The house had been, and continued to be for all the years her parents lived there, a fixer-upper. Perhaps the agent had described it as “a handyman’s dream.” If she had, it was clear that Mendel and Lydia either didn’t know what that phrase meant (highly unlikely, as its meaning was self-evident) or that they misheard and/or didn’t pay any attention to the words. Pretty much everything was in terrible condition. Lizzie knew this because pretty much everything was still in terrible condition for the whole eighteen years that she lived there. The edges of the linoleum in the kitchen were peeling; Lizzie still remembers when, at age ten or so, she tripped, fell, and on the way down hit and chipped part of a front tooth on the edge of a counter. This was a tooth that George had been pleased to get his hands on and had done a wonderful job of repairing.
Against all the rules of their department and the university at large, Lydia and Mendel made good use of their students, particularly their PhD students, to attend to different parts of the house. When she was old enough to realize what was going on, Lizzie wondered whether her parents accepted these students as advisees every year based not on any academic qualifications or interests but solely on their household cleanup, paint, and fix-up capabilities. There was the student whose dissertation was on the optimal height of urinals in K–6 schools who happened, perhaps not so coincidentally, to be the son of a plumber in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He certainly knew the difference between a copper pipe and a plumber’s snake. Over the years there were one or two frustrated fine arts majors who would happily paint the rooms, especially as Mendel and Lydia couldn’t care less what color the walls were and thus left the choice up to them. Sometimes the interior of the house would be painted every year and sometimes a decade or more would go by before a student who’d majored in studio art as an undergrad showed up. Oh, there were amateur but capable carpenters, very occasionally a bricklayer, and once someone who actually knew about reroofing houses. It was amazing who ended up studying with Lydia and Mendel.
Still, the house suffered mightily from old age and neglect. It looked scary from the outside, and Lizzie knew that even kids her own age were loath to look at it as they walked by. Halloween brought very few trick-or-treaters, although Lizzie and her longtime babysitter Sheila had great treats for those who did make it up the uneven steps and across the sagging porch to the front door. Some years there were none. (The student/bricklayer hadn’t been particularly good. Perhaps that was why he’d gone into psychology rather than become a mason.)
Whenever Lizzie made a new friend in school, she’d try to prepare them for the sight of the house, but it still came as a shock to many of them. She remembered the first time Andrea came home with her—they were in the second grade—and Andrea’s astonished gasp at the sight of it.
Lizzie’s bedroom, however, was a comfort to her. When she was thirteen, a grad student chose to paint each of the four walls a different shade of pink. Despite the fact that Lizzie had never been particularly fond of pink, she loved the result. And her room was at the rear of the house, so its two windows faced the back of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. The Kappas had a screened-in porch that ran the entire length of the house, and every fall and spring the new pledges would practice the sorority’s theme song out there. Lizzie would lie in bed, year after year, listening to them harmonize.
“Kaaa pa, Kaaa pa, Kaaa pa Gaaa muh,
I aaaaammmm so haaapy thaat I aaaam uh
Kaaapa, Kaaapa, Kaaapa Gaaa muh,” and so on.
During the nights of the Great Game, when the boys were otherwise involved with her body and Lizzie was tired of reciting poetry, she’d silently hum it to herself, over and over. It passed the time.
*?Sheila?*
Sheila came into Lizzie’s life this way: Dr. Lydia Bultmann, in a very bad mood, was grocery shopping. She was in a terrible mood for a couple of reasons. She hated shopping. She couldn’t stand being lumped together with the unwashed masses wandering the aisles, and the manipulative marketing of the advertising agencies annoyed her intensely. Plus she just couldn’t abide waiting in line. By this time in their lives, the Bultmanns had plenty of money, but Lydia had from the early years of their marriage (when she and Mendel really had very little money) always feared it would run out. She still only bought the store brands and whatever was on sale, which made for uneven meals. In the past she’d just ask one of her grad students to pick up the basics, which in Lydia’s mind were milk, hamburger, coffee, cereal, cigarettes, and bread.
But she could no longer ask a grad student to run to the store and shop for her. The dean, who had perhaps received a complaint or two from one of the students who, over the years, had plumbed, painted, roofed, or otherwise worked on the Bultmann house, had sent out a strong message reminding the faculty that their grad students were not their personal servants; they were to lay off asking them to do anything that was not relevant to their schooling. Lydia took great offense at this. It meant she’d have to take even more time away from her research and find someone to take care of three-year-old Lizzie while she and Mendel were at work.
She was standing behind a youngish woman who was very slowly paying for her groceries and at the same time conversing with the equally youngish woman who was manning the cash register. Despite herself, Lydia was listening to the conversation.
“So I need to find a job that will give me time during the day to take classes. I can’t do these eight-hour daytime shifts and go to school at the same time.”
“What kind of job?” said the slow payer. “How about waitressing?”
“No, I was thinking more about babysitting; that might be more flexible.”
Lydia liked the look of the checker, but even if she hadn’t, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. It was as though the god she didn’t believe in had answered the prayers she hadn’t prayed.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but I’m in need of a full-time nanny, someone who will live in. My daughter is three.”
“Really?” said Sheila, for it was she.
Hard to believe unless you knew Lydia Bultmann well, but that constituted the whole hiring process, and Sheila moved in with the Bultmanns a week later.
She met Lizzie, who knew nothing of a new babysitter, the next morning. Mendel and Lydia were already at work and Sheila was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee that was way, way too strong, when she heard a series of thumps. It was Lizzie, trying a new technique to get herself down the stairs. She could walk down them if someone held her hand, and she’d also taught herself to come down backward. But this morning she’d gotten herself out of her crib and had the idea of sitting on each stair and then carefully moving to the next stair down. This is what Sheila heard, the bump bump bump of Lizzie’s behind as she went from stair to stair.