Measuring Up

by Dan Robson

  “Careful,” she calls, walking by.

  I shake my head and get back to it. The saw whirls to life again. I pull it down—slowly, still—but fully through the wood, pushing the blade back across the width to complete the cut. I feel the tension release in my left hand. I let go of the trigger and slowly raise the blade.

  I stop to survey my work. A perfect line.

  Matt walks around the corner balancing three more pieces of trim. “You can cut these three at the same length,” he tells me.

  I used a pen to mark the line on the first piece of trim. I’m feeling self-conscious about it now as Matt looks at my work and I realize there’s a bit of ink still visible.

  Damn it.

  “I’ll get a pencil,” I say. “I used a pen, but maybe it’ll rub off—or we can paint over it?”

  “It’s okay. But is this the seventy-four mark?” he says, pointing to the still very visible line.

  “Yeah, this is seventy-four right there,” I say. “Or, a little more than seventy-four. Do we need it to be right on?” This feels as dumb as it sounds.

  “Yeah, you’re going to need to cut an eighth off that,” Matt says. “What I like to do is, in my mind I say, ‘I need to make that mark disappear.’ ”

  We measure and mark the length on the next piece of trim. I straighten the blade on the line and give it another push. The line turns to dust.

  “Beauty,” Matt says.

  “You’re pretty precise with that, eh?” I say. Again, it feels ridiculous as it comes out.

  That’s the benefit of a mitre saw, Matt tells me. The Skilsaw we used downstairs is better for cutting pieces of wood for the framing because it’s more of a rough cut. We can move around more easily on site with the smaller saw, he says. The table saw is more cumbersome. We’re confined to wherever we set it up. But it’s also much more exact. We can cut angles with it—like with outside corners, he says, where you have to make sure they are cut perfectly and everything lines up, or it’ll leave a gap. “With the table saw you can be back on down to a twenty-fourth,” Matt says.

  “If I knew what that was it would be impressive,” I say.

  Matt laughs. “A twenty-fourth is what machinists use.”

  It’s not much of an explanation.

  He walks away again, and I keep going. I try to run the tape lengthwise along the next piece of wood by myself, but it slips off several times. This works better with a crew: one measures, one cuts. Alone, it takes me at least ten minutes to cut a few pieces.

  Matt returns with more wood to cut, then leaves with the pieces I’ve finished.

  I get much steadier with the process. I find a rhythm. After about a dozen tries, I become quick and firm with each push of the blade.

  But the measuring tape still gives me trouble. And the thin trim keeps flopping when I lay it out across the table saw. The tape snaps back and rips towards me several times. As soon as I get it in place and am about to measure, it unclips and falls. This happens at least five times in a row—and all I can do is struggle with it and keep on going.

  Matt comes back up from the basement and I swallow my pride.

  “Hey man, can you just hold that end there?” I ask. “It keeps falling off.”

  He hangs on and watches me fiddle with the measurement. “Mark it with the other hand maybe,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I mumble. “I was going to…” I look up and realize he’s walked away from the other end of the measuring tape. He’s somehow clipped it in place.

  I line up my new cut and attempt to keep the speed and confidence going. I place the blade right on the piece of wooden trim without pressing the trigger to start it. When I do, the wood jumps up beneath the blade. I scrunch my face, and Matt sees me. We’ve already talked about this. He goes to say something, but I rev the blade and start sawing again, drowning out his voice.

  The wood drops to the floor. I shake my head and scratch my nose.

  It feels like it’s my father who’s been telling me how to do the job.

  “Hold it steady…”

  “Try again…”

  Again. Again. Again. Every time I try and fail, I can hear his voice. Not angry or impatient, but knowing. No matter how many times I try, I won’t get it right.

  I can’t hold it steady. I don’t know how. For the first time since we started, I want to quit.

  “Steady, buddy. Try again…”

  Matt turns his attention back to his own task.

  “All right, so I’ll pass these through the window?” I say casually, as if I hadn’t just cut him off with the blade.

  “Sure,” Matt says. “I’ll run down there.”

  He heads through the laundry room as I pick up the pieces of baseboard.

  “Ugh,” I sigh.

  * * *

  —

  When I join Matt in the basement, he hands me the nail gun, attached to the air compressor. He tells me to use the gun every sixteen inches or so to shoot two small nails into the baseboard, holding it in place. If you don’t hit a stud, just put it in on an angle, Matt says, so the nail will have a better grip in the drywall.

  I nail the baseboard pieces to the wall, roughly sixteen inches apart, as instructed. I’m not really sure if I hit the studs or not. But the pieces are holding.

  The corner poses a new challenge: we have to cut the pieces on an angle to make them join properly. The mitre saw turns on precise degrees, so Matt shows me how to shift the blade to a forty-five- degree angle. Then he holds the baseboard in place with his left hand while pushing the saw handle down with his right. His fingers are incredibly close to the blade as it cuts through the wood.

  As the cut piece of baseboard falls to the floor, Matt sees the concern on my face. “I’m not afraid, really,” he says. “So, there’s our forty-five.”

  Easy enough, it seems. But we’re not done.

  The forty-five-degree cut has revealed the contour of the baseboard’s profile. Matt picks up one of Dad’s saws that looks like just an enormous handle with a thin grey blade sticking out of it. A jig saw. The blade moves up and down rapidly as he pulls the trigger. He runs it across the contour, trimming away a triangular offcut. This is supposed to allow the piece to fit tighter on the inside corners. I have no idea how the random cuts he’s made can possibly do that.

  He joins the new edge with the end of the other piece of baseboard, making a corner.

  “You just fill that,” he says, running his finger across the exposed end. “And it’s perfect.”

  “Perfect,” I say.

  But now it’s my turn.

  We have to move the saw from forty-five degrees on one side to the other side. We clamp a brace on the table to hold the wood in place. I have to cut away from me—so I push down and away with my right hand, bracing the wood with my left. The saw whirls to life. I hesitate just enough.

  “Oh, you have a little bite here,” Matt says, pointing to the small nubby in the edge of the wood. “Hit it again.”

  I try again, but miss the wood completely. One more time—I have to nudge the wood over. This time sawdust flies. The nubby is gone.

  “Right on,” Matt says.

  But now I have to cut the edge, which seems much more complicated as I hold the saw in my hand.

  “You just have to follow this line all the way,” Matt says, running his finger across the decorative ridge at the top of the baseboard. “It might be easier to go in at an angle.”

  I move around and line up with my left hand, which feels like an odd way to start with a saw I’ve never used before.

  “Just take it nice and slow,” Matt encourages. “Make sure you’re going straight and right along this line.”

  The saw sputters as I start it, pushing forward—but halts about a centimetre in.

  “Keep going,” Matt says.

 
I push further and it sputters and stops and then jolts forward, ripping up a puff of sawdust.

  “Nice and slow,” Matt repeats. “There you go. The easiest way is to just hit it from this side now.”

  I move to the other side, switching the saw to my right hand and readying myself to cut through the ridge. But when I try to cut the shorter angle slowly, the blade begins to sputter and jump again. I flip to the other side, on my left, to try and get the final ridge. Matt says something about how there are mitre saws you can buy for $15, but that the one I’m using is way more expensive and professional. I nod—and then bump and bumble with the saw through one last cut.

  “That’s it,” Matt says. “Perfect.”

  I’m dubious.

  “Is that notched enough?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says.

  “This part too?” I ask, rubbing the longer butchering job I did.

  Matt grabs the other piece I cut and holds them together at a ninety-degree angle, making a corner with the baseboards. “That’s going to be a nice finished joint,” he says.

  “Perfect.”

  He leaves me to take on the rest of the baseboard pieces alone. I line up the first forty-five-degree cut, trying to decide whether I’m actually on the line or beside it, and not really confident that I know either way. I move the saw up and down a few times, seeing where it lands—and continue to hesitate. I look up and down the piece of baseboard, as though it will provide an answer. I put my hands on my hips and look out across the court. It’s a sunny afternoon. There are birds chirping. I sigh.

  “Shit,” I say. “Ugh.”

  Then I pull the saw back to the centre, take a deep breath, and press down. The end of the baseboard falls to the floor.

  When I pick it up, I realize that I’ve cut the wood on the wrong angle and to the wrong length. It’s a truly incredible failure.

  Start again. It takes a couple more attempts to get it. When I finally have it figured out—the right length, the right angle—I try cutting out the edge with the jig saw, just like Matt showed me. I fiddle with the jig saw and the wood for a minute, but I’m afraid to ruin the work I’ve done already, so I pick a piece of scrap to practise one more time. The wood bounces around again as I saw into the edge. I toss it on the floor in disgust.

  Twenty minutes later, I’ve successfully sawed and notched out a single piece of baseboard. I deliver my masterpiece downstairs.

  “Let’s see the expert cut,” Matt says.

  I lay the piece against the corner I’ve been trying to complete. It nudges out just beyond the edge of the wall.

  “Too long?” I ask.

  “Perfect,” Matt says. “I never should have doubted you.”

  “Perfect,” I repeat, unsure. “Is it perfect?”

  “Let’s line it up with the other piece,” Matt suggests. He takes the adjacent baseboard for the corner and sets it in place. He pauses. The piece I cut extends just beyond it. “It’s a little long,” Matt concedes. “By an eighth. You could shave a bit off.”

  He’s trying to be encouraging.

  “Just disappear that line and it will get you right on this corner,” he says. “It’s like pretty close to perfect.”

  “Thanks,” I huff.

  23

  I head back to the loft Jayme and I share in Toronto for the weekend, and it’s quickly apparent just how much I’ve neglected. There is so much work to do. The painting Jayme asked me to hang has been leaning against our concrete wall for months.

  She mentions that maybe it’s something I can finally get around to doing.

  Metaphors are rarely so neatly framed. While I’ve been trying to build something from my old life, I’ve completely forgotten the one we were building here. Meanwhile, Jayme’s been busy at work while planning our wedding.

  I’d had a designer make a custom ring, right before Dad died. I’d planned to tell him about my intention to ask Jayme to marry me over a round of golf on his birthday, which we would have been celebrating only a week afterwards.

  I ended up proposing to her on my parents’ anniversary, November 1, a month after Jenna and Tim’s wedding. It should have been an exciting step forward—a catalyst. But beyond the proposal, I’ve let everything else fall to her. We’ve set a date: October 1 in the coming year. She’s taken on every task it requires while I’ve been in my parents’ basement playing toolman. I figure it’s time to show her the value in what I’ve learned.

  Having bored through a brick wall and smashed through the foundation of a house, hanging a frame on a concrete wall will be simple. I packed Dad’s hammer drill in the truck to get the job done, intent on using it just the way he did when he installed the bookshelves that rise up next to where the painting is supposed to hang.

  It does not go as planned. No one is around, but I feel nervous. I stop and start several times. The drill fires up and bounces off the concrete even as I try to press into it with both hands.

  “Ah!” I shout in frustration.

  Henry, our miniature Goldendoodle, gets frightened and hides in the corner.

  I try again.

  Nothing.

  Steady.

  Piercing whine. Concrete dust. Another millimetre.

  Push with all your weight.

  I shout an expletive and push in again. Nothing—I barely move a millimetre.

  I look at the drill, checking to make sure it’s the right one, the one with the hammer. I’ve used whatever bit I could find that fits.

  “Come on…” I say.

  Hold it steady, buddy, straight—and push.

  Nowhere. And the drill stops. I swear again, softly, close to defeat this time.

  “The battery. Ugh.”

  Done.

  The dog shakes.

  “Henry, buddy, it’s okay.”

  I pack up the drill and lean the painting back against the wall.

  The next day I decide I’m ready to caulk our shower, which has been leaking down into our hallway for several days.

  I go out and buy a special blade to remove the old caulking and a new tube and a gun to squeeze it out with.

  I overdo it. There’s no consistency to my squeeze—no delicacy, no art. It looks like the excess glue on the popsicle-stick bridge I constructed in a competition in high school, which I decided could be held together by adding more glue than anyone else. I lost.

  My caulking is one long uneven blob, right around the base of the shower. It might be the most amateur job ever done. But nothing—not a single drop of water—will be able to seep through. I’ve stuck to my long-held belief that when in doubt, more is always better.

  “What are you going to write your next book about,” Jayme mocks, “caulking the bathroom?”

  “Yes,” I defend.

  She’s mad. It’s more than just the past couple of weeks in Brampton. It’s the last year of our life, which I’ve spent trying to take care of a house that isn’t ours. Trying to be my father, which is a role no one asked me to take on. And no matter how I try, I can’t replace him.

  The biography I’d completed after Dad died had been successful and earned decent enough royalties. It had taken everything I had to get it done. I dedicated it to him.

  “For my father, Rick Robson, a builder and a fixer. With me, always.”

  He would have been proud. I should have been thrilled.

  But I can’t feel joy in it. I don’t care about much beyond my anger that he’s gone.

  I’m upset because Jayme doesn’t seem to understand what I’ve lost. She wants to push us forward and for me to pull myself together. She either refuses or is incapable of understanding why I can’t. At least that’s how I view it.

  In reality, she was there the night he died and she stood by me for months, helping me finish the books that needed to get done, while still balancing her
own career with one of the best investigative journalism teams in the country.

  I remember when we first met, the year we were interns at the Toronto Star and we sat next to each other. I couldn’t focus on my work because I was enamored with everything she did. She rolled her eyes at me every time she caught me peeking over the cubicle. When she was sent to Cairo to cover the Arab Spring, I helped her get ready to leave, frantically running through all the things one is supposed to pack for an uprising. Her flight was just hours after she’d been given the assignment. It was a huge opportunity for her—the kind you don’t turn down—but we were both still interns, both still scared. As we waited for a cab to take her to the airport, she turned to me and said, “I want you to know that I love you.” It was the first time that either of us had said that.

  I didn’t hear from her for nearly a day after she landed. It was rather busy in Tahrir Square. But I kept refreshing my e-mail, waiting to see her words. I kept swallowing, swallowing. Finally, a few rows away in the newsroom, I overheard an editor repeating copy about the rising demonstrations as she took dictation over the phone on a headset. I walked over and interrupted.

  “Is that Jayme?” I asked the editor.

  She looked up from the phone, confused by the intrusion on deadline. Very few people knew that Jayme and I were seeing each other at the time.

  “Yes,” the editor said, shortly.

  “Tell her I say hi.”

  She looked back at the copy on her screen, newsroom body language for go away now.

  “Dan Robson says hello,” she repeated into her headset.

  There was a brief pause while the editor continued typing.

  “Jayme says hi back,” she said.

  I smiled and walked away.

  I love you too.

  We built our life together over the next half decade, supporting each other through shared dreams and embarking on global adventures.

  This was the second half of me—the part that was supposed to have it all figured out. But I’d fallen apart on her.