“Anyway, let’s go help her.”
“Can I go to grandma’s instead?”
Since it was Friday night, I said yes. “Do you want me to bring the Mac-N-Cheese to grandma’s?”
“No, she’ll make me French toast. Why don’t you take it to Miss Dalton’s?” Again he gave me that strange smile.
‘Yes, Luke, why don’t you?’
That voice again? Is it too late to see a shrink?
We went to the garage, and I unlocked my large toolbox and took out my plumbing belt. I grabbed a torch and a couple of short pieces of copper pipe with some elbows and tees and put it all in the trunk of my car.
I dropped Bobby off at mom’s and asked, “Mom, can Bobby spend the night?”
“No, Dad, the weekend, I want to stay until Sunday night so you can finish fixing Miss Dalton’s leaky bathroom.”
“Why do you think I need all weekend to fix it?”
“You hafta cut a hole, fix the pipe, plug the hole, then tile and ground.”
“It’s grout, not ground, and how do you know what I have to do?”
“Mommy told me.”
“Of course, he can stay, dear. Who’s Miss Dalton?”
“She’s Bobby’s teacher, and she has leak, and Bobby volunteered me to repair it,” I said as she smiled.
“Have a good time, and maybe you can bring her over some time so we can talk.”
‘See, Luke, even your Mom knows what you need.’
Speaking out loud as I walked toward the front door, I said, “Oh yea, what do I need?”
Mom answered, “Well, I don’t know what you need, son. Do you want to talk about it, or better yet, why don’t you ask Miss Dalton while you fix her bathroom?”
Mumbling to myself, I drove to the address I had written down and parked, letting my mind drift to memories in my head of washing Marta in our tub, smiling at me as I moved my hand under the soap suds. Suddenly, the face changed to Betty’s, and I sat straight up, wondering if I was going crazy.
‘You’re not crazy, Luke; keep an open mind.’
Where is that voice coming from?
Resisting the instinct to run, I grabbed my tools and the Mac-N-Cheese and went to the building entrance. I found the intercom panel and pushed the button for #401, E. Dalton.
“Hello.”
“Betty, it’s Luke.”
“Luke, I’ll buzz you in. The elevators are to your left.”
I entered, rode the elevator to her floor, and was ready to knock on her door when she pulled it open. “Thank you for coming. My bathroom is back here.”
She is pretty and has a great smile. “Um, Betty, I made this for Bobby and me, and now he’s spending the weekend at my parents’ house.”
“I was going to make you something to eat; I’ll warm this up and add it to the meal.”
I followed her to her bathroom, and water was dripping from the tiles above the faucet.
“Where’s the shutoff?”
“The next door over.”
I opened the door to the mechanical room and found the water shutoff valve. I tried turning the valve wheel, but it didn’t budge. I got a small pipe wrench and very carefully applied pressure. The wheel turned a 1/8th of an inch, then froze. I squirted some WD40 on the valve and sat down to wait for a few minutes.
“So Betty, how did you become a teacher and end up at this school?”
“I grew up in the town of Monroe and wanted to teach first grade, so I went to NYU and began teaching at PS187 here in Washington Heights, and sixty miles is far enough away from home so that I couldn’t commute.”
“Parents trying to fix you up with somebody’s third cousins’ friend?”
“You nailed it.”
“Let’s see if I can move it now.” I finally broke it loose and was able to open and close it by hand.
“It probably hasn’t been closed since the building opened.”
Back in the bathroom, I could see places where the grout was missing. “I need to open this up and see what’s underneath. I think it’s been leaking awhile.”
She put her left hand on my shoulder and leaned over to see what I was looking at. Bobby used to say mommy smelled good; Betty smells different from Marta but also very nice, and her hand on my arm gave me the chills.
“Okay, I see what you mean. Can you do tilework too?”
“Jack of all trades, master of none, that’s me. That’s why I became an architect.”
I dug out the dried grout in a square and cut through the soggy drywall with a drywall saw. After I pried out the square piece, I could see the leak had wet an oval area six inches high by five inches wide on the back of the drywall. As I expanded the square hole to remove all the wet blue board, I noticed Betty had left me to my work, and I could smell the aroma of food.
‘She’s cute, and she cooks too.’
I jerked and looked around, but of course, no one was there. I shook my head and went back to work.
I turned the water back on a tiny bit and found the leak, a pinhole in the pipe. I shut the water off again and noticed an open box of tile sitting against the wall. Inside the box was a mix of kitchen backsplash tile, bathroom wall tile, and bathroom floor tile. I cut out the bad piece of pipe and soldered in a new piece of pipe. With the water back on and no leak, I measured for drywall and went to the kitchen, where I smelt Mac-N-Cheese and hamburger helper.
“All done?”
“The leak is fixed, but I need to patch the wallboard and replace the tile.”
“Well, dinner is ready, Mac-n-Cheese and Hamburger Helper.”
“One of my favorite meals. I try to cook, and I am getting better. Bobby keeps telling me what I’m doing wrong.”
“Why didn’t you bring him today?”
“He wanted to stay with my mom and dad. Strange, he talks about you all the time. I was surprised he didn’t want to come with me.” I could have sworn I heard a woman snickering behind me.
We talked while we ate, and I learned her parents wanted her to be a lawyer like her father.
“What about you, Luke? Did you want to be an architect?”
“My dad was a construction foreman, and one day, when I was Bobby’s age, he took me to a job site he was working at, building a school. He left me in the construction trailer and ordered me to stay there, and he’d be back as soon as he could. I was bored, and there was a table with plans laid out, so I looked at them. He returned three hours later with another man, and I bombarded them with questions about the plans. Later, he told me that man was his boss, and he was impressed with my enthusiasm regarding the plans and said he wished more of his workers paid attention to them. That’s when I decided I wanted to be an architect.”
After dinner, I showed Betty what I had done and explained what I needed to finish.
“If you need a shower to use while I fix it, you could use my guest bedroom and bathroom; I mean to use it to change, to shower and get dressed, well you could get dressed in the bathroom, and I think I should quit talking before I stick my foot in my mouth.”
‘Smooth, Luke, you still have that golden tongue you charmed me with.’
That was Marta’s voice, so why is she in my head?
‘I’ll always be in your head, darling. Where did you think I’d be, six feet underground?’
“What’s next? Luke? Hello, Luke? Is anyone in there?” Betty was waving her hand in front of my face when I came back.
“Are you okay, Luke?”
“A slight pain in my head, but nothing serious,” as I pinched my nose between thumb and index finger. “Anyway, I need to cut a piece of blue board drywall for bathrooms, secure it with screws, tape it, mud it, replace the tiles, and then grout the joints. Easy peasy.”