Page 23 of Upstate

“Weatherman’s predicting a run of sunny days,” I said, inserting myself in their banter. “The sooner you tell me what I owe you, the sooner I can get to work.”

“You?” the men said in unison. The father’s cigarette fell from his slack lips. The son spilled some nails that clattered to the tile floor.

“That’s right.” I pulled my wallet from the back pocket of my dungarees. “There’s no husband at my house. I’m doing the job myself.”

“You’re buying the right tools at least,” old Mr. Burgess said, “but if you’re getting them new, seems to me this is something you’ve never done before.”

“True enough,” I admitted, “but I’ve been reading up on the topic. The job looks simple enough for anyone who doesn’t suffer from a fear of heights.”

He waved away my words. “It’s been a decade since I’ve scampered up a ladder, and my son can’t climb anything steeper than a flight of stairs since his knee went out on him, but Junior does general contracting on the side. I’d sleep easier if you’d let me send my grandson out to your place to take care of this for you. Where do you live?”

“I bought the farmhouse down Ridgetop Road from Mr. Sprague’s place.”

“You bought that run-down shack?” the son said, turning to his father. “She must be that magazine writer from the city people were talking about down at the bank.”

“A city girl, eh?” The old man fixed me with a beady eye. “I’ve got half a mind not to sell these tools to you at all, Miss, so as not to feel guilty when I hear you’ve broken your neck.”

I’d arrived at the exhausting moment of opposition when a man tries to undermine a woman’s confidence. I found myself wondering if I really did know what I was doing and worrying I might actually snap a bone or two. Then I reminded myself I had two strong arms and a good brain. If Burgess the Third could learn to fix a slate, why couldn’t I?

“How about you let me make my purchases here and save me the trouble of driving out to the Ace store in Glens Falls, and I’ll let your grandson bid on the job.” I stuck my hand out. “Deal?”

The old man grudgingly reached across the counter. “Deal.”

He totaled the price of my items. The cash register’s drawer flew open with such force it nearly knocked him off his stool. As he counted out my change, I nonchalantly said, “Give me a couple of days to tidy things up around the place before sending Junior out my way, okay?”

Throughout my life, proving someone wrong has always inspired me to forge ahead. When my mother threatened to throw me out at fifteen for refusing to quit high school in favor of a full-time job, I found a teacher willing to take me in and eventually ended up a college graduate. When the lieutenant colonel tasked with implementing Truman’s Executive Order 9981 in Korea told me a US Navy ship was no place for a woman, I countered that taking me along as his secretary would free a man to fight. When my editor at Mlle said the Women’s House of Detention was not a proper subject for a story, I wrote such a compelling article they were practically forced to print it. I wasn’t about to let a narrow-minded man stop me from fixing my own house — or trying to, at least.

Three days later, when the scion of Burgess Hardware pulled up in the company truck, I was on my roof, fitting the last of the missing slates into place. I tucked the slater’s hammer through a leather loop on my tool belt and carefully climbed down the ladder, determined not to let this young man’s gaze destabilize my steps. Once my shoes were on terra firma, I wiped my dirty palms on my dungarees before reaching out to shake his hand.

“Thanks for coming by,” I said, “but you can tell your grandpa the job’s done.”

Junior looked from me to the ladder to the roof and back again. “How did you know what to do?”

“From a book,” I said with a shrug, trying not to seem too proud of myself. But why shouldn’t I have been proud? I’d just done something most women — and many men — would never attempt. An experienced roofer would no doubt have finished faster, but I’d taken my time and done it well without paying a penny for labor. I suppose if I were writing this from a hospital room with a cast on my leg I’d be singing a different tune. As it was, I pulled back my shoulders and proudly lifted my chin. “You shouldn’t be surprised at what a woman can do once she sets her mind to it.”

Chapter 12

The village of Schuywich is quaint as a model railroad kit, complete with white church, brick firehouse, and Progressive Era post office. Main Street is lined with Victorian houses in various states of repair, their clapboards painted shades of pink or white or green. I’m charmed by cupolas and turrets, wraparound porches, carriage barns, and cross-topped steeples. There’s even a gazebo in the town square.

I park behind the Adirondack Diner (closed, of course, because of the pandemic) and walk back up the street. A few of the shuttered businesses surprise me. Besides the expected thrift stores and gift shops and the inevitable pizzeria, there’s also a gallery for local artists, a massage therapist who offers craniosacral treatments, and a café so on-trend it could have been airlifted from Brooklyn. The library’s community bulletin board even sports a rainbow flag.

I’m not fooling myself into believing I’ve landed in some upstate Shangri-la. Bumper stickers on parked cars don’t let me forget I’m in a very red part of this blue state. Like the majority of Americans in 2016, I did not vote for the man currently occupying the White House, but I don’t make the same assumptions about the people who did as my appalled colleagues at the college. My father started out as a labor-union Democrat, but his loyalty wavered when Chrysler went back on its word and shut down the American Motors plant in Kenosha. Instead of working a steady factory job with good wages and benefits, Dad scrambled to reinvent himself as a general contractor who specialized in renovating historic houses. After my mother died, Dad lost faith in most things, including traditional politics. He called himself an independent and started voting Libertarian after Ross Perot lost to Clinton. He never became dogmatic, though. The most consistent lesson I learned growing up was to judge a person by how they treated the people around them, not where they worshipped or who they voted for.

It’s not long until I reach the other end of the village. The last storefront is in a brick building with a wide front porch, its big windows brightly lit. The sign painted on the glass reads battenkill natural food co-op, but the pattern of the masonry above the entrance spells out burgess hardware—the very place, I realize, where Evelyn bought her roofing nails.

The same old-fashioned bell jingles as I pull open the door. Inside, shelves of bulk grains and refrigerator cases of fresh produce have replaced the wheelbarrows and barrels of nails Evelyn described. Strips of blue painter’s tape on the hexagon-tiled floor designate a one-way flow up and down the narrow aisles. I maintain the required distance from the only other person shopping, a woman in Birkenstock sandals and gardening overalls whose unruly gray hair hangs long and loose. Along with my favorite brand of almond milk and a bag of locally roasted coffee beans, I grab a loaf of fresh sourdough bread, a jar of Saratoga apple butter, and a wedge of cheese from an Essex County dairy. Completing my tour of the store, I place my purchases on the marble counter.

“Good morning.” The guy on the other side of the plexiglass barrier is wearing a black mask, green apron, and blue latex gloves. His dreads are gathered in a scrunchie at the nape of his neck. The crinkle around his brown eyes tells me he’s smiling. “Is this everything?”

Returning his hidden smile, I say, “I’ll take a bag, too, thanks.”

Ignoring the antique cash register, which I’m disappointed to realize is just for show, he scans my purchases with a handheld wand. As he turns to place the bread in a canvas tote, there’s a glint of gold from the barbell that pierces the cartilage of his upper ear. My heart seizes up the instant I recognize it as the same one David wore. My arms wrap around my stomach as if I’ve been walloped.

“Hey, are you okay?”

I shake my head, incapable of speech. My eyes already too wet to see, I abandon my purchases and stumble blindly toward the door. That stupid bell jingles as I burst outside. Leaning over the porch rail, I tear off my mask and let loose a torrent of pent-up sobs.

David’s effects never have been returned to me—no surprise in all the madness of the pandemic. Where are they now, I wonder, that gold bar and the ring that matches mine? Were they stolen from his corpse by a desperate orderly? Maybe they were burned along with his body, the globs of melted metal panned from his ashes before they packaged what remained. Or did the box his mother received contain traces of precious metal? I imagine sifting through the contents of that package, my guilty fingers searching for what I left behind.