The Renovation

by Terri Kraus

  “They do. The photographer is here. I’ve seen our Bart, snapping away.”

  “You’re not doing the story?” Chase asked.

  “No. I don’t do education stories all that much. Lydia Fox usually covers school events.”

  Chase nodded.

  “But I’ll stay. To see the winner. Might be you, right?”

  Chase smiled, a smile that let her know he knew he wouldn’t win but would not be disappointed when he didn’t. “The student council is selling Cokes and stuff over in the lobby. They’re always selling something. Do you … do you want a Coke or something while we wait? I … I could treat.”

  Cameron wanted to cry, the invitation was so sweet and uncomplicated and generous. “I would love a Coke or something, Chase. That’s very nice of you to ask.”

  Chase stepped from behind his house and pointed. “It’s over this way. We can go around if we use this door.”

  Cameron set off behind Chase, knowing he wasn’t sure if he should wait for her to draw even with him or if he should simply feel comfortable leading the way.

  Ethan folded the bank check back against the perforations, and ran his finger along the edge. He tore it out and slipped it into the envelope.

  Being the owner of a small construction business required more office time than most people realized. Besides all the actual construction work and ordering materials and supplies, Ethan had to verify statements; pay bills; calculate payroll, withholding taxes, and insurance; send invoices; deal with bids and contracts.… Everything that a large business did, Ethan had to do himself. It seemed more complicated—and would be too costly—to hire someone to help with office work than to handle it all himself.

  With each check he wrote, Ethan entered the numbers in a small calculator and tapped the minus key. And with every deduction, his spirits, and his optimism, sank a little further. His checking balance grew smaller and smaller, and the pile of unpaid bills remained an inch or two thick.

  He could simply delay paying a bill or two, depending on the supplier. The big outfits—the companies that provided lumber and other materials—would hound him if he skipped a payment, but once lumber was cut up and nailed in place, there wasn’t much they could do. They would wait a month, then start with the late notices, then the phone calls asking for payment, negotiating payment installments and amounts.

  Ethan hated this part of being a contractor. He hated when his finances were this skinny. He took slight comfort in the fact that most small contractors lived close to the edge financially. He did not want to be known as one of those contractors, but he didn’t see a good way out of this current tangled thicket. He had several more bid requests to quote. Contractors, regardless of their current workload, always kept soliciting new projects. Otherwise, how would they keep their crews busy? Ethan had bids out on four or five jobs in addition to the ones on his desk. The Carter project would be over in a couple of months, and he would need another major project to begin.

  What he didn’t want to do, but began feeling he’d be pressured to do, was to use the deposit a new client paid to finish off the bills from this current job.

  It’s done all the time. Everybody does it in the contracting business. It’s only a money float for a few weeks—that’s all. That’s not so bad, he told himself.

  But Ethan did not want to go that direction—unless, he resolved, it was the one and only way to get through the next several weeks.

  He paid one more bill, tapped in the numbers, and grimaced. Picking up the stack of invoices in his hand, he shuffled through them in order.

  I can pay this one, this one can wait, this one I have to pay, this I can pay in small chunks.…

  He slipped one invoice onto the desk, and carefully stacked the remaining ones, placing a paperweight on top of them. The last invoice was from the Oilers’ traveling team. Hockey was not an inexpensive sport. For the season, each skater was assessed a $250 fee—for ice time, the cost of regional meets, and liability insurance.

  He mentally gulped as he wrote this last check. As he tapped at the calculator again, he saw, with a sinking feeling, that the amount was now getting close to his minimum balance.

  Not much of a cushion left. But Lynne loved hockey and she loved watching Chase skate. He needs to know that. This is important. He needs to know how important it was to his mother. I can’t just let this die.

  He ripped the check from the checkbook, tucked it into the envelope, and sealed it.

  Then he leaned back in his chair and wondered if there was something he was forgetting.

  “Over here,” Chase said, holding the two Cokes, one in each hand. “There’s an empty table over here.”

  Cameron followed him through the jumble of tables and chairs. He had insisted on paying for both drinks, and Cameron let him, watching him carefully extract two single dollar bills from his wallet. He refastened the Velcro on the red nylon fabric wallet after paying and shoved it back into his hip pocket.

  “Your project was really well done, Chase. I learned a lot about building, and your presentation was very clear.”

  “Thanks.”

  Cameron looked around. The gym lobby was filled with parents and students, teachers, younger brothers and sisters. Female teenagers possessed the remarkable ability to squeal in such a unique fashion when meeting friends, punctuating the afternoon with their voices.

  “You like working for the newspaper? I always thought it might be cool to do that. You get to write a lot, don’t you?”

  “It is cool. And I do write a lot. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s more like work. But I enjoy it.”

  What do young teen boys talk about? she wondered. I guess … I could treat it as an interview.

  “Why did you pick the scale model house as a project?” she asked.

  “I dunno. I guess ’cause my dad builds things.”

  Cameron saw nervousness in his eyes.

  “Was it hard to put together?” she asked.

  “Naw. I mean, I build models a lot. It’s all balsa wood. That’s really easy to cut. The only hard part was doing the captions and labels. I used the computer, but I had to cut them out and paste them on cardboard. Some of ’em I had to do five times.”

  “Are you going to be a builder when you grow up?”

  Chase shook his head rapidly. “No. I mean, it’s okay and all. But I don’t want to do that. I think my dad worries a lot about everything all the time. A lot of things can go wrong.”

  Cameron took a sip of her Coke. Chase did likewise, but tilted his head back until the can was nearly upside down and vertical.

  “My friend Elliot’s science project is pretty cool too,” he said.

  “Which one is that?”

  “It’s the one about the concrete.”

  “Oh, yes … Elliot. I thought that one was really well done too,” Cameron answered.

  She could see his uncomfortable look again.

  “It’s kinda like people, you know?” Chase said after a moment. He looked right at her then.

  “Like people?” she asked. “How’s that?”

  “Like, how they are on the outside isn’t the same as they really are.”

  “You mean … they could look as though they’ve got it all together, but inside they’re crumbling?” she asked.

  “Yeah … something like that.”

  Cameron could feel an ache in her heart as she heard Chase’s words. He looked down and tapped one foot on the rung of his chair.

  Cameron quickly surveyed the busy lobby, giving him a minute to regroup before she asked, “School’s good?”

  Chase glanced up and nodded.

  “Are you doing … basketball? Is it still basketball season? Or does track and field start now? I ran cross-country in high school, but the seasons here are differ
ent than in Philadelphia.”

  “No. No sports right now. Hockey starts soon. But … I don’t think I’m going to play this year.”

  “No? I bet you’re good at it. You’re good at baseball.”

  He shrugged as only teenagers can shrug, accepting and deflecting a compliment at the same time.

  “My dad wants me to play hockey. I think he does, anyhow. He was some sort of star when he played hockey in high school. Like he scored the most goals in one season. There’s a big trophy somewhere in the attic with his name on it.”

  Cameron pushed the hair from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. “You don’t want to play? Why? I mean, if you’re good at it and all.”

  He shrugged again. “I don’t like it anymore. When my mom … my mom liked it a lot. It’s hard. Hockey’s real hard, I mean. And the practices are real early in the morning. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t hate it. But … maybe I do. I guess he’s going to be real disappointed in me—but I just don’t want to play it anymore. I was only doing it because … I didn’t want him to be mad. He kept saying Mom would have loved to see me play.”

  The small ache in Cameron’s heart grew bigger.

  A bell rang, as if signaling a change in classes, and Cameron jumped in her chair, almost spilling her Coke. Chase remained unperturbed, but looked down at his hands, as if he thought he may have shared too much.

  “I don’t hear that sort of bell anymore. I forgot how loud they are,” she explained.

  “You get used to it, I guess.”

  “Well … I guess I should head back to the judges’ area.”

  “Yeah. I need to get back to the exhibit.”

  “Thank you for the drink, Chase. That was very nice of you.”

  She touched his arm as she complimented him, and he might have blushed a bit.

  “That’s okay, Miss Dane. I was thirsty too.”

  Chase stood behind his table and watched the judges gather in a cluster. He expected his father to have come. His father had said he was going to be busy that day, but that he would make time for a brief stop. “I’ll be there for the awards, okay, sport?” he’d said, again using the nickname Chase disliked.

  But Chase hadn’t seen him at all that day.

  Maybe it’s better that he’s not here. I’m not going to win anything, anyhow. And if I don’t win, why should he waste his time coming?

  Chase was fairly certain that he would not take any of the top five awards. He imagined that the honorable mention might be as high as he would go.

  The judges started at the bottom—number five was announced. The elated student walked self-consciously to the stage and received his award ribbon. Then fourth place was announced. When the third-place winner was named, Chase was excited and sort of stunned when they called out his friend’s name.

  “The third-place award, for outstanding achievement in an experiment explaining and demonstrating tensile strength of concrete goes to—Elliot Hewitt!”

  Chase peered down the end of the row of chairs and saw Elliot’s mom jumping up and down, and his father just standing, but with a smile Chase could see from where he stood.

  Academics were not a playing field on which Elliot often excelled. He wasn’t slow; he was actually quite bright. But he just wasn’t an overachiever. And Chase knew that the combination of their work on the project made it look absolutely like a student had done all the work—which was true for Elliot. That must have been the deciding factor, Chase thought. The project was really good, but the fact that it was all done by a kid made it better somehow. The work that parents did was pretty obvious on most of the projects. Even Chase could tell a kid’s project from a kid’s-but-mostly-parents’ project. Chase’s was a kid’s-only project, too, but he knew that it didn’t really solve or prove anything. It was simply a pretty cool model. And it did make it into the finalist row for an honorable mention. That was something.

  And now Elliot had won third place. He was happy for his friend, because Elliot did not win many awards.

  This would be a really big deal in the Hewitt house for a long time.

  He wondered if Elliot would get his picture in the paper as well. Maybe he could talk to Miss Dane about that. They were sort of friends now—and maybe as a friend, she could pull some strings. If Elliot had his picture in the paper—well, his mom would just about burst with pride.

  Chase figured he should ask Miss Dane right away, while the photographer guy was still there and while Elliot’s white shirt was still white and tucked into his pants.

  Ethan stood and stretched. He bent backward, then at the waist, expecting to hear his back make some noise—but he heard nothing. A good stretch without a crack or two felt unsatisfying.

  He shuffled all the invoices and matching statements into a neat stack. The unpaid bills that had been under the paperweight on his desk, he tucked in the upper-right-hand drawer. The bills with checks inside, he placed in the alcove by the phone. It was Saturday, after the mail carrier came by the house, so waiting until Monday would suffice. Maybe an unexpected check would arrive on Monday morning—but Ethan knew that would be almost an impossibility.

  The house was quiet.

  Chase must be at Elliot’s.

  He grabbed his work coat and headed outside. After paying bills, after feeling uncomfortable and anxious, he thought a walk would clear his thoughts and settle that uneasy, jangled feeling that filled in the spaces around his heart.

  The day was drab and overcast, not really cold, but there was enough humidity in the air to give a man a chill—a biting, cold, damp chill that cut through his thick work coat without slowing down.

  He began to walk faster, hoping that picking up the pace would keep him warmer. It did help, a little. After twenty minutes, Ethan found himself only a block from the Carter Mansion.

  Ethan might have been working Saturday if it had not been for the paperwork.

  He had the key to the front door on his keychain, so he slowly walked up the long flagstone walk, opened the door, and quietly shut it behind him.

  A stack of new trim lay in the hall entry. Pails of mortar and five-gallon buckets of paint were lined up against the wall. The path of brown paper taped to the floor was torn and ragged. He told himself that it would be replaced on Monday. CeCe worried all the time about the walnut floors, which were original to the house, with an exotic inlaid border of ebony. Ethan imagined how they’d look when sanded, stained, and finished to a satin glow. He hoped that new, clean, smooth paper would help settle her nerves.

  He took the stairs up to the third floor and began walking through each room, creating a mental checklist of sorts, as to what projects and work remained. As he did so, he kept a separate tally of a more unsettling number: the costs incurred when the owner of the house overrode his choices for trim or wall placement or any number of other frustrations.

  As he passed the site of each battle and loss, he mentally figured the financial cost of each one of those lost battles. The authentically styled light fixtures that he thought would be perfect, she hated. They were returned, of course, for credit, minus a 20 percent restocking fee. The trim in the third floor ballroom-now-party-room was a complete loss. It sat in his garage now, balanced on three pallets. Perhaps he could use it on another job. If not, his choice cost him over two thousand dollars, plus time. The stairs, too narrow for CeCe, cost him another forty board feet of tread and riser material. The too-short stair tread and risers were stacked in Ethan’s garage as well. Maybe he could find a use for them, but if not, that was another five hundred dollars. By the time he arrived back on the first floor, he had a long list of unfinished work and an account sheet that ran into the red.

  If I had that money … this job would be profitable. But as it is … if I break even, I’ll be doing well.

  He sat on the first step of the wide stai
rcase and stared blankly ahead, stared at the closed door with the frosted glass sidelight panels that he hated and CeCe had insisted on. He had forgotten that. Another lost restocking fee. And as he added that three-hundred-dollar loss, he felt a sweep of anxiety and fear pass over him, as if a cloud, dark and black, had just positioned itself between himself and everything that was good and hopeful in the world.

  He lowered his head and cradled it in his hands, wishing and willing that what was, wasn’t.

  It was not an unfamiliar feeling to Ethan.

  It was not unfamiliar at all.

  Cameron felt again the unfamiliar feeling of peace that was becoming more and more familiar.

  She looked up from her reading and out onto West Park. As daylight faded to a flinty gray, the streetlights were just coming on and began to glow faintly through the tall windows as she sat in her turret room.

  The Bible, called The Message, which Paige had given her, lay open in her lap to a section in Romans 3 titled “God Has Set Things Right.” She read the passage again.

  Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners … and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity He put us in right standing with Himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where He always wanted us to be. And He did it by means of Jesus Christ.

  Farther down the page, she read, out loud this time, there all alone in her apartment: “Having faith in Him sets us in the clear.… God set things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in His rightness.”

  As the sound of her reading filled the turret, all the words she had heard in church as a girl, all the things Paige had said, all of Pastor Johnson’s sermons—all these were somehow coming together to form a single truth for Cameron.

  God sets things right. For me.

  She had a sudden memory of early summer evenings with her grandparents and the one-thousand-piece puzzle of some sort that they’d bought at the Ben Franklin. It was always out on a card table on their screened porch, and their heads were bent together over a lighthouse or farm scene, over zebras or a flower garden, as the twilight around them faded with the chirping of crickets. Her grandpa always had them begin with the simpler edge pieces. He said that once the borders were complete, the rest of the more difficult pieces in the center could then be found more easily—and perfectly, almost magically, form a pretty scene from what was just a pile of random, irregular pieces.