by Han Nolan
"I was thinking," he said, dropping the English accent and developing a tougher, furniture maker's voice, "that I might just do it myself, go about it slowly. I'll take my time and learn it right. Start with tables and just keep experimenting. Then when I feel I know tables, I'll move on to chairs and beds. Yeah, I do better working on my own. It'd be too much like my old man standing over me if I worked under someone."
Another time he came in after cutting his hand on one of the tools, dripping blood in the hallway, and said, "I might just do tables the rest of my life. I don't think there's an end to what they can teach me."
I didn't know a table could teach anything at all, but I knew that the one I had my hand on was a piece of art. It was simple and sleek and stained in walnut. I saw the can of stain and a rag sitting on the newspaper beneath the table. I ran my hand over the top of the table and then backed away. I backed out the door and closed it.
"James Patrick, it is. See, Colleen, it's not a burglar, it's just me boy, James Patrick."
Pap ran down the slope toward me, his arms wide, while Aunt Colleen stood next to her car with her arms folded, watching. I hadn't heard them drive up.
Pap grabbed me in a bear hug and said, "You beat me home today. How come you're in Larry's cabin? Is Erin there, too? Is yer Mam in there?"
I pushed away from Pap. "No, Pap, remember? Mam left for Switzerland this morning."
"I know that already, James Patrick. I know it"
"I thought you were a burglar," Aunt Colleen called to me. "What are you doing home so early? Erin said you didn't get home till five or five-thirty."
Pap and I walked up the slope to where Aunt Colleen stood waiting for me, a bright green purse dangling from her folded arms. She looked majestic somehow, standing at the top of the lawn with the house looming in the background. She looked as if the house were hers and she was guarding it against the likes of me. I wasn't too far from the truth.
"James Patrick," she said, when we had gotten within closer hearing range, "I can't believe you and that sister of mine could allow such havoc. The house is a disaster area, and who in heaven's name were all those people I found lounging and scrounging about this morning? I thought I'd walked into the wrong house."
"That's the way Mam likes it." I shrugged, enjoying the indignant look she gave me.
"Well, she has gone clear out of her mind. I always thought there was something wrong—" She caught herself and, looking at us, said, "Never mind. I'm going to wait around until those others get here. Patrick says they live with you."
"Yup, I told you that already," Pap said. "They live here all the time and they eat with us even and they call me Pap 'cause they think I'm their Pap, I think. But I'm not really, am I, James Patrick?" Pap turned to me, but I didn't answer. I was eyeing Aunt Colleen.
"What are you going to do? Kick them out?" I asked.
"No. But I can make them clean up. I thought Erin said you had a schedule for cleaning."
I nodded. "Yeah, we did once, but there's just too many people now, and too much junk."
"Well, we can just get rid of all that junk. We pan haul up a big trash canister if we have to, and load it all in. And we'd better do something about the ceiling in that parlor or you'll be having it in your laps. And the living room—we need a professional painter in there."
I felt a charge run through me. This was my day.
I said, "I've drawn up a plan of all the work that needs to be done. Want to see it?"
Aunt Colleen uncrossed her arms and stood taller. "Yes, yes I do, but you bring it out here. I don't think I could bear to go back in that house."
I ran up to my room and rifled through my desk drawer, hunting for the plans. The thin drawer overflowed with the torn photographs of Bobbi I had stashed there one furious afternoon, and I had to dig beneath flashes of her eyes, her hands, her hair, still feeling the pangs of hurt and envy, to find those plans.
I heard a car roll into the driveway and glanced out the window to see—who else but Don and Bobbi rolling into the drive in Don's pickup.
I found the plans underneath the one photograph I'd had blown up and didn't have the heart to destroy, even in my fury. It was the picture I had taken of Bobbi just before she left with her father that Christmas Day. I remembered how I had thought her smile held such hope, showed such good feelings between us, and how it was a shock to see it later when I got the prints back and find that her smile held fear and doubt, not friendship. Her mind was already on her father and leaving, and not bound up with mine at all. I had been the one full of hope and love. I had given her my feelings, believing they were hers, too, but the photograph told me the truth.
Don was standing with his arm around Bobbi and saying something to Aunt Colleen and Pap when I returned with my plans.
They all looked at me, and I held up my sheet of paper, avoiding Bobbi's eyes. I said, "Found them!" hoping I sounded more cheerful than I felt, and then Don said, "Well, look here, it's Little Pap," and he laughed at his own joke. Bobbi laughed, too, and then so did Pap.
I replied, "It's Dumb Don," and laughed back, and I saw his jaw tighten, the muscles in his face bulge out.
Pap laughed and repeated. "Dumb Don. I like that Dumb Don."
I handed Aunt Colleen the plans and Pap repeated, "Dumb Don."
Then Dumb Don said to Bobbi, "Come on, let's grab some of my things and take them on up to our room."
Aunt Colleen looked up from the plans. "You live here, too?"
Pap chuckled. "Dumb Don."
Don squeezed Bobbi closer to him and, lifting his head, said, "I do now."
"All right," Aunt Colleen said in a let's-get-down-to-business tone. "We've got the four of you. You all can get started cleaning up the junk off the floors downstairs. Pick up the garbage, fold the clothes. Don, you haul the paint out to the garage."
Don eyed Aunt Colleen a moment, as if he were trying to decide whether he was going to belt her or not, then he backed up toward his truck. He reached into the bay and pulled out a duffel bag, hefted it onto his shoulders, and headed for the house.
Bobbi trotted after him and Aunt Colleen said, raising her voice, "I should imagine you'd have the downstairs cleaned up by dinnertime."
Don turned around and, walking backward toward the front door, said, "Lady, I don't do women's work."
Pap chuckled and said, "Dumb Don."
Chapter Nineteen
OVER THE WEEKEND Aunt Colleen had us all cleaning and scrubbing, everyone except Don. She could never tolerate a messy home. She had even hired a painter and a work crew to come, starting on that Monday, to fix up the place. To make sure the workers kept up to the mark, she stood over them all afternoon. One day I came home from school and found her down in the basement holding electrical wires in her outstretched hand, keeping them a safe distance from her silk blouse and talking about red and blue wires to the electrician. Another time I found her in my room, watching a woman stirring paste in a bucket and asking her about water stains on a white ceiling.
She strode about the house each day in her ramrod, there's-business-to-be-done way, but then she met Mr. Fitzgerald, the painter, and something in her changed. Overnight she became a different person. She stopped following the other workers around and just stood talking to Fitzgerald, who, she later told us, claimed to be a leprechaun. He was a small, wrinkled man with a squeaky-sounding Irish brogue and a dark complexion. He chewed on the end of an unlit cigar and sang "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" with Pap, who didn't know the words but sang anyway.
One day I overheard Aunt Colleen quizzing him, asking him leprechaun questions, such as, "Where do you live? How do you make yourself disappear? Let me see you do it. Where's your pot of gold?" And she laughed at all of his answers. I had never heard Aunt Colleen laugh before, and I thought maybe it was a first for her because the laugh sounded like a rusty hinge swinging back and forth.
Another time I overheard her talking to him in a more serious tone, saying, "I just told him to
put on a little bit of foundation and blush. He's so pale in the winter, you know. I didn't want him operating on his patients looking like death himself. How would that be?"
Mr. Fitzgerald drew in his breath and said, "Indeed."
"But my husband has his pride. One of the other surgeons noticed the makeup and they made fun of him."
"Ach no! Pity, that."
"He wouldn't speak to me for a long time after that. Actually"—Aunt Colleen lowered her voice, but I could still hear her—"he moved out and lived at the club for a couple of weeks. And I don't mind telling you, I don't like staying in that big house all by myself, not at night."
"No. No, that ain't right, for sure. But he has his pride, ya see."
"Yes, but he is so pale. He doesn't have your fine dark complexion."
"I thank you fer that, missus," said the leprechaun, and then he added, "You missed a wee spot there, I think."
I couldn't resist, I had to peek in the room, and what did I see but Aunt Colleen dressed in a pair of overalls, with gloves on her hands and a bandanna wrapped around her head, painting right alongside Mr. Fitzgerald. I darted away again before they heard me gasp, and I decided that this ugly man had to be a leprechaun; there could be no other explanation for the sudden change in my aunt.
With all these changes going on I decided to try a change of my own. I wanted to create a Grandma Mary meal. I figured I didn't have to put up with Larry's or Mam's vegetarian glop anymore. I could make my own meal. I stopped at the grocer's after school one afternoon and purchased some hamburger meat and a few other ingredients. When I got home I went in search of Grandma Mary's recipe file, to check on the exact measurements for each ingredient. I went to Pap first. I'd seen him sitting up on the roof when I came home.
"Pap," I called out the window, "do you know where Grandma Mary's recipe file is? I need it."
Pap sat still as if he hadn't heard. He stared up at the sky.
"Pap?"
"Yup, I have it, James Patrick"
"Can I borrow it, then?"
"Okay." Pap inched his way on his bottom toward the Nativity set and reached out for one of the Three Wise Men. He lifted up the base and felt around a second and then withdrew the file. He slid himself back and handed me the rusted file without looking at me. Then he returned to his watch of the sky.
"Thanks. Pap? Did you go to the Center today?"
"Nope."
"How come?"
"'Cause I need to stay up here."
I leaned farther out the window. "You been up here all day?"
"Yup."
"Well, Pap, when you coming in? It will be dinnertime soon."
"No, I'm not coming in now, 'cause I got to wait, is why."
I set the recipe file box down on the window ledge and climbed out on the roof. I sat down next to Pap.
"Hey, Pap," I said.
"I got to stop talking now." Pap sniffed up the snot running out of his nose and shoved his hair out of his eyes. His lips had a blue tinge to them.
"It's cold up here, Pap. Why can't you talk? What are you waiting for?"
"I'm waiting to see her."
"Who? Aunt Colleen?"
"You know, 'cause I can see her, but not her."
I took an exasperated breath. "Pap, that made no sense at all. Who can you see, who can't you see?"
Pap raised his chapped hand up in the air as though he were feeling something in front of him. "Me mam is here, of course."
"You can see Grandma Mary?"
"Yup."
"Where? What does she look like?" I tilted my head so it almost touched his, and gazed up in the sky.
Pap held up his other hand so that both arms were outstretched, and he looked like a person who couldn't see, who needed to find his way in the dark. "She's here. She's everywhere when I come up here." He smiled and gave a satisfied sigh and lowered his arms.
I tried to follow his gaze, to see what he saw. I couldn't see anything. I shook my head. Of course I don't see anything. Have I gone crazy looking for Grandma Mary in the clouds?
"What are you waiting for up here, then?" I asked Pap.
"Me wife." Pap turned to me. "Do you see her, James Patrick?"
"No. Do you?"
"No, I can't see me wife at all up here."
"That's probably because she's not dead, Pap. Don't you think? She'll be home before you know it. Then you'll see her every day."
"But I need to see her now. Do you see her, James Patrick?" Pap stared back into the sky.
"Are you going to stay here until you see her?"
"Yup."
"What if you never see her? What if you can't see her until she gets back from Switzerland? You can't stay up here all night long."
"Yup, I can, too, if I want."
I stood up. "Pap, come in now, okay? It's cold. You can look for her again tomorrow after your classes."
"No, I'll just stay here, and yer not me mam, yer me little boy, I think"
"Great," I said "That old song again."
I left him on the roof and took my recipe file box down to the kitchen. I dug out Grandma Mary's recipe for chili con carne with pasta and began cooking. I was deep into it when some of the others came home and wandered into the kitchen.
"Smells good," Harold said, standing behind me and drawing in his breath through his nose. "What is it?"
"Nothing. It's for me," I said.
Jerusha and Melanie came in and asked the same question.
"It's just a chili recipe."
"It's just for him," Harold added.
"Well, you are all vegetarians, remember?"
Then a few minutes later Ben and Susan came into the kitchen, and I knew Larry wouldn't be far behind.
Susan started to speak, but Harold and Melanie spoke up at the same time and said, "It's chili, but it's just for him."
Susan looked in the skillet "You've got enough to feed an army."
"I'm hungry, and it's for more than one day." I inched closer to the stove, bending over the skillet and stirring the contents.
"Geez, you act as if you think I'm going to cheat off your test paper or something," Susan said, backing away.
Then Larry came in and everyone said, "It's chili but it's just for him." And Ben added in a squeaky voice, "You can't have any, it's mine, it's mine!"
Larry walked over to the stove. He picked up the container of cumin off the counter and examined it. I grabbed it away from him. "Just lay off, Larry. I'll be done in a few minutes and then you can have the kitchen."
Larry backed away and watched me pour the chili con came over the noodles I had sitting in a casserole dish. Then I sprinkled shredded cheddar cheese over it and placed it in the oven.
"You know, that's my skillet you're cooking with," Larry said. "I don't recall you asking to borrow it"
"It is not," I said, moving to the sink with it so I could wash it out. Larry came up behind me.
"That's my sponge, too. I bought that sponge myself the last time I went shopping for groceries for everybody. When's the last time you went shopping for groceries?"
"This afternoon," I said, hunkering down over the pan and rinsing it out.
"Cute, O'Brien."
"And that's Larry's dish towel, so don't think of using it to dry dishes," Ben said.
"And that's Larry's mat you're standing on," Harold added, standing up and drawing closer to me.
"And Larry's sink." Susan got up and began moving toward me, too. I had turned around so my back was to the counter. I held the dripping pan in my hand.
Melanie laughed and stood up to join them and said, "This is Larry's kitchen. You have to pay a fine to use Larry's kitchen."
"Yeah, you have to pay a fine," Harold said, and then they all said it, chanted it at me. "You have to pay a fine. You have to pay a fine."
I pushed through them, slammed the skillet back down on the stove, grabbed a pot holder, and pulled my casserole back out of the oven.
"No, no," Ben said. "That's Larry's ov
en mitt."
I set the dish on the table, where only Jerusha sat, and I said, "Here, you skinny, bug-eyed bug. Eat this!"
Then I strode out of the kitchen and up the stairs with the group of them laughing and applauding.
"Larry's kitchen, my ass," I muttered. "You want to play games, I'll give you games." I grabbed up some clothes and my coat and hat and went down the hall to Bobbi and Don's room. I walked in, grabbed a paper bag off the floor, and stuffed some of my things in it. Then I scooped up her sleeping bag and marched down the stairs.
I met Bobbi and Don on the second flight. Don was yelling at Bobbi and yanking her arm by the wrist as if he wanted to pull it out of its socket.
"You guys can have my bed," I said, storming past them, not caring what happened to Bobbi and her arm. I kept on walking, right past the kitchen, past Aunt Colleen and her leprechaun, out the door and down the slope to my cabin.
I heard Pap calling to me but I didn't answer. I slammed open the cabin door and threw my things on the floor.
It didn't take long before Larry came running down the slope after me, shouting, "O'Brien, if you lay a hand on that table, I swear—"
I'm in control, I told myself, taking a deep breath and stepping over to the table to wait for Larry. I tried to steady my legs, which trembled so much I feared they'd buckle under me.
Larry burst into the cabin and I stood running my hand over the table's surface, trying to act as calm as could be.
