One Small Step for a Man

by Erin Brandt Filliter

The day that Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, Gordon labored in his garden picking peas. A collective gasp whooshed through living rooms across his neighborhood the moment the astronauts sunk their feet into the cosmic dust. Meanwhile, Gordon plucked the juicy pods from their vines, tendrils holding on to the trellis in tiny spirals like they were holding on to life itself.

He had more important things to worry about than not being invited to the neighbors’ parties to watch the moon landing.

His fingers cramped from the repetitive pinching and his jaw ached from clenching. Sweat glistened on his forehead and clumped the wisps of thinning hair atop his head.

The bell on his mailbox chimed, pulling his focus temporarily from the plants. Gordon did not want to receive the letter that was likely delivered by the postman that day.

He hauled carrots and beets from the ground in bunches. Specks of dirt rocketed around his forearms as he pulled the vegetables like they were the root of all of his problems.

Wasps, loyal to their queen and hunting for meat or sugar, gathered around his sweaty head. The buzzing was enough to drive a man crazy. He made a mental note to find the nest and add Raid to the shopping list.

As if on cue, Sally’s stirring cries poured out of the open window. Gordon gathered his crop and washed up with the hose before going inside to check on his nearly four-year-old stepdaughter.

“Hey, darling,” he sang as he pulled her from her crib, making another mental note that she’d outgrown it, and he’d need to get her a big-girl bed. She clutched a blue stuffed horse in her chubby fingers.

Her sleep-heavy body molded into his arms. She nuzzled her face into the crook of his salty, earth-coated neck like it was the safest place in the world.

“Hi Gordo,” she said in a whispery sweet voice right into his ear.

While the neighborhood kids were gathered around fuzzy black and white TVs watching Buzz and Neil, and their perfect mothers in perky dresses served snacks on trays, Gordon gave Sally a bowl of berries with a splash of heavy cream and avoided the world outside. Especially the mailbox.

But he couldn’t ignore the phone.

“Hello?” Gordon answered instinctively.

“Hello. Mr. Folkins?” An official-sounding female voice came through the receiver.

Gordon shuddered.

“Did you happen to get our letter? It should have arrived yesterday or today.”

He knew that hanging up would be another strike against him, so he inhaled a calming breath and replied, “No. I’m afraid I was in the garden and haven’t checked the mail yet.”

“Well, let me go over the contents with you now.” The words of the Child Protective Services agent jumbled into a long, stringy sentence. The words coiled around his heart like the phone cord cutting off circulation around his finger.

“No mother. … unfit. … a man can’t raise a girl on his own.” And the final stab: “She’s not really your daughter…”

He cursed Madeleine for not having a will. In fairness, they’d both assumed he’d kick the bucket first, given their age difference. After their quick engagement and small wedding with Sally as the flower girl, they’d discussed formalizing Sally’s adoption, but never got around to it. We were such fools, he thought.

He was pulled from his self-abasement by the words: “You’re just going to have to surrender Sally to the state, Mr. Folkins. We’ll find her a good home with a father and a mother. Do you understand?”

He didn’t understand and he wanted to say that much, and more. But he didn’t want Sally to overhear and be alarmed. She’d been through enough. So, instead, he said, “I think you will find that I am a suitable father who loves Sally very much. Perhaps you can come to the house and see for yourself.”

They set a time for the CPS agent to come the next morning, though she made no promises about the outcome of the visit. Gordon got to work to show how good and stable a home he could provide, wife or no wife.

He gathered Sally and dressed her for shopping. At Sears, they picked out a new bed and outfit. Both purple, her favorite. A blue horse was embroidered onto the front on the sweater, “Just like your snuggly toy horse Ed,” Gordon said. Madeleine had named it in tribute to her favorite: The Ed Sullivan show.

The posh cashier packed up the shopping bag as the workers carted off the bed to the delivery van. She winked at Sally, “Your mother must be very proud to have such a pretty daughter. And what a dedicated grandfather to be taking his granddaughter on a shopping trip!”

Sally squeezed Gordon’s one hand as he grabbed the paper bag with the other. It crunched a little too aggressively in the weight of Gordon’s grip. The pair managed tight smiles and “Thank yous” as they left the counter.

At the grocery store, they bought milk, eggs, and bread through the judgmental stares of housewives pushing carts filled with Miracle Whip and Jello. Gordon picked out a banana loaf from the bakery section and fancy teas.

He realized while packing the paper bags into the trunk of his Chevy wagon that he’d forgotten the Raid.

No time, he thought. I’ll grab it later this week. More important things to do.

When they got home, Gordon put swing jazz on the record player. Sally danced her dolls around their living room, while Gordon scrubbed, vacuumed, tidied, mopped, folded, and arranged. In the few months since Madeleine’s death, he’d developed an efficient cleaning routine. He could do the entire first floor by the time the A-side of Benny Goodman’s Carnegie Hall album finished spinning on the Victrola.

The delivery men with the new bed arrived. Gordon ignored their stunned faces when he opened the door in his rubber cleaning gloves and answered the inevitable question, “Is your wife home to tell us where to put this kid’s bed?”

It was like he could read their minds, poor schmuck has to raise a kid alone? Why wouldn’t he just call CPS?

Gordon showed them upstairs. He wiped the tabletop, avoiding their confused and pitiful stares as they took away the cardboard boxes. He hustled around the kitchen, preparing egg salad sandwiches for dinner.

“Your mommy used to say that I make the best egg salad sandwiches.” Gordon smiled at Sally’s enthusiastic chewing. “She said that was one of the reasons she married me.”

“Mrs. Jewett said it’s because Mommy didn’t want to be alone with a baby,” Sally said matter-of-factly.

Gordon breathed, nostrils flaring slightly, Nosy Mrs. Jewett next door, he fumed to himself.

“I’m sure it might’ve seemed that way to Mrs. Jewett, but she’s wrong. Your mother and I loved each other very much. I am the luckiest man in the world to have gotten to spend time with her. And even luckier to spend time with you.”

“I miss her,” Sally said, looking longingly at her Wonder Bread as if the spirit of her mother was hidden in the holes and ridges of the toasted surface, “but it’s nice to be with you too, Gordo.”

She leaned over and kissed his scruffy cheek. He wiped the familiar dampness around his eyes away with a napkin.

“Alright darling. Bedtime for both of us. Big day tomorrow.”

After a fitful sleep, he woke Sally with the promise of pancakes. Aunt Jemima’s best recipe. He laid out her new outfit and made sure she brushed her teeth.

He mowed the front lawn while she played on the front steps, close by. The Bennett kids across the street were building a cardboard rocket ship. APOLLO 11 looped across the side of the construction in scrawling black paint. Sally stared at the children who mostly ignored her, except to stick their tongues out from time to time.

Mrs. Bennett, with her stranded pearls and crimson lipstick, was their street’s second most prolific gossip next to Mrs. Jewett. Gordon had no doubt the two busybodies had spread instructions throughout the neighborhood children to never play with a motherless runt like Sally.

“How can a child be normal growing up without a mother?” He imagined her midwestern drawl perfectly forming the ugly words.

Sally was better off without them. He smiled at his precious girl.

The agent arrived promptly before lunch in her sedan with a magnetic logo on the car door: “Child Protective Services” around an official coat of arms. She clipped along the walkway, a study in beige from her practical shoes to her unassuming skirt and cardigan. Her wide-rimmed glasses and tight bun aged her at least fifteen years.

“Good morning, Mr. Folkins.” She offered him a firm handshake while staring at Sally sitting on the step. “That’s a lovely toy horse you have. What’s his name?”

“Eddy. Mama named it after Ed Snuffilan,” Sally stammered under the agent’s intense gaze.

The CPS agent giggled. Gordon reluctantly chuckled too. Her chiming laughter defied the menacing bureaucrat he expected.

“Sally, darling,” Gordon put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, “can you play in the backyard for a bit while I have a talk with the nice lady inside?”

Sally nodded and scampered off to the backyard. The Bennett kids lobbed a few jeers and taunts as she disappeared around the side of the house.

Gordon sighed out his urge to reply in kind to the jerky neighbors while opening the front door to the lady in beige.

“I’m Patty. Patty Doak. Ms. Doak, if you don’t mind. For officiousness.”

He nodded; she already knew everything about him. He put the kettle on for tea and sliced the banana loaf. In his periphery, she assessed his spotless home.

“You sure you don’t have a woman living here, Mr. Folkins? Or a housekeeper?” she asked as she swiped a finger along the chair rail to reveal not a speck of dust.

“No ma’am,” he replied. “Just me and Sally for the past four months since my wife—”

“I know,” she cut him off. “I’ve read the file.”

The awkward pause filled the room like a helium balloon. Gordon’s resolve redoubled under its presence.

“Can I show you around?” he offered, and guided Ms. Doak upstairs.

He showed her Sally’s new purple bed and closet full of clean clothes. In the bathroom, he pointed to Sally’s toothbrush and explained how his veterans benefits offered dental coverage. He even revealed the linen closet with its neatly arranged towels and bedding.

“It’s all very impressive,” Ms. Doak said as she settled at the table with a cup of Earl Grey and a slice of rich banana loaf, “but don’t you think Sally needs a mother? Let’s think about what is best for her.”

The balloon of anger inflated inside his chest again. He exhaled.

“I think what is best for Sally is stability. Her father was deployed to Vietnam and died before she ever met him. We didn’t catch her mother’s cancer in time before it killed her. I am the only parent she knows.”

“Except, legally speaking, you are not her parent.”

Gordon absorbed the reality of that statement. It seemed as inconceivable as a man walking on the moon. He stared at the wet crumbs on her plate through the tears forming around his eyelids.

“We’re not just concerned about what is or isn’t legal. It is best for Sally to grow up in a home with a mother, especially as she’s getting older. You have to agree, Gordon.” She patted his forearm.

A shriek from the backyard interrupted their discourse. Gordon rushed out to find Sally screaming and swatting at a swarm of wasps soldiering out of a nest near the garden. He braved the stings and ran towards the terrified child while the CPS agent gaped in horror behind the safety of a window pane.

He clutched Sally’s writhing body and shook off as many insects as he could before running back into the house with her limbs dangling like carrot tops. Her breath panted in shallow gulps and red welts formed all over her skin.

“Call an ambulance,” Gordon demanded of Ms. Doak. She turned the rotary phone to access emergency services, each number stretching like an infinity. Gordon tended to Sally with cool rags and soft songs while they waited.

The medics arrived and loaded Sally on a stretcher into the ambulance. Mrs. Jenkins and the whole Bennett family gathered on their lawns to watch the spectacle with tongue clicks and head shakes.

Ms. Doak followed the emergency vehicle to the hospital. Gordon slumped onto his front step and sobbed into Ed’s plush, blue fabric. The welts on his own arms and neck began throbbing to the beat of his broken heart.

***

The day that Apollo 11 re-entered the atmosphere and the astronauts returned safely to Earth, Gordon tore apart his garden. The rows were reduced to craters by the time he worked out his rage and found the wasps’ nest. He stomped off to the shed to fetch a fresh can of Raid.

He sprayed the papery queendom with a stream of expletives and poison. The straggling scout wasps nipped at skin, the pain from their stings eclipsed by his grief and worry.

Security had prevented him from visiting Sally in the hospital, as per CPS orders. He had to assume she was alright, but no one would tell him anything. When the phone finally rang, he was covered in grime, but rushed to answer it.

“Mr. Folkins?” Ms. Doak’s voice thudded through the line. “Do you mind if I pay you a visit?”

Gordon did his best to tidy the house and wash up before she arrived. He waited for the knock on the door sitting in his armchair, with his head in his shaking hands. He heard her sedan pull up and preemptively opened the door.

Sally stood with a smile as wide as the gate. Gordon sank to his knees.

“I pulled some strings,” said Ms. Doak.

Sally flew into Gordon’s arms and nuzzled into his neck. “Hi, Gordo,” she said with a giggle into his ear. 

“How?” was all Gordon could muster as he hugged Sally.

“Truthfully, I was really moved by how you saved Sally from the wasps. Your bravery spoke volumes about the lengths you’d go to protect her.

“And all Sally wanted in the hospital was you. Well, you and Ed.”

“I can’t thank you enough.”

“I don't have much sway in my role, but my job is to recommend to the state what is in the best interest of the child. Even my manager was charmed when he met Sally in the hospital. She was very compelling, especially when she told us about your sandwiches.”

Gordon’s happy tears spilled over Sally’s purple sweater. He held her shoulders to examine her glowing face. The scars from the wasps’ stings barely visible across her sweet cheeks. His unshaven lips kissed the top of her head. She galloped happily back into her home searching for Ed the horse.

“It’s a new world,” Ms. Doak shook her head with a glint in her eyes. “They put a man on the moon, you know? Raising a daughter might be only slightly more complicated than that!”

Gordon chuckled and wiped his eyes.

“I’ll check on you from time to time, but I have every confidence you and Sally will do just fine.

“The adoption paperwork will be in the mail,” she said as she turned on her heels.

Gordon thanked her again and closed the front door with the deepest sigh, expelling the pressure of anxiety that had expanded under his ribs over many months.

He turned to Sally. “Egg salad for dinner, darling?”

Gordon’s cheeks hurt from smiling, sure he was the luckiest man in the solar system.