A Job You Mostly Won't Know How to Do
Page 24
“Is that what she’s going to say?”
Elmo winces. “Walked into that.”
“El.”
“Well, what, you just think we should move in together, for her sake?”
Taz says, “Not just for her sake.”
He walks down the hall, opens the other bedroom door, waves her after him.
She sees the bed, the new mattress covered up by the blankets, the comforter. Rudy’s gigantic old bow on top. “Merry Christmas,” he says.
“You got me a mattress? For Christmas?” Elmo laughs. “Wow. I guess the whole princess phase is over. What next year? Tire chains? Vacuum cleaner?”
“I was thinking maybe a new kitchen.”
She eyes him. “And what, Taz? This new bed’s for me? And you’re going to sleep on the couch? Set up some cot or something? Some faithful dog nest at the foot of the bed?”
“No,” he says. He looks straight at her. “I’m thinking ahead here. About the future.”
“You and me?” Elmo says.
Taz touches her nose with the tip of his finger.
“I won’t do it for her sake,” Elmo says.
“That’s not what I meant, I—”
“I won’t even do it for your sake,” she says. “Only ours. The future’s.”
He smiles, lets out a breath. “That’s what I meant.”
“And I’m not ever pretending I’m her mother. Like, biologically speaking.”
“No. Just the woman who’s always been around. Always loved her.”
“And you.”
He swallows. “That would be good, too.”
“But you keep telling her about her mom.”
“Right,” he says.
“And let’s screw that princess stuff, okay?” she says. “Who really wants all that? The balls, the magic wands, those gigantic dresses. Pain in the ass.”
“We can just be peasants?”
“We,” she says, smiling.
DAY 1
EPILOGUE
“Tazmo and Rude has never done finer work,” Rudy says, and El stands up, stretches, the last of the hex tile in, just the grout waiting, moving in the gigantic cookie-making stove, the sink, all the cabinets out in Taz’s shop, gleaming, more stashed in Rudy’s garage.
“We deserve a break,” Taz says.
“Beer thirty?” Rudy says.
Elmo smiles. “That’d be good, but it’s pretty early.”
“God,” he says. “How old are you? Ninety?”
“Don’t you have shopping to do?” Elmo says, and Rudy gives her a blank, then a slow dawning.
“Right you are,” he says. “See you guys later.”
Taz watches him tear out the door, glances to Elmo, says, “What’s that all about?”
“Probably the same thing that kept you awake all night.”
He still can’t get used to it. How she knows everything.
“He’s getting the party stuff. I told him we had other birthday things to do.”
Gated off from the tile work, Midge calls, “I am two!” from the living room.
“Other birthday things?” Taz says.
“I think the water will be perfect,” she says.
Taz says he guesses so.
“So?” she says.
He nods, and she flips him a thumbs-up, says, “I’ll pack lunch.”
They don’t say a word to Midge about where they’re going. With the wind roaring through the windows, Midge’s hair a whirlwind, they hardly say a word to each other, a word at all, until they’re off the highway, the pavement. Taz rolls slow, not bouncing Midge the way she likes, but at the last turn she remembers. Her raven call is gone, but she smiles so wide it looks like it could hurt. Begins to bounce in her seat, the seat belt straining as she cranes.
They get out of the truck, and they’re not looking at each other. Quieter even than the ride out. They walk around the far end of the chokecherries, leaving no trail.
It’s like it’s always been. No new fires, no burns, no change at all. But everything is different. They stand back from the water, the slow circling of the big eddy. Elmo holds her cooler.
Midge takes off her own clothes. Doesn’t need help any more. Dances out of her pants. Peels back the Velcro ties of her dry diaper. Elmo starts racing her, clothes flying. The two of them, giggling, right at the edge of the water.
Taz says, “Wait for me.” Clears his throat. Says it again.
Midge turns to El, says, “Wait, wait, wait.”
Elmo sings, “Wait, wait, wait. He’s sooo slow.” And they laugh and start into the water together.
Midge shivers, draws her elbows into her ribs, her fists up to her chin. “Toady,” she says, though he thinks she knows how to really say it now.
El takes her hand and walks beside her, and Taz has not made a move to even take off his shirt. He just stands and watches. Wants it to last forever. Behind him, Marn whispers, You do good work, Taz.
Midge punches her feet into the water, one after the other, splashing. She tugs on El’s arm, says, “Swim!”
Taz stands in his sandals, his shorts.
Elmo dips under, stands back up, water streaming. Midge dunks, jumps back up, shrieking and laughing, two years old. He starts taking off his clothes.
When he’s done, he looks up to see Elmo just standing there, holding Midge on a hip, water thigh-deep, one eyebrow raised, checking him out. Behind them the eddy curls in, and the willows edge the far bank, the cottonwood, the mountains and ponderosa rising up, the canyon upstream.
“Ready?” he says, and Elmo says, “And waiting,” and so does Midge, and Taz dashes in and dives, the world gone to bubbles, to rush and silence and broken light, until he sees their arms, hands open and reaching down, ready to pull him back into the air.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With many thanks to Joe Millar, for years of friendship and for the poem that gave this story its title. Thanks as well to my agent, Gail Hochman, who found the right home for Taz and Marn and Elmo and Midge, and to my sister, Ellen, proofreader par excellence. And, finally, to Dan Smetanka, the kind of roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-to-work editor long rumored to have gone extinct. This story would not be the same without them.
© Emmanuel Romer
PETE FROMM is a five-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award for his novels If Not for This, As Cool as I Am, and How All This Started; the story collection Dry Rain; and the memoir Indian Creek Chronicles. He is on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program, and lives in Montana with his family. Find out more at petefromm.com.