Chapter 4.
"A Letter for Emily"
Chapter 4. The Mechanic.
Heavy footfalls above awakened him. Louder than seemed possible for the retired surgical nurse in her seventies in whose house he slept. In his old bed. His mother’s house, his old room where he had slept as a boy and a young man.
Still he lay, watching the ceiling tiles for sounds, and waited. From his room in the cellar. The steps ran the full length of the floor above him from the dank coolness of is old bedroom downstairs where he had taken refuge from the heat of an August night hours earlier.
He heard the muffled banging, nervous and graceless, and an image of cats came to mind. Cats that jumped to the floor from a forbidden shelf and made a sound on landing, far in excess of their weight.
There were voices and although the doors, ceilings, the fabric of that unique architect-designed house, muffled the things that were said, the evidence slowly came together.
Flatness of affect without modulation. That middle-aged feminine monotone devoid of the lilt of youth or girlishness. Laughter in which angry sarcasm stood in for mirth. The passionless anger, as steady as if cultivated in a barren field all those years.
Ten years. Twenty years.
The protest in reply. A lilting voice.
The voice that commanded without traces of hope.
“Really Ellse, I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Oh Mom,” she said in a derisive tone. “It’s after eight. You two. Between you and Peter…”.
He heard his sister’s voice slow and grow louder, more emphatic, gathering strength.
“Stop it, Ellse,” their mother protested. Pete closed his eyes and the image was plainer than if he’d been watching from the next room upstairs. The nurse’s eyes hooded, squinting away in annoyance. Drag on a cigarette. Distant glance. A nervous touch behind her head to primp.
“Get the ladder.”
“Ellse, I’m not awake yet,” replied her mother.
“You two act like you’re on vacation,” Ellsie said.
Unca Pete could conjure his sister’s image, standing as her mother took refuge behind another drag, another cloud of blue smoke in the morning sunshine, pausing in confusion at the onslaught.
Before coffee!
The mother pursed her lips.
Ellsie continued.
“I’ll go up and look at that roof. Then there are the windows to clean. Don’t want you falling, Mom,” said Ellsie.
The mother’s lined face softened a moment. She knew her daughter meant well, but it was just too early in the day to be running around like this.
Down in the cellar from where Pete lay, he could imagine the scene, was familiar with its entire content, what was said, the ploys, the jabs between mother and daughter, the comments aside, protests, the desperate coercions in the ruse of helping an elderly lady.
In a moment, he was dressed, up the stairs and poking around the kitchen for a cup of coffee. He looked up, saw his mother, and heard the clomping sounds coming through the kitchen ceiling above, this time on the roof of the house.
His mother’s house. The house where Pete and Ellsie had grown up.
More footfalls. The mother smiled painfully when he looked to her silently.
“Ellse?”
The mother nodded with a disgusted shrug at her son Peter.
“She means well,” the mother whispered.
Above him, unseen boots clambered and tromped, busy and nervous, impetuous and unyielding. All from the sounds, their volume and spacing along the asphalt tiles above.
“Peter, go get me the hose,” he heard from somewhere above as he stepped outdoors on the roofed deck with his coffee. The day was hazy already and he hadn’t felt quite right since the passing of a chest cold.
More footfalls reminding him of cats jumping from forbidden shelves.
Peter stood on the deck railing, catching the rain gutter for balance and extending a foot lightly into space, all the while holding his cup of coffee in the other hand.
“Peter?”demanded the voice from above. Somewhere.
“Yes?”
“Get the hose.”
“What are you doing up there?” he queried, amused, no, entertained.
“Mom’s roof leaks!” came the reply from on high.
His face was near the pegboard soffit that served as ceiling to the porch deck. He glanced carefully for the first time since he’d been back at the chipped and peeling paint in the corners of panels lining the overhang. It had been leaking.
For some time.
“Go get a broom,” his sister’s voice demanded.
He remembered he hadn’t seen her in weeks, not since his trip to Potterbrook farm, and wasn’t fully awake.
“You and Mom act like this is a vacation,” something he had heard before. “Do you always sleep this late?”
The neighborhood echoed with bird calls and he just stood there underneath the overhang, listening, listening for the next sound from somewhere above on the roof where he couldn’t see.
He didn’t answer. In fact, he quietly descended his perch and retreated back to the darkness, toward the coolness of the kitchen.
From the other room, he heard that Ellsie had come back down.
She was explaining to someone, probably their mother.
“You can’t tell where the leak is without hosing the roof down. It’s the tar around the vent pipe”, she concluded.
No answer. Her mother was still sitting, attending lecture, still sipping, less tentative now, at her coffee cup. Her lightly sweetened, milk-stained coffee.
The footfalls across the carpeted floor grew louder, and his sister appeared, a face to match the strident voice, for the first time that morning.
“Why don’t you eat your bagel?” she demanded again. In fact, a bagel lay out on the bare formica and a finger’s prod told him it had been recently heated.
“You bring these?” he asked, amused, watchful.
They, the two of them, were trying to force-feed him. He, the man who survived on coffee days and beer nights, could not win. These damnable women took insult if he did not eat past hunger. He had given up having any say in the matter, no longer protesting his lack of appetite, and adopted tactic of pleading the need to watch his weight.
That was it. Something they could catch onto. The admission, his fable, of being forty-five and overweight. A little, he’d admit.
“Peter is dieting,” his slim mother said with smug satisfaction. For all her eighty pounds, she had the diet of an athlete. Ancient wonder, to have kept her figure all those years.
He couldn’t win. They would feed him to cure their own appetites.
They were both looking away, the daughter and the mother, distracted by something else for the moment, when he remembered the old movie.
Cowboys, something.
Yes.
The Kid was crossing a log bridge. Winter’s breath. Frozen stream near the camp. The tenderfoot came on from the other way. Billy, right friendly like, remarked at the sight of the rube’s oyster-handled pistol grip stuck in his belt. So pretty. Pretty enough Billy wished he could see it. Just a moment. The rube abashed, proud. Good natured. Slowly, carefully, out comes the pistol rip offered in pride, and in the next lightning instant, he’s floating face down through the broken ice, with Billy’s earnest protests of self defense to some onlooker.
The women were chatting.
He shrugged but they caught him short and he turned trying to slip down the stair.
“Peter, you have to read this article I brought you,’ said Ellsie slowly as if reading a stupid child simple directions.
He turned and arched an eyebrow.
“You have to read it. About a college professor who went into business.” The lesson continued.
“Thanks,” he sighed, ad retreated back down the staircase.
As he straightened the coverlet where he had slept, the conversation floated down the stairwell and he could not help listening. In fact, his sister’s voice was booming on about something just a bit too loudly. She seemed to be talking too loud. Or was he merely growing deaf?
“Peter should help you more,” she seemed to be saying. “He’s not working, just loafing around the house. He has all the time in the world.”
“Ellsie, Ellsie, “ her mother repeated, pained, to tone her down a little.
“Ouch,” he thought.
A few more muffled words passed as the conversation left the room upstairs.
“Are you ready to go to Builder’s Square, Mom?” Ellise asked.
“I haven’t cleaned up yet,” came the reply.
“I have to take you now, to show you where it is,” said Ellsie, emphasis on now.
His money was low, he thought, as he folded the blanket and collected the typed pages on the table.
“We’ll go to the landfill, the builder’s store and be back. The builder’s store is just a ways farther than South Falls. Peter?” she began softly, modulating.
“Peter!” she screamed down the stairs.
He cringed from the safety of the cellar bedroom.
You two are something,” she directed at her mother and the spoke down the stairwell.
“You have to come with us. C’mon. Now. Now!”she insisted.
Pete just shook his head to himself and listened.
***