My Neighbors Son Threw A Pool Party In My Backyard So I Taught Them A Lesson
“What’s that?”
Denise walked over to it. She read it out loud.
“Step one. Skim every leaf and bug from the surface of the pool. When finished, lift the blue bucket by the shed.”
She looked around the yard. At the skimmer net leaning against the fence. At the leaves floating on the water. At all the equipment scattered around.
Then she smiled.
“Oh!” she said. “The pool company must have left before finishing. They probably got called away.”
Brandon looked uncertain.
“So?”
“So,” Denise said, and shrugged. “We’ll just finish the last little bit ourselves. Then we can swim. How hard can it be?”
I nearly spilled my iced tea.
They walked through my gate like they owned it.
Denise picked up the skimmer net. She held it like a lacrosse stick. She dragged it across the surface of the water in quick, choppy swipes and got about half the leaves.
“Brandy, you do it,” she said after two minutes. “My arms are getting tired.”
Brandon took the skimmer. He was better at it. Longer arms. He went all the way around the pool, slowly, getting every leaf. It took him about ten minutes.
Then he walked over to the blue bucket by the shed and lifted it.
He stared at the ground underneath.
“Mom,” he said. “There’s another sign.”
Denise walked over and picked it up.
“Step two,” she read. “Brush every pool wall, top to bottom, all the way around. Don’t forget the steps.”
Brandon groaned.
“Seriously?”
“It’ll take ten minutes, Brandy.”
It took twenty-eight.
I know, because I timed it on my phone. My stopwatch doesn’t lie.
Brandon finished brushing. He was sweating. He’d taken his shirt off and thrown it on a lounge chair.
He opened the filter cabinet beside the pump, like the card had said.
He stood there for a second.
“…Mom.”
Another card.
Denise came over. She read it slowly.
“Step three. Vacuum the entire pool floor. Slowly. Overlap your passes.” She blinked. “Vacuum the pool?”
Brandon turned around and stared at the long blue vacuum hose coiled on the bricks. He stared at it like it had personally insulted his family.
“I thought we were swimming,” he said.
“We will,” Denise said. “After this.”
“How do you even vacuum a pool?”
“There’s probably instructions,” Denise said.
There were. On the back of the card. Chuck’s exact method, copied word for word off his clipboard. How to prime the hose. How to attach it to the skimmer. How to move it slowly across the bottom in long, overlapping lines, like mowing a lawn.
It took them an hour.
The hose kept losing suction. Twice, Brandon pulled it out of the water by accident and it sprayed him in the face. Once, Denise tried to help and got the hose tangled around her ankle and nearly fell into the deep end with her floppy hat on.
Finally, they rolled the hose back up.
Brandon wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm. Exactly the way Chuck used to.
“I’ve never vacuumed water before,” he said. He sounded a little dazed.
Denise opened the chemical cabinet.
Another laminated card.
STEP 4
Test chlorine and pH levels.
Record results on Chuck’s clipboard.
Adjust if necessary.
Brandon groaned out loud. Long and loud.
“There’s more?”
He looked around the yard. At the waterfall. At the shed. At the flower beds. At all the other equipment still sitting there.
“Mom,” he said slowly. “How many of these signs are there?”
Denise shrugged. She was reading the instructions on the back of the test kit.
“Maybe this is just how the pool company does it,” she said. “We’re almost done, Brandy. Hold this tube.”
I laughed so loudly my cat, Biscuit, jumped off the couch and ran under the dining table.
They figured out the test kit eventually. It took twenty minutes and a lot of squinting at little colored tubes. Brandon wrote the results on Chuck’s clipboard in very messy handwriting.
The pH was fine. I’d checked it that morning. But the card said adjust if necessary, and they didn’t know if it was necessary, so they added a cup of something from the cabinet “just to be safe.”
I’d hidden all the strong chemicals in the garage the day before, just in case. The cabinet only had baking soda in it.
Then Step 5. Empty the skimmer baskets. There are three of them, and they were full of the leaves I’d scattered.
Then Step 6. Backwash the filter. That one took Brandon fifteen minutes of reading the instructions on the card out loud and turning valves while Denise shouted, “No, the other one!”
Then Step 7. Hose down the deck.
Then Step 8. Clean the waterfall rocks with a scrub brush.
Forty-five minutes later, Brandon was carrying a bucket of patio cleaner across the yard. His swim trunks were soaked with sweat and pool water and soap.
“Mom…”
“What?”
“We’ve been here for two hours.”
Denise was on her knees by the waterfall, scrubbing a rock with a toothbrush. The card had said use the small brush for the cracks. She’d taken it literally.
“We’ve already done this much,” she said, pointing around the yard with the toothbrush. “It’d be silly to stop now.”
Brandon looked over at the pool.
The water was sparkling. Clean. Clear. Blue.
“We still haven’t even touched the water,” he said.
“Oh, we’ll get there.”
The next card was clipped to Chuck’s old clipboard, hanging on its nail by the shed door. Brandon pulled it off.
At the top of this one, I’d written in big letters: CHUCK’S POOL.
Underneath:
STEP 12
Wash and dry every patio chair. Including the cushions. Including the legs.
Brandon stood there holding it.
Then, very slowly, he turned his head and looked straight up at the security camera mounted under the eaves of my back porch.
He looked directly into it.
I swear that boy knew someone was enjoying this.
He scrubbed. Denise rinsed.
Eleven patio chairs. Two lounge chairs. A teak table. Six cushions. Every leg.
When they finished, Brandon flipped over the last cushion on the last chair.
Another card.
STEP 13
Sweep out the pool shed.
Then, taped inside the shed door:
STEP 14
Organize the flotation toys by size.
Then, rolled up inside a pool noodle:
STEP 15
Weed every flower bed. Gently. Don’t pull the geraniums.
By the time Brandon knelt down in the third flower bed, he looked mentally and physically destroyed. His hair was plastered to his head. He had dirt on his face. A sunburn was starting on his shoulders.
“Mom…”
“WHAT?”
He sat back on his heels in the dirt and stared out at the shining pool for a long moment.
“Chuck,” he said, to the sky, “wherever you are… I respect you now, man.”
I laughed so hard that Biscuit ran out of the room entirely.
Denise ignored him.
By now, it had become personal.
I could see it on her face, even through the grainy camera. Her jaw was set. Her floppy hat was crooked. Her sundress had a big wet stain down the front.
She needed to finish.
She’d started this thing, and she wasn’t going to let a pool beat her.
Chuck would have loved watching this. He really would have.
Every Saturday, I’d stick my head out the back door around eleven and ask him, “Are you almost done, honey?”
And he’d always answer, without looking up, “That’s what I said an hour ago.”
Now Denise was saying exactly the same thing.
“We’re almost there, Brandy,” she said, for maybe the ninth time. “We’re almost there.”
Brandon didn’t even answer anymore.
Three and a half hours after they’d first walked through my gate, Brandon lifted the very last whiskey barrel flowerpot to finish weeding around it.
There was another laminated card underneath it.
His whole body slumped. His shoulders dropped. His head fell forward.
“No,” he said.
Just that one word. Quiet. Defeated.
Denise came over and took the card out of his hand.
“Step twenty-two,” she read. “Polish the handrails on the pool steps until you can see your face in them.”
Brandon looked up at the sky with an expression of pure despair.
“I think this pool hates us, Mom.”
I nearly choked on my iced tea. I had to put the glass down.
They polished the handrails.
Brandon did the left one. Denise did the right. They used the special polish from Chuck’s shed and a pile of soft rags. Brandon actually leaned down at the end and checked his reflection in the metal.
“I can see my face,” he reported flatly.
Then they found the twenty-third card, tucked in the skimmer basket. Step 23. Put every tool back exactly where you found it. Coil the hose. Hang the net. Close the shed.
They did it. Every tool. Every hook. Brandon coiled the vacuum hose so neatly it looked like Chuck had done it himself.
And when they finally turned around and looked at my backyard, it looked better than it had in years.
Every chair lined up perfectly around the pool. Every cushion clean. Every flower bed weeded, the geraniums standing up straight in their new whiskey barrels. Every pool toy neatly stacked in the shed, from biggest to smallest. Every handrail gleaming. Every brick spotless.
Every tile at the waterline sparkled.
The water was so clear you could count the cracks in the bottom.
Brandon walked over to Chuck’s blue-striped lounge chair to sit down for the first time all afternoon.
He stopped.
There was one last laminated board on the seat. Face down. Bigger than the others.
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