by Pete Fromm
Taz straps Midge into the truck, heads home. She sleeps straight through the nights.
Elmo texts when she’s done, and they stand on the sidewalk, admiring. Midge in the truck, asleep. He holds his breath, prays she won’t say, “I do good work.” She does, though, Marn says, all quiet.
“The paint’s still a little wet,” she says. “It won’t be quite that shiny.”
He lets his breath out. “It looks good.”
“It does,” she says. “Thanks.”
They stand looking. “That bathroom next?” he says.
She shakes her head.
“Really?”
“We can’t work for free. Either one of us.”
“Wasn’t much work. Didn’t take me away from any paying jobs.”
“We’re not renovating this place.”
He glances to her. Arms folded across her chest. Lip caught between her teeth. The freckles. “If anything,” she says, “we do yours. Spare-time stuff only.”
DAY 275
Another week without work, she won’t let him get out of it, keeps hammering about his bathroom, claims she wants to learn, that she liked working on the porch, liked working for Tazmo and Rude, wants to be able to fix her own place, waving off toward some invisible future. And, almost before he knows it, his bathroom—Marnie’s bathroom—is gutted. Studs. Nail holes. Plaster dust. A faded red rag plugging the waste hole. Tub plumbing sticking up, bent.
Elmo, at the very end, picks up one huge sliver from the old pine subfloor. Shoved up under her fingernail. He has to leave the room. It’s not the finger. He’s seen more slivers, more torn and beaten fingers, than he can count. But her face. Tears in her eyes. Shock. The disbelief.
Marnie. At the end.
He comes back, still shaking. Apologizes. Asks if she can afford the clinic. If she wants him to take it out himself.
She raises an eyebrow. “Health service,” she says. “On campus. It’s free.”
He drives her over, just the three blocks. Wonders if he can enroll.
Next day she’s back, big white bandage the size of a plum on the end of her finger. She points it at him, croaks, “E.T. phone home.”
He smiles, like he knows he should, and she says it doesn’t even hurt, that she’s good to go. She asks what’s next.
“Work,” he lies. “Marko called.”
“Well, that’s great and all,” she says, “but, um, where’s a girl going to take care of business around here?”
“What?”
“The toilet? The sink? You’ve got no bathroom.”
“Oh. That.”
“Well, yeah,” she says, laughing. “I mean, hello? It’s kind of like, a nice thing to have.”
He starts toward the kitchen, waving her along. “Ever been to the basement?”
“The basement?”
“It’s kind of through the broom closet.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, like Hogwarts kind of.”
He swings open the first door, wriggles through to the second, pulls the light chain, the bare bulb swinging, then the turn, the steep, open treads, another swinging lightbulb at the base.
“This is so not like Hogwarts,” Elmo says, right behind him.
When they reach the bottom, she looks around, almost on top of him. “You know,” she says, “there isn’t a single person in a single horror movie who’s ever made it out of this place.”
“And nobody believes you just followed me down here. They were all screaming, ‘Don’t do it! Don’t go down there!’”
She grins, her hair like blood in the dim, swaying light.
“So, anyway,” Taz says. “The throne.” He leads her around the stairs, an old American Standard plunked down on the dark concrete, a blackened floor drain nearby, a crusty six-inch-wide showerhead plumbed in above it, wiring and piping threaded through cross-braced joists.
“Are you serious? Just sit down here on that and wait for Jason to plant a cleaver in me?”
“I know it’s not deluxe, but—”
“Deluxe?” She breaks out laughing. “You’ve got to promise me, right now, that you will never, ever take Midge down here. She won’t potty-train till she’s forty.”
“It’s just till we get—”
“Nope, me neither. No way I’m dropping my bonbon on that down here.”
“Drop your what?” Taz says.
“You heard me. You get one of those porta-potty deals if you have to, or, I don’t know, just bring the old toilet back in and hook it up, till you’re ready to roll again.”
“El, I’ve showered here before.”
“Showered!” she says, all but shrieking. “Like, you took your clothes off down here! Are you out of your freaking mind?”
Laughing, Taz follows her to the stairs. “It’s just a basement,” he says.
Elmo’s already on the stairs, climbing up. “Just a basement like Gitmo is just a beach resort.”
Following her up the stairs, he says, quietly, “Your bonbon?”
She whips around, her finger an inch from his nose. “Total,” she says, “violation.”
When they step out of the broom closet, they hear Midge from her crib. “Mo? Mo? Mo?”
DAY 305
He brings the old toilet back in, some three-eighths ply to get it back up to height. She inspects, asks about the sink, about basic hygiene, and he says, “The one in the kitchen?”
“Why don’t we just finish it? How much time would it take to put walls in?”
“And wire and plumb and tape and mud and tile and paint and trim and—”
She holds up her hand. “All right, all right. For now. But weekends, we finish this place.”
“If I have weekends.”
“Don’t even pretend. And don’t you dare mention that basement again.” She gives a stage shiver, mutters about still not believing he actually took his clothes off down there, lived to tell about it.
A month passes with no more work in the bathroom, Taz avoiding it, Marn everywhere. Even those first weeks, crowding in with Lauren, trying to figure out Midge, feel like something he can’t lose. Real work caught up to him, he says, though, in truth, there’s been precious little of that, Marko still framing, any finishing long weeks away. But she’s done with school. Only student teaching left. He pays her, every week, never forgets, wonders, sometimes, if that’s the only reason he works, to pay her. But the little nest egg is turning into more of a goose egg.
He can hardly force himself to look at it. That gutted waiting. He and Marnie’d done their bedroom first, Because, like, what else do we need? Then the whole front room, Midge’s room, all at once. “One fell swoop,” she kept calling it. “Well, time to head into the swoop.” They’d slept outside on an air mattress, away from the dust. Didn’t set up anything permanent. “If we do, we’ll never move back in,” she said. Showering together in the grungy tub, its makeshift shower, scrubbing the dust and dirt out of each other’s hair. Out of every single pore. Tended to scrapes, slivers. Aching muscles. Hours on the leaking mattress. Every single muscle and tendon, nerve and synapse.
Everything he and Elmo had torn out.
Pulling down the plaster in the bath, the lath, it hadn’t hit. Only afterward. Their whole house like that, every morning when they’d creep into the kitchen, stand beneath the stare of her smiley face, pull back the Visqueen and stand with their coffee, surveying the swoop, what they’d done the day before, what still lay before them. Like adventurers, standing on the edge of a new continent. Same as they’d looked at her belly, trying to see if it showed yet. Later, when there was no denying. No wish to.
This was their place. Theirs.
He hadn’t recognized that until he saw Elmo on her knees with the sliver, eyes wide, holding one hand so tight with the other. Unable to believe what had just happened to her.
Marnie’s eyes so wide. Clutching his hand like it would have to break. As sure as the rest of him was breaking. So unable to believe what was h
appening to her.
The day after Elmo’s sliver, the toilet returned to its place on the subfloor, the dust vacuumed as much as it could be, he threw his tool belt into the truck bed, left Elmo and Midge waving on the porch. Took the right turn at the end of the block, but then, out of sight, cut out of town, climbing up onto the highway. Like he was having an affair.
It’s only a bathroom, Taz, Marnie said. Really. That’s all.
He veered onto the empty state road, again off onto the dirt, the two track, down to the river, the bank of their chokecherries. Peeled off his clothes. Carefully. Almost folding them. Stacking them. Slipped into the water.
He didn’t think he’d ever go upstream again, the desolation around their pond. He wondered if the beavers survived, if they could just hole up in their lodge, wait it out in the darkness, the creep of smoke through the tangle of sticks their only clue as to what was taking place outside.
He worked his way around the eddy, pushing toward the true pull of the current. Wondered about building his own lodge. Mud and sticks, a hidden underwater entrance. He dove, looking for it, the light going dim, mottled, the sound cut to only a rushing gurgle. When his air gave out, he blew back up, into the world, the glaze of sun, the touch of breeze, the tumble of water.
What are you doing, Taz? Marnie asked.
He broke through the eddy line, and put his face down and started to swim, as hard as he could, straight into the teeth of it, sprinting at first, gaining ground, then settling into a steady pull, finding his pace with the river, swimming against it until exhaustion took over and it nudged him away, back to their spot, and he rolled onto his back, the brightness biting, and took two more pulls, his arms slack, slapping against the surface, pulling himself through the line, into the quiet water, where they’d circled and circled.
Taz, she whispered. It’s okay. Go ahead and finish it.
“I should have Midge here,” he said.
Yes, you should.
His feet touched bottom, he squatted, stood, glanced down at his farmer’s tan, his nakedness. “Jesus,” he whispered. Here on earth without her.
DAY 365
He’s come back ever since, whenever he gets a day. Never once leaves Midge behind. She squeals every time she sees the water. Pulling at her own clothes. Dying for it.
He calls Elmo, and he lies. Tells her he’s giving her a day.
Then, one morning, even though he’d called the night before, he finds her at dawn standing on his porch, ready to start.
“But,” he says, and she says, “What are you doing this for? These days off?”
“It’s just another install,” he says. “You know, teaching her a trade. So she can support me one day.”
She watches him.
He’s got a towel behind the seat of his truck now. A bag with fresh clothes for her. Diapers. Snacks. Where he used to carry a level. A tape. A hammer.
He’s afraid she’ll ask to come along, afraid she’ll say, “Tazmo and Rude?,” but she only says, “Don’t be all day. Okay?”
“No,” he says. “Of course not. It’s only a few doors anyway.” Then he looks at her, catches it. As if he’s leaving her here. As if she’ll stay.
“El?” he says. He wonders if she’ll work on the bathroom herself.
“Wherever it is you go,” she says, looking out the window, “just don’t stay there all day. Not today.”
He swallows. Blushes, he’s sure. How do people do it, he wonders. Lie. Cheat.
She purses her lips. Not in the good way. Disappointed? Disgusted?
“It’s just—” she starts, then looks away, anywhere but at him. “Man, I don’t know if you even know.” She runs her hand up through her hair. Does look at him. “You’ve got a birthday today. And the kid’s got to celebrate.”
Taz does know. He doesn’t. It’s what’s been creeping around the edges of his days, like something in his eye, that he can see, but not quite. He swallows. “I don’t know if—”
“Yes, you do,” Elmo says. “No matter how much you don’t want to.” She looks at him. “For her sake, you have to.”
“I—”
“Yeah. You, Taz. You have to be happy. If only for her sake.”
Taz holds Midge by the hand, ready to walk her out to the truck. He looks down at her.
“There are some people coming over,” she says. “Five o’clock. I’m making the cake. She’s going to make a mess of herself. She’s going to be the center of attention.”
Taz breathes in. Out. One year.
“And you are not going to be the black hole here.”
He wants to throw something at her. Make her go away. Disappear. He wants Midge to eat her cake. Both hands.
“How,” he manages.
“Rudy.” She looks straight at him. “Remember him? Your best friend?”
Taz nods.
She waves him toward the door. The back of her hand. “And then, tomorrow, we start rebuilding. The bathroom. Everything. No more stalling.”
“Aren’t you the babysitter?” he says.
“Yeah,” she says, “I am. And sometimes it feels like double fricking duty, okay?”
He takes a step backward, toward the door. Midge teeters, totters to catch up, free hand waving like a ropewalker’s.
“And, for christ’s sake, brush her hair when you’re done swimming. You know the knots it gets into?”
Taz gets a hand on the door. Holds himself up.
“Someday maybe we can all go. You two can show me this secret spot of yours.”
He just stands there, silent.
“Now go, and don’t come back without your party hat on.”
He steps onto the porch, lifts Midge over the stairs.
“I mean it,” she calls out after him. “Girl’s got her own place to cut in the world. Ghost-free.”
Taz is shaking. He swings Midge up, all the way, into his arms, and has trouble making it down the stairs, as if he’s carrying an anvil. He glances back, the gauze of her through the screen.
Elmo waves her hand, shooing him away.
“She’s not a ghost,” he manages. “She’s, she’s her mother, and she’s . . .”
“Gone,” Elmo finishes, a whisper, almost a ghost herself.
Taz shakes his head, says, “Don’t.”
“I’m just—”
“The babysitter,” he says, before she can say whatever it is she is going to say, and he can see the impact even through the screen. He’s gone off the porch before he can see one more thing.
They float in their river. He tells more stories, new installments. “She’s rounding the Cape of Great Hopes,” he says. “Last I heard, anyway, before she went out of contact. She may already be in Neverland. But she made me promise to tell you how much she loves you. More than anything in the whole wide world. Misses you even more.”
He rolls her over, so they’re chest-to-chest. “She had all the sails on, hair flying, huge dark clouds. It’s not an easy place to go.” He looks her in the eyes, which have darkened, just like hers. “She sends you thirty-two million kisses, one for each second since you were born. Some extras to help you grow.”
He tells her it’s her birthday. Tells her, again, what a swimmer her mother is. “If her ship goes down, no worries there. She’ll carry the whole crew with her.” He holds her out in the water. Works on her kick. Her stroke. Lets her go. She swims like a frog. She squeals when he lifts her back out. No idea how she knows to hold her breath, that one medium is not the other. He tells her, “Your mother, she won’t be one bit surprised to see how perfect you are.” He touches her nose. “Not.” Her chin. “One.” Her belly button. “Bit.”
They circle and circle together. Longer than they ever have. Pruned toes. Fingers.
As he dries her off on the truck seat, his phone lights up. Lauren. He doesn’t pick up. She doesn’t leave a message. He checks missed calls. Lauren. Twice. Elmo. Once. He does the diaper. Tickles her. Snaps the overalls.
He’s late, bu
t he drives back slowly. A hazard to what traffic there is, all the fisherman, the tubers. Marnie says, Step on it, buster. Then, more quietly, She was right, you know. You have to do this for our Schmidge.
There are no cars parked in the drive. Along the street. He says, “Midge, I’m sorry. I’ve ruined everything.” Marnie says, Unbelievable.
He pulls into the empty drive. Midge just waking up in the car seat, dressed in her fresh, practically new Goodwill bibs. No tee. Ready to party.
His phone vibrates. He glances. Lauren. He presses the Silence button. Marn says, You have to answer. I know, I know, but you have to. Midge is hers, too.
He works Midge’s seat belt. She yawns prodigiously.
He carries her up the walk. Swings back the screen. Pushes open the door. Steps through, swinging the baby seat in after him, clanking it against the screen.
They jump. They shout. Blow party things, those zipper deals.
Midge cries.
Everyone laughs, says, “Oh,” says, “Baby,” says, “Sorry,” says, “Beautiful.” Elmo steps forward, takes the seat from his hand, takes Midge out, soothes her. She reaches up, puts a party hat on Taz’s head, the elastic string catching in his hair. She says, “Haircut.”
Rudy blows a party horn at him, the coil stopping just short of his nose. “You made it,” he tells him. “One year.”
“We did,” he says. “We made it.” He watches Elmo move through the people, holding Midge. He’d been so afraid she’d be gone. The babysitter.
Surrounded by people. Some he’s sure he hasn’t seen in a year. Since the funeral. That party. Someone puts a beer in his hand. Rude maybe. They all want to talk to him. Ask him. How it’s been. How he is. All about Midge. Some he wonders if he’s ever even seen before. Elmo never comes near until she bumps him in the back with a shoulder, says, “Candles.”
She sits at the table, Midge in her lap before the cake.
Chocolate frosting so rich it looks nearly black. Knife-swirled peaks. The treacherous black waves off the Cape of Great Hopes.
Taz holds the flame close over the waves, gets the candles lit. They sing “Happy Birthday.” He wonders why there’s more than one candle.