Anne Tyler - The Beginner's Goodbye

Gil’s men and I barely crossed paths, since we had such different schedules. They arrived each weekday morning just as I was finishing breakfast. They brought paper cups of coffee that steamed in the early coolness, and they scuffed their soles heavily on the hall mat to let me know they were here. After we’d exchanged a few weather remarks I would leave for work, and by the time I returned they were already gone, no sign of them remaining but their little nest of belongings on a scrunched-up drop cloth in one corner of the living room. Something hung on in the atmosphere, though — something more than the scent of their cigarette smoke. I felt I’d interrupted a conversation about richer, fuller lives than mine, and when I drifted through the bare rooms it wasn’t only to reclaim my house; it was also, just a little bit, in the hope that some of that richness might have been left behind for me.

On Friday, however, two of the men were still there when I got home. One was just completing the varnishing of the sunporch floor while the other walked around collecting paint cans, brushes, and rollers in an empty cardboard carton. “We were figuring we’d be gone by now,” the one with the carton told me, “but then Gary here bought the wrong color varnish and set us back some.”

“It wasn’t my fault, bro!” Gary said. “It was Gil the one wrote the wrong number down.”

“Whatever,” the other man said. “Anyways, we’re finished,” he told me. “Hope you like how it all turned out.”

“You mean you’re finished finished?” I asked.

“Yup.”

“Nothing more needs doing?”

“Not unless you say so.”

I looked around me. The place was spotless — the living-room walls a gleaming white, the new bookshelves in the sunporch just waiting to be filled. Somebody had swept up the last traces of sawdust, and the paper cups and the jar-lid ashtrays had disappeared, which made me feel oddly forlorn.

“No,” I said, “I can’t think of a thing.”

Gary straightened and laid his brush across the top of his can. “Now, don’t go walking on this, you hear?” he said. “Not for twenty-four hours. And then, the next few days or so, keep your shoes on. You wouldn’t believe how many folks think they’re doing a floor a favor to take their shoes off and walk in their stocking feet. But that’s the worst thing.”

“Worst thing in the world,” the other man agreed.

“Heat of your body …” Gary said.

“Linty old socks …”

“Bottoms of your feet mashing flat against the wood …”

They were still moaning and shaking their heads when Gil opened the front door. I knew it was Gil because he always knocked before he let himself in. “Hey there, guys,” he said, appearing in the living-room archway. He wore his after-hours outfit: khakis and a clean shirt. “Hey, Aaron.”

“Hi, Gil.”

“How we coming along?”

“Just finishing up, boss,” the man with the carton said.

Gil walked over to inspect the sunporch floor. “Looks good,” he said. “Now, give it twenty-four hours before you step on it,” he told me, “and then for a few days after that—”

“I know: not in my stocking feet,” I said.

“Worst thing in the world,” he said.

He saw the men out to the hall, then, clapping Gary on the shoulder, reminding them both they were due at Mrs. McCoy’s early Monday morning. (I felt a little twinge of sibling rivalry.) Then he returned to the living room.

“So,” I said, “I hear you’re all done here.”

My voice echoed hollowly in the empty room.

“She’s good as new,” Gil told me.

“Actually, better than new,” I said. “I appreciate the care you took, Gil.”

“Oh, any time. God forbid.”

“God forbid,” I agreed.

“Monday I’ll send a couple of men to move the furniture back. You want to be here for that?”

“No, that’s okay. It’s pretty cut-and-dried, in a house this small.”

He nodded. He pivoted to survey the living room. “And window washers,” he said. “You’ll be needing those. We’ve got a list of names, if you want.”

“I’m sure Nandina knows someone.”

“Oh,” Gil said suddenly.

He clapped a hand to the right front pocket of his khakis. A certain staginess in the gesture caught my attention. “By the way,” he said, falsely casual. He pulled a tiny blue velvet box from his pocket, clearly a ring box.

“Oho!” I said.

“Yeah, well …”

He snapped the lid open and stepped closer to show me. (I caught a strong scent of aftershave.) The ring was yellow gold, set with a little winking diamond.

“That’s really pretty, Gil,” I said. “Who’s it for?”

“Ha ha ha.”

“Does she know about this?”

“Just in theory. We’ve had the talk about getting married. Gee,” he said, “I guess I should have asked you first. I mean asked for her hand or something.”

“Take it,” I said, and I gave him a breezy wave.

“Thanks,” he said with a grin. He looked down at the ring. “I know the stone is kind of small, but the jeweler claimed it’s flawless. Not the least little flaw, he said. I had to take his word for it. Would I know a flaw if I saw one?”

“She’s going to love it,” I told him.

“I hope so.” He was still studying it.

“How did you know what size to buy?”

“I traced the band of that opal of hers when she was in the shower once.”

He reddened and glanced up at me, maybe worrying he had revealed more than he should have, and I said, “Well, great. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have for a brother-in-law.”

“Thanks, Aaron.” He closed the box and returned it to his pocket. “There’s a wedding ring that matches it, but I figured I should make sure Nandina likes this before I buy it. I already know she wants me to wear a ring.”

“Yes, that’s how people do these days,” I said. I started to raise my left hand to show him my own ring, which I still wore, but then I thought — I don’t know. It seemed that might have been tactless, somehow.

No couple buying wedding rings wants to be reminded that someday one of them will have to accept the other one’s ring from a nurse or an undertaker.

It was kind of a nuisance having to wait till Monday for the furniture moving. I started doing some of the work ahead of time — dragging the living-room rug into place and unrolling it, setting a few of the lighter-weight objects where they belonged. And on Saturday evening, when the sunporch floor was dry, I fitted what books I still owned into the new bookshelves. I carried the photo albums from the kitchen and lined them up in order, oldest first. Even the most recent wasn’t all that recent. The last picture in that album — my mother’s butterfly bush in full bloom — came immediately after our wedding photo, so I’m guessing it dated from late summer of 1996. Or ’97 at the latest, because my father died in early ’98, and he was the one who took the pictures in our family.

This business of not labeling photos reminded me of those antique cemeteries where the names have worn off the gravestones and you can’t tell who is buried there. You see a little gray tablet with a melted-looking lamb on top, and you know it must have been somebody’s child who died, but now you can’t even make out her name or the words her parents chose to say how much they missed her. It’s just so many random dents in the stone, and the parents are long gone themselves, and everything’s been forgotten.

Even my mother’s butterfly bush struck me as poignant, with its show-offy clusters of blossoms in a vibrant, electric purple. Although in fact that bush still existed; it stood right there in Nandina’s backyard, where I could see it every time I took the garbage out.