The Regrets of Cyrus Dodd

by Bette Lee Crosby

  “Oh, there was a previous tenant in the apartment,” Clara explained, “but it wasn’t furnished then.”

  “How’d it get furnished?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I collected things our neighbors weren’t using right now.” Clara squared her shoulders and puffed her chest out. “I figured in time you’d want your own furniture, but for now this is nice and cozy.”

  Cyrus pinched his face into a tight knot. “That’s charity!”

  Clara thumped her hands on her hips and stepped in nose to nose with him.

  “It’s no such thing!” she said. “It’s friendship! And if you’re a man who can’t tell friendship from charity, then you’re to be pitied!”

  She whirled on her heel and headed for the door. “Be downstairs at five o’clock,” she hollered back and stormed out.

  As the door slammed, Cyrus looked over at Ruth and saw the fire in her eyes. The last time he’d seen her so angry was in Elk Bend, on the morning he’d told her about stealing back the piglet that was rightfully his.

  “What?” he said, trying to sound innocent.

  “That was uncalled for! Clara went out of her way to do something nice for us, and instead of thanking her you insulted her!”

  Ruth grabbed the suitcase and started dragging it toward the bedroom.

  “Wait,” Cyrus said, “I’ll carry that for you.”

  He reached for the suitcase, but she shoved his hand away.

  “No, thanks, I don’t need your charity.”

  “It’s not charity,” he said. “I’m just trying to help out.”

  “So were Clara and her friends,” Ruth snapped. “They thought they were helping out, but you with your pompous attitude robbed them of that pleasure.”

  “That wasn’t my intention.” Cyrus stared down at his feet. “I’ve always prided myself in paying my own way. How is a man supposed to stand proud if—”

  “I don’t want to hear about your stubborn pride! Such pride is a river that can’t be crossed without a price!”

  Cyrus followed Ruth to the bedroom and stood watching as she unpacked the suitcase. It was several minutes before he spoke again.

  “I’m sorry if I insulted your friend,” he said. “I didn’t mean to; it’s just that I feel better if I pay for what I get.”

  Ruth folded the last sweater, placed it in the dresser drawer and turned to him. “Then pay for it.”

  Cyrus stood there looking confused. “I don’t understand. How can I—”

  “Not everything has a dollar value, Cyrus,” she said in a softer voice as she looked him in the eye. “You can also repay kindness with kindness.” She turned back, closed the lid to the suitcase and slid it under the bed. When she looked up he was gone.

  Her first thought was that he’d stormed out, maybe gone for a walk to give the argument time to cool down. Or worse yet, left altogether. Instead, she found him sitting in the brown leather La-Z-Boy in the living room, not relaxed or pushed back but with his elbows perched on his knees and his face cradled in his hands.

  She turned back to the bedroom and sat in the small slipper chair. She thought back on the conversation and wondered if maybe she’d gone too far. Knowing Cyrus as she did, she could have simply allowed the moment to slide by. Sooner or later he would have seen his misjudgment of Clara’s intentions. Uncertain of what to say or do now, she took the small train case she’d set aside and carried it into the bathroom. Removing her toiletries from the case she arranged them on the cabinet shelf. Hairspray. Lotion. Cotton puffs. A plastic cup filled with loose bobby pins. A comb and hairbrush.

  Ruth checked her watch for the third time. Four-thirty. Cyrus hadn’t made a sound since he disappeared from the bedroom. She began to worry. Perhaps he’d left the apartment. But where would he go? They had no other home. This was it. She waited another fifteen minutes then walked into the living room as if nothing had happened.

  “It’s ten of five,” she said. “Don’t you think we should start downstairs?”

  He looked up at her then stood. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  As they started down the hall he reached over and took her hand in his.

  “I’ll try,” he said. His words had the sound of earnestness.

  Cyrus Dodd

  Ruth’s way of handling life is a lot different than mine. Doing things for people comes easy to her. She has a way of knowing what someone wants before they even know they want it. Last year Pauline Crawford was sick with the flu, so Ruth cooked up a pot of her homemade chicken soup and asked me to bring it down. I did and when I walked in with the pot, Pauline said homemade chicken soup was just what she was wishing for.

  However did Ruth know? Pauline said, and that’s precisely what I keep asking myself.

  It’s not as if I’m unwilling to lend a helping hand. I’d be more than happy to pitch in if somebody asked for a favor. But knowing what they want before they ask is a whole other ball game.

  Yesterday evening at the party Ruth was going from one person to the next and saying how delicious the dish they brought to the party was. How’d she know what each of them brought? It’s not like there were signs saying this green bean casserole was made by Maybelline Meriwether who lives in Four-B.

  I spent most of the evening talking to Clara. I like her; she’s an upfront person who says exactly what she thinks. I told her I was sorry about insulting her earlier, but she just laughed. She said I could make up for it by fixing the falling-down shelf in her hall closet. Of course I said it was a deal.

  That’s how I am. Straightforward. A person asks for something, and they get it. There’s none of this nonsense about me guessing what they want.

  This afternoon I’m going down to the hardware store and replace some of those tools I lost in the fire. I’ll get a power drill, a new screwdriver and some molly-plugs. I’m going to need those for fixing Clara’s shelf.

  See, I don’t mind doing something if someone flat out asks me. I’m not a bad guy at all, and I think Clara’s someone who can see that.

  The Thing about Plans

  That afternoon Cyrus showed up at Clara’s apartment with his new tools. Item by item he took everything out of the closet and installed a new bracket to hold up the shelf that wasn’t falling down but was loose at one end. Once that was done he installed additional support brackets on all of the other shelves even though they didn’t need it.

  “You could sit a ten-ton weight on those shelves, and they won’t budge,” he assured Clara.

  To show her gratitude, she insisted he have one of her peanut butter muffins. He did, and then they sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee and talking for well over an hour. Returning to his own apartment, he caught the fragrance of beef stew the minute he walked in.

  “Hurry and wash up,” Ruth called out. “Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.”

  “Dinner already?” Cyrus glanced at the clock on the mantle. It read six-twenty. They’d eaten dinner at the same time for as long as he could remember.

  He sat down at the table and gave a sigh of contentment.

  “I can’t believe it’s already six-thirty,” he said. “I don’t know where this day went.”

  Ruth smiled. Now she was certain of what she needed to do.

  The following morning she telephoned Clara and suggested Cyrus was a man who got great pleasure out of fixing things. By late afternoon he had requests to reset a few wobbly bricks in the back walkway, hang a picture for Barbara Harris and help Wayne Dolby move a chest of drawers to the storage room in the basement.

  The next morning he returned to Moore’s Hardware store; although he’d intended to buy just a bag of mortar to set the bricks he ended up with two wrenches, three different sized hammers, a box of assorted size nails, another one of screws and a metal tool box.

  The following Monday he was on the top step of a ladder replacing a bulb in the lobby chandelier when he heard someone call out.

  “Cyrus Dodd?”

  Cyrus looked down. The man�
��s face seemed vaguely familiar.

  “Yes,” Cyrus answered tentatively.

  The man laughed. “It’s me, Stan. Stan Gorsky, from the railroad yard.”

  “Well, I’ll be…” Cyrus grinned, scrambled down from the ladder and gave Stan a one-armed hug.

  After a round of comments about gray hairs and a few extra pounds, Stan said, “You working as a handyman now?”

  Cyrus laughed. “Nah, we’re staying here for the time being, and I’m just helping out.”

  “For the time being?”

  Cyrus nodded. “Temporarily. Our house burned down and—”

  “Holy crap,” Stan exclaimed. “The one on Harrison Street was your house?”

  “Yeah. It got hit by lightning, and we were away—”

  “You were lucky,” Stan said. “My son-in-law was one of the firemen, and he said the way that house went up nobody would have survived.”

  “Really?”

  Stan nodded. “Yeah, you definitely got luck on your side. A man with your luck ought to be playing poker.”

  Cyrus laughed. “You think so?”

  Once the residents of the Wyattsville Arms discovered Cyrus Dodd’s ability to fix, repair or build almost anything, the requests came pouring in.

  Louise Fallway needed shelves on the wall of her sewing room. Barbara Conklin’s kitchen faucet was dripping. Diane Miller’s window refused to open. It seemed there was always something more to be done—a light fixture to be installed, a sticky hinge to be oiled, a doorknob to be replaced.

  Some mornings Cyrus would dash out after breakfast and not return until almost suppertime. And when he finally did get back, he’d come in whistling like a carefree kid.

  “Did you skip lunch?” Ruth would ask, and he’d shake his head and say that one or another of the neighbors had given him a sandwich or bowl of soup along with a slice of homemade cake or a handful of cookies.

  At first Cyrus used the wall calendar to jot down reminders of what he’d promised to do, but before long he ran out of space and had to start keeping a notebook. In between the odd job notes, he penciled in reminders for Men’s Poker Night and the Bowling League.

  In early May a debris removal team came and cleared away what was left of the house on Harrison Street. Later that month, Cyrus and Ruth drove over to have dinner with the Crawfords and stopped to look at the place where their house once stood. It was now an empty lot with patches of blackened dirt showing through and weeds springing up.

  “I guess it’s time to start rebuilding,” Cyrus said.

  Ruth nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

  “I suppose,” he replied, but his words were without the sound of conviction.

  For the remainder of that summer, there was no further mention of rebuilding the house. Near the tail end of August Cyrus got a telephone call from a realtor asking if the lot was for sale.

  “Missus Hawkins, your neighbor, it’s her daughter who’s interested.”

  “Mildred’s daughter?” Cyrus asked. “I thought she moved to Louisiana.”

  “She did,” the realtor said. “But now that she’s got three little ones she’s looking to move back closer to her mama.”

  The idea of young children coming to Harrison Street warmed Cyrus’s heart, and he thought back on the years of Joy’s childhood.

  “It’s a good place to raise kids,” he said.

  “It certainly is,” the realtor agreed. “We live two blocks over on Spruce.”

  “Nice,” Cyrus replied.

  The realtor explained the offer and said it was actually a bit higher than market value, but the girl was willing to pay more to be where her mama could help out with the kids. They spoke for a few minutes longer; then the realtor suggested Cyrus talk it over with Ruth and get back to him.

  That evening they were in the middle of watching Perry Mason when Cyrus got up and snapped off the television.

  “We need to talk about Harrison Street,” he said.

  “Oh?” Ruth set the tiny sweater she was crocheting aside. “What about it?”

  She expected to hear him say it was time to start work on the new house. When he told her there’d been an offer to buy the property, a look of surprise swept across her face.

  “I thought you were planning to rebuild.”

  Cyrus gave a soft chuckle. “I thought so too; then this offer came along and now I’m starting to wonder. What do you think?”

  Ruth hesitated a long while before answering.

  “We certainly have a lot of sweet memories from that house,” she said. “But it’s almost impossible to go back and have things be as you remember them.”

  Cyrus waited.

  “When we moved into that house we were younger, and Joy was just a child.”

  “True.” Cyrus nodded.

  “I was involved in her school and the Girl Scout troop. And you were busy working. Why, I can remember hundreds of evenings when you’d work late, and I’d set your dinner on the back of the stove to keep warm.”

  Cyrus gave another chuckle and nodded.

  “Now it’s different. We don’t have those responsibilities anymore. This is our time. A time when we’re free to do the things we enjoy.” Ruth gave a wistful sigh. “Since we’ve been here, I’ve made a number of friends…”

  “Me too,” Cyrus said. “And people count on me to help fix things they can’t handle themselves.”

  There were several minutes of silence. Then Cyrus said, “I wouldn’t be unhappy staying here.”

  “Me neither,” Ruth replied.

  The next morning Cyrus telephoned the realtor and said they’d accept the offer.

  The Vacation

  The first two years they were at the Wyattsville Arms, Cyrus and Ruth took a few short vacations. After what happened the last time they went to Virginia Beach it had lost its appeal so they tried Ocean City in Maryland and Atlantic City, but without the Peppermint Club the magic was missing.

  Twice they went to New York to visit Joy and Peter. Both times they rode the train to New York and stayed at the Statler Hilton across from Pennsylvania Station. No question the hotel was luxurious, but the minute they stepped outside it was a frenzy of horns honking and people hurrying by without even a nod. Not Cyrus’s idea of a restful vacation. Besides which, Joy and Peter were out at work all day. In the evening they’d meet for dinner in a nice but crowded little restaurant, and then Joy would rush off to rest up for the next day.

  That third year, in the dead of winter when the trees were bare and there was not a flower to be found, Cyrus began to long for the feel of grass beneath his feet.

  “We’ve got the money from the insurance settlement in the bank,” he told Ruth. “And since we’re happy here I can’t see us buying another house, so let’s treat ourselves to a really nice vacation.”

  Ruth agreed and said it was a fine idea.

  For the remainder of that winter they went back and forth on thoughts of where to go. Ruth said she’d always wanted to see Paris but Cyrus nixed the idea, claiming it would be tough to find their way around since neither of them spoke French. At least once a week he stopped by the travel agent’s office and each time came home with a handful of brochures on exotic retreats.

  They both agreed Africa was beautiful but much too far away, and after Ruth saw the Hawaii brochure filled with bronzed beauties in skimpy bathing suits she said it was probably too hot there anyway. California was too touristy and Arizona too dry.

  In the early spring Cyrus saw a newspaper article that told about the new West Virginia Wing added onto the Greenbrier Hotel. That same afternoon he went back to the travel agent asking for a brochure about the resort. He came home with three brochures and a thought that he might have found the perfect place. That evening he and Ruth sat side by side on the sofa and studied the brochures.

  “Look at these beautiful rooms,” she said. “And the flowers…”

  “It says they’ve got everything for the sportsman—golf, tennis, fly
fishing, hiking trails, indoor and outdoor swimming pools,” Cyrus said. “Even a bicycle path, although I’d hardly consider that a sport.”

  “And afternoon tea.” Ruth sighed. “Imagine getting all dressed up just to have tea in the afternoon.”

  Cyrus rubbed a hand across his chin. “How dressed up are you talking about?”

  Ruth laughed and showed him the picture. “You’d have to wear a jacket. We wouldn’t have to do it every day, but once would be nice.”

  “I suppose once would be okay, if I’m not too full from breakfast. They have world-famous sweet potato pancakes.”

  Ruth looked at the breakfast buffet picture. “I don’t think I’ve ever had sweet potato pancakes.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” Cyrus said. “Mama used to make them when we had a big harvest of sweet potatoes and no flour, but I liked them way better than her regular pancakes.

  That evening Ruth and Cyrus got so busy looking at those brochures they forgot about the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show they were planning to watch. The next day Cyrus went back to the travel agent and told her to make a reservation for them starting on the Wednesday after Easter and staying for ten days.

  “Do you want a room or a suite?” the agent asked.

  Cyrus thought for a moment then said a room would do just fine.

  * * *

  Once the reservation was made, Cyrus and Ruth spent the next three weeks planning their trip. Not even the smallest detail was left to chance. They would leave early in the morning the Wednesday after Easter so they wouldn’t miss the holiday festivities at Wyattsville Arms.

  “Can’t afford to miss the luncheon,” Cyrus said. “Not when I’m chairman of the committee.”

  “I should think not,” Ruth replied.

  Night after night they sat together and pored over the brochures. Cyrus took a map of the Southeastern United States and with a red pen traced the roads they’d take to get there. After all those years of scheduling trains that came and went at all hours of the day and night, planning came easy to him and he enjoyed doing it.