The Renovation

by Terri Kraus

  Chase shrugged. “Finish listening to the game?”

  Elliot pondered for a moment. “We could go fishing. We could take the radio with us.”

  Chase shrugged. “Okay. I’ll get my stuff.”

  “You got an extra pole? I don’t want to go home and ask. I think my mom would say no.”

  Chase nodded. Elliot’s mom was often moody and had seemed more explosive than usual over the last several weeks.

  Their favorite site, on the rocks just by Sibley Park, shaded by a thick stand of evergreens, had been taken over by a half-dozen older teenagers. Their shouts were loud, and Chase heard a new variation on a familiar string of curse words.

  They did not argue but simply made their way up the river, past the picnic grounds, past the public boat launch and by a small nudge in the shoreline. The riverbank was grass right up to the waterline, and was cut short and tidy by city workers. The water was deep and still, with a tangle of exposed tree roots just below the surface that offered great hiding places for smallmouth bass.

  They spoke only a few words as they set their lines. Chase knew Elliot was a skilled fisherman. He wanted a fly-casting system, but even as a birthday present, his family couldn’t afford it, Chase imagined.

  Chase put a shiny spoon bait on his line, cast it into the river, and slowly began to crank the reel. He sat down on a large flat rock at the water’s edge. Elliot was still carefully threading the line through a minnow lure. He always seemed to struggle with the small things in life.

  “You want me to help?”

  “Naw. I’ll get it.”

  Chase looked to the far shore. “Your mom being hard again?” he asked.

  He didn’t expect an answer. A lot of their questions didn’t have answers.

  Elliot shrugged. “Sometimes she gets that way. My dad just says she’s going through the change.”

  “What’s that?”

  Elliot shrugged again. It was a most familiar gesture. “I don’t know. Means she gets a chance to act weird, I guess. Moms can be pretty much a pain sometimes.”

  Chase looked away.

  “Sorry,” Elliot said softly.

  “’Sokay,” Chase replied. And it was. He thought about his mother a lot—more in the last few weeks—but he never minded when anyone who still had their mother mentioned that his mother was gone. It just made her real again—even if only for those few minutes.

  They made numerous casts and retrieves without garnering the slightest interest of the fish. Sounds of the ball game filtered and drifted between them. The Pirates were leading by one going into the fourth inning.

  “I saw your dad in the paper the other day,” Elliot said as he cast into the waters again. “My dad said he never had a reporter follow him on his job. I think he was jealous or something.”

  Chase smiled.

  “Did that lady reporter write it?”

  “What lady reporter?” Chase asked.

  “The one at the ball game. The real pretty one.”

  Chase didn’t change his tone, but a muscle in his jaw flexed. “I dunno. Maybe. I guess she did.”

  Elliot nodded. “My mom said she’s a real looker. And she’s looking for a man. She said she could tell.”

  A long breezy silence took over.

  “Do you think your dad is looking?” Elliot asked as he pulled off a strand of river weed from his hook.

  “For what?”

  “You know. A woman. Like a new wife, you know?”

  Chase shrugged again. He laid his pole down, leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. “I don’t know. Do you think he is?”

  “I dunno,” Elliot replied. “I can’t figure out grown-ups. They say one thing and do another.”

  “He’s never said anything about that. Or her, I mean. He wouldn’t,” Chase said.

  Elliot opened up the tackle box and began to very carefully rummage through the lures. Chase couldn’t blame him. Last summer he’d managed to get a hook into his thumb so far that his dad had to pull it through and cut off the top to extract it.

  “You ever ask?”

  Chase rubbed his nose. “Naw. We don’t talk about stuff like that.”

  Elliot stopped looking for a hook and simply waited.

  “Since my mom … you know … we don’t talk about a lot of stuff.”

  “But you’re always doing stuff with him. Camping and stuff,” Elliot answered.

  “Doesn’t mean we talk. I think … I think he thinks that somehow it was all my fault … you know … back then.”

  “Was it?”

  The muscles in Chase’s throat tightened. This subject lay in a new territory for the two friends.

  “Naw. I was just a little kid. How could it be my fault? I mean, I was just a kid.”

  Elliot offered a tentative, knowing smile. “Hey, all kinds of stuff is my fault at home. Stuff that I didn’t even know about. It’s easier to blame me than to figure out what really happened.”

  Chase turned to his friend. “Doesn’t that drive you crazy?”

  Elliot stared up at the sky, his eyes unfocused. “Naw. I mean, it does, but I don’t let it bother me. If you fight it, that makes it worse. Like they taught us in Sunday school. Blessed be the peacemakers and all that sort of stuff.”

  “Yeah.”

  Elliot nodded back. He understood. He understood without saying. You could just tell he understood by looking at his face, his eyes, as if he understood everything that couldn’t be put into words.

  “Life is just so messed up,” Chase said.

  Elliot sighed. “Yeah. Sometimes it is, I guess.”

  All but Death, can be Adjusted—

  Dynasties repaired—

  Systems—settled in their Sockets—

  Citadels—dissolved—

  Wastes of Lives—resown with Colors

  By Succeeding Springs—

  Death—unto itself—Exception—

  Is exempt for Change—

  —Emily Dickinson

  CHAPTER SIX

  PAIGE WINCED AS SHE swallowed the last of her coffee. She looked at her watch. “Goodness! It’s nearly ten. We haven’t been this late in months.”

  Cameron yawned and stretched her arms over her head. “I know. What happened tonight? We only had thirty-six pages.”

  Paige shrugged. “I miss the days of hot lead and linotypes. Now those were deadlines.”

  Cameron held her grin. Even in her short tenure on The Franklin Derrick, she had heard this same refrain many times.

  Paige rummaged about her desk. “Even wax and paste was better than this. You could hold a headline in your hands and lay it down. You had a physical connection to the paper. Now it’s just us and these idiot computers.”

  The Derrick had gone computerized several years earlier, one of the last holdouts in an increasingly electronic world. All page layouts were done on computer screen. No one touched a real paper anymore—not until it came off the press. At the touch of a button, the pages would transmit to a printer located in the anonymous nondescript industrial park on the outskirts of town, between the airport and the American Legion Hall.

  “I wish we could go back. When I handed the pages to the printer, I really felt something,” Paige said. “There was a finality about the process. Now I press Send and—poof!—it all just goes away. Hardly seems right.”

  Roger Corkel, a fussy middle-aged man who lived with his mother, was responsible for the majority of the design and layout of The Derrick, but he worked only five days a week and the newspaper came out six times a week—Tuesday through Sunday. On Monday evenings, Paige and another staff member would handle all the design chores. Cameron imagined that the Tuesday edition always looked both tense and loo
se at the same time, as if the hands putting it together were tentative and unsure. Most readers would have been hard-pressed to see any difference, but Cameron noticed. She always noticed.

  Paige hiked her large drawstring handbag—red canvas and bigger than most backpacks—to her shoulder. She shifted her weight to compensate.

  “Are you coming?” she asked as she dug into the depths of the bag, shaking it every so often, listening for the jingle of a key ring, jammed with dozens of keys.

  “In a minute or so. I think I’ll send some e-mails. Lock up. I’ll make sure the door is closed when I leave.”

  Paige pursed her lips. “It’s late. Shouldn’t you be getting home?”

  Cameron giggled, then realized Paige was serious. “Well, I’m not due in tomorrow till afternoon. I’ll sleep in.”

  Paige nodded in agreement, though Cameron knew Paige never slept in, no matter what hour she left the office. She always arrived at work at eight in the morning—no matter what. Paige hefted her bag again, and cocked her head and stared at Cameron, as if studying her. Then she sidled up to the desk opposite Cameron and sat against it.

  “What’s the question?” she asked.

  “What question?” Cameron replied. “I didn’t ask a question.”

  “No … but you want to. I haven’t been in the newspaper business for all these decades without learning a few things about how to read people. You have a question. Ask me.”

  “No, really. There’s nothing.”

  Paige turned her head and stared harder—just like Cameron’s mother used to do.

  “Well … I don’t want to bother you. It’s late, Paige.”

  Paige leaned on the empty desk and let her bag thump to the ground. “So? All I have waiting for me at home is an old, scruffy tomcat with a bad disposition. Now or ten minutes from now, he’ll still be in a bad mood.”

  Cameron looked at her hands, then toward the windows. All she could see through the tinted glass was a row of streetlights leading to the theater and Fountain Park. The red lights of the marquee flashed and wobbled in the strong river breeze.

  “So what’s on your mind? Man troubles?”

  Cameron looked up as if she had heard a shot echo in the empty building. “What?”

  “Man problems.” Paige exhaled a soft whistle. “Am I good or what?”

  “It’s not man problems … exactly.” Cameron had not looked up from the desk. “It’s nothing. I shouldn’t bother you with this. I’m not even sure I should bother with it myself.”

  Paige slipped off the desk and into a chair. “Can’t be analytical standing up. And it’s times like these that I truly regret giving up smoking. Late-night philosophy and cigarettes seem to go together. Even if they do kill you early. So who’s the new fellow?”

  Cameron didn’t answer. She did not look up until she heard Paige’s very throaty laugh, soft at first, then full-bodied, resonant and hearty.

  “Sorry,” she said, holding up her palm, “but I just stepped back and looked at us. Here I am, an almost sixty-something, twice-widowed old lady assuming to know something about men. All my experience happened in the last century, remember?” Paige took a deep breath. “Doesn’t all this seem a little like a French absurdist play to you?”

  Cameron didn’t answer.

  “So you’re really serious about this?” Paige finally said. “I’m sorry for making fun of it. It just seems …”

  Cameron could only muster a sidelong smile. “I know. Women today are supposed to have everything figured out. To know what we want and how to get it. Men are supposed to be the easy part of the question. They’re supposed to be there and ready—when you’re ready.”

  Paige laughed again, a friendly, pat-on-the-back sort of laugh. “Cameron, there are men out there that are very, very ready. But I just bet they’re not the kind you want. And I should know that. I married two of the worst choices God ever put in western Pennsylvania.”

  “I don’t think this one fits into that sort of ‘beware’ category.”

  “So tell me, who is he? Do I know him?”

  Cameron took a deep breath. She brushed back a loopy strand of dark hair that fell across her cheek. She looked up at Paige, who was the closest thing to a grandmother she had ever known.

  “Ever since I did that piece on the old Carter place …”

  Paige’s face showed her surprise. “No. Not one of Willis’s crew? The blond one—the mysterious one with the ponytail … and very nice frame?”

  Cameron grinned. She had no idea that Paige knew any of the carpenters on Ethan’s crew. “No … not Doug.”

  “The one with the motorcycle? He’s pretty easy on the eyes too.”

  “No … not Jack either.”

  Paige winced as she appeared to be mentally reviewing Ethan’s crew. “But other than Doug and Jack, the others are all married, aren’t they? Please don’t tell me it’s with a married man.”

  Cameron looked up. “No. He’s not married. Well … he was. He’s a widower.”

  A few seconds later realization dawned in Paige’s eyes.

  “Ethan? Ethan Willis?”

  Cameron nodded.

  “Really?”

  She nodded again.

  “But he’s a good bit … older than you, isn’t he?”

  Cameron shrugged. “I didn’t ask his age. Maybe a few years older.”

  “More than a few.”

  Cameron hesitated. “Maybe under ten.”

  “More than likely over ten. He’s got to be close to forty.”

  A car horn sounded from the street below. Cameron watched the sweep of headlights as the car turned into the alley, apparently on its way to the rear parking lot behind Ernie’s, a tavern four doors down from the newspaper.

  Cameron looked up. “So I should forget about it—just because he’s a little older?”

  Paige’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t say that. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

  Cameron was silent. Her mind swirled with a mixture of confusion and pain.

  “I’m sorry,” Paige said as she leaned closer. “I had no idea. I mean … I just would have never thought … the two of you. You know?”

  Cameron waved her hand in an odd sweep, as if trying to communicate all her uncertainty in a gesture.

  “Have you two gone out?” Paige asked. “I mean, this is a small town and all, and sooner or later, I hear about everything.”

  “Not really. Not yet. But we did go for lunch after the interview. We spent two hours at Cumming’s. I think … well, I think there was … something there.”

  “Has he called you?” Paige asked, as if she were a mother with a teenage romantic crisis on her hands.

  “No. But I want to call him. Ever since I found out about his wife and all that. And his son … being there when it happened and all.”

  Paige’s face grew visibly surprised. “What do you mean—he was there?”

  “Chase was there when his mother was killed.”

  “What?”

  “In the backseat of the car.”

  It was obvious this was news to Paige—who knew everything about everyone.

  Cameron related the story of her trip to Erie and her conversation with the reporter at the Erie newspaper.

  “Well, no one in town has a clue,” Paige said with finality. “Whoever knew about this did a very good job at keeping the secret.”

  A pool of silence settled around them. Cameron heard the ticking of the clock on her desk, the wheezy hiss of the air-conditioning. She considered Paige, realizing the woman was in the midst of processing too much information.

  Cameron looked out at the darkened street, then glanced at her watch.

  I’ve done a very good job at keeping my secret too.

 
; “I should be getting home. Would you give me a lift?” she asked Paige.

  “Sure,” the older woman replied. “Give me a minute to find my keys again.”

  Cameron opened the door and started to get out of Paige’s silver Volvo station wagon. The engine rattled and ticked softly. She sat back down and pulled the door closed, then turned back to Paige.

  She had to ask. She was surprised at how much the older woman’s opinion mattered.

  “So, I shouldn’t call him, then? He’s too old for me?”

  It was apparent that Paige had been thinking of an answer to Cameron’s question during the short ride to her apartment.

  “Cameron,” she began, her words maternal and cautionary, “I can’t tell you what to do. He is older. But then my first husband was ten years older than me. I can conveniently forget all sorts of things like that. But here’s what I have to say about this: If it’s meant to be, then it will be. But I also know that if anything is going to happen, you’ll have to be the one to make the first move.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do. He’ll never ask you. The age thing, I would guess. A fellow like Ethan, he just won’t call first—no matter how many hints you may have dropped. Remember: The worst that can happen is that he says no.”

  Cameron deflated. “But he’s a really nice guy. I know that much about him. He seems like a decent man. He would have to be a good person to raise his son on his own like he is.”

  “But you do have to be aware … that he may be …”

  “What?” Cameron asked.

  Paige was silent, then said, “I’m not one to talk, obviously, but he may be … well, damaged. He may be damaged in a way that you can’t fix. My second husband was like that. There was something major in him that needed fixing and I thought I was the person to do the fixing. But in the end, we almost wound up breaking each other.”

  “So, a man with a past … I mean, should I avoid any man with some sort of past? That includes just about everyone, doesn’t it?” Cameron asked.