We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas

Author:Matthew Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

41

The work began a couple of weeks after the new year, 1992. The bustle in and out of her kitchen was exciting. She offered them drinks and set out platters of cold cuts on the island, rolls, tubs of potato salad, bags of potato chips.

She brought home a couple of six-packs for them one day. Ed took one and threw it to the floor. One of the cans landed with a thud and shot a stream of beer all over the cabinets. A floor installer who had been using the bathroom stopped in the kitchen on the way back to the living room.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Mind your fucking business,” Ed said.

She hadn’t heard Ed utter that word in years. Maybe she’d never heard him say it.

“You okay?” the worker asked her, ignoring Ed.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Ed said.

“Whatever you say,” the worker said. “Whatever you say.” He backed out of the room, his hands up in bemused resignation.

Eileen followed him in, carrying the unexploded beers on the plastic yoke. “My husband has been under a lot of stress,” she said. “I’m sorry he spoke to you like that.”

“No worries,” the worker said. “We come across all kinds of people in this line of work.”

“He’s not the kind of man he seemed like back there.”

He gave his head a sage tilt. “Some guys just don’t like other guys in their house, doing work they think they should be doing.”

She felt a need to protect Ed. “It’s just that he’s losing his job,” she said, surprising herself with the lie. “Layoffs.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s going to be fine. We’re going to be fine.”

He and the other worker looked at her as if they were waiting to see if she’d make another revelation.

“Please drink these,” she said, holding up the beers.

“You don’t have to tell us twice,” he said. “But we have to wait until we’re done for the day.”

It reminded her of her father, to hear him responsibly defer having a drink. They returned to laying in the boards, and she went to the breakfront to find the red velvet-lined box that held the set of crystal glasses with “Schaefer” etched into them that her father had received upon his retirement. She took them out and ran a cloth over them.

At the end of the day, when she laid the six-pack on the dining room table, she set out the glasses too, on a Schaefer bar tray she’d saved for years.

“Please use these,” she said.

“Oh, we don’t need glasses, ma’am,” he said politely.

“It would make me happy if you’d use them. They were my father’s. I’d like to see them filled with beer for once.”

• • •

The roof could wait for a couple of years. The rot in the basement would have to remain for now. The tile floors she’d pictured down there were a project for another time. So was renovating the half bath between the kitchen and den. So was moving the laundry room to the first floor from the basement.

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