Half days Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. All day Tuesday and Thursday. They work it out. The details. Weekends as needed. He asks if she thinks she can handle the workload, with school and all. She stares at him a moment and says, “Weekends weren’t really optional watching my dad’s kids.”
“For free?”
She touches her nose with her fingertip.
The first day he has to ask her in, like she’s not sure if she should be there, if she might be interrupting something, maybe imposing. But when she sees Midge on her blanket, she goes down to her knees and talks to her as if they’re lifelong besties, gentles her up. Midge reaches for Taz, begins an uncommitted whimper, and Elmo shifts her to a hip, rocking slightly, says, “Oh, please, you’re not even trying.”
Taz has already taken a step toward them, but Elmo holds up a hand, says, “We’re fine.”
He stands back, begins to tell her of their routine, the daily ins and outs, but Elmo hardly seems to listen, and he goes quiet, watching her bounce Midge, just lifting up to the balls of her feet and dropping back down, up, down, like she’s been here since day one, and when Midge cracks into a wide, toothless grin, eyes alight, whimper forgotten, she twists around, turning her first smile toward this girl, and Taz’s knees nearly give out. He tries to say something, anything, but she has no idea, thinks these grins have been flashing across Midge’s face her whole life.
He manages, “I’ll just be out back, in the shop.”
She doesn’t take her eyes off Midge, grins back, widening her eyes even more.
“You can get me anytime, anything you need.”
Elmo gives him the slightest of glances, whispering something to Midge. He catches his name, and feels like he did in middle school, passing girls in the halls, catching their glances, snatches of their secret conversations. He closes his mouth over whatever else he might have said, all the rest of his directions, and walks away in freefall, retreating to his shop.
So that’s what it would have been like, he thinks. Every day. He and Marn taking their turns. Marn and Midge whispering about him, making their jokes.
He steps into his shop, suddenly surrounded by the hardness of wood, the bite of steel, surfaces to be smoothed, angles to make sharp, everything precision and function. He starts to close himself in, but then leaves the door open, as if he could hear her calling for him. Then he just stands for a minute, trying to remember why he is there, what’s to be built. He leans into his workbench, hands down on the maple as if it’s all that holds him up.
Taz says, “Cabinets,” and pushes himself up straight. “Marko’s cabinets.” He reaches for the clipboard, pulls it over, reacquaints himself with his drawings and measurements. Finally he picks out a piece of the reclaimed fir, the same bleacher boards he’d lifted for Marn, these bought and paid for, and pulls a tape down its length, and begins to calculate, avoiding the old bolt holes wherever possible. He will do all he can to make it shine, but knows that from the moment it’s in place it will show its every nick and gouge, its every bit of wear and tear. Just like anything.
He gets all the cabinet doors plotted, each rail and stile of the face frame, too, which piece from which length of wood, has placed the extra boards into his wood rack, has even set up the table saw for his first rip—this ancient cast-iron monster he has kept running from the days his father tore his rough-cut planking through it—before he can no longer stand it, before he turns back toward the house, has to see how Midge is, how this whole sorry Muppet experiment is flaming out.
He stops himself halfway there, one foot stepped out into air. He sets it down, stands in the middle of his yard as if dropped down by Dorothy’s cyclone, and forces himself to go back into the shop, double-check all his settings, hit the switch, listen to the saw whir up to speed. He finds his glasses, lines up the first board, and starts feeding it into the teeth, making something.
Taz finishes the first round of cuts, runs them through the jointer, sets up the planer to begin thinning the boards that will make up the panels, and only then does he brush off the sawdust, walk back to the house. He’ll say he’s only in for a drink, fill up a water bottle to back up his story.
But when he peeks around the back door, she’s standing in the kitchen, fiddling with the stove, Midge nowhere in sight. She’s in satin basketball shorts, something he hadn’t even noticed before. Jersey, too, tank top, number on the back: 00.
Taz, stopped dead in the doorway, wonders, what is she doing here, how did this happen? and she turns, as if he’s said it out loud. He wonders if he did, but she smiles, does her half-shrug thing. “I kind of thought maybe I’d make us something to eat. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Us?” he says, thinking he’ll have to let her know Midge isn’t quite on solids just yet.
She lifts her hands, waves them back and forth, the two of them. “But, um, you don’t really have much in the way of, you know, food.”
“Oh, yeah. I was going to do that with Midge later, after work.”
“Okay,” she says, and he remembers, says, “I just came in to get some water.”
She holds his eye for a moment, her smile growing, then glances around for a clock. Finding none, she says, “You made it a lot longer than I thought you would.”
He walks to the cabinet, reaches in for the water bottle. “Hot out there.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, still smiling.
He fills the bottle, caps it, starts back out.
“She’s on the couch,” she says. “Asleep.”
“Who?” Taz says, and Elmo just smiles wider.
He closes the door behind him, will never come back inside as long as she’s there.