She drags her open hand over the stale carpet. In one direction a hazelnut brown shows in the thin strands; the other direction, coffee with cream. After a few passes she extends a finger and with three straight lines draws a somber face on the floor.
She asks me what’s wrong.
I tell her nothing and she wipes the face away.
In front of us the fire pops and the burning wood breaks, rests into place. Cast iron tools rest heavy on a rickety stand––the brass handles are hot––an oven mitt I bought at a second hand store hangs from a small hook a few inches under the brush. Light from the fire dances on the hot steel; the tools sit motionless, content, as if they were enjoying the heat the most.
Her hands are in motion again. The light flickers on the carpet, her skin, and she draws a question mark.
I draw air through my knotted hands pressed to my mouth.
She rolls away from me, sighs, “Fine.”
She tells me it’s hot and pushes the quilt off her legs. Her grandmother gave her the quilt as a birthday present when she turned eighteen; hand stitched, intricate, the patches that have worn through to the cotton mat have created a new pattern, a new design revealed through age.
Her grandmother’s hands: arthritic, careful and gray, worked slowly over the stiff cloth. I imagine her rubbing them often, rubbing the soft flesh at the base of the thumb, adjusting her tri-focal glasses and attentively returning to her task. She told me once, with pride, it took her grandmother a month to make the quilt. Her grandmother told her on her birthday she “wouldn’t feel a bit a cold with that one.”
Tonight she kicks it away. I look again at the worn squares, the new pattern, where the heat from the fire burns my thigh. I disregard what I feel and the fire pops again. An ember is projected onto the mantle and she tells me to get it. I crawl forward and brush it away with my hand.
“Did that hurt?” She asks.
I shake my head. I slide back and rest my elbows on my knees, cross-legged.
In the kitchen behind us I hear the iron lid of a pot popping as red potatoes and salt boil low.
She complains again of the heat and moves further from the fire. She rests her back on a couch we bought on credit. I told her we should wait a few months to pay cash for it but she insisted it was a good deal now; she rests on the couch bought on credit.
A large square archway separates the couch from a cedar table my mother gave us as a wedding present; it seats six, ten with the leaf. Last year I wrapped the archway with mahogany molding; I stained it with burnt umber and lacquered it. I borrowed a chop saw from her father and he told me to use a miter joint. I nodded and thanked him for the saw.
The wood floor is still in good condition from when the house was built in 1963. I wasn’t born yet when this house was built, not by a great length, “You weren’t even a twinkle in my eye,” my mother would say.
She purchased an area rug from a yard sale. She giggled as we moved the heavy table to lie it down, “It will really bring the room together.” I laughed as well.
The corner of the rug, the one nearest to the entrance of the kitchen, is tattered by frequent tread. The original door to the kitchen, dual hinged and dangerous without windows, was removed before we moved in. An old shoe cobbler lived her before us, the original owner. He told us of the door and how much he despised it. He hung glass gypsy beads from the doorframe and insisted we leave them; his wife loved the chaotic sound of the clattering glass. He nodded his head and his eyes squinted when he spoke of her, “like chimes indoors,” he mimicked his wife, dead six years, “and I get to be the wind.”
When we moved in, before the wedding present of the table was delivered, we ate cross-legged in front of the fireplace with no fire. It’s the only room on the main floor of the house with carpet.
One particular night she picked up take-out on her way home from work; bass and wilted baby spinach from Charlie’s. She served it on her mother’s china; her mother’s china that her grandmother gave to her mother and her mother gave to her. The china came with us in one of the few boxes we could fit into our car. She crossed through the glass beads and in the chaotic shuffle a strand fell. The beads clashed with the platter and chipped a corner of the milky, white edge. After a string of expletives she was furiously stripping the beads down; moments later I heard her crash the aluminum lid of the garbage can outside.
Through the doorway where the beads once were, in the kitchen is the refrigerator we purchased on credit––there are no good deals with a fridge full of rotting food. It’s a chrome refrigerator and matches nothing in the kitchen, in the house for that matter. She insists it matches the other appliances she intends to purchase.
The dishwasher is next to the refrigerator. The sink is cast iron and sits heavy on the old, white tile of the countertop. Above the sink, plants hang in baskets and the dirt spills over and stains the grout in the white tile. I clean it on Saturdays but with little fervor. She suggests we move the plants outside and I say nothing; she scowls and returns to what she is doing.
I retiled the floor when we moved in; twelve inch ceramic tiles. The grout is cracking in spots, she wants to put in linoleum. I enjoy the cool touch of the refined clay on my bare feet. I feel natural and somehow connected to this home, the work I’ve done. On my days off I wake early and walk through the grass in my yard. I pick old pits embedded in the lawn from a dying peach tree; this Saturday I might tear the tree out. It looks attractive in the yard. During storms it cracks and apposes the thick, gray skies. I might leave it until summer.
In the spring I plant a garden. I pull weeds with my fingers. She brings me coffee or beer, depending on the time of day. I use a shovel to turn the dirt, pitch and throw; I move earth, remove large stones and dark clay. I pull old roots and stems from a dead raspberry plant entwined in the chain link fence next to the garden. I wear thick leather gloves and feel the strike of the coarse, red thorns only occasionally.
The shed, just outside the French doors on the back of the house, where the cobbler moved his business when the city improved the taxes of his space downtown, stores the equipment I use to keep up the yard. Inside there is a tool bench with a vice bolted to the heavy wooden table. Rakes hang horizontally above the bench. The lawn mower rests opposite the bench. The shed smells thick of turpentine, wet grass and dry glue. I imagine the cobbler with his awl firmly in hand, driving holes through leather, stitching, sewing, doing repairs late in the evening under a poorly lit lamp.
The French doors in the back of the house have mullions and are drafty. She tells me I need to weather-strip them. In the morning, cool air creeps into the kitchen, touching my feet as I grind coffee for the French press.
Now––water boils low in a heavy pot on the old gas stove, quartered red potatoes cooking. Once, I fried the potatoes with onions, I ate them with ketchup, she tried one with her fingers and refused a plate. Tonight, we boil them. Foam gathers under the lid that pops up and down as steam hisses. I hear the popping lid as I sit in front of the cracking fire.
She creeps away from the couch and adjusts the worn blanket until a square with cloth still in tact is on my thigh and rests her head on it. She stares at the flames. She doesn’t complain of the heat.
“What’s wrong?”
I shake my head and she says nothing.
A few moments later she asks, “Are you comfortable?”
She glances back to see my answer and I nod. She looks back toward the fire.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she replies.
“Nothing?”
“We talked.”
She adjusts her shoulders and I’m aware of every movement: her hand on my leg, the breaths she takes through her nose, her legs are careful and motionless; her body steady and rhythmic with each breath, I watch her.
“You talked?”
She lifts her head from my leg, her body from the ground. She kisses my cheek.
“Come on, the potatoes are done.”
I only hear her steps when she reaches the wood floor, passing the table. She shuts off the burner and the steam dissipates with one last pop. She retrieves two plates from the cupboard and we eat the potatoes with cracked pepper and kosher salt. She is right, the potatoes are cooked perfectly.
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