A Basic Renovation

by Sandra Antonelli

  ‘Make a habit of parading around your house naked?’

  ‘What’s the matter, can you only get off when you peep in—’

  Dominic held up his hand, turning to look at his son, who was watching the interplay with an immense amount of interest. ‘Kyle, go fire up the Bush Hog.’

  ‘I’ll stay here and look at her power tools ‘til she’s done,’ he poked at the saw and added, ‘just to make sure you’re all right.’

  ‘I’m fine. Go on.’

  ‘You sure? Your throat’s not swelling up or anything, is it? You don’t have a metallic taste in your mouth, do you? Do you feel lightheaded at all?’

  Lightheaded? That was an interesting choice of words. Dominic was whacked out of his mind with bewildering lust that made no sense. The only sure-fire way he knew to snuff it out was to be spiteful. He just didn’t want to direct his malice towards his son. He set his mouth in a grim line. ‘Come on. You’re here to work, not observe first aid. She’s paying you for the Bush Hog so get in the backyard and get started.’

  ‘If she’s paying me for this, does that mean you’re not?’

  ‘Don’t worry; you’ll get your regular part-time pay as well. Get going.’

  Cinemax skin flick, still reverberated in Lesley’s head and it took a lot of effort for her to refrain from slapping the back of Dominic’s skull. Was he kidding? He’d been eyeing her breasts since he burst into the house! The ladder and towel had been piss-poor cover for nudity and he’d probably gotten an eyeful of everything else as well. She wondered just how long he’d stood at the rear windows watching her paint her toenails. When he twisted back around to face her, she was of half a mind to slide onto his lap and shove her tongue into his mouth, just to shock the hell out of him.

  Instead, the idea of her tongue exploring his mouth was so exciting it shocked the hell out of her.

  She squeezed the tweezers, the metal biting into her palm. That put her right, that renewed her scorn, and an odd idea popped into her head. That sign out front says Last One Standing. ‘Hey, kid, wait a minute. You know how to use those tools over there?’

  The boy stopped by the front door, turning. ‘Yeah.’

  His father cocked his head. He twisted and glared at her, a dark threat in his blue eyes. He knew exactly where she was going. Lesley looked at Dominic, smiling acidly when she said it, ‘You know how to operate a compressor?’

  ‘Sure do.’

  ‘You want a job for the summer? I’m going to need some help here. I’ll pay you fifteen dollars an hour.’

  ‘He’s already got a job,’ Dominic growled softly.

  ‘From what I just heard, he’s got a part-time job, and I’m offering him full-time work. You interested, Kyle?’

  Unlike her, Dominic was fortunate never to have needed braces. He ran his hands through his sweat-dampened hair, slicking it back, accentuating a slight widow’s peak, and he bared his perfectly straight teeth at her. Lesley thought he looked like Dracula when he said, ‘No, he’s not.’

  ‘Actually, Dad, I am interested. When do you want me to start, Miss, Mrs…’

  ‘Lesley. How about today, when you’re done with the back?’

  ‘What about the delivery job at the hardware store, Kyle?’

  ‘Aw, come on, Dad. You’re the one who said I needed to understand the value of earning something on my own. I know you’re trying to help me out so I can get my car. You’re my dad. I like you and all, but, everyone knows why I’m there. You’re management, the big boss, but nepotism sort of blows.’

  For a second time that morning, Lesley was shocked. ‘You work in Trujillo’s hardware store?’

  With his lips still drawn back from his teeth, his cold, aquamarine glare pierced into her, or at least tried to. ‘There is no way you’re working for this…woman.’

  ‘Hello? I’m already doing her yard, remember, Dad?’

  ‘Then why the hell are you still inside?’

  Kyle’s gaze flicked in her direction. ‘How about today, uh, Miss…uh, Lesley?’

  She nodded. ‘After you finish the yard, we can take out this wall,’ she pointed to the divider between the kitchen and dining room, ‘and you can help me move the oven. It’ll be fun.’

  Dominic roared. ‘Fun?’

  ‘Oh, man. We’re going to argue about this later, aren’t we?’ Kyle muttered as he opened the screen door.

  ‘Fun?’ his father said again. ‘You bet your ass we’re gonna argue!’

  Lesley snorted. ‘I’m sorry, Kyle. The last thing I wanted to do was come between a boy and his vampire.’

  Kyle laughed, the screen door banged shut behind him.

  Dominic’s anger radiated from his body, waves of heat rising from his bare skin. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Removing stingers.’

  ‘Are ya done?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think there’s one or two more.’

  ‘No. You’re done.’ Unceremoniously, Dominic stood, hauled the stained towel from his shoulder and dropped in on the cooler.

  ‘Well, well, the rocket scientist works in a hardware store.’ Lesley pocketed the tweezers.

  ‘What of it?’

  She shrugged. ‘From astrophysicist to store manager, my, how far the mighty fall.’

  ‘Quantum physicist and I don’t give a rat’s what you think.’

  ‘Sure you do. Do you still make everyone call you Doctor Brennan?’

  The Bush Hog rotary cutter sputtered to life in the driveway. Dominic raised his voice over the noise. ‘You listen to me.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ She took off her glasses and began to polish them with the hem of her robe.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re up to, but you leave my kid out of it.’

  ‘What I’m up to? I offered your son a job.’

  ‘Yeah, to spite me.’

  ‘Afraid I’m going to corrupt him, huh?’

  ‘With you, who knows? You were waltzing around your house naked when you knew you had a sixteen year old coming to work in your yard.’

  ‘Hey, you were early! You peeked through my window. For all I know you two could have engaged in some father and son masturbatory bonding.’

  Dominic stood stock still. He didn’t bare his teeth, clench his jaw, or swallow. He simply tried to flatten her with a solid, malice-filled stare. If he’d been a different sort of man, the kind of man he detested, he would have knocked the self-righteous smile from her lips with a resounding slap, only he lacked the brutality it took to strike a child or woman out of anger. Instead, he pulled a pink-tainted envelope from his pocket. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘you’re vile.’

  That was true. What she said had been vile. Lesley held up her hand and bit her lips together, knowing she’d gone too far. Good God, what was wrong with her? Since when had she assumed GP’s caustic persona? She wiped her mouth and exhaled remorsefully, wishing she’d let Dominic have the gold medal for nastiness. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. This has nothing to do with your son. It was uncalled for and—’

  ‘Exactly within your character.’ Dominic’s swollen shoulder throbbed hotly, but pulsating anger acted as a painkiller that surpassed a dose of ibuprofen. He flapped the envelope in his hand, ‘You left this at my store yesterday. Daphne said it’s a driver’s license.’

  ‘Your store, Doctor Brennan?’

  ‘Yep. Trujillo’s is mine, I own it, and I hope you enjoy shopping for all your hardware needs down in Santa Fe, because after today, you’re not setting the tip of your toe in my store.’ He spun the envelope to her. Like an off-balance Frisbee, it wobbled through the air and hit the floor, skidding across the cement, disappearing beneath a small crack at the bottom of the wall behind her. He turned on his heel, slamming the screen door he’d broken earlier.

  Chapter 3

  Her name was Eilish Flanagan. When she prayed, she faced Father Kearney, earnestly, hands together like a girl making her first communion, her hair as red as the first ray
s of morning sunlight.

  Martino was pretty sure it was a dye job. He sat two rows behind her at mass nearly every Sunday, so he had plenty of time to check out the back of her smooth, chin-length bob. Plus, she lived in the unit next door to Aces Witteveen, who said she was eighty-seven, and what eighty-seven-year-old woman still had hair that red?

  She and Millie Phelps sat at the round table near the newspaper rack. The afternoon sun streaming through the Starbucks storefront window lit up that red hair, making it glow around Eilish’s softly wrinkled face like the Holy Spirit. She tapped two packets of sugar against her paper cup before she tore off the tops and dumped the contents into her vanilla latte.

  Eilish liked vanilla lattes. Martino took note of this little snippet of sweet information. He knew a few more things about Eilish Flanagan too. She came from Inchigeela, a tiny town in County Cork, Ireland, she’d been widowed in 1998, and when she spoke she sounded just like Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man. Martino had always like Maureen O’Hara – even if she was Irish.

  Every Sunday for the past four months, he watched Eilish’s flame-coloured head. It bobbled around when she sang Hail Holy Queen Enthroned Above, dipped in reverence whenever Father Kearney said Jesus, and nodded pleasantly whenever she shook hands during the Sign of Peace. Two days ago, that bobbling red head got his attention at the library. He was checking over the shelf of large print books, all dumb spy novels, political biographies and dippy Martha Stewart – God, he hated Martha and her New England Christmas schlock – when Eilish and her red head came bobbing along.

  Something funny happened that day. A Robert Ludlum nose-dived off the shelf and landed at his feet. She bent over, retrieved it, and smiled. The old bat with the red dye-job smiled.

  She smiled at him. Coquettishly.

  And thirty-five years after his wife had died Martino Rotolone felt the rug under his feet jump ten feet to the left.

  Standing at the Starbucks counter with Number Five, his fifth of seven children, he watched Eilish and felt the floor undulate beneath his Doc Martens, the hippest orthopedic shoes in the world.

  Eilish drank her coffee and bobbed her head while she chatted to Millie, who was seventy-nine, but looked a hundred and ten with her bony frame, pouf of downy white hair, and jiggly wattle under her chin. She wheezed through a short beak of a nose like a sickly, scrawny hen. Martino knew it was stupid, but he hated Millie for two reasons. First, she was the nosiest bag over at the Betty Erhart Senior Center. Second, she was sitting with Eilish, which meant he couldn’t mosey on over to say ‘howdy-do’. Not that he would actually say ‘howdy-do’; he was, after all, Italian. He still had a full head of hair, he still knew how to be suave, and he would still be nice to Eilish’s poultry pal. He’d say, ‘Mi scusi, signore.’

  A hand shook his shoulder, ruining his daydream. ‘Daddy,’ a voice said, ‘I asked you if you want a scone.’

  Martino dragged his eyes from the bobbling red head and glared up at his daughter. Oh, maybe she was a little taller than him these days, but he could still give his children looks that made them wither. ‘I’m busy, Number Five.’

  Gina glared right back, her look just as withering, which was why she was his favourite. ‘Busy staring out the window? I asked you three times,’ she said, her eyes narrowed, ‘Are you losing your hearing now? Do I need to get you a hearing aid?’

  ‘Bite your forked little asp tongue. You need to get me an espresso Frappucino. A large one.’

  ‘You can have a Tall decaf.’

  ‘I want a Venti, regular.’

  ‘How about a Tall, decaf?’

  ‘How about a Grande regular?’

  ‘Daddy, you can’t have that much caffeine.’

  ‘Cazzo.’ Martino swore in Italian, which he did in public because saying fuck once got him into trouble with the law. ‘Why the hell did I come here with you?’ He knew Number Five was right. He’d slept like crap last night since he’d had two glasses of Dr Pepper with dinner and coffee earlier in the day. His stomach wasn’t very happy about the acid, his body was unhappy about the lack of sleep, but minchia, coffee didn’t taste like coffee unless it was caffeinated.

  ‘Take it or leave it, Daddy,’ Gina said, wallet in hand.

  ‘I want a half-strength Tall.’

  ‘OK, Big Wheel, let’s go.’ Gina slipped her wallet back into her purse.

  Martino glanced over at Eilish and her pal with the chicken neck. Originally, he wanted to get his Frappucino and get the hell out of Starbucks, but that was before he noticed Eilish. Now, his plans had changed. Now he was going to feign fatigue and take a seat. Since it was already served chilled, he could make his icy coffee last an hour. In that hour, he could pretend to listen to Number Five prattle on about how wonderful it was that Lesley had come back to town, and watch Eilish over Chicken-neck’s bony back. ‘OK. OK,’ he sighed, ‘Don’t break my balls. Get me a Tall double-strength decaf.’

  To his left was the table with the inlaid chessboard. He grabbed a chair, scraped the wooden legs over the tiles, and planted himself in the seat. The noise diverted Eilish’s attention just long enough and this time, when their eyes met, Martino smiled at her.

  Dominic pushed his fork through the pile of dirty-looking rice on his plate. The single parents he knew never ate with their kids, but he and Kyle sat down for breakfast and dinner together nearly every day. He looked forward to those simple times and counted them as high points in his life. Unfortunately, tonight their usually pleasant dinnertime was turning into the apex of a crappy day. ‘How come the risotto comes out better when you cook it?’ he sighed.

  ‘For starters, I don’t burn the rice.’

  ‘It’s not burned.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kyle said. ‘It’s extra crispy yet at the same time, completely uncooked.’

  ‘Extra crispy is cooked. By all rights, extra crispy denotes cooking.’

  ‘Only if you’re buying from KFC.’

  ‘I cooked it. It’s your job to eat it.’

  ‘Why, as punishment?’

  ‘Quit being a moody adolescent.’

  ‘I may be adolescent, but I’m not the moody one at the table.’

  ‘Where did you learn to be such a smart mouth?’

  ‘Master, meet your greatest pupil. Can we get a pizza?’

  ‘I am not wasting this food.’

  ‘OK, here. Have mine.’ Kyle pushed his plate towards his father.

  ‘Smart ass.’

  ‘This smart ass is calling for pizza.’ Kyle tipped his chair backwards, balancing it on two legs, and reached for the cordless phone on the Indiana Step-Back hutch he’d refinished last Easter. ‘Was she…’ he said as he began dialling, ‘was Lesley...a friend of Mom’s?’

  ‘Is that why you want to work for her, so you can find out more about your mother? Lord almighty, Kyle, you want to know anything about Stefanie ask me. She ate banana and peanut butter sandwiches just like you. Her eyes were brown. She left when you were two months old. I keep telling you, you can ask me anything you want about your mother.’

  ‘I thought I just did.’

  ‘Glory days!’ Dominic tossed his fork into his plate. He stood, his chair sliding back on the polished pine floor, and grabbed his plate, stacking it on top of his son’s burnt risotto primavera, blackish bits of rice oozing out from in between. ‘This is shit. You want pizza? Order it! You wanted that job and I let you take it, but I’m not getting you up in the morning, I’m not driving you over there, and I’m not picking you up!’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to. I was perfectly happy to walk home after I finished there today.’

  ‘You were perfectly overjoyed when I pulled back up that driveway.’

  ‘That’s because she has rats.’ Kyle set the phone on the table.

  ‘Rats?’

  ‘Yeah. They live in the oven. When we moved it from its cubby, a big one ran out. We tried to kill it with a sledgehammer.’

  ‘A sledgehammer? An ice pick seems more her style
.’

  ‘Aw, come on, she bought my lunch and she listens to cool music. She’s nice; she likes Squeeze like you do.’

  ‘Nice? Let me tell you about nice,’ Dominic clunked the plates back on the table, a few greyish, wrinkled peas popping out to roll across a placemat, but he ignored them. Instead, he told Kyle all about nice Lesley and how she ruined Uncle Terry’s life. When he was through, Kyle went quiet and picked peas from the placemat, depositing them onto the top plate. Dominic exhaled noisily. ‘Did she pay you?’

  Kyle nodded, his mouth a bleak line.

  ‘Good, then you can pay for the damn pizza.’ Dominic took the dishes into the kitchen and dumped the ruined food into the disposal. He turned on the water, flipped the power switch, and watched everything swirl down the raucous, grinding drain.

  Gee, that went well. What happened to being forthright and open about Stefanie? Why did Lesley Samuels piss him off so much? Was it because she had launched his idiot brother’s path of destruction? Was it because she’d been friendly with Stefanie, because they’d talked those last few weeks before it all fell apart? It couldn’t honestly be the bizarre physical attraction he’d felt towards her, could it?

  No. No, of course it wasn’t that. She was simply a life-sized reminder, a neon sign pointing directly at something he’d kept in the darkest part of his mind and never thought about anymore. Christ, he’d processed all that years ago. He’d put it in the past and let go of the hurt, the disappointment, the anger. He’d told himself it didn’t matter and he believed that, wholeheartedly. He had the better end of the lollipop. He had the better life. He had Kyle. They were father and son. They were a family. They were happy.

  Whatever the reason was, it was plain that seeing Lesley again had put a bug up his ass – a big bug that had obviously crawled all the way through his intestines to his brain. Up until today, he thought he was a better man, a more tolerant man, a more equable man, and he was appalled by his behaviour. What was most disturbing, besides his incredible botch job being honest with Kyle, was that he’d wanted to draw a little blood from Lesley.

  ‘Dad?’ Kyle put his empty milk glass on the white-tiled countertop beside the sink and handed a short-stemmed wine glass to his father.