Outside, Inside, and Never Together

The ceremoniousness of it all was understated by the fact that it had to be done. All their plans to place and accentuate the table were superseded by the inability to get it through the door. This was to be the table where Rita and Karl were going to hold bohemian dinner parties for eight or more; on this they would place Karl’s grandmother’s depression glass fruit bowl with its milky green, pocked look that was so very retro, thereby, so very “in” according to the papers; their 2.4 children that they were going to attempt to have in a couple of years were going to necessitate the need for plastic dinnerware, miniature utensils, and lidded drinking vessels encompassed in various cartoon characters. This table could make it all happen for them. Their dreams for the dining room seemed plausible if, and only, if, they could get this particular table inside.

Rita and Karl were “The Couple” of the block. People felt discriminating. People loved them, and people hated them, because their house was perfect, their teeth were perfect, and their bank account was perfectly suited to the lifestyle to which they aspired. They hosted homeowner’s meetings. Rita made the perfect lemon squares. Karl had the perfect swing. No sand traps for these folks. In the eyes of their neighbors, they were mired in nothing but the bliss of their existence. For all of this the neighbors cared. What they cared for was distinct in that it was defined by the envy they felt when these people showed their faces. They didn’t even have to speak of their plans for people to rant and rail against them. People felt crass, as a condescending couple will have the propensity to make people feel.

William, next door, had been scooping up the oil slick in the gravel of his drive when the Lexington delivery truck had pulled to the curb of his neighbor’s home. He leaned on his shovel and watched the deliveryman unlock the door to the back of the truck and lower the ramp. A second deliveryman hopped down from the cab and joined the first in the back of the truck. Will made another half-heart scoop at the gravel that he leisurely let tumble into the wheelbarrow.

Karl came vaulting through door of his Victorian with Rita seconding his motion. He halted at the top of the stairs and clasped his hands. Rita met the end of her sprint at the porch column and caressed it lovingly, peering coyly at the truck as though it were a date arriving. They were not quite prepared to meet their fate, so they left the steps as a barrier for one final moment.

Anticipation overtook them. Rita made the first move to descend the steps, gingerly stepping down one, then another. Karl bound down two in order to meet her stride — an escort to a debutante that had somehow been lax in his duties. Together they met up with the deliverymen at the rear of the van, tiaraless and crownless. The table was a royal decree that would instill upon their lives their status that they believed they so richly deserved.

“Hey Fellas. Thanks for being so prompt.”

“No problem.”

“Did you have any trouble finding the place?”

“Nah, we had a map.”

“Good, good. Now did they put the base on like I asked?”

“Nah. We need to put the base on inside ‘cause it’s too heavy when it’s all together.”

“Now, look, I specifically asked that the base be put on before you delivered it. You’ll have to put it on in the truck.”

“Sir …”

“You can call me Karl …”

“Well … Karl … the top of the table weighs about three-hundred and fifty pounds, and each base weighs close to a hundred-fifty apiece, and if we put it all together it’s gonna break the ramp.”

“You guys that deliver have got to deliver furniture that’s heavier than that?”

Karl stood with his hands on his hips, eyes widened, and his head cocked upwards into the bed of the truck. Rita stood behind him staring at the curb and nodding like a wooden lawn bird. The deliveryman was stone-faced and introspective while his partner had retreated into the depths of the truck as though it was a hive.

“OK, Sir … Karl … then with just the two of us … it’s gonna break us.”

“Don’t you have a gurney back there?”

“A gurney won’t get it up the stairs, Sir.”

When Olivia spied Karl out the window of her garage apartment that was directly across from his front door, he was spinning like a gyroscope. She picked up her watering pot, her small pruning shears, and her gardening gloves. Her intention was to water her strawberry pot that she had filled with various herbs, and to get a better handle on what was going down across the street.

Flapping and pacing, Karl delved into some place within himself that the neighbors had never known. This place’s visit had outward consequences. MR. CALM, COOL AND COLLECTED Karl, MR. I’M GOING TO HANDLE IT Karl, MR. EVERYTHING IS PERFECT ON MY SIDE OF THE FENCE Karl had been replaced with MR. SNARL.

The Robertson’s paused in their fraudulent excavation of their mini-van to watch the show, while their son stopped his excavation of the flowerbed to run to his parents and ask “What’sa madder wid Mister Track?”

Rita began to whimper, “My floors … my beautiful floors …”

Karl stamped his feet down on everything in his elliptical path. He muttered snatches of words that seemingly had no connectivity, “one and one-half inches … solvent … throw the rug down … flagstones … I called … I know I called … three times … can’t throw the rug down … eight-thousand bucks … eight thousand bucks … Saturday … Christ …” and he spun himself down to one point on the sidewalk where he stood with his limbs beginning to tuck themselves back to his body. He brought his palms up to his eyes and pushed as though to pull down the valances of his eyebrows and rip down the curtain that shaded the outside world from his view.

“All right … look, Fellas … here’s the deal ... I didn’t want the table put together inside because we have hardwood floors in the dining room and I don’t want them scratched; I just don’t want the mess … I’m sure you can understand that, can’t you?”

By this point, both deliverymen were simply staring down at Karl from the truck.

“The only thing I have that’s large enough to throw down for you guys is the Persian rug and I just can’t take the chance that it’ll get ruined. You can understand, right?”

“We have tarps … massive tarps …”

“Well … that’s just not going to be good enough!”

Lillian had been lingering on the corner with her spaniel, letting her sniff and lick at the storm drain grate far longer than she might otherwise have had patience for at any another time. She tugged at the leash, pulling her dog back up onto the sidewalk and into motion. She jibed, stopping and starting to avoid the full wind of the situation, until she was about fifty yards from the spectacle. “You could … maybe … have them put your table together on the porch, Rita,” she piped hesitantly.

Karl side waved in Lillian’s direction encompassing the lot of them with a palm-up gesture, “I know you’re trying to help, Lilly, but I asked for this to be done before they got here. They owe me the service that I asked for.”

Rita slipped two fingers into the crook of Karl’s elbow and lifted her chin level with his secret, trinity knot tattoo that was just under the cuff of his polo shirt, “Karl, Honey, we better let them put it together on the porch.”

“Fine … fine …if that’s the only way we’re going to be done with it, do it … just do it!”

The table top, wrapped in tarp and strapped to a sturdy handcart, came down the ramp with one delivery guy in front stooped guiding the base end of the cart, while the other simultaneously pulled it back and let it roll downward with the gravity. Once in the street, they grabbed either arc of the handle, pulled it over the curb, across the flagstones, and up each step where the wheels made a kakunk sound each time it hit the face of the step in front of it until they reached the flatness of the porch. Each deliveryman took a turn at retrieving the two bases with the cart. They removed their back belts, returned to the van, grabbed their tool belts, and reentered the porch.

“Maam …?”

“Please … call me Rita.”

“Uh … Rita … may I please have some water?”

“Yeah … Maam … uh … Rita … me, too … please.”

So the men got to work at drilling and dowel pounding. Karl stood at one corner of the house with arms crossed in the manner of a foreman, excavating the job, like the Robertson’s, with a characteristic thoroughness while Rita stood at the other picking dead leaves off her hanging geraniums, emulating Olivia across the street in haphazardness and inattentiveness. William swirled gravel with his shovel, unaware of the designs he created while Lillian was hunched petting her dog, and unaware of the designs the dog’s fur fell into.

Lillian stepped, with her spaniel in tow, up William’s drive, taking him slightly by surprise.

“Kinda weird, huh?”

“In two years I don’t think I have ever seen them act like that.”

“Me, either.”

“Kinda weird.”

“I’ll say!”

The table was whole, in all its inlaid, select hardwood, and six hundred and fifty pound glory. It was gorgeous; the varnish of it shown mirror-clean. It was spectacular, and so was Karl’s show that followed when everyone (except the deliverymen) realized, collectively, that there was no possible way that it would fit through the front door. It was not going to fit if they took the door off its hinges — it would not even fit if they took the door's frame off.

Karl imploded. His arms dropped to his sides and he seemed to slump. If one got up very close, one might believe that they saw his eyes beginning to roll into the back of his head. He sat down on the porch swing and put his head between his knees with his hands grasped at the back of his head and with his forearms covering his ears, whispering, “What … God! … What did I ever … Shit!”

William dropped the shovel and walked to a spot below Karl’s porch level with Karl’s shoe, all the while suppressing the adolescent urge to start giggling, “Karl, may I make a suggestion?”

After a brief pause where Karl glanced sideways from his perch on the swing, he responded, “Yeah … what?”

“Take it through the bustle-door!”

“Will, I hate to ask, but what the hell is a bustle-door?”

“Well, it’s that door on the side that the Victorians made wider for the ladies … the one that leads into the Ladies’ Parlor … to fit their bustles in without dirtying themselves … your table’s kind of like a bustle now, isn’t it?”

Everyone started laughing. Karl sprung off the porch swing and the deliverymen sprung into action to unhook it, so they could walk the table around without obstacle. The deliverymen took the back-step end of the table, Karl and Will took the front-step end, and Tab Robertson came from across the street to help guide from the middle. They all could see themselves huffing with exertion in the reflection off the tabletop. Rita swept through the interior of the parlor (living room) clearing nonexistent debris from the path destined for the table. She swung the door open and hugged herself with relief. The table easily cleared the doorframe and was set down for those toting to catch their breath. Congratulatory glances were thrown generously to all. Rita ran to get the boys some refreshments and, on the way, attempted to open the other side of the double doors leading into the front hall. The second door was stuck.

“Look, it’s got no hinges.”

Karl grabbed the floor lamp to the right of the sofa and swung with a force hefty enough to embed its base into the façade. The action had been taken so quickly that everyone ducked. The aftershock was astonishment, even Karl, most probably at his own action.

The table sat calm, cool, and collected for many weeks. Rita had pulled a chair up to it, using it as a sorting table for her scrapbooking. Karl had pulled a chair up to the opposite side to watch her clip and paste upside-down images of himself windsurfing or hiking up mountains on his head, all the while formulating new plans, master plans, where his home would not get the better of him.

The neighbors now had their chances to host homeowners meetings. Rita and Karl did not want anyone in their home until they could move the table and repair their wall that once was viewed as a door. The neighbors no longer loved, nor hated, Rita and Karl. But, they all got the distinct impression that “The Couple” did not care for them all very much.