She went into the dining room and saw Ed surrounded by planks of wood. He had half a plank in his hands. Nails were sticking out of it, and its end was a comb of shards. She could see the other half nailed into the floor. He must have tried to rip it up in his hands.
“Get up, Ed.”
“I’ll be in when I’m done,” he said. He was hunched over, breathing hard. He looked like he’d been whipped. He lifted himself up onto one knee in a vaguely supplicating manner, and the sight of him there put her uncomfortably in mind of the Stations of the Cross. She wasn’t going to give him the chance to make some kind of poetical self-sacrifice, if that was what he was after. The only person who’d feel sorry for him if he did that would be himself. He’d had all the chances in the world to bring someone in. They had enough money for at least the floors and the kitchen. He was too damned stubborn.
“You’re done.”
“I have to finish this section.”
“You’re done,” she said. “Come and eat.”
But he didn’t follow. After she and Connell had finished, she brought a plate of cold sausage and beans in to him. She could barely stand to look at him as she left it on the floor by his feet. He hadn’t moved in half an hour. He was in the same place in the middle of the room, a perfect vantage point from which to survey the mess he’d insisted on making.
? ? ?
She made the phone calls and settled on a general contractor who could finish the kitchen, do the floors, put in high-hats, and plaster and paint all the walls on the first floor.
The night before the workers were scheduled to start, she told Ed they were coming, and he didn’t put up any kind of fight. She wondered whether she should have forced his hand sooner, but they gave out no manual when you got married, no emergency kit with a flashlight for when the power went out. You had to feel your way around in the dark for the box of matches.
41
The work began a couple of weeks after the new year, 1992. The bustle in and out of her kitchen was exciting. She offered them drinks and set out platters of cold cuts on the island, rolls, tubs of potato salad, bags of potato chips.
She brought home a couple of six-packs for them one day. Ed took one and threw it to the floor. One of the cans landed with a thud and shot a stream of beer all over the cabinets. A floor installer who had been using the bathroom stopped in the kitchen on the way back to the living room.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Mind your fucking business,” Ed said.
She hadn’t heard Ed utter that word in years. Maybe she’d never heard him say it.
“You okay?” the worker asked her, ignoring Ed.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Ed said.
“Whatever you say,” the worker said. “Whatever you say.” He backed out of the room, his hands up in bemused resignation.
Eileen followed him in, carrying the unexploded beers on the plastic yoke. “My husband has been under a lot of stress,” she said. “I’m sorry he spoke to you like that.”
“No worries,” the worker said. “We come across all kinds of people in this line of work.”
“He’s not the kind of man he seemed like back there.”
He gave his head a sage tilt. “Some guys just don’t like other guys in their house, doing work they think they should be doing.”
She felt a need to protect Ed. “It’s just that he’s losing his job,” she said, surprising herself with the lie. “Layoffs.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s going to be fine. We’re going to be fine.”
He and the other worker looked at her as if they were waiting to see if she’d make another revelation.
“Please drink these,” she said, holding up the beers.
“You don’t have to tell us twice,” he said. “But we have to wait until we’re done for the day.”
It reminded her of her father, to hear him responsibly defer having a drink. They returned to laying in the boards, and she went to the breakfront to find the red velvet-lined box that held the set of crystal glasses with “Schaefer” etched into them that her father had received upon his retirement. She took them out and ran a cloth over them.
At the end of the day, when she laid the six-pack on the dining room table, she set out the glasses too, on a Schaefer bar tray she’d saved for years.
“Please use these,” she said.
“Oh, we don’t need glasses, ma’am,” he said politely.
“It would make me happy if you’d use them. They were my father’s. I’d like to see them filled with beer for once.”
? ? ?
The roof could wait for a couple of years. The rot in the basement would have to remain for now. The tile floors she’d pictured down there were a project for another time. So was renovating the half bath between the kitchen and den. So was moving the laundry room to the first floor from the basement. There was old wallpaper on the second floor that couldn’t come down, and there were walls that needed to be painted. She had pictured fresh paint and white tiles wherever she looked. She had flipped through design magazines for elaborate ideas, but in the end, white had seemed appropriate, the cleanest option, the only one she could deal with right now. She would have to wait for everything to be white. She would have to deal with gray and yellow and brown and a sickly mauve. She thought that a lot of her house looked like a waiting room. The path from kitchen to dining room to living room, though—the path that company would travel—this path was ready to go. She could keep them from going upstairs or downstairs. And as soon as she had a spare few thousand dollars, she was going to put a better half bath in for them and spruce up the den.
There was, on the other hand, the question of the furniture. She simply wouldn’t be able to live with the things she’d brought from the old house, not if she couldn’t fix this one up the way she wanted. Her furniture squatted shabbily and hardly filled the room. The scratched dining room table, the worn armrests on the chairs, the boxy end tables, the permanently depressed couch cushions: they were like placeholders for the real pieces to come. She saw now that she would need to replace nearly all of it. She would put it all on credit cards. Upstairs, she would create a sitting area, buy the desk she’d always lacked, and outfit each guest room with a stereo, an armchair, and a beautiful reading lamp. As soon as she got these bills paid off, she would replace Connell’s childhood furniture.
She knew she lacked the aesthetic sense necessary to give the house the ambiance it deserved. She would bring in an interior decorator. There would have to be new art everywhere, and the little touches that put one in mind of real discernment. She could pay for that with credit cards too. Ed would veto these expenses if given the chance, but he was past the point of possessing veto power. He was simply going to have to place his fate in her hands. They would pay it off. Ed would get another grant. Their salaries would rise. Once everything was in place, they would live frugally, sensibly, like Boston Brahmins. They would even find a way to build their savings back up. There was always a little more money to be had every year.