“I’m almost twelve,” Astor interrupted with a hiss, making “twelve” sound like an age so advanced that it required regular geriatric care.
“Well, that may seem old enough to you,” Rita said. “But the first sign of maturity is— Cody, stop drumming on the table. Go get dressed—and wear old clothes.”
“I only have old clothes,” Cody said in his too-quiet voice.
“Why can’t I ever just do what I want to do?!” Astor demanded, and Lily Anne began to shout, “Wanna wanna wanna,” pounding her tray rhythmically with her spoon.
“Because you are part of this family, and we all have to— Dexter, can you make the baby stop that?”
“I don’t want to be part of a family,” Astor said.
“Well,” Rita told her, pushing back from the table and grabbing at the dirty dishes, “if you can think of a better way to get your Own Room in a New House— Dexter, please, Lily Anne’s noise is giving me a headache.”
“It’s not a new house,” Astor grumbled, but she was clearly winding down at the thought of her Own Room. The only real enthusiasm I had seen from her recently had been when she was thinking about moving to the new house, where she would have private and personal space for the first time—but, of course, she couldn’t just cave in and admit that she was excited.
“It’s new to us,” Rita said, “and it will seem even newer when we paint it and— Dexter, for God’s sake, please take the baby and get her dressed?”
I stood up and went to the high chair, where Lily Anne had moved into march time with her spoon-pounding. But as I approached, she raised both arms in the air and shouted, “Dadoo! Uppy uppy!” I unsnapped the chair’s metal tray and lifted her up, and with the pure and heartfelt gratitude that only the very young can display, she smacked me on the nose with her spoon. “Dadoo!” she said happily, and as I stood holding her, with tears in my eyes and applesauce on my nose, I could think of nothing else to say but, “Ouch.”
Astor had dropped her complaints into a kind of background rumble as I carried Lily Anne away to the changing table. I was pleased that I had discovered what important tasks awaited me: “old clothes” for Cody and “paint it” to Astor. With my legendary powers of deduction it was the work of a mere moment to conclude that we were going to be working on the new house, most likely with rollers and brushes and buckets of pastel paint. It wasn’t the idle day of couch-warming I’d had in mind, but there are far worse fates than spending a day painting your very own new house.
I got Lily Anne cleaned and changed, and put her in the playpen. I washed the applesauc
e and related goo off myself, and re-dressed in some appropriately grubby clothes, and then loaded all the paint, brushes, and drop cloths stacked in the carport into the car.
Then I went back into the house and sat for half an hour, marveling at the chaotic din that ebbed and flowed through the house as the rest of my little family got ready. It was really remarkable how complicated they could make the simplest tasks: Astor couldn’t find old socks that matched and flew into a towering miff when I suggested it didn’t matter whether they matched, since she was just going to get paint on them. Then Cody appeared in a T-shirt with a picture of SpongeBob on it and Astor began to scream that it was hers and he better take it off right now, and they fought about whose shirt it was until Rita hurried in and solved it by taking SpongeBob and giving Cody an Avatar shirt, which he wouldn’t put on because he still liked Avatar and didn’t want to get paint on it. Then Astor appeared in a pair of shorts so small they might have been denim underwear and fought Rita for the right to wear what she wanted to wear for another ten minutes.
Cody finally came out and sat next to me, and the two of us waited in silent camaraderie and watched as Rita and Astor changed shoes, shirts, shorts, hair scrunchies, and hats, fighting every step of the way. By the time they were finally ready, I was so exhausted just from watching them that I wasn’t sure I could lift a paintbrush. But somehow, we all got into the car, and I drove us over to the new house.
It was a surprisingly peaceful day. Cody and Astor stayed in their separate rooms, slopping paint over almost everything, every now and then even getting some on the walls, where it was supposed to go. Rita painted the kitchen and then the dining room, running back and forth between roller strokes to supervise Cody and Astor, and Lily Anne stayed in her playpen in what would someday be our family room, yelling instructions.
I worked around the outside of the house, pulling weeds, painting trim, and discovering two fire ant nests the hard way, by stepping on them. I found a few other things even less pleasant—apparently there was a very big dog living in our new neighborhood. Luckily, there was a hose still hooked up to the side yard’s faucet.
At noon I drove out to Dixie Highway and picked up two large pizzas, one with just cheese and the other with double pepperoni, and we all sat in the screened enclosure by what would someday be our swimming pool, if we could figure out how to get all the green floating crud out of the water. Large chunks of the screen hung from the pool cage’s frame like Spanish moss, and several of the metal ribs were bent or missing, but it was all ours.
“Oh, my God,” Rita said, clutching a slice of cheese pizza and staring around her at her new kingdom. “This is going to be so …” She waved the pizza in a way that was intended to convey unlimited magnificence. “I mean, to have our own— Oh, Dexter, Carlene says her nephew has a pool service?”
“Carlene’s nephew is a lawyer,” I said. I remembered quite clearly meeting him at Rita’s office Christmas party, and coming home with three of his business cards.
“What?” Rita said. “Don’t be silly; why would a lawyer have a pool— Oh, you mean Danny.” She shook her head and took a bite of pizza. “Mmp. This is Mark. Danny’s younger brother.” She said it through a mouthful of pizza and still made it sound as if she was explaining shoelaces to someone with brain damage. “Anyway, he can get all the gunk out of the pool and make it totally— But we could save a lot of money if …” She took another bite of pizza, chewed, and swallowed. “I mean, it can’t be that hard. And we still have to get a new pool cage, which costs— But we can buy the chemicals at the pool store? If you don’t mind doing— Cody, you’ve got tomato all over your— Here, let me get that.” She leaned over to Cody and scrubbed at his face with a paper towel, while he scrunched up his eyes and looked annoyed.
“Anyway,” Rita said, leaning back away from Cody. “It would save some money. Which we will need for the new pool cage, because they are very pricey.”
“All right,” I said, not completely sure what I was agreeing to do.
Rita sighed and smiled happily. “Anyway,” she said again, and I had to agree.
It was five thirty when we decided we’d had enough. We cleaned our paintbrushes, and ourselves, as much as possible, and climbed into the car. I turned the air-conditioning to high for the drive home; we’d all been without for the whole day, since the power was not on yet in the new house, and even though it was a pleasant fall day, we were all sweaty.
The next day was a repeat of Saturday, except that we started an hour later, since it was, after all, Sunday. The only difference was that I got our lunch from a nearby Burger King. I found that I didn’t really mind the work. In fact, I slipped into a kind of Zen state of not-painting, letting the paint apply itself without any conscious effort on my part, and it was a great shock to me to see how much I’d done when we all knocked off for the day. I stood and looked at the vast expanse of newly painted house, and for the first time I began to feel a real sense of ownership. I walked around the whole house one time, letting it sink in that soon I would be living here. It was not at all a bad feeling.
And so Monday morning I arrived at work slightly stiff from all the physical labor, but remarkably cheerful in spite of it. I had gotten almost all of the paint out of my hair, off my hands, and out from under my fingernails, and I still had a sense of smug satisfaction with things that lasted all the way up to my desk, where I found Robert Chase sitting in my chair and eating a guava pastelito and slurping coffee from my personal mug. A large white pastry box sat on the desk in front of him. There were two big Styrofoam cups with lids beside the box, which made me realize with a bright flash of irritation that he’d used my mug merely because it was mine and he was starting out the new week by being Me.
“Hey, Dexter,” he said with a jolly smirk. “How was the weekend?”
“Very nice,” I said, sliding into the ratty folding chair I keep for visitors.
“Great, super,” he said. “Hung out with the kids? Playground and so on? Push ’em on the swings …?”