Ashley & Milo

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  "What do you think, Mark? Do you still want to work for me?"

  "I do, I just hope I get to work on the house project before school starts."

  "I will see that you are involved. I don't suppose you have a digital camera do you? I want to start a visual record of the work I do and put it in a scrapbook for the girls. Someday they may want to look back and see what their dad has done with his life. Come on, we have to get those kids from Mrs. Grover. I have to do a job there on Monday."

  "What are we going to be doing tomorrow?"

  "I'll show you presently. A lot of these rich people may have little projects in mind and I try to accommodate them. Have you ever done any painting?"

  "Not much, although I helped a neighbor last summer."

  "That is about the way I started getting interested in this kind of work. When your step-mom divorced me, I was pretty broken up over it. I had a business of my own, but had to give that up. So I started going to building supply places and just hanging around to kill time. It made me aware of what different materials were used for different jobs.

  "I was fortunate in meeting Mrs. Winslip in that she gave me paying work and I was able to have a place to live. I worked seventy-seven hours the first week for her. I don't work quite so much now as I have to watch the kids this month, but they are worth every dollar I lose while I have them with me. The courts say children should be with their mother and I basically agree, but I miss them when they aren't with me."

  "I can see that."

  I pulled up in front of the Grover house. Lindsey and Marie came running from around back and shouted to Mark to come meet their friends. I heard, as I headed to the front door, Marie tell someone that this was Mark, their big brother. Somehow it made me feel real good.

  The room Kim showed me to be converted was already a beautifully decorated room like most of the rooms in the house. It was their money and they could have it decorated as they wished.

  Kim wanted figured wallpaper with farm animals. It was a fairly long room so when she asked what I would propose for the ceiling, I suggested a series of circles done in the plaster. I could outline an animal in each of the circles down the center of the room. I also suggested that as you entered the room, on the opposite wall, I could make a plaster likeness of a baby right in the wall. When I asked how permanent she wanted it, she said make it forever. It would make a great conversation piece.

  When we got around to the color scheme, she had things she wanted that I didn't feel confident in doing. I suggested she use the same company that I had employed to do my apartment.

  "No, you hire them and put in your markup on top of their bill. That way I will have to write only one check." I warned her that although the bulk of the work would be done on Monday, Tuesday, and part of Wednesday, it would be a week before the painters could do the ceiling because the plaster had to cure. That was fine ? the baby was still nestled in a safe place for another five weeks.

  As we drove away I said, "Okay Mark, talking to the lady was a billable hour. Sometimes if you have a difficult customer, that won't show up on their bill, so your overhead has to be high enough to absorb it. Everyone advertises free estimates, but in one way or another, the customer pays. Your father can explain it and he does the same with his clients."

  "I wish he had more clients so he would have more billable hours. Sometimes he doesn't make very much."

  "Maybe he needs to partner with another firm where each can work to their own strengths." Nothing further was said as we headed for the deli. I swung by the Home Depot and told Mark this is where I was getting the materials for tomorrow's job and then I showed Mark where we were going to dispose of the debris from the ramp.

  I bought subs for all of us and we went to the apartment to eat. Mark had of course heard me make suggestions to Kim Grover about doing her ceiling. He asked many questions as I showed him the ceilings here where I lived. "So while you are plastering, what will I be doing?"

  "You will be helping. This is a job that pretty much has to be hurried right along. The living room here was too big for me to do alone, so I asked Mrs. Winslip to help. We were both a mess when we finished, but we got the job done. The two bedrooms I did by myself and I sure could have used someone. You'll see when we do the Grover's ceiling."

  "Who is Mrs. Winslip? Jean has mentioned her several times."

  "She is my landlady, my boss, and the widow of a man that was my best friend. I like to think she is becoming my friend too."

  "How old is she? Is she pretty?"

  "I think she is about twenty-eight. She isn't beautiful by some peoples' standards, Jean's for instance, but she is warm and friendly and a person you just want to be around."

  "Do you love her?"

  "Mark that is too personal a question. I've only known her a short time and really that would be our business and definitely not yours."

  "I know and I'm sorry. I guess I read too many novels." Mark was flustered now and I knew he had asked without thinking. "Would you forget I asked? I am sorry!"

  "Forget it. Say, what happened to your mother? No one has ever mentioned her."

  A look of sadness came over Mark's face. "Mom is sick and Dad put her in an institution. She is pretty good if she takes her medication. Sometimes the state lets her out and we see her, but then she thinks she is fine and stops taking her medicine. She ends back in the institution. When I'm eighteen I'm planning on becoming her guardian and am going to make sure she does what she is supposed to. She is really nice and all of us kids miss her."

  "How come your father divorced her?"

  "Dad said he needed a woman all the time, not someone he just had to take care of and not someone that was in an institution part of the time. I guess he is right in a way, but it hurts when it is your mother."

  "Where is your mother staying if she isn't in an institution?"

  "The state has what they call halfway houses. One time they closed the one that Mom was in and didn't tell us. We found her out on the street wandering around. That was about the last time Dad had anything to do with her." I let the matter drop. My estimation of James Burgess hadn't been raised any during this conversation, that was for sure.

  I had Mark sit down and we filled out the forms I needed to employ him. While I did more paperwork I had the girls take Mark out to look at the gazebo. I reflected on what Mark had told me about his mother. No wonder the Burgess kids resented Jean. I suppose they lived with their father because they had to.

  I bet I could work up more than a little dislike for the son-of-a-bitch. He was married to a woman and when she got sick, the bastard dumped her. More and more I wanted Lindsey and Marie with me. I didn't want them growing up near him.