Delicate Seconds

The morning air is thick, needing to be stirred before crystallizing for the day. Single story homes in a single story neighborhood, buffered by two streets before the main thoroughfares, were built as models, each one a four-walled model home, bricks and driveways, constant eaves, clean, quiet, everyone asleep. Cool minutes cling to dry rain gutters, gather and grow like a great web until each house on the street connects with pre-morning lace, an icy layer between rooftops.

            The newspaper deliveryman hasn’t come past yet. Behind an ivied and cats-clawed wall, two houses in on Lawrence Lane, in the back corner bedroom of the old home, behind the lattice, an antique mantel clock, powered by delicate pieces of spinning brass, ticks into existence clear seconds, into the unseen day. Unseen until Shirsh awakes.

            Shirsh stirs and pushes the heavy covers back. The old woman’s room is adorned with the glowing mid-century. Hand made porcelain figurines frozen in Cuban dance, clock radio, two glass-topped dressers and a flowered chair do not and cannot yet move. The room has the feel of a polished wood machine accompanied by the scent of an old typewriter and dusty, dead bugs in the windowsills.

            In the kitchen, pie tins and a rolling pin, pastry cloth and bowls lay in their planned positions. The coffee pot is already full and lobbing its column of sweet smelling steam up and down the hallway. With the kitchen light turned on, there are bananas, a line of amber vitamins, the shining floor and a hum of fluorescence one minor key higher than the hum of the deep Eastern universe. In the cup cupboard above the sink rests a glass bottle of apple cider vinegar, white label facing out, and a small cup nearby which always smells of vinegar. Shirsh first takes her morning vinegar drink and then the vitamins.

            Her hands are meant for silverware and oatmeal. The microwave lights up. From outside comes a thud when the morning paper hits the garage door. Frozen apples thaw in a mixing bowl. On the concrete slab front drive, in a nightgown and robe before a still darkened orange garage door, she stands with her ankles exposed. The paper man takes another pass in his ‘82 Bonneville.

            “Hey Shirsh!” from the rolled down window.

            “Good morning!” she sings back.

            “Got your go-juice, I see?”

            “Sure do,” the cup of coffee, black, no sugar, sloshing in her hand.

            “I got mine too!” and he drives off.

An hour already gone by. Three pies glow in the oven, edges bubbling with warm juice. The Herald’s opened up with the Wednesday advertisements on top, the grocery ads each in an assigned column like a game of solitaire so they can all be considered at once, pencil and pad of paper. The first round of the day’s dishes dry in a sink-side rack. Two minutes to sunrise, a mourning dove on the wire lets out its first soft cry then heads into the warming sky squeaking in time with its flapping wings.

            A bird in a cage squeaks in reply. The cockatiel bends its head beyond the limits of believability and pries into his own neck with his sallow beak. From the neck down, the bird is bald. Incessant on its perch, his body is wrinkled and baked. His head, however, stays fluffed with soft feathers of grey and yellow.

            A piece of red string has mysteriously knotted itself on one of the cage’s golden bars. Scissors easily clip the thread, and the red falls slow and restful. The scissors also fall and hit the floor, breaking at their pivot point, now shattered and useless. Shirsh throws them away with a sigh.

            She opens the back screen door, which creaks and slams as screen doors do. The backyard grows around her. The Brazilian tree stretches further up, depositing parts of itself into piles on the roof. The mesquite is healthy, likely the tallest in the state. The sprinkler heads come up momentarily to spray the grass and descend gurgling into the ground again. Shirsh spots one large terracotta pot with a crack. The sun reaches the treetops first and trickles to the ground. Shirsh is a whirlwind in her translucent-roofed shed, collecting tools for the day, one bucket, two trash bins, gloves, leaf blower, wrapped utility extension cord, clippers, two rakes, both the good one and bad, two brooms, a good one and bad, and garbage bags. A ladder leans in shade against the back wall of the house. She sets everything in the front yard. The soles of Shirsh’s shoes show, on her knees and trash bins filling. Three hours have passed.

Dusted sun stretches over a series of stacks of digital pocket calculators, brown and yellow function keys, solar cells and nearby is a pile of one ply lightweight bond paper. Beavin’s teeth soak in the glass by the bed, bubbles stick to his eyeteeth and molars, a box of denture clean also on the night stand. Outside his bedroom window, Shirsh stands clutching the leaf blower, a cloud of dirt and clamor swirling against his windowpane. It sounds to him much like nine prop planes formed up and flying along the bottom of the sky, heading off to bomb Ponape as he’s below, baby-faced, taking inventory, counting until he’s awake. On the nightstand leans a bottle of black whiskey, brown label peeling from the glass, tropical 45s outside of their sleeves. With whiskey poured in a rocks glass, Beavin drops his dentures into the liquor and lets them sit. He swirls the glass and pulls his teeth out, setting the device, whiskey-soaked, into his mouth. And takes a deep breath. Daylight moves to the desk and shows grease spots on the spools and upper carriage of a black Victor brand calculating machine, with clean black and white numbered keys, antique lever, metal and wood sparkling, a beauty. Beavin applies a few brief scrubs with soap and a toothbrush, removing the grease, finally proclaiming over the noise of the leaf blower, “I give up! Today’s the day. Haha. I’m a-comin’ for you, Shirsh.” She can’t hear his yell behind the wall and the sound of the leaf blower. His words muffle and disappear, but they propel him onto his feet and out into the day.

            The triangular tin ladder set under the tree blocks Beavin’s arrival from Shirsh, and it is only when his tennis shoed feet touch the gravel in her yard that she looks to see the gray and wide man there. Not startled she looks back at the tree branches and sings, “Good morning, Beavin. And how are you today?”

            Had she sung to him? She most certainly had, and Beavin does his best to sing back, “Oh hiya Shirsh!” he croaks, hoping today is going to be more than easy, it might darn well be great. He trudges through the rocks, his momentum absorbed by the sharp sloshing ground. “Everything slows down in your yard Shirsh, especially me.” Leaning an arm on the ladder, dressed in shorts and a cheesecloth tee, he says, “Shirsh.” A twig falls. “Shirsh,” in a lower voice. “Can I offer you my hand?”

            “I could use a hand. A hand. Why of course. I’ve got to get this stake in.”

            Beavin takes a knee and takes ahold of the green landscaping pole, steadying it upright in the dirt near the overgrown ivy bushes. “I’m moving right through my list today, and it’s not even ten,” Shirsh says, sounding almost disappointed. “I’ve three pies baked, my shopping list printed, and the bathroom, well, it’s gleaming.”

            “You and the marines, Shirsh. You do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day.”

She has a hammer in her hand. “Just keeping busy.”

Beavin grips the coated metal pole with both hands while Shirsh stands opposite and hammers. Her arms are a downward gale, striking the tip of the post, and Beavin sits crisply, staring out to the street, but he turns his head away when a car passes by. “You’re doing fine,” she says. She is effective in her pounding but Beavin, on his knees begins hemming and hawing, saying, “Now. Now, uh, Shirsh. Shirsh, hold on. Hold on, Shirsh. Please.” She stops.

            “What’s a matter? I hit you?”

            “No. No you didn’t hit me. It’s just, here I am, on my knees, you’re there, well…” He looks up at her, smiles and raises his eyebrows. “Will you just go ahead and marry me?” He expects a no, yet he’s smiling.

            “Hold it.” Shirsh raises the hammer. “I said hold it.” And she finishes driving the pole with one impressively strong strike and drops the hammer. “Dogonne it, Beavin! I’ve already answered that question, haven’t I? Didn’t I answer you last week? Heavens. And the week before? I already have a husband. What do I need another one for?”

            Beavin says from his knees, explaining, “You could use a man around.”

            “How? I’d like to hear how.” She goes to her knees and works on tying the ivy to the pole.

            “Well.” Beavin climbs to his feet as if it’s his first time standing. “Well, you know how.”

            “Beavin!”

            “That’s not what I meant, Shirsh.” He crosses his arms, grimaces. “I’ve got money, Shirsh. Lots of it. You never knew that, did you? I never told you that before, did I? I got lots of it, gold. Maybe a mil’ worth. And I’ve got no one to give it to. No grandkids. No causes. You’ll outlive me, Shirsh. You already have!”

            “That’s all in the hands of the lord.”

            “Mostly, I guess.”

            “Yes, mostly.” Shirsh gets to her feet. “You see this?” She holds her left hand to Beavin’s eyes.

            “I know. I know,” he says. “You could use a husband, that’s all.”

            “I got my own money. Unless having a husband adds more hours to the day, I don’t have any need for one.”

            “Well, Shirsh,” Beavin says confidently, “I was just readin in Reader’s Digest, seems they say it can.”

            “More for men. And know what else can? Having a bird. And I have one. And I might get a dog soon, too. I’ve got an air purifier, sunblock. I’m gonna be just fine. Thank you for your consideration.”

“Aw.”

“Hey, speaking of hours anyway, what time is it?”

            “I’m not sure.”

            “Well, what does your watch say?”

            “What do you mean? My watch? Oh, my wristwatch. Clock part don’t work on this old thing anymore. I just use it as a sorta wrist-calculator now. See? I have all the main functions, and the buttons are nice and big.” He holds it up to her. She stands and folds her arms behind her back, holding her elbows and looks.

            “Oh my heavenly days! Whatever would you need a calculator on your wrist for? You’ve got lots of calculators.”

            “Damn it, Shirsh.” He looks around. “You know what? Forget it.” He pulls the band from his wrist and throws it with all of his strength. It lands in the green and brown grass of his front yard, across the brick partition that separates their properties. Shirsh looks up at the sun. “You’ve got to think it through, Shirsh. Don’t answer right away. It makes sense, you know. One of us could sell our house, give the money to the kids…”

            “No, Beavin. Now, what time is it?” She moves toward her front door.  Beavin steps spryly into her path. “Shirsh. Do you value honesty? I mean really value honesty?”

            “I have valued honesty. Still do.” She looks past him toward the door.

            “No, I mean really, really.”

            “Beavin! I’ve about had enough of this. Really.” She’s yelling.

            “Shirsh. Really, really, really?”

            “What’s the matter with you? You’re behaving like a child.”

            “Shirsh, it’s 11 p.m., okay? It’s two in the morning.”

            “Get out of my way.” Her face is flush.

            Beavin puts his arms on her shoulders as if he’s addressing his son.

            “Go eat your lunch, Beavin.”

            “Would you ever consider being my wife? Could it happen?”

            “No.”

            “And you value honesty.”

            “Still do, yes.”

            He drops his hands. “Well, I’m going to keep asking, anyway.”

            “That’s fine,” she says and walks inside. She closes the metal screen door and stops to look through it to him. “Go on ahead and ask what you’d like.” After she’s gone, he can see into her home through the metal screen door. Light fills the entrance through yellow stained glass and a bird inside is chirping loudly. “That got her blood movin.” He says.

The old plastic fingers of the rake lay in the rocks, and its round handle rests in the crossed brick walkway. With a round handle, the wood scarcely touches the ground. It looks as though it’s levitating. Inside, windows open, Shirsh holds a picture in a stained wood handmade frame. A plane floats in midair above the Grand Canyon, a backdrop of unchanging brown. The pilot’s round face is hidden behind aviator sunglasses and a bulky white headset. The propellers are in blur, the ground unfocused, but the small shining silver plane and the unmistakable man inside are palpable and genuine, forever facing west, forever there, in front of her. She kisses the picture and goes to the kitchen and eats a hotdog sandwich.

            Beavin sits on his bed and drinks another glass of whiskey, his thin tee shirt hanging from his shoulders. The sound of a rake begins to scrape against the quiet of his room, and he smiles as he ties his shoes.

            The saw blade cuts through a wide, dead branch on a struggling evergreen, Beavin’s leather fingers gripping the cracking handle, Shirsh resolutely stabilizing the ladder that he stands on. The dry branch finally fractures severed and falls. Green branches fall. Hundreds of tiny leaves fleck and twitter and lower into the pores of the uneven ground. Shirsh balances the ladder. “Sorry about those fresh ones,” he says.

Beavin stretches out, his fat tanned fingers tying now with twine, knotting twine to tie thin green twigs back to the branches he didn’t mean to cut them from. He knots eight back on, ties tightly and they appear to stay.

            “Do you think that will work? Do you think they’ll stay?” from below.

            “I think it’s working already.” His wet shirt clings to his back and chest. At the bottom of the ladder, he says, “It’s time for me to be going.” His hands are lightly shaking. He holds them in front of his waist and looks at her. “How’s your VCR operating?”

            “Fine, since you fixed it last.” She sees children home from school gathering around a sno-cone truck. “My phone’s on the fritz again, though. I might like to borrow your technical know-how tomorrow.”

            “Of course. Of course. Good night.”

            In the dark of his room, Beavin drops his dentures into bubbling water. He lowers the needle onto a record.  Vibraphone plays and he sleeps.

            “What’s next?” she asks after the tools are put away. Daytime meets its gentle end. The sun behind the walls and trees does not fall or gloriously exit but simply fades until everything is left in shade. Shirsh works in the garage, moving boxes filled with second hand gifts, dishes and documents, and she considers potential attic space, climbs into the attic where gray insulation sticks to everything. She eats dinner standing in the kitchen with games of solitaire, cross-stitches a saguaro with flower for the dining room. She’s in her nightgown on her hands and knees on the linoleum floor, scrubbing it clean with a large bottle of vinegar when the digital clock with big red numbers clicks 1:01 a.m. and an alarm sounds. “Time for bed, then,” she says. She throws the water out, puts the grocery list on the refrigerator with one of a dozen butterfly magnets, the blue one, her favorite. She covers the birdcage with a sheet, the bird already asleep. She sets paper bills and her ledger on the counter, a pencil and calculator, something for the morning. Amber vitamins line the countertop.

            The light in her museum-clean room is dimmed by a rich and thick cream lampshade, clothes on the chair are laid out for morning, a fresh bar of soap in the shower. The windows locked. Shirsh climbs into bed and pulls the heavy covers over her body and turns out the light. She looks at the ceiling and dreams while awake. The morning will soon come. Delicate seconds from the mantel clock tick into the air, collect, and drape the room around her.