Building Home

by Dee Ernst

  I laughed. “Sorry. I didn’t even know you had a website.”

  “Welp, see, both Steve and I used to be financial bigwigs. I’m serious now. He has an MBA from Columbia, excuse-me-very-much, and worked on Wall Street till the crash in ’08. I was in Boston, also with an MBA, and we both got our butts kicked and lost our jobs and had to come running back here to lick our wounds.”

  He pulled on a blade of grass and stuck it between his teeth. I had already noted that his lips were full and looked rather soft. I found my eyes going back to his mouth every time that blade of grass moved. It was quite distracting

  “Luckily,” he continued, “we’d both worked construction before. That’s what paid our college tuitions, so we looked around down here, saw all those broken-down summer cottages, and went into business for ourselves. And we’ve done pretty well for two hometown boys, I must say.”

  I stared, then let out a whoop of laughter. “So, that whole gee, shucks thing you got going on is, what? A show for your clients?”

  He grinned. “Chris, I am a gee, shucks boy from way back. It’s in my blood. You can take a man out of the Eastern Shore, but you can’t scrape the Eastern Shore off the man, not even with putty knife.”

  “Hey.”

  I turned. Steve was standing on the porch, his hands on his hips. “What are you doing on my job site? Don’t you have work of your own to do?”

  “Joe and I are discussing important business here with our client,” Mike yelled back. “And you are interrupting.”

  “And what is so important?”

  “Windows. Go away, little brother. All your good looks are spilling out on this new-mown lawn.”

  Steve turned and went back inside.

  “I guess that’s my cue,” Mike said, standing slowly and stretching his hands high over his head. “This front lawn doesn’t look half bad now that’s it’s been cleaned up a bit. Who did you get to mow this, anyway?”

  “I did it myself.” I shaded my eyes with my hand as I looked up at him.

  “‘Though she be but little, she is fierce,’” he quoted.

  “Trying to show off some of that MBA with a little Shakespeare?”

  “I try to show off that MBA any way I can,” he said. “It took me years to pay it off.” He grinned. “I’d better get back to work before my brother comes on back here and starts hollerin’.”

  “Okay, then, but feel free to stop back any time,” I told him. “And bring Joe. I like the strong, silent type.”

  “Why, thanks, I think I will. Will there be beer next time?”

  “I’ll make sure of it.”

  “You’re already up for Favorite Client of the Year. A cold one or two will probably clinch it,” he winked at me. “Next time, we’ll talk a little more Shakespeare,” he said, and went back across the street, Joe walking behind him without a backward glance.

  I watched him as he walked away, and I had to admit the view was just fine.

  When I made my second appearance at the Grove that Friday night, I was greeted like an old friend. I’d had several people stop by during the day on Friday to watch the activity at the house, and now they all had questions. I found myself drawing the floor plan on a napkin from memory. Luckily, Susan drifted by and flipped the napkin over, her lines straight and true and garnering murmurs of admiration.

  “Susan is very good,” Stella Blount whispered in my ear. “A little snooty, but she’s original and talented.” Stella, I knew, ran a shop on Main Street. She was a small, compact ball of energy with a splash of bright red dye brightening her Afro, and she radiated a solid earth-mother vibe. Karen was there again as well and invited me to try a yoga class. I declined without telling her that I pretty much despised exercise in general, yoga in particular. Karen introduced me to a tall, attractive bald man, who stuck out his hand to shake mine warmly.

  “I’m Judd Mitchell. You must be Chris. I’d love to take some photos of the house as it goes from derelict to dream.”

  I smiled back at him. “That sounds like one of the HGTV shows Terri has been watching.”

  He laughed. “I don’t do video, sorry, but it would make a great photo essay. I put some of my work online. Would you mind?”

  I shook my head. “Not at all. In fact, it would be great to be able to look back and see how everything was done. How about Sunday?”

  We agreed on a time, and he drifted off.

  Marie Wu was also there. She was a real estate attorney, and although I knew her only slightly from previous trips to visit Terri, she sat beside me all through dinner and kept me laughing all night as we traded our strangest real estate stories. Then it was an early bedtime.

  I’d spent most of the last part of the week not thinking about Mike McCann. And by that I mean that I made a very concerted effort not to think about the way his gray hair curled, just a bit, at the base of his neck, and how his hands looked knotted and muscular and very capable. Then, I didn’t think about what those hands might be doing if they were involved in something other than power tools and plywood and spray-foam insulation. What would they feel like, for instance, running through my hair, down the side of my arm, up the inside of my thigh…

  Finally, Saturday afternoon, I knew I had to do something to pull my head out of the clouds, so I headed out to the Coop, one of my favorite places on the Eastern Shore. It was also where I had another good friend, albeit an odd one.

  When I came down to visit Terri right after my divorce, almost fifteen years ago, I wandered into The Northampton Antique Co-Op, known as the Coop, a long, rambling building at the end of a rutted drive off the highway. Inside, the air was cool, and it had that musty kind of smell: old books and aged wood, dust and mold. There were at least thirty different vendors represented there, with stalls selling everything from vintage baseball cards to Victorian oak bedroom sets. Right away, I knew it was my kind of place.

  I had bought a small framed print, and in paying by credit card, the woman behind the counter read my newly reacquired last name slowly, then looked up at me though eyes made bigger and blacker by layers of mascara.

  “You’re Italian?” she asked.

  I nodded. My father had died when I was eight, and shortly afterwards my Irish mother moved from the busy Italian section in Baltimore to live closer to her brother in Rehoboth. I had fond memories of my paternal grandmother, widowed at sixty, who lived off of social security in a tiny walk-up apartment. Whenever we visited, there was a crowd of relatives: her cousins and their children, the neighbors down the hall, and aged old men from the neighborhood. There was always laughter and arguing, penny-ante card games and talk about the old days. And there was always a pot of what Nana called Sunday gravy on the stove, and a plate of delicacies from the Mastriano’s Bakery on the kitchen table.

  The woman behind the counter beamed. “I’m Celestina Montecorvo. Call me Celeste,” she said. Then she turned her head and shouted into the back office. “Connie, come out here!”

  An even older woman came out. The two women were immediately recognizable to me: short hair dyed pure black, thin, penciled-in brows, thick lashes and a red mouth.

  “This is my sister, Constanzia. Connie. Do you live here on the Eastern Shore? We always like to make our Italian customers welcome.”

  I shook my head, smiling. “Sorry, just a visitor.”

  Connie grabbed my hand. “But you’re staying a while? Maybe you could stop back and visit? Where are your people from?”

  I had to think. “The Marches?” I said, dragging the name from a faint memory.

  Celeste clasped both of her hands to her chest. “Us too! We might be family! Where?” She rattled off a series of place names that left me shaking my head and laughing.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I just don’t know.”

  Celeste patted my hand. “Doesn’t matter. Come back? We’re closed on Mondays, but we live right in the back.”

  I had tried to back out gracefully, but they were so sweet and insistent that the followin
g Monday I went back and sat in their tiny apartment behind the Coop, eating homemade sausages with broccoli rabe the likes of which I hadn’t tasted since I was last in my Nana’s kitchen. They represented something warm and familiar to me, and I went back to see them every subsequent trip. The last time I had been down, I had sat in their cramped kitchen and cried about my mother, then cried again when Connie said she was moving into a nursing home because of her most recent stroke.

  As I walked in, I paused to let my eyes adjust from the bright sunlight outside to the considerably dimmer interior of Coop.

  “Christiana, dear, it’s so good to see you,” Celeste called, coming out from behind the counter. She seemed even tinier than before, her back humped and misshapen under her flowered shirt. She reached up to kiss me on both cheeks.

  “Is your dear mother gone?” she asked.

  When I nodded, she embraced me again. “Oh, Christiana, I’m so sorry. But it’s good you’re here. The sea air will heal you.”

  I drank in the familiar smell of her: garlic and peppers, and a hint of mothballs. “How’s Connie?”

  Her face fell. “Not good. And that place…” She waved a hand and went back behind the counter. “I don’t like that place. I want her somewhere else, but…” She rubbed her two fingers together against her thumb. “Who can pay?”

  “Well, Celeste, I bought a house in Cape Edwards, so I’ll be spending lots of money here.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Oh, how lovely! Would you come with me sometime to visit Connie? I know she would love it.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Let me get a little settled first. And let me shop!”

  She waved her hands and I felt a little tugging at my heart. She had aged so much since I’d seen her last, and she seemed so tired. Next time, I’d be the one cooking for her, I thought.

  As soon as I had a kitchen.

  Chapter Three

  I had a budget. I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly, but I knew how much I could spend. I spent almost an hour checking off the things I couldn’t buy before starting my second loop, this time with a more determined eye.

  I went back three times to an oak dresser, footed, with three drawers and an attached mirror. It spoke to me. It had a story, I could tell. And it was only two hundred bucks. I took a picture on my phone, and then another, then walked away to see it from a different angle.

  “I’ve seen people spend less time looking at a car they were about to buy,” Mike McCann said slowly. He’d come up behind me, and as I glanced up, he was shaking his head. “What, exactly, are you looking for?” He was dressed in a linen shirt and khaki shorts, his sunglasses pushed up to the top of his head. Joe was behind him, looking slightly bored.

  I was totally surprised to see him. My heart rate jumped and I swear I got a little breathless. I was totally unprepared for such a reaction, and to hide my confusion I crouched down and held out a hand. Joe took a few tentative steps toward me, sniffed my open palm, and wagged his tail slowly.

  “I’m impressed,” Mike said. “He usually bites first and asks questions later.”

  I stood back up. “You’re a liar, Mike McCann. I bet that dog is a complete marshmallow.”

  He grinned. “You’re a pretty good judge of dogs.”

  “I’ve always wanted one, and if I could get one as well behaved as Joe, I’d jump right in.” I turned back to the dresser. “I’m thinking this would be great in the bathroom. Instead of a regular vanity? What do you think?” I found myself smiling, and he smiled back.

  “I think you don’t even have walls in your bathroom. Aren’t you rushing things just a bit?”

  “Not at all. This is the very first house I’ve ever lived in that’s going to be just mine, and if I see something I want, I’m going to get it. And I think this would be just fine, with a little cleaning, maybe scrape off this old paint?”

  “You know, you could save me a whole lotta trouble if you just went to Home Depot.”

  “Yes, but look at this piece. It’s the right height, the bottom two drawers could be used for storage, and that mirror…”

  He raked his fingers through his beard. “Hmm.” He got down on his knees and looked under the dresser, pulled out all the drawers and looked again, then stood with a sigh. “Yeah, this is pretty perfect. One of those square sinks on top, a few coats of poly…it’ll work.”

  I beamed. “And look what else I found.”

  “Is it going to be more work for me?” he asked, his blue eyes twinkling.

  “Probably. Or you could show me how to do it.” I started down toward the next aisle. “Now, this armoire?”

  “Is flying under a false flag. This is not an armoire at all. It’s a tall kitchen cupboard.”

  “Whatever. But can it fit in where the hall closet is supposed to go? Look at all this storage! I can put some shelves in the top here, and these drawers are…” I pulled. The first drawer had opened quite easily, but the bottom was stuck.

  “These drawers are painted shut,” Mike pointed out.

  “Not all of them. But what do you think? It’s not too wide, is it?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not too wide. And the height is about right, too. Okay, I’ll give you this one. We can make the opening to fit this piece, if you want to take it on. You can strip the paint, do the sanding, hell, you can even change out the hardware.” He was grinning now, and I could see the laughter in his eyes.

  “You’re mocking me, Mike McCann. Just you wait. I’m going to become a master at this stuff.”

  “Yes. Welp, let’s see if you can get it all back to the house first.” He glanced down at me. “There’s more?”

  I nodded. “Yes. But, you weren’t here to help me with all this. I’ve got the rest. Really.”

  “The rest? God, woman, just how much were you thinking about buying?”

  “Well, there’s a set delivery charge no matter how many pieces I get, so I may as well just go for broke, right?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “May as well. Okay, what’s next?”

  “Are you sure? I mean, what did you come here for in the first place?”

  He shrugged. “I collect old woodworking tools. Planes, saws, drill…any old piece of crap nobody else wants. Got a whole garage full. I have no idea what I’m gonna do with it all, but it just makes me feel good to know that if the apocalypse comes, and there’s no more electricity in the world, I have the tools and can still build me a house. So, go on. What else you got?”

  I jerked my head to the left. “I know we ordered a kitchen island from the cabinet place, but look at this, this long table. It’s almost counter height, isn’t it? And that shelf along the bottom is perfect for storing bowls and stuff.” The table was long, over six feet, with a rough top and legs painted a dull red.

  “Welp, we could sand down the top here, or maybe get you some nice butcher block. And you’re right, it’s a perfect height.” Mike crouched down and looked at the underneath. “It’s solid enough, for sure. And these red legs? Is that your pop of color?”

  “You’re mocking me again.”

  “Nope, not me. I’m just a small-town boy tryin’ to get up to speed with your big-city design ideas.”

  I snorted. “You’re not going to try to pull that ah, shucks BS on me again, are you? I’ve got you figured out, Mike McCann. I don’t want my house to look like everyone else’s,” I said. “Besides, I like junk. And over there…” I raised my arms, hands together, both index fingers pointing.

  He groaned and caught my hands, rocking them back and forth. “Woman, you’re killing me here.”

  I almost jumped out of my skin. His hands on mine felt just right. I felt the heat of his palms, and electricity shot up both arms, across my chest, down my back and, well…down. He held them for just a second before dropping his arms and walking away, but in that second, I had lost my breath.

  Maybe he was glib and dismissive, and maybe he was just humoring me because I was his client and paying him lot
s of money, but…

  “Never mind. I think I’m done,” I managed.

  “Thank all that is holy. Okay, let’s see Celeste and get this stuff tagged. You don’t want anyone else grabbing up this treasure.”

  Celeste greeted Mike with a kiss on both cheeks, and carefully wrote down what I wanted, then graciously accepted my credit card. She handed it back to me with a smile. “Thank you, Christiana. I hope you enjoy all those lovely things.”

  Mike raised his eyebrows. “Christiana? That’s not the name on that check you wrote us.”

  She beamed. “She’s Italian, you know. That’s her real name. Chris,” she waved both hands in the air. “Chris is a man’s name.”

  Mike looked skeptical. “Italian really? What with all those light-colored curls?”

  “My mother was Irish,” I explained.

  “Ah,” Celeste breathed. “Of course. You know, the Irish and the Italians, when they get together, they make very beautiful children.”

  Mike nodded slowly. “Yes, Celeste, they surely do,” he said, his eyes never leaving my face.

  I felt my cheeks start to burn and ducked my head. “Thanks, Celeste. We’ll talk soon.”

  I went outside, thankful for the fresh air. Just when the rush I’d felt of Mike touching my hands had started to fade, he called me beautiful? What did that mean? I needed to put some distance between Mike and me and try to sort that out. I took a few deep breaths on my way to the car, and wouldn’t you know, Mike was right behind me.

  “We’ll pick this up for you, Chris. I’ll send somebody out here with a truck. That way, Celeste won’t have to pay her driver, and we could save her a bit.”

  I looked back at the Coop. “Is the place in trouble?”

  He shrugged. “Things will get better once the season starts, but she’s worried about her sister, and I know that money is an issue for her.”

  Not only did he have sexy blue eyes and a killer smile, he was also a nice guy.

  “You should buy the place, Mike. Just think of all that good rusty stuff in there.”