The Carpenter & the Queen Read online

  Closing the cabinet, he saw his reflection in the mirror and studied it. He was just a little under six-feet tall, enough to have an inch or two on his sisters, but shorter than both their husbands. His nose and chin dominated his face in such a way that he thought of himself as a caricature of a man. His brown eyes were glassy and dull. Growing out his dark buzz cut would only reveal thick, weighty hair that made him look messy. There was a time, after the accident when he had thought about dating again, when the pain of losing Linda had abated enough that he could look in the mirror and take stock of who he really was. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. He hadn’t shaved today. No, there wasn’t anything about him that a woman would want.

  He went to the kitchen, careful that his limp should not be more pronounced than usual, and pulled out a slice of bread to munch on. Nora and Beth stood at the counter, shredding lettuce and cutting vegetables for the salad.

  “We hear you lost,” Nora teased. With her dark hair pulled back in a pony tail, her chin looked sharp, and she reminded Paul of their mother, although he had no intention of speaking that thought aloud.

  “Hey, I was playing by the rules.”

  Beth shook her head. Her hair was lighter than her two older siblings, and her chin less prominent, although she had the family nose—long, straight, and triangular. “You’re not letting the girls win, are you?” she asked.

  “I say yes, and you give me a lecture. I say no, and my pride . . .”

  “Well, let’s not damage that,” Nora said. “Tenuous as it is.”

  Beth mentioned something about the stew on the stove, but Paul didn’t listen. He noticed for the first time how the cabinets in Nora’s remodeled kitchen did not line up flush with the door jamb. He ran his hand along the moulding and frowned.

  “What did you find now?” Nora asked.

  “Either the door’s not plumb, or the cabinets aren’t. Your carpenter should have been able to hide that—if he knew what he was doing.”

  “That’s Richard’s doing.” Nora was referring to her husband. “And the man at Home Depot.”

  Paul winced. If he had known his brother-in-law was responsible, he would have kept his mouth shut. He wished he could think of the perfect thing to say to diffuse the awkward situation, but nothing came to mind. Beth saved him instead.

  “You’ve spoiled us. We can never be satisfied with anything manufactured now. You ought to get back into it.”

  This was the third time this topic had come up in as many days.

  “Too much time standing,” Paul replied.

  “You stand when you want to,” Nora chided. “You’d have plenty of business here, if you’d take it. You might even meet some beautiful woman who needs her kitchen remodeled.”

  Beth sighed dramatically. “Stainless steel appliances, custom cabinets, granite counters, and true love.”

  The door into the kitchen from the garage opened, revealing Richard and Beth’s husband Kevin carrying grocery bags.

  “So, how many men does it take to buy ice cream?” Beth glared at her husband in irritation.

  “Three,” Richard replied. “Two to buy new flat screen TVs, and one,” he pointed to Paul, “to keep the women distracted.”

  Paul laughed when he saw his sisters’ angry faces.

  “I had nothing to do with this.” He raised his hands to show his innocence.

  “And we didn’t buy any TVs,” Richard said.

  Richard and Kevin gave each other a high five and laughed.

  “We looked,” Richard admitted. “We just didn’t buy.”

  “You better not have,” Nora scolded, swiping the bag with the ice cream from his hand. “Or you’d be sleeping in the garage tonight.”

  The banter continued for a few more minutes, but Paul stopped listening. The good-natured teasing his sisters shared with their husbands contrasted sharply with the insults Linda had hurled his way whenever they were with other people. She couched the barbs in jokes, which made them hurt all the more. Paul only responded with lopsided grins. He always lost in witty repartee, but he was a champion at silence. He couldn’t watch his sisters’ marriages without thinking of his own failure at “happily every after,” which accounted for his infrequent, short visits.

  Much later in the evening, after supper, a movie, and a gifted dramatic performance by the girls as they pleaded with their parents to let them stay up, the house quieted. Beth, Kevin, and Marissa went home. Richard and his girls went to bed. Paul was pulling out the sofa bed when Nora came out to help. Together they straightened the sheets and unfolded the blankets in silence until Nora finally spoke.

  “I worry about you.”

  Paul paused, surprised. “No reason to.”

  “You’re alone so much.”

  “I like it that way.”

  “I feel like you’re doing some kind of penance.” Nora avoided his gaze, smoothing out the quilt. “Like since the divorce you think you don’t deserve to be around people.”

  “I don’t want to be around a lot of people. There’s a difference.”

  Nora traced the quilt squares with her finger.

  “Have you thought about dating again?”

  “Can you just leave it alone?”

  Her mouth became a thin line, turned down at the edges. He had spoken too sharply and hurt her feelings.

  “I’m perfectly happy,” Paul tried to explain.

  Nora did not look convinced, but that didn’t surprise Paul. He didn’t believe himself either.

  * * * * *

  As he drove the six hours home, Paul felt guilty for being so anxious to leave. A long weekend was all he could take of the family. Now that they had seen him, they wouldn’t beg him to drive down for a while, and he could do what he wanted in peace. He liked being the one who occasionally dropped in to family life but wasn’t a part of it.

  Paul had learned this behavior from the best—his father. He had traveled for work, coming home only on the weekends. As a boy, Paul used to chafe at being surrounded by so many women and longed for his father. But any difference his father’s presence might have made was a fiction Paul had created. Even when his father was home, he rarely spent any time with the children. His one passion was chess, and that was how Paul had negotiated the little one-on-one time he had with his dad.

  Paul was just six or seven when his father taught him how to play. As he thought about it now, Paul realized it was a wonder his father had the patience to explain repeatedly how the different pieces moved. Paul had never been what anyone would call a fast learner.

  In those early games, his father would remove his own queen before the game began. “It’s a handicap,” his father had said, “to give you a chance.”

  Paul always lost.

  “Why don’t you ever let me win?” Paul had asked.

  “I can level the playing field,” his father replied, “but I won’t win the game for you. You’ve got to learn that in life there are no free moves, and every mistake costs you something.”

  Years later, Paul knew the truth of this advice, noting sardonically his bad leg, his ex-wife, and his barely profitable online business. He was living his life in check, hemmed in from all sides. This was probably why Paul had taken to making chess sets, as a way of controlling the game. So far, it hadn’t worked.

  Maybe it was time to move to a bigger city, to get back into carpentry. Paul wasn’t sure about anything anymore, except that a new year had begun. He didn’t have any resolutions but to live through it, which in itself didn’t give him much to look forward to. However, he was human, and no matter how much he wanted to hide in pessimism, hope kept creeping up, hope that this year, things would be different.

  3

  “I don’t know about you,” Claire commented to Sam at the breakfast table, “but I’m ready to make some changes around here.”

  They sat in folding chairs at a card table in the kitchen nook.

  “Are we getting a home theater?”

  “No, but nice try
. We’re redecorating.”

  Sam sighed in disappointment.

  “All this wallpaper is nasty. We need some color on the walls, don’t you think?”

  “Whatever.”

  “We’re going to make up a plan for each room of how we want it to look. We can’t spend a lot of money, of course, but we can paint, buy some more furniture, and make it feel more like ours. What do you think?”

  “Sounds like girl stuff.” Sam took a sip of his grape juice and shrugged.

  Claire put her hands on her hips and tilted back her head as though she were offended. “If I didn’t do girl stuff, you’d be in a world of hurt, young man. You’d have no clean clothes, no clean house, and certainly no pancakes for breakfast!”

  “That’d be OK with me.”

  Claire reached over and roughed his hair, accidentally bumping his glasses down on his nose. He pushed them up with an index finger.

  “May I be excused, Mom?”

  “Yes, go get dressed. We’re going to town.”

  Sam groaned. “I wanted to play my DS.”

  “You can do it in the car. There’s going to be more snow this afternoon, so I want to get out and be back before it comes.”

  She heard Sam mumble on the way to his room. It was hard for him not to get what he wanted. She would bribe him with a movie rental so she could accomplish what she needed to. Not exactly textbook parenting, but Claire called it survival.

  The phone rang while she was washing dishes. Since she had only lived in the house a few days, very few people had her number. A quick check of caller ID confirmed her guess as to the person on the other line. It was her brother.

  “Worried about me already?”

  She heard chuckling on the other end as her brother replied, “I never stop.”

  “Your timing’s good. I’m getting ready to go to town here soon.”

  “Yeah? What for?”

  “I got some decorating ideas.” She cradled the phone between her shoulder and ear as she finished up the dishes.

  “Heaven help us.”

  “Come on,” she joked. “I’m just talking paint and ripping out that wallpaper.”

  “As long as that’s all it is. Stay away from the sledgehammer. I can hear it now, a phone call at 3 a.m., ‘Garrett, I’ve knocked out a load-bearing wall!’”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Want some help?”

  “If you want.” She pulled the plug from the sink and rinsed out her sponge. “But I can do it. I mean, painting a wall can’t be that hard. It’s not like I have to be an artist or anything.”

  “Buy some drop cloths,” Garrett advised. “I’ve seen you at work.”

  “Funny.”

  “I thought I’d drive over this evening and stay the weekend.”

  “You were just here.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want me?”

  “No. I just don’t want you to think that you have to take care of me.”

  “Why would I think that?”

  Claire frowned. Garrett didn’t take hints well, and she wasn’t brave enough yet to be blunt.

  “So,” she said, “you’ll be here for supper?”

  “Unless the storm slows me down. You’d better get going so you can be home before it hits.”

  “I know how to drive in snow, Garrett.”

  “That doesn’t mean everyone else does.”

  “You’re biased against country living.”

  “Untrue. I just don’t want my nephew growing up a redneck.”

  Claire rolled her eyes.

  “I could move you back here. I saw some townhouses yesterday priced right in your range.”

  “Garrett—“

  “I know. Back off.”

  Claire shook her head in frustration. “See you tonight.”

  Anxious to get on the road, Claire didn’t analyze her phone conversation until Sam was strapped into the backseat of the car and she pulled out of the garage. Garrett took care of her in the oppressive, suffocating way older brothers did. He forced himself where he didn’t belong because he worried she couldn’t take care of herself. Truly, he had been a great help to her over the last four years, especially last week when he helped her move in. Even before that, he was always showing up with a present he thought she needed. Of course, she usually didn’t, but Garrett liked giving gifts. The Nintendo DS Sam carried into the backseat of the car was a prime example, as was the new cell phone Claire had in her purse. She had a sneaking suspicion that the gifts and his continual offers of help were his attempts to make up for what they had lost. Well, no person or thing could replace Will.

  The snow in the driveway was several inches deep. Claire wasn’t sure if she could get the car up the incline to the road, but she made it with only a little slipping and sliding. She would have to shovel the drive later so she wasn’t stranded, but she dreaded the chore, knowing it would take a few hours given the space she had to clear. Why couldn’t she just leave the snow as it was and enjoy the way it covered the cracked driveway and sparse brown yard? Claire knew the answer, of course. While the snow and ice were pretty, they were dangerous. But given the choice, she would rather drive through an icy mess than devote her time to shoveling every time a new storm blew in—it was a lot of effort with little reward.

  The little road in front of her house was still slushy, but the county road that would take her to Mt. Pleasant—which had the closest decent shopping center—was dry. Claire hadn’t lived in central Michigan in close to twenty years, but she was surprised how quickly her knowledge of the area came back to her from her teenage years. Her mother’s mother, Grandma Thelma, had lived here in Lindberg in a tiny house that looked out over the picnic area and playground just off Main Street. Claire and Garrett used to spend a few weeks each summer there from the time they were school age until they went off to college. Claire was sixteen the first time she came alone to Grandma Thelma’s. She smiled just thinking about those magical weeks that had changed her life forever.

  That was the reason she had taken the house. She wanted Sam to have that connection to his father. Come spring, she would take him into the yard and teach him how to shoot a bow and arrow. Maybe she would buy him a dog, too. The yard was big, and the closest neighbor lived half a mile away.

  The sky was the shade of pewter, a sure sign that snow was on the way. Claire adjusted her rearview mirror so that she could see how Sam was doing. His furrowed brow and squinting eyes told her he was concentrating on his DS. The reflection of the colorful graphics danced in the lenses of his glasses. Claire focused back on the road and sighed. When he made that face, Sam was the image of his father. Years ago, back when the hurt was so bad she could hardly get out of bed, Claire had feared seeing a carbon copy of Will running around the house. But time had softened the hurt so that she didn’t feel like crying every time Sam broke into his father’s grin.

  Claire knew Sam needed a man around the house, someone who understood him. Garrett had tried to be that person, but his attempts had never succeeded, mostly because Garrett enjoyed improving things. He couldn’t sit still and appreciate something for what it was. Garrett, a pacifist to his core, also could not understand Sam’s fixation on weapons. She suspected Sam latched on to anything military related as a way of remembering his father. But Garrett wouldn’t let the situation alone. Worried that Sam would grow into a serial killer, Garrett imposed his own will over Sam’s and Claire’s in interest of what Garrett considered the greater good.

  That was another reason Claire had taken the house. She had to find her own way, apart from Garrett’s persistent sculpting of their lives into what he wanted for them.

  * * * * *

  “I come bearing gifts,” Garrett proclaimed when he arrived that evening.

  Garrett removed his hat with the untied earflaps, revealing spiky blond hair above his oval face of perpetually tanned skin. He had clothed his tall, thin frame in green coveralls with his name and his company logo—Peterson Landscapes�
�embroidered on his chest. He leaned down to kiss Claire on the cheek and waved to his nephew.

  Sam sat up a little straighter and looked at his uncle expectantly.

  With an elaborate gesture, Garrett unzipped the top part of his coveralls, reached inside, and pulled out a CD case.

  “Check this out,” Garrett said, grinning. “It’s a landscaping game. We can plant grass seeds and mow the lawn with this really cute cartoon mower.”

  Sam’s face fell. “Oh,” he said.

  “I’ve already tried it out,” Garrett continued. “Wait until you see the weeds. They sing these annoying songs until you pull them out with the mouse.”

  Claire watched Sam try to smile, and her heart ached at the situation. Garrett didn’t understand Sam at all.

  “Thanks for thinking of him,” Claire said.

  Garrett stood up straight and plastered a smile on his face.

  “Come outside,” he said to Claire. “I’ve got something for you, too.”

  Claire slipped on her boots and coat and followed Garrett out the front door. The snow was falling heavily, although there was no wind this time. The sidewalk was already covered, even though she had shoveled it just an hour before Garrett had arrived.

  The back of his green pickup with front snowplow attachment was full of boxes and other objects Claire couldn’t see readily in the faint light from the porch.

  “What’s all this?” she asked.

  “I cleaned out the storage unit for you. Figured since you had a bigger place, there was no need for you to keep paying the extra rent.”

  “I’ve forgotten what was even in there.”

  “Then it’s like Christmas two weeks late.” Garrett pulled down the tailgate and pulled back the tarp. “And then, there’s this.”

  Claire cocked her head as she studied the object. “A snowblower?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll plow the driveway for you tonight, but you’ll need a way to clear it when I’m gone. Can’t have you getting stuck.”