by Jan Karon
‘We need some new plumbing. And a new wall. A weight-bearing wall. We’ll have to jackhammer a section of the floor in the prep room so we can install new copper pipes.’ The wall would require a construction crew, but one of the plumbing guys had construction experience and had given him a ballpark for the combined jobs. Ten big ones easy, more likely twelve.
He gave her the low figure of ten thousand. The heaviness in his chest was oppressive. ‘Maybe more.’ This whole scenario was beyond.
He got up and turned off the water and took the overflowing bucket out of the sink and let himself feel the heaviness on his chest.
‘There are things in the car,’ she said, barely audible.
‘I’ll help,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Jack Tyler, he can help, too.’ L.A.? A mural? ‘We’ll all help. Help is good.’ He set the bucket back in the sink. ‘Really good.’ He was babbling.
• • •
The shop vacs were getting the water up. Willie was standing by and Harley offered to stick close, but they sent him on, with a bag of fresh mint for Helene Pringle’s tea.
He and Lace visited the patients and distributed fresh water and Jack Tyler let Pete the bulldog into the run.
He went alone to check again on Chester, who was sitting up in his e-collar and looking perplexed.
They were getting dunked into the big stuff right out of the gate, he thought. It was a sheep dip.
• • •
She and Dooley didn’t talk as they washed up the dishes.
She was glad they didn’t have a dishwasher; a sink full of hot water and soap gave her time to think.
She wouldn’t leave Dooley and Jack. Not ever. But she would allow herself the thrill of being asked to do the mural. Just to be asked! Her wedding present to Dooley—the painting of him driving the red truck with the dogs in the truck bed—was the largest work she had ever done; she had liked working big.
‘Jack Tyler could come with me,’ she said. It was a terrible idea, but she had to say it and mark it off the list.
‘But he just got here. The little guy is still figuring out the place.’
Don’t go, don’t do this, he wanted to say. The disruption at the clinic would be huge. Alarming to their patients, not to mention staff and clients. Hammering, sawing, drilling, tearing up a floor, trucks in the driveway.
‘My parents . . .’ she said.
‘We can’t do that. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t do that. Hoppy and Olivia have helped so much already.’ He wasn’t running to his parents, either. They had been more than generous. The whole parent scheme was out.
‘And we did the right thing about Miss Sadie’s money,’ he said. ‘I’m glad we can’t get to it.’
What was left of his inheritance from Miss Sadie was untouchable. They had told the trust officer, Bartlett, ‘Don’t let us withdraw anything more for five years, no matter how hard we beg.’ Bartlett was tough; it was done.
‘If I do the mural, it would solve everything,’ she said. She felt the enormous conflict of it, her breath short.
Was this the way he was going to handle life with the only woman he could ever love? My God. He hung the drying cloth on the rack. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘Sorry that work has pretty much taken me over, that I can’t think of anything else. Sorry that I seemed to blow the mural commission in the weeds. This is huge. I’m so proud of you.’ He put his arms around her, comforting her, comforting himself. ‘I’ll do better, I promise.’
She didn’t want to cry, she was always bawling, but the relief of this moment was manna, and she let the tears flow.
‘Do whatever you need to do,’ he said. ‘We’ll make it happen.’
At eight o’clock, he went to the clinic, checked the floors, made a call to a contractor he’d gone to school with in Mitford, and walked home, scraping his brain for some overlooked solution. There would always be revenue coming from Choo-Choo’s on-site services, but nothing close to what they needed now.
The plumbers’ trucks were backing out of the drive. The meter had been running since two in the afternoon at sixty-five bucks per hour per man.
The mural job would solve everything, but . . .
He said what his dad said when he couldn’t pray, when his thoughts were too jumbled, when he couldn’t think straight. ‘Jesus.’
A rock and a hard place, he thought. As a married couple, it was their first rock and a hard place.
• • •
She raced up to Heaven, the attic studio where her head could be in the clouds. She wrote swiftly in her Dooley book; it had been weeks since she opened it.
THURS OCT 1~ A calamity~ that is the perfect word. I can’t write about it now as I want to write only positive things tonight.
Three things.
Kim has offered me a commission to paint a mural! In her house in Malibu! Dooley says we can make it work but I don’t know how. I don’t want to leave D and Jack~ I don’t. But it would completely solve the awful thing which I don’t want to talk about right now. I am crazy happy to be asked but really sad to think of leaving. I can’t imagine leaving them. This is so good, but so hard.
Two! Dooley has not been late for anything in months. I am so grateful he is working to break this old habit. Trait? Can we break a trait? Can we inherit characteristics like being late? Or on my side crying without good reason? Did we have ancestors who went around being late and weeping?
Last but so not least~ our Jack Tyler is the light of our lives~ of everybody’s life. We would go through all the waiting and testing and paperwork a million times to have our wonderful son.
Thank you God for so many dreams coming true. Thank you for everything. Even confusion and hard decisions.
• • •
When, when, when?’ Jack Tyler opened his arms in supplication. ‘When are we goin’ to talk about somethin’ ex-cit-ing?’
Suddenly there was too much to talk about. But they had to start somewhere.
‘How about now?’ said Dooley. He and Lace were sitting on the old sofa in Jack Tyler’s bedroom.
‘Now is always a good time,’ said Lace.
Jack Tyler climbed up between them, smelling of soap and clean pajamas. ‘I didn’t say my ain’t at supper.’
‘Good.’
He held up two fingers to his mom. ‘I can say it this many times tomorrow, okay?’
‘Okay.’
Dooley put his arm around Jack. ‘Just before Christmas, you will be our son. Legally. We’ve talked about it a couple of times, remember? And we will be your mom and dad. Legally. But things will stay just like they are now.’
They looked at the boy who insisted on being called by both his first and last names. Jack Tyler had been a mouthful, but they had gotten used to it. They wanted to avoid saying Jack Kavanagh a hundred times a day; they had even knocked a syllable off Lily’s name.
‘Only one thing will change,’ said Dooley. ‘Your name will be Jack Kavanagh.’
Jack Tyler blinked. ‘What will happen to my Tyler name?’
‘You and your mom and I will all have the same last name. We’ll all be a Kavanagh. Forever.’
‘When he was your age,’ said Lace, ‘your dad had another last name. It was Barlowe. Like Uncle Kenny and Uncle Sammy.’
‘But I gave it up,’ said Dooley. ‘Because Granpa Tim was good to me and wanted to be my new dad.’
‘What happened to your old dad?’
‘He was never around.’
‘Like my old dad?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was adopted, too,’ said Lace. ‘I was Lace Turner. But when Granny O and Granpa Hoppy adopted me, I was proud to be given their name.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they loved me and took care of me.’
Jack Tyler looked at his dad.
‘Will I get red hair like you if I’m Jack Kavanagh?’
Dooley laughed. It felt good to laugh. ‘You get to keep your own hair. And if you’d like to keep your Tyler name, it could be another middle name. You would be Jack Brady Tyler Kavanagh.’
Jack Tyler looked at his mom. ‘You would say Jack Kavanagh if you called me to come in the house?’
‘If I called you to come in the house, I would say . . .’ She put her hands on either side of her mouth and called. ‘Ja-a-ck! But if I baked a pie and you and Charley gobbled it all up when I wasn’t looking . . .’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘I would say, Jack Kavanagh!’
Dooley laughed. ‘See there, buddy, you an’ Charley don’t want to go gobblin’ up her whole pie.’
‘But if I kissed you and told you I love you,’ said Lace, ‘I would say . . .’ She kissed his cheek and looked into his brown eyes. ‘Jack. Just Jack.’
Jack Tyler’s eyes were big.
‘When December eleventh comes,’ she said, ‘we’ll sign papers that say Kavanagh is your new last name. Forever.’ They said forever a lot in this house. So much in their boy’s life had been maybe, maybe not, whatever, we’ll see, who knows, who cares.
‘We’ll be a true family,’ said Dooley.
‘Ain’t we a family now?’
Jack looked at them, surprised, then threw his head back and laughed big. He had used up his ain’t but would get another one tomorrow. They all had a laugh.
‘In our hearts,’ said Lace, ‘we’re a family now. When we sign the papers, we’ll be a family all the way. Legally. And the next day, everybody will come and celebrate your new name. Officially.’
Legally. All the way. Officially. She wanted better words; this was hard. ‘You don’t have to decide now. And whatever you decide will be good. We love you with all our hearts.’
‘The big day will be here in ten weeks,’ said his dad. ‘Think about a present you’d like to have. Just one special thing. Maybe it’s a bike, maybe something else. And if we all agree, you’ll get it the day you become Jack Kavanagh.
‘We’ll have a party and there’ll be music by Uncle Tommy and his band, and great food and maybe, just maybe, the cousins will come and we’ll all dance again. Like at the wedding.’
‘Man!’ Jack Tyler spread all his fingers and knew that was how long it would be. A present, a party, maybe even the cousins. ‘The cousins!’ he said. And dancing! He liked to dance.
He jumped down from the sofa and bolted to the middle of the room. ‘Look at me!’ he said, and did his boogie dance that everybody laughed about at the wedding—wiggled his hips, flapped his arms. Charley barked.
He liked better than anything to make his mom and dad go laughing.
Dooley watched Lace watching Jack Tyler. If his wife was happy and his boy was happy, he was happy. End of discussion.
• • •
They were doing the tuck-in.
‘Because I would be Jack Kavanagh, we would do everything like at th’ wedding?’
‘Pretty much,’ said his dad. ‘But without the tent.’
‘Could we let Choo-Choo out of th’ gate again?’
‘No way,’ said his dad. ‘That was a one-off, trust me.’
‘How about this?’ said his mom. ‘Starting tonight we’ll call you Jack. Just Jack.’ She watched his face. ‘We’ll practice for the big day!’ They had said everything there was to say. ‘Okay?’
He blinked again, solemn. Then nodded. ‘Okay.’
His mom hugged him and maybe cried and his dad gave him a high five.
‘Jack!’ they all said together, loud as anything.
He felt a smile coming on his face. When he got up in the morning, he would look in the mirror to see if he was still himself, because it seemed like he kept changing into another boy.
• • •
He pushed open the screen door to the glider porch and the odor of new paint on the railings. He was twenty-six—gaining on twenty-seven, as Uncle Henry would say. But he felt old tonight. Beat. The plumbers had reminded him that toilets as well as sinks would be shut down for ‘a good while.’ He had thought the rigor of vet school was grown-up, but no—this was grown-up.
‘Any sign of Harley?’ he said.
‘We’re not his parents, you know.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Maybe nine-fifteen?’
‘That’s midnight by Mitford standards.’
He liked to know where everybody was; he was a worrywart.
He sat next to her in the glider and kicked off his tennis shoes. They had sat in this old glider during a lot of visits from school, but they’d never thrashed out anything with three zeros behind it.
He wanted her to know he was proud, but bottom line, he couldn’t make it without her.
It occurred to him that the mural money was probably close to what the practice would net this year. On the other hand, it was no small matter that she was a super hand at the clinic. He could always call her to come help and she loved helping—she had a sixth sense with animals. But no matter what, the plumbing work had to start immediately. They could not run a hygienic operation, any operation, without water.
‘Listen,’ she said.
A heifer bawling in the west pasture, katydids in the grass. His heart rate slowed a little.
Don’t go, he said without saying it.
‘There’s my savings,’ she said.
‘We said we wouldn’t touch it, we would only add to it, it would be for his education. We made a promise.’
‘It’s just sitting there, not earning anything. We’d do better to bury it in a jar.’
She didn’t want to give up her savings for plumbing. All the scrimping like crazy and cutting corners . . . In college, she could have bought clothes and shoes like other girls, she had loved shoes; she could have done things that a lot of other girls did, but she had worked hard to build the savings account.
She remembered her mom giving her three cotton sweaters; she had felt like royalty. She had never asked for anything, even when her mom wanted to be asked.
Just before the wedding, the most amazing thing—she sold five paintings to Kim Dorsay for more money than she could have imagined. She remembered the huge thrill of having a head start on Jack’s future. She and Dooley had agreed that the money wouldn’t be used for anything but college—no matter what.
That said, she would withdraw the money. But to do it for water pipes . . .
‘Are you saying you don’t want to go?’
‘I’m saying I’m not going.’
He leaned back, closed his eyes, breathed out. They heard Harley’s truck pull in and the sound of the basement door closing.
She didn’t say that Kim would have flown her home on weekends—all the way across the country on Thursday night and back again on Sunday—or that the mural could possibly take up to three months. Kim wanted farm animals in a pasture, with clover, and mountains in the background, a whole farm scene. It would be done on a large loft wall, for her many grandnieces and -nephews. Kim had lived most of her life not knowing she had a twin sister, Irene, with all those lovely children and grandchildren. The children and grans lived in cities, one family as far away as Munich. They all loved meeting now at Aunt Kim’s, and for reasons not explained, they were crazy about everything to do with farms.
Both Irene and Kim were true fans of her work, and had seen a photo of a painting she did of Choo-Choo and the girls. Lace Kavanagh was ‘the very one’ to paint the mural, said Kim. ‘The only one!’ said Irene, who hardly ever made extreme statements.
She would love to paint a mural, it would stretch her skills and teach her something important. But no.
For years she had been dry as stone and now, tears at the drop of a hat. Glad, sad, whatever, there they came. ‘We’ll use the savings.’
She leaned into the curve of his arm. A quarter moon gleaming out there in the grass with the katydids, the glider a cradle rocking. They held each other in what seemed a dream.
She had worked hard for that money, and he admired her for being smart enough to put it away. He would help replace whatever the plumbing tab would be. They would build Jack’s future together this time.
‘Hey,’ he whispered.
She looked up at him. ‘Hey, yourself.’
They went inside and closed the kitchen door and turned out the lights and went up the stairs.
• • •
He toweled off from the shower and came into their lamplit room.
‘You asleep?’ he said.
‘Wide awake.’
The bed creaked as he got in. He appreciated that about a bed. It was kind of like hello, I’m your bed, great to see you again, how did it go today?
‘You know what we forgot to do?’ she said. ‘We forgot to pray.’
Her hair smelled of cut orchard grass and Jack Tyler and apples.
He turned off the lamp and pulled the cover up and drew her close. ‘How about now?’ he said. Now was always a good time.
3
MITFORD
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1
If he had a cigar, he would smoke it.
J. C. Hogan sat at his desk in the Muse office, in a busted swivel chair bought at a yard sale in 1997. He was wired from the effects of an idea that would be nearly impossible to pull off.
Esther Bolick’s passing was good. It was, in fact, great. Carpe diem! This would be more than a front-page obit. It would be the first-ever special edition of the Mitford Muse, and well deserved by the deceased. Hadn’t Esther carted that cake to every down-and-outer in a ten-mile radius, including old man Mueller, now gone to his rest? She had even carried one to the Muse when it celebrated its twentieth anniversary, he would not forget her for that.
He had always wanted to do a special edition, and here was the perfect opportunity. Rotten luck that the Muse hit the street today, as it had done every Thursday for thirty-some years. By the time next week’s edition was out, Esther’s demise would be old news, sayonara, life goes on. So he would have to put this baby to bed by two A.M. tomorrow morning, run it to Wesley before five, and roll the presses.