tdr
10-17-2013, 11:45 PM
I have not written a LITB fanfic in years, but this afternoon I was just sipping my coffee at Dairy Queen, and this story idea just came to me.
Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood(s)
[Note: the writer of this frantic has only seen about half the New LITB episodes, and those years ago, so some text here may contradict what was on that series. But most of the text refers back to the original series episode, “Wally’s Weekend Job.”]
Wally and Mary Ellen Cleaver closed the door outside the private hospital room and Mary Ellen let a flood of tears drop as Wally gently placed his arm around her. They had been visiting Mary Ellen’s dad, who had had his second heart attack a week before, at the age of 94. He was not able to speak to them, with tubes inserted into his mouth, but they thought he had understood what they said by the way he moved his eyeballs. He could go at any time, so they knew their words just uttered could be the last ones he ever hears from them. They passed the nurses’ station and let the nurse in charge know they were leaving, and she promised the patient would be looked in on very frequently.
Knowing that Mr. Rogers had set his affairs in order years ago, after the death of Mary Ellen’s mother, his sixty-year wife, they knew there was nothing about that subject that needed discussing. Mary Ellen was his only child, and she was to get the balance of his estate, which included the last of the houses in Mayfield he owned, and everything else after the charitable contributions he had made provisions for, after any debts had been paid. He had made his checking account a joint account with his daughter, for which she could write checks, so there would be no need to be approved by probate as the administrator just to use the cash funds. Instead, they spoke lightly about how Mary Ellen never doubted his love, but she had wished often that they had been closer as far as showing affection. She did not say this in a despairing way with the attitude, “and it’s too late now;” but rather with quiet chuckles, the more to say “it doesn’t matter now—we’re all at peace.” He was always a faithful husband and father, a good provider, and a man who earned respect in his circle of friends and in the larger community. But he was rigid, unbending, and often seemed he would have been more in his time if he had been born a generation or two earlier. That circumstance, in fact, had almost cost Mary Ellen her marriage to Wally, at least with her father’s blessing. And that was the subject that Wally had touched on in their half-hour visit. He reminded the man he always called “Mr. Rogers” of the beginning of a rift between them the night Mary Ellen was hosting a slumber party for her girlfriends, and also Wally’s first day in his job as a weekend soda jerk at Gibson’s Drug Store. It was at that point that Mr. Rogers’ eyeballs made the sharpest movement, as if he were thinking about that night, too. As the couple took the elevator down to the ground floor, they shared a laugh about just what he may have been thinking—how he almost made Wally an adversary for life, and thus never to be his son-in-law; or whether when he found out both he and Wally were the victims of a prank, that that was the beginning of his strong, but hidden, approval of Wally as being worthy of his daughter.
They drove home quietly, with no radio or CD playing, and as they approached the house where Mary Ellen had once lived, around the corner from their current home-- which was next to the house Wally had lived, and was now Beaver’s longtime house—Mary Ellen felt a new tear fall. But just then they met an old familiar friend (?) as was driving from the opposite direction, who waved at them with a big grin. “It looks like we may have company,” said Wally, as he continued down the street. The SUV they had met made a three-pointed turn on Pine Avenue, then showed its headlights, blinking between high and low bean three or four times. Just as Wally pulled into their driveway, Eddie Haskell came to a screeching stop by the curb in front of the house.
“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver!” said Eddie, walking up toward Wally and Mary Ellen as they got out of their car. “I was just here a minute ago, but you didn’t answer your doorbell. I’ll bet I was on video, wasn’t I? eh-eh-eh….”
Wally looked down, then back at Eddie. “Yeah, Eddie you were on video. But look—we’re not too much in the mood for shooting the breeze, if that’s all you’re here for.”
“If that’s all I’m here for?” repeated Eddie. “This is what I’m here for!” he continued, pulling out his wallet and holding up a check. “I told you I’d get something to you this week toward your fee for the last case you handled for me. But, if you don’t care about that…“ and he started to put the check back into his wallet.
“Oh no you don’t” said Wally. “Hand it over, because it’ll just be that much less that I have to squeeze out of you some way. But why didn’t you mail it or bring it to the office?”
As Eddie handed Wally the check, he said, “Hey, good buddy, we don’t get together as often as we used to. We’re both grandpas and we’ve both slowed down since we passed that sixty mark. So bringing it to you here on a weeknight, I thought, would give us a chance to catch up on what’s new.” But as Eddie was analyzing the sadness on their faces, especially Mary Ellen’s, he added, “But it looks like I chose the wrong weeknight. Okay—I guess I’ll just call you some time later, and maybe we’ll—“
“Eddie, I’m sorry,” cut in Mary Ellen, “but we just came from the hospital, and my father may not see tomorrow. Come on in and have a glass of—something—and we can talk for a few minutes. After all, life does go on.”
“Oh I’m really sorry,” said Eddie. “Leave it to old Eddie to be such a bore at the worst of times.”
“Oh, never mind, Eddie,” said Wally. “And yeah—life does go on. Come on in the house.”
“Well, you talked me into it!” gleefully said Eddie, walking past them to the front door. “If you’ll be so kind as to hand me the key, I’ll do the honors.”
After they were inside and Eddie took the recliner, Mary Ellen went upstairs for a moment and Wally went to the kitchen and returned with 3 wine glasses and bottle of chardonnay. As he began pouring, Eddie remarked, “I guess that training you got back in our high school years, in old Gibson’s Drug Store, really went a long way, and now you pour a pretty advanced glass! Eh-eh-eh-eh…”
Wally finished filling the three glasses about two-thirds full, then said, “You know, it’s funny you should mention that. When I was talking to Mr. Rogers tonight, I mentioned that first night on the job, when you and Lumpy Rutherford got me in trouble with him at Mary Ellen’s slumber party.”
Eddie thought for a moment. “Ohhhh yeah!” he mused, with that mischievous grin. “Oh yeah!” he repeated rapidly. “I’ll never forget you coming by my house and pouring that melted ice cream down my sweater!”
“Well, you had it coming, and you know it,” replied Wally. “And then, the way you squawked about having to pay for half of that ice cream…“
Eddie grinned. “Maybe you never knew that I offered to pay for all the ice cream after my old man and Lumpy’s old man found out what we did—from your old man!”
“How come you offered to pay for all of it?”
“Because old Fred Rutherford got ahold of my dad and they decided between them that Lumpy and me had to go in person to see Mr. Rogers and apologize, and then go to Mr. Gibson at the drugstore and pay the money. So I told Lumpy he could go see Mr. Rogers and if he’d give me his dollar eighty, I’d go pay Mr. Gibson. But when he didn’t trust me with his money, that’s when I said I’d pay it all. Then he still gave a dollar.”
“Man Eddie,” said Wally, “it seems to me you gave the tougher job to Lumpy. Didn’t he know it?”
“Of course not— he always was as fat in the head as he was in the belly—“
“Eddie!—“ exclaimed Wally, in reminder of the loose agreement between them that he would not be tolerant of Eddie’s disparaging comments or gossip about mutual friends.
“Okay!” acquiesced Eddie. “But you remember how that was—I know you do.”
“Alright,” consented Wally. “But no, I never did hear about what happened after I pasted you guys with the ice cream—except Mr. Gibson told me that you did pay for it. And, of course, it was two or three weeks before I saw you in the store again.”
“Yeah, I didn’t have any money to buy anything for two or three weeks after that. And I didn’t think old Gibson would be very willing to extend me credit. But The Lump told me that when he went to see Mr. Rogers and told him that he had impersonated him on the phone to order the ice cream, Rogers blew up all over the place. He called up delinquents, and other names, and he said he ought to sue us, and said if either of us ever come around his house or talk to his daughter again, he’ll sick the law on us. Well, I guess he must have forgot that before too long, because Mary Ellen did invite us to a party or two. But anyway, he also told Lumpy that you must be a—uh, “virtuous, well-governed youth--” compared to the two of us, and he was gonna call your old man to say so.”
“Well, if he did, I don’t remember hearing about it,” said Wally.
“Oh, he did,” added Mary Ellen, who had been standing by, unnoticed, on the stairs. “I don’t think I ever told you that, Wally. But I heard him talking on the phone to your dad, and he raved on and on about you, and how he was sorry he threw you out and wrongly accused you of plotting to crash our slumber party. And the last thing I heard him say was, ‘Well, I agree, Ward—we’ve got to be careful about giving these young people too many accolades; we’ll just keep that between us.’”
“Keep what between them?” asked Wally. “Whatever it is, I guess it’s why my dad never told me about your dad calling him after that.”
“About you being a ‘virtuous, well-governed youth,’” answered Mary Ellen, with a chuckle. “That’s probably the very language he used—he always did like Shakespeare, and that’s a quote from Romeo and Juliet, by Juliet’s father talking about Romeo. But I thought, even then, that if you knew my dad talked about you in that way, you’d be embarrassed.”
“Yeah, I guess I would have been.”
“And not only that—“continued Mary Ellen, “but that was when he started trying to steer me toward you. Even after you went with Julie, and Kathy, and Shirley, and Natalie, and whoever else, he said he thought I would be the one for you by the time you got out of college, and he reminded me of that every time I got interested in somebody else. And—well, he made me promise once that I wouldn’t tell you this until he was gone—but---“
“Well then, don’t tell me!” said Wally. “Because he’s not gone yet.”
Mary Ellen ignored that. “He wanted me to tell you that Drug Store and ice cream incident—that is, your innocence in it—made him ‘believe’ in you, and he hoped for those 8 years that you would be his son-in-law, before it finally happened.”
“Boy!” said Wally. “I guess I understand why he never wanted to tell me himself what he really thought about all that. But he not only didn’t tell me, sometimes he acted like I was the last guy he ever wanted to see around you. He would raise that bass voice and ask me what my worst subject in school is, and what kind of car I was driving, and all that—and how good a friend I thought Eddie and Lumpy still were—“
“Hey now!” cut in Eddie. “I never wanted to be a liability to you, you know.”
“Oh—how about all you legal fees?” returned Wally. Eddie, beginning to feel he might be the bore he mentioned earlier, just looked away.
“Well, I’ll tell you this—“ added Mary Ellen, “you heard me say to him tonight that I sometimes I wished he’d been more the type to hug and touch, and say the word ‘love’ more often. And even with his own friends—clients and golfing buddies—he sometimes acted like he didn’t like being around them. I think that was just his way of showing his feelings—by sometimes showing almost the opposite. In fact, I remember now he admitted that to me when we were in the bride’s room getting ready to walk the aisle.”
“You know,” began Wally,” I did wonder sometimes why a man who told people off and kinda talked down to them would have had a model city like he did for so many years. You know-- that model railroad that you used once to lure Beaver to your house to con me into being your dance date, when we were about the eighth grade? Building that seems more like a project for a nostalgic or sentimental man.”
“Yes, that was like his own fictional world,” said Mary Ellen. “His neighborhood!—you remember that children’s show with Fred Rogers—Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood? He was just like in some ways with that model town and railroad.”
“Well, he had a real neighborhood, too,” remarked Eddie. “How many houses in this town has he owned before? About a dozen?”
“I think just six,” answered Mary Ellen. “We lived in three—including one of them twice! But being a landlord helped him save the money for his long retirement. And he did help a few people who rented from him, giving them extra time to get the rent money, for example—as long as he was sure they weren’t just trying to take advantage of his generosity.”
“Gee,” said Wally, “I’ve learned a lot about him tonight that I should have learned a long time ago. But he did stay true to himself all the way…” Wally wasn’t sure how, or if, he should end this statement. His wife looked like she understood what he meant.
The telephone rang. Mary Ellen put down her wineglass and got up to answer it. “See if it’s a business,” said Wally, “and let the machine pick up if it is.”
Mary Ellen looked at the caller ID. Her eyes popped out as she looked at Wally and said, “It’s the hospital!”
Wally stood up. “You want to me to answer it?”
“No,” said Mary Ellen, as the third ring sounded. “I think it’s my responsibility.”
She answered, identified herself, waited for about twenty seconds, then put the phone down, sobbing, and confirmed, “He passed away between eight and eight fifteen.”
Wally looked at the wall clock. It was eight thirty-three. He walked over to Mary Ellen, gave her a hug, and said, “You kept your promise.”
Eddie arose. “Well folks—I think I need to be going. Thank you so much.”
Mary Ellen gently waved, and Wally said, “Bye Eddie. You know, it was good having you come by tonight. You helped us share some memories at just the right time.”
“Well, I’m glad,” replied Eddie, as he slowly walked toward the door. But he turned around and added, “’Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now {http://mentalfloss.com/article/31936/20-gentle-quotations-mister-rogers}.’ Goodnight, Mr and Mrs. Cleaver.”
Wally looked very puzzled, but Mary Ellen gently laughed while still sobbing.
“Where did that come from?” asked Wally.
“That’s a quote from Fred Rogers,” replied Mary Ellen. “Somebody once brought it to my attention the he said it on his show. I learned a lot of quotes from him because, while I was overage to actually watch his show, I always did make the comparison. That is, for both Daddy’s real estate in Mayfield, and his model town. But I don’t know how Eddie happened to know it so well as to quote it for us just at the perfect time.”
Wally mused for a moment. “Maybe Eddie’s more like your dad than we ever thought—or the other way around, maybe your dad once had some Eddie in him.”
“Come to think of it,” considered Mary Ellen, “my mother did tell me that he once crashed a slumber party and saw her in an embarrassing nightdress.”
Between tears of joy and tears of laughter, the Cleavers called it the night.
Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood(s)
[Note: the writer of this frantic has only seen about half the New LITB episodes, and those years ago, so some text here may contradict what was on that series. But most of the text refers back to the original series episode, “Wally’s Weekend Job.”]
Wally and Mary Ellen Cleaver closed the door outside the private hospital room and Mary Ellen let a flood of tears drop as Wally gently placed his arm around her. They had been visiting Mary Ellen’s dad, who had had his second heart attack a week before, at the age of 94. He was not able to speak to them, with tubes inserted into his mouth, but they thought he had understood what they said by the way he moved his eyeballs. He could go at any time, so they knew their words just uttered could be the last ones he ever hears from them. They passed the nurses’ station and let the nurse in charge know they were leaving, and she promised the patient would be looked in on very frequently.
Knowing that Mr. Rogers had set his affairs in order years ago, after the death of Mary Ellen’s mother, his sixty-year wife, they knew there was nothing about that subject that needed discussing. Mary Ellen was his only child, and she was to get the balance of his estate, which included the last of the houses in Mayfield he owned, and everything else after the charitable contributions he had made provisions for, after any debts had been paid. He had made his checking account a joint account with his daughter, for which she could write checks, so there would be no need to be approved by probate as the administrator just to use the cash funds. Instead, they spoke lightly about how Mary Ellen never doubted his love, but she had wished often that they had been closer as far as showing affection. She did not say this in a despairing way with the attitude, “and it’s too late now;” but rather with quiet chuckles, the more to say “it doesn’t matter now—we’re all at peace.” He was always a faithful husband and father, a good provider, and a man who earned respect in his circle of friends and in the larger community. But he was rigid, unbending, and often seemed he would have been more in his time if he had been born a generation or two earlier. That circumstance, in fact, had almost cost Mary Ellen her marriage to Wally, at least with her father’s blessing. And that was the subject that Wally had touched on in their half-hour visit. He reminded the man he always called “Mr. Rogers” of the beginning of a rift between them the night Mary Ellen was hosting a slumber party for her girlfriends, and also Wally’s first day in his job as a weekend soda jerk at Gibson’s Drug Store. It was at that point that Mr. Rogers’ eyeballs made the sharpest movement, as if he were thinking about that night, too. As the couple took the elevator down to the ground floor, they shared a laugh about just what he may have been thinking—how he almost made Wally an adversary for life, and thus never to be his son-in-law; or whether when he found out both he and Wally were the victims of a prank, that that was the beginning of his strong, but hidden, approval of Wally as being worthy of his daughter.
They drove home quietly, with no radio or CD playing, and as they approached the house where Mary Ellen had once lived, around the corner from their current home-- which was next to the house Wally had lived, and was now Beaver’s longtime house—Mary Ellen felt a new tear fall. But just then they met an old familiar friend (?) as was driving from the opposite direction, who waved at them with a big grin. “It looks like we may have company,” said Wally, as he continued down the street. The SUV they had met made a three-pointed turn on Pine Avenue, then showed its headlights, blinking between high and low bean three or four times. Just as Wally pulled into their driveway, Eddie Haskell came to a screeching stop by the curb in front of the house.
“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver!” said Eddie, walking up toward Wally and Mary Ellen as they got out of their car. “I was just here a minute ago, but you didn’t answer your doorbell. I’ll bet I was on video, wasn’t I? eh-eh-eh….”
Wally looked down, then back at Eddie. “Yeah, Eddie you were on video. But look—we’re not too much in the mood for shooting the breeze, if that’s all you’re here for.”
“If that’s all I’m here for?” repeated Eddie. “This is what I’m here for!” he continued, pulling out his wallet and holding up a check. “I told you I’d get something to you this week toward your fee for the last case you handled for me. But, if you don’t care about that…“ and he started to put the check back into his wallet.
“Oh no you don’t” said Wally. “Hand it over, because it’ll just be that much less that I have to squeeze out of you some way. But why didn’t you mail it or bring it to the office?”
As Eddie handed Wally the check, he said, “Hey, good buddy, we don’t get together as often as we used to. We’re both grandpas and we’ve both slowed down since we passed that sixty mark. So bringing it to you here on a weeknight, I thought, would give us a chance to catch up on what’s new.” But as Eddie was analyzing the sadness on their faces, especially Mary Ellen’s, he added, “But it looks like I chose the wrong weeknight. Okay—I guess I’ll just call you some time later, and maybe we’ll—“
“Eddie, I’m sorry,” cut in Mary Ellen, “but we just came from the hospital, and my father may not see tomorrow. Come on in and have a glass of—something—and we can talk for a few minutes. After all, life does go on.”
“Oh I’m really sorry,” said Eddie. “Leave it to old Eddie to be such a bore at the worst of times.”
“Oh, never mind, Eddie,” said Wally. “And yeah—life does go on. Come on in the house.”
“Well, you talked me into it!” gleefully said Eddie, walking past them to the front door. “If you’ll be so kind as to hand me the key, I’ll do the honors.”
After they were inside and Eddie took the recliner, Mary Ellen went upstairs for a moment and Wally went to the kitchen and returned with 3 wine glasses and bottle of chardonnay. As he began pouring, Eddie remarked, “I guess that training you got back in our high school years, in old Gibson’s Drug Store, really went a long way, and now you pour a pretty advanced glass! Eh-eh-eh-eh…”
Wally finished filling the three glasses about two-thirds full, then said, “You know, it’s funny you should mention that. When I was talking to Mr. Rogers tonight, I mentioned that first night on the job, when you and Lumpy Rutherford got me in trouble with him at Mary Ellen’s slumber party.”
Eddie thought for a moment. “Ohhhh yeah!” he mused, with that mischievous grin. “Oh yeah!” he repeated rapidly. “I’ll never forget you coming by my house and pouring that melted ice cream down my sweater!”
“Well, you had it coming, and you know it,” replied Wally. “And then, the way you squawked about having to pay for half of that ice cream…“
Eddie grinned. “Maybe you never knew that I offered to pay for all the ice cream after my old man and Lumpy’s old man found out what we did—from your old man!”
“How come you offered to pay for all of it?”
“Because old Fred Rutherford got ahold of my dad and they decided between them that Lumpy and me had to go in person to see Mr. Rogers and apologize, and then go to Mr. Gibson at the drugstore and pay the money. So I told Lumpy he could go see Mr. Rogers and if he’d give me his dollar eighty, I’d go pay Mr. Gibson. But when he didn’t trust me with his money, that’s when I said I’d pay it all. Then he still gave a dollar.”
“Man Eddie,” said Wally, “it seems to me you gave the tougher job to Lumpy. Didn’t he know it?”
“Of course not— he always was as fat in the head as he was in the belly—“
“Eddie!—“ exclaimed Wally, in reminder of the loose agreement between them that he would not be tolerant of Eddie’s disparaging comments or gossip about mutual friends.
“Okay!” acquiesced Eddie. “But you remember how that was—I know you do.”
“Alright,” consented Wally. “But no, I never did hear about what happened after I pasted you guys with the ice cream—except Mr. Gibson told me that you did pay for it. And, of course, it was two or three weeks before I saw you in the store again.”
“Yeah, I didn’t have any money to buy anything for two or three weeks after that. And I didn’t think old Gibson would be very willing to extend me credit. But The Lump told me that when he went to see Mr. Rogers and told him that he had impersonated him on the phone to order the ice cream, Rogers blew up all over the place. He called up delinquents, and other names, and he said he ought to sue us, and said if either of us ever come around his house or talk to his daughter again, he’ll sick the law on us. Well, I guess he must have forgot that before too long, because Mary Ellen did invite us to a party or two. But anyway, he also told Lumpy that you must be a—uh, “virtuous, well-governed youth--” compared to the two of us, and he was gonna call your old man to say so.”
“Well, if he did, I don’t remember hearing about it,” said Wally.
“Oh, he did,” added Mary Ellen, who had been standing by, unnoticed, on the stairs. “I don’t think I ever told you that, Wally. But I heard him talking on the phone to your dad, and he raved on and on about you, and how he was sorry he threw you out and wrongly accused you of plotting to crash our slumber party. And the last thing I heard him say was, ‘Well, I agree, Ward—we’ve got to be careful about giving these young people too many accolades; we’ll just keep that between us.’”
“Keep what between them?” asked Wally. “Whatever it is, I guess it’s why my dad never told me about your dad calling him after that.”
“About you being a ‘virtuous, well-governed youth,’” answered Mary Ellen, with a chuckle. “That’s probably the very language he used—he always did like Shakespeare, and that’s a quote from Romeo and Juliet, by Juliet’s father talking about Romeo. But I thought, even then, that if you knew my dad talked about you in that way, you’d be embarrassed.”
“Yeah, I guess I would have been.”
“And not only that—“continued Mary Ellen, “but that was when he started trying to steer me toward you. Even after you went with Julie, and Kathy, and Shirley, and Natalie, and whoever else, he said he thought I would be the one for you by the time you got out of college, and he reminded me of that every time I got interested in somebody else. And—well, he made me promise once that I wouldn’t tell you this until he was gone—but---“
“Well then, don’t tell me!” said Wally. “Because he’s not gone yet.”
Mary Ellen ignored that. “He wanted me to tell you that Drug Store and ice cream incident—that is, your innocence in it—made him ‘believe’ in you, and he hoped for those 8 years that you would be his son-in-law, before it finally happened.”
“Boy!” said Wally. “I guess I understand why he never wanted to tell me himself what he really thought about all that. But he not only didn’t tell me, sometimes he acted like I was the last guy he ever wanted to see around you. He would raise that bass voice and ask me what my worst subject in school is, and what kind of car I was driving, and all that—and how good a friend I thought Eddie and Lumpy still were—“
“Hey now!” cut in Eddie. “I never wanted to be a liability to you, you know.”
“Oh—how about all you legal fees?” returned Wally. Eddie, beginning to feel he might be the bore he mentioned earlier, just looked away.
“Well, I’ll tell you this—“ added Mary Ellen, “you heard me say to him tonight that I sometimes I wished he’d been more the type to hug and touch, and say the word ‘love’ more often. And even with his own friends—clients and golfing buddies—he sometimes acted like he didn’t like being around them. I think that was just his way of showing his feelings—by sometimes showing almost the opposite. In fact, I remember now he admitted that to me when we were in the bride’s room getting ready to walk the aisle.”
“You know,” began Wally,” I did wonder sometimes why a man who told people off and kinda talked down to them would have had a model city like he did for so many years. You know-- that model railroad that you used once to lure Beaver to your house to con me into being your dance date, when we were about the eighth grade? Building that seems more like a project for a nostalgic or sentimental man.”
“Yes, that was like his own fictional world,” said Mary Ellen. “His neighborhood!—you remember that children’s show with Fred Rogers—Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood? He was just like in some ways with that model town and railroad.”
“Well, he had a real neighborhood, too,” remarked Eddie. “How many houses in this town has he owned before? About a dozen?”
“I think just six,” answered Mary Ellen. “We lived in three—including one of them twice! But being a landlord helped him save the money for his long retirement. And he did help a few people who rented from him, giving them extra time to get the rent money, for example—as long as he was sure they weren’t just trying to take advantage of his generosity.”
“Gee,” said Wally, “I’ve learned a lot about him tonight that I should have learned a long time ago. But he did stay true to himself all the way…” Wally wasn’t sure how, or if, he should end this statement. His wife looked like she understood what he meant.
The telephone rang. Mary Ellen put down her wineglass and got up to answer it. “See if it’s a business,” said Wally, “and let the machine pick up if it is.”
Mary Ellen looked at the caller ID. Her eyes popped out as she looked at Wally and said, “It’s the hospital!”
Wally stood up. “You want to me to answer it?”
“No,” said Mary Ellen, as the third ring sounded. “I think it’s my responsibility.”
She answered, identified herself, waited for about twenty seconds, then put the phone down, sobbing, and confirmed, “He passed away between eight and eight fifteen.”
Wally looked at the wall clock. It was eight thirty-three. He walked over to Mary Ellen, gave her a hug, and said, “You kept your promise.”
Eddie arose. “Well folks—I think I need to be going. Thank you so much.”
Mary Ellen gently waved, and Wally said, “Bye Eddie. You know, it was good having you come by tonight. You helped us share some memories at just the right time.”
“Well, I’m glad,” replied Eddie, as he slowly walked toward the door. But he turned around and added, “’Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now {http://mentalfloss.com/article/31936/20-gentle-quotations-mister-rogers}.’ Goodnight, Mr and Mrs. Cleaver.”
Wally looked very puzzled, but Mary Ellen gently laughed while still sobbing.
“Where did that come from?” asked Wally.
“That’s a quote from Fred Rogers,” replied Mary Ellen. “Somebody once brought it to my attention the he said it on his show. I learned a lot of quotes from him because, while I was overage to actually watch his show, I always did make the comparison. That is, for both Daddy’s real estate in Mayfield, and his model town. But I don’t know how Eddie happened to know it so well as to quote it for us just at the perfect time.”
Wally mused for a moment. “Maybe Eddie’s more like your dad than we ever thought—or the other way around, maybe your dad once had some Eddie in him.”
“Come to think of it,” considered Mary Ellen, “my mother did tell me that he once crashed a slumber party and saw her in an embarrassing nightdress.”
Between tears of joy and tears of laughter, the Cleavers called it the night.