In Summertime Saga

The grass was past my ankles.

I stood on the back porch in my boxers and a t-shirt drinking coffee that Debbie had left in the pot and looked at the yard and it was bad. Three weeks of summer and nobody had touched it. The edges along the fence were knee-high and the middle was patchy and overgrown and there was a strip near the house where the sprinkler hit that was darker green and thicker than the rest. A dandelion had gone to seed near the shed and the white puffball sat on top of it like a hat.

Saturday. No school. Jenny was still asleep and Debbie was somewhere in the house, she was moving around somewhere upstairs. The coffee was hot and too strong and the morning was already warm. By noon it was going to be brutal.

I knew what the yard needed because I'd played this exact quest. The mower was in the garage and the mower was out of gas and gas cost thirty dollars at the hardware store and the hardware store was a ten-minute bike ride. In the game this had been an afternoon of clicking: walk to garage, examine mower, receive quest prompt "MOWER NEEDS GAS," ride to store, buy gas, ride back, mow lawn, receive +1 relationship with Debbie. Four minutes of real time stretched across an in-game day.

I went to the garage. The mower was where I expected it: in the back corner behind a shovel and a rusted toolbox, covered in a thin layer of dust. A push mower, manual, the kind you walked behind. I pulled the cord. Nothing. Checked the tank. Bone dry.

I put on jeans and rode the bike to Consum-R. The morning air was warm and the ride was flat and I bought a gas can for thirty-two dollars from a woman at the register who didn't look at me. I rode back with it hooked over one handlebar and it kept swinging and I almost wiped out on the turn into our street.

I filled the mower. Pulled the cord. It coughed twice and caught and the sound of it was louder than I expected, a ragged mechanical buzzing that vibrated through the handles and up my arms.

The shirt came off because it was hot and because I knew Debbie's kitchen window faced the backyard and because I wasn't an idiot.

Three weeks at the gym with Kevin. Strength 3. In my past life I'd been in shape because looking good was the job. Now the body was catching up to the routine. My arms had definition that hadn't been there when I woke up in this kid's body. My shoulders sat wider. There was a line down the center of my stomach that hadn't existed on Day 1. I wasn't jacked. I wasn't close. But I didn't look like a teenager anymore, or I looked like a teenager who did something with his afternoons besides homework.

I pushed the mower across the back yard. Row by row, left to right, the way you do it. The sun was on my back and the cut grass sprayed out the side and stuck to my shins and the sweat started on my neck and worked down my spine and after twenty minutes my chest was slick and my jeans were sticking to my thighs. The mower was heavy and the yard was bigger than it looked from the porch and my forearms were burning by the time I finished the first half.

I stopped for water at the outdoor spigot. Bent over, drank from the stream, splashed my face. Stood up and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and turned toward the house.

Debbie was in the kitchen window.

She had a coffee mug in both hands, held up near her chin. She was standing at the sink looking out at the yard. At me. She was in the bathrobe, hair down, and the morning light was behind her so her face was hard to read but her posture was clear. Still. Watching. She'd been standing there long enough that the steam from her coffee was gone.

I raised a hand. A casual wave. Just a guy taking a break from mowing.

She startled. Put the mug down. Raised a hand back. Then she moved away from the window.

I went back to mowing.

The second half of the yard was faster because I'd found the rhythm and my arms had adjusted and the mower was pulling itself through the grass by the time I hit the far fence. I did the edges by hand, pulling the tall stuff near the fence posts and around the shed base and near the sprinkler heads. My hands were green and my knees were dirty and the yard looked completely different when I was done. Clean lines. Even height. The dandelion was gone.

I dragged the mower back to the garage and went inside.

Debbie was in the kitchen. She had a glass of water in her hand and she held it out when I came through the back door.

"Here."

"Thanks."

I drank the whole thing standing at the counter. She watched me drink it. I was shirtless and sweating and the grass clippings on my shins were starting to itch and she was looking at the same places Roxxy had looked in the hallway two days ago. My arms. My chest. The line down my stomach that the sweat followed. She was trying not to and she was doing it anyway.

"You didn't have to do that," she said.

"Needed doing."

"The yard hasn't been mowed since Frank." She said it simply. "He used to do it every Saturday morning. Six thirty, rain or shine. Jenny and I could set our clocks by the sound of that mower." She took the glass from me and refilled it. "I kept meaning to hire someone but I never called."

"Now you don't have to."

She handed the glass back. Our fingers touched on the glass. She didn't pull away immediately. Half a second where her fingertips were on mine and the glass was cold and her fingers were warm and then she let go.

"Thank you, sweetie."

"You're welcome."

She was looking at me. The same look Jenny had given me after the first photo shoot, when she'd looked at the monitor and then looked at me and her whole estimate of me shifted. Jenny's version had been simple: this is worth something. Debbie's had a layer underneath it that tightened the corners of her mouth and made her look away and reach for her coffee mug, the one that had been sitting on the counter since I started mowing. She picked it up. Took a sip. Set it down.

"It's cold," she said, looking at the mug. She poured it in the sink and turned on the hot water to rinse it and her back was to me and neither of us said anything for a few seconds.

"I'm gonna shower," I said.

"Go ahead, honey."

I went upstairs. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, between my room and Debbie's. The shower had a curtain, not a door. White, opaque, with a pattern of little shells on it. I turned the water on, stripped, stepped in. The water was hot and the grass clippings washed off in green streams down my legs and the steam filled the small room and I stood under the spray and let my shoulders unknot.

The mowing had been the right move. The lawn was a chore that needed doing, and doing it shirtless while she watched was the oldest play in a book I'd been reading my whole life. Same principle as the massage: be useful, be present, be visible. Let her come to the conclusion on her own timeline.

The bathroom door opened.

I heard the handle turn and the hinges and then Debbie's voice, already apologizing.

"I'm sorry, I just- I left my- I need my moisturizer, it's on the counter, I'll just-"

The curtain was between us. White fabric with little shells. Her silhouette moved behind it, blurred, heading for the counter. She was an arm's length away. The steam made the curtain stick to itself in places and the bottom of it was wet where the spray hit the edge of the tub.

I didn't move. I stood under the water with my hands on the wall and the spray hitting the back of my neck and I let her be in here.

She was looking for something on the counter. She was moving things. A bottle. Another bottle. The quiet click of a cap opening and closing. She was taking too long. The moisturizer would have been the first thing she grabbed. She was standing in the bathroom while I was in the shower three feet away with just the curtain between us and she was opening and closing bottles she didn't need.

"Found it," she said. Her voice was closer than before.

"Okay."

A pause. Her breathing was close on the other side of the curtain. Short. Like she'd been holding a breath and let half of it out.

"The lawn looks great," she said. From right next to the curtain. She was standing at the edge of the tub. If I moved the curtain six inches I would see her and she would see me and the steam was thick and the water was loud and neither of us moved.

"Thanks," I said.

"You're getting- you look-" She stopped. "You're filling out. Kevin's gym is working."

"Yeah."

"Good. That's good." Another pause. "I'll let you finish."

The door closed. The handle clicked. Her footsteps went down the hallway and I heard her bedroom door open and shut.

My heart was going. Hard. My hands were flat against the tile wall and the water was running down my back and my pulse was in my throat. She'd been right there. Right on the other side. And she'd stood there and she'd told me I was filling out and her voice had gone lower, the same register it hit during the massage.

I stayed in the shower until the water went cool. Got dressed. Went downstairs.

Debbie was in the living room folding towels. She didn't look up when I came down. The coffee pot was making a new batch and the kitchen window was open and the smell of cut grass was coming through and the yard was clean and green and visible from every window on the first floor.

I grabbed my gym bag.

"Heading to the gym."

"Have fun, sweetie."

Normal voice. Normal smile. Back to Debbie. The woman from the bathroom was gone, folded up with the towels, put away.

I rode the bike to Planet Thiccness. Kevin was already there, curling dumbbells that were bigger than my head. "BRO. Leg day. You ready?"

I was not ready. He destroyed me. Squats, lunges, calf raises, leg press. My legs were shaking by the end and he was counting reps in a voice that could be heard in the parking lot and I loaded ten more pounds on the bar because my body could take it now, or this body could take it now, and Kevin said "that's my boy" and slapped my back hard enough to leave a handprint.

Strength 4. The squat rack told me. The bar that had been hard last week was manageable this week and my form was better and the weight sat lower and more stable on my shoulders and Kevin said "you're built different, bro, I keep saying it" and I said "good genetics" and he said "genetics don't move that fast" and he was right but he didn't know why.

I rode home in the late afternoon. The lawn was still clean. The yard smelled like fresh-cut grass and the sprinkler was running and the water caught the light.

Debbie's moisturizer was on the bathroom counter where it had always been.