PART3
Here’s how it went.
Then a brown stain bloomed on the ceiling, and the roof turned out to be a bigger problem than the faucet ever was.
Every fix opened a new wound.
I learned to solder, to patch drywall, and to swear quietly so the neighbors wouldn’t hear.
Half the house stayed unfinished, and I got used to walking past bare studs like they were furniture.
Then Margaret moved in next door.
Every fix opened a new wound.
She was seventy-nine, small, and sharp as a tack. Most neighbors I’d known gave me a nod and nothing more.
Margaret walked over on her second day with a hand out.
“You’re Frank? You look like a man who owns a lot of tools.”
“I own a lot of problems,” I said. “The tools come with them.”
She laughed, a dry little crackle. I carried her groceries that week.
“I own a lot of problems,”
Her gate hung crooked on one hinge, and I fixed it in ten minutes because I was already in work mode. She watched me from the porch.
“Nobody asked you to do that.”
“It was crooked. It bothered me.”
“Sit. I’ll make coffee.”
That’s how it started. Coffee turned into evenings, and evenings turned into months.
“Nobody asked you to do that.”
She told me about the piano she’d never learned and the men she’d sent packing. I told her about my pipes.
She lived alone, and I became the guy she called when a lightbulb died or a jar wouldn’t open. I never asked for a dime. Why would I? She was my friend.
Then one evening, the porch light was buzzing with moths, and she set her cup down.
“Frank, if I asked you to marry me, would you?”
I became the guy she called
I laughed so hard I nearly spilled my coffee. “Margaret, I’d have to check with my pipes.”
She didn’t laugh. She looked at me steadily.
“You’d inherit everything when I’m gone.”
Now, I’d love to tell you I was too decent for that. But I’d just spent that week staring at a plumber’s estimate with a number on it I couldn’t pay.
Something in me shifted. Call it greed if you want.
I’d love to tell you I was too decent for that.
I call it what happens when a drowning man sees a rope.
“Okay,” I heard myself say.
***
We married a few weeks later at the courthouse. She wore a green dress and held my arm like she was steadying herself on a rail.
I’d like to say I stayed the same man, but I didn’t.
Call it greed if you want.
I started talking about the future over dinner. MY future.
“I’d fix the roof first,” I said. “Then the pipes. Invest the rest”
Margaret just nodded.
“What about your accounts?” I asked her one night, trying to sound casual. “The property papers? Your will?”
“It’s all taken care of,” she said.
I started talking about the future
She said it the same way every time, gentle and final, like closing a book.
Eventually I stopped asking. I told myself she was old-fashioned and private.
I didn’t think about what it meant that I’d asked at all.
Then her health slipped. It happened slowly, then all at once.
First she got tired on the porch. Then she got dizzy on the stairs. Then came the appointments, and I drove her to every one.
Then her health slipped.
I learned which pills went with breakfast and which went with dinner. I learned to cook soup the way she liked it.
Some nights I stayed in the chair beside her bed because she didn’t like the quiet.
My own house sat unfinished, and I barely looked at it. I was too busy looking at her.
A year after the wedding, Margaret died.
I was too busy looking at her.
The funeral was on a gray Saturday, cold enough that everyone kept their coats buttoned.
I stood at the front and shook hands. People squeezed my arm and murmured things.
“You take care of yourself now, Frank.”
“She left you well set up, I hear.”
