by Pete Fromm
Taz thinks of bringing a baby up here, hauling her through that canyon, keeping her out of the pinecones, out of the creek, the ponds, listening to her crying right when everything goes so silent, wonders how many nights like this they have left. “I could hump it back to the truck,” he says. “Get the sleeping bags.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she says, voice changing as she stares into the fire. “And you know it.”
Taz rubs her back, bites off his own sigh. “We’ll get the house finished. I’ve got time right now.”
“If another job doesn’t come up, time’s all we’ll have.”
Taz pulls his hand away, leans toward the fire, pokes at it with a branch no bigger around than his finger. “Work always shows up, Marn.”
“Well, now’d be a good time.” She pitches the trout skeleton onto the coals. “That’s all I’m saying.”
With the tip of his stick, Taz pushes the skeleton deeper into the fire, the tiny, fragile bones glowing more than burning, and then just gone.
They roast on the drive back, windows down, the rush of ninety-five-degree air less cooling than baking. “Jerky,” Marn says, shifting herself, rolling her neck the way she does any time she’s uncomfortable. She looks down at her belly, blows out a long sigh. “Buffalo jerky.”
Taz steps harder on the gas.
They slog into the house, the sheetrock up, but not yet taped or mudded. Still, the living room, as soon as they push open the door, looks like an actual room, not just an open skeleton. The Visqueen covering the sanded maple crinkles underfoot, and Marnie slides onto the broken-down couch the college students had pitched, just some place to sit during construction, something they’d pile onto the dump load as soon as the main room was finished. They’d scabbed in the electrical, the tangle of knob and tube still in the truck, under the sheetrock scrap. He’d mud this week, tape the seams, cover the screw heads, then dust like a fiend, paint, peel up the plastic, dust some more, put the polyurethane down until the maple gleamed like glass. Marn didn’t know, but he’d made reservations, two nights, the C’mon Inn, where she could bob in the pools, teach Midge to swim, where neither one of them would be breathing in all those fumes. Or gilling it, whatever Midge did in there. He pictures her floating, the umbilical cord her deep-sea diver’s air hose, a little brass helmet covering her head, the paned-off round window of the face mask. All twenty thousand leagues. He does not tell Marnie any of this.
He glances down to her slumped on the couch, eyes closed, pale, sweating, breathing like a diver herself. He’s learned better than to ask if she’s okay, but he does anyway.
She peeks open one eye, stares at him. “She’s going to be a giant,” she whispers. “A Titan. You try carrying her around.”
“In a heartbeat,” he says, actually kind of meaning it, thinking, before he stops himself, that he could do better, that he’d just bear up, wouldn’t make such a show of the exhaustion, the misery, make such a fricking burden of the whole thing. But she purses her lips, blows a tired raspberry, and he has to admit that he doesn’t really have a clue.
He goes to the kitchen, as unfinished as the day they bought the place, worse. They weren’t in the house a week before they tore into the bedroom, The only room we’ll need, she’d said. Sure the kitchen would be next, they’d emptied their paint brushes against the wall above the sink, Marn painting in this gigantic green smiley face, adding white fangs with the ceiling paint. A joke then, but work had caught up with them, the bank account, and the face, three years on, had become her picture of the house itself, eating them alive. If there’d been a way to paint it over without her noticing, he’d have been on it yesterday.
He stares at it as he pulls open the freezer, twists an ice tray, breaks out the cubes, brings the water in a pint glass. She holds it against her cheek, her forehead, rolling it back and forth. “We never discussed heat waves when we planned all this,” she says. “Drought.”
Planned? Taz keeps himself from saying. “Two more months,” he says.
Eyes closed, she says, “Yeah, the timing hasn’t slipped my mind.”
He sits on a sawhorse and watches her, leans a little closer, ready to snatch the glass if she nods off.
Minutes later she opens her eyes, sits up a bit more, holding the glass in both hands, resting it on her belly. “We have to get serious,” she says.
Taz braces.
“I mean, look at the accounts, add and subtract. All that abacus shit.” She waves a hand around. “And this place. We’ve got to get a real schedule going. We can’t bring her into this mess.”
Taz doesn’t even have to glance around, though he’s always liked these first days with the sheetrock up, the rooms echoey. And, really, it is a room. Shelter. They have plumbing. Power. Their bedroom’s been finished for years, and now the other, the baby’s room, is just waiting on paint, trim. The bathroom, stuck off the hall between them, has a door at least, hiding all that waits inside, the plumbing, the fixtures they can’t yet afford, the tile. The kitchen, though, doesn’t even have a door, just the opening he’s turned the couch away from, so she doesn’t have to see all that still waits in there, those appliances so far out of reach they haven’t had the heart to even start tearing down the plaster. Still, it isn’t like she’s going to drop this baby in a cave. But he says, “I know, Marn.”
She stares at him. “You always say that.”
“I know,” he starts, then closes his mouth, pushes up off the sawhorse, just as dog-tired as she is.
He walks out to the shop, keys the padlock, and pushes the door open, flips the lights, walks around the tool bench, one thing, along with the relic of a table saw, that his father couldn’t ship overseas. He pulls back the tarp keeping the dust off all the non-woodworking tools, and digs through the buckets of plumbing stuff, electrical, until he finds the taping box, collects the mud tray, the eight-inch knife, a roll of drywall tape, mixes a batch of mud.
She stares at him when he comes in, his every move. “That’s what you think I mean? When I say we have to get real, make a plan?”
He doesn’t bother to answer. Just dips his knife into the mud. Turns to face the wall. Gets to work.
He’s rolling the tape out along the belly band when, behind him, Marnie says, “You know, not talking about money doesn’t mean we have any.”
He pulls the tape back against the knife edge, tearing it off, then dips the knife into the tray, walking backward, spreading the mud out over the tape.
. . . AND COUNTING
Taz picks up a week of work, a week and a half, all more handyman than carpenter or cabinetmaker. It helps, but not much for the way it stalls out the work at home. Only a month out, the living room and baby’s room floor still plastic-covered, the walls’ every screw and seam smooth with sanded mud, he presents Marnie with her packed bag, tells her about the weekend at the motel. She stares, shaking her head, asking where he thinks money really actually comes from, but eventually lets Taz usher her into the truck, saying that they’ve got arrivals to think about, that the money’s something they can worry about later. He leaves her bobbing in the pool, like a manatee, she says, and he races home, grabbing Rudy on the way. Together they throw up the paint, living room first, Rudy rolling at light speed, Taz cutting in the corners. They barely speak, moving around each other like they’re the married couple, knowing each other’s movements, thoughts.
Until Rudy, eyes on his rolling, says, “How’d she take it?”
“Take what?”
“The whole banishment thing.”
“Banishment?” Taz stops. “You think she should be breathing this shit in?”
“What, I don’t have brain cells?”
Taz laughs, leans as far as he dares, slides his brush along the ceiling line. “Just a few terrified survivors.”
Rudy takes a swig from his beer. “They can run, but they can’t hide.”
They work, falling back into silence until Taz climbs down, resets his ladder, climbs back u
p.
“You tell them yet?” Rudy asks.
Taz turns, finds Rudy loading the roller in the tray, not looking anywhere near him. “Tell who?” he says.
“About the grandbaby and all?”
Taz dips his brush into the paint. “Yeah, I told them.”
“So, they’re racing up here?”
Taz runs the brush along the ceiling line. “Not exactly,” he says.
“Happy at least?”
“Mom’s thrilled. My dad just wondered How the hell you plan on supporting a family?”
“Nice to see him mellowing.”
Taz reloads his brush, reaches as far as he can.
Rudy says, “You told them you bought this place, right? They don’t think you’re still living at my place? Still finishing high school?”
“Even told them I got married.”
Rudy eases the roller onto the wall, up first, then back. “Wow, full disclosure.”
“Mom’d come,” Taz starts, but leaves it at that.
“No doubt,” Rudy says. “I just kind of wondered if a baby might be enough to make it happen.”
“There’s nothing bringing him back.”
“The, um, current administration?”
“Could be Bozo the Clown. Wouldn’t make any difference.”
“Well, pretty much is. Bozo, I mean. But, still, a baby. Kind of a game changer, right?”
“They left me here with you, Rude.”
“And my parents,” Rudy says. “Not exactly raised by wolves.”
Taz resets his ladder, climbs, dips his brush. “He got wiped out. Holds the global economy against the whole country. The whole globe. You know how he is.”
“Dude does have some anger-management issues.”
“How much difference you think a baby is going to make?”
“My folks left, too. The crash smacked us all.”
“Arizona, Rudy. They hated winter, not themselves.”
Rudy finishes his section, and they shift over to the front wall, the one they saved for last, the windows eating up that space. He waits for Taz to get the corner in, stands leaning against the roller pole like a wizard’s staff. “What’d Marnie say?”
“She’s never done more than seen them on Skype. I don’t think she had any big ideas.”
“Doesn’t bum her out?”
“She lived here six months without heat, Rude. I don’t think much else is going to phase her.”
“It was summer,” Rudy says. “Mostly.”
Taz laughs. “She could handle him.”
“And anyone else.”
“I’m sort of just kind of glad she doesn’t have to.”
Taz gets the corner in and Rudy finishes with the roller. “Baby room next?”
Taz picks up his ladder, starting that way. “But it’s not the baby’s room anymore. She’s calling it the nursery now. For real. Marn.”
Rude kneels to change roller heads, switch paints. “Calls the baby room the nursery,” he says. “Totally insane. I mean, like, where does she even come up with this shit?”
Taz opens the new paint, something called Gemstone, blue or green. Both maybe. Marn’s going to stencil dragonflies in around the ceiling, mayflies and stoneflies, and, of course, midges—another bridge he’s decided to cross when they come to it.
The next day, they start with the floor, predawn, pre-coffee. “What!” Rudy says, and Taz says, “We can get all three coats in if we fly.”
“Three?”
“Place is going to last forever.”
“Overkill,” Rudy says, but takes a knee on the front porch, works the lid off the five-gallon bucket.
“Coffee’s on me while the first coat dries.” Taz says, “Promise.”
Rudy gives him a look and stands back to let Taz stir, and without a word of planning, both of them knowing the drill, they open the door and start. Rudy pouring while Taz spreads, they finish the living room and move into the hallway between the bedrooms without so much as lifting their heads. They slick down the hall into the nursery, stepping around each other as they shimmy through the doorway, the maple popping out so golden they smile all the way into the back wall before they realize what they’ve done.
Rudy says, “No way.”
Taz, “We didn’t.”
But they’ve painted themselves in, no way out but through the nursery window, Taz first, Rudy handing out the bucket, the roller pole, both of them laughing till they can hardly stand. Catching his breath, Taz gets out, “Marnie never hears a word,” and Rude’s eyes widen. “To our graves.”
They get into the kitchen through the back door, the sun still not up yet, but the east lurid with the smoke from the wilderness. Taz builds coffee and has almost a whole cup before going out to the shop, getting a few more pieces marked out for the bed he’s making for the nursery. A surprise. Rudy leans in the shop door, sips his coffee, watches a while before asking, “Do you even sleep anymore?”
“Time for that later.”
Rudy walks in, pulls a chair out from the gigantic dining room table Marnie had found, some Civil War leftover, something peace treaties could be signed at, leaf after leaf after leaf, a dozen chairs, all of it shoved up against the jointer, the band saw, the shaping table, which are all shoved up against the back wall. “Later,” he says. “Like after the baby comes? I hear that’s a good time for sleeping.”
They get the second coat down before noon, starting in the nursery this time, and a third before nightfall. Half dizzy from the fumes, Taz braces himself in the doorway of the still-1917 kitchen, Rudy cleaning brushes in the stained and rusted farm sink, the linoleum pattern beneath them long, long gone. Aching and exhausted, he admires their work, the reek of fresh paint wrestling with the drying poly. Behind him, Rudy shuts off the water, pops a beer, then a second. “And they said it couldn’t be done,” he says.
“Not by mortals,” Taz says, and they click bottlenecks. “Not a chance.”
He turns to the kitchen’s rough old plaster wall and raises his bottle to Marn’s fanged smiley face. “Here’s to Marn, too,” he says. He had, he has to admit, guessed they’d have the kitchen wrapped in a few months, the whole house in six. Been fool enough to tell her so. Out loud. Six months. Three years ago.
“When are you picking her up?”
“Tomorrow, I suppose. Maybe the next day.”
“Coward,” Rudy says.
Taz smiles, though to himself he admits it’s been a relief, having her gone a few nights. “Just depends how long it takes to air out.”
“We’ll be able to open the windows soon. This heat? It’ll be a few minutes. You hear about the fires?”
Taz nods. The wildfires breaking out of the wilderness, raging, zero percent containment. Seeley Lake already evacuated. Lincoln prepped for it. Holed up in here, he can’t really remember what all. He could sleep standing up, if he had time. “Want to poly the baseboard tomorrow, the door trim?”
“You already got it?”
“They were tearing out the old bleachers at Loyola.”
“All that clear fir? They didn’t sell it?”
Taz glances his way, smiles. “Not all of it.”
Rudy stares, says, “Dude,” but can’t come up with anything else. “That’d be a surprise for her. Coming back to find you in lockup.”
“Just re-sourcing, Rude. If they sold it, it’d just wind up as crap somewhere.”
“But you, you’re serving a higher purpose?”
Taz taps the neck of his bottle to his forehead.
“And you’ve got it all milled already? Ready to go? When the hell did you do that?”
“Nights.”
Rudy keeps shaking his head. “And you still got all your fingers? Wonders never cease. Marn know?”
“It’ll be a surprise.”
Rudy slaps his hand against the tabletop, fumed oak, nearly black. “You want to get this bad boy in too, get it all set, plates, salad forks, teacups, candles lit?”
“Got
to let the poly harden up a little first.”
“But, seriously. You’re going to try to have this all finished before you bring her home from the motel?”
“No, even god couldn’t do that.”
“So, what’s the rush?”
Taz blows a long, sorrowful foghorn across the neck of his bottle. “What’s the rush? There’s a baby coming, Rude. I told Marn the whole place would be done two years ago. Maybe three.”
Rudy turns to look Taz in the eye. “Her mother,” he says, and Taz turns away. “She’s on her way. Am I right?”
“Not till the baby is born.”
“Oh, jesus, and Marn’s holding your toes to the fire, get this place all Martha Stewart before she gets here.”
“The main rooms, anyway.”
“Well, what time do we start tomorrow?”
“The crack.”
Rudy groans.
“Whenever you want to show up, Rude. You know that.”
“Yeah, but with Moms on her way, we better scorch.”
Taz tosses his bottle toward the garbage can across the kitchen. “Might be time for you to take a break anyway, Rude. I got no idea when I can pay you next. Not a clue.”
Rudy opens up the fridge, backs out empty-handed. “Pay? Man, that’d be a novelty,” he says. “I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll bring some beer.”
Taz follows him out, watches him walk down the drive, a wave over his shoulder, then turns to the shop, flips on the lights, starts brushing stain on all the trim he’s made out of the stolen bleachers.
HOLDING
She comes to the nursery door, huge, hands on her back, and stands there watching him work at the foot of the twin bed he’s just surprised her with, a matched pair, mostly, to the bed he’d made for them, something he’d got after at night, buried in the shop, slipping into bed late, smelling of wood, something she actually kind of loves. “It’s gorgeous,” she says. “Walnut?”
Taz can’t not quite grin. “The wood of royalty. Most of it from that rolltop job.”