On Saturday I returned to Wendell's house by invitation.
I wore sensible shoes this time.
He met me on the porch with two paint cards.
One was bright yellow.
The other was a softer shade, like sunlight through old curtains.
“Which one?”
“Neither, if you're painting it for me.”
He blinked.
I laughed.
“Let's decide what you want first.”
He sat on an overturned bucket.
“I like the second one.”
“Then so do I.”
He had cleared a path across the garage.
The ramp now had finished handrails, though a contractor still needed to inspect the work and verify the measurements before he treated it as safe for regular use.
We went inside through the front entrance.
I didn't want him treating me like a woman already unable to climb two steps.
The living room was small.
There were photographs of his late wife, Ruth, beside a shelf of books.
He had not hidden them.
I asked about her.
He told me she had been a school secretary who kept a pencil behind her ear.
At Wendell's place, the door opened before I reached the bell.
He had been watching for me through the kitchen window.
The sight made me smile despite myself.
He had spread old newspaper across the table and arranged three jars of paint samples.
One was the bright yellow of my childhood.
One was almost cream.
The third was somewhere between them.
He handed me a brush.
“Pick a wall.”
“Any wall?”
“It's my house. I can survive repainting one wall.”
I dipped the brush and made a square beside the window.
The yellow looked cheerful in the morning light.
Then I tried the softer shade beside it.
We stood examining them like two judges at a county fair.
“I prefer the second,” I said.
“Then that's the one.”
“You get a vote too.”
“I do. I just happen to agree.”
I looked suspiciously at him.
He grinned.
I walked through the house slowly.
There were tools in the hallway and plastic sheeting over the furniture.
Wendell had already removed two raised thresholds.
He showed me the new lever handles on the doors.
They were easier to turn than round knobs.
I tried one with my stiffest fingers.
It opened smoothly.
“That would be useful even when my knees behave,” I said.
“Mine aren't exactly brand-new either.”
He showed me the measurements he had taken for the bathroom.
He had spoken to a licensed contractor about moving one fixture.
The contractor had warned him not to guess about the plumbing.
Wendell respected that advice.
“I spent years telling younger workers to call someone qualified instead of pretending they knew everything,” he said.
“Good advice for a retired man too.”
I laughed.
We moved back toward the kitchen.
Through the window, I could see the pecan tree.
The yard was smaller than my own.
A narrow garden bed ran along the fence.
I could imagine planting herbs there.
Then I stopped myself.
Imagining was not the same as deciding.
Wendell brought sandwiches from a cooler.
He had remembered that I liked mine with mustard instead of mayonnaise.
We ate sitting on the back porch steps.
He asked about my appointment with the banker.
I told him enough to explain what had happened.
I did not hand him account balances.
He never asked to see them.
He did ask whether I felt safe at home.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then that's where you should stay until you decide otherwise.”
I looked at the tiny crack running across one porch tile.
“I've spent so much time defending my house that I barely enjoy it lately.”
“Then maybe we should find something enjoyable to do there.”
I suggested planting tomatoes.
He offered to help prepare the soil.
I accepted on the condition that we agree on the work before he started.
He made a solemn show of taking out his notebook.
I told him to put it away.
We both laughed.
Before I left, we returned to the kitchen wall.
He asked me to sign my initials below the paint samples.
“Why?”
“So I remember which one you actually picked.”
I wrote W beside the softer yellow.
He wrote another W beneath it.
We looked at the two letters.
They felt like a promise neither of us had to rush into explaining.
On the drive home, I thought about what made this relationship different from my fear of losing control.
Wendell sometimes guessed wrong.
His secret renovation had proved that.
But when I told him he was wrong, he listened.
That was a small thing.
I had begun to see how large small things could become over time.
She died after an illness several years earlier.
He said her name without apology.
I told him about Dwight's fishing hat and the recliner.
Neither of us hurried to change the subject.
We ate sandwiches on paper plates at the kitchen counter.
There was a pile of screws beside my elbow.
I moved it without asking.
Wendell laughed.
“You sound like my mother.”
“She had sense.”
He showed me the contractor's estimate.
It covered the bathroom floor, plumbing fixtures, and inspection of the doorway changes.
The number was ordinary and expensive in the way real repairs are.
He had arranged to pay it over two stages from his savings.
He was not asking me to fund anything.
I asked whether he would have gone ahead with the renovation if he hadn't met me.
He looked at the yellow wall.
“Eventually. I want to stay here as long as I can.”
“Then that's a good reason to do it.”
We discussed the ramp as something useful for him, his visitors, and possibly me one day.
It stopped feeling like a proposal disguised as carpentry.
After lunch, he showed me his workshop.
Every screw had a drawer.
My kitchen was the opposite.
He gave me a small block of sanded cedar shaped like a bird.
“Made it from the offcut.”
I held it in my palm.
“You don't have to build something every time you care about a person.”
“I know. I just like building things.”
There was no reason to argue with that.
On the drive home, the hills lay brown and open under the November sky.
I was thinking about Ruth's picture when Megan called.
She was coming the next weekend.
She asked whether I minded if she brought dessert.
“I'd love it.”
Then she said something that made me pull into a parking lot.
“Zach told me you had signed the house over to Wendell.”
I stared at the dashboard.
“I have signed nothing.”
“That's what I thought.”
I told her I wanted to know exactly where Zach had gotten that idea.
She hesitated.
“From a conversation he says he had with you.”
“No such conversation happened.”
My hands were shaking when I hung up.
I could excuse fear.
But I was tired of being discussed as if I were missing from my own life.
Click here to continue reading: PART 8: When Megan Came Home, We Finally Compared What Zach Had Told Each of Us
The Man Who Would Not Show Me His House and the Ramp I Found Inside His Garage
Part 7 of 8
