Papa Joe

Dana Petersen didn’t like the way her neighbor kept his garden. She always tried to sneak over and do a bit of pruning, a spot of weeding. Her own garden was very nicely kept, with a neat row of dahlias peeping out from behind some daisies, and a gorgeous string of sunflowers beaming at the back like a shining yellow fence. Mrs. Petersen was an elderly lady and she liked things to be just so. Her neighbor was the exact opposite. Ted Down was an absolutely horrid teenager in Mrs. Petersen’s opinion. He shaved his chest, which she found unnatural, and instead of keeping it covered with shirts, he left the buttons open, or sometimes didn’t wear a shirt at all! And he was constantly mowing the lawn while bobbing his head to some appalling rock noise. When he went out in his rackety but shiny car, he put his rock noise up to the loudest setting possible. Ted appalled Mrs. Petersen. What else appalled her was his garden.1

It wasn’t really his garden. It was more like his mother’s garden. Ted didn’t live next door alone, you know. He lived with his mother and his grandfather. Mrs. Petersen didn’t like the mother either. Horrid woman. Didn’t seem to care what Ted did at all. Appalling. But of course, as the audience, we all know that Ms. April Down cared what her son did. She just didn’t feel the need to prove it in front of her meddling neighbor.2

While there was a growing enmity between Ms. Down and Mrs. Petersen, there was nothing of the sort between the latter and the grandfather. Mr. Joe Down, better known to his family as Papa Joe, rather liked Mrs. Petersen. He said she was a feisty young thing. It was a pretty far stretch from the truth, but then again, maybe it wasn’t: he was ninety-nine years old, and Mrs. Petersen was sixty-two. To him, she was his grandson’s age. He knew she hated their garden, and she often complained about it to him, but there was not much he could do about it. He was confined to a wheelchair, Ted was concerned with mowing the lawn and driving his car, and April spent her days at the gym, swimming or playing sports with other members, or just reading at the pool. She was a very athletic woman.3

Papa Joe was a doctor when he was young. He had a habit of diagnosing random things; he had been a very good doctor because he diagnosed things not only using knowledge from the books, but from what he felt himself. Sometimes he would say, “To hell with the books! Today, they are wrong.” And he would not listen to the books but do exactly what his mind told him to do. He was never wrong. And so he diagnosed Mrs. Petersen’s dislike for their garden as a passion for life.4

It seemed logical to him that she had a passion for life because she was constantly bickering with some person at her door, or yelling at some milkman or postman or UPS man from her window, or making faces at some silly little child through the transparent curtains of her living room. This showed Papa Joe that she lived every moment of her life some how, some way. She was always doing something. That was one thing Papa Joe regretted about being in his wheelchair. He could not always be doing something, living life however he wanted. He had to live life according to his wheelchair, which really didn’t give him very many possibilities at all.5

Papa Joe knew that Mrs. Petersen thought she was an old maid. Despite this passion for life that Papa Joe thought she had, she didn’t seem to think she had much of her life left to live. It seemed to Papa Joe, now, that she was living her life in a flurry now, and that she was trying to pack in every single action she possibly could that she hadn’t done before. It seemed like this to him because one day he saw her grab Ted’s skate ramp from him, drag it to the end of their driveway, strap on some old roller blades, and fly off of the ramp yelling, “HALLELUJAH!” She landed on her feet and cackled triumphantly, pumping her fists up in the air. Papa Joe assumed she had not done that before.6

To go with this old maid image she had made for herself, Mrs. Petersen called herself Mrs. Petersen. She made her children call her Mother, and her grandchildren call her Grandma, but other than that, everyone had to call her Mrs. Petersen. She had even made her husband call her that when he was alive. Of course, as the audience, we know that it happened only in the past ten years, when Mrs. Petersen first realized she was getting old.7

Besides that, Papa Joe also knew that she really did not like their garden. It did not fit in with her passion-for-life philosophy. Of course, as the audience, we know that it wasn’t really a philosophy, and that Papa Joe never really talked about it to Mrs. Petersen’s face, but he still liked to think that she lived according to her philosophy. He liked the idea of making up a philosophy and then doing what it wants. It sounded important, if you know what I mean.8

One afternoon, while Mrs. Petersen had snuck over to do some pruning to their dead garden, Papa Joe watched her from the deck. He opened the door and pushed himself forward and out the door.9

“Hello, Dana,” he said.10

Mrs. Petersen looked up sharply. “Excuse me?” She was angry.11

“I said hello, Dana. That is your name, isn’t it? Dana Petersen. Dana. I do hope you don’t mind me calling you Dana. Anyways, I was wondering if you would like some help pruning our garden.”12

His question sounded so funny- could I help you prune my garden? - but it was a very pertinent question. Mrs. Petersen thought that maybe some help would do both her and the garden some good. 13

“Alright then, Mr. Down. But how exactly do you propose we get you off that deck and onto the grass? I can’t very well lift you myself, your April has gone to the gym, and that Ted of yours is mowing the lawn and bobbing his head.”14

Papa Joe chuckled. She could be funny and not even know it. Bobbing his head. How quirky. “Well, I thought I might try getting out of the chair, actually. Considering how I’ve been practicing walking on my hands and stumps for the past five decades now, but I’ve never really bothered to get out of the chair, I think it’s high time, don’t you?”15

Mrs. Petersen stared at Papa Joe. He must have gone mad. She looked up at the sun and snapped her fingers. Aha! She thought to herself. He has taken in too much sun and it’s all getting to his head. If only she could get some cold water right now with just a little twitch of her nose like that Bewitched lady. Or maybe summoning a doctor would be a better thing to do with a nose-twitch. She didn’t know. But she did know that Papa Joe was, first of all, much too old to be walking on his stumps and expecting to survive; that, second of all, she didn’t believe he had been practicing for the last five decades, because doctors had said he wouldn’t ever be able to use those stumps at all; and third of all, she didn’t think she could look at his stumps press against the deck and the grass and get all dirty like that.16

Papa Joe had lost his legs in a car accident. He had been underneath a friend’s car, helping him change the punctured tire, when the friend’s child got in the car and started it somehow, just while they were tweaking the tire in place. It rolled right over Papa Joe’s legs, almost completely severing them. There wasn’t a whole lot the surgeons could do for him. He continued his practice as a doctor, but he himself was now confined to a wheelchair, and people hadn’t felt as safe going to a disabled doctor.17

Mrs. Petersen decided there really wasn’t anything she could do about anything at all, let alone the Downs’ garden or Papa Joe’s stumps, so she thought she might as well help Papa Joe. She let him take the blanket off of his lap, revealing two ghastly thin thighs that ended almost immediately above the knees in two grotesque surfaces that looked molded by hands. The flesh was scarred and disfigured; the doctor’s didn’t know much about things like this let alone how to heal them.18

Papa Joe waited as Mrs. Petersen took hold of the wheelchair to make sure it didn’t move while he gently pulled himself out. Mrs. Petersen winced as his stumps balanced precariously on the deck floor. She wasn’t sure they could take the pressure, she could already imagine them bursting blood all over her, her fainting, him dying, everything ending so tragically. Then Papa Joe was climbing down the stairs and at the garden, doing a spot of weeding.19

“I say, Dana, you don’t think you could come down and give me the watering can, do you? I think I see some growth here.”20