“Fuck the regulations,” I tell her. “We’re talking about children’s lives.”
I study faces a lot. I used to be a painter. I even sold a few portraits to Sarah’s family, before the divorce. The woman in the doorway has a trustworthy face, soft and fuzzy like a TV interview lady.
“Is the mister around?” I say.
“I’m afraid the mister isn’t ever around,” the lady says, looking down at the little girl. “He is, uh, on a long vacation.”
I nod my head sympathetically, offer a discounted rate, and hand over my card.
It all started when this showboat was doing backflips at night in the community pool. Apparently he had the deep end mixed up with the shallow. His lady friend ran screaming down the street buck naked.
I was there when they fished him out. If you wanted to see a good face, you should’ve seen his. All pop-eyed and head flopping around like a fish. It was disquieting.
The community was in an uproar on account of both this and the toddler who’d drowned last year during swim class, but City Hall wasn’t doing anything. I knew a business opportunity when I saw one. Sarah was walking out the door for girls’ night and gave me a face like, Boy, I hope you know what you’re doing.
My first job, so it was kinda lumpy. But there were a few people who might have said I was a hero. One newspaper did, and I carry a clipping around to show the customers.
I think my favorite faces are the faces of children. Like the next day, when I’m back at the lady’s house, lowering a sump pump into the deep, and the little six-year-old is smushing her pudgy face right into the chain-link fence.
“What’s your name?”
“Petunia,” she says.
“Oh,” I say, “like the flower.”
“No!” she shouts.
I hook up the hose to the pump and turn that sucker on. The girl’s face gets all white and she runs inside.
It’s a hot day, and I sit on a deck chair under a faded blue umbrella. Watching all that water being sucked into the sewer makes me wish I had a beer. A few minutes later, Petunia is back outside stuffing fish sticks in her face. She hands me one through the fence. It’s still a bit frozen on the inside, but I swallow anyway.
“Thanks,” I say. I can see her mother watching behind the glass door. I give a little wave, flash my kindly neighbor face.
“Come around if you want,” I say, and I lie down in one of the pool chairs, listen to the sump pump churn. The sound reminds me that I need to call my ex-wife.
Straight to voicemail.
“It’s good to hear your voice, Sarah,” I say. “Wondering if you can give me Bob’s number.” Bob’s our old plumber. I’ve got a burst seal in my basement. I pump it out every morning, but there’s a new pool each night. “Let’s let bygones be bygones. Also, let me know if you want to get coffee sometime.”
While I’m on the phone, Petunia opens the gate and sits down on a fun noodle near the pool’s edge. I click the phone off, stuff it in my pocket.
“Why are you filling in our pool?” she says with an angry face.
“Just the deep end, baby-doll.”
“Why are you filling in the deep end?”
“So you don’t die.”
She frowns and eats another fish stick. She walks to the edge and kicks a floaty duck into the pool, watches it lower inch by inch.
Backyard deep ends can go up to ten feet deep, which I level out to four. That’s a lot of cement. Sometimes I toss little things down as it dries. A plastic truck or some coins, makeup or jewelry Sarah left at the house, whatever is around. They get covered up and left where no one will ever find them. You could fold a few bodies into that goop before it hardens.
After a day’s work, I like to just drive around looking for splashes of blue over the fences. I keep a map of potential clients. What’s funny about these neighborhoods is you drive around them enough, and they start to feel like a giant maze. You can’t remember where anything is supposed to be. The faces of each house look the same as the last.
I give Sarah another call and again she doesn’t pick up.
“How much of this is a man supposed to take, Sarah?” I say. “This is my fucking basement we’re talking about! It’s growing a weird mold.”
I pull into my driveway, go inside, and flip on the TV.
I’m back the next day, mixing up the cement. Petunia is squatting on the noodle, singing a song. The mother gives us mugs of lemonade.
I’m watching the gray bits swirl together and thinking about Sarah, the way she thinks she can treat me, when Petunia pulls on my wallet chain.
“Why are you sad?” she says.
“What?” I say.
I make my face look confused for a while. Then the mother comes sprinting up with the cordless still in her hand. She’s holding the baby tight in the other.
“I’ve got an emergency,” the lady says to me.
I give her a nonchalant wave, tell her I’ll be okay. She puts her arm around Petunia, smothers her against her knees.
It’s her father, she mouths. She can’t see him.
“Can you keep an eye on Petunia?” she says out loud.
“Sure,” I say, “protecting children is my job.” I give her the all-business smile and Petunia the silly-clown smile. Petunia winces. Her mother pulls her inside and gives me a string of thank-yous and curses.
The cement takes quite some time to dry after you’ve flattened it out, so I go inside to wash the gunk off my hands, maybe find the little girl a bag of fruit snacks or a stack of crackers.
The house isn’t that large, but it feels comfortable and calm. The walls are decorated with framed family photos and paintings of running dogs. It feels like the place Sarah and I always thought we’d have, although Sarah was a calico cat girl. I didn’t like having to clean up after her’s but liked the look of its furry tortoiseshell face. When she left, she took the cat too.
Petunia is at a computer playing with cartoon hippos.
“Is that educational?” I ruffle her hair a little, give her a pinch on the cheek.
“Can I have a juice box?” she says.
“Sure thing, sweet pea.”
It feels good helping out a family in need. I walk to the fridge and fish out a grape juice for Petunia, then search around until I find some whiskey. I pour a little into my mug with a picture of a beaver and the phrase “too much dam work to do” and walk around the house checking out the different rooms.
Something about the blue mug, with its comical phrase printed on the front, makes me feel like a father as I stroll through the rooms. Like this could have been the castle I was king of if things had happened a little differently. And who knows, maybe I could have something like this someday still.
I try Sarah yet again. “Hi, Sarah,” I say. “You’d never believe where I am right now!”
I’d thought it was the voicemail again, but it was her actual voice.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Burt?” she screams. “I don’t have any goddamn number of any goddamn plumber. Call me one more time though, and I’ll use the number of the goddamn police!”
“Now hold on,” I say, but she’s already hung up.
I walk back to the kitchen, pour some more whiskey. I go to the couch and sit and stew. Then, I don’t know why, but I just start to cry.
Petunia comes over, and I cover my eyes, pretend I’m laughing at something on TV.
“I knew you were sad,” she says. She puts her little hand on my shoulder.
“It’s nothing.”