Elliot piddled around the basement not able to do much of anything. There wasn’t hardly enough room to turn around and he’d been sneezing almost non-stop from the dust. After about an hour or so, Elliot heard some bumping around in the kitchen. Then there were footsteps and the door to the dining room opening. Maggie called down, ”Elliot! Come upstairs for some tea.” Elliot had forgotten how tired he was – from lack of sleep, from the excitement, and from his day of running around the nation’s capital. So he gladly accepted Maggie’s suggestion to worry about Benny’s problem’s later and to rest himself a little instead.
With Elliot seated at the kitchen table and Maggie busy with her bread ingredients, she filled him in on the monthly pattern of life at the Garfield Street House. The immediate aftermath of the Herald’s monthly publication, typical of the week Elliot arrived, would bring about a relaxed calm. But occasionally something would set Benny on fire and all else shrank to insignificance with the sudden certitude that this particular interest at this particular time was the very most important thing that Benny could possibly occupy himself with. After the short respite, week two meant that Benny had to start thinking about his next issue – generally over a series of chess games spread between home and Dupont Circle Park. By week three, the recurrent frenzy became clearly manifest in his demeanor and behavior around the house. The frenzy burst into a full-fledged maelstrom by week four, immediately leading up to the paper’s final edit, checking the proof copy, delivering the proofs to the printer, and finally picking up and delivering the printed newspapers to their appointed rounds. Then some measure of calm would gradually settle over their humble abode once again.
She tried to be a supportive helpmate, to give Benny room to grow as a man, and to exercise his creativity. But she had her needs too. Marriage was a dance, a delicate balancing act, that could be sometimes liberating, and other times stifling. Life with another person was a cycle of emotions, rising and falling expectations, waves of joys and sorrows, seasons of plenty or scarcity. “You never know when your spouse is going to surprise you,” she said. “Just the other night, right out of the blue, Benny announced that he was going to clean up his shed. Now, I’ve been trying to get him to get rid of that shack for years. But I’ve learned that there’s a trick to living with Benny. If I have an idea, then he’ll inevitably shoot it down. So when he brought up something I wanted him to do anyway, I had to keep quiet and let him think that it was his own idea.”
They heard the front door open and Benny call out, “Hon-ey! I’m ho-ome!”
Maggie said, “That’s his little joke that he learned from an old comedy television show. He thinks it’s amusing.”
Benny came in carrying a bag of carry-out for dinner. He said, “I’ve returned from the hunt with the fruits of my labors. I hope you like Chinese,” he said to Elliot.
Before Elliot could answer, Maggie said, “Not again! We just had that!”
Benny replied, “Yeah, but it’s cheap and there’s enough for all three of us.”
Maggie grumbled, “Well, I guess I’d better put together a salad to stretch it out with.”
Elliot said, “Can I help?”
Maggie shooed them away saying, “No, you go on and take a load off. I’ll call you in a few minutes.
Leading Elliot toward the front room, Benny turned to Elliot and asked, “Now, did I ask you if you play chess?”
“I know how the pieces move, ” said Elliot.
“Great! Let’s play a game and you can bring me up to date with your adventures in our Nation’s Capital.”
“Not much adventure so far. I deliver newspapers and then looked for your box downstairs. I didn’t find it though.”
“No? Perhaps it’s down at the office somewhere then.”
(Opportunity for some chess discussion here.)
Benny and Elliot had been playing chess and talking in the living room, oblivious to the TV that glowed and flickered between scenes of giant man-eating plants and commercials for household cleansers. “New! Improved! Now with seven secret ingredients!…” Benny was the far more accomplished and coached Elliot in the fundamentals of the game as they played.
Finally Elliot stood up to stretch and excused himself for bed, “I think I’m spent. Thanks for the lesson, and everything.”
“Thank you for all your help today,” answered Benny, as he put away the chessmen in a wooden box. “What do you have planned for tomorrow?”
A brief sardonic laugh escaped before Elliot caught himself without a clear plan of any kind. “Try, try again,” he said. He climbed the stairs to see Maggie through the open bathroom door flossing her teeth. Elliot said, “Good night, Maggie. It’s been nice meeting you.”
With two hands and a piece of string in her mouth, Maggie grunted enthusiastically, which Elliot took to mean, “Wait a moment.” He watched patiently as she finished up the last several teeth thinking that he should really be flossing more often himself. Maggie rinsed her mouth, dropped the string in the wastebasket, clapped her hands together wiping them on her sides, and gently grasped and squeezed his shoulders. She said with a surprising intensity and sincerity that Elliot had not expected, “It’s nice to have you here, Elliot.”
He went to bed weary, falling into a contented sleep recounting the experiences of his day. He had a rather disturbing dream of working on a rooftop chimney with Benny. Just short of neurosis, he had always been afraid of heights. “Don’t worry,” Benny said in the dream. “I won’t let you fall.” The brick chimney began to crumble and plummet to the ground many stories below. The handhold Elliot had relied on for security had disintegrated. The steep slate shingles were old and precariously fastened with rusty nails. There was nothing firm to hold onto. Elliot’s slightest movement would send him hurtling to the ground.
Next: Distractions
~: Maggie POV note
thermodynamics of ideas 