Little Dummy
The house next to me sold months ago. Yesterday, Friday, movers delivered the new owners’ things. I cancelled my Saturday plans to nothing and mowed my yard, trimmed back the rogue gardenia bush, washed the hood and passenger side of my car, and painted the wood trim on that side of the house facing my car and the new neighbors.
Toward the end of the day, I am sweeping the patio when I spot the new neighbors walking from their minivan toward the back door of their house.
I tighten my face mask and call out, “Hello, neighbors. My name’s Loch.”
“Dan-the-man,” the man in the couple says jovially.
“And Alice,” the and-half says.
Dan sets down a large cooler and approaches the picket fence between the properties. When he extends his hand over the points of the pointed fence, I step back.
“I don’t want to be the unneighborly neighbor—this soon into our living arrangements—but Toby and I are still practicing social distancing.” I indicate the cat behind me licking his feet.
Dan and Alice hold their hands in front of their mouths in a gesture of compliance.
“Is this IT?” a young voice cries with disgust. Behind the couple, a young girl, maybe seven or eight, steps into the yard holding a toddler in her arms.
“Yes, Sweetheart,” Dan-the-man answers. To me he says, “That’s Tabitha and…” he hesitates. “Francis.”
“Don’t say your son’s name like that,” his wife snaps at him. “It’s a good name. It’s my father’s name. Why do you have to say it like you’re apologizing?”
Dan-the-husband looks at me sheepishly and, dare I say, apologetically.
And and Man are off to a good start, and I tell them I’ll let them get back to the business of moving in.
I return to my patio where the cat’s paws are sparkling pink. I resume sweeping the pavers sure to impress the new neighbors by their very cleanliness. This is what I’m thinking with each sweep, that Dan and Alice will actually watch out their window at night and covet the dirt-free brick on my side of the fence. While I’m deep in that worthy fantasy, the girl in the next yard disappears into the house with her parents and returns, by herself, with a sword.
Hmm.
I tell myself I will only let this scenario develop so far. But I am willing to let it get started.
The dark-hair girl raises the sword above her head, pausing dramatically, and then steps as she pulls the blade forward and down. In the sword’s wake, a sheet of bubbles glistens. She raises her weapon of choice once again, and executes a perfect two-handed slice, pulling another sheet of bubbles out of thin air. Her stance, the rhythm of her execution, even her purposeful scowl are that of a samurai many times her age.
I mimic her swordplay with my broom, making dramatic sxhwings, baps, and rub-a-dub sweeps across the patio. She sees this and takes her game up a notch, swinging in more contrived arcs, grunting from the diaphragm as she gives rise to sheet upon sheet of bubbles.
I’m not above acting someone else age, and I follow the young bubble warrior’s example—minus the bubbles—grunting heroically as I leap and sweep.
Annoyed, Toby takes his clean feet onto the grass.
An unspoken competition has developed. The girl and I. The bubble sword and the dust broom. We each try to out-swing the other, grunt louder than the other. Until…
“Tabitha!” the girl’s mother shouts from an open window. Bubbles drop. The girl stops what she is doing and looks at me as though to ask Do you see what I have to live with?
“Yes Alice!” the girl calls her mother by name.
I like this kid. I’m just thankful she’s not mine.
Her invisible father steps to the window. “Tabitha, please don’t let your brother eat the dirt.”
The kid looks again at me. I’m looking past her at the toddler with a handful of dirt. He raises his hand. I can’t look away.
“Gee Laweeze,” the girl says and stomps to the cooler. She removes what looks like a rather large and sophisticated sandwich for such a young girl and takes it to her even younger brother. Francis dips the dripping sandwich in dirt and sort of presses the whole dirty business against his mouth area.
That accomplished, the girl steps closer to the fence and tells me, “My name’s Tabby. Like a cat.”
On cue, Toby leaps up onto the fence and deftly steps between the painted points toward the new Tabby in the neighborhood.
“My name is Loch,” I tell her. “Like the Lochness Monster.” She goes with it.
“That’s my brother. Sir Francis.”
“Sir Francis?” The kid can’t be two yet. “He’s got blue kangaroos on his pull-ups.”
“That’s what my dad calls him.” She shrugs.
“Well, the little guy whose head you’re scratching is Toby. Toby, say hello to Tabby.”
“Hey Toby.” For the first time since arriving in the neighborhood, the little girl talks and smiles like a little girl. “I’m not supposed to get too close to other people. But cats are not people.”
“That’s a good rule. Is that what Dan and Alice told you?”
It takes a moment, but she gets it and smiles. “No. That’s what they say on TV. Keep your distance, wear a mask.” She looks around, surveying the new home. “What kind of yard is this? The fence only covers this side and the back. What about the other side?”
I shrug.
“Anyone could get in,” she says with incredulity beyond her years. “Anyone could crawl out.”
I look at the young boy sitting on the dirt, firmly rooted on the dirt by his interest in the dirt.
“I don’t think you need to worry about Sir Francis. Besides, this a good neighborhood. I think you’re safe. But just in case…”
I leap with my broom over my head and bring it down on the unsuspecting pavers. Dust mushrooms over the patio.
“That’s stupid,” Tabby tells me.
“Really? It’s the same thing you were doing.”
She considers and then explains her purpose. “I’m defending our home.”
“What are you defending it against?”
She rolls her eyes. “The 19 viruses.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. I couldn’t see them.”
“Gee Laweeze. You don’t see the viruses. They’re invisible.”
“Then how do you know where to swing your sword?”
She puts a hand on her aspiring hip to harrumph at me. “Anyone knows this isn’t a sword. It’s a light saber. Didn’t you see the movie?”
Toby meows, totally with the girl on this point.
“I’m impressed that someone your age knows about the 19 viruses and has taken it upon herself to defend her family from them.”
“Everyone knows about them,” she says.
“But not everyone acts like it.”
“YE’AHH,” she booms. “I know.” Speaking in a voice of disdain that could serve to introduce the next bad actors on a stage, she turns at the sound of her parents stepping outside, their hand-masks at their sides.
“Hey,” her father cries into the open cooler. “What happened to my sandwich?”
“You said you wanted Sir Francis to stop eating dirt.”
“But…” Dan-the-mere-man looks at his daughter while he wrestles with hunger, disobedience, and a weak parental spine. “I guess we weren’t very specific about what to do.”
“Nope,” their rogue daughter answers.
He looks at me. “It’s just a sandwich.”
I nod my head. “Just a sandwich.”
Tabby is quite taken by Toby who is uncharacteristically receptive to her petting. But the girl assumes too much when she tries to pick him up.
“Ow,” she cries. “He bit me.”
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” Alice and Dan spring into protective-parent mode, hovering around the girl to see, while keeping their own hands away from her mouth.
“Why did he bite me?” she asks me.
“He wasn’t cool with you picking him up.” There’s no reason to tell her that the strongest words in a cat’s vocabulary are not words. She’ll learn. “But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you.”
“I’m sorry, Toby,” the girl says to the kitty on the fence. “I won’t do it again.” The little guy arches his back and gives her a parting meow before leaping down on my side of the fence.
“And there he goes, back to the big dummy with the broom.” This commentary is provided at the courtesy of one spoiled third-party narrator.
Big Dummy.
I look to Alice and Dan, but neither bat an eye at the term of disrespect their daughter just expressed for their new right-next-door adult neighbor. They don’t hear it. Or they’re scared to acknowledge it, take a position and act like parents.
But Toby and I? We don’t have to live with the attitudinous bubble master.
“Back to me,” I say. “Perhaps when Little Dummy learns some respect for cats and their owners, she can have a playdate with Toby. He’s got some really cool ninja moves against invisible forces.”
Dan and Alice freeze. Their eyes move from daughter to neighbor like onlookers at a showdown. They step back.
Tabby frowns as she thinks through—what is no doubt for her—a novel situation. “I can learn some respect.”
Toby and I laugh.
Dan and Alice look ready to move again.
“Really,” the girl says. “If I show respect, will you teach me how to hold Toby? And will you let him show me some ninja moves?”
I cup my hands and Toby hops up. “We’ll see. Tomorrow? Same time. Same fence.”
She picks up her sword. “I’ll be here.”
Fighting the nineteen viruses with her bubble sword.
Watching the effects of the Bubble Master.
The Sxhwing! The Bap! And the Rub-a-Dub moves in fighting the virus back!