Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“What the hell is wrong with you people?” George Loper shouted, waving what looked like a small jeweler’s box perilously close to Lyle’s face. Lyle stood looking back at him in stunned silence.

I jumped to my feet and saw that Jean-Paul was already rushing toward the tool bench where George was fulminating at poor Lyle.

“Dammit,” George spat. “A young man gives his life in service to his country, and this is how you people honor him?”

“George!” Karen snapped, coming back into the garage. As she tried to make haste to intercept her husband, her limp became more pronounced.

I put myself between George and Lyle, who stood mute, ashen. “What’s the problem here?”

“This.” He opened the little box and pushed it close to my face. I took it from him so I could see what had upset him so.

My brother Mark’s Purple Heart. It was given to my parents, along with some other medals and a tightly folded flag, during Mark’s funeral.

“Where did you find this?” I asked George.

“In a drawer with a bunch of-” He sputtered, trying to get the next word out. “Crap.”

“I can’t imagine why you were going through my father’s drawers,” I said quietly, closing the box. “Or why you are so concerned about what he kept in them.”

He had more to say, but I didn’t want to hear it. Looking into his eyes, watching his red and angry face, wondering if he would explode like a character in a cartoon, I said, “We can manage from here, Mr. Loper. Thanks for dropping by.”

Karen was at his elbow. “Honestly, George.”

He spun on his heel and stormed out.

“He’s a veteran,” Karen said, attempting to apologize for him, or to explain something about him, but gave it up with a shake of her head and walked out behind him. The other neighbors in the drive, perhaps sharing chagrin for being snoopy, drifted away.

“Sorry, Lyle,” I said. I heard my voice break. I knew he was upset, even though he said he wasn’t. But he went inside to check on Roy’s progress just the same. Jean-Paul took me in his arms and I buried my face against his shoulder, taking a minute to catch my breath. Like my mom, I wear grief for my big brother close to the surface, and George had no business scratching at it.

“Some work crew.” I knew the voice; my Uncle Max had arrived. “Everyone standing around snogging when there’s work to be done.”

I looked up over Jean-Paul’s shoulder. Uncle Max stood there with his arms akimbo and a grin on his face, a welcome sight. I asked, “Where did you come from?”

“I’m told I was born in Duluth,” he said, ever the smart-ass. “But I was too young to remember. So, what was all that fuss and feathers I walked in on?”

“Snoopy neighbor. Not to worry.”

“Says you.” He tapped Jean-Paul’s shoulder as if he were cutting in on a dance floor. “You have a monopoly on the lady’s hugs now, Bernard?”

“A lovely thought,” Jean-Paul said, releasing me.

Uncle Max enveloped me in a bear hug and smooched my cheek. Holding me at arm’s length, he said, “I got an interesting call early this morning. Very, very early.”

“Did you?” I said, pulling free.

“From Paris. Canal Plus wanted to talk deal. Something about backing your Normandy film project.” He gave Jean-Paul a pointed glance. “Anyone here know anything about that?”

I turned to Jean-Paul. “Does anyone?”

He responded with a shrug and a moue with a guilty grin behind it. “Perhaps someone spoke with an acquaintance.”

“I thought so,” Max said, mimicking Jean-Paul’s shrug. “They made a decent offer. Problem is, there’s this network that thinks the project is already theirs.”

“But?” I said and waited.

“But the network needs to shit or get off the pot,” Max said. “There are two sides to the contract, you and them, and you both have performance obligations. You have done your part. Now it’s their turn. If the guys with the checkbook don’t come across with funding by early next week, they are in breach and you are free to take the project elsewhere.”

“That is good, yes?” Jean-Paul said.

“Maybe good for you, Kemosabe,” Max said, pointedly. “But, Maggie, only you can decide what’s best for you. I promise that if you walk away with this project, no matter how badly the network is behaving, they will sever your relationship. Permanently. Are you ready for that?”

“I need to talk with Guido before I do anything,” I said. Guido Patrini had been my film production partner for a long time. The decision absolutely was not mine alone to make.

“Guido told me he can get himself up here tomorrow,” Max said. “You two can talk it over.”

That bit of news didn’t quite please Jean-Paul. I suspected he was hoping that we would have more time alone together, to talk. I took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

Max looked around at the apparent chaos we had made of the garage, stuff piled out of cupboards and in the process of being separated into various zones by category: keep, donate, dump. It looked more chaotic than it was; I could actually see the end.

“Max,” I said. “There’s work to do. Go up and change your clothes. Jean-Paul and I are in your room. We’ll put Guido in my room and Susan in Mom’s room. So why don’t you take Mark’s room?”

“Where do you want me to begin?” he asked.

“Legal and financial records,” I said. “There’s a stack of labeled boxes in Dad’s den. I was going to take them home to go through, but you can save me the portage.”

“Where’s the shredder?” he asked.

“In the den, next to the records.”

Jean-Paul and I worked alone together in the garage for the next couple of hours, sorting, dumping. And talking. It was a dusty chore, but there was something oddly romantic about doing it together. I appreciated that he stuck with me without ever grumbling or suggesting a break, kept a sense of humor about it all. By the time we had emptied the cupboards along the back wall and dispatched their contents, this is what I knew: The two of us also had some very serious decisions to make, together.

Lyle came out of the house carrying a big box filled with household chemicals. As he deposited the box in the truck, he announced, “Lunch is ready.”

“I wondered what you were up to,” I said. I closed the garage door and we followed him inside.

“You can thank Roy.” Looking over his shoulder at us, Lyle said, “Wash those hands.”

“Bossy as ever,” I said, laughing.

Years ago, when I was a fledgling divorcée and Casey was in elementary school, we lived in a wonderful old house in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco; I was still working for PBS. Lyle was our across-the-alley neighbor, someone we waved to when we took out the trash or backed out the car, or ran into each other in the market. When an earthquake reduced his house to rubble and left ours habitable, though damaged, we took him in. For a month, we thought. But contractors and repairmen were hard to come by for a long time after the quake, so he just continued on with us, one month after another, until there was no pretense any longer that one day he would go home, even when the quake repairs were long finished. The three of us lived together like a family until he met Roy and I met Mike, and Casey and I moved down to LA. We still considered Lyle to be family.

“What’s for eats?” I asked when, freshly scrubbed, Jean-Paul and I joined the others in the kitchen.

“Homegrown tomato-basil bisque and grilled cheese sandwiches,” Roy said proudly. “First thing, before I got to work on anything else, I went right out and picked the Romas from the garden to get them stewing. There are so many tomatoes out there that we could open a stand out front.”