"Everything half-price for you"

Another unproductive day for the house next door. I don’t believe I went inside even once. Oh—there was that one time when I went over after dark to fetch my bib overalls to join my friend and the broken car at his shop. He’d gotten the necessary part delivered during the day and was ready to put everything back together again.

During the day I took care of some bills and other housekeeping chores, making the rounds of the different banks to make deposits and so on. With that accomplished, I took a drive over to the big mall to visit their Sears. I wanted a couple of cordless drills and screwdrivers—the kind that are powered by long-lasting and robust rechargeable batteries. The man with the tools asked in a perfunctory kind of way if he could help me find something. I told him what I was looking for, noticed that he didn’t seem much interested one way or the other, so I kind of let my words trail off into a puddle of senseless drivel---somewhat like a stream with no conviction ending up in a swampy area that swallows what was once a direct and purposeful little bubbleway. He seemed happy to leave things like that, went over to stand near a display where he wasn’t doing much of anything. I was happy to be left alone.

I found what I was looking for—a powerful drill and cordless screwdriver set that came in a plastic carrying case. These things would probably last at least until the other house was finished, maybe longer. The set cost a hundred bucks and came with two batteries and a charger. I often use one tool to drill holes, while keeping the other tool handy to drive in screws and other fasteners. Having two of these tools helps save time and makes tedious jobs a little less onerous.

Out in the mall fairway I had some offerings from the Popeye’s chicken joint. I don’t like fast-food chicken, but I actually enjoy the red beans and rice at this place. I had some of that and an order of their mashed potatoes. None of this food is really that good, but it is something to do while at the mall—a place I don’t often frequent. To get a better idea of what people were into these days, what was driving the popular taste of the masses, I stopped at a kiosk that sold artwork—photos actually, with undulating lights that implied some kind of movement. Many of the scenes had water in them: waterfalls, a beach in Jamaica, more waterfalls, and so on. You had audio with the scenes as well. You could turn a little dial to hear the sound or make it softer. The salesman demonstrated all of this, even though I’d told him I had no intention of buying one of the photos with undulating lights and accompanying audio. He was a good salesman, not to be deterred by a customer saying flat out that he didn’t want the things.
“We’re just talking here, no pressure—you don’t have to buy anything.”
“Ok,” I said.
“But if you DID want to buy one, which one is your favorite?”
This was a fair question, so I looked over the offerings again.
“I like this one,” I said, pointing to some mountains. “And this one with the lake. The movement effect is minimized in these,” I added. “I don’t really like that effect; it looks phony.”
“Tell me about it,” he said, sympathetically.
“Yes—these ones are good; you can hardly tell the lights are moving. At least they’re better than the other ones,” I added.
“Ok—so if you were to buy one, would it be for yourself or as a gift? You know, for Christmas?”
“Well, since I am not going to buy one, it would not be for either purpose,” I said. We were getting into strange territory, things were getting a little too philosophical, too theoretical for me. The odd but brilliant photos did have an effect on me, however—especially the ones where you couldn’t really make out the fake lighting effect so well.
“But,” I added, “Since everyone I know hates this kind of thing, it would definitely not be a gift.”
“Ok,” he laughed, then lowered his voice. Now he was going to let me in on something.
“You see the price of the large one—that one up there?”
“Yep,” I said.
“Two hundred dollars,” he said. I already knew that, since it was mostly my interest in the price that had made me stop in the first place. I wanted to know what people were shelling out for these days.
“For you, one hundred dollars,” he said, his voice lowered to a whisper. “This one, this smaller one is a hundred and fifty dollars,” he continued. “For you, seventy-five dollars. Everything half-price for you,” he said, his tone conspiratorial, like we were both in on a secret.
“You’re a good salesman,” I said. “Lots of luck to you.”

I walked down to the See’s candy kiosk, where overpriced sweets from that venerable west coast confectionary were being offered for the holiday season. I pondered a small candy bar—a Bordeaux with a soft cream filling priced at a dollar-fifty. Long I considered this item, the disinterested girl in her See’s outfit lounging on her high and uncomfortable stool. I put the small candy back, headed out to my car where it was raining in earnest, and headed home. My purchase—the drill set in its large box—took up almost the entire trunk of the little car.

I got washed up, fetched my overalls from the other house, and drove over to my friend’s shop to help finish up my car. He was putting the finishing touches on it, was almost done by the time I walked through the door. I took an air wrench and put the front tire back on, tightened the lug nuts the rest of the way with a regular hand-wrench. He reached inside the car, turned the key. The engine fired up, strong and smooth. It never sounded healthier.

At the shop I phoned the woman who’d wanted to do something nice for her daughter, make sure she had something reliable to drive out in the rugged wilds of western Maryland. She’d been interested in my car—just before it broke down. I found her number in my phone, guessed that the unfamiliar digits dialed on that cold Friday morning were hers. God bless cell phones and their unerring accuracy and attention to detail.

“Hello?”
“Hello, Janey? This is Gerrit from Maryland. You were interested in my car; I just wanted to let you know that it’s fixed now, the problem wasn’t that serious; just a broken thingamajig on the motor. You know—one of those parts that spins around. They break every once in awhile.”
Oh! Yes, hello! Well, I’m back in Wisconsin now. We were just in town for a little while, for the holidays; I guess we’ll have to pass on the car, but I appreciate your calling me back!”

I wanted to cry. Not for the lost sale of the car, but for the woman—with her child—fending off the loneliness and uncertainty of a new life brought into her world, her world where someone, way off in Wisconsin, might have brought some little bit of stability, some comfort in knowing that a neat and well-cared for compact car was parked in the driveway for her use, for those times when she absolutely needed transportation, couldn’t rely on others. She and her new child were going it alone, from what I had heard. I wished the woman’s mother well, thought that she was maybe taking the easy way out, but can’t say I blamed her. She hadn’t seen the car—only knew that the last time she’d spoken to me it was broken down by the side of the road.

Of course there is this: In my foolish mind I envisioned only the purest and most noble of creatures out in the wilds of Allegheny County. A young maiden, struggling against the whims of nature and the unfairness of her fellow man, caring not only for herself, but for the new life she’d brought into the world. My mind, ever skewed towards the ideal of feminine beauty, pictured the young woman in a modest wooden-framed house, perhaps a small pasture with an old well from bygone times a little apart from the dwelling. Sunlit mornings would find her in a fine, billowing gown, her hair done up hastily against the turnings of the night, the intrusions into her sleep by the new child—the child that she herself was not so long ago. With the small and helpless creature relying on the young mother for everything, the two would venture out into the pasture, the sun glinting off the shimmering hair of the mother as she held the babe to her bosom. She would show the wondrous swaddler the new world and—laughing—gather up a small bouquet of wild flowers.

The reality I never wanted to entertain, didn’t want to admit to knowing it—to even think it possible. The young mother was most likely a lumpen mass, an unhealthy specimen with little regard for herself or the new child. Life was a never-ending chore, a non-stop cycle of trips to the convenience store to pick up bottled soda and maybe some baby formula. On the television would play out the lives of others, of those California beauties that stepped right out of a glossy ad from a magazine she’d never heard of. She’d see them through a fog of cigarette smoke, the haze illuminated only briefly by the flashbulbs of light emitted from the glowing tube. Darkness would envelop the untidy dwelling—an apartment in a dingy part of town, the outsides not at all wholesome, but strewn with broken things, broken cars and people; the baby would cry from the other room, and she would turn up the volume on the television.

I left the car there at the shop, drove home in my little convertible. My friend said that it could stay there until I came by to pick it up—it wasn’t in the way. He refused to take any payment for the repair, for his help in getting the car to the shop. I’ll be forever in his debt.

The next day I had my young market helper come to do a few odd jobs around the house. Earlier in the year—maybe last year, actually, I’d built a little walkway and a staircase down to the bottom part of the yard. The brick landing that you step onto just as you leave the patio was never really finished; some bricks had to be cut at irregular angles to make them fit right. He brought his saw with a special blade and did a phenomenally good job of making the cuts and fitting the last few bricks into the little landing. I was more than impressed with his good work. Later, after a brief lunch break, we started on the shed again—the horrible little steel structure that will house my tools, my garden tractor and so on. The more I look at the awful thing, the more I am convinced that I should have just left the tools lying about in the yard, as has been my habit for the past ten years or so. This little shed is not much of an improvement. It is almost finished, however, and that is what matters most at the moment.