Learning to Drive by Mary Hays

Author:Mary Hays [Hays, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

Paul offered to go to work on the water problem while they waited to find out if Hoskins would choose to come down on his own, though he’d need some pipe wrenches, he told her, adding that he’d understand if she didn’t want to let him use her tools; it had been a mistake to take the lawn mower out of the shed, and he was sorry. Charlotte countered his apology with her own, saying she shouldn’t have been so … She couldn’t find a word, and he supplied it. “Huffy,” he said, and she laughed.

It turned out that their water came from a dug well up the hill and ran down to the house through a series of underground pipes. To keep it from entering the unheated basement in the winter and then freezing and bursting the pipes, someone had installed a shutoff valve in a wooden box built onto the side of the house. Charlotte had noticed it before, but had never known its purpose. Paul opened up the box, removed the insulation, and found the valve that he was looking for.

Back in the basement, all they had to do was turn on a faucet. The air was expelled in a series of hisses and burps until a gush of rusty water exploded into the pail they’d placed below the spigot, and the water gradually ran clear. Charlotte told him she felt much better knowing all this now; it made the house much less of a mystery, and she planned to write it all down.

Paul said he’d be glad to show her how to turn the water off, too, and how to drain the pipes when the time came, which he hoped wasn’t any time soon, of course, but he could see she was a very curious person and liked knowing how things worked. He admired that in a woman, he told her seriously, in a tone that implied that he had a very reasonable set of standards for his women and it made him sad that a lot of them didn’t measure up.

They found a garden fork in the barn and went out to the garden. Paul hung his jacket on the fence and began turning over the ground, working away in his slippery loafers, stepping on the fork as it sunk into the ground and leaning his weight forward to make it sink deeper before jarring a clump of grass loose. He talked as he worked, making his way slowly along the edge of the garden plot, shaking the dirt out of the weediest clumps and throwing them over his shoulder. Baird brought out his dump truck and hauled away the clumps of dirt and grass Paul discarded.

Charlotte watched him while he worked, listening to his stories and keeping one ear open for sounds of Hoskins descending the tree. He had an ex-wife, she learned, named Billie, and two children, Paul Jr. and Tanya, ages nine and fifteen, and both of them with a smart mouth just like their mother.

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