by Pete Fromm
“After a sea,” he says, “not the devil.”
She nods, biting at her lip again.
“So,” he says.
“Rudy said—”
“I know, that I could use some help. What about the Club?”
“What about it?”
“Two jobs? And school?”
“I know,” she says. “I’d’ve dropped it a year ago, but you wouldn’t believe the tips.”
Taz pulls out a chair for her at Marn’s monstrous dining room table. She’d made a tent under it, blankets, couch pillows, sheets. They’d slept under it. More. “Can you imagine?” she’d said in the underwater light beneath the new sea turtles, “how Midge is going to love this place?”
Can you imagine? God, how many times had he heard that, her eyes as big and wide as this teenaged pretender’s. And here he was, left with a banquet table for kings, something he looked at ten times a day, crowded now with plans and unsigned contracts, receipts, medical bills he’d pay just as soon as fricking hell froze over, wondering if he’d ever be able to pull a single leaf, store a single chair. She’d wanted hooks, a place to hang the chairs they weren’t using. He’d already started on them.
“Taz,” she says.
He looks down, sees her seated there, craning around to see him, glancing away. He’s holding the back of her chair in both hands, fingers knotted around the spindles, knuckles going white. “Oh good christ,” he says, and wonders what to say next, when Midge cranks, just the first roll in the crib.
“Damn,” he says. “The formula.” He leaps toward the bedroom as if for a life ring.
When he comes out, Midge pushing halfway away from his chest, turning out to the world coming at her, wispy blond hairs a fray, a flight, the girl sucks in her breath and says, “OMG,” and Taz just manages to breathe out, “You’re hired.”
She is smart enough not to hold her hands out for Midge, and once Taz deals with the formula, he settles in across from her, the two of them studying her. She says, “I’m not cheap.”
“All those tips to replace.”
She touches the tip of her nose with the tip of her finger. “Exactly,” she says.
He says, “I’m guessing I might not make as much as your tips.”
“Rudy says you’ve got friends who’ll help. Who’ll do anything for you.” She looks away. “You know, till you’re working again.”
Taz blinks as if he’s been slapped. “I—” he says. “It, it doesn’t really work that way here.”
She gives this kind of half shrug. “Maybe it will for a while. You know, if it has to.”
He shakes his head, says, “I suppose I better know your name.” Midge reaches, grabs a handful of his hair. He winces, works to free her fingers.
She smiles at his untangling. “Elmo,” she says.
Taz rubs at his eyes, looks at her, tries to focus. A fricking Muppet. What next? “Elmo?” he says.
“Last name’s Elmore,” she says, studying the table. “And with the hair.” She pushes a hand through the mass of her red hair. “Middle school, you know. It just kind of stuck.” She tries another smile. “Sure as hell beats Ginger.”
DAY 75
Half days Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. All day Tuesday and Thursday. They work it out. The details. Weekends as needed. He asks if she thinks she can handle the workload, with school and all. She stares at him a moment and says, “Weekends weren’t really optional watching my dad’s kids.”
“For free?”
She touches her nose with her fingertip.
The first day he has to ask her in, like she’s not sure if she should be there, if she might be interrupting something, maybe imposing. But when she sees Midge on her blanket, she goes down to her knees and talks to her as if they’re lifelong besties, gentles her up. Midge reaches for Taz, begins an uncommitted whimper, and Elmo shifts her to a hip, rocking slightly, says, “Oh, please, you’re not even trying.”
Taz has already taken a step toward them, but Elmo holds up a hand, says, “We’re fine.”
He stands back, begins to tell her of their routine, the daily ins and outs, but Elmo hardly seems to listen, and he goes quiet, watching her bounce Midge, just lifting up to the balls of her feet and dropping back down, up, down, like she’s been here since day one, and when Midge cracks into a wide, toothless grin, eyes alight, whimper forgotten, she twists around, turning her first smile toward this girl, and Taz’s knees nearly give out. He tries to say something, anything, but she has no idea, thinks these grins have been flashing across Midge’s face her whole life.
He manages, “I’ll just be out back, in the shop.”
She doesn’t take her eyes off Midge, grins back, widening her eyes even more.
“You can get me anytime, anything you need.”
Elmo gives him the slightest of glances, whispering something to Midge. He catches his name, and feels like he did in middle school, passing girls in the halls, catching their glances, snatches of their secret conversations. He closes his mouth over whatever else he might have said, all the rest of his directions, and walks away in freefall, retreating to his shop.
So that’s what it would have been like, he thinks. Every day. He and Marn taking their turns. Marn and Midge whispering about him, making their jokes.
He steps into his shop, suddenly surrounded by the hardness of wood, the bite of steel, surfaces to be smoothed, angles to make sharp, everything precision and function. He starts to close himself in, but then leaves the door open, as if he could hear her calling for him. Then he just stands for a minute, trying to remember why he is there, what’s to be built. He leans into his workbench, hands down on the maple as if it’s all that holds him up.
Taz says, “Cabinets,” and pushes himself up straight. “Marko’s cabinets.” He reaches for the clipboard, pulls it over, reacquaints himself with his drawings and measurements. Finally he picks out a piece of the reclaimed fir, the same bleacher boards he’d lifted for Marn, these bought and paid for, and pulls a tape down its length, and begins to calculate, avoiding the old bolt holes wherever possible. He will do all he can to make it shine, but knows that from the moment it’s in place it will show its every nick and gouge, its every bit of wear and tear. Just like anything.
He gets all the cabinet doors plotted, each rail and stile of the face frame, too, which piece from which length of wood, has placed the extra boards into his wood rack, has even set up the table saw for his first rip—this ancient cast-iron monster he has kept running from the days his father tore his rough-cut planking through it—before he can no longer stand it, before he turns back toward the house, has to see how Midge is, how this whole sorry Muppet experiment is flaming out.
He stops himself halfway there, one foot stepped out into air. He sets it down, stands in the middle of his yard as if dropped down by Dorothy’s cyclone, and forces himself to go back into the shop, double-check all his settings, hit the switch, listen to the saw whir up to speed. He finds his glasses, lines up the first board, and starts feeding it into the teeth, making something.
Taz finishes the first round of cuts, runs them through the jointer, sets up the planer to begin thinning the boards that will make up the panels, and only then does he brush off the sawdust, walk back to the house. He’ll say he’s only in for a drink, fill up a water bottle to back up his story.
But when he peeks around the back door, she’s standing in the kitchen, fiddling with the stove, Midge nowhere in sight. She’s in satin basketball shorts, something he hadn’t even noticed before. Jersey, too, tank top, number on the back: 00.
Taz, stopped dead in the doorway, wonders, what is she doing here, how did this happen? and she turns, as if he’s said it out loud. He wonders if he did, but she smiles, does her half-shrug thing. “I kind of thought maybe I’d make us something to eat. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Us?” he says, thinking he’ll have to let her know Midge isn’t quite on solids just yet.
She lifts her hand
s, waves them back and forth, the two of them. “But, um, you don’t really have much in the way of, you know, food.”
“Oh, yeah. I was going to do that with Midge later, after work.”
“Okay,” she says, and he remembers, says, “I just came in to get some water.”
She holds his eye for a moment, her smile growing, then glances around for a clock. Finding none, she says, “You made it a lot longer than I thought you would.”
He walks to the cabinet, reaches in for the water bottle. “Hot out there.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, still smiling.
He fills the bottle, caps it, starts back out.
“She’s on the couch,” she says. “Asleep.”
“Who?” Taz says, and Elmo just smiles wider.
He closes the door behind him, will never come back inside as long as she’s there.
DAY 85
A few raindrops sprinkle over Taz as he heads to his truck from Marko’s latest trophy house, and he looks up and stares, as if it’s manna raining down. It doesn’t last more than a minute or two, but in the mountains it’ll be snow, and the fires, when the smoke and the haze had come to seem a part of life, may finally die out, the world just a bit less apocalyptic.
He climbs in and starts up the river toward town, the water leaden under the overcast. He glances to his phone, rattling on the dash, needs to call Rudy, who he hasn’t seen in a week, more, not since the first day the babysitter started.
Rudy, who could ever tell? The international man of mystery, Marnie had called him. Just nobody home, Taz had answered. Marnie had given him a look, and he said, “He gets calls for work. Sometimes he forgets to tell anybody.”
“Work? Changing lightbulbs?”
“Tower technician,” Taz answered, but she knew that. “He doesn’t just change lightbulbs.”
“So, a little height. But, really, how can he always be available to work with you?”
“First,” Taz said, “fifteen hundred feet is not a little height. And it pays enough he can do whatever else he wants.”
“Like?”
“Fish?” Taz said. “Tear down our walls?”
“Well, I can see the attraction. Maybe I should apply.”
Guessing Rude’s been pulled away to another tower job, or something glam like cleaning bird remains from wind turbines, Taz pulls onto his street, slows for the turn up the drive, and sees Rudy back in his old place on the porch, giving a wave, like he knew he was about to call, saved him the trouble.
“Oregon?” he asks.
“Just Judith Gap. Oil. Grease. The migration, too. Some feathers. Guts.”
Taz pushes down the brake, climbs out, reaching back around for his tools. “They should be home,” he says, and starts for the porch.
“They?” Rudy says.
“Midge,” he says. “Your babysitter.”
“Mo?” Rudy says. “Got a bone to pick with you there.” Rudy swings open the door, leading the way in. “Honey, we’re home!”
“Who?” Elmo says, coming out of the kitchen. “Oh, you,” she says, and gives Rudy a nod. Midge watches from her blanket, reaches for Taz.
Rudy starts in, complaining about losing Elmo at the Club. “A little extra here,” he says, “fine, whatever. But I never thought you’d quit.”
Taz glances to Rudy. Quit?
Rudy pulls bottles from the fridge, pops caps, pushes one at Taz, another at Elmo, but she holds up a hand, says she’s got a paper to write. She tells Taz when the last feeding was, the last nap, and heads straight for the door, says, “See you tomorrow.”
Rudy watches her go, whistles when the door is closed. “You stole her fair and square,” he says. “Just like you did the first one.”
It’s their old joke, Rudy’s and Marnie’s, this whole glorious life they could have had together if she’d picked more wisely on the river that first day, but Taz just puts his bottle on the table, pulls Midge up from her blanket.
Rudy stops, takes a drink. “So,” he says. “You two getting along?”
Taz lifts Midge into the air, once, twice, mesmerized by her grin. “We’re good.”
“I mean you and Mo,” Rudy says. “The whole babysitter thing.”
“She’s—” Taz starts, then shrugs. “Midge thinks she’s found her long-lost sister.”
Rudy cartwheels his bottle over to the kitchen trash can. “So,” he says. “You tell your mom you found a younger model.”
Taz picks up his beer. “See how this works out first.”
Rudy looks to the floor. “You think it might? Work out? That you might let it?”
Taz pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m giving her a chance, Rudy. I am.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” he says, then, “If you want to strap in our little buckaroo, we could head to the Club. I could tell her stories about wind in the Gap, rocking through those turbines, that’ll curl her toes.”
DAY 98
Taz shuts down the power. Another row of rails and stiles line the bench, waiting to be cut to length, rabbeted, mortised, tenoned. Cherry this time. Whole banks of cabinets for Marko’s latest. An imitation Craftsman, in a dubious wood selection. Doing what he’s told, making ends meet.
When he looks up, Elmo’s in the door, Midge struggling away from her, shrieking so loud Taz can’t believe he didn’t hear her over the rip of the saw. Another round of the separation thing. Elmo tilts her head away from it, says, “I’m sorry, but she won’t stop.”
Taz brushes the sawdust off his shirt, the thighs of his jeans, the hair of his forearms, and walks to the door, reaches for Midge. In his arms, she takes one more stuttering breath and lets it go, a sigh, done. For now.
“I’m sorry,” Elmo says again.
“It’s okay,” Taz says, bounces Midge the way she does. He feels her reach, strain, and turns to see the attraction, that glittering, whirring blade. “Oh, jesus,” he says, wrapping her fingers tight inside his fist and stepping around Elmo, out into the air, finally crisp, like fall will come after all.
Behind him, she says, “I was making soup, and then she was just so done.”
Taz blinks. “You’re cooking?”
“Well, just soup, but . . .” she starts, then glances at him, away. “I kind of have been, you know.”
He looks blank.
“That food you find, it’s not some Rumpelstiltskin thing. Some gnome or whatever getting after the stove all night.”
Taz looks toward the house, the kitchen just through the back door.
Midge leans toward her, her latest, wanting to be with whoever doesn’t have her. Elmo starts to hold out her hands, and Midge pulls back to Taz.
“You have noticed that there’s been food in the house, right?” Elmo asks.
Taz thinks. “I was going—”
She lets her hands fall to her side. “You have been eating, right?”
“I, I just thought it was leftovers or something. I guess.”
She tilts her head. “Leftovers from what?” she says, almost a whisper.
“You’ve been cooking, buying stuff, filling the fridge?”
“The cabinets, too.”
Taz pats at his pockets, the wallet he never takes with him.
“Relax,” she says. “It’s part of the deal.”
“What deal?”
“Just, you know, part of the job, what I’m supposed to do when I’m here.”
“I’m hardly paying you enough for babysitting,” Taz says. “You can’t be buying my groceries.”
“Well, Rudy, we’ve . . .”
“Rudy? Rudy’s paying for my groceries?”
“Just for what I need to keep the place going.”
Taz bounces Midge as she reaches again for Elmo. “That was never any plan.”
“Just till you get your feet under you. He’s keeping a tally. All on the up-and-up.”
“This is just for a few hours here and there,” Taz says. “So I can get some work done.”
She gives
him a glance, starts to reach for Midge again, then looks away, over at the Karmann Ghia.
“Nice car,” she says eventually.
“That?” he says. It’s covered in dust, half-yellow maple leaves.
“A classic.”
The paint is oxidized, the bottoms of the doors rusted. If it starts, farting blue smoke, it shakes hard enough to rattle teeth. “Would be if it wasn’t falling apart.”
“Still, pretty sweet.”
“Want to buy it?” he says, an old line, but Marn jumps. I will kill you. Her pride and joy, for christ’s sake.
Taz clears his throat. “It’s not really for sale,” he says.
“I know somebody who’d die for it,” she says. “Myself, I’m not exactly in the classic car market.”
Taz swallows. “It’s really not for sale.”
Elmo sucks the corner of her lip between her teeth. Turns toward the shop. “It smells good in there,” she says.
“Your soup?”
“No. In there. The wood.”
“Cherry?” he says. “Beats oak, that’s for sure. But, fir . . .”
“Fur?”
“The wood in the house. Douglas fir. That smells good.”
“Really?” she says. She tilts her head toward the shop. “I just thought it was, you know, wood.”
Taz’s smile is maybe not completely forced. “Please,” he says. But he lets her take Midge before Midge has a chance to pull back, and steps to the shop and pulls a scrap of fir from the rack. He shows her the grain, tight straight lines. “This is old stuff, from the giant trees, old growth. Miles of it without a knot, straight as an arrow.”
She leans toward the board, takes a whiff, looks unconvinced, and making sure she’s got a hold of Midge, Taz cranks the table saw, runs the wood through the blade, can’t keep from smiling himself, the way Marn got after him for his love affair with fir.
Taz flips the saw’s switch, listens to it ratchet down.
“Now I see what you mean,” she says.
“Right?” he says. “You can’t not like that. Once I got this old stuff salvaged from a distillery in Tennessee. Big six-by-three beams, racks that used to hold the bourbon barrels, all notched and mortised. A ton of work just to cut it up enough to make anything out of it. But, when you cut it, man, the whole shop, it just filled up—whisky sort of, and butterscotch, vanilla. Used to want to cut it just to make the shop smell that way.”