by Terri Kraus
Burt nodded as if he understood. “You got an extra flyer? You can put it up on the board over there. Sometimes we get amateurs in here trying to do things themselves and they look for a little help. And sometimes the big crews need an extra hand. You never know.”
“Thanks. I’ll put one up. I have a few in my truck.”
Jack loped out to his truck and in a minute was posting the flyer in the middle of the board.
Burt leaned against the counter and folded his arms back over his chest. His arms barely made it across. “Why Butler? Why here? Must be better places to pick than Butler. Not that I’m nosey or anything. Just interested.”
Jack wasn’t bothered by the question. In truth, it was a question he’d already posed to himself dozens of times. He thought he’d come up with a succinct, clear answer and decided to try it in an out-loud way.
“Butler’s a nice town. Not too big. Not too small. It doesn’t seem like a fancy place. It feels honest. Lots of old buildings. Seems like a good place to start a renovation business. Close enough to Pittsburgh, if you need a big city. Far enough away to not be bothered.”
Burt nodded, as if satisfied, then added after a bit, “Well, it’s nice to meet you. Hope to see you back here, Mr. Kenyon.”
Jack offered a half wave in reply and walked back to his truck, confident that he’d made a good impression.
That went well. Nice to know I still have it.
“Leslie Ruskin. I called yesterday about enrolling my daughter in kindergarten. Ava Ruskin.”
The woman behind the battered desk craned her wrinkled neck forward, as if making sure that Ava was indeed a child.
A brass nameplate holder sat on the woman’s desk, but the holder was empty, as if waiting for the school district’s central office supply to provide an updated name. The unnamed woman’s eyes narrowed in a permanent, angry squint, the kind only a civil servant with a lifetime position can have.
“Ruskin?”
“Yes, Leslie Ruskin. And Ava. She’s five, and I want to enroll her in kindergarten. We’ve just moved to the area.”
“You’re late. Students registered for school last spring. School starts next week.”
Leslie fought hard to keep control of her voice. She was not angry, she seldom got angry, but panic began to form inside. She knew this was simply a misunderstanding and not worthy of panic. Yet there it was. She had never moved anywhere, all on her own, at any time in her life, and she now realized that moving was much more complicated than she’d imagined.
Grandma Amelia experienced a lot of upheaval in her life. She overcame some big obstacles. I can handle this. I can.
Leslie took a deep breath before responding. To handle things in an appropriate manner, to relax in order to banish stress was a necessity—that was something she’d read in a Reader’s Digest article while standing in a long checkout line in the grocery store.
“I explained this yesterday when I called. We just moved into town. We didn’t know we were going to be here until a few weeks ago. On a permanent basis, I mean … in this school district.”
The woman behind the desk pursed her lips. “Registration is over. Has been for months. I don’t know if we can do anything about this.”
Leslie looked back over her shoulder to make sure that this building was indeed a school and that she had not entered a business. She could see the lettering on the banner that hung over the office windows facing the dark, unlit hall. Even though the letters were backward, she could easily read the hand-painted words: WELCOME STUDENTS TO THE EMILY BRITTIAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.
Leslie looked down at her daughter. Ava seldom seemed perturbed by anything. She might worry, but she didn’t grow anxious. Or perhaps, more truthfully, she simply did not show her anxieties like her mother. She smiled back up at her mother, then rubbed her nose with her hand.
“I called yesterday. The woman I spoke to said all we would have to do is come in to the office with Ava’s birth certificate, her state health form, and proof of residency. I have all of those. And the custody papers. She said I needed those as well. The woman said if I had all that, my daughter could be registered. I have all of that with me. Just as requested.”
“What woman?” the nameless woman asked, a little harsher than Leslie thought appropriate.
“I can’t remember. I’m not sure I asked.”
The nameless woman all but threw her hands in the air in response. “Well, no one told me anything about this.”
Leslie drew in a deep, calming breath to fight her rising anxiety.
“The lady’s name was Wilson,” Ava said firmly, unexpectedly. “You said ‘Mrs. Wilson’ on the phone, Mommy.”
Leslie was often amazed by what her daughter chose to remember, or could remember. She was like a sponge.
“That’s right. It was a Mrs. Wilson,” she said with triumph.
The woman behind the desk scowled. “Dr. Wilson? Figures. New principals—they think they know everything.” And under her breath, just loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, she added, “As if she knows how any of this is supposed to work.”
Leslie stood, awaiting instructions, and gave her daughter’s hand a gentle congratulatory squeeze. The day grew brighter during that squeeze, and the tight band of tension forming around Leslie’s heart suddenly loosened.
“Here—fill this out. This one too. And I need to make copies of everything you have.”
Ava sat, her legs swinging in midair on the hard plastic chairs by the door. Leslie carefully filled out the six pages of forms, stopping for a short, painful moment every time she wrote Ava’s father’s address as different from their own.
“Kenyon Construction.”
Jack waited for someone to say hello.
“Hello?” he finally said into the phone.
After what felt like a long silence, Jack heard the snuffling of an old woman’s voice. “I have this paper. It says free estimates. Is that true?”
“Yes, it is,” Jack answered brightly.
“Then you come and tell me how much it will cost to fix this, okay?”
Jack tried to get a description of what it might be that was broken, but the voice kept repeating, “Free estimate, right?”
Instead of trying to decipher the problem over the phone, Jack asked for the address. He hurried to his truck, making sure he had his clipboard, tape measure, and digital camera. He checked and made sure he had a supply of business cards as well, snugged in a package with a rubber band.
I can do this.
The address was an older home, gently sagging from age, and had been one of the first homes to receive one of his flyers. He tapped on the door. He heard shuffling, and the thin curtain on the inside of the door was pushed aside. Jack could see the top of a head, then an eyeball behind thick glasses.
“What do ya want?”
“I’m Jack Kenyon.”
“Who?”
“Jack Kenyon. We just talked on the phone.”
“What?”
Jack had no idea of what words might work. Then he smiled to himself. “Free estimate.”
A tumbler was turned, and a chain was removed from the hasp.
“Free estimate, right?” the old woman nearly shouted as Jack handed her one of his business cards.
Jack yelled back, “Yes. Free.”
He stepped inside. The living room nearly overflowed with a dusty mix of dark furniture, lamps, bags, newspapers, and magazines, plus three televisions on a standard church-issue folding table, and four calendars—two from the previous year—tacked on the closet wall. The room, done in ocher paint, smelled of Vicks, cats, and wet newsprint.
The best way to make the old house better would be to tear it down, Jack couldn’t help but think.
“The back door sticks. How much
will it cost to fix it?”
Jack might have told her, had the woman been able to hear, or had she appeared to have some resources, or appeared to be … more normal, that he was not a handyman but a carpenter who specialized in renovation, not repairs.
She shuffled off down the hallway, her blue faded housedress fluttering around her thin calves like leaves rustling in a quiet fall breeze. She walked with her hand out, her fingers tapping against the wall for balance.
“I would have called one of the kids … but they got their own problems. Not that they would care if I did call them. They figure, ‘Why spend the money on the old lady?’ when it just means they’ll get less when she dies. Now what kind of attitude is that? I tell you—kids these days.”
She stopped and turned to face Jack. The kitchen was nearly as cluttered as the living room. The smell of cats was stronger. Cans of food were stacked on the counter, unopened, in shaky pyramids. The old woman stood no more than five feet tall, so the upper cabinets were out of reach. The countertops were not.
On second thought, maybe she was shorter than five feet.
“I can’t open the back door anymore. Is it busted? How much to fix it?”
Jack pushed against it, turning the knob. It gave just a bit. He pushed harder, with his shoulder this time, and the door popped open. A gust of warm air either entered or left—Jack wasn’t sure which.
He looked down. The weather strip on the threshold had popped loose and was bent over, acting as a wedge.
He held up his hand. “I’ll be back in a second.”
Using a pry bar from his truck, he bent the strip back into place and hammered in five small roofing nails. They weren’t exactly right for the job, but the proper nails would not hold as well, and he didn’t have any wood screws in his toolbox. He opened and closed the door several times. Nothing was binding. He was dead certain his repair would outlast the rest of the house.
“There you go. Good as new.”
The old woman—gray, bent, wrinkled, nearsighted—stared hard at him, her hand braced against the wall. “How much?”
Jack waved his hand. “This one is free. No charge. Only took a minute.”
She shuffled closer than Jack would have preferred. “Free? Really?”
“Yep. No charge.”
She put her hand on his arm, her fingers cold despite the room’s warmth. She looked harder at his face through her thick glasses. Her fingers trembled. She drew even a step closer. “I … I could make you lunch.”
Amelia Westland, age thirteen years, two months
Glade Mills
Butler County, Pennsylvania
September 5, 1875
I am now two months older than when I began this diary, and I am afraid, very afraid, despite my prayers, despite the reverend’s assurances. There is a scourge of pox sweeping the county, and many people have died or are suffering—high fevers, terrible pain, horrible sores. The church will no longer hold a wake for people who have passed from this disease, for there are too many and some believe the illness will jump from the dead to the living.
Father and Mother try their best, but I know that the specter of death worries them. I hear them whisper in the dark after they believe I am asleep. Mother has the most doleful countenance at times.
I struggle to pray. I struggle to believe. I know that God is good, that He is love, for that is what the Holy Scriptures reveal, but I have seen small neighbor babies, covered with scabs, howling out in pain. How do I have faith? How do I remain unafraid?
My limitless future, as Father had described, has diminished to a faint glimmer, until the passage of this plague.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
—Psalm 23:4
CHAPTER THREE
“DO WE TAKE THE FURNITURE with us, Mommy?” Ava asked as she carefully packed her three dolls in a pink child-sized suitcase, placing each one just so, aligned at right angles, with little doll clothing neatly placed between them as padding.
Leslie looked at her daughter. “You mean the furniture in this room? No, this belongs to the hotel. Our new home has some furniture in it already. And we’ll go on a shopping excursion to get what we don’t have. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
Ava zipped her doll suitcase. “No. But I’ll go with you.”
Leslie gave her daughter a hug.
Maybe she’ll grow to like shopping. But maybe it’s a good thing she doesn’t enjoy shopping … for now.
They sat on one of the beds, side by side, in the bedroom of the two-room suite. This would be their last night in the hotel. They didn’t have much to pack, but Leslie wanted to be out early in the morning. The Midlands Building would be hers, officially, at eight o’clock the following morning. The current owner, the First Bank of Butler, or at least the director of commercial real estate, said she could have gone in the previous night. But she remembered what her husband, her former husband, had said before they had bought their first home, back when things were normal and good. “Never go into a house before the papers are signed. If something gets busted, or was busted before you got there, they’ll try to pin it on you. Nope. Wait till the ink dries. That’s what you do so you don’t get ripped off,” he’d said.
Leslie didn’t think anything would happen but was unwilling to take any chances. Not now, after risking so much … and signing so much of her future away.
“Tomorrow morning we’ll get our breakfast here, since it comes with the room, then we’ll go to the bank to get the keys,” she told Ava. “Then we can start moving in. We’ll do a little cleaning, and we’ll set up the kitchen. It’ll be so much fun.”
Ava kicked her feet as they hung over the side of the bed. “Does the television there get Dora the Explorer?”
Leslie promised herself that she’d no longer lie to her daughter—about anything. “No. I don’t think so. That show is on cable, and we don’t have cable at our new house.”
Ava’s mouth turned down. She looked at her feet, now still. She folded her hands in her lap. “Oh.”
She didn’t cry, as Leslie thought she might. Ava had fallen in love with Dora the Explorer during their stay in the hotel. She did not plead or ask “Why not?” or demand that Leslie try to get cable television, even though they couldn’t yet afford it. She simply stared ahead and kept whatever thoughts she had inside, in a place Leslie knew was out of reach.
The new owner of the Midlands Building came to a decision: She picked the middle apartment for their residence. The apartment on the east side had remained rented, with long-term tenants—the Stickles, a pleasant older couple. Leslie knew the apartment on the west side of the building was a bit nicer, a little larger with more windows and more closet space, but it would also be easier to rent. The monthly income it generated would help them remain solvent. For Leslie, it was an easy choice.
At the top of a wide stairway was a landing. Behind the apartment door, a cozy entryway opened into a spacious living room that had an original fireplace with a marble mantle and cast-iron surround, and enough room for a small dining table that Leslie would need to purchase. French doors opened from the living room onto the screened balcony at the front. Off the living room was the kitchen, and behind it, a surprisingly wide hallway led to two cozy bedrooms, with a bath in between at the end of the hall. The apartment had high ceilings and very tall arched windows, hardwood floors, and thick, dark-stained wood moldings. Leslie was relieved all the walls had been painted a fairly standard off-white, which wasn’t exactly stylish, but at least wasn’t ugly and wouldn’t clash with anything. There were also several pieces of decent-enough furniture to help fill up the space until she could upgrade to her own.
After bringing in their luggage
, a few boxes of kitchen supplies and linens, and her box of things most treasured from the front seat of the minivan, Leslie attempted to connect their small television. The building had been built well before everyone “had” to have a cable connection but had an antenna on the roof, and the wire ran to all three apartments. Feeling electronically inept, she stared at the end of the wire, then at her television set. She could see no match in connection styles. She looked over and saw Ava sitting quietly on the sofa, holding two of her dolls in her lap. Leslie stared back at the television again. Until she could get help hooking it up, without some sort of antenna there would be no reception at all.
Leslie wanted to weep in that moment, feeling as if she’d failed her daughter again. She bit at her bottom lip. The wire from the roof culminated in two silver horseshoe-shaped connectors, but every connector on the back of the television was round and shiny.
“Will our television work here, Mommy?”
Leslie peered out from behind the set. “It will, sweetie. But I think I need to buy a special plug.”
Ava nodded, as if she understood. “At the Radio Shack place?”
“There’s a Radio Shack in town?”
Ava pointed north. “It’s by that store where you bought us popcorn.”
“Really?”
That was five minutes away, by the hotel they had just left. While Ava did not read, not really, she did recognize logos and brand names with ease. McDonald’s she’d known from age two.
“Well, honey, after I bring the last of the boxes up from the minivan, we’ll go there and see if Mommy can find the plug that makes it work. Maybe tonight. Or tomorrow, for sure.”
Ava offered a satisfied smile. “Okay.”
After fixing the old woman’s back door, Jack received two other calls for estimates. That made three calls from his door-to-door advertising. One caller wanted a new roof. Even though he was hungry for work, Jack had made a promise to himself before he started that he would not do roofing. That was hard, dangerous work, and a single contractor had no business even attempting to roof a house; even flat roofs could be dangerous. He explained this to the caller, stating that he’d be better off with a company specializing in roofing.
