Salvation

Working on a house is a lot like going to therapy. You go in with one little issue (troublesome, but manageable)--and the expert discovers hidden ones: aging wiring, a foundation flaw, a plumbing complication, surface cracks.

And so, you agree: now is the time to refurbish what's shabby and correct the flaws. A sixty-one-year-old house (like her sixty-one-year-old owner) has plenty of flaws. Some women at this age choose a face-lift on their actual skin faces; me, I chose to lift the face of my beloved little house.

The projected two week project has turned into two months. I'm practicing patience--some days. And some days, I'm wallowing the juice of my own fatigue with it all. I'm crabby, and I want to get in my car and drive to Maine or Oregon, somewhere far away, then come back and see it's all done and the experts are nowhere in sight.

One expert is an electrician. Let's call him Bobby.

Bobby is mild-mannered and meticulous.

He takes his time. "That's just the way I am," he says, "I want to do it right."

("But you're taking MY time," I want to say. "Please hurry up. The painters can't paint until you finish.)

I don't say that--not directly.

Because I am a Southern girl, and I know that I can probably get further with honey than vinegar, as they say down south.

He tells me the sad story of his life. It takes forty-five minutes, and he's only up to age 12. I look at the clock on the stove while he's talking, while I'm eating my salad, and I want to be sure we're off the clock for this hour of biography.

The difference between writers telling their stories and Bobby telling his is this: writers go for connection and clarity. There are nuances. In the very telling, we discover things we didn't know before.

But Bobby leaves no pauses, no beats for interruption. I can tell that the story he's telling me is the same rote version he's told a million times. And I can tell he needs something from me. Since his mother "threw him out at the age of fourteen," I suspect that what he needs is what he never got: attention, understanding, admiration, and sympathy. Maybe I can give him that for an hour and send him on his way?

The more generous and mature part of me agrees to give him that for an hour, then send him on his way--though the paying customer part of me is balking. The more generous part of me must admit: if I had been thrown out as a child, I'd still be hungry, too.

One day, Mary Beth and I are looking at my ten patches of pink on the wall (for the painting that was scheduled for a week ago--and is now ten days from now, at the soonest.) Here comes Bobby to give his opinion: "Linda, when we get married, you're going to have to change the color of this house. I can't live in a pink house." Ha ha ha. Jokey jokey.

Mary Beth later looks at me with a very stern look, like a big sister who suspects that her little sister might be smoking pot or snorting coke. She warns me: I am never ever to consider so much as a cup of coffee with this man! Not to worry--I say to her: I am now remembering why I have no intention, ever, of dating again.

He brings his boom box, plugs it in on the porch. All day I can hear loud sermons, the kinds delivered with loud, authoritative, angry voices. Then, as he eats his sandwich, he listens to (and I do, by default) Rush Limbaugh. I'm losing my mind, I know I am. I can feel it unraveling.

If I ask a question, I get an hour-long answer, so I've learned to ask very few questions. His answers are punctuated by a patronizing "Do you understand?" (To which I want to say: I think so; this is the fifteenth time you've explained that; I get it.")

Besides, the answers rarely fit the questions. You ask "When?" and they tell you "how"--and it's like reading a long and tedious instruction manual. If you seem the slightest bit annoyed, he looks at you as if you're a petulant child. "This is the way I always had to handle my wife," he said, explaining his male-female teaching style.

If I were ballsier, I'd have said outloud what I was thinking: "And that really worked well for you, did it?" (The day before he had let it slip that he'd been married and divorced five times.)

The word, handling, keeps echoing in my mind, rankling me. I've heard it from his preachers on the radio, a word that helps men of that particular brand of Christianity believe that they are,always, on top, big and strong, in charge.

But here's the kicker:

The electrician--let's keep calling him Bobby--gave me a not-so-subtle hint yesterday as to why he may be taking his time. "The Lord sent me here to witness to you," he said.

What I said under my breath at that moment probably sounded like a little bit like a prayer, but it wasn't. It was the static from my unsaved wires.