Renovations

         The paint chips on the steps crunched like tiny bones when he walked on them.  He stopped in the doorway.  He felt odd, walking in, even to an unfurnished room where there would be nothing he should not see.  The walls were white, for the most part, clean and blinding where she had already painted, and glistening still.  She was on the ladder, the one borrowed from his wife, her back arched, trying to reach the roller as far as she could.  He listened to the methodical squeaking as she rolled regular strips over the same spot.  He thought it sounded like the springs of a mattress squeaking in rhythm, and imagined her arching back above him, listening to the squeak, thump, squeak, thump.
         When she did notice him, it was with a small jump.  She laughed clear and soft, and quite unlike the slow, loud guffaws his wife gave when he did something particularly dunderheaded.  She was obviously not from Thompsonville, or from anywhere in the surrounding several counties.  Her voice was too trained to be anywhere but from a city, and he could see what his wife meant when she had commented on the woman’s skin: it had never been tanned, he was sure of it, and never really been worked.  The color was too fine, and her cheeks were too smooth to have known country wind.
         “What do you think?” she asked.  She gestured around at the dripping walls, which was good, because he’d thought she’d meant to ask his opinion on the way her paint splattered overalls hung over her body.  He smiled in return.
         “You’ve never painted before, have you?”
         Her brow creased.  “Is it that obvious?”  He didn’t tell her that her painting was surprisingly smooth, that most women painted before having the sense to strip the walls first, and that he would have been exhausted by now, after painting a ceiling over his head for hours and hours.  He didn’t say anything, but he smiled again and she took that as an answer.
         “Is it really that bad?” she said after a moment of silence.  She rubbed her arm unconsciously, leaving a streak of white fingerprints from elbow to shoulder.
         “It’s not terrible,” he finally answered.  “Peculiar color though.  We don’t paint things white here; it’s too clean, it gets dirty too easily.”
         “I thought it would make the room bright.  I was thinking about opening up a shop here.  Antiques or home-stewed jams or something delightfully country.”  His eyes narrowed, even as he imagined swirling his tongue around her sticky, sweet fingers, tasting blueberry preserves.
         “My wife wanted to know how long you’d be borrowing that ladder,” he said.  “She wants me to replace the ceiling fan in our bedroom.  If you want to keep it for a while, though, that’s fine with me.  I’ve got other things to do.”
         “Oh…I was sort of hoping to finish all the ceilings first.”  She brightened and leaned over her ladder so that the top step dug into her waist and her breasts were pushed up, he noticed, almost above her overalls.  “Would you two like to come over to dinner?  I’ve already gotten the water turned on, and the gas, and I was thinking of roasting a whole chicken on the grill, and I certainly can’t finish it all myself.”
         “I…could talk to her about it.  Usually we just cook our own dinners and go to bed.”
         “I’ve got some really nice wine, though, and it’s just begging to be drunk.”  She had accented begging, had said begging really, and for a moment he thought she had been begging him to come instead, and he had almost said yes.

***

         Mae watched her husband walk down the road toward the Thompsonville bar until he disappeared around the bend up by the old Miller place that the woman with the too-fair skin was working on.  As the thought occurred to her, she narrowed her eyes.  People like that woman were unusually set on modernizing, and bringing business and noise to places that weren’t used to it.  Mae had almost told her that they didn’t own a ladder; what use would it be in a one-story house?  But that hadn’t been a good enough reason, so she had led her to the two-story barn and helped her carry the ladder out to the front yard.  She didn’t even know the woman’s name.  It was something like Eleanor or Evelyn probably; Mae had been planting peonies when the woman introduced herself, and hadn’t been paying attention to her name.  Nevertheless, she had told Ralph all about the woman, and what she said she was planning to do with the Miller house.  He had been indifferent, untying his boots without looking up at her.  When she had finished, he had grunted and asked what she had planned on making for dinner.
         When Ralph got home from the bar that afternoon, she had planned on leaving him, for good this time, but before he made it all the way up the road she lifted her head from the doorframe where she had been watching for him and unpacked her suitcase, sliding it back underneath her bed like she did every afternoon.  Instead, she let herself be swung into his rough, drunken kiss as they passed on the front walk, he going inside to drink more beer, she to water her newly planted begonias.  Maybe, she thought, I’ll stop into the church tonight to see if Bingo’s going on.

***

         Ralph had worn a clean pair of jeans for the occasion, which was more than even Sunday services usually got.  He hadn’t bothered to bring anything; she had offered him dinner, and besides, her wine had been begging to be drunk.  There was no sense in bringing his own beer.
         Ellen had set up a table in the center of the white room with four chairs and silverware for three.  Ralph had not bothered to knock; only her screen door was closed, and he could hear something bubbling in the kitchen.  From somewhere outside behind the house he could smell meat grilling and the smoky smell of charcoal, mixing with the smell of paint still potent in her dining room.  He did not take off his boots, and had not thought to bring a jacket.  Ellen leaned her head around the kitchen door as the screen thudded shut and smiled at him.
         “Dinner will be a few minutes.  I thought I’d try a new recipe, and it takes a bit longer than I was expecting.  Mae wasn’t interested in dinner?”
         “She had somewhere to go tonight, to church or somethin’.”  Truth be told, by the time he had sobered enough to be coherent, she had already gone, and he hadn’t invited her at all.  Before he had left, he had scraped the vegetable stew she had left him into the bushes growing on either side of their front door.  She had imposed a vegetarian diet on him in hopes that he would lose weight, but he had so far managed to keep his potbelly.
         “That’s too bad.  Help yourself to a glass of wine; the glasses are on the table.  If you’d like to help, I still need to mash these potatoes.”  Ralph poured himself a glass from the bottle on the counter and watched her wash dishes she’d been unpacking from a cardboard box.  He was unused to drinking wine and felt slightly annoyed at the delicate, thin-stemmed glasses.
         They emptied the entire bottle before Ellen carried the slightly burnt chicken into the dining room on an aluminum foil lined pan.  The mashed potatoes were already filling a bowl on the table.  It was one of her only bowls and was, consequently, far too small, so that it had made a squelching sound and potatoes oozed out of the sides as she had forced the lid on to keep it warm.  Ralph carried in another bottle of wine he had opened that had been in one of her cardboard boxes.
         Ellen, who had been charming company sober, was positively seductive drunk.  Ralph noticed it in the way she laughed easier, held her eyes half-closed, and sucked on her fork after each bite of mashed potatoes.  For his part, he noticed the way his jokes were funnier, his wit coming freer, and his confidence positively remarkable.  They talked about young love, and cities, and Mae.  Ellen told Ralph how she had acquired the property, through a friend of hers who knew someone who knew a real estate agent, and Ralph told her how he had met Mae, whose house he still lived in.
         Dessert was a pint of Häagen Dazs that Ellen had gotten at the grocery the night before, and from which she ate directly, slipping her spoon into the softening cream, occasionally offering the container to his outstretched hand.  She had said she was out of clean bowls, and Ralph had hoped she’d be out of clean spoons too, but no, she’d washed those.
         He asked for a tour, but she said the rooms upstairs were locked, and filled with bats.  She was sleeping, for the time, on an inflatable mattress that she had set up in the proper dining room, off of the kitchen.  She told him, though, that if he’d like to help her clean the bedrooms upstairs, that she could certainly use the help anytime, and Ralph found himself nodding, noting that he would be the first man to see her finished bedroom.

***

         Mae did not ask where he’d been when he got home.  He was drunk, and tired, and lustful, waking her up as he climbed into bed.  She murmured how she’d won ten dollars at Bingo as he reached his arm around her waist and down, pulling her against him.  Moreover, she said, it had only cost her two dollars per game, and she’d played three games, so she’d come out ahead.  He did not speak as he fumbled with her floral nightgown, finally conceding to have it bunched around her hips as he pressed himself against her.
         “Would you like to come to Bingo some night?” she asked when they were lying next to each other again.  He mumbled something noncommittal and turned his back to her.

***

         Mae was fertilizing the bushes in front of her door when Ellen brought over the blueberry pie.  Mae was surprised enough to put down her trowel and lean back on her heels.
         “I meant to thank you properly for lending me the ladder,” she said by way of explanation.  The pie was still warm.
         “Well, we weren’t using it.  Besides, I’ve had enough trouble trying to keep these bushes alive.”
         “I’ve never seen anyone fertilize with cooked carrots before,” Ellen said, running her fingers through the dirt at the base of the bush closest to the front door.
         “Carrots?” Mae asked.  “Where?”  She stared at the vegetables.  “I guess Ralph’s been composting.”
         “Composting his dinner?”
         “Who can fathom what men do?” said Mae, waving her hand dismissively.  Ellen laughed and Mae smiled at her.

***

         Ellen was upstairs the next time he stopped by.  He did not knock.  He could hear noises upstairs, but he stopped to look in the room off of the kitchen where her clothes were spilling out of a suitcase and her bed sheets were tangled on the inflatable mattress.  When he had satisfied himself that she was not there, he made his way noisily back through the living room so that in a moment she had come to the top of the stairs, a dust mask over her face and rubber gloves covering her hands.
         “Come to help?” she asked brightly.  In fact, he had come to watch her under the pretense of retrieving his ladder, but he accepted her proffered gloves and the chance to see her pull invisible cobwebs from her body.

***

         Ralph watched her throat undulate as she swallowed great gulps of clear, cool water.  Her shirt was smeared with grey cobwebs and fingerprints, and he had suggested she change it, but she had declined.  Mae had said bats were the hardest rodents to get rid of, and they had a lot more dirtying to do.
         Ralph leaned against the white doorframe as Ellen refilled her own water glass, and then searched through the refrigerator for bread and cold turkey.  She hummed as she fixed the two of them lunch.
         “How’s Mae doing?” she said as they sat down with sandwiches.
         “Fine, I guess,” Ralph said.
         “You know, she stopped by yesterday for a short while.  She brought me some stew she’d made, and she helped me wedge open one of the doors upstairs that had swollen from the heat.”
         “Ah.”  Ralph had not bothered to ask Mae where she’d gone the day before.
         “She told me her sister had checked herself into the hospital yesterday.”
         “She did?”
         “Do you know how she’s doing?”
         “Never cared much for her sister,” Ralph mumbled.  Ellen did not press the matter.  When they had finished lunch, Ralph let her carry the dishes back into the kitchen while he rinsed his face in the bathroom sink. 
         “Mae’s been wanting to leave me for years,” he called over the running water.  “We don’t talk very much anymore.”
         “It seems like a terrible way to live.”
         “We never did get along all that well.  I married her because it was convenient and she married me because she was lonely.”
         “That’s not to hear her tell it, of course.”  Ralph came out of the bathroom wiping his still dirty face on a white towel.
         “Well, she generally tells the truth, and I tell it how I remember.  Our life suits us.  You’d know if you’d gotten married.  It’s easy to live out of convenience.”
         “I did get married.”
         “What happened to him?”
         “Nothing happened.  He still lives where I left.  I didn’t want to live an easy life.  I make things difficult for myself.”
         “Does that make you happy?”
         “Terribly so.  Are you going to stay to help me with the next bedroom?”  She was shaking water droplets off of her hand as she came out through the kitchen door.
         “I think I’d best get drunk just now.  Mae will be expecting it of me when I return home.”  He turned to walk out the door, but stopped on the paint chip bones on the stairs, the screen door propped open against his side.  “Why’d you come here?” he said.  Ellen glanced at him, startled.
         “I was tired of making our home.  I needed my home.”
         “So you left him?”
         “He’s still my husband.  I still respect that.”  He shrugged, and left as she pulled her gloves back on.

***

         As Ralph laid next to Mae that night, he turned over for the first time in a long time to face her, to talk to her.  “She’s got a husband.  Did you know that?”  Mae did not.  “I don’t think he knows she’s here.”
         “Why’d she leave him?  He cheat on her?”
         “No.  She just lives here now.”
         “Do you think you’d like to go to Bingo with me some night?” Mae asked after a while.  Ralph said he’d consider it, muttering as he fell asleep against her side.  She could smell his sweat and something else.  It was a time before she realized he didn’t have his usual aroma of stale alcohol.  After a while, Mae put down her book and turned out the light to let him sleep.

***

         Mae, at least, knocked before opening the front door.  Ellen was on their ladder in the master bedroom upstairs, slowly removing the old light fixture in the ceiling.  Mae tapped on the door as the electric tape went rolling across the floor.
         “I brought you more vegetarian stew,” she said, handing up the black roll.
         “Did you?”  Ellen took the tape.  “That’s kind of you.”
         “I also wanted to know if you’d like to come down to the church sometime.  We’ve got Bingo most every night.”  Ellen smiled down at her.
         “I would enjoy that.”  The two worked in silence for a minute as Ellen wrapped the loose wires poking from the ceiling.  “Do you ever go antiquing?”
         “No.”
         “Would you like to?”
         “What would I look for?”
         “Anything that catches your eye.”
         “I’m generally not interested in old things.”
         “You’re interested in Ralph.”  Mae laughed appreciatively.

***

         It was late at night when Mae walked up the front steps, laden with old lamps.  Ralph was wedging a crowbar behind the long strips of wooden paneling that lined their living room walls.  Patches of torn wallpaper clung to the walls where the panels had already come down.
         “What’re you doing?”
         “What’s it look like?”
         “What was wrong with our old living room?”
         “You said you’d always hated the wooden paneling.”
         “You’ve never listened to me before.  What’s gone wrong with you?”  Mae made to take the crowbar from his hands, but Ralph jerked it away from her.
         “I’ve started this and I’m gonna finish it, Mae.”  She narrowed her eyes at him and, after a moment, decided that vegetarianism had done Ralph good.  She left him in the living room as she went to fix dinner.
         “Ralph,” she called through the doorway.  He did not stop tugging at the walls.  “Ralph, why exactly have you disconnected the sink?”
         “The cabinet underneath was wet.  I can’t have things breaking faster’n I can fix ’em.”
         “Ralph,” she called after another minute.  “Did you shut the gas off?”
         “Don’t be stupid, Mae.  You can’t work on the stove when the gas is on.  Whaddya want me to explode or somethin’?”
         It was a few minutes more before Mae called again.  “Ralph, where’s the bathtub?”
         “The garden, Mae.”
         “And our bedroom floor?  Where’s that gone?”
         “It’s still there.  That’s it in the corner.”  Ralph continued to pull at the walls.
         “Ralph, where are we supposed to sleep?”
         “It’ll only be a couple of days, Mae.  We c’n ask Ellen to sleep in her guest room.”
         “Ralph, they’ve got bats in them.  Live animals.  We can’t sleep there.  And, Ralph, I have to pee.  Where am I supposed to go?”
         “Oh, geez, Mae, I dunno.  There’s an empty plaster bucket ’round here somewhere, I’m not sure.  Try the basement.”
         “You want me to pee in the basement?”
         “No, Mae,” he said, now evidently frustrated at a particularly stuck piece of paneling, as her voice still called from their back rooms.  “The bucket’s in the basement.  You can pick it up and put it wherever you’d like.”
         “I can’t pee in a bucket!  What was wrong with our toilet?”  She came back into the living room.
         “It was old.  I thought we could use a change of scenery.”
         “You told me you’d die before you did anything on this house that wasn’t absolutely necessary!  You told me that my mother would rise from her grave and slice you open as you slept if you ever changed this house.”
         “I told you Mae, we can sleep at Ellen’s.”
         “Did you even ask her if we could?”
         “We lent her our ladder, and some paint besides, and I’ve been helping her fix that house up.  The least she could do is let us sleep over a few nights while I fix things up around here.”
         Mae stared at him for a full minute while he tore old wallpaper off with his bare hands.
         “I’m going to have you committed.”
         “Don’t be ridiculous, Mae.  I’m just spring cleaning.”
         “Not in September you’re not.”
         “Sure I am.  Come on, Mae.”  He finally turned to look at her, crowbar held loosely at his side.  “I’m just trying to make things right around here.  This house needs me, and I need to be doing something.  I’m not even asking you to help.  A man should be able to take care of his house, shouldn’t he?  Otherwise, what kind of man would he be?”
         “This is my house, Ralph.”
         “So I’m going to make it our home, finally.”  Mae shook her head.
         “I’ll never quite understand you, Ralph, and all of these things that you need to do.”  She turned to go.
         “You’re not leaving, are you?”
         “Damnit, Ralph, I told you I had to pee.  I’m going to ask Ellen to use her bathroom and maybe for a cup of tea, too.  As long as we live in a decent house with decent neighbors, I swear to you I will never use a bucket.”  She pointed a finger at him menacingly.  “You had better turn the gas back on.”  Ralph smiled to some internal joke and then, as Mae turned to leave again, he said, “you goin’ to Bingo tonight?”  Mae glared at him, and Ralph took her silence as affirmation.  “Maybe I’ll stop by if I finish taking down the paneling.”
         “Oh, Christ,” Mae said as she left.