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  “I’m committed,” I said, trying to put a little of her crackle into my voice. “I want the job. I want to work on wood.”

  “Good. Can you come to work tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow? Saturday?”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “No, no problem. I was just thinking—Okay, sure. Tomorrow.” I wouldn’t be able to work for my father, but that was okay.

  “I can count on you? I open to the public at nine, but I’m there at eight, and I want you there then, too.”

  “Okay. No sweat. I’ll be there at eight. And thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. Let’s see if this is going to work out.”

  I hung up and whooped. And who do you think I thought to call? Julie? I called Troy instead.

  His mother answered. “Oh, George, I’m giving a lesson now,” she whispered, as if she were in a library.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Bonner. I just want to talk to Troy for a few minutes.”

  “He’s not home yet.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I’ll tell him you called. I’m sorry, I have to hang up now. My lesson is waiting.”

  I started to dial Julie. I had to grab my hand and move it away. What would I say to her? Tell her about the job? Why? She wasn’t interested. What was the point? Just to let her know that life was going on? That I wasn’t dragging around, brooding over her?

  I’d make it short and crisp. Julie, this won’t take long. I just want to tell you about this interesting and maybe important opportunity that’s come my way. That wasn’t crisp. It was stuffy and pompous and boring.

  I’m beginning to think of wood as a way of life, Julie. Wood as a way of life? Right there, she’d probably start yawning.

  My mind is working, Julie, clicking and clacking. Pushing you out of it has left a big, cool space for other things. I’ve begun to think you never knew the real me, Julie. I’m not just old reliable, ordinary George. I can do some surprising things … such as getting this new job.…

  I told myself, do not call her. Turn down the heat. Don’t make this phone call.

  But the thought had crept in and I was like an alcoholic, a drug addict, a cigarette fiend. He knows he can’t touch the stuff, and still he picks up the glass, he lights the cigarette.…

  I picked up the phone. With every ring I expected to hear Julie’s voice. That special hello with a little expectant lift at the end. The phone rang and rang. Eight … nine … ten … I hung up on seventeen, my age.

  Five minutes later I called again. Beth answered. “I just walked in, George. What timing. How did you know?”

  “I’m across the street watching the house.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you, George. I suppose you want to talk to Julie? She’s not here, George. But even if she was.…” Beth sighed. “George. I don’t know why you keep calling her.”

  “I have something to tell her, Beth.”

  “Listen, can I say something? Everyone here likes you and wishes—”

  “Everyone, except Julie, Beth.”

  “No, that’s not true. She likes you. It’s only—you know Julie, once she makes up her mind.…”

  “Understood.”

  “You’re still saying that!”

  “It bothers you, too?”

  “No, it’s just that Julie mentioned something about it, that she was doing it, too. I thought it was pretty funny.”

  “You know anything about wood, Beth?”

  “Only that sometimes I think your head is made of it.”

  “Same old sweet Beth.”

  “George, you want me to give my sister a message?”

  “Tell her I called to say hello. Tell her I don’t think she has the guts to talk to me.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Tell her I’ve taken a sharp turn in my life. I have a new career and a new friend.”

  “Understood.”

  “She hired you?” Troy said. “So you conned her into it.”

  “Bull, my man. I got this job on my outstanding merits and qualifications.”

  “Ah, so. What was that song and dance, ‘I’m strong, Ms. Joy. I’ll work hard, Ms. Joy.’ Do you know what you’re getting yourself into? Dragon Lady there will run your ass off and pay you pennies.”

  “I’m not doing it for the money.”

  “Then you’re not even one quarter as sane as I thought you were. What’re you doing it for?”

  “Experience.”

  “Good luck. Think of me tomorrow while you’re piling up experience. I’ll be truckin’ on up the Garden State to see the old man. He had to send me twenty bucks for gas.”

  “What are you going to do in Binghamton?” Troy’s father had just opened a restaurant. “Does your father want you up there to work?”

  “Work? Sure, I’ll work. But then we’ll be moving. Dad and I are going to hit the high spots.”

  “In Binghamton? What kind of high spots would that be?”

  “Use your imagination, old son. My father’s a free man and so am I.”

  “What does Chris say about that?”

  “Chris who?”

  “Since when?”

  “I had a little dust-up with the lady.”

  “What happened?”

  “Who knows? She’s too damn sensitive. I said something about her teeny-tiny brain, and she thought it was an insult. To be precise, I called her a birdbrain.”

  “What do you have between your ears? Why would you call her a birdbrain?”

  “Teasing, teasing. You know me, big, bluff, affable me. Always saying things I don’t mean. She’s supposed to be able to read between the lines. I do it with you, don’t I? If I called you a birdbrain, you’d be flattered.”

  “Yeah, well, coming from someone with half a brain—”

  “There, you said it, but am I insulted? She said I didn’t display enough feeling. I told her maybe it’s because I’m Norwegian. Where we come from, it’s so cold, you open your mouth too wide and you’ll frostbite your tongue.”

  “Great theory. It must have gone over big with Chris.”

  “Forget it, George. Whose side are you on? Is it us against them or isn’t it? I didn’t mean anything by it. It just slipped out and she took it seriously. I told her to do it to me, call me anything she wanted to. ‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Don’t hold back! Pound me! Hit me in that blubber!’ It just made her madder. You ever get into that stuff with Julie? No, you didn’t. You tiptoed around her, right? You didn’t make it dangerous for yourself.… Why don’t you call Chris? Maybe she’s desperate enough to go out with you.”

  “I don’t feel like seeing anybody.”

  “Still carrying the torch for Julie?”

  “Julie who?”

  “You’re working someplace else?” My father took it personally. Just what I’d been afraid of. “What am I going to do today without you?”

  “Dad.” I’d made the mistake of waiting till the last minute to tell him. “You can get somebody else to sweep the floor. What’s the big deal if I’m at Leonard’s or not?”

  “The big deal, my son, is that it’s a family business and you’re part of the family. People expect to see you. They feel good when they see you. Don’t you feel any sense of responsibility?”

  “Pop.…” He was giving me looks, a lot of wrinkled forehead and darting eyebrow. He was packing all this negative energy, piling me hip-high in guilt. “You’re cutting me down, Dad. Making me feel guilty as hell.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I told her I was coming in.”

  “You can tell her you were mistaken, and you’re not coming.”

  “You don’t really want me to do that, do you?”

  My father lit a cigarette. “George, you do what you think is right.”

  “Dad—” I glanced at the clock. “I’m sorry.… Can I take the car?”

  He gave me an incredulous look. “Absolutely not. Not coming to work and
you want my car?” He puffed furiously. “You have nerve, I’ll say that for you. And how am I supposed to get to work?”

  “You just have to call the shop and somebody’ll come for you. Do you want me to bike seven miles?”

  “You’re young and strong. You don’t smoke, your lungs are fine.”

  “I’m going to Englewood. I’ll be biking through heavy traffic. It means nothing to you, even if I kill myself?”

  “No comment, my son.”

  After that, I had no time for anything. I grabbed a donut and ate it as I pedaled to Lydia Joy’s. I was half an hour late. “Sorry,” I said. “I thought I’d have a car.”

  She studied me for so long I had the uneasy feeling that my face was covered with white sugar. I took a swipe at my mouth.

  “I fired you already.”

  “Oh, no! I haven’t even started working! That’s not fair.” I wanted this job. “I know I’m supposed to be here at eight. I won’t be late again. I know you can use me.” I made a muscle. “I have them on both arms.”

  She almost smiled. It was okay. She was going to give me a try.

  She started me off sweeping. Wouldn’t you know? My luck. I might as well have been in Leonard’s. At least there were people to talk to there. Lydia Joy wasn’t a talker. All morning, she was either on the phone or working in back on furniture. I swept, moved things around, ran out once to buy her a sandwich.

  After lunch, she finally gave me some real work, removing paint on a Boston rocker. “I want every little bit and speck of that paint gone.”

  “Will do.” I went to work, attacking each blemish like an enemy. Loosen the old paint up with the remover, scrape, smooth, attack the next blemish. It was like popping zits. Toward the end of the day Lydia Joy came over to inspect my work and show me where I needed to sand some more.

  “I do everything by hand. I never dip furniture to remove the old finish because it ruins the wood.” She blew dust off the chair. “Here’s the stuff we use,” she said pulling a can off a shelf. “It soaks into the wood. It revives it, brings out the natural grain and color.” She ran her hand over the seat of the chair. “You see how it is?” she said. “There’s something old and fine here that a new piece can never have.” Then she asked me to work again the next day.

  “Sunday?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Biking home, my arms felt as heavy as the wood I’d been working on, and the ride seemed more like seventy miles. But I liked the dryness of my hands and the smell of wood and linseed oil that rode with me.

  In the morning, everyone was asleep when I got up. I grabbed some food and got out my bike. The streets were wet. It had rained during the night. When I’d told my mother I was working today, she’d said, “Sunday, George? Why? You don’t have to do that.” All I did was smile and shake my head.

  That day Lydia Joy had me take the old finish off a small commode. There were several layers of paint on it, starting with black and then green and getting down to a stubborn white glaze that resisted me all day. I worked steadily, hardly stopping.

  The commode was square and sturdy, as ready for use as it must have been the day it was built. It had been made by human hands, not machines. Removing the finish, I’d had a chance to examine the drawer joinings, the way the grain of the wood had been matched on top, and how each piece had been fit together. And I’d thought that some day I’d like to make something like this, build a simple piece of furniture out of the best wood in the best possible way.

  A few days later, I broke down and called Julie again.

  “George?” her mother said. Then the pause that killed. The pause that said, I don’t know if she’s going to talk to you, George. The pause that said, I feel sorry for you because you’re still coming around and making a fool of yourself. “I think she might be busy, George.”

  “Fine. It’s not that important,” I said.

  But a second later Julie came on. “George?”

  It was so unexpected, I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t ready for it. I was speechless.

  “Is that you, George? George, are you there?” she yodeled. “Yoo-hoo, George.”

  “Hi, it’s me,” I said. “Just wanted to say hello.”

  “Hello!” She laughed. She was high, feeling good. I knew if I asked her why, I’d only feel bad. Don’t ask her, I told myself, and I asked her. “Why are you feeling so good?”

  “Oooohhh, I don’t know, it’s a beautiful day, isn’t that reason enough? How about you?”

  “Yup, feeling good. Having lots of fun.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “This and that. Working. I have a new job.”

  “Ahh.”

  She didn’t ask what the job was, and I couldn’t stop thinking how dull I sounded. “Your cousin still around?”

  “Oh, you’re getting sarcastic. We better hang up.”

  And that was my big phone call with Julie.

  One night, I lay in bed and thought about Julie, how strange it was that we were so near to each other, less than half a mile between us, she in her house and me in mine, and we didn’t see each other. Never saw each other. It was as if, suddenly, we were living in two different countries with no way to cross the borders. I had no passport to her country and she didn’t want one to mine. Did she ever think about me? Had it been easy for her to put me out of her mind? It still hurt when I thought about her, but more and more there were long periods when I was able to forget her completely.

  Chapter 17

  At Lydia’s, I worked harder than I ever had for my father. I stripped and scraped and sanded and scraped and stripped and rubbed and polished. I was stripping an oak flour safe and I started going in after school to work on it. Lydia said it was an unusual piece. “Most of the cabinets people used to keep in their kitchens were pine.” She loaned me a book on antiques. “Keep it as long as you want. See this?” She pointed to a picture of a lamp. “It’s a Handel. Once I found a Handel at a house sale for twenty dollars.”

  “Is that good?” I said.

  The way she laughed, I knew it wasn’t too bright a question. “Is Tiffany good?” she said.

  I didn’t know much about Tiffany, either.

  One day, she watched me working on the oak flour safe. I was wet sanding and checking for roughness and sanding again. “You have good hands, George,” she said. From Lydia that was a big compliment. I mentioned it later that day to my father.

  “So?” he said. “How long is this going to go on?”

  “Maybe for the rest of my life.”

  “Very nice,” my father said. “You know what you’re going to do for the rest of your life after you’ve done it for a few weeks. Too bad the rest of the world isn’t so smart.”

  “Don’t harass me, Pop. I just know. This is what it is. I like antiques, old stuff. Is it any worse than taking someone’s ratty hair and shampooing it and setting it and combing it out and making it look great? Don’t you get a kick out of that?”

  “That’s different, that’s a person. You’re making a difference to a person. You make that person feel good. Her whole personality cheers up when she gets her hair fixed. Does a chair cheer up because you sand it? I like antiques, too. Does that mean I should spend the rest of my life working on old chamber pots?”

  “Pop! Chamber pots!”

  “I’M GOING TO SEND YOU MY PICTURE, GEORGIE. AND YOU CAN SEND ME YOURS.”

  “I TAKE TERRIBLE PICTURES.”

  “I WANT TO SEE WHAT MY FRIEND LOOKS LIKE. MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST MEET AND FORGET THE PICTURES.”

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, MEET?”

  “MEET, AS IN GET ACQUAINTED, SEE EACH OTHER, ETC. YOU’RE NOT THAT FAR AWAY. DON’T YOU WANT TO MEET ME?”

  I had trapped myself. “PICTURES FIRST, ROSEMARY.”

  But that was a trap, too, for as Rosemary reminded me, photos had to be sent by mail and names and addresses had to be exchanged. She was Rosemary Swift, and she lived i
n the middle of Manhattan Island over on the East Side, on Sixty-second Street, and she had a phone number and suddenly she was somebody tangible and close. Manhattan was just across the bridge.

  “WHAT’S YOUR PHONE NUMBER?” Rosemary asked.

  My phone number? Of course that was next. I still didn’t know how I was going to get out of the photo thing. And talk on the phone? With my voice? Just tell her the truth, I told myself, and end the deception, but instead, I gave her Lydia’s shop number. Which was not too bright, but I was more worried about my parents finding out than my boss.

  What a mess. Was I really going to send Rosemary my picture? That would be the end. So don’t send the picture. Say it was lost in the mail. Say you have a disfiguring disease.… Say I’m sorry, Rosemary, I’m allergic to film.… I get terrible headaches when my picture is taken.… What I ended up doing was procrastinating.

  “DID YOU SEND THE PICTURE, GEORGIE? I SENT MINE ALREADY.”

  “I’M GOING ON FRIDAY TO HAVE MY PICTURE TAKEN.”

  Friday, I “forgot,” and then her picture came, but I didn’t know what to do. She looked interesting. She looked better than interesting. She sent a large glossy photo that came in a brown envelope, showing her in a tuxedo and top hat. A posed studio shot. Beautiful!

  I don’t know what I’d expected. All the time I had talked to her there were these little doubts in my mind. She said she was this and that, but you could say anything you wanted on a computer. She might have been grotesque. She might have been pimply. She might have been every ugly fantasy I could imagine. But she was none of that.

  I saw that photo and I wanted more. I wanted to meet Rosemary. And how was I going to do that? She was waiting for my photo. No, she was waiting for “Georgie’s” photo. Which I couldn’t send. Any way I looked at it I was going to lose. And I didn’t want to lose. So I pushed my luck a little bit further.

  I went downtown after school, to the license bureau in the basement of City Hall. People were in line. The photo booth was off by itself in a little alcove. Nearby, a couple of girls in jeans and long shirts were filling out forms.

  I went in the booth and pulled the curtain, then held it tight with my knee. I pinned on a pair of my mother’s dangly earrings. I had lipstick and eyeshadow in my pocket that I’d also taken off my mother’s bureau. I checked the curtain again, and smeared on lipstick. I pushed my hair in my eyes, glanced into the camera and pushed the button. Snap.