The Beginner's Goodbye

  “Knowing What You Want” was the first chapter. (Where in your present kitchen do you do your slicing and dicing? DO you, in fact, do any slicing and dicing?) “Communicating with Your Contractor” was the second. Almost the entire remainder of the book consisted of what now seemed to me an inordinately detailed plan for setting up an interim kitchen in a spare bathroom.

  I took the book to my desk and sat down to read the contractor chapter. Apparently the essential element was control. Do not assume that, having issued your directives, you can lean back and let your contractor run wild. Inform him or her that you will be checking his or her progress at the end of every workday. Insist that he or she submit a timeline, in writing, outlining the steps to be completed by certain fixed dates. Schedule meetings on a weekly basis, at which you will require him or her to present a record of current expenses.

  It was Nandina who was to blame for the him-her business, although otherwise she steered clear of the editing side of things. (For starters, she couldn’t spell. She was one of the smartest women I knew, but she couldn’t spell worth a damn.)

  I closed the book on an index finger and reached for the telephone. I punched in the number I’d written down for Gil Bryan.

  “Hello,” he said.

  At least he wasn’t as gruff as the first man. He spoke at a normal level, above the whirr of some power tool in the background.

  I said, “Gil Bryan?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Aaron Woolcott. I own that house on Rumor Road where the—where the—”

  Stupidly, I could not seem to get the words out.

  “Where the tree fell,” Gil Bryan said. “Right.”

  But even with his help, I wasn’t able to go on. I can’t explain what happened. My eyes filled with tears and I didn’t trust my voice.

  “Are you thinking of getting that fixed?” he asked me after a moment.

  I swallowed and said, “Yes.”

  “I could come by and take a look, if you like.”

  “I’m not there,” I said. I cleared my throat.

  “Maybe after you get home from work, then?”

  “I mean, I’m not ever there. I’m staying with my sister. That rain we’ve had broke through the tarp and the hall ceiling fell in.”

  Gil Bryan made a whistling sound through his teeth.

  “I was thinking,” I said, “could you stop by my sister’s house around five-thirty and I’d just give you the key so you could go check the place out?”

  “Check it out on my own, you’re saying?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause. Then he said, “Well, I could do that, I guess. But it’d be better to have you along.”

  I said nothing.

  “So, okay,” he said. “I’ll go it alone.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re talking about just the roof? Or the interior, too.”

  “Everything. I don’t know. Just take care of it. You decide.”

  “Everything? What kind of time frame are you looking for?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “However much time it takes, I guess.”

  Then I gave him Nandina’s address, and hung up, and put The Beginner’s Book of Kitchen Remodeling back in its place on the shelf.

  · · ·

  I’d chosen five-thirty for a reason: Nandina would still be at work. She made it a point of honor, most evenings, to stay longer than anyone else in the office. So she wouldn’t be there to horn in on my first consultation with Gil Bryan. She wouldn’t find out that it was my first consultation.

  But my sister has an uncanny sixth sense; I can’t think of any other way to explain it. She knocked on my door at a quarter till five and stuck her head in and said, “I’m going now. See you at home.”

  “You’re going now?”

  “I might as well. I’m at a good stopping place,” she said. She had her purse slung over her shoulder.

  So, by the time I got there, she was already in the kitchen starting dinner preparations. And when the doorbell rang, she arrived in the hall right behind me, wiping her hands on the hem of the apron that covered her housecoat.

  Gil Bryan had the dingy, dusty look of a man who’d been at hard labor all day, but the skin beneath his eyes was still shining, and I felt the same sense of trust that I had before. I said, “Come in, Mr. Bryan,” and he said, “Gil.”

  “Aaron,” I told him, and we shook hands. (He had a hand like a baseball mitt.) Then I had to add, “This is my sister, Nandina,” because she was still standing there. “Contractor,” I told her curtly, and she said, “Oh,” and backed off and returned to the kitchen.

  “Come in and have a seat,” I said to Gil.

  “Oh, I’m all dirty. I’ll just take the key and be on my way.”

  I fished my key case out of my pocket. As I was unhooking my house key, I asked, “Are you planning on going over there this evening?”

  “I figured I would.”

  “Because I’m not sure the electricity is working.”

  “Huh,” he said. “Okay, I’ll go in the morning. Check it out during daylight. How about I come by here tomorrow, same time, once I know what’s what.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. I handed him the key.

  “And you want me looking at everything.”

  “Everything,” I said. “Make a list.”

  “Okay, then,” he said. But I could tell he was baffled by my attitude.

  We shook hands again, and he left. Not two seconds later, Nandina popped out of the kitchen. “That didn’t take long,” she said.

  “He just needed a key, was all.”

  She nodded, apparently satisfied, and returned to her cooking.

  But over dinner she asked, “How exactly did you get this contractor’s name?”

  “Through Jim Rust,” I told her.

  She cocked her head, like someone who thought she’d heard an off-note in a song. She said, “Jim Rust has used his services personally?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, although I didn’t know that for a fact. Then I said, “It’s a done deal, Nandina. Butt out.”

  “Well! Sorry,” she said.

  We ate the rest of the meal without talking.

  · · ·

  The following evening, I had Gil to myself. I was waiting at the house for him when he rang the doorbell.

  “Hey there,” he said, and I said, “Come on in.”

  This time, he had clean clothes on—a chambray shirt and fresh khakis—and he accepted the seat I offered him on the couch. I sat at the other end of it. He was holding a crisp white file folder, I was happy to see. It implied some degree of professionalism. He opened the folder on the coffee table and spread out an array of papers covered in surprisingly small, tidy, uppercase handwriting.

  “So, okay, Aaron, here’s what we’ve got,” he said.

  I was happy, too, that he used my first name. Workmen who persist in saying “Mr.,” even after you’ve told them not to, always strike me as deliberately off-putting.

  “You were right about the electric,” he told me. “There’s been a short in the wires, on account of the water dripping down through the walls to the basement. For that I’m going to bring in Watkins Wattage, but they can’t make it over to take a look till—”

  I heard the front door open. Nandina called, “Aaron?”

  Damn. She appeared in the living-room entrance.

  “Oh!” she said.

  Gil stood up. “Evening,” he said.

  “Good evening.”

  “We’re busy going over some figures,” I told her.

  I gave her a look that she couldn’t possibly mistake, and she said, “Oh, all right; don’t let me interrupt,” and backed hastily out of the room.

  “You were saying—?” I asked Gil.

  He had sat down again, and he was riffling through his papers. “There’s structural damage in the attic,” he said. “That’s the worst of it. Some of the rafters need replacing. Roof, of course,
and the insulation’s shot; and so are the hallway and kitchen ceilings and the cabinets on the west wall. Chimney will want rebuilding, too. Chimneys are kind of a big deal, I hate to say. Now, moving on to the sunporch—”

  “Can’t we just take that off?” I asked.

  “Say what?”

  “Take the sunporch off; demolish it. It’s a lost cause, anyhow, and it was only tacked on to begin with. It’s not a part of the main—”

  “Would you two like some refreshment?” Nandina asked. She had reappeared, but from the dining room this time.

  “No,” I told her.

  “Mr. Bryan?”

  “Gil,” he said. He had risen once more to his feet. “No, thanks.”

  “A cold beer, maybe?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Or a glass of wine?”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  “We don’t have anything harder,” Nandina said. She had ventured a few feet farther into the room; any minute now she would plop herself down in an armchair, as if this were a topic that required deep discussion. “I know it’s still gin-and-tonic weather, but—”

  I said, “Nandina.”

  “What?”

  “That’s okay,” Gil told her. “I don’t drink.”

  “Oh.”

  “AA,” he said. He straightened his back as he spoke, almost defiantly, but then he raised a hand to feel for his beard in this uncertain sort of manner.

  Nandina said, “Oh, I’m sorry!”

  “That’s okay.”

  I was fully expecting Nandina to segue into the non-alcoholic side of the menu, but before she could, Gil told her, “We were just talking about the sunporch. Aaron here is saying how he wants to take it off.”

  “Take it off? Take it off of the house?”

  “That’s what he’s been saying.”

  “Well, that makes no sense whatsoever,” Nandina told me. “You’ll lower the resale value.”

  I said, “What do I care about the resale value?”

  “It’s a tiny house as it is. You need that room.”

  “Nandina, do you mind? We’re trying to have a private conversation.”

  “You’re just mad at the sunporch; that’s what it is.”

  “Mad!”

  “You’re just … emotional about it, because of what happened there.”

  “For God’s sake, Nandina, what business is that of yours?”

  “Here’s a thought,” Gil broke in. He spoke in an extra-quiet, reasonable-sounding voice, as if negotiating a treaty. “What if we were to keep the sunporch but change the orientation.”

  I said, “Orientation?”

  “Like, right now it looks like you had a desk kind of arrangement along that wall of shelving that joins the house, am I right?”

  The wall where the TV had hung, the one that killed her. I nodded.

  He said, “How about we plan now for your desk to face the front, in the middle of the room. Better anyway, right? You’d be looking out on the front yard. And then we’d run a row of shelves all around the circumference, underneath the windows. Just low shelves, built in. It would be, like, a whole new different setup.”

  I said, “Well. I don’t know.”

  Although I did see his point.

  Which Nandina must have guessed, because she said, “Thank you, Mr. Bryan.”

  Then she turned and left us alone, finally, and Gil sat back down on the couch and we went on with his papers.

  Mr. Hogan said he’d had an inspiration about his war book. He thought it should include his letters home to his mother. That was fine with me. We were merely his printers. But what I hadn’t realized was that he meant to submit the letters in their original, handwritten form. He set them on my desk one day in early October: a three-inch stack of envelopes bound with a satin ribbon that had probably once been blue. “Now, here is an example,” he said, slipping one envelope free. He hadn’t even sat down yet, although I’d offered him a chair. He was a tiny, stooped, white-haired man with squarish patches of pink in his cheeks that made him look enthusiastic. He drew the letter from the envelope with his crabbed fingers. Even from where I stood, I could see that it was almost illegible: a penciled scrawl, faded to silver, on bumpy onionskin paper.

  I said, “You’d have to get them typed, of course.”

  “Here I’m telling her all about what they give us to eat. I’m telling how I miss her fried shad and her shad roe.”

  “Mr. Hogan? Are you planning to have these typed?”

  “I’m saying how I haven’t had real biscuits since I left home.”

  “Who typed your original manuscript?” I asked him. It had arrived looking quite presentable, which wasn’t something we could take for granted in our business. (And we didn’t have even a hope of any sort of electronic submission.)

  “That was my daughter-in-law did those,” he told me.

  “Could your daughter-in-law type these letters, too?”

  “I don’t want to ask her.”

  No point inquiring why, I supposed. People’s goodwill wears out. It happens. I walked over to open my office door. “Peggy?” I called. “Could you bring in that list of professional typists?”

  “Right away.”

  “Is this something I would have to pay for?” Mr. Hogan asked me.

  “Well, yes.”

  “Because I’m not made of money, you know.”

  “I doubt it would be that expensive.”

  “I’ve already spent my life savings on this.”

  Peggy walked in, holding a sheet of paper. She seemed to be wearing a crinoline underneath her skirt. I didn’t know you could even buy crinolines anymore. She asked, “How’s the arthritis today, Mr. Hogan?”

  “He says I’m going to have to get these letters typed,” Mr. Hogan told her.

  “Oh, well,” Peggy said, “I’ve got a nice long list here of people who can help you with that.”

  “I don’t think I can afford it.”

  Peggy glanced down at her list, as if she might find some solution there.

  “These are letters I wrote to my mother,” Mr. Hogan said, offering forth the one letter in both hands. “I thought they might add a little something to my story.”

  “Oh, letters from the front are always good,” Peggy told him.

  “Mine are more like, from Florida.”

  “Still,” Peggy said.

  “I write about how I miss her cooking. Her shad and her shad roe.”

  “I love shad roe,” Peggy said.

  I said, “Well, in any event—”

  “I’m living on a fixed income,” Mr. Hogan said. He was peering intently into Peggy’s eyes, and the letter he held was trembling.

  Peggy said, “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Hogan. Why don’t I just type them.”

  As if I hadn’t seen that one coming.

  “Would you charge me?” Mr. Hogan asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “It won’t be any trouble.”

  “Well, thank you,” he told her. A little too easily, in my opinion.

  I said, “That’s very nice of you, Peggy,” but in a severe tone, as if I were reproving her.

  It was wasted on both of them, though. Peggy merely dimpled at me, and Mr. Hogan was busy fitting his letter back in its envelope.

  I always worried our older clients might feel insulted by Peggy. Her honeyed voice and her overly respectful manner could have been viewed as, let’s say, patronizing. Condescending. I would have found her condescending. But no one else seemed to. Mr. Hogan placed his stack of letters in her hand quite happily, and then he said to me, with a combative lift of his chin, “I was sure it would all work out!”

  Somehow, I had turned into the heavy. It wasn’t the first time.

  When Mr. Hogan had gone, I told Peggy, “I certainly hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said blandly.

  Then she offered to fetch me a cup of coffee, even though it was mid-afternoon. I never drank
coffee in the afternoon, as she very well knew. She was just changing the subject.

  If it hadn’t been for Peggy, Dorothy would have found her Triscuits exactly where she had left them. I thought about that, sometimes. I turned it over in my mind: could I say that, if not for Peggy, Dorothy would still be alive? But it didn’t really compute. Often, Dorothy had taken her six Triscuits to the sunporch with her. Most likely it would not have changed a thing if she had found them.

  So I couldn’t really hold that against Peggy. Although I seemed to hold something against her, these days. She was just so, what was it, so sweetie-sweet. And Irene was doing her best to avoid me, as if grief might be contagious, and Charles couldn’t even meet my eyes. Oh, I was sick to death of my officemates.

  Maybe I should take a vacation. But how would I fill my time, then? I didn’t even have any hobbies.

  “I should start volunteering or something,” I told Peggy. “Sign on with some sort of charity. Except that I can’t think of anything specific I could do.”

  Peggy seemed about to say something, but then she must have changed her mind.

  My insurance agent’s name turned out to be Concepción. How could I have forgotten that? She had more dealings with Gil than with me. I gave her Gil’s cell-phone number and the two of them grew thick as thieves, conferring by e-mail and in person and faxing documents back and forth. Gil’s file folder metamorphosed into a three-inch-thick, color-tabbed notebook stuffed with estimates, receipts, diagrams, and lists. He brought it over most evenings after supper and sat on the couch to lay papers the length of the coffee table, explaining his progress in a degree of detail that would have more than satisfied The Beginner’s Book of Kitchen Remodeling. Already the damaged rafters had been replaced and the roof was nearly finished. He was aiming to beat the weather, he said. He would tackle the interior later, after it grew too cold to work outside. He had hired two extra carpenters and so far things were on schedule, as I would see for myself if I ever came to check it all out.

  I said, “Maybe one of these days.”

  He looked at me for a moment. I thought he was going to start pressing me the way other people did (my sister, to be exact), but all he said, finally, was, “Okay.”