end of school there was a tornado inside me, tearing me
up from one end to the other. I jumped on my bike and rode home faster than I ever had before. The
right pedal clanked against the chain guard, and the whole bike rattled and squeaked, threatening to
collapse into a pile of rusty parts.
The tornado, however, was still going strong when I skidded to a halt in our driveway. So I
transferred pedal power into painting power. I pried open the gallon of Navajo White my dad had
bought me and started slopping paint around.
Chet appeared about ten minutes later. “My,” he laughed, “you’ve got an enviable amount of energy
today, don’t you?”
“No,” I said, brushing back some hair with the back of my hand, “I’m just mad.”
He produced his own brush and an empty coffee can. “Uhoh. Who at?”
“Myself!”
“Oh, that’s a tough one. Did you do poorly on a test?”
“No! I… ” I turned to him and said, “How did you fall in love with your wife?”
He poured some Navajo White into his can and smiled. “Ah,” he said. “Boy problems.”
“I do not have boy problems!”
He hesitated but didn’t argue. Instead, he said, “I fell in love with her by mistake.”
“By mistake? What do you mean?”
“I didn’t intend to. At the time I was engaged to somebody else, and in no position to fall in love.
Fortunately for me I saw how blind I’d been before it was too late.”
“Blind?”
“Yes. My fiancée was very beautiful. She had the most magnificent brown eyes, and skin like an angel.
And for a time all I could see was her beauty. But then… well, let’s just say I discovered she wasn’t a
fraction of the person Renée was.” He dipped his brush in the coffee can and stroked a picket with
paint. “It’s easy to look back and see it, and it’s easy to give the advice, but the sad fact is, most people
don’t look beneath the surface until it’s too late.”
We were quiet a minute, but I could see Chet thinking. And from the furrow in his brow, I knew it had
nothing to do with my problems. “I’m… I’m sorry I brought up your wife,” I said.
“Oh, don’t be, that’s all right.” He shook his head and tried on a smile. “Besides, I wasn’t thinking of
Renée. I was thinking of someone else. Someone who’s never been able to look beneath the surface.
At this point I don’t suppose I even want her to.”
Who was he talking about? I wanted to know! But I felt it would be crossing some line to ask, so we
painted pickets in silence. At last he turned to me and said, “Get beyond his eyes and his smile and the
sheen of his hair—look at what’s really there.”
The way he said it sent a chill through me. It was as though he knew. And suddenly I felt defensive.
Was he telling me his grandson wasn’t worth it?
When it was time to go in for dinner, I still didn’t feel right, but at least the tornado was gone. Mom
said Dad was working late, and since the boys were off with their friends, it was just the two of us. She
told me that she and Dad had talked about it and that they both felt a little strange having Chet come
over like he was. Maybe, she said, they should find a way to pay him for his help.
I told her I thought Chet would find that insulting, but the next day she went ahead and insulted him
anyway. Chet said, “No, Mrs. Baker. It’s been my pleasure to help out your daughter on this project,”
and wouldn’t hear another word about it.
The week ended with my dad loading the back of his truck with all the clippings and scraps before he
set off for work on Saturday morning. Then Chet and I spent the rest of the day hoeing up weeds and
raking and readying the dirt for seeding.
It was on this last day that Chet asked, “Your family’s not moving, are you?”
“Moving? Why do you say that?”
“Oh, my daughter brought up the possibility at the dinner table last night. She thought that maybe
you’re fixing up the house because you’re getting ready to sell it.”
Even though Chet and I had talked about a lot of things while we were working, I probably wouldn’t
have told him about Mr. Finnegan or Uncle David or why the yard was such a mess if he hadn’t asked
me about moving. But since he had, well, I wound up telling him everything. And it felt good to talk
about it. Especially about Uncle David. It felt like blowing a dandelion into the wind and watching all
the little seeds float off, up and away. I was proud of my parents, and looking around the front yard, I
was proud of me, too. Just wait until I got my hands on the backyard! Then maybe I’d even paint the
house. I could do it. I could.
Chet was pretty quiet after I told him the story, and when Mom brought us out sandwiches at
lunchtime, we sat on the porch and ate without saying a word. Then he broke the silence by nodding
across the street and saying, “I don’t know why he doesn’t just come out and say hello.”
“Who?” I asked, then looked across the street to where he’d nodded. The curtain in Bryce’s room
moved quickly back into place, and I couldn’t help asking, “Bryce?”
“That’s the third time I’ve seen him watching.”
“Really?” My heart was fluttering about like a baby bird trying to fly.
He frowned and said, “Let’s finish up and get that seed sown, shall we? You’ll want the warmth of the
day to help with the germination.”
I was happy to finally be planting the yard, but I couldn’t help being distracted by Bryce’s window.
Was he watching? During the rest of the afternoon, I checked more often than I’d like to admit. And
I’m afraid Chet noticed, too, because when we were all done and we’d congratulated each other on
what was sure to be a fine-looking yard, he said, “He may be acting like a coward now, but I do hold
out hope for the boy.”
A coward? What on earth could I say to that? I just stood there with the hose in one hand and the
spigot valve beneath the other.
And with that, Chet waved so long and walked across the street.
A few minutes later I saw Bryce coming down the sidewalk toward his house. I did a double take. All
this time I’d thought he was inside the house watching, and he was really outside walking around? I
was embarrassed all over again.
I turned my back on him and concentrated on watering the yard. What a fool I was! What a complete
idiot! And I had just built up a nice head of angry steam when I heard, “It’s looking good, Juli. Nice
job.”
It was Bryce, standing right there on our driveway. And suddenly I wasn’t mad at me anymore. I was
mad at him. How could he stand there like my supervisor and tell me, Nice job? He had no business
saying anything after what he’d done.
I was about to hose him down when he said, “I’m sorry for what I did, Juli. It was, you know…
wrong.”
I looked at him—into those brilliant blue eyes. And I tried to do what Chet had said—I tried to look
past them. What was behind them? What was he thinking? Was he really sorry? Or was he just feeling
bad about the things he’d said?
It was like looking into the sun, though, and I had to turn away.
I couldn’t tell you what we talked about after that, except that he was nice to me and he made me laugh.
And after he left, I shut off the water and went inside feeling very, very strange.
The rest of the evening I bounced back and forth between upset and uneasy. The worst part being, I
couldn’t really put my finger on what exactly I was upset or uneasy about. Of course it was Bryce, but
why wasn’t I just mad? He’d been such a… scoundrel. Or happy? Why wasn’t I just happy? He’d come
over to our house. He’d stood on our driveway. He’d said nice things. We’d laughed.
But I wasn’t mad or happy. And as I lay in bed trying to read, I realized that upset had been
overshadowed by uneasy. I felt as though someone was watching me. I got so spooked I even got up
and checked out the window and in the closet and under the bed, but still the feeling didn’t go away.
It took me until nearly midnight to understand what it was.
It was me. Watching me.
