I know why.
I know why Michael spent days painting the crumbling, weed-split concrete patio behind our mother’s house in southern West Virginia a medium, shiny shade of grey. I know why he covered as much as possible with outdoor rugs. I know why he painted the metal glider, given to our family over fifty years ago, to match the chair cushions he bought. I know why he planted tall, skinny snap dragons in flowerpots and put them in all the corners. And I know why the green table is in the yard. Michael has had enough of making do. Michael, the eldest, me, and Clery, our younger brother, grew-up making do.
When summertime came and school was dismissed, my mother situated her black Singer sewing machine on the kitchen table, unfurled the grey cord, moved the fruit bowl containing mounds of dusty, plastic grapes and one wooden apple, to the side, located the foot pedal and ordered us to try on last year’s pants. Then she began cutting and sewing. She cut the legs off the pants, split the seams of what remained up the sides, and took a strip of fabric from the cut-off legs to widen the waist and hips. Then she reassembled the whole thing. Shorts for summer and beyond were made, and nothing needed to be purchased. Almost, just about, you couldn’t tell. She did that good a job. And we got along pretty well that way. The shorts would suit throughout the summer and for school in the fall before it got too cool outside. Dad even took the leftover scraps and made me a small denim bag for my jacks. He could sew really well, learning the craft in the Navy on an aircraft carrier. “When you’re out to sea for months,” he explained, “you have to make do with what’s on hand.” He threaded an old shoelace through the top seam, and then I could cinch the bag closed and tie a knot. I tied it like I tied my shoes, and I took my jacks to school that way, playing at recess and never losing a single jack. Years later, when I was in high school, he made me a purse from an old pair of blue jeans. He even left the zipper, so it would look like a small pair of shorts.
About once every couple of weeks, Dad brought home a giant box of Breeze laundry detergent from the grocery store. Promotional ads had flooded daytime TV, bragging that the detergent would feature a new towel in each box. We owned very few towels and what we did have had been patched with bits and pieces of outgrown t-shirts or old pajama bottoms, and even with that the patches were wearing thin, so we watched TV and bought soap during those Breeze years. Sometimes you ended up with a box that had a pink or blue flowered towel, and those we kept for the kitchen or bathroom, like a prize. But Mom collected the other towels until she had enough, and then she would sew three of them together to create a beach towel, one for each of us, to take to the local swimming pool. She’d fold them up and sit them on top the shelf beside the backdoor. If there were leftover dimes and nickels from paying the paperboy, then we each grabbed some change and a towel on the way out the door. There were a few sneers, but mostly you’d never know it wasn’t a real beach towel. You could feel it, of course, that it wasn’t the kind with a soft, velvety touch, and it didn’t have bright-colored sailboats or seahorses or a kaleidoscope of purples and pinks, blues and yellows, but we got along ok.
Nothing went to waste. A coffee can became a Valentine box in February. A plastic trash can became an Easter basket or a mop bucket. The breastbone from the Thanksgiving turkey was washed, scrubbed, painted bright red and used as a small Santa sleigh in a homemade winter wonderland scene. We even wrapped small aspirin boxes and put them in the sleigh as presents. A worn-out canvas tarp became a large duffel bag. Even the detergent box itself was useable because it was so tall. Dad saved every box. Throughout all my school years, even into high school, I kept my socks in one of the Breeze detergent boxes Dad had saved. He would carefully split open the box with a razor-sharp knife, angling the opening perfectly so that it would reclose, like some sort of miniature safe. Then he’d attach a string to one side and a button to the other, cover the whole thing in wrapping paper, and magically it was a container for socks, like a dresser drawer – almost. We each had one. I even took mine to college. No one ever knew it was a leftover Breeze box. Dad had several for himself. He kept tools for the washing machine in one of them. It set right beside the machine, always on hand.
Michael has made it a point to give the old, cement patio at our mother’s house a good spiffing-up. “He’s a man obsessed,” my mother says. She’s surprised, but I’m not, not at all because I think Michael noticed making do the most, became frustrated more easily, always saw himself as doing things differently, having more. One year for Christmas he gave our parents a single share of IBM stock. He must have put aside some of his pay from baling hay that fall. He instructed our parents carefully when they opened the envelope. “You want to sit on this, watch it grow, make the most of it, maybe buy another few shares. Then you’ll really have something,” he added. But the $76.00 or so dollars was just too necessary, so Dad cashed it quickly. I’m not sure he told Michael just how fast he did that.
Michael brought down his own patio furniture from his home a few miles away, an outdoor couch and two chairs, plus a coffee table, and two tiny metal end tables, just wide enough for a glass of iced tea and a small paper plate. Then he ordered one of those area rugs that are meant for patios or decks. I saw it before he cut the plastic ties that held it in a tight roll. “Indoor/outdoor,” the label claimed, but I couldn’t imagine it inside a house, since the fibers really did have a plastic-type feel underneath my bare feet. He spread it carefully over the buckled cement, cement that our Dad had poured and worked himself years ago in between shifts at the aluminum plant.
Then Michael arranged the whole ensemble just so, angling the couch so it sat caddy corner instead of straight against the patio’s edge. He did something similar with the chairs, so nothing had the impression of a square. It looked like an arrangement from an outdoor magazine or a book about “making the most from your outdoor living space,” as if he’d been studying and thinking about what to do. The couch and chairs have a black metal frame, but the outdoor table my mother has had for decades is a chipped and faded nearly ancient shade of mint green. It bothered him it didn’t match. It bothered him a lot, so he pulled the old table into the yard, tucked it away from what was shiny and right, and ordered a new one with a black metal top and black metal legs. He shopped long and hard for coordinating chair cushions. “I wanted a perfect match,” he told us. Then he burned the old mismatched cushions in the leaf pile, carried them down to the deepest part of the yard, doused them in gasoline, and struck a match. Gone forever.
My mother said, “I don’t know why it troubles him so about that table.”
I’m glad she doesn’t know what I know.