56

 

       ART

 

    My feet make hollow sounds in the hall.  Lorraine wants me to carpet this too, but I like the sound.  I walk slowly, deliberately, listening to it.  At the doorway into the dining room, I stop and stand, holding the molding and just looking in.  She's got  the hutch and china closet all just so, and the table's been polished.  The good candlesticks.  You'd think we were eating inside.  Little lacey things--doilies--on everything.  Flowers.  But what I see when I stop here is the work.  Under this carpet is top quality plywood--better than it needs to be--and if I live to be a thousand, I'll remember where every damn one of those nails is; I'll feel them when I walk in my sock feet.  Right through her twenty-two-dollar-a-square-yard-carpet.  Behind the hutch is dinge in the wallboard.  I didn't see it until I had it up.  And under that window--I had a hell of a time with that one--nearly all the nails are bent over.  I just couldn't get them in straight at that angle.  It's behind the wall now, but I can see it as clear as the morning I did it.  And in the other room, under the television, under the carpet, under the flooring and the joists and crawlspace, and under the concrete is a rock.  I tried for two days, and the guy with the backhoe tried, but it wouldn't budge.  He laughed and said it was probably just the tip, that the whole thing was probably bigger than the house.  So I just poured cement over it and around it.  Every time I look at that corner, I'll know it's there.  The ceiling is three degrees off level.  The kitchen counter is a quarter  inch higher  than I planned.

    She rushes by me in the hallway, her shippers making shh shh sounds, a can of furniture stuff in her hand.  What are you doing there?  Just standing?  People coming in no time at all, and you're standing staring.  If it wasn't          How does the couch look?  I told Eric to do the windows, and of course there were streaks, so I had to get up early to do them over.  I swear, if you want something done right, do it yourself.

    She disappears into the kitchen, but I don't move.  The can makes a metallic sound on the counter.  Something  thumps and rolls on the table.

    I put that meat out three hours ago.  Do you think it's thawed?  Everybody's going to be here, and nothing's going to be ready.

    It looks fine, I call to her.

    What?  Her head appears at the end of the hall.

    The couch, I say.  It looks fine.

    She just stares at me for a minute.  Oh you!

    I stand there for a few beats after she disappears again.  Her back is to me when I enter the kitchen.  The refrigerator is open, and she is bent over in the triangle of light, concentrating on the crisper.  Her arms are full of apples.  Her blouse is hiked up and the skin of her lower back is exposed.  I open the kitchen door and go outside, closing it it behind me before she can ask me something else.

    The grass is cut.  I told Eric to do it and I didn't leave room for argument.  And he trimmed the shrubs.  I don't remember telling him to do that.  And even this early in the morning the September sun has dried the dew away.  The tables are out, wiped clean, the rough places in the seats sanded smooth.  The cobwebs off the lawn chairs.  The lawnmower has been put away in the shed.  And some of Eric's old toys--I found them when we moved--are out in the grass behind the stump. Jimmy and Derek'll like them.  They never seem to know what to get into when they're up here.  I stashed the last of the brick and the wood scraps in the shed.  No loose nails.  No broken glass.  If I'd have thought of it, I could have made a sandbox with the sand that was left over from mixing the cement instead of hauling it up to the other end of the orchard and dumping it.  The driveway's clear.

    I take Lorraine's gardening tools from the porch and out to the shed, out of reach of little hands.  As I come out and push the rusty old hasp down, the house catches my eye.  It stops me.  There is a warmth in me as I stand and just look at it.

    She comes to the door and calls to me, You want to bring me some stuff from the garden when you come in?  Corn.  Tomatoes.  Cucumbers.  And some carrots.  Whatever.

    As I walk back in, my shirt front full of vegetables, something across the street catches my eye. Well, the grass is cut, and the couch has been sprayed and scrubbed, and  the corner of John's curtain is raised.  We must be ready.