Pulling Weeds

By Jennifer Wise

Frank and Sharon stood looking at the mess of matted grass and maze of tunnels running across the lawn. It was the first of April, their inaugural day for post-winter yardwork. 

“Those tunnels are from moles,” Frank said. 

“Nope, those are from voles,” Sharon said.

After some back and forth as she gathered her tools, Frank discovered Sharon was right. He had looked up the answer on his shiny new iPhone. Yes, clearly voles. The picture on his screen looked identical to the maze of tunnels in their yard. He pocketed the phone. He didn’t acknowledge she was right. 

He wasn’t sure why he had to double check what she said. After all, she did have a very good track record of being right during their twenty years of marriage. Whatever it was, nature or nurture, he often turned to the Google god, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger to confirm what Sharon was sure of. 

Frank considered himself pretty flexible on most things. He learned proper toilet seat etiquette, had reliably been covering the butter when he was done with it, and he remembered how to find and massage that one stubborn tension spot from her neck. In fact, he had learned many things during many years of marital tutelage. Somehow, though, he couldn’t get on board with believing his wife. 

Then, maybe it was the yellow spring light that brought back to him a day from when he was about ten years old. He was playing with some tinker toys on the floor, his mother was standing in the middle of the living room, while his father was sitting on the sofa. His mother said, “The new neighbor’s family name is Schmidt.” His father said, “No, it’s Smith.” After that, his father raised his newspaper and went back to reading. That left his mother talking to a full-page automobile ad on the back of the newspaper. She gritted her teeth and repeated that she was just talking to the neighbor that morning, and his name was Schmidt. “Yes, dear,” was all that emerged from behind the rustling pages. 

Frank had known his mom was right, because Joe Schmidt was in his class at school, but he didn’t say anything. He thought his mom’s intense stare might ignite the newspaper. But that didn’t happen either. The next thing he recalled was his mother at the kitchen counter stabbing chicken cutlets with a long knife then shoving garlic cloves deep into their pale peach flesh.

Yes. That’s it, he thought. 

Frank’s epiphany was that his inability to acknowledge even the potential correctness of his wife was his father’s doing. Or undoing. He then recalled how his mother and father talked less and less over the years. He always blamed their dueling hearing aids, but maybe there was more to it. 

Nature and nurture, I supposed, which means it isn’t my fault. That’s just the way it is for Morin husbands. In that moment he was almost glad he and Sharon had two daughters and no sons. 

Frank watched his wife nudge grass clods back into the grooves made by the voles. 

She still looks mad, he surmised. He started working through a one-liner he could use about a mole and vole meeting at a local sod bar but he couldn’t quite get the punch line worked out. Then he thought it was probably too soon to joke about it anyway.

If he was like his father, Sharon was like his mother: those two women let their anger out in tiny tributaries. He was glad he hadn’t married a woman who gushed like a geyser. Her annoyance, like small rivulets of Spring runoff, eventually stopped. As long as he didn’t provoke her too soon of course.

Frank started off with the closest version of an apology he could make, which was to change the subject, “Sooooo, are you ready for lunch?” 

She didn’t turn around, “I’m not hungry yet.” 

She stabbed the earth with a steel weeder. With a closed fist and overhand motion, the sharp points worked loose stubborn roots that grew deeper into the earth than he had realized they could. 

“Nope, not yet,” she re-affirmed.

He wasn’t sure what else to do other than wait it out. Didn’t she know it was hard for him to admit she was right? How much more could she ask of him? After all, he usually provided placating foot rubs in the evening after days like this one. 

It was nearly noon and even early in spring the sun was intense by midday. The forest had not yet grown its leaves. The trees at the edge of the yard seemed glaringly monotone as their steely gray trunks stood straight and unyielding along the edge of the lawn. Frank couldn’t help but think about lunch again, bored with his assigned task of clearing leaves out of flower beds. The vegetarian omelet from breakfast had long since digested. He wanted Sharon to stop being mad at him if for no other reason than he might starve to death. His stomach growled.

He recalled the image of his father disappearing behind the newspaper with a new thought, How often had he done that to me, too, when I had something to say? 

Frank knelt down beside Sharon with renewed sensitivity after that thought. He surveyed the tools in her bucket, still dusty with last year’s yellow-green pollen. She didn’t look up, even though he was close enough that dirt from her shovel pelted his pant leg. 

Frank took one garden tool out at a time and set them in a straight row. He sat, cross-legged, in the grass and used the tail of his shirt to dust off each tool. As the pile of newly shined implements grew larger, Sharon’s stabs slowed. She still had not looked at him, but she finally paused, resting the trowel on the ground. She took off her gloves and shook out the loose dirt that had settled into them.

“Want to help by carrying these buckets over to the greenhouse?” she asked as she stood up, gesturing to a pair of five-gallon pails full of old roots and weeds.

Frank smiled, Sharon still wasn’t looking at him, but her tone had softened. Her warming melted him, too. His knees became liquid. Although he nodded his intention to help her, he sank into the grass and lay on his back.

Sharon looked down at him. She smiled and held out her hand to help him up. But instead of getting up with her gentle tug, he pulled her onto the ground next to him. Frank gazed into the bottomless blue sky. Sharon rolled onto her back too and set her head on his belly. Thin clouds wisped in the sky above. 

“Those are stratocumulus clouds,” Sharon said.

Frank was sure they were cumulonimbus clouds and said so. 

Sharon sighed with a depth he had not heard before as she rolled over and picked up the newly polished steel weeding tool.