Mr. Right Goes Wrong

by Pamela Morsi

  Inside they ran into Clark, who had snagged a booth. Eli introduced Tru, who was very polite to Sheila and the girls.

  “How was your first Brandt Mountain basketball game?” Clark asked.

  “Fun. It was fun.”

  “You look tall enough to be on the team,” Sheila pointed out.

  “It’s not really my game.”

  “Well, you look like a hometown boy in the sweater,” Clark said.

  “It’s your sweater,” Eli pointed out.

  Clark laughed.

  His daughter Ava was astounded. “Daddy used to be that size?”

  A few minutes later, Clark privately buttonholed Eli for an aside conversation as Tru held a place in line.

  “So Mazy came with you,” Clark said. “But then she’s practically throwing herself at Tad Driscoll.”

  “She didn’t throw herself at anyone,” Eli replied tightly.

  Clark shrugged. “That’s the way I saw it,” he said. “Sheila thought exactly the same thing.”

  “They talked to each other in plain view of the entire community,” Eli said. “It was probably about business.”

  “Business? Is that what she said?”

  “I didn’t ask her,” Eli told him.

  Clark shook his head. “I’m worried about you. I don’t want you to get your hopes up again only to have Driscoll swoop in and get her two-timing you.”

  “Nobody is two-timing anyone.”

  Clark looked skeptical. “Driscoll doesn’t chat up women for his health.”

  That was probably true, but it was also true that half the community, including his brother, wanted the entertainment of another juicy scandal rehash.

  “You’re going to need to up your game,” Clark suggested.

  Eli pretended to discount the words, but he couldn’t quite shake them. The memory of Mazy in the gym calmly chatting with Driscoll left a very sour taste in Eli’s mouth.

  That was not helped by Mazy’s acknowledgment that the jerk had bought the sodas. Eli had deliberately foisted the refreshments on Mazy. Now he refused to be “cheaped out” again. When they finally reached the front of the line, he bought enough food to feed a small army.

  Fortunately, he discovered when they got back to the tailgate that teenage boys eat like a small army.

  The burgers were good. The activity around them was fun and upbeat. Mazy seemed to be actually enjoying herself. The reswarm of after-game revelers was not limited to high school teens. Although there were plenty of those, there were also families with young children and grandparents with memories of games long gone by. There was a warm feeling of community camaraderie and, surprisingly, Mazy seemed as comfortable easing into that as anyone else.

  Eli was pretty sure that wasn’t a good idea. As he slathered French fries with ketchup, he tried to come up with a bad-guy plan. A public scene would certainly fill the bill. But Eli had never done anything like that. He was not sure that he could pull it off. And all those who saw Mazy with Driscoll might see it as a jealous tantrum. No, he didn’t want that.

  With an extra burger in hand, Tru went running off with other kids. Mazy’s conversation was casual, superficial, as if they were merely a couple of friends seated next to each other. Clark was right, he needed to up his game. Or, in line with his current plan, kick it down a notch.

  He watched the goings-on around him and ruminated on the lovelorn woes of the internet lamenters. What would their boyfriends do out in a public place? He knew the answer immediately.

  “Whoa, check out the rack on that one,” he said as he gestured toward a young woman with a very nice figure. Significantly more endowed than Mazy. “Yellow-and-black stripes have never looked so good.”

  Beside him, Mazy stiffened. Eli saw her brow furrow, but she said nothing.

  Deliberately he kept his eyes on the young woman as he made a smacking sound with his lips. “Oh, I’d sure hit that.”

  A shocked sound emitted from Mazy’s throat that she attempted to cover with a cough. Eli enthusiastically pounded her on the back.

  “I’m okay,” she assured him.

  Eli got a better look at the face of “nice rack” girl and realized that she was little more than a teenager. He felt slightly sick. She was closer to Tru’s age than his own. That was way too creepy. But it had gotten Mazy’s attention. He decided to limit his attention to women who were obviously older.

  A moment later a female deputy from the sheriff’s department came out the door of the burger joint. Perfect, Eli thought to himself.

  “I’d hit that.”

  In his peripheral vision he could see Mazy’s wide-eyed expression evidencing disbelief. This was good. This was really working. He decided to go for the jugular.

  A young mom with a preschooler in hand walked by. “I have hit that,” he said to Mazy in a quiet, boastful aside.

  Mazy was completely silent. Eli couldn’t be sure if it was jealousy or hurt. Either would probably work.

  Going into the restaurant door he spotted another woman with a short cropped hairdo and slightly wide backside covered in a black skirt.

  “I’ve hit that, too,” Eli bragged, stuffing a handful of fries in his mouth.

  “What?” Mazy’s voice was a squeak of disbelief before she dropped her tone to a furtive whisper. “You’ve had sex with Mrs. Markowski?”

  Eli nearly choked as he immediately recognized the name as that of the pastor’s wife at the Church of Christ. Clearly this was not a good strategy for a small town.

  And it was not one that he shared with his dad during bath time the next day.

  “I’m going to be helping Tru with a project,” he told Jonah. “It’s just a shelf, so it’s weird that I’m so jazzed about it. Tru doesn’t know anything about anything. And it remains to be seen if he even has an aptitude for this stuff. But it’s fun to see his mind working. To see him enthused. I guess I get tired of being the only one who really loves what we do.” Eli sighed heavily. “I miss working with you, Dad. Clark is...well, Clark is just Clark.”

  Clark had moseyed into work that day, late as usual. And when questioned about the storage it was clear that he hadn’t actually bothered to even make the phone calls.

  Eli refused to let that dampen his day. He was going to be working on a project with Tru. That was like doing something nice for Mazy without the consequences of doing something nice for her. He could hardly wait.

  The teen showed up a little after four. Eli waved him over to the workbench.

  Tru proudly opened up his notepad and showed Eli the dimensions that he’d measured. There was easily room for any number of shelf configurations. He’d gotten answers to all the questions except the one about paint.

  “The wall isn’t painted,” he told Eli. “It’s got wood on it.”

  “Wood? Like paneling.”

  “Yeah, I guess it would be paneling. It’s tall, but it doesn’t go all the way to the ceiling.”

  “Ah, so it’s more of a wainscot.”

  “Okay.”

  “So we’ll probably need to match that as best we can,” Eli said. “What kind of wood is it?”

  Tru screwed up his face uncomfortably. “Brown wood?”

  They both laughed.

  “When we put the wood shipment up the other day, did you see anything like it?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Eli shrugged. “Well, wood looks different when it’s finished. Lots of folks can’t tell a mahogany from a maple and describe everything as oak.”

  “I guess that’s me,” Tru said.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll learn,” he told him. “Come on. Let’s take a field trip.”

  As they headed to the coat hooks, Eli stopped at his brother’s workbench. “You’ll need to get tho
se bench planes sharpened today. And the spray gun needs cleaning.” Eli glanced around. “And sweep before you lock up. We’re gone for the day.”

  Clark’s shocked expression was priceless, but Eli hardly spared a moment to even notice.

  On Main Street, there were several empty parking spaces in front of Local Grind. Inside there were only two tables with customers.

  Charlie greeted them both warmly.

  “So, you’re back already,” he said to Tru.

  The teenager shrugged. “I didn’t know what kind of wood is on the walls,” he answered.

  “Oh, it’s some kind of oak, I think,” Charlie responded. “I wanted to tear it out, it looks old-fashioned, but Alice liked it.”

  “Your wife has good taste,” Eli said.

  He was staring at the wall. His expression was totally calm, but his heart was beating faster.

  He walked to the side of the room where the tables were empty and slowly, almost lovingly, ran his hand across the paneling. At the edge of one, where the tongue fit snuggly within the groove, he pressed a fingernail into the wood.

  “I don’t think this is oak, Charlie.”

  Eli glanced back to see both the building’s owner and Tru standing behind him.

  “It’s not oak?”

  Eli shook his head. “I think it’s chestnut.”

  “Chestnut?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You don’t see much chestnut these days.”

  Eli glanced over at Tru. “American chestnut was one of the most abundant and useful native wood species in the country. It was strong, but relatively lightweight. It was durable, easy to work and it could be finished up to look beautiful. Best of all, there was a lot of it. One out of every four hardwoods in Appalachia was chestnut. And when a wood is abundant, it’s inexpensive.”

  “So why don’t we use it anymore?” the teenager asked.

  “In the early twentieth century, commercial nurseries imported ornamental trees from the Far East. Unfortunately, along with the pretty mimosas and Japanese maples, they brought in a blight that virtually wiped out the entire American chestnut species in less than a decade.”

  “That can happen?”

  “It can and it does,” Eli said. “It keeps happening. It’s happening right now. We were still staggering from chestnut loss when we were hit with Dutch elm disease. It’s a fungal infection, just like the chestnut blight. We’ve done a little better with it and with oak wilt, but our trees are always at risk from plagues. These are all fungal infections. I think the pine problems out west are the same.”

  “Wow.”

  He turned to look at Tru. “So you are looking at a remnant of a type of wood that you and I will probably never work again. It’s like a rare antique.”

  “Jeez,” Charlie said. “I’m sure glad I didn’t rip it out and dump it. I would have. I wanted the walls to be a muted green. It seemed like it would brighten the place up.”

  Eli glanced around. “It would,” he said. “If you still want to do that, don’t trash it. Take the chestnut down carefully. You can sell it.”

  “I can sell it?” Charlie repeated. “People will buy the wood off the walls.”

  “There’s no other way to get this kind of wood,” Eli answered. “There is a big market for reclaimed chestnut.”

  “Do you want to buy it?”

  “Me? No,” Eli assured him. “I could use a few pieces, but nobody should be making furniture from this. And it’s too rich for my blood. Ten-foot lengths of chestnut lap and gap in excellent condition, somebody will pay some cash for that.”

  “Seriously? I could sure use some cash. And there is more of this stuff upstairs.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “Yeah, the whole second floor used to be a ballroom,” Charlie answered.

  Eli and Tru took the dimensions of the downstairs wainscot and then repeated the action on the second level. The ballroom wainscot was significantly shorter, more of a chair-rail height. But it also had some decorative beams around the stage area.

  Back in the coffee shop, Charlie was excited.

  “Give me a day or two,” Eli told him. “I’ll make some calculations on how much chestnut there is, what kind of buyers are out there and how much you might get for it.”

  They drove home eager to get online. Tru wanted to start the search right away.

  Eli shook his head. “Your mom and grandmother are going to be expecting you home for dinner,” he said. “I’ve got to get something to eat myself and then go see my dad.”

  “Eat with us,” Tru suggested. “Gram won’t mind. And that way we can get started.”

  Routine refusal was his immediate inclination. It was incredibly rude to show up at somebody’s house expecting dinner. And when that somebody is the woman you’re sleeping with, it would look like an overreach expectation worthy of an insensitive misogynist. Which, he quickly reminded himself, was what he was going for.

  Sometimes it was hard for Eli to remember why he was doing all this. Why he was cultivating his inner bad guy and jerking Mazy around in a way she never deserved. It would be so much easier when he could simply love her and she would love him back.

  Not yet. They were not there yet.

  “Dinner at your house sounds great!” he told Tru. “Let me grab my laptop and I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”

  30

  She had been surprised when Tru had announced that Eli was coming for dinner. The basketball game had been unexpectedly fun. And being out in the open with Eli had felt wonderful. She was proud to be with him.

  Well, at least most of the time. She hadn’t remembered him as a guy who had such weird moods. And his openness about his conquests of other women, that was positively embarrassing. Of course, she knew that he’d slept with other people. But she sure didn’t what to know who. And poor Reverend Markowski! She hoped that had happened before the couple married.

  Feeling attraction was human nature. But to gawk at women while she was sitting right there. That just didn’t seem like the Eli she knew.

  But even with that strange episode, the sight of him sitting so relaxed and looking so at home in her mother’s kitchen felt wonderful. The idea that he was there at the invitation of her son warmed her heart. She couldn’t recall any guy that she’d dated that Tru had actually liked. But he liked Eli. He clearly respected him and the feeling appeared to be mutual.

  If that wasn’t enough to make her day, the news about what they’d found in the Local Grind building easily put her over the top.

  “It’s like the walls are lined with money,” Tru told her.

  “They’re old boards. It can’t be that much,” Beth Ann said, looking toward Eli for confirmation.

  “It very nearly is,” he told her. “Narrowing it down to actual buyers will take some time. The going rate is twelve bucks a board foot. And that’s ordinary lumber. This is gorgeous lap and gap, twelve inches wide and ten feet long.”

  “What does that mean in English?” Mazy asked.

  “It means the wood in that building could be worth maybe forty thousand dollars.”

  “Good Lord!”

  “That’s more than he owes on the building,” Mazy blurted out before she could stop herself. Fortunately, her gaff was effectively covered by her mother.

  “For some old boards?”

  Eli nodded. “They’re chestnut.”

  Beth Ann quickly glanced around the room and then rose to her feet to slap the wall surface near the doorway. “What about this? What is it?”

  “That’s 1960s laminate paneling,” he answered with a chuckle. “But it’s good to keep your eyes open, Mrs. Gulliver.”

  The mood for most of the evening was lighthearted, optimistic. And Mazy felt that way, too.

&
nbsp; After dinner, Beth Ann insisted that Mazy sit with “the men” in the living room while she cleaned up. Mazy agreed because she thought Eli was there to see her. But he hardly glanced in her direction. She sat in a chair across from him as he and Tru searched the internet, looking at what Eli jokingly described to Tru as “wood porn,” photos of trees and cut lumber and furniture construction.

  “‘American chestnut trees grew to a diameter of ten feet and heights up to one hundred feet until an airborne fungus killed up to three million trees in the early twentieth century,’” Tru read aloud.

  “It’s hard to even picture how the landscape must have looked with all those big trees.”

  Tru was nodding. “I have to do a paper in history this semester. Do you think something like this might count as history?”

  Eli shrugged. “You’d have to ask your teacher, but it certainly counts as history to me.”

  “And it’s for sure more interesting than what politician said what to whom at the time of the Louisiana Purchase.”

  Eli laughed. “Those things are important, too. A guy has got to know a little bit about everything in order to have credibility when he talks about anything.”

  He would have made such a good father, Mazy thought to herself. If she had married Eli back when they were first together, Tru would have never known anybody else as “Dad.”

  Even if she married him now, Tru would likely accept him as a father figure. That’s what she should do, she decided as she watched them together on the couch. She should marry Eli.

  But as the evening wore on, it seemed less and less obvious that she would have that option. Eli never directed a word at her. He didn’t even make eye contact.

  Mazy told herself it was because he was totally wrapped up with Tru and the wood research.

  But when Beth Ann joined them from the kitchen, Eli changed the subject to one more general and pulled her into the conversation. Still, he never directed a word in Mazy’s direction. And when, on two separate occasions, Mazy asked him a direct question, he managed to answer without ever looking at her.