The Television

Mom banged on the bathroom door. “Come on, Annie! Out of the bath. You’ve been in there for ages. Patty will be here any minute.”

I responded immediately. “Okay, Mom! I’m almost done. I’ll be right out.” I’d been lost in reverie. Daydreaming about my approaching birthday, about summer vacation, about visiting my cousins. I jumped out of the tub, not really having cleaned myself, pulled the plug and began drying off. Hanging my towel haphazardly next to my sister’s on the rack by the door, I quickly threw my old nightgown over my head and unlocked the door.

Mom was standing in the hallway trying to brush Lisa’s hair. “Hold still, girl!” she said with exasperation. She glanced at me. “I’ll do your hair next. Go sit on the couch.” I pushed around them.

As I sat down, Dad came out of the kitchen with a beer in his hand. “Don’t give Patty any trouble,” he directed at me. “You go to bed when she tells you, right?”

“Yes, Dad,” I answered.

“If I hear you give her any trouble there’ll be hell to pay tomorrow, young lady.” He paused and took a swig from the can. “You understand me?”

“Yes, Dad,” I said again, looking down at the worn carpet at his shoes.

He wore white faux-leather loafers. My eyes travelled up his frame. He touted powder-blue flared polyester pants and a light blue golf shirt with a pocket that held his Pall Malls. He’d recently started sporting a moustache, trying, I thought, to look like the guy in Magnum PI. He drew the line at Hawaiian print shirts, though. I thought he bore a striking resemblance to J.R. in Dallas, but with thick, dark-rimmed glasses and a balding head. He also had a fairly paunchy mid-section.

Mom had finished with my sister and walked up behind me. Generally quite gentle with the hairbrush, now she pulled it through my hair with vigor. “Ow!” I moaned.


Sorry,” she muttered and kept on pulling. She got it all back and braided into a neat pigtail down my back. “There,” she announced, handing me the brush, which meant ‘put it away.’

She walked briskly toward the dining room to fetch her purse. She looked nice, I thought. Her dark shoulder-length hair framed her face beautifully and always reminded me of Mary Tyler Moore. She wore a dark blue mid-calf dress which was covered in tiny white flowers with a round neckline and cinched at the waste with a matching belt. She’d sewed it herself, like she did all our clothes. Even the old flannel nightgowns we wore were products of her sewing machine. She picked up her small blue bag from the dining room table and pulled it on to her left shoulder. She turned and looked at me and I smiled. She smiled back. I got up from the couch and went to put the brush away.

The doorbell warbled its little ding-dong chime and I knew our neighbor Patty had arrived. She lived with her parents four doors down from us at 151 Mercury Street. I heard my mom greeting her and as I walked into the living room Dad disappeared into the kitchen downing the rest of his beer. Patty’s face wore its usual bright smile. “Hello, Mrs Nelson,” she said. Then she saw us and her face lit up even brighter. “Hi, Annie! Hi, Lisa! How are you two?” Patty bubbled in a voice that seemed too loud for the size of the room. We politely answered her.

Dad returned from the kitchen and was fishing the car keys from his front right pants pocket. "Okay,” he said, barreling toward the door. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

“Patty, I’ve written the emergency numbers next to the phone like usual, just in case. I’m sure you will all be just fine! We won’t be too late. The girls know when they are supposed to go to bed,” Mom looked at me, “right, Annie?” Her eyebrows were raised.

“Yes, Mom,” I replied. “Eight-thirty.”

“Good,” she said and smiled, leaning over and kissing us one at a time on the crown of our heads. “I left some cookies on a plate in the kitchen. One each, and don’t forget to brush your teeth . . .”

“Mandy! Let’s go already,” Dad barked. He was still holding the screen door open.

“Bye, girls! Have fun.” She turned and walked out the door. “Love you!” she called on the way to the car. Dad closed the front door without looking back.

Patty turned to us with a smile that seemed bigger than her face, eyes opened to reveal mostly whites. “What should we do first?” she asked as she placed her purse on the chair closest to the door.

Patty was one of the shortest adults we knew. I was confident that by my tenth birthday in four weeks’ time I would outgrow her. I knew she was over twenty-one, because her parents had thrown her a big neighbourhood birthday party last year in November just before Thanksgiving. Paul, who lived directly across the street from us and was a grade above me in our school, told me that Patty was retarded. He called everybody and everything retarded though, so I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. Patty was different from other adults I knew, but she was also very kind and sweet. She wore sleeveless floral-print house dresses which had huge wide pockets and buttons up the front. Under these dresses she would wear plain T-shirts or turtlenecks, depending on the weather. She always had white cotton bobby socks on with brown-and-white saddle shoes. Her hair was cut short and spread over her head in big fluffy dirty-blonde curls. She wore a bright red lipstick and rosy rouge on her cheeks.

“Let’s play Crazy Eights,” she shouted with enthusiasm; her eyes lit up.

“Okay,” I smiled. “I’ll go get the cards.” I came back with the special deck of Crazy Eight cards that Patty had given Lisa for her last birthday. The two of them were already seated at the dining room table.

Patty chattered as I took the cards out and shuffled them. “I like your name, Lisa. My mom read me a story about a famous painter named Leonardo and he painted a famous picture that is called the Mona Lisa. It is in Paris in France. I want to go to Paris sometime. They speak French there. I can say hello in French. Bonjour! Can you say that?”

Lisa and I both said Bonjour! and Patty bonjour-ed us back. I dealt the cards and Patty started the play. After several rotations Lisa won the game. “Good for you, Lisa! Mona Lisa! I should call you Mona Lisa now. Have you seen the painting? She’s not as pretty as you are!”

Patty never left much space for answering her questions. We mostly just listened. I gathered and shuffled for the next round. “I like the name Annie, too,” she said, looking at me. “Annie! I think there was a famous cowgirl named Annie. I’ll have to ask my mom about that.”

We played another game and I won. “My name is Patty,” she babbled, “and my mom says she named me after a very famous actress named Patty Duke. My name is not Patty Duke, though; it’s Patty Cuthbert. My mom says Patty Duke is very pretty and a very good actress.” Before I dealt the cards I went to the kitchen and got the plate with Mom’s homemade peanut butter cookies. We munched on them before starting another game. “I love your mom’s cookies,” Patty said. “We only ever eat Oreo’s. My mom doesn’t cook like your mom. You’re lucky!” Lisa and I looked at each other. What we wouldn’t give for an Oreo!

The next game I could have won, but I pretended I couldn’t discard and drew three cards. Patty was then able to go out. “I won!” she shouted, throwing up her arms. Patty would have gone on playing all night, but I was quite bored and suggested we watch some television.

“Oh, that’s a great idea!” Patty beamed. She and Lisa moved into the living room while I put the cards back in the box. They settled themselves on the couch, Patty closest to the television and Lisa next to her.

I joined them in the living room, pushing the T.V.’s power button on my way to the far end of the couch. The machine hummed for a moment. Then from the center of the screen a star-like light flashed and moved outward until the entire display was filled with a moving picture accompanied by the sound of people talking.

I knew Patty’s parents didn’t own a television. This is probably why Patty was so fascinated with our set and stayed glued to the screen whenever it was on. While our television wasn’t new, it was Dad’s pride. Grandma and Grandpa had purchased it for cash and owned it six years before they passed it on to us. It was a Zenith Chromacolor 23-inch console television. It sat inside a wooden cabinet that had a big hole for the picture tube. Under the screen were two fake drawers with real handles. I remember trying to open one of the drawers on the day we got it. Mom laughed at me. “Those are just there for decoration,” she explained. I never understood why they would go to all the trouble of putting real handles on fake drawers. Dad loved it. He said it was classy. He wouldn’t let anyone else touch the television controls. He said he had all the settings adjusted perfectly, and all we could do when he wasn’t around was turn it on or change the channel. Even the volume knob was forbidden.

The TV blared with some action show with a helicopter flying around and people yelling at each other before I suggested we see what was playing on the other channels. Although Grandma subscribed to TV Guide and could find her programme listings before switching on her set, Dad said it was a waste of money. “All you have to do is switch the damn thing on,” he’d say. “That doesn’t cost anything!” I got up and rotated the dial from Channel 5 to 7. A cop show was on with a policeman chasing some bad guy. I turned the dial to Channel 9. This was the public broadcasting network and they were airing some news programme with people talking behind desks. I went back down to Channel 4. A short black boy was sassing an old balding man. Given that there was laughter in the background this must be a comedy as opposed to an action show. “One more channel,” I announced as I flipped to Channel 2, the local network. Here there was a black-and-white rerun of Gunsmoke, Gramdma’s favorite show.

“Let’s watch the funny show,” Lisa suggested. Patty said nothing. She was mesmerized. I turned it back to Channel 4. The blended family continued talking and teasing one another with the studio audience in the background laughing at silly jokes.

To this day I don’t know what made me do it. After we decided on that programme, I should have just gone back to the couch to sit down. But those little knobs on the side of the set had always intrigued me. I knew what the volume dial did. “I think it’s a little loud,” I muttered to myself and found my fingers adjusting the sound. It lowered significantly and then I quickly put it back to where it had been. Patty was too absorbed in the show to even acknowledge me. Lisa was also being pulled into the programme. The other knobs seemed to beckon me. One was labeled “CONTRAST.” Another was “BRIGHT.” Then there were “TONE,” “PEAK” and “VERT HOLD.” Before I could think about it, my hand slipped down to the contrast dial and slowly turned the knob. I could see the picture getting a bit darker and so then I turned it back to where I thought it had been. Next I slowly rotated the bright knob. The picture got lighter. Tone made the colors change. The pink people got redder, the dark people got sort of green in the face. I twisted the dial back. How fun to be able to make the objects on the screen turn whatever color you wanted! When I tried the peak knob the picture started rolling and I panicked a bit.

“Hey, what’s happening?” Lisa asked. I put the knob back where I thought it had been and the picture looked right again.

“That was weird,” I said. I quickly went to sit back down next to my sister. “Maybe the station had a problem. Looks fine now.” But, while the other two didn’t notice a change, I thought the color looked a bit funny. And the screen was maybe a tad darker than it had been. I couldn’t go back to the television set to readjust things without arousing suspicion, so I spent the rest of the time during the programme trying to convince myself that everything was fine. After what seemed like a lifetime, and was actually only about twenty minutes, the show ended and it was our bedtime.

We said good night to Patty and brushed our teeth. She murmured something and stayed glued to the screen. Lisa didn’t say anything about my having touched the T.V. dials, so I hoped she hadn’t noticed that I did anything besides change the channel. We slipped into bed and Lisa was asleep within a few minutes. I listened as Patty watched whatever programmes came on next. Although my stomach was in knots and my mind kept going over the evening, I must have fallen asleep.

Suddenly I was awakened by shouting. My parents were home. I held my breath and listened carefully. Fortunately Lisa was a heavy sleeper and rarely woke during one of our dad’s rages. He was yelling rather loudly. I could hear the soothing tones of my mother’s voice in the background, but no Patty. She must have already gone home.

“I told you we shouldn’t have that retard over to sit. She’s gone and fucked up the whole television. LOOK at those colors! Stupid cow! Can’t she keep her hands where they belong?”

“Dave, calm down. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed. Besides, maybe it wasn’t Patty. Maybe it was one of the girls.”

Dad snorted. “Not on your life! They know what would happen to them if they ever even thought about touching this thing! No, it was that retard, I’m telling you! God, she even messed with the picture positioning!”

“Please don’t call her that, Dave. Her name is Patty.”

I couldn’t hear Dad’s response. He muttered and swore while I imagined him sitting on the floor in front of the screen adjusting the picture back to the way he liked it. I heard Mom go into the bathroom and then into their bedroom. Dad stopped moaning and went into the kitchen. I heard him pull the tab-ring on a can of beer and settle himself on the couch. He was watching some late-night programme. I heard him laugh and I relaxed a bit. He must have been able to fix the screen to his liking. Maybe he’d forget the whole thing. Slowly I drifted back to sleep.

No mention was ever made about the television and its readjustment. Dad never confronted Patty or her parents, although she never did sit with us again. A year later we moved to a new town when Dad got fired. And I never went near the television again. In fact, I don’t think I ever even switched it on after that.

I was reminded of Patty the other day when my sister mentioned her. “Remember Patty who lived on Mercury Street? She babysat us a few times when we lived in Fresno.”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I remember Patty.”

“I heard from Mom that she passed away last week.”

“That’s sad. She couldn’t have been that old.”

“No, she was in her late fifties,” Lisa looked at me. “Did you know that she was mentally challenged? I think Mom said she had Down syndrome.”

“Really? It was such a long time ago. She must have been high-functioning. She seemed pretty nice.” Suddenly I was flooded with guilt. Fortunately Patty never knew I’d let her take the fall for something I’d done.

“Yeah,” Lisa agreed, turning back to the groceries she’d been unpacking. “I just thought it was odd that Mom would let someone like that watch us at night. I mean, being a parent I was so careful about who I let babysit the boys.”

“Well, we were just little kids. Mom knew her better than we did. I’m sure she wouldn’t have left us with anyone who wasn’t responsible.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right.” She gave me one of her quirky smiles. “She never did leave us with Dad!”

“Bless her heart!”