by Jack Weyland
She opened the door, saw us, and gasped. “Oh—I forgot you were coming. Gee, everything’s a mess.”
“We don't mind,” Brother Porter assured her. “Besides, we won’t be long.”
She let us in. She was right about the mess. She’d been sorting clothes before going to her mother’s to do the laundry, and she had a pile of whites and a pile of coloreds on the living room floor. Toys were strewn around the clothes.
Brother Porter introduced me to Joan and her daughter Melissa. Soon after sitting down on the worn couch, I discovered I’d sat on an old piece of toast with peanut butter on it.
A little light talk about the weather and then we went on to the lesson.
“I have this lesson about these two frogs. You see, these two frogs get trapped in a bucket of cream.”
Melissa appeared from the bathroom with no clothes on.
“Melissa, you get your clothes on,” her mother warned.
“No!” Melissa insisted in her best terrible-two-year-old voice.
“Excuse me,” Joan said, heading for her daughter.
The TV was still on. As she left the room, we automatically turned our attention to the program. It was an adult love story—siphoned from the flow of real sewers.
“I can’t believe they show that on TV, can you?” Brother Porter asked as we watched.
“No, I can’t,” I agreed.
We heard Joan slam a door, lock it, and then she returned.
“Sometimes I have to lock her in her room,” she said, looking very tired. “Excuse me for the interruption. Go ahead with your lesson.”
“Well, there were these two frogs, you see, and it turns out they got caught in this bucket of cream.”
“LET ME OUT!”
“I’m sorry,” Joan said, distracted by her daughter’s yelling and banging on the door, “but what were you saying about a frog?”
“There were these two frogs—”
“I WANT OUT!”
“. . . and they got trapped . . .”
“LET ME OUT!”
“. . . in a bucket of cream . . .”
“MOMMY!”
“Excuse me,” Joan said, marching back to the bedroom.
Again we turned our attention to the TV, rationalizing that we wanted to find out how rotten things have become.
One scene was particularly bad, especially for me because I didn’t have a wife to go home to. I’d probably be up late working on a model plane again.
Then it proceeded from bad to rotten.
“I wonder if she’d mind if we turned it off,” I finally said.
“What?” Brother Porter asked.
“I shouldn’t be watching that,” I said.
“No—it’s terrible, isn’t it? I wonder who watches this stuff.”
“I’m going to turn it off now,” I warned.
“Right now?” he asked.
I turned it off.
“Terrible,” he said. “It’s a wonder they get away with showing that. You know, people could avoid the mistakes that couple was making if they’d just get themselves a good hobby—like fishing or hunting.”
“Or model planes,” I agreed.
“You ever notice on TV, they never have a guy involved with another woman if he’s a trout fisherman?”
Joan returned with Melissa dressed in pajamas with the zipper pinned shut.
“Now I’m ready for your lesson.”
“I hope you don’t mind, but I turned off your TV.”
“Was it on? I never even notice anymore—it’s just nice to have adult voices in the room.”
Brother Porter cleared his voice and talked down to Melissa. “Now Melissa, you listen real carefully because I’m going to tell you a nice story. It’s all about these two frogs, and one day they got caught in a big bucket of cream . . .”
Melissa drifted out of the room.
Before Brother Porter could get the frog out of the bucket again, Melissa appeared from the kitchen, covered from head to toe with flour, looking like a grinning ghost, tracking white as she walked.
“MELISSA!” Joan yelled, chasing her, spanking her hard, sending up little clouds of flour with each whack. A second later, a white screaming Melissa was hauled into her room and locked in again.
“MOMMY, LET ME OUT!”
Joan looked as though she might cry, but she didn’t. She just collapsed into her chair, held her head in her hands, and asked us to finish so she could get the mess cleaned up.
“Oh, sure,” Brother Porter assured her, and quickly polished off the frog story.
“Thank you,” she said numbly, after being told to keep swimming.
“We’ll help you clean up,” I said.
“You don’t have to.”
“We’re world authorities about cleaning up flour from kitchen floors.”
“Of course we would like to stay and help,” Brother Porter backpedaled, “but we have other appointments tonight.”
“Call and tell them we’ll be a little late,” I suggested.
“One is an old lady who goes to bed at eight-thirty.”
“Then we’ll visit her tomorrow night.”
“I go bowling tomorrow night.”
“We’ll go right after work then.”
By then I was already sweeping, so he decided to help.
Sometimes a frog can’t escape the bucket all by itself.
* * * * *
The next day about five-thirty, Brother Porter picked me up again.
“Well, two more visits and we’ll have it wrapped up for another month,” he said. “The first one is Sister Hilton. She’s a retired schoolteacher—lost her husband a couple of years ago. She’s doing all right now—completely active in the Church, so we don’t have to worry much about her. She even does genealogy. I usually just visit with her a couple of minutes. Completely active—okay?” he stressed again so I’d know she was problem-free.
“Okay,” I said.
Sister Hilton lived in a small house. There was a broken board on one of the steps of her porch.
“Careful of the step,” Brother Porter warned me well in advance.
“We can’t stay long,” Brother Porter cautioned as we sat down after the introductions, “but we just wanted to drop by and see if everything is all right.”
“Just fine,” she said.
“You’re healthy and strong?”
“Fit as a fiddle.”
“Got enough food?”
“Certainly,” she said, sounding a little insulted.
“How about family home evening?”
“Well, there’s just me now . . .”
“Well, we’ll count you as having it. Our lesson today is about these two frogs . . .”
I was sitting near a window. There was a continual stream of cold air pouring into the room on that cold winter day. I turned around to look. She didn’t have her storm windows on, and there were large cracks that needed caulking. I wondered how much her heating bill was.
The room was filled with the usual knickknacks given long ago and never discarded. It was what you’d expect from a retired teacher, with the exception of a giant potted palm near the door to the kitchen. It was seven feet tall and extended well into the room, something you might find in a musty second-rate hotel, not in her tiny house.
“. . . so it just goes to show you—when things get rough, we have to keep swimming. And that’s our lesson for tonight.”
“Thank you, it was nice. Will you stay for a piece of cake?”
“Gosh, we’d like to, but we have another appointment in a few minutes.”
“Sister Hilton,” I said, “that’s an interesting potted palm.”
“Oh, that. I hate it, don’t you?”
“Well, it is a little large for the room.”
“Would you like to hear how I got it?”
Brother Porter checked his watch. “Some other time, okay? We really do need to run now.”
“It’s not a long story,” she said.
/>
“I’d like to hear it,” I assured her.
“My husband and I taught school for forty years. Even after he died, I stayed in the same school. Then it came time for me to retire. During the last school assembly, a student was giving a talk and mentioned I was retiring. I saw a look of shock pass over the principal’s face and knew he’d forgotten to get me anything for my retirement.”
Brother Porter jangled his keys.
“Of course, I didn’t want much, but it was as clear as day that he’d forgotten. After the regular program, he got up and gave a little talk about my retirement. While he talked, his eyes fell on the large potted palm they kept on the stage. He walked over to it, picked it up, called me from the audience, and presented it to me.”
She stood by the palm. It was much taller than she was and seemed almost to engulf her.
“And that’s the story of my palm tree.” Her voice had a bitter edge to it. “I hate it, you know.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Forty years’ teaching, and that’s what I have to show for it.”
“Well,” Brother Porter cheerily announced, “that’s sure an interesting story!” He stood up, ready to leave.
“But you keep it,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Why, if you hate it so much.”
“Because we have a common bond, don’t you see? We’re both discarded and useless now. So we stick together. It wasn’t the palm’s fault. Yes, we hate each other, but we’re all we have now.”
Brother Porter had his jacket on and his hand on the door.
“What do you do with your time now?” I asked.
“Not much. I do genealogy for my ancestors. I think they appreciate it.”
“I’m sure they do.”
“Although they aren’t much for conversation.”
Brother Porter left.
“Sister Hilton, I’d better go. One thing, though—I noticed it’s cold around that window. Do you have storm windows?”
“I guess so—my husband always took care of that. I haven’t felt like going down in his workroom in the basement and looking around—to see his tools just the way he left them.”
“Let me come over Saturday morning and put the storm windows on for you. All right?”
She looked at me strangely. “Do you really mean it?”
“Of course I do.”
“I’d appreciate that very much.”
I hurried to the pickup, and Brother Porter headed quickly for our last stop.
Paul Wilson lived in his aunt’s two-story house and looked after it while she was in Arizona for the winter. He was a physics student at the University of Utah.
When he opened the door, he was carrying a large metal serving spoon in one hand. He was tall and skinny, wore thick glasses, and had an absent stare about him, as if never completely sure where he was.
“Yes?” he asked at the door.
“Don’t you remember me?” Brother Porter asked. “We’re your home teachers.”
“Oh,” Paul said, letting us in.
Even as we sat down, he continued to look at his reflection in the spoon, first from one side and then the other.
“Well, Paul, how’s it going?” Brother Porter asked.
Paul looked up at us with blank stare.
Brother Porter glanced over at me and shrugged his shoulders.
“Say, that’s a big spoon you got there! About to have a big dish of ice cream?” Brother Porter chuckled at his little joke.
“No.”
“I see—just looking at the spoon, huh?”
“When I look at it this way, my image is right side up, but when I turn the spoon over, my image is upside down. Want to see?”
He handed us the spoon and we both tried it.
“Say, that’s right!” Brother Porter exclaimed.
“In one case,” Paul continued, “the image is virtual and erect, while in the other case, it’s real and inverted.”
“Heck of a deal!” Brother Porter said, checking his watch. “Well, I guess we’d better go to the lesson. I think you’ll really enjoy this. You see, there were these two frogs . . .”
Three minutes later, we stood up to leave. “If there’s anything we can do, don’t hesitate to call us,” Brother Porter said, shaking Paul’s hand.
Paul was confused. “What?”
“You know, if you have problems, we can help,” Brother Porter said, putting on his coat.
“I have problems,” Paul said simply.
That caught Brother Porter off-guard, and he quickly backpedaled. “Well, of course, everybody’s got problems.”
I wasn’t going to let Brother Porter just ignore Paul and his problems. If Paul needed our help, then we would help.
“Paul,” I asked sympathetically, “would you care to talk about your problems?”
Brother Porter checked his watch again. “I don’t know if we have time to go into Paul’s problems right now. Paul, how about next month when we come?”
“We’re his home teachers! Why do you make these visits anyway?”
That caught Brother Porter by surprise. He glared at me.
“Go ahead, Paul, tell us about your problems,” I said, my voice dripping compassion.
Paul put his big spoon down and looked at me. “I’m not sure you’d be interested in my problems.”
“Of course we’re interested,” I said, glancing at Brother Porter. “And we’ll help you, even if we have to stay till midnight.”
Brother Porter looked at his watch and mumbled something.
“Now go ahead,” I continued. “Sit down, if that’ll make you more comfortable. Tell us about your problems.”
Paul sat down and looked at me with a curious expression. “Okay—if you’re sure you’re interested.”
“Trust us, Paul.”
Paul looked down at the floor and began. “I’m supposed to derive with the help of the method of saddle point integration a formula for the partition function of an ideal gas composed of integral spin Bose particles.”
We both stared at Paul with our mouths wide open. There was a moment of silence.
“I didn’t think you’d be interested in my problems,” Paul said.
“Oh, that kind of problem! I thought it might be another kind of problem. Paul is there any other kind of problem in life you’d like to talk about?”
“No, not in life.”
“Good man!” Brother Porter exclaimed, slapping Paul on his back. “Well, just remember the story about the frogs! It gives us a lot to think about, doesn’t it?”
“Yes—I’ve been thinking about it,” Paul said.
“See there?” Brother Porter smiled triumphantly at me.
“I wonder why the farmer didn’t take better care of his cream.”
“We gotta run now!” Brother Porter announced, escaping to his pickup.
On the way home, I told Brother Porter about offering to install Sister Hilton’s storm windows.
“Fine, go ahead.”
“Can you help?”
“No, I’m going to get some more wood for our fireplace.”
A few minutes later, he parked his truck in our driveway. “Five years of one hundred percent home teaching,” he said proudly.
“It’s good you visit them every month.”
“I guess so, but you know what? You seem to care about them a lot more than I do.”
“Maybe because I’m single like they are.”
“If you want, I’ll talk to the elders quorum president about having you work with them. Maybe you can help them, Sam.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know—I’m not sure I can even help myself.”
“Let me give you a little advice,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Just keep swimming and before you know it that old cream’s going to turn to butter.”
* * * * *
Chapter Five
Time passes. Whatever else you can say about life, at least
you’re guaranteed that.
Some see time marching grandly onward like a military parade. Others view it as flowing, a river emptying into an endless sea.
But to me time halts and limps and then lurches forward, like a wounded sailor in a foreign port trying to make it to his ship before it sails at dawn.
Six months had passed since my wife’s death; the original white-hot ache had decayed to a bleakness of routine and duty and responsibility.
The turning point occurred in March when the bishop called me to be one of the single adult representatives in the ward. We met once a month with our ward committee and also once a month with the stake committee.
At my first stake committee meeting, I met Jon Stevens. We were both about the same age. He had never married.
He told me he was building a boat from a kit and said if I’d help him with it, he would let me use it anytime I wanted. Once a week after that, I bundled Adam up and we went to Jon’s garage and worked.
He was sort of a cross between the Marlboro man (with no cigarettes) and a young Archie Bunker. Sometime after he turned eighteen he must have sat down and taken a stand on every possible political issue. We spent hours arguing politics as we fitted and glued and sanded and painted.
Another source of interest in my life came from home teaching. Two weeks after going with Brother Porter, I was assigned his route.
My home teaching companion was a senior in high school who was involved in sports. I was happy for his success but sometimes found it difficult to arrange a time to go out with him home teaching. Sometimes I took Jon with me even though we weren’t in the same ward.
One day after church, Shirley told me she had joined a computer pen-pal club and had been writing a man who lived in Pennsylvania. She had told him about the Church, and he was taking the missionary lessons.
Three weeks later she told me he had been baptized.
And then, a few days after that, she asked me to come over that night because she had something important to talk to me about.
Since my regular companion was out of town, I asked Jon to go with me. When we arrived, she told us her pen pal wanted to meet her, and maybe even marry her, and that he was coming in five weeks.