The Red Hunter(12)

Josh wanted to take the table over to the Warblers after he’d finished work, but the varnish wasn’t dry. It was better to do it anyway during the day when Wayne and the boys weren’t there. Jennifer was different when she was alone, when her husband was at work and the boys were at school. She was more exuberant, less distracted. Joshua wanted her to enjoy the table, to see how beautiful he’d made it, not be pulled in a million different directions. Fabulous, Josh! What do I owe you? Like it was just another thing she had to cross off her list. He knew if she had a minute, that she’d see and appreciate how an old thing, one she’d found and recognized as beautiful, had been made new again. She was a person who recognized good work and beauty. Few others did.

He pulled the door to the workshop shut behind him and locked it. He had a lot of expensive power tools inside, and there had been a rash of thefts and burglaries in the area. The property he shared with his elderly mother was isolated, a total of ten acres now though it had been bigger once. He’d sold off a parcel of twenty acres after his father passed to pay off the old man’s debts and help to take care of his mother. But the house was still far from the road and surrounded by trees; it was just him and his mom now. Nurses came in during the day and some evenings to help with her meals, bath, and medicine. Her best friend from childhood helped out sometimes, too.

The night was cool as he moved up the path between the shop and the house, a path his father had walked every day just before supper. Josh hadn’t imagined that it would have been his path as well. When he was young, he’d dreamed of being all kinds of things—a firefighter, a cop, an acrobat, an astronaut, an ice cream man. No little boy dreams of being a handyman, the guy you call to clean out your gutters because your very successful hedge fund manager husband just doesn’t have the time for that kind of work. But, all things considered, it wasn’t that bad. When his father had passed, and his clients just started calling Josh instead, he fell into it easily. It was right, familiar. And he didn’t have anything else going on after a string of failures: he didn’t past the psych evaluation on the police exam (which he still didn’t understand). He’d abandoned the real estate course he was taking online. The lead singer for the band in which he played bass guitar got a DUI and was in rehab. They hadn’t been getting many gigs anyway—mainly because they weren’t that good.

As he approached the house, Josh saw that Mom’s light was still on upstairs but that the nurse’s car was gone. The nurse had probably left around nine, and his mother was most likely propped up in bed, watching reruns of Criminal Minds, her favorite show, when she really should be sleeping.

Inside, he went to the kitchen (it was exactly the same as it had always been except that some of the appliances had been upgraded ten years ago and needed upgrading again), grabbed a beer from the fridge, and headed upstairs.

“Ma,” he said, pushing the door open a little. “You should be asleep.”

She was, as predicted, propped up in bed, her white hair a little wild, her flannel nightgown too big.

“Hmm,” she said, squinting at the screen. “That’s what I used to say to you. Did you listen?”

He sat in the chair by her bed, took a swig of his beer. On the dresser by the television were his parents’ framed wedding picture and another one of his ma holding him in front of the hospital, a yellow tinge to both photos, she looking impossibly young and pretty like a girl he wouldn’t mind meeting. Even now she still had that sparkle in her hazel eyes—mischief.

“Guess not,” he said, kicking off his boots and propping his feet up next to her on the bed.

“Always with that Game Boy under the sheets,” she said. “Your brother with his books.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling.

“No one who is told to go to bed ever wants to, young or old,” she said. “The end of another day.”

He watched the rest of the show with her, not really paying attention, just being with her. When the credits rolled, she turned it off, and he told her about his day—about the table and the woman he went to see about her renovation. Fact was, he hadn’t stopped thinking about Claudia Bishop since he’d been out to her place.

“That would be a good thing,” she said. “To have the regular big job and fit the other small jobs in.”

“Instead of just the small jobs,” he said. There was always a need for a handyman; he always had work. But the bigger jobs usually went to a crew. Sometimes he worked for a contractor in town and that was good; he might get a regular thing that went on for a couple of months—doing floors or painting in a larger renovation. But when the market was slow and people had stopped building, there was less work to go around. He’d had a couple of lean years, though things were picking up again.

“Someone’s been calling,” she said, after he thought she’d drifted off.

“The home phone?” he said. “Just telemarketers probably.”

He lifted his cell phone from his pocket, noticing that he had varnish underneath his nails. No messages—no texts or voicemails—except one from his buddy earlier today asking if he was going up to Lucky’s where they usually played pool on Thursday nights. If he brought his bass, he might get to play with the band for a few songs.

“More than usual,” she said. She reached out a small, papery soft hand to him, and he took it in his. He touched his thumb to her wedding ring, which he’d had adjusted earlier that year to fit better.