by Ann McMan
“Are you doing it all yourself?”
“As much as I can. There are some things I can’t do—like wiring and plumbing.”
El laughed. “Right. I think you’ve demonstrated your lack of proficiency with plumbing.”
“Hey. That wasn’t just my fault. As I recall, you were present, too. Besides . . . I never said I wasn’t good at demolition.”
“That’s true.”
Fritz followed us onto the back porch. I held open the door that led inside to the tiny mudroom and the kitchen beyond. I was pretty proud of the kitchen. I had torn out the old one, which had really been more like a lean-to, and rebuilt it all from scratch. I scoured around for quite a while before finding old pine cabinet doors with unglazed glass windows at an estate auction in Fort Branch. They were narrow, tall doors that reached all the way to the ceiling. I had sanded off the rough spots but left all the various undercoats of paint showing through in places. They had, at various times, been painted yellow, blue, and white, and I decided I liked the muted patina of all three colors. The base cabinets were solid white. So were the appliances. I had refinished the pine floors, and they were now a soft gold color, speckled here and there with black dots left by the nails that had once held the old linoleum in place.
El was staring at the kitchen with an open mouth. “You did this yourself?”
I shrugged. “Mostly.”
She looked at the ceiling. “Is that real bead board?”
I nodded. “I pretty much had to do that. The old ceiling had those cellulose tiles, and they were pretty stained and awful looking. The roof used to leak back here . . . there was quite a bit of water damage above the dropped ceiling when I tore it out.”
El shook her head. “This is just gorgeous. How on earth did you figure out how to do all of this?”
“It wasn’t all that hard. It was mostly undoing what had been done over the years. I really just took it back to the way it likely was when it was built. I mean, except for obvious things like newer appliances and better wiring.”
“The countertops look like concrete.”
I smiled. “Good guess. I actually thought about that, but opted for quartz instead.” I ran the flat of my hand along one of the surfaces. “I didn’t realize that a lot of people have concrete allergies—not something you probably want to take a chance on in your kitchen. So I picked a color that looked a lot like cement.” I looked at her. “Once they were installed, I was afraid that maybe they looked too . . .” I didn’t know what word to use.
“Butch?” El suggested.
I laughed. “Exactly.”
“They don’t at all. They look perfect.”
“So I don’t need to hang my tool belt in here?”
“Do you have a tool belt?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
She seemed to consider that. “Not the last time I looked.”
I leaned against the sink. “What kind of union do you belong to, anyway?”
“Are we speaking literally or metaphorically?”
I smiled at her. “Yes.”
“Okay. I guess I belong to the I’m-not-a-real-straight-womanbut-I-play-one-on-TV union.”
I was intrigued. “So nobody at work knows you’re gay?”
“Tony knows. A few others do. I generally don’t advertise it all that much. It’s a lot simpler that way.”
“Forgive me for saying this, but you didn’t really try to disguise it when we first met.”
“You were different.”
My reflexive response to comments like that was to want to change the subject, but I didn’t. Maybe being on my own turf allowed me to feel braver and less tentative.
“What made me different?”
El looked amused. “Explaining that would be a longer conversation.”
“Longer than what?”
She glanced down at her soggy ensemble. “Longer than I want to have while standing here in wet clothes.”
I wasn’t at all sure if she intended for that to sound provocative. But to be fair, I had to admit that El could read from the Yellow Pages, and I’d probably think it was erotic poetry.
“I can take care of that,” I said. “Let me give you something else to wear.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Does it involve a tool belt?”
“Not unless you want it to.”
“I think I’ll pass.” She stared at me for a moment. “Okay, dry clothes would be great.”
“Follow me.”
I led her out of the kitchen and through the dining room toward the front of the house. It took me a moment to realize that she wasn’t keeping up with me. I turned around. She was standing in the middle of the dining room shaking her head.
“What is it?” I asked.
She gestured toward the floor to ceiling bookcases. “I suppose you’ve read all of those?”
“I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I told you they came with the house?”
“Really.” El walked over and pulled a fat book off a shelf. “Bondage of the Will?”
I shrugged. “I thought it was an S&M classic.”
El rolled her eyes. “Nice try.” She returned the book to the shelf. “This place just gets better and better.”
“I’m really glad you like it. Sometimes I think I’ll never get it finished.”
She gestured toward the row of oak chairs that were still missing their seat bottoms.
“What are those?”
I sighed. “I foolishly bought those, thinking I could learn how to re-cane the seats.” I pointed at the one I had been working on with Grammy. “You can see that I don’t have any real skill in this area.”
El went to examine it. “I don’t know . . . it doesn’t look too bad.” She tipped it over. “You just need to tuck these longer ends in better before you clip off the shorter reeds.”
I was dumbfounded. “Are you kidding me?”
“What?” She set the chair down.
“You know how to do this?”
“Of course.”
I had a hard time not blurting out the words, “Marry me.” How was it possible that El, a hard-nosed UAW agitator, knew how to do something this folksy and antiquated?
“How on earth did you learn to do that?” I asked.
She laughed. “When you grow up in a blue collar family with six kids, you learn how to fix things that are broken.”
“I guess I missed a lot being an only child.”
“I don’t know.” She looked me over. “You don’t seem to have fared too badly.”
“Now you’re just flattering me.”
She smiled. “Pretty much.”
There was that panicked feeling again. I wanted to kick myself. Here I was, finally, in my own home with someone who was smart, funny, high functioning, and, as far as I knew, unattached. And she seemed to be telegraphing her interest in me. And as if that uncommon combination of attributes wasn’t enough, she was drop-dead gorgeous, too. Things like this just didn’t happen. Not a Thursday night in Owensville, Indiana, and not ever to me.
Maybe T-Bomb was right. Maybe it was time for me to get my head out of my ass and do something about it. I took a step toward her.
“El,” I said.
“Friday Jill,” she said.
Then the phone rang.
I closed my eyes. It rang again . . . then again. There was something annoyingly familiar about the persistence of the rings. It could only be one person.
I sighed and walked to where the phone sat on my desk in the living room.
“Hello?”
“Hey? Friday?” It was T-Bomb. “You left your backpack at the VFW. I called your cell phone seven times until I figured out it was in the dern backpack. Luanne fished it out and showed it to me. I didn’t hear that stupid ‘Give Me Back That Filet-O-Fish’ ring tone goin’ off like crazy in there.”
“I know. I’ll get it from you in the morning, if that’s okay?”
“I was gonna ask if you needed me to pick you up
. I figured El DeBarge wouldn’t drop you off at Hoosier Daddy since you don’t have your keys.”
“No. She brought me home.”
“She did?” She tried to muffle the speaker on her phone while she talked to somebody else. “El DeBarge took her home,” she whispered.
I sighed. “T-Bomb?” There was no answer. “T-Bomb?”
“What?” she asked.
“I can hear you talking to somebody. Who’s there with you?”
“Well, dern,” she said. “It’s just me and Luanne. Is El DeBarge still there with you?”
“Yes.” I saw no reason to lie to her—she’d probably just drive by the house to check if I said no.
“El DeBarge is still there,” I heard her whisper.
“T-Bomb?” I called out. “You don’t need to whisper. I already know Luanne is there.”
“Hey?” She was back on the line. “Luanne wants to know what you two are gonna do with that sink?”
“Why? Does she need one for something?”
“Yeah. She says that Jay’s been wantin’ one to put on the back porch for cleanin’ fish.”
I sighed. “Tell her she can have it.”
“She says the post commander was hoppin’ mad when he saw that bathroom.”
“I know. We’re going to pay to get it all fixed.”
I heard muffled talking in the background again.
“Hey?” T-Bomb continued. “She says to tell you that your Grammy won that dern swimmin’ pool.”
“She did?” I was shocked. It was hard to imagine Grammy with an above ground Esther Williams pool. Although I figured Fritz would probably love it.
“Yeah,” T-Bomb said. “But she don’t want it. She traded with Ermaline.”
“What did Ermaline win?”
“Them garden gnomes. But she said they already had a set, and she really wanted that swimmin’ pool.”
I was confused. “What’s Grammy going to do with a set of paramilitary garden gnomes?”
T-Bomb cackled. “Nothin’. She traded them with Wynona Miles, who got the free anal gland thing from that place out in Poseyville. She don’t have a dog no more since Buddy got hit by that bookmobile last year.”
I’d had about enough of this conversation. “I’m hanging up now, T-Bomb.”
“Hey?”
“What?”
“Tell that El DeBarge you snore!”
I could hear her laughing as she hung up her phone. I held the receiver against my chest for a moment before returning it to its cradle.
El was watching me with an amused expression. She’d been standing near my desk, looking at one of my business law textbooks.
“T-Bomb,” I explained.
“I gathered as much,” she replied.
“So. About those dry clothes . . .”
She nodded and put the book down. “Right behind you.”
She followed me across the living room and up the stairs that led to my bedroom. Fritz trotted along behind us. I noticed that he was sticking pretty close to El’s heels.
My house was really just a story and a half. The upstairs area housed only one bedroom and a small bathroom. But the space was homey and inviting with a bank of three windows that overlooked the street in front of the house. I actually had another bedroom on the main floor, but that one I kept set up as a guest room. It was important for me to have a space that might be suitable for Grammy, if she ever got to the point that she didn’t feel comfortable staying alone out in the country.
El looked around the room with interest.
“I like this,” she said. “It’s very spare. Almost Amish.”
I laughed. “Amish? Is that code for undecorated?”
“No, smartass. I meant it as a compliment. I really like the simplicity of the colors and the furniture.”
“Well, Grammy gets the credit for that. This was all her stuff.” I pointed at the bed, which, mercifully, I had remembered to make up that morning before I left the house. “The quilt was made by her mother. That’s partly why the colors are so faded.”
“It’s beautiful.” El looked at me. “I like your house. It’s a lot like you.”
“A work in progress?” I asked.
El shook her head. “No. Open. Uncluttered. Balanced.” She smiled. “Smart. Nice to look at.”
I knew I was blushing. “Thanks. Although I don’t know of anyone else who would say my life is uncluttered.”
“I wasn’t talking about relationships.”
“Neither was I.”
“That’s good to know.”
“How about you?” I asked.
She looked confused. “What about me?”
“Is your life uncluttered, too?”
“Oh.” She gave me a small smile. “Yes. For some time now.”
“I guess that’s also good to know.”
El laughed. “Why are we acting like two kids passing notes in homeroom?”
I looked around the room. “Because it’s late, we’re both soaking wet, and we’re standing here in the middle of my bedroom without a chaperone.”
El looked down at Fritz, who was sprawled out at her feet. “What about him?”
“He doesn’t count.”
“Are you scared?”
I nodded. “Shitless. How about you?”
“I’d say that shitless about covers it for me, too.”
“I don’t want to be scared, El.”
“Neither do I.”
“So where does that leave us?”
She shrugged and ran her hand along the oak footboard of my bed. “Soaking wet and standing in the middle of your bedroom without a chaperone.”
“Be serious.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
I sighed. “This is one for the record books. An agitator who doesn’t know what to say.”
“Well . . . we are better known for being people of action.”
“At least that’s something. What would a person of action do right now?”
El gave me an ironic look.
“Besides that,” I added.
El laughed. “I think you should lend me something dry to wear and take a shower to wash that mess out of your hair.”
“Agreed.” I walked toward my dresser. “Will you wait for me?”
She nodded again. “Sure. Fritz can keep me company.”
“He’d like that.” I pulled a maroon t-shirt and a faded pair of gym shorts out of a drawer and held them out to her. “These will be too big, but I suppose you can make do.”
El took them from me. She unfolded the shirt and held it up to examine it.
“Salukis?” she asked.
“My alma mater,” I explained. “Very exclusive.”
She smiled and draped the shirt over her arm. “Come on, Fritz.” She patted a hand on her thigh. “Let’s go downstairs and wait on mommy.”
Fritz got to his feet and followed her toward the stairs with his tail wagging. I watched them go.
“Help yourself to anything you want to drink,” I called after her. “There’s beer in the icebox or wine in the rack on the counter.”
“I’ll figure it out,” she answered. She and Fritz were already halfway down the stairs.
I stood rooted to my spot in the middle of the room, trying to make sense out of everything that had happened that day, and how it had all ended up with me about to take a shower while El reposed someplace downstairs with Fritz.
I gave up and headed for the bathroom. I knew there’d be plenty of time later for me to pour over events and get even more confused. These days, that was just about the only thing in life I could count on.
Ella Fitzgerald was singing about falling leaves and sycamore trees.
I paused at the bottom of the steps. Moonlight in . . . Owensville?
It didn’t have quite the same magic.
I walked toward the silvery sound. El and Fritz were on the back porch. El had c
hanged, and was draped across the swing in a heartland parody of an art master’s odalisque—all except for the baggy shorts and the Salukis t-shirt. It didn’t matter. She still looked pretty mesmerizing. If Menards had been able to put a photo of her in their Sunday newspaper ad, they’d have sold out of porch swings five minutes after opening the store.
Fritz was splayed out on the rug at her feet, happily munching away on a rawhide bone. El was thumbing through a Renovator’s Supply catalog.
I stood in the doorway and watched them. Maybe I was wrong? Moonlight in Owensville did seem to have some magic.
El saw me standing there staring at her.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, gesturing at her bare feet. “I made myself comfortable.”
I walked over to join her. “I don’t mind at all.” I didn’t see any kind of beverage on the table in front of her. “Didn’t you want anything to drink?”
She put the catalog down. “I thought I’d wait and see what you were in the mood for.”
The buzz I’d had earlier in the evening had long since evaporated. I thought I’d probably be safe to indulge in something else.
“Do you like wine?” I asked.
“Not as much as I like five-dollar pitchers of Old Style.”
“Really?”
El rolled her eyes. “No. Not really. Of course I like wine, goofball.”
“I guess I did it again.”
“Did what again?”
I waved a hand in frustration. “That . . . thing. You know . . .”
El seemed to be enjoying my discomfort. “I can think of several things I’d like to have you do again, but I’m hoping none of them would make you this nervous.”
“You think this is funny, don’t you?”
“Let’s see.” El sat up and pivoted her legs around so she could stand up. “Yes. Pretty much.” She smiled up at me. “I think I know why you’re in so much distress.”
I kind of doubted it. “You do?”
“Of course. It’s the elephants.”
Elephants? I looked around the porch. “What elephants?”
El shook her head. “Oh, lord. You really are that literal, aren’t you?”
“I thought we’d already established that.”
El got to her feet and took hold of my hand. “Come on. Show me your wine stash.”
I still felt like I was playing catch up. El led me into the kitchen. “What elephants?” I muttered.