“That’s great,” Markie said. “I had no idea you’d actually like that kind of thing. Carpentry, I mean.”
“I know! It’s way more fun than I thought it would be. Frédéric said he felt the same way. He was an engineer—did you know that? Designed landing gear and a bunch of other stuff for airplanes. Total desk job, he told me. That’s why he’s always dressed that way, I think, like he’s going to some important office job, because for so long that’s what he did. I mean, I didn’t ask him, but that’s my guess.”
So he could be a professor after all, Markie thought. Engineering was a brainiac thing, not a comedy routine—a shy person could teach it. Given the regularity of his outings, it made total sense. A consultant’s hours would vary more, wouldn’t they?
“Never lifted a hammer until after his career was over,” Jesse went on. “He never owned a handsaw even, let alone all the stuff he’s got set up in the garage. And he says there’s even more in the basement. I really hope he’ll show me sometime. He didn’t offer, so I didn’t ask. Anyway, it was so cool!”
Markie laughed at his excitement. “You make me want to get out there and replace a section myself. I should call you Tom Sawyer.”
“And it’s straight-up addictive, too,” he said. “I mean, I can’t wait to go at the next section. I never noticed before, but now I can see how old the wood is, where it sags in places, where parts are broken. I wanted to keep going until we’d gotten rid of all the old, broken stuff and put up all the new wood. I told him we could keep going—get half of it done today and finish it all off next Sunday. But he says Mrs. Saint won’t let him work past four on weekends.”
“But it’s almost six,” Markie said. “So was she away for the day, or—”
“Oh, we knocked off two hours ago,” he said, and she smiled at his use of what must surely have been Frédéric’s phrase. “We’ve been sitting in the garage talking all this time. Then he had to go, because Mrs. Saint wanted to be sure he ate dinner. Isn’t that funny, how she’s like that? With a quitting time and making sure he eats? And she must’ve sent Ronda out with water for him five times an hour.
“She’d carry this big pitcher out and look at his glass, and if it wasn’t empty yet, she’d stare at it until he finally walked over and drank it. It reminds me of how Mrs. McLaren is with Mr. McLaren. Remember at Grandma and Grandpa’s club last summer? She was always handing him sunscreen or water or telling him to move his chair into the shade.”
Markie considered the fact that in seeing this kind of doting, Jesse hadn’t been reminded of his grandparents. Or his parents. Neither Markie nor Lydia had ever been a fraction as solicitous with their husbands as Mrs. Saint was with Frédéric, and in the few months she had known him, Frédéric had proven himself to be more devoted to his employer than Markie could recall Kyle or Clayton being to their wives. And then there was the fact that the time, attention, patience, and encouragement Frédéric had given Jesse that day had been so much more than the boy had received from his own father or grandfather in at least half a year. It was plainly something Jesse had been starved for, given the animated chatter it had inspired. For that reason alone, Markie decided, she would love Frédéric forever.
“So,” Jesse asked, “what’s for dinner? I’m starved.”
“Frozen pizza?” she suggested. “Or we could heat up—”
“Because Ronda made this enormous pan of lasagna.” He sat up, the thought of food having evidently restored his energy, and separated his hands to show how big the lasagna was. “I’m talking gigantic. Not sure why she made so much, ’cause she made a point of telling me they’d never get through it over there, and that if you and I wanted to take a few pieces off her hands, it would be a help more than anything.”
He was on his feet, pointing toward Mrs. Saint’s house. “Since we were only going to have frozen pizza . . .”
Markie shrugged her consent, and about ten minutes later, he returned with two heaping plates and three containers.
“For lunch tomorrow,” he said, putting two of the containers in the fridge. “This one”—he nodded to the third—“is salad. I told her we’re not much for green stuff, but she said Mrs. Saint wouldn’t let her send dinner without it, so . . .” He shrugged, reached for two plates from the cabinet, and set a piece of lasagna on each. With two forks, he portioned salad out of the container onto the plates. “I thought about just tossing it, but I get this funny feeling Mrs. Saint would figure it out. Is that crazy?”
Markie looked at him blankly, refusing to admit she didn’t think it was crazy at all.
“Oh, and there’s this.” He reached into his back pocket and extracted a figure made of Popsicle sticks and wool, which he held up. “It’s Angel. I’m supposed to put her with the house.” He set the totem beside the little house Markie had put on the kitchen windowsill.
Later, they Skyped her parents, and Markie was relieved to turn the entire thing over to her son as he took his grandparents through the same repair-the-fence play-by-play he had blurted out earlier. Clayton was impressed.
“A man needs to learn to use tools sooner rather than later,” he boomed. “So I owe this Frédéric chap a thank-you. So does your father. He’s actually quite handy with tools himself, your dad, though I don’t suppose he’s taken the time to show you that.”
Markie would have jumped in to defend Kyle, but Jesse, who either never recognized her parents’ digs at his father or never bothered to take offense to them, had moved on. After he and Frédéric were finished with the fence, he announced proudly, there was a long list of other jobs, starting with “tinkering with Mrs. Saint’s car a little, since it’s been running a little rough.” Markie was sure he had no idea what this meant, but she loved that he pretended to.
“A man should be able to repair his own vehicle,” her father propounded. “And if he can’t, it’s not the right vehicle for him. So how is it that you came to be hired by this neighbor, anyway?”
“I . . . I . . . ,” Jesse stammered. “Uh . . .”
“We’ve just gotten to know them,” Markie said, as though that answered the question.
She had been in many situations where lying to her parents would have been the easier thing, but she had never been able to do it, so she had gotten good at making short, true statements in a way that made them sound authoritative. If her parents ever wondered about the vagueness of some of her explanations, they were too proud to ask for elaboration.