JJ didn’t need to explain. Sylvia never liked Alice Graham one bit. Alice had been a woman drifting alone, little family, few connections to the town. She looked through you when you saw her and wouldn’t even pretend to be interested in your life. Civilization runs on people pretending to be interested in your life. What a shock when she popped up one day with a grandson. She had to be the last person in the county you would expect to be taking care of children. A grandson my eye, a grandson my black ass, Sylvia thought. All JJ ever was to the woman was a five-hundred-dollar-a-month check.
“I couldn’t get back for her funeral. I thought about it. I really did. I know I owe her something. But I was in the middle of a house flip.” JJ hesitated, like he wasn’t sure of the story himself. “In California.”
“A flip huh? Is that what they call it?”
JJ raised his eyebrows unsure how to respond to Sylvia, the boy coming out in him all over his smooth broad face. “A flip is when you buy a house to sell and fix it up and wish you never started the damn thing in the first place.”
“I know what a house flip is. Believe it or not, we have television here.” Sylvia hesitated, to see if she’d hurt him, she might need to balm her words to keep them from stinging. She was once the kind of person people told their secrets to. She had a trusting face, she was told. Sylvia thought it was probably because she stayed still enough to listen. JJ was still smiling at her. She smiled back at him. “This is what you’ve been doing with yourself then?”
“Yeah, mostly.”
“Are you working now? Because you won’t find anything around here.”
“I’ve got a workshop set up at my house. I make parts for the military and businesses sometimes. When the old machines break, they call me.”
“So you’re a machinist?” Sylvia pictured JJ as the traveling man in a western, MR. FIX-IT or something like it on a handmade sign hanging from the wagon, soldering pots and pans, farm and kitchen tools, or taking the unsalvageable for scrap, his cart swaying like an elephant’s rear, jingling from the metal hitting together as he traveled.
“There’s money in that?”
“If you can get contracts there is. I’m doing okay.”
“A lot of machinists here are out of work,” Sylvia said. “Whole factories of them. You must have noticed all the empty parking lots at the plants on the bypass?”
“I noticed. What are people doing?”
“Being poor, I guess,” Sylvia said.
“From what I remember people were always poor.”
“Being destitute then. That’s all I know,” Sylvia said, but she wanted to tell him about the grown men she’d seen in Dooleytown hugging the streets, smoking and hanging, trying to swagger their way out of no job, no money, no prospects.
“Are you doing okay, Sylvia? You working?”
“Same place for the past hundred years, but I am this far from retired.” Sylvia compassed her fingers in front of her face. “This much from the finish line,” Sylvia said. For nearly thirty years Sylvia had been an intake clerk at county social services office. She was the first face the elderly, but mostly young women registering for food stamps or rental assistance or help with the heating bills, saw. Somebody must have decided that a black face would set the right tone for the office. The girls that came in now looked just a few years older than the babies they wheeled in with strollers.
Sylvia nodded like she was accepting everything JJ said. “You’ve got a big place started up there.”
JJ looked up, like he might be able to see the house.
“What are you looking at? You can’t see it from here, can you?”
“I thought I just might be able to. I can see this house from my deck. The roof anyway.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that. This house? For sure?”
JJ nodded, but Sylvia could tell he was not entirely sure. “You know what, Mrs. Sylvia, turns out you don’t get over being poor.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Sylvia said.
“You know what I’m really excited to see? The ice maker. I’m getting an ice maker.” JJ rubbed his hands together like a cartoon bank robber.
She loved his face. Something was breaking up, unmooring in her chest, cracking and moving around like glacial ice. Being useful would settle the movement or at least keep her mind busy. “Let’s get something to eat. Ava ought to have something around here. What do you want?” Sylvia knew that Ava wouldn’t have much, but she had to let her hands act, keep her brain in gear. On the miserable last day of Uncle Monroe’s life he couldn’t wait to clean out the drawer in his bathroom. If you had fewer than twenty-four hours to live, would you waste time tossing slivers of soap, rubber bands his dead sister Lula used to trap her gray shoulder-length braids? Would you smooth with the wedge of your hand your kinky hair all of it into the plastic grocery bag you use for a trash liner? If you were dead in twenty-four hours would you clean out a drawer? Why not? Keep those hands moving, keep going. Sylvia understood.
“Nothing for me, Mrs. Sylvia.”
“You don’t have to call me Mrs. anymore. It makes me feel old.” Sylvia opened the cabinet over the dishwasher. There had to be some crackers or something lurking in there. She would bring some tuna and peanut butter tomorrow at least. “I had to tell my friend that I would hang up on him if he called me anything but my name.” Only after about a month of phone calls did Marcus start calling her Sylvia. She had secretly liked that he was a nice boy with some home training.
“Did you say your friend?” JJ asked, a sly grin on his face.
“Yes, I did. Can’t I have a friend?
“Are you and Mr. Don split up?”
“Split up? That’s funny. When do you remember us together?” Sylvia asked. “What are you asking me? Do you mean Marcus?”
“No, ma’am, I was just wondering. You were talking about your new friend. I should just mind my own business. You don’t have to say.”
“Oh no, honey, he’s twenty-five years old.”
“Twenty-five! I was wrong, you have changed.”
“Lord, don’t even say that out loud. He’s just a boy I’ve been talking to on the phone. Nothing like that. He’s like a son to me, a friend.” Sylvia considered what she’d said. It had been a long time since she’d made a friend. She wasn’t sure about the boundaries of it anymore. “Are you crazy? I’ve got drawers older than him.”
JJ put his hands up like he was being arrested. “I don’t judge.” JJ nodded like he was giving serious advice.
“You better stop.” Sylvia laughed. “About time you came down here to see us. We’ve been waiting for you. Why’d you tease us like that?”
“I wanted to get the house done. I want you to see it.”
“Well welcome back anyway. I’m sure there’s some good news in this town, but I don’t know it.” Sylvia laughed. “This isn’t my house anymore. This is Ava’s house now. Ava and Henry, I should say.”
JJ blinked, not sure of what heard. “But I’ve seen your car.” JJ paused, like he’d revealed something he hadn’t meant to say.
“I’m here all the time. Too much of the time.”
“I never would have come if I’d known. I thought you lived here. Tasha told me you lived here.”
“Tasha Jenkins? Where did you see her? At the grocery store? She probably meant I still own it. People always think they know your business. Small town living. You remember all about that don’t you?”