by Chris Lynch
Furrowed brow and squinted eyes, the Oakley I see doesn’t know who he’s seeing.
It’s quite a maneuver for me to twist up and get a look at Pauly, but I do it, managing not to disturb the grip he’s got on me because when they happen those grips mean something and breaking them too would sure as hell mean something.
I’m looking up at my man Paul, in the stupid opaque shades, with the phone in his ear and the key in the door, his friend—his only friend, but you didn’t hear it from me—under his arm and a key in the door of a place he’s got no business going into. And a smile of smile of smiles slashed across his face.
“I’m gonna make it happen, Oakley,” he says, and he is simultaneously killer serious and near giddy with joy. “Dizzy’s gonna make me his partner when he sees what I can do. This is my big chance. This house is gonna be finished when he gets back from lunch.”
I try to rewind.
“What, exactly, is going to be finished, Pauly?”
He’s now paying closer attention to the phone than to me. “Why doesn’t she answer?” he asks.
“Why don’t you answer?” I ask.
“What?”
“What is going to be finished by the end of lunch? The front of the house? The prep work? What?”
Please, I’m thinking, let him give me the right answer. Please, I pray, though I do not pray unless absolutely necessary.
The key will not move in the door. No worry. No hurry.
“My house,” he says, smiling, confident. “That really is a good crew out there. You see those guys bustin’ tail, Oakley?”
It may very well be, I realize, that the reason I don’t seem to be able to invest my heart in much of anything is that I fight it, and him, and myself. I am equal parts excited by the possibility and convinced, of the old futility. “Oh Pauly,” I say. “Pauly, that can’t—”
“So while those guys are getting the outside done, and I’ll be pushing them really hard … you can be in here and you’ll do the first floor and I’ll take the second floor …”
If it were a matter of spirit. If you could make things happen by want, then Pauly’s vision would come true. But if things were simply that, then much would come true for Paul. But, not much does.
“Pauly,” I say. “Pauly, that can’t happen. That is not humanly possible … Nobody could expect that of you, and I think you’d probably die in the attempt. And maybe I’m being a little selfish, but I’d rather let your dream die and keep you.”
His smile is warm and benevolent and I have this fleeting moment when I think I see on his face that he appreciates, realizes … But I’m just wishing it.
“And as much as I love you, Oakley, that, I gotta tell you, is why you’re never gonna get anywhere. Thinkin’ like that.”
He hangs up the flip on the phone, lets go of me, and works harder on the dry uncooperative lock.
Pauly rattles the door and shakes it, wiggles the knob, and finally kicks the green tarnished brass plate at the foot. Kicks it again, pissed, works the key until I am sure it will break, or that Pauly will, then finally we are in the foyer.
“Nice fuckin’ foyer,” he says. “Welcome home. Doesn’t it say welcome the hell home, Oak? It sure does, and it’s beautiful.”
And it is. Red and blue and green threadbare but stylish oriental rug. Dark wood paneling and a brass gas lamp-style light sticking out of one wall. It’s a warm-feeling place, like a rich person’s library.
Pauly’s hit the redial already.
“Why won’t she answer? Where is she? She doesn’t have anything doing today. I asked her and she said she doesn’t have anything doing today.”
“So? So she got something doing, what’s the big deal, Paul?” But at the same time, I want him to keep dialing till he gets her.
“In my truck. In my truck, she got something doing? She better not be up to the old tricks. Not in my truck anyway.”
Pauly snaps the phone closed again.
“She never had any old tricks, for one thing. And it’s not even your truck for another.” It’s more of a long-term loaner, since Pauly’s father skipped out and just sort of forgot to take his wheels with him.
“Ya … well … just the same. She starts that stuff, I swear I’ll just … When I see her this time, I’ll just …”
He can’t even finish it. Not as a threat, not as a bluff, not as a joke. I know it, he knows it, and the creaky steps we climb in the beautiful old house know it. So I help him out.
“You’ll just … fall on your knees and rub her feet? Or, you’ll just … buy her a box of chocolates and take her to a movie?”
Pause. He’d like to do better than that. If there were any other witnesses he might.
“Ya, something like that,” he says, then laughs. “But that would sure teach her a lesson wouldn’t it, Oak? She’d never mess with ol’ Pauly again, would she?”
“No,” I say, following him to the top of the stairs and into the first bedroom. “No, Pauly, I don’t suppose she would.”
He plunks himself down on an old bed so springy it bounces another six times before settling down. Like a car with bad shocks. He’s dialed again. Outside the window we can hear the rattling, scraping, clamoring of the crew attacking the house. They appear to be responding well to Pauly’s style of leadership.
As he waits for the phone, he points out the window. “See?” he says, and winks.
“Just … we might fall a little short of your goal, Pauly, so don’t get … too rigid about it. We’ll do our best….” I do not want to point out that, on top of all the other difficulties in getting a three-week job done in an hour and a half, he and I aren’t actually doing anything still. Somewhere in there, he sees different.
He hangs up the phone. Sighs hard like a little boy denied a trip to the candy store. Stomps past me wordlessly, bumping me deliberately on his way by. But that’s okay.
We poke our heads into each of the other three bedrooms, similar cozy but shabbified bedrooms. Somebody else’s bedrooms. The last one, at the end of the hall, the corner room, with windows on two sides, that is the one Pauly names his bedroom.
“Yup,” he says, bouncing on the bed. He dials.
I leave him and go exploring down the narrow yellow-walled rear staircase. Wind up in the grease-stained yellow kitchen. I would never eat in this kitchen. I would never eat anything that had been prepared in this kitchen. I wouldn’t shake hands with anyone who had eaten in this kitchen. It looks almost as if there was a fire, and the people of this house had to flee in the middle of a meal. Two years ago. Crumbs and smears and drops of stuff—unfathomable stuff, after all this time—spill out of boxes in open cupboards, off plates at a perfectly set table, and cover the countertops, stove, and floor. The refrigerator, which I wouldn’t open on a bet, is the fat old-style Frigidaire. The stove is a gigantic iron thing with two huge ovens suitable for cooking a whole entire person, if that’s what you’re into. The chairs and table are thick solid oaky things, dark-oiled and heavy-looking. Goofy cartoony curtains hang at the windows, with cats chasing butterflies all over them. All the shelves and drawers are covered in shiny orange shelf paper. You could write your name in the thick grease that covers every bit of wall, and the entire place is a mouse-turd plantation.
It is a great room. If I were a painter I would paint this room. Not that kind of painting the room, the kind I’m actually here to do and which I am not doing, but the other kind of painting, the kind artists do. This is a room for that. It talks, this room does.
I am about to explore further when I hear Pauly in the room above me. He’s talking, but then not. You can hear pretty well through these walls and floors.
I quick-step it back up the stairs and round right back into the room where I left him.
He’s talking on the phone. He’s talking, lying on his back, rolling side to side.
“It’s it,” he says, the pitch of his voice climbing out of his real range. “It’s it, Lilly, it’s the it. This is the s
core … my uncle and me … he’s going to let me in all the way once I prove myself. The whole real estate thing, we’re gonna do it together, the buying and selling and rehabbing … and I got, for you, a huge huge surprise….”
He’s still got the sunglasses on. He’s got his free hand on his head as if he cannot believe his great fortune. He’s writhing there on the bed.
“So call, huh, when you get this message. Wanna talk to you, Lil, wanna talk to you, sweetie….”
I don’t know if it’s not apparent to Paul what was apparent to me, or if it simply does not matter to him. We go on. BAU, as he likes to say. Business As Usual. That’s a Pauly joke, see. We wouldn’t recognize usual if it flew up our noses.
“I love this house,” Pauly says. “This house is gonna be my house, Oakley. How you fuckin’ like that? It’s gonna be mine, can you believe it? Then I’m gonna, after it’s mine, gonna give it to Lilly.”
I’m listening. Wishing and hoping and all that, but mostly listening. And smiling and nodding.
“Big house. Big enough, way,” Pauly says. “You wanna live here with us, Oak? You can, y’know. Like, rent free. What am I saying, of course ya do. Just help me here and there with the fixin’ up. You shouldn’t wanna live in that divey place above the coffee crap place anymore. You live with me. Lilly and me and you. Fuckin’ ay, Oak, huh?”
I have to remind myself that I am supposed to be the level-headed one. That this scheme should hold nothing but terror for me. That the idea should be not only impractical but deeply unsettling.
Yet for an instant I get none of that, and instead feel a warm shot of something through my belly.
I wait a couple beats. I know these moments too well. I pull it back, must speak carefully. “It is, Pauly. It is a great house. So, then, your uncle’s gonna make it possible …?”
“We’re workin’ on it. Shit’s gonna happen. But it’s a go, man, it’s a go. We got it all figured up.”
I nod, as it is the only strategy I can muster. “But Lilly’s … Remember, Paul? Once the school year’s up—”
He raises a hand to shut me up which is fine since I got further than I had expected to.
“That’s just because—okay?—because she doesn’t know the possibilities. She thinks about dead ends in Whitechurch but I think about the opportunities. She is really kind of limited that way, so I’m doing the figuring for us. To make it possible for her to be happy here, Oakley, see? I know she really wants to be happy here—’”
The phone rings, and he is all smiles answering it.
“Ya, sweetie, ya. Big stuff. But I’ll fill you in more in person. Oh, unbelievable. No, no you gotta wait. But here’s a hint—don’t go packing your bags for Boston just yet….”
I am listening, I am picturing Lilly’s expression.
“Ya. Well, ya, he’s here, but so what? This is our moment, Lilly … no, no, he just left. Never mind. I’ll talk to ya later.”
He sits there on the bed, staring at the phone.
“Did she want to talk to me?” I ask.
“No,” he snaps. “Where did you go, anyway?”
“Kitchen,” I say.
“How is it then?” he asks.
“Needs work.”
“Let’s see.”
So we do, down the yellow stairs to the needy old kitchen. Pauly stands there in the middle of it, and I still can’t tell exactly what he thinks because the glasses are obscuring the windows to his soul. But he does this arms-spread, taking-it-all-in, Sound of Music twirl, sizing up every inch of the room. Then he stops still.
“This is it,” he says. “This is where I am needed most. Change of plans. You take the upstairs. I am going to save the life of this house, right here in the heart.” He rolls up his sleeves, like for surgery.
I shake my head. “Jesus, Paul, this is an awful lot of work….”
He finds a loose sheet of wallpaper in one corner, starts clawing it down. “We are not afraid of work,” he insists. “Come on, Oakley, are we afraid of work?”
“Well, I suppose it’s not the work, exactly—”
“Good,” he says, “good man. Let’s kick some ass, Oak, me and you.” He whips around now and—it does not matter whether he has the glasses on or not—I can see in the windows. “We can do it, I am certain we can do it, Oakley, if you’re behind me. You’re behind me, right? Right, we’ll show him. Then we’ll show her … she can’t be doubting, y’know, Oak, or nothing works, right, y’know?”
There is no answer. There is no answer that will say what I want to say to Pauly without saying what I do not want to say. So the two of us spend ten ridiculous minutes circling the room, pulling down a strip of wallpaper here, pulling up a strip of linoleum there. I am near despairing when help, or at least diversion, arrives.
“Pauly,” Lilly says from the doorway of the kitchen. She is looking all around, and where Paul sees potential, she … fails to see potential.
We look at each other, me and Lilly. We don’t know why she’s here. We are very glad she is.
“The more I thought about it … you don’t need this crap work, Paul … come on home.”
He is flabbergasted. “What are you doing here? I didn’t tell you to come … you’re ruining everything …”
“Let’s get out of here, Paul—”
“Fuck, Lilly. I’m onto something huge here. I told you that. What are you—” He stops himself, very quickly stares into me—rips off the sunglasses to do it—then at her. “Sonsobitches,” he says low, then puts the sunglasses back on. “You’re wrong. This time you’re wrong.”
“Pauly,” she says, sympathetically, which is her mistake.
“Just shut up,” he says, then leads her out. “C’mon, I’ll drive you home. You can lie on the floor if you’re too embarrassed to be seen with me.”
He is making tracks, and she rushes to keep up. Uninvited, I follow.
It’s a pretty silent ride, and I can feel Pauly pulling away from us. Down down down the old hill we go until he kicks her—and me, go figure—out of his truck which isn’t even his, right outside the church. She tries to speak, but he pays no attention.
“What the hell?” is all Lilly can say as we stand there watching the pickup tear down the street.
“He’s convinced this time.” I shrug.
“I almost wish he wouldn’t even try….”
The sound of that bottoms me out so badly, I can’t muster the muscles to shrug. Then the two of us, Lilly and me, me and Lilly, which I normally love to hear myself think in either direction but now feels so fractured, we sit right there on the curb waiting for the inevitable. “Inevitable,” it occurs to me, is a good word for events in Whitechurch.
It takes roughly ninety seconds to drive the length of Main Street, turn left, come up the same length of Middle Street, and wind up back here at the church.
“He thinks he’s really got it for sure this time, huh, Oakley?”
“He thinks so. I don’t know what Dizzy told him, but Pauly’s long-gone sold.”
Lilly leans into me with her shoulder, and ever so ever so slightly I let the weight of me fall into her. “Ah, Oakley,” she says, and she sounds exhausted.
“Ya,” I say.
It’s been just about ninety seconds.
He pulls to the curb. No, he creeps to the curb. Rolls down the window.
“You gotta baby-sit tonight?” Lonely, he asks.
She nods.
“Can’t I, you think, this once?”
She shakes her head.
“Oh, go on, ask him. Whatsit hurt?”
“The Rev hates your guts, Pauly. There’s no way.”
He looks at me, looks and sounds genuinely angry with me. “Get your shoulder off my girlfriend.”
I don’t.
“See me later, then,” Pauly says. Strong. A statement.
Lilly waits. Not a flutter.
“See me later, then?” Pauly asks. Soft. A request. More than a request, really.
“Sure,” she says. “Love to.”
He is so excited, smiling goofy like a child. Also like a child, he seems like maybe he shouldn’t be allowed to drive a truck. He races the engine, accidentally lets it roll. Puts it in reverse to return to the conversation. Gone, he is, off to Lovelillyland. Like she has said yes for the first time right here right now instead of right here four years ago. Gone, like he is every time. First time every time.
“I’ll come get you here, at nine then, is it?”
“Nine it is.” Lilly stands. She is smiling, no longer tired. She has made Pauly happy, or whatever it is Pauly gets when the rest of us would get happy. All she wanted to do in the first place. All right now. All nice.
“And you, bird-dog girlfriend-stealing skinny bastard. Get in the truck. I’m gonna take you someplace secluded. Kick yo’ ass. Teach ya not to be messin’ with my old lady.”
I stand, look slowly up, then slowly down, the street. I brush off the seat of my pants. “Might as well, I guess. Nothin’ else doing around here around now. Kick my ass, then we’ll get back to work.”
He’s up again, Power Pauly. I love to see him this way. And I worry.
“First, lemme buy you a Coke. And while we’re drinkin’ I’m gonna lay out the Plan.”
“We got time?” I ask.
“Get in the truck,” he says.
I climb in the truck.
Then he’s buying me the Coke, at the fountain at the counter in the drugstore where they still have fountain drinks. I realize in lots of places this just isn’t so anymore, but Whitechurch simply couldn’t be, without the drugstore with the fountain where you can get a vanilla or cherry Coke and it may be too flat and so syrupy you’re happy you’re drinking in a place that also sells mouthwash, toothpaste, and floss. The cell phone rings but Pauly ignores it. He’s talk talk talking, about the Plan, which I thought would be about high finance and real estate, but turns out to be about a potbellied stove and exposed beams and parquet flooring. The kitchen. His kitchen. And nothing but the kitchen. He’s ignoring the phone, which keeps ringing, and the looks from customers and Willomena who works the fountain when her mother is around to watch the kids.
