Nonfiction by Susan Bloch
The dandelions push up, cracking the flagstone slate on the front patio of my London home. Weed killer? But the killer had already done its job when asbestos took John, my husband. “Oil me,” shriek the hinges on the front door. The kitchen faucet leaks. Drip. Drip. The smoke detectors chirp. Bills unpaid, the house is dark and cold. A bruised Granny Smith and moldy cheese in the fridge.
“You must move on…”
1.
When I planned my move to my new home in Seattle, Jason, a structural engineer, was the first man I met—by email. He prepared the inspection report of the property I planned to buy. Jason found every little thing that needed fixing: the seven holes in the crawl space where rats and raccoons might nest; the twenty-two rotten planks on the cedar deck; the four missing shingles on the eastern slope of the roof; the leaking shower faucet; two loose charcoal slate tiles in the kitchen; a disintegrating concrete driveway; and roots in the thirty-year-old clay sewer outlet leading from the bathroom to the city main. He stressed the importance of replacing the outdated circuit breaker panel, the three faulty electric sockets, and the hook behind the bathroom door. Why the hook?
“Besides these minor repairs,” Jason wrote, “the house is solid, and the foundation will withstand the earthquakes that happen in this region from time to time.”
I pictured Jason to be lanky, slim, and frisky enough to climb a tall ladder, squeeze into the crawl space, peer behind the washer and dryer, and bend low enough to test the bathroom drains.
When I did finally meet him, Jason, barely taller than my five-foot-five, wore black-framed glasses perched at the end of his nosewith an expressionless face that looked as though he had nothing good to say.
“This hook on the bathroom door needs replacing before you splinter the door,” Jason said, clipboard in hand. Now it made sense. “And you’ll need to think about installing an on-demand water heater soon. This tank is over ten years old.” His dark brown eyes scanned the room as if searching for more bad news.
I pressed my forehead against the streaked bedroom window and closed my eyes.
“Signs of a woodpecker here on the deck…” Jason stopped mid-sentence. “It’s not so bad.”
He paused, but I couldn’t straighten up.
“I’ll connect you with Sam. He’ll fix the lot. I’ve seen his work and you can rely on him.”
Shoulders sagging, I turned to look at Jason.
“You look like you need cheering up. You should try the Seattle Opera.” For the first time I saw half a smile. “My wife Laura and I saw La Traviata last night. Awesome.”
He began to hum the first few notes of “Libiamo Ne’Clici.” As if he were on stage, he waved his arms like a conductor, and I half-expected him to break into the aria. I hummed along with him and grew taller.
2.
At six-foot-two, muscular yet wiry, Sam took the stairs two at a time, fixing everything on his to-do list. And more. I soon got used to the sound of him chewing gum with his mouth half-open, the rattle of the bunch of keys attached to his belt, and his chuckles when he completed yet another task. He wore acid-stained jeans and white sneakers that looked brand new, even though he insisted he’d had them for over a year. My new Adidas looked as if they’d run a dozen marathons already.
During the day, Sam took swigs from a thermos filled with coffee and whistled Jimmy Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” while drilling, sawing, and hammering. Sam’s thick calloused fingers tackled every repair with the delicacy of a spider weaving its web, while I dropped or cracked almost everything with my slender manicured fingers. He had no problem repairing the rattling drum on the washer or sliding his hand behind the television to fix a loose wire.
After Sam completed all the repairs, he insisted on unclogging the gutters, rewiring the outdoor sensor light, and helping me hang my artwork and lug heavy boxes to the upstairs bedrooms. His paint color choices—cream and pale yellow—for the bedroom and living room brought light into areas previously a dull grey. Without Sam showing me which buttons to press, I wouldn’t have been able to operate the American-style electric oven or learn that the smoke detectors were linked by wi-fi to the security system. Otherwise, I might have spent far too much time looking for the batteries.
When he decided to take a year off to hike through Nepal, I missed the sound of swishing jeans, drilling, and his “Sure, I’ll deal with it, no problem.”
I’ve been afraid of knocking a nail in the wall without his patient voice saying, “Steady now. Not so hard.” His voice calm, without sucking in air as if I were stupid. But without him I swore when the nail went in at an angle.
I decided to try to find a reliable handyman.
3.
When I opened my front door, I was greeted by a scarlet woolen cap, an unruly silver beard, a broad grin with a missing incisor on the side, and the smell of cigarettes and soap.
“Hey there, I’m Pete, your handyman. Let’s check and see what needs doing.”
He thrust out his hand to shake mine and shook it up and down for a little too long before putting his toolbox down on the front porch.
“Thanks for coming by.” My mouth was dry and my voice shaky. I was reluctant to let this stranger into the living room—not someone who’d been recommended, but whose card had been stuck onto the notice board of my local coffee shop. I opened the door a little wider. Pete’s Ford Ranger, parked in the driveway, looked as if it had come straight out of the carwash.
While he kicked off his scuffed black work boots, I texted my neighbor Jen. Would you please call me in half an hour to check if I’m okay?
Slipping my cell phone into my back jeans pocket, I tried to blot out all images of being held prisoner or strangled in the basement and poured Pete a cup of coffee to relieve my anxiety.
He spent the day fitting customized Formica shelves into the closet, rehanging two bedroom doors that were sticking to the wooden floor, spray-painting the marked white windowsills in the main bedroom, and unblocking the hair-clogged shower drain.
The shelving in the closet fits perfectly, and my feet no longer sink in a puddle when I shower.
A few weeks later when I was out on a neighborhood walk near home, I met Pete and his wife tending their vegetable box near the sidewalk. He cut a bunch of Swiss chard and handed it to me. I felt my cheeks flushing, remembering the time when he was a stranger rather than a neighbor.
Pete has since repaired the garage door, replaced the front doorbell, and painted the deck railings. He always brings me freshly cut chard and parsley.
4.
Once I settled into my new home, I found a cleaner—someone I could trust with my front door key and security code for the alarm when I was at work, advising executives on leadership. Navy sneakers next to the front door are a sign that Carlos is still vacuuming.
“I want to make sure everything is perfect for you,” Carlos says, rubbing the palm of one hand up and down his dark brown razor-cut hair.
On his fortnightly rounds Carlos not only polishes the wooden furniture, vacuums the carpets, dusts the bookshelves, and mops the kitchen floor, but he also waters the house plants, brings in the mail, and refills the hummingbird feeder with sugar water. Every few months he washes the windows on the outside, sweeps the deck, and polishes my brass kettle the natural way with lemon and salt.
When I travel, on his own initiative Carlos will text me, “I’m going to go into the house to make sure everything is okay.”
On my return I see the garbage bins are back in their enclosure and my car is washed. Mail is on the kitchen table next to a vase of roses cut from my back garden. The house smells of fresh lemon and Carlos’s smile.
Just before Christmas Carlos brought me Rosca de Reyes, or King’s Wreath, a traditional Mexican bread his wife baked especially for me.
“We eat this in January, after the New Year,” Carlos told me.
My gift basket filled with ginger cookies, chocolates, crisps, and nuts seemed a feeble attempt to match the time it had taken his wife to bake my sugar-coated delicacy.
5.
When my electric toilet flusher broke I tried to find a plumber to fix it. I called about ten, but all were either too busy, didn’t return my call, or only wanted to work on large projects. For weeks I had to use a bucket to flush until I finally called Home Depot for suggestions.
“We don’t normally recommend people,” the salesperson told me, “but Roni is great.”
And he is. Roni is the only workman I know who will return a call from a stranger in just a few minutes.
“Please text me a photo of the cistern, and I’ll get back to you later,” he said through his speakerphone. “I’m driving right now.”
By six o’clock I’d not heard from him. He was like all the other plumbers who’d said they’d call back. As I was finishing dinner he called while still on the road.
“I looked at the photo,” Roni said, his voice echoing through the speaker phone. “You have a fancy, schmancy, toilet.” His strong Eastern European accent was hard to understand.
“Can you fix it?”
“I grew up in Russia and lived in Israel while at school. I can fix anything.”
We were both newcomers to Seattle and chatted on for a few minutes about life in our new city.
“You lived in Tel Aviv too?” I asked. “Whereabout?”
“Just off Nordau near the port.”
“Are you telling me we were once neighbors? That’s not possible!”
We chatted on about our favorite coffee shops there, and then returned to business.
“A new pump will cost almost as much as a new manual system which is more reliable. Kohler has discontinued your model.” Roni added, “I’ll let you know later.”
He called back when I was watching The Late Night Show.
“Do you have your computer in front of you?” Roni asked. “Look for Drek toilets.”
Unable to find ‘Drek’ toilets on the internet, I cradled my phone between my shoulder and chin and asked, “Drek, how do you spell that?”
“I don’t know. Type dr and see what happens.”
“You know drek is the Yiddish word for shit,” I said, laughing out loud and expanding the search. “It’s Drake, not drek.”
“You make me laugh so loud I will have an accident,” Roni choked. He was not yet home.
Roni suggested I replace the whole toilet and scheduled the work for the following week. Such a response is unheard of when so many houses in Seattle were being remodeled.
“I’ll call the wholesaler tomorrow. It usually takes a few days for the order to be processed. Three-fifty bucks is okay for the job?”
“Sounds good. You want a deposit?”
“No, no. You pay me when all the work is done.”
We both burst out laughing when I answered Roni’s punctual knock. Drek tied us together in a common bond. I expected Roni to have the build of a short, stocky Russian weightlifter, like those in the Olympics, but he had to bend to come through the front door. A Brad Pitt look-alike with shoulder-length curly black hair.
I peered out through the drizzle looking for his sidekick. He was alone.
“How are you going to get the toilets up and down the stairs on your own?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Don’t worry,” Roni said, laying a worksheet up the stairs. “I do this all the time.”
Banging, clanging, drilling. I willed myself to stay in my study. I closed my eyes trying to banish a picture of a hole in the ceiling or water flowing down the staircase. I stayed away even after the financial spreadsheet on my laptop became blurry. Suddenly it was quiet. I stood up, opened the study door, and walked up the stairs. Roni was gulping down a bottle of water.
“It’s pretty hot up here,” he said. “Do you mind if I take my shirt off?”
I nodded and smiled. If Brad Pitt wanted to take off his shirt that was fine by me.
6.
Until Juan began to trim the hedges, do the weeding, and line the window baskets with fresh compost, I had no idea that the dull-green potted plants on the cedar deck could bloom into mauves and purples, hues of yellows and gold, white, scarlets and pinks. The colors reflected his energy and humor as he worked his way from window box to flowerpot, laughing and chatting.
“Let me show you how to prune this rose…in Guanajuato where I was born, we have tomatoes all year…did I tell you my son got into college? He is the first in the family.”
Juan pushed back his straw hat, touched the brown and white speckled feather in the black headband, and wiped his forehead with a lime-green kerchief. He chortled at my attempt to de-bud the rhododendron bush.
“Here, try one of the Mexican cookies my wife baked yesterday.” Juan’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “It makes the plants have more flowers.”
In the front courtyard where I’d struggled to grow any plants except weeds, Juan planted a variety of flowering rose bushes and fuchsias, filling the area with a carpet of color well into the fall.
Juan has other talents too. He offers a hoarse, “Yes, I do it,” to any request as if my question is an insult. One spring day, before I could protest, he clambered to the top of the sloping slate roof to tape aluminum foil around the chimney to keep the woodpecker away.
Juan offered to change the water filter under the kitchen sink and replace the inset light bulbs in the vaulted ceilings. When he stood on the top step of the ladder in my bedroom he gasped.
“Suzie, did you see this wasp nest here at the top of the door frame?”
I’m embarrassed to say I hadn’t even noticed it. I let out a long sigh, bit my lip and couldn’t speak.
“Don’t worry too much. I think maybe they’re dead.”
“What do I do now?”
“Just bring me a broom,” he whispered, slowly climbing down so as not to disturb the nest.
I opened the window and cowered in a corner. There was no buzzing when Juan knocked the grey ball off the ceiling with the broomstick. Chips of a cement-like stone fell onto the floor. Inside were three dried, dead wasps. And I’d been sleeping with them while they were nesting.
“Promise you won’t tell the neighbors,” I said laughing.
7.
During Seattle’s short summer season, my kale, tomatoes, and potatoes growing in pots on the south-facing deck need daily watering. It takes over an hour to lug the heavy bucket from pot to pot, and then control the flow, making sure I don’t drown them.
One day when I tipped too much water, uprooting a pansy, I swore a little too loudly. A straw hat popped up as a man looked over the short laurel hedge.
“You need an automated sprinkler system,” he said, taking off his hat and fanning his face.
I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my T-shirt sleeve and frowned.
“I’m Mike, the person who looks after your neighbor Alison’s yard.”
“Hello.”
“I can install an irrigation system for you and save you all that hassle.”
“I’m okay,” I said, turning away. “No thanks.”
A week later, during a heat wave, the handle of the bucket snapped. I turned the bucket over and sat on it, sweat running down my T-shirt, wishing I weren’t so stubborn.
I called Mike. “This is Alison’s neighbor. You said you could install a sprinkler system?” I felt my face redden.
He installed a smart sprinkler system which is much smarter than I am. Connecting to the local weather forecasts, the system adapts the amount of water according to the moisture in the ground and the plants’ needs. Both Mike and I have access to the phone app which shuts off the system if a leak is detected. When the app notifies us of a problem, Mike arrives faster than an ambulance responding to an emergency call.
One summer’s day, Mike went about his quarterly check-up shuffling, head bent.
“Are you okay?” I asked, knowing he was not.
“My wife was just diagnosed with stage four breast cancer.” He stood up and wiped his eyes with the back of his right hand, still gripping a piece of tubing with a pair of pliers. His hand was tanned, but his knuckles were white.
The kale plants seemed to lose their verdant leaves, and the pungent smell of compost clawed my nose. A black house crow let out a series of hoarse caws, rattles, and clicks, but I couldn’t speak. Then I made him a cup of coffee and let him speak. All I could do was listen to a rerun of my own story.
John’s work tools lie on a steel-framed storage rack in the basement of my new home. Even though I hardly ever use them, I sometimes go to look at the bottles labeled in his handwriting with the different size nails and screws. From time to time when I need to fix a leaking tap or hang a new photo, I pick up a wrench or hammer and hold it close to my cheek. Then I take a breath and hear John’s voice. “Take it easy and watch your thumb.”
Author of the award-winning memoir, Travels with My Grief, Susan Bloch’s fiction and nonfiction writing has appeared in publications including Gemini Magazine, Stirring, Frigg, Glint, and The Hooghly Review, as well as receiving a notable mention in Best American Essays. A lifelong traveler, she lived in South Africa, Tel Aviv, London, and Mumbai before alighting in Seattle. www.susanblochwriter.com.
Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash
Random Sample Review 