I was annoyed that he was late and not even apologetic. I said, “Are you the bus driver?”
He said, “No,” and a second later seemed to change his mind about getting aboard. This really annoyed me, because I was sure he was the bus driver, and I muttered something, which I wish I could remember now. He walked away. I waited awhile, and then it hit me.
That man, the gruff stranger I had spoken to, was my ex-husband, Taylor’s father, to whom I had been happily married for sixteen years, until he went off with a much younger woman, who I heard had dumped him, couldn’t stand his drinking. I looked back and did not see him. Later, we said hello but not much else. We never discussed my gaffe, which I think says a lot.
I was unhappily married and living in Connecticut, your typical bored housewife. Then I took a course: radiology. X-rays, CAT scans, MRIs. Two years. I got my diploma and left my husband and came here to Maine. There’s a lot of work in radiology, and the hours aren’t too bad. I chose Maine because of the winters.
I spend the whole winter skiing, except last winter, when I had some medical procedures. I have five screws in my shoulder and a permanently damaged rotator cuff that screams in damp weather. I’ve broken both arms, my collarbone, and my left ankle. I need to have my knees replaced. That’ll be fun. Basically, they make lateral incisions, sever your legs, put in metal, and give you some kind of ID so you can go through a metal detector in an airport.
The ankle was something else. I read my own CAT scan and opted for ankle replacement. Basically, they got me an ankle from a cadaver, and they removed my bad ankle and fitted me with this donor ankle. But it’s too small. I’m getting pain. They might have to redo it.
I hate cross-country skiing. My ex was huge on it. I hated hearing him say, “Oh, look at that yellow spruce,” or “Oh, look, a rose-breasted grosbeak,” or “Oh, gosh, let’s sit on that log and have a bagel.” Cross-country is for, I want to say, fairies.
He didn’t understand that pain is pleasure, if properly applied. What I want is black runs, all-day black runs. I want to ski straight down on black runs with my legs banging and the tears streaming out of my eyes and freezing on my face. And snot pouring out of my nose and streaking on my cheek, and my whole face burning from the cold. I am hardly able to breathe on a black run, which no man I have ever known can understand, which is also why I fired my husband, I’ve fired every boyfriend I’ve ever had, and basically it’s just me and my dog.
Mother and Grace — let’s just say they weren’t best buddies. So as the elder daughter, and single, I began to look after Mother when she began to fail. And she was a wreck. Got confused in stores, left the oven on, real muddled about time. I made her stop driving, so of course I had to take the wheel. God, the hills. I wrote Grace that I was moving in with Mother. The big Polk Street house had been in Mother’s family for years; Mother was lost in it. Grace understood completely and said she was relieved. She had been in a Minnesota convent since taking her vows, though she sometimes spent extended periods in Nevada and Florida as a hospital worker, “and doing spiritual triage too,” on Indian reservations. We seldom heard from her, but Mother sent her money now and then. Because of the strictness of her religious order, she was never able to visit us in San Francisco. “And just as well,” Mother said.
It got so that Mother could only manage with my assistance. I resigned from my secretarial job, lost my retirement and my medical plan, and became Mother’s full-time caregiver. I updated Grace on Mother’s condition and mentioned the various challenges we faced. Grace wrote saying that she was praying for us, and she asked detailed questions because these infirmities were to be specified in the prayers, or intercessions, as she called them.
About three years into my caregiving, Grace called. She said, “Why not take a few months off? My Superior has given me special dispensation to look after Mom for a while. It’ll be a break for me. And you can have a real break. Maybe go to Europe.”
Mother wasn’t overjoyed, but she could see that I was exhausted. Grace flew in. It was an emotional reunion. I hardly recognized her — not because she had gotten older, though she had. But she was dressed so well and in such good health. She even mentioned how I looked stressed and obviously could do with some time off.
I went on one of those special British Airways fares, a See Scotland package. It was just the break I needed, or so I thought.
Long story short, when I got back to San Francisco, the Polk Street house was being repainted by people who said they were the new owners. Everything I possessed was gone. Mother was in a charity hospice. She had been left late one night at the emergency room of St. Francis Hospital. There was no money in Mother’s bank account. Everything she had owned had been sold. I saw Mother’s lawyer. He found a number for Grace — the 702 area code, a cell phone. Nevada.
“I’m glad you called,” Grace said. I could hear music in the background and a man talking excitedly, a fishbowl babble, aqueous party voices. I started to cry but she interrupted me with a real hard voice. “Everything I did was legal. Mother gave me power of attorney. I never want to see you again. And you will never undo it.” Unfortunately for me, that was true.
Giulio was recommended to me as a hard worker, a good man, very skillful in all sorts of building. This proved to be the case. When I praised him, he said, “I come from Sicily. We build the whole house there — foundation, brickwork, framing, plastering, carpentry, roofing, shingles, tiling, plumbing.” He could do anything. He worked one whole summer, first brickwork, then replacing shingles, then glazing the cracked windows, then painting — every job I’d put off at last getting done.
He was seventy-seven years old. He asked for $40 an hour — a lot of money, the weekly bills were high — but he earned it.
After the second week, he brought his son Paulie, a big, boyish fellow of forty-three, tattooed, potbellied, very funny, not a good worker but strong. He could heave the big sacks of cement, he dug holes, he lugged the bricks. He was also to get $40 an hour, but some days he didn’t show up. “He’s goofing around,” “He’s sick,” “He’s sleeping,” Giulio would say, seeming both dignified and somewhat ashamed of having to make excuses.
Then, one day: “Paulie’s in jail.” It turned out he’d been in jail before, spent several years inside for theft, credit-card fraud, and receiving stolen goods. What astonished me was the contrast between father and son: the honest old man, so talented and hardworking; the lazy son, who was a petty thief and a druggie.
Time passed, Paulie stayed in jail, but as I got to know Giulio better, I realized that he was cheating me on his time sheet, charging me for tools he bought or broke, not quite truthful about the work, carelessly hiding the scrap wood and the mistakes, a subtle thief. And I began to see, first faintly, then powerfully, how prideful Giulio the sly worker was more like Paulie the jailbird than anyone could ever guess.
I left my small village in Norway as a young man — I was hardly seventeen — and became a student in the USA, first in Michigan, where I had an aunt and uncle, then in Massachusetts, where I attended MIT and where I eventually settled. My life’s work has been in developing radar sensitivity — defense work, but I justify it to myself by saying that I was creating a shield, not weapons of destruction. This was not entirely true. Missiles are guided by radar. In this work, my colleagues were from India, Pakistan, China, Korea, Japan, and many other countries. I must emphasize the diverse nationalities and how well we got along — it is important to this story.