Trust and Consequences

What do women want? Sir Gawain knew (or King Henry, depending on whether you’ve got the folktale or the ballad at hand): we want our own way. But doesn’t everyone want that? I’ve only met one apparently easy-going person ever, and he was shamming. I myself have been named more than stubborn—my own mother called me Stalin in drag: the iron fist in a velvet glove. So when taking care of the dead 25-foot sycamore in the back yard was miles higher on my priority list than on that of my husband, Marc’s, I bit my tongue and awaited an opportunity. It would be breaking trust for me to spend without further discussion the $600.00 a tree-removal specialist had quoted for the job, and due to a thorough and well-demonstrated clumsiness I have been forever banned from any power tools lying around.  I figured a little quick, quiet yard operation with hand tools was in bounds. It would be easier if Marc just happened to be away from the house at the time. When he and his brother, Bill, decided to go to a Padre’s spring training game, I figured that the two hour window between the first pitch and their arrival back home would be plenty of time for me to get the tree down and dealt with. I maintain this discreet willfulness was acceptable--the chaos of that afternoon was due to other character flaws.

I rushed home from work on game-day, entering the house through the garage and noting that Marc must have failed to arm the security system—odd, because he was very precise in all things, but just as well since he was usually the one to disarm and I was none too sure I remembered the code anyway. Out through the garage to get the tools, around to the side gate and in ten minutes I had several lower branches down—just enough to realize that it would have been smarter to trim the higher branches first and that apparently yardmen get paid for more than just their brawn. Back around to the garage to get the ladder. Time was slipping away. I sawed feverishly. The higher branches dropped one by one, mostly over the side yard wall--not as rude as it seems, because next door was a vacant lot, and the retainer wall in between was 20 feet deep and surely no one would notice a few yard trimmings down there in the desert scruff. All the tugging and shaking and swaying of the dead tree must have loosened its roots because the mutilated tree slowly fell toward the fence with me, clinging to the ladder, following. The mangled trunk toppled four or five bricks down the far side and came to rest balanced in the jagged new gap in the block wall. The root ball on the near side dropped dirt clods every few moments on me where I lay flat down on the gound and under the ladder.

I staggered up from my cushion of leafy debris, thinking madly how to hide the evidence of my stubborness and selective honesty in my rapidly shrinking alone time. Perhaps I could lever the whole wretched thing over into the abyss. I ran into the house through the back yard patio door, whereupon the earlier absent robo-voice now announced “intruder alert!” I ran to the control panel across the room and punched in several possible disarm codes on the nearby panel, but could not recall the correct number sequence. The secondary wailing, hideously loud siren followed the first alarm. I was stabbing at the key pad randomly, hoping to hit the right code when the phone rang.

“Are you safe?” the Security One rep asked.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine, this is a false alarm—please, please, please turn off
that awful siren”. “Certainly, ma'am, if you will please give me the security answer”.  I couldn't remember that any better  than I did the disarm code. The siren swung into an even louder “whoop-whoop-whoooooop”. I fiercely regretted my habit of handing off everything systematic to Marc and then never listening to his patient, methodical summaries.  “Blackbury? Cicada? 1984!” “Ma’am, none of those are on our list and you seem very agitated—for your safety, we will contact the police for you.” The phone clicked off, but the siren continued its cyclic wails, whoops and blats.

Explaining the defective alarm, the damaged wall and damnable tree to the police was mildly embarrassing, but more so was the arrival of a familiar car to pulling into the driveway as they questioned me. The security company’s next call after the police had been to the back-up contact Marc had set up, but I knew who that was no more than I did the disarm code or the security answer. It was Marc's brother, Bill. Of course he’d answered his cell phone there in the Hi Corbett field bleachers with Marc sitting right beside him.  What I did learn from the very married moment that followed later that evening was that if I was going to get my own way on the sly, I needed to be quicker, smarter and a tad more attentive to the details of daily life.