Chapter 108: The Neighbor Situation
The family dinner table that evening had the specific quality it had when everyone knew something mildly absurd was about to be discussed and was trying to manage their expressions about it.
Mary had told Sheldon at the kitchen counter that they'd found out what was happening on the walk to school. Sheldon had come to the dinner table with the composed, slightly braced quality of someone who knew an uncomfortable thing was coming and had decided to meet it with dignity.
The dignity lasted until Connie said, gently and with genuine curiosity: "Sheldon, honey — it's a six-year-old girl?"
"She's not an ordinary six-year-old," Sheldon said. His voice had the specific, earnest firmness of someone defending a position they knew was difficult to defend. "She has the strategic instincts of a much older adversary."
"What does she do?" Connie said.
"She comes out of nowhere," Sheldon said. "With things. She has a toy frog. Last week she had a water pistol. The week before that she jumped out from behind the Pattersons' car making what I can only describe as a deliberate ambush sound." He looked at the table. "I am aware that she is six years old. The awareness does not change the experience."
George Sr. had his mouth pressed together in the specific way of a man exercising maximum control.
Georgie was looking at the ceiling.
Mike was eating his roast beef with careful, deliberate attention.
Connie was not, it had to be said, succeeding at the composed expression she was aiming for. The laugh arrived in stages — first the corners of her mouth, then the shoulders, then the full thing, warm and genuine and completely involuntary.
Sheldon looked at her.
His expression did the specific thing it did when he had decided that the people who were supposed to be on his side were not being on his side.
He stood up, picked up his plate with the controlled movements of someone maintaining dignity under pressure, said "I'm going to eat in my room," and walked down the hallway. The door closed with a sound that was not quite a slam but was definitely deliberate.
The table was quiet for about two seconds.
Then Georgie made a sound that he'd been holding since the walk to school, and the table went.
Mary collected herself first, which was always how it went.
"Okay," she said. "I know. But we still need to address it."
"Mary," George said, from the end of the table, still recovering, "it's neighborhood kids being neighborhood kids. If we go next door and tell the Pattersons their six-year-old is terrorizing Sheldon—"
"I know how it sounds," Mary said.
"It sounds like it sounds," George said.
"Sheldon's been wearing foam padding under his jacket," Mary said. "That's not nothing."
George looked at his beer.
He did not have a strong counter to the foam padding.
"I'll go," Georgie said.
"You'll make it worse," Mary said. She said it without unkindness. It was simply the observation of a mother who had watched her eldest son navigate confrontations for seventeen years.
She looked at Georgie and Mike together.
"The two of you," she said. "Together. Just — let them know. Politely. Neighbor to neighbor."
"The Patterson family," Mike said. "Not the Sparks family?"
"The Pattersons are the ones with the six-year-old," Connie said. "Billy Sparks is nine. The girl is the Patterson youngest."
Mike nodded. He'd had the families slightly confused.
"What's her name?" Georgie said.
"Cecily," Connie said. "She's actually a very sweet child, normally."
"She's been systematically ambushing my brother with a toy frog," Georgie said.
"Children have complicated ways of expressing interest," Connie said, in the tone of someone who had watched a lot of children express interest over seventy-two years.
Mike looked at her.
Connie drank her beer.
The Patterson house was four doors down — a two-story with a covered porch and a big enclosed yard, the kind of property that said the Pattersons had been in this neighborhood longer than most. It was eight o'clock on a Thursday evening and the lights were on throughout the ground floor.
Georgie knocked.
The door was answered by a man in his early forties in a flannel shirt, holding a glass of iced tea, with the comfortable, slightly rumpled quality of someone spending a Thursday evening the way Thursday evenings were meant to be spent.
He looked at the two teenagers on his porch.
"Cooper kids?" he said. He'd been on Meadowlark Lane long enough to know the families.
"Georgie Cooper," Georgie said. "And Mike Quinn, he lives with Mrs. Tucker."
"Jeff Patterson," the man said. "What can I do for you?"
"We wanted to talk to you about Sheldon," Georgie said. He'd decided in the thirty seconds before the door opened to go with direct and see where it landed. "He's been a little spooked on the walk to school lately, and we figured out it's been—"
He paused.
He was discovering that saying this out loud was harder than he'd anticipated.
"Your youngest," Mike said. "Cecily. She's been jumping out at him on the way to school. The toy frog specifically."
Jeff Patterson looked at them.
His expression ran through several things — surprise, the instinctive parental defense response, and then the specific quality of a parent who knew their child well enough to recognize when something was plausible.
He set his iced tea on the porch railing.
"Cecily," he called, into the house.
A moment. Then light footsteps.
Cecily appeared at the door in pajamas with small yellow stars on them, looking up at Georgie and Mike with the clear, direct curiosity of a six-year-old who had no particular concern about whatever had prompted this gathering.
She was about half Sheldon's height.
"Did you scare Sheldon Cooper with your frog?" her father said.
Cecily looked at him.
"No," she said.
She said it with the specific, simple conviction of a six-year-old stating what she believed to be a reasonable interpretation of events.
Jeff looked at his daughter.
He looked at Georgie and Mike.
He looked at his daughter again.
"Cecily," he said.
"I was just playing," she said.
"Sheldon doesn't know it's playing," her father said. "He thinks you're being mean."
Cecily's face showed the very particular expression of a child who has just received information that genuinely surprised her. She looked at Georgie and Mike as though they might have more context to offer.
Georgie, facing a six-year-old at eye level from his full height, had approximately no idea what to say.
Mike crouched down.
"Hey," he said. "The frog's really good. He's scared of it every time."
Cecily looked at him with the alert, evaluating attention she'd been giving the whole interaction.
"I know," she said. There was something almost proud in it.
"Sheldon doesn't like surprises," Mike said. "It's not that he thinks you're bad. He just gets really scared when things jump out at him. Even funny things."
Cecily thought about this.
"He makes a really good scared face," she said.
"He does," Mike agreed. "It's pretty impressive."
Cecily looked at the space between her feet and then back at Mike.
"I wasn't trying to be mean," she said. It came out smaller than her other statements.
"I know," Mike said. "I think you just wanted to play with him."
Cecily looked at him.
She didn't confirm or deny this, but something in her expression had the quality of someone whose actual motivation had been accurately named.
Jeff Patterson was watching this exchange with the expression of a father who was revising his plan for the conversation he'd been about to have.
"How about this," Mike said, to Cecily. "Sheldon's really interesting when he's not scared. He knows more about science than anyone I've ever met. If you talked to him sometime — without the frog — I think you'd actually like him."
Cecily looked at him with the focused consideration of someone who was taking a proposal seriously.
"He could tell you how frogs actually work," Mike said. "The real ones."
This landed.
Cecily's expression changed in the specific way that children's expressions changed when something had connected with a genuine interest.
"Okay," she said.
Jeff looked at his daughter. At Mike. Back at his daughter.
"No more jumping out at him," he said.
"Okay," Cecily said. She said it in the tone of someone agreeing to a rule she'd already decided she was going to follow.
Jeff picked up his iced tea.
"Sorry for any trouble," he said, to Georgie and Mike. "She's— yeah. She's a lot."
"She's six," Mike said. "It's fine."
Cecily waved at them from the doorway — a small, matter-of-fact wave — before the door closed.
On the walk back to the Cooper house, Georgie was quiet for most of it.
Then: "Real frogs."
"She needed a reason to switch approaches," Mike said.
"You told a six-year-old that my brother would explain how frogs work," Georgie said.
"Sheldon would genuinely enjoy that," Mike said. "She'd get a forty-five minute lecture on amphibian biology. She'd probably love it."
Georgie thought about this.
"You might be right," he said.
"I usually am about Sheldon," Mike said.
They went inside.
Mary was in the living room.
"How did it go?" she said.
"Good," Mike said. "Talked to Mr. Patterson. He talked to Cecily. She was just trying to play with Sheldon — she didn't understand it was scaring him."
"She didn't know?" Mary said.
"She thought the scared face was part of the fun," Georgie said. "For the record."
Mary looked at them.
"So what happens now?" she said.
"I told her Sheldon could explain how frogs work," Mike said. "The real biology. I think she'll come find him at some point, and it'll be a different kind of interaction."
Mary looked at him for a moment.
"Mike," she said.
"Yeah," he said.
"That's actually quite thoughtful," she said. She said it with the specific, warm surprise of someone who had been expecting a simpler solution.
"It solves the actual problem," Mike said. "Which is that they're neighbors and they're going to be on the same street for years."
Mary nodded slowly.
"I'll tell Sheldon in the morning," she said. "So he's not ambushed."
"He'd appreciate that," Mike said.
Georgie looked at his mother and then at Mike and then at the ceiling.
"I also talked to a six-year-old tonight," Georgie said, to the ceiling. "About frogs. On behalf of my brother."
"You did great," Mike said.
"I didn't say anything," Georgie said.
"I know," Mike said. "You were great at being there."
Georgie went to bed.
(End of Chapter 108)
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