The Metamorphosis of Peter Withers

The Metamorphosis of Peter Withers

By Paul Sedgwick

Padre

I stood at the sliding glass door to the backyard.  My left hand gripped the door handle, my cane was in my right hand, and a beach towel was draped over my neck.  Another beautiful day out there.  In San Diego, we pretty much had full sun all day, everyday.  Especially in the summertime.  The air was always clear and dry, too.  There was never any of the smog that we had left behind in Los Angeles, and which had caused even my brothers’ healthy lungs to ache after a day of hard play.

            “Is the new place going to make me get better?” I had asked my mom when she told me we were moving.  I was just a little kid, nine years old.

            She looked deep into my eyes.  I remember thinking she was looking inside me to see whether or not the new place could do the trick.  She was figuring it out because moms and dads are smart like that.

            “It might make you feel better,” she had said.

            I smiled and gave her a big hug.

            The door was heavy, but I knew how to deal with it.  It was all about weight, gravity and timing.  I looped the crook of my cane over my right wrist, grabbed the door handle with both hands, leaned sideways and let the weight of my body do the work.  The door slid open nice and slow.  Just enough so I could walk through.  Now I leaned my weight backwards and the door stopped moving.  Keeping my left hand on the door handle, I reached my right arm out and set the cane down.  “Thank you,” I said to the cane’s quadruped feet.  I grabbed the cane by the hand grip, adjusted my balance, and stepped into the door opening.  Easy.

            I heard a girl’s laugh.  One of my brothers must have his girlfriend over.  Hadn’t realized we had company.  That made me think twice about going outside.  I turned and started back to my room.

            “Peter!”  The call came from outside.  “Peter!”  I smiled. 

            Padre.  Damn bird.  I turned back to look out the opened door, to find Padre in his cage, and I saw my reflection in the glass.  The cane.  The towel hanging down, the hunched-over posture, the glasses.  When we were a few years younger, Mike and Dave had teased me mercilessly about looking like a bird.  They squawked and flapped their “wings.”  I could see it.  But what a sad sort of bird I had turned out to be.  Flightless.  Weak and unsure on its feet.  Going blind? 

            “Peter!”

            I knew the parrot wasn’t actually calling me to try to get me to change my mind, to come outside.  Parrot brains don’t work like that.  But somehow or other I really was his favorite.  My name was his favorite word to yell.  I was the only person who could still scratch his head through the bars without losing the tip of a finger. 

            It was hot and swimming was the only physical activity I actually looked forward to.  I wasn’t sure who was out at the pool, but if it was Kathy or Linda, both of them had seen me in my swimsuit before. 

            I went back to my room and put one of my over-sized t-shirts on; then I returned to the opened door, left my cane inside the house, and walked out.

            There was a redwood veranda off the back of our house, which provided shade for Padre, a yellow-headed Amazon parrot, and created a canopy for a whole bunch of potted plants--vines, cacti, hanging flowery plants, trees and, my favorites--a collection of Aloe vera plants in clay urns.  Almost anything could grow in San Diego.  Almost.  We had one Aloe vera that was five feet tall!  There was a picture of me somewhere from our first year here, actually standing inside that thing flexing my biceps with a big grin on my face.  It was supposed to be healing me.  My idea. 

Six long years had passed since that hopeful nine-year-old kid had arrived in San Diego.

            I walked right over to Padre’s cage.  It was one of those big wrought-iron ones with the heavy black metal bars. 

            “Here I am,” I told him.  “What do you…want?”

            He didn’t say anything if you were up close to him, paying attention to him.  He fluffed his feathers up and gave me the psychedelic eye.  That’s when he dilated his pupil big-little, big-little, big-little.

             “Hey, Peter!” my brother Mike called from over on the pool deck.  “Going for a swim?”

            “Yeah,” I said.

            The other half of the backyard, over to the left, was taken up by the pool.  Shoot!  Both of my brothers had their girlfriends over there!  All greased-up and lying out in the sun.  All right.  That’s okay.  I knew them.  The pool looked good.  The girls too, actually, now that I saw them.

            “Hi, Peter!” both of the girls said.

            “Hi.” 

             I left Padre and walked over toward the pool.  Padre said something as I turned away.  Parrots do that.  When you stop paying attention to them, they start making noise.  I didn’t hear what he said.  My attention was kind of going back and forth between the pool water and the shiny girls in bikinis.

            “Where’s your cane?” Dave asked.  He got up and went to get a life jacket off of a hook attached to the wood fence.

            “I don’t need it,” I said.

            “The pool deck is slippery, you knucklehead.  What are you talking about?  This is exactly where you need it.”  He was walking over toward me with the jacket.

            “I feel good!” I said.  I made fists and stretched my arms up over my head to demonstrate how strong I was.

            “Keep your arms up.  I’ll take your shirt off.”  David was the oldest, the only blonde, and the only green-eyed member of the family.  He had long, straight corn-silky hair.  “Tom Petty Hair,” according to him.  (Tom Petty was one of his favorite rock-n-rollers.)

            “First…” I said.  I brought my elbows down to my sides to keep him from lifting my shirt up.  I pointed a finger at him.  Inside my head, the words weren’t slow.  I can talk inside my head as good as anybody.  It just took a while to get the words out.  Especially when I was going to say more than a few words at a time.  “…I can take my shirt off…by myself.”

“All right, so do it.”  Dave stepped back to let me take my shirt off by myself.

“Second…” I said, pointing at him again.  “I am not…taking my shirt off.”

            Dave looked at me for a moment.  “Whatever,” he said.

            Mike was there now with a tube of sunscreen.  Mike was the Middle Brother, a surfer, and the bronzest and brawniest.  His thick brown hair was naturally very curly, but so long (like the rest of us seventies boys) and frizzy from continual saltwater immersion, that it spread out over his shoulders like an Egyptian pharaoh’s headdress, making him look like the Sphinx.  Dave took the towel off of my neck and dropped it on a lounge chair; then he helped me put the life jacket on over my shirt while Mike smeared sunscreen all over my face and arms.

            “Thank you,” I said.

            “Go get Peter’s cane,” Dave told Mike.

            “I’m going…swimming,” I said.  “Don’t need it.”

            “All right, after you get out,” Dave said.  “Deal?”

            “Deal,” I said.

            “Let’s go,” Dave said.

            My brothers took me by my elbows and started to lead me out onto the deck.

            “Whoops,” I said.  I lifted my arms out of their hands.  “I can walk by myself.  Look,” I said.  I stepped out onto the deck, away from them.  The cement was hot on my dry feet! 

            “Ooh!  Ooh!  Hot!  Hot!”

            My brothers picked me up under my arms.  They quickly carried me over to the diving board and set me down.  It was wet, and, therefore, had a cooling effect on my feet.

            “Ahh…” I sighed, making a big deal out of it.  I knew how to perform.  Kathy snickered appreciatively. 

            “You’re going to let him go off the diving board?” Linda asked.  She looked very worried.

            “This is what he does,” Dave told her. 

            Dave stayed behind me.  He held the back of the life jacket as I moved out to the end of the board.  “Oh.  One more thing,” Dave said.

            “What?” I asked.  He reached around and took my glasses off my face.  The world turned into a blur of colors and shapes.  Believe it or not, this made it easier to jump in the water.  I couldn’t see how far away it was anymore.  I bent my knees and tested the spring action of the board a few times.  “Let go,” I told Dave.  He let go of the life jacket.  I bent as low as my knees would take me, and just as I was about to give the board a little bounce to get in the air, someone yelled,          “Wooey!” 

            I was so startled I lost my balance and tumbled into the water face first!  Mouth open, mid-scream.  When I came up sputtering for air, Dave and Mike were laughing hysterically.  They were kneeling down at the edge of the pool.  Mike was reaching his hand out for me. 

            “Are you all right, Peter?” 

            My head was too full of water to answer, and I was pissed.  It had been a long time since I had swallowed pool water or had chlorine that far up my nose.  I paddled over to the side of the pool.  My brothers reached down and grabbed me under my arms.

            “I don’t need…help!”  They let go of me and I sagged back into the water.  I tried to wrestle myself up.  I was able to get my hands and one elbow onto the deck.  I pulled and pushed, but there was no way I was going to hoist myself out of the water.  I had forgotten about buoyancy: “The upward force exerted by a fluid on an immersed object.”  Makes you think you weigh nothing, so when you go to pull yourself out of the water you feel like you’re being sucked back in.  Mind games.  

I looked up at my brothers.  They looked like skyscrapers.

            “Hi, guys,” I smiled.  “Little help here?”