Tulipwood

by Barry Rachin

  "What's that for?" Frankie gestured at a can of silicone spray that Kendra waved over the slot saw.

  "The slippery silicone lubricates the metal teeth so there's less chance of the wood seizing up in the middle of a cut."

  "What if the blade grabs the wood?"

  Kendra cracked a gritty smile. Rummaging around on the floor under the workbench, she located a badly shattered box with an amboyna burl lid. "If the slot cutter blade seizes up, you concede defeat and let go."

  She handed him the ruined box. The orangey wood was speckled with reddish-brown, black and gold highlights. "Amboyna burl is imported from the jungles of Cambodia. The sheet of veneer that came from set me back a pretty penny."

  Later that night at home Frankie could still picture the willowy woman hunched over the drill press, her elbows straight-jacketed against her slender waist. Just before she pressed the wood up against the slot cutter, Kendra filled her lungs with air. Listening to the mute language of the slot cutter blade as it blindly wormed its way through the black walnut casing, she didn't breathe again until the cut was complete. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck.

  * * * * *

  In September, Frankie returned to school. He dropped by the Lomax place a couple days after school. One afternoon as the boy was approaching the slate blue house, the front door opened and a middle-aged man bustled past him. Climbing into a Buick convertible, he slammed the door and drove off in a rage.

  Kendra was in the kitchen. A rather imposing tea box fashioned from red birch was resting on the counter alongside several sheets of flamboyant handmade paper. "I found these beauties," she said as soon as Frankie entered the room. "at the Rode Island School of Design."

  "Nice stuff!" Frankie gazed at a velvety, cream-colored sheets.

  "A slurry of twigs, leaves and flower petals are added to the moist pulp so that, when it dries, the paper has an organic, three-dimensional quality." She transferred a piece she had already cut to the top of the unfinished tea box. "I'm thinking of using the paper as the medallion to showcase the wood."

  Kendra had told Frankie on more than one occasion that 'presentation' was everything. The artisan needed some central theme or unique feature to draw the consumer in. "Yeah, I get it. The mint green and dark purple…that’s swell!"

  She lay the paper aside. "Of course, we can't use wood glue... too brittle" She was thinking out loud. "Maybe an acid-neutralized PVA."

  "What's that?"

  "Water-based white glue with a vinyl additive." She turned and smiled at the boy, a conspiratorial gesture. "Did you get a chance to meet Edgar's brother as he was leaving?"

  "He almost knocked me over."

  "Yes, well, the man was a bit upset." Kendra rolled the exotic, handmade papers in a bundle and fastened them with a pair of elastic bands. "He wants to put the house on the market… gave me thirty days to pack up my belongings and clear off the property." She sipped from a cup of coffee. "After he took sick, Edgar warned me that his family was a bunch of greedy bastards, and they might try some funny stuff. That's why he went to an attorney and redid his will; signed the property over to me, free and clear."

  "So the family can't kick you out?"

  Kendra raised her hands, palms up, and smirked impudently. "Not in thirty days, not in thirty years."

  For the second time since he met the hardscrabble woman with the unlovely features, the boy burst into tears. Kendra reached out and pulled him close. "I ain't going anywhere, so don't you worry."

  Only when he had gotten his emotions back under control, did she gently pull away. "The Boxboro juried art festival is coming up next month."

  "Yeah, you already told me." Frankie blew his nose and dabbed his cheek with the back of a hand.

  "Well, I sure could use an extra pair of hands and I'm willing to pay."

  "Okay."

  "I'll need someone to sand and finish, while I get the rest of the inventory together. Can't afford to pay you much better than minimum wage, but - "

  "Yeah, I'll do it. When can I start?"

  "Unless you're planning another emotional meltdown," Kendra tucked the red birch tea box under her arm and headed for the basement, "you can get to work now."

  * * * * *

  Later that night, Frankie told his mother about his new, working relationship with Kendra Ryder. "So everything's going good over there."

  "Yeah, real good."

  "You staying away from the power tools?"

  "She lets me use the stationery belt sander but that's pretty safe."

  "Good." His mother wet her lips. "Your father called from the office. He won't be coming home tonight."

  "Okay."

  Frankie turned to go, but his mother brought him up short. "I suppose he's spending the night at his girl friend's place." Her voice was devoid of anger, no hint of bitterness. "So it will be just the two of us for supper."

  He eyed her uneasily. "You're not going to drink, are you?"

  "No, not tonight." The woman pursed her lips and gazed pensively out the bay window. "I still care about your father but he's all mixed up."

  "What if he wants a divorce?"

  "That will be his choice to make," his mother replied evenly. "At some point he'll have to choose. I don't want to look back twenty years from now and discover that our happiness was held hostage by a man who put his own needs before those of his family. Either way, we can make a life."

  They ate supper alone. Somehow it didn't feel so bad. Frankie sat in the kitchen while his mother did the dishes. "Don't you have homework?"

  "Already did it."

  Frankie's mother squirted a stream of dish detergent into the sink. "Be nice to the Ryder lady." She was facing away when she made the odd remark, and Mrs. Dexter blurted the handful of words with an abrupt severity that caught the boy off guard. He stared open-mouthed at his mother's backside. "I want you to be nice to the lady who lives at the Lomax place," she repeated.

  "Why wouldn't I be," he stuttered. His mother reached for the sponge and began scrubbing a Pyrex baking dish. He waited. After Mrs. Dexter finished the dish, she washed the rest of the plates and rinsed the sink. Approaching the kitchen table, she cupped her son's face in her moist hands, planted a kiss on either cheek and said, "I gotta throw a load of laundry in the dryer."

  Frankie went upstairs and took a shower. Then he got in bed with his tulipwood. He had already used up the old piece and Kendra sliced him a new one off a three-foot slab. He scuffed the surface and raised the pungent wood to his nose. Yes, that was better.

  Be nice to the Ryder lady. What the hell did his mother mean by that moronic remark? Kendra was the nicest goddamn person he had ever met! No one had to tell him to be kind, or generous, or decent or anything! Frankie felt a lump growing in his throat. He scratched the sassafras a half dozen times for good measure, rolled off the side of the bed, went and found his mother in the laundry room. "The Ryder lady,… why did you say what you did?"

  Mrs. Dexter had finished with the dryer and had moved over to the ironing table. She added a cup of distilled water to the steam iron and raised the temperature to the cotton setting. "I forgot that Kendra volunteers over at the library and ran into her when I returned some books earlier today." She pressed down on the steam button and a puff of watery vapor burst from the sole plate. "Anyway, we got to shooting the breeze the way women do and one thing led to another."

  Frankie's mother spread a plaid, perma-press blouse over the nose of the ironing board and made a tentative pass. "Well, the conversation turned to a certain fifteen year-old boy and she kept going on and on about what a swell kid you were." Finishing with the blouse, she grabbed a pair of black slacks. "Then the woman goes all mushy on me and confides how she and Edgar Lomax were planning to start a family of their own right before he took sick and how she looks at you almost like the son she never had." Only now did the woman set the iron aside and look her son full in the face. "I'm only sharing this because you forced the issue. What I'm telling y
ou goes no further than this room."

  "Kendra… she really said all that?"

  His mother turned back to the ironing. "No further than this room, mind you!"

  Still later that night while teetering on the cusp of sleep, Frankie tried to reconcile the notion of the utterly fearless, taciturn female hunched over a slot cutter chucked into a drill press lumbering at six-hundred rpm's and the mushy volunteer at the Brandenberg Public Library.

  * * * * *

  Kendra had signed on for a couple of local craft fairs. The third Sunday in October, Frankie helped load the rust-pocked Dodge Caravan and spent the day watching her greet customers and sell merchandise. As Kendra explained it nobody bought the big stuff. The elaborate, mixed-media tea boxes and multi-drawer jewelry cases sold reasonably well through the chic galleries on Cape Cod and Newport but were outside the price range of the average craft fair shopper. "They usually stop to ogle the really fancy stuff and admire the workmanship, then settle on a smaller keepsake."

  She also set out items each show as a 'lost leader', cheaper items she sold for cost and never really brought in any profit. The sign over a hexagon-shaped ring box fashioned from bird's-eye maple read:

  Clearance Sale!!!

  Ten dollars while they last!!!

  A dozen or so ring boxes were spread out on the table. "Customers view the ring boxes as a solid bargain so they grab them up. Meanwhile, more people crowd under the canopy to see what all the fuss is about, and medium-priced items start flying off the table. Even if I lose a few bucks on the ring boxes, I recoup the loss twice over on pricier stuff that gets tacked onto the initial sale."

  Kendra gestured with a flick of her eyes at a lanky older man sitting on a director's chair next to a tent full of watercolors. "That jerk isn't going to sell crap!"

  "How can you be so sure?"

  Kendra smiled at a woman pushing a baby stroller past her booth. The woman nodded amiably but didn't slow down. "You see how the sourpuss sits with his nose buried in the newspaper?" Sure enough, the fellow was leaning back in his chair, ignoring the customers streaming down the walkway. The artist's expression was sullen, disinterested. "Customers aren't stupid. They can tell when a vendor is giving them the holier-than-thou cold shoulder." Kendra waved a hand emphatically in the air. "By five o'clock, you will be able to count the number of sales that fool has made on the fingers of one hand."

  A young woman approached and was staring at an unusual box with green, gold and black highlights. "That's paldao," Kendra explained. "The wood is harvested from the jungles of Indochina. It's a dangerous wood to harvest, and most natives won't go anywhere near a paldao tree."

  "Why is that?"

  "Boa constrictors."

  The woman flipped the lid up then ran her fingertips over the crushed velour interior. "You're joking." Kendra grinned and shook her head slowly from side to side.

  The woman left but returned an hour and a half later. "About that tree and the snakes… you were pulling my leg, right?"

  "The boas hang from the trees searching for prey; the natives, who are animists and believe in voodoo, are terrified of the snakes. The logging companies had an awful time finding loggers willing to go into the jungles and cut down the trees." The woman promptly pulled out her wallet and paid cash for the paldao box. By closing time Sunday night, Kendra had pocketed fifteen hundred dollars. Peeling five twenty dollar bills off the roll, she handed the money to Frankie. "What's this for?"

  "Your take. Now help me break down the tent and pack up all this crap so we can get home."

  * * * * *

  Saturday morning the phone rang. "Hello, son, is your mother there?"

  Frankie went upstairs. "Dad's on the phone."

  Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Dexter fixed herself a cup of tea, went out to the retrieve the newspaper that the paperboy flung in the bushes and sat down at the kitchen table. "Apparently it's not going so hot with your father and Phyllis."

  Frankie cringed. This was the first time his mother had ever mentioned the 'other woman' by name. His father moved in with her six months ago. They hadn't been getting along for the past three. Over the weekend the girlfriend threw him out, and Mr. Baxter had taken a one-room efficiency apartment at the Motel 6. Now he wanted to come home.

  "What now?"

  "I told your father that, in his absence, things had changed… we had moved on with our lives." She ran a poised finger around the rim of the cup. "I explained that, if he came back, there would be no more nastiness, no more hurtful bickering." Opening the newspaper to the editorial page, she scanned the offerings. "I also explained that I wouldn't tolerate any more deceitful hanky-panky. The next time he screws up will be his last."

  Later that afternoon, Frankie's father returned dragging an overstuffed Pullman suitcase. He looked tired, bedraggled like a beaten dog. Mrs. Baxter was civil and courteous. She even fixed him a roast beef sandwich on sourdough bread with a slice of pickle and can of diet Coke. She didn't make a big deal about his arrival. He wasn't the prodigal son or some long lost relative. She didn't berate him or rub salt in his middle-aged wounds. What his mother said earlier in morning as she leisurely thumbed through the Brandenberg Gazette was true; in his absence, things had changed.

  * * * * *

  The first week in December, Frankie stopped by the Lomax place. The door was open but the basement was empty. He glanced in the bedroom. Kendra was lying under the comforter with a box of Kleenex balancing precariously on her chest. "What's the matter?"

  "I gotta bad cold. Bronchitis."

  The boy placed a hand on her forehead. "You feel hot."

  "I was up to a hundred and three last night, but the temperature came down since then."

  "What about the Litchfield Christmas Fair?"

  "I dunno," she said listlessly.

  Frankie went and sat on a chair in the far corner of the room. "You got food?"

  "Yeah, I went to the market just before I got sick. There's plenty to eat… just can't keep anything down, that's all." The woman coughed spastically, blew her nose and lay silent. Five minutes later, Kendra Ryder began snoring softly. On the night table was a framed photo of Edgar Lomax. Heavyset with a dark beard and plaid flannel shirt, the unsmiling hulk of a man resembled a backwoodsman from the hills of Appalachia. This was the man who taught Kendra Ryder to cut finger joints, miters, dovetails and mortises. This was the man who died before he could give the woman what she wanted most in the world.

  Frankie went home and told his mother what had happened. "When is the Litchfield Fair?"

  "This coming weekend. It's an indoor event at the art center. The booth fee was two hundred dollars."

  Mrs. Dexter groaned. "Maybe she could tell them what happened and get a refund."

  "It's a fancy-schmancy, juried art show," Frankie explained. "By invitation only… no refunds."

  Mrs. Dexter blew out her cheeks. "Tough luck!"

  Thursday Frankie's mother came into the bedroom as he was climbing under the covers. "How's the Ryder woman doing?"

  "Much better, but she's still too weak to work the fair." He breathed out heavily making a disagreeable sound. "She spent the whole month making inventory for the show, and now she'll have to eat the loss. What a waste!"

  His mother picked up a pair of Dockers slacks, folding them on the crease. "You know how to manage the booth, right?"

  "Yeah, but each crafter has to set up, greet customers, track sales … "

  Mrs. Dexter hung the slacks in the closet and turned to face her son. "I told your father about the Ryder woman taking sick, and he suggested that, if she got permission from the sponsors, maybe we could manage the booth in her absence."

  Frankie's brain flickered, momentarily dimmed then grew white hot again. "I can sell. That's no problem as long as somebody helps bagging, collecting the money and sales tax."

  "What's Kendra's telephone number?” Mrs. Baxter shuffled to the door. “I'll call over there now and let her know."
/>   When his mother was gone, Frankie reached under his pillow and fingered the milky white shaft of Brazilian tulipwood. He ran his over the surface of the redolent, ornamental wood - the talisman of a kinder, gentler universe – but left it where it lay.