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It wasn’t like none of Mikey’s stuff was at the new house. Just that most of it wasn’t, and all the important things, like his toothbrush and pajamas, were definitely still in Gerard and Lindsey’s front bathroom and/or piled in the corner of their living room by the sofa bed.
“You’ll be fine,” Gerard told him on his last night there, when he came out to visit Mikey after everyone else had gone to bed. Gerard flopped down in the love seat and then, when Mikey didn’t say anything, he stretched his foot out and poked Mikey with his toes, jostling his leg.
The lamp on the end table cast a warm, dim glow in the room, and Mikey felt safe but sad. They were still comfortable being night owls together. It was those kinds of things that made it so easy to be in Gerard’s house, to stay, and then keep staying after his and Alicia’s house had sold, even after he found and put an offer in on a new little place of his own that was, he had to admit, a bit of a fixer upper. But everything in his life seemed to be sorely in need of that right now—of fixing up.
Gerard forged ahead, familiar with conversations where Mikey didn’t have much to say, even though those were fewer now that they were both older. “I think you’ll like it,” Gerard said, “Being in your own space.”
Mikey nodded and still didn’t say anything. You can’t keep hanging out all day with my four-year-old forever, is what Gerard may have been hinting at, Mikey thought, and he couldn’t begrudge him that. It had been so great to spend so much time with Bandit, coloring and watching cartoons. He didn’t have a TV at his new place yet, and when he got one, he would have to figure out how to mount it on the wall, which sounded … about as easy as flying to the moon. But maybe once he did, he and Bandit could watch cartoons at his new place.
Shortly after he and Alicia had filed for divorce, Mikey had given notice at the advertising firm where they had met and where she still worked. At the time, he had been convinced something new would come his way and he would … well, he would show her … soon enough. With his new job and his new life. He wasn’t sure about that anymore. Houses, even fixer-uppers, were expensive and jobs, apparently, weren’t as easy to come by as he’d thought. Being unemployed was proving to be the worst, most despairing form of leisure, and he wasn’t showing anyone anything.
“What I like is watching Dora with Bandit every day,” Mikey said. “Ask her, she’ll tell you. We have fun.” There was a long pause. “But yeah,” he said finally. “I hear what you’re saying.”
“And look,” Gerard continued. “At your own place, you can do your own thing—you won’t have to do kid stuff all the time like we do—and you can have friends over.”
“Yeah,” Mikey said grimly. “I don’t mind kid stuff. At this point, Bandit’s pretty much my main friend, besides you and Lindsey.”
Gerard sighed fondly. “You’ll be okay,” he said again. “It’ll be good. I know your place is a little rough right now, but it’ll be livable soon. And you’ve got that hardware store just a block up.”
Mikey snorted. “You’re giving me advice on hardware? God help us both.”
“I’m just enjoying the thought of you with a hammer in your hand.” Gerard giggled.
Mikey didn’t want to go to the hardware store, even though it was clear now that he had to. He walked the two blocks over and one block up grumbling to himself, with the screw in his pocket that he had to match.
Lately it seemed like the only men who worked in hardware stores were should-be-retirees who reminded him of his grandpa, but not in a good way. They had this air of impatience, like whatever they were going to help you with was something you should already know, and they had serious doubts about how you were turning out as a man.
This store was smaller, more of a neighborhood feel than the Home Depot he had bought the shelf kit at this morning, and the door had a friendly bell that jingled as it opened. “Hello!” someone called from the counter, but Mikey dodged away without making eye contact. He found the fasteners aisle and breathed a deep, discouraged breath, looking out over the approximately 3,000 tiny blue plastic drawers that lined the aisle walls.
“Okay,” he muttered and pulled out a drawer at eye level. Too thick, with large square heads, like they were for outdoors or possibly a basement dungeon. Completely different than what was in his pocket. “Okay,” he repeated to himself, sighing through his nose.
He had moved to the middle of the aisle and tried a few more drawers at random (far too long, but they looked like they might be in the same family as what he needed) when someone found him.
“Can I help you?”
Mikey didn’t want help, he wanted everyone to leave him alone, even if it meant spending the rest of the afternoon in the screw aisle. Even so, he couldn’t stop himself from turning around. The guy standing at the end of the aisle was about the same age as Mikey and had glasses and this long-ish curly hair that, if Mikey was honest, made him look like kind of a dork. He had on the red apron-thing that all the clerks seemed to be wearing. But he was smiling, and didn’t seem as condescending as the grandpas were, so that was good.
“Well, so, um,” Mikey said, and held up the tiny screw on his palm.
“Right,” the guy said and took the screw from him, peering at it between his fingers. “Let’s see.” He scanned several of the nearby banks of drawers, stopped, then turned around to look on the other side of the aisle. “Honestly, this section is a mess,” he said. “We’re rearranging it, but it’s only like half done.”
“Really?” Mikey asked faintly, watching the guy trace over the rows of drawers and labels. “I figured it was just me.”
“No way. It’s impossible right now.” The guy’s voice was a little distracted as he read the labels and pulled out drawers. His concentration was endearing. “So,” he continued absently, still focused on the contents of the little drawers, “What are you doing? Something fun?”
“Um, it’s a shelf in the bathroom. My new house … it’s kind of a fixer upper.”
“That’s great,” the guy murmured cheerfully, as though a dilapidated house like Mikey’s could be something other than an albatross around someone’s neck. “Okay, here we go.” He pulled out a drawer and set it on the counter. He picked a screw out of the drawer and held it up next to Mikey’s screw. He turned to Mikey. “How many do you need?”
“One,” Mikey said. “Or, actually, make that two. It’s a kit, but, like … ”
The clerk laughed sympathetically. “It’s the worst when they don’t come with enough.”
Mikey was quite confident the kit originally had all its pieces, but when he pulled open the plastic packet of screws, the little short ones that were supposed to attach the bracket to the shelf board, it had exploded everywhere. He heard the metallic clicks as the screws hit the bathroom linoleum, and the long rolling and rattling sound as at least one disappeared into the floor vent. He could hear it rattling down the ductwork into the bowels of the basement.
“Yeah, no, it didn’t come with enough,” Mikey said, chuckling awkwardly along with the clerk. “How obnoxious.”
“Here.” The clerk wrote some stuff on a plastic bag, pressed the bag closed with the screws inside, and handed it to Mikey. “Do you need anything else?”
“Um,” said Mikey. “No. Not right now. Probably later, yes. But not right now.” He clutched the baggie in his hands, which were getting sweaty. The trip seemed to have been successful, and he wanted to get out of the store before anything changed that.
“I can get you up front,” the clerk said, and Mikey followed him up.
At the cash register, he blinked at the total on the register. 34 cents. “Huh,” Mikey said. “I guess I thought it would be more.” He felt his pockets. No change, of course. “Sorry,” he mumbled to the clerk. “I’m just … really useless at all this.” He scanned the nearby candy counter and hurriedly picked out a soda and three candy bars to put his purchase over the $5 card minimum.
“Hey, don’t panic,” the clerk said. “You’ll figure it out. And if you get stuck, whatever you get stuck with, look it up on YouTube.”
Mikey laughed, surprised by this reassurance. “YouTube. Okay.” He liked this guy. All the things he was saying were actually making Mikey feel better, not just about the shelf, but about everything.
“Well, thanks a lot for your help, um—” Mikey glanced at the clerk’s name tag, and then knew he would never read an employee’s name off his chest back to him.
“It’s Ray,” the clerk offered. “And you’re …?” he said tentatively. He looked at Mikey and pointedly not at the bank card still in his hand.
“Michael, but people call me Mikey.”
“Well, good luck with the project, Mikey. Come back if you need anything else.” Ray gave him an encouraging little smile. He held out the plastic bag with Mikey’s soda and candy bars and, presumably somewhere inside the plastic folds, the screws. Mikey smiled and reached across the counter to take it, feeling stupid and encouraged at the same time.
It had been 36 hours and the shelf in the bathroom hadn’t fallen down yet. That seemed positive.
Mikey cleaned the bathroom, really well, along with the bedroom, and put sheets on his bed and his toothbrush in a cup on the bathroom counter. That night, the double bed felt normal and adult, not like the pile of unmade blankets he had wormed under to sleep the night before—and also incredibly empty.
“Who cares,” Mikey said out loud to the empty room. He slapped his arm out on the empty bed next to him. Who cares, indeed.
The next day, he told himself, he would attempt the television. Then he’d be able to watch afternoon cartoons again. And maybe Bandit could come over.
After watching three YouTube videos on flat screen wall mounts and reading the instructions that came with the mount he had ordered online, Mikey understood he needed a stud finder. The drywall anchors had been okay in the bathroom—the only thing on the shelf right now was a tissue box—but to hold something heavy like a TV, the hardware had to be mounted in the studs. Which had to be located.
At the store, Ray was checking someone else out at the counter when Mikey walked in. Mikey lurked in the aisles near the counter and then hurried up once Ray was free.
“Mikey,” Ray called out, coming out from behind the counter. He straightened his red apron-thing. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, you know,” Mikey shrugged sheepishly. “I need more help.”
Mikey explained the television situation and then followed Ray to the aisle with stud finders, which apparently came in a dizzying array of choices. Ray pointed out some options, talking through what each kind did, and for a moment Mikey felt almost qualified to make a choice.
“How about … this.” He pointed toward one in the middle, a black and yellow one. It needed batteries, but it wasn’t any of that expensive, deep scanning business.
“Sure.” Ray pulled it down. “Something like this ought to be just fine for you. You just gotta be careful where you point it.” He matter-of-factly turned the package around so the flat side was pointed at Mikey’s chest and pantomimed the kind of swipe you would do against a wall. “You don’t want to mess up your readings.”
Mikey stared at him for a disbelieving second and then groaned. “That’s terrible,” he said, starting to laugh despite himself. “That’s, like, inexcusably bad.”
Ray giggled a high pitched giggle.
Hanging the TV mount was a little touch and go, even with the stud finder, and Mikey definitely put more holes than were necessary in the wall, double- and triple-checking where he would hit wood. And it was a good thing he did, too. He thought he had the edges of the stud were marked—like, how could the stud finder beep, but then there was nothing behind the wall? How did that work? The drill bit filled with white dust—only—for several holes before he actually saw sawdust. Whatever.
The TV hid everything that was going on on the wall behind it, once he got it up. And, like the bathroom shelf, it had also not fallen down yet, though Mikey was keeping a closer eye on it. It looked a little crooked no matter how often he tried to straighten it, and eventually he had to abandon it as good enough. Like, if he or Bandit or anyone was actually going to watch something on it, instead of evaluating it critically from the side, you probably wouldn’t even see that it was crooked. Probably.
On the next couple visits to the hardware store, Mikey brought carefully written-out lists of all the tiny bits and bobs that he needed. A plate for the bedroom outlet and a plate for the light switch in the kitchen (two switches), because those actually seemed like easy replacements and definitely came with their own matching screws. And then Mikey could stop looking at the broken ones. There was a whole section of floor trim missing in the dining room, but then Mikey found it in the garage, as though it had just been pulled off and never replaced. It was hard to figure out what the previous owners had been thinking.
He trailed Ray through the aisles as Ray helped him pick out all the tiny accoutrements he needed, which were usually tucked away in places that Mikey could have never found on his own. Ray always asked what Mikey was doing and offered some tips. Like getting a nail set for the trim. It was this thing like a metal pen with a thin nose that you would use to tap the thin little trim nails deeper into the trim surface.
Two days later, when he was back with another list, he showed the paper to Ray.
“What happened here?” Ray asked, pointing to the bandaid on Mikey’s index finger.
“Oh, um, the nail set.” Mikey said vaguely. “I got the hang of it eventually, but. Yeah. I definitely started out too hard. Like, way too hard.”
Ray outfitted him with the next wave of supplies and Mikey treated himself to a welcome mat, because he didn’t have one, and the store had this display of cheap green astroturf-looking plastic ones that had little plastic daisies in the corner. He pulled one from the stack. He thought Bandit might appreciate the daisy.
Later that week, he went to the store for spackle—for the trim nails, for the extra holes behind the television, for the ugly holes from picture hangers in the centers of the walls that the previous owners had just decided to leave. Mikey found himself standing in the correct aisle—he had somehow found it by himself, even though what he had really been looking for was Ray, at the front and down every aisle. But in the spackle and fill compound aisle, there were like fourteen choices. And they probably had some sort of meaningful differences between them. There was no way Mikey could decode the red and white containers until Ray was there.
“And what can I help you with?” someone said in a brisk monotone.
Mikey already knew it wasn’t Ray from the gruff-sounding voice. He turned toward the end of the aisle. It was one of the grandpas, short, balding, and cranky looking.
“Do you need to patch something?” The man scowled at the containers, then at Mikey. “If you’ve got drywall, these might work, but they aren’t going to give you the dry time you want. But it depends on the size of the patch. And obviously, if you’ve got lathe and plaster, it’s a whole different project.”
“Um?” Mikey said, peering at the man. It was all information he didn’t need or understand, and it made him feel incompetent anyway. “Is Ray here?”
“Ray?” the man snapped. “He’s off today.” Mikey felt himself wilting at the irritation in the man’s voice. “Are you sure you don’t need help with something?” the man prodded.
“Uh, no. Nope,” Mikey mumbled. “I don’t really need anything. I was just looking. At the spackle. You know.” Mikey waved a hand at the shelves and then ducked around the man and jetted toward the door.
Naturally, when Mikey went back, Ray was able to show him the right kind of spackle in like three minutes, although they stood around at the back of the aisle after that for another ten and exchanged escalating South Park references that culminated in Ray making some terrible joke about a good screw, which would have been even better (more terrible) if they’d been in the fastener aisle, even though they hadn’t been back there since that first day.
Meanwhile, things at the house honestly seemed to be getting better. Mikey was moving more and more of his stuff in, had bought some thrift store items (mostly unmatched end tables), and had given the entire place a really good cleaning, which was the thing that had probably improved it the most. The hardware store had a ton of cleaning supplies too, and Ray had recommended this green liquid cleaner that was all organic and non-toxic and stuff, and you could use on literally anything. Mikey had puzzled through the directions on diluting it correctly, and then used it on literally everything.
Things were looking so good that he had invited Gerard, Lindsey, and Bandit to come over for dinner that weekend. The day before they came, Mikey was on the front porch, taking the most serious look at the yard that he had thus far. There was a sprinkler system, he had seen the box in the garage, but he hadn’t been brave enough to turn it on. The realtor had mentioned there might be some issues and basically, Mikey wasn’t ready to know what they were. The lawn was dry and crackly.
He got the outdoor broom out of the garage and snorted to himself, realizing that he was now the kind of person who had an indoor and an outdoor broom. But the inside broom was new, and its plastic bristles were still bright green and white. He had bought it for himself the first day Ray showed him the cleaning section at the store, and he just wanted it to stay … nice. So he was going to sweep the steps with the outdoor broom, an orange thing, left in the garage by the previous owners, whose bristles were equal parts plastic, cobwebs, and dirt. When the steps were clean, he could put out the door mat with the flower.
His foot hit something behind him and he heard the splintering crack of breaking wood.
“Okay, hit me,” Ray said, when Mikey breathlessly found him in the garden section.
“So I have these concrete steps in front of the front door, with a wooden railing, and I’m having kind of a big problem. It’s the … um … spindles,” said Mikey, who had watched 52 minutes of YouTube videos on stair railing before coming to the store. “On the railing on the front steps, some of them are loose, like almost falling off, and it makes the whole railing wobbly. And also, I just broke one. Like, fully broke it. With my foot. Now there's just, like, this jagged end there.”
“Okay,” Ray said seriously, and Mikey could see his eyes focus somewhere in the distance as he visualized it. “So when you look at the actual spindles on the railing, the rest of them, how well attached are they to the handrail? Do you remember?” Ray asked.
“Well … they still are, but not really,” Mikey said with a grimace. “They’re all bad, like … I could pull them right off if I tried. Plus the one I already broke off.”
“And the big posts at the top and the bottom?” Ray asked him. “How are those?”
“The newel posts,” Mikey said, and flashed Ray a quick little smile. “I learned that. So—they seem okay. Like, not wobbly. It’s just those middle pieces that are all, like, rotting, or something. Really easily breakable.”
“Okay,” Ray said. “So, you learned about it. What do you think you need to do?”
“Um,” Mikey considered. “I think I need to get new spindles, for at least a couple of them. They ones right now, they’re … pretty done. But I looked online. They don’t seem expensive.”
“Good.” Ray nodded encouragingly. “They’re not. We have them. And?” he asked. He looked at Mikey expectantly, the way Lindsey looked at Bandit when she wanted to make sure Bandit had been listening to her.
Mikey looked back at him. “And what?”
“Okay.” Ray nodded again, but it was clear he was recalculating. “You’re gonna probably need a few other things. Screws, galvanized ones so they don’t rust outside. And a square bit for your drill, if you don’t have that, because all the deck screws will be square bit, probably. A level, of course, cuz you want to check if the spindles are plumb, but you probably have that. And probably some masonry adhesive, to be safe.”
“Um,” Mikey said, dejected. That was like four new things that he hadn’t planned on. “Yeah, I definitely don’t have a level.”
His demoralization must have showed on his face, because Ray laughed and slapped his shoulder. “You’re panicking. Listen, if you want, I could stop by your place and give you a hand this afternoon. You must live close, right? You always walk.”
“Oh,” Mikey said. He could feel his face flushing. “Um, no. I mean, you don’t have to do that.”
“No, seriously,” Ray said. “It wouldn’t be a problem. And it’s easier to do stuff like that with two sets of hands, especially if you want to make sure something’s plumb. And honestly,” he said with a little grin, “I’ve gotten kind of invested in how your house is turning out.”
“Um, okay. In that case,” Mikey said.
Mikey trailed after Ray to the different sections while Ray picked out items for the stair railing repairs and put them into Mikey’s basket.
“A good screwwwww,” Mikey breathed behind him as Ray perused the boxes of deck screws. Ray snorted.
Ray stopped them in the row of drill bits. “Here’s a countersink.” he said, pulling something off the wall.
“I don’t know what that is,” Mikey said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll show you.” He tossed it into Mikey’s basket.
“So when are you off?” Mikey asked him when they were at the counter.
“At four. I’ll stop by right after.”
“Okay.” Mikey couldn’t stop himself from smiling. He gave Ray directions, mostly by pointing out the front window and gesturing.
Mikey walked home, deposited the supplies in a heap in the driveway, and then got in his car, drove to the Safeway, and picked up a six-pack of beer. Just in case he had the opportunity to offer Ray something for his help. Just in case.
“Do you think he’ll be my friend?” Mikey remembered asking Gerard, sometime at the very beginning of elementary school. He was watching the boy he’d spent all recess playing with walk away from them, toward the busses.
“Maybe,” Gerard had said. “If you’re nice to him, and he’s nice to you.” And then, as it happened, he and the boy, whose name was Jamie, had been friends for most of elementary school. And when Mikey got to middle school, somehow it was over. He and Jamie weren’t friends anymore.
Things change, Mikey reflected. They don’t always last. And you didn’t always know when or why they would end, but they did anyway. And then, sometimes, you knew exactly why they didn’t last and the exact moment they ended, like he had known with Alicia. But you couldn’t know which it would be—sooner or later, mysterious or clear, a gradual disappearing or a sudden clean break. You didn’t know at the beginning, and there was no way you could know unless you tried.
Mikey found himself lurking inside the curtainless window—curtains were definitely what he needed to tackle next—craning his neck to watch each car that turned down his street, wondering if it would be Ray. An older Honda appeared and Mikey recognized Ray’s disheveled curls in silhouette.
He started out the door before he could stop himself and was waving to Ray from the top of the concrete steps. He could hear vibrating bass and wailing guitars from what must have been a fairly decent car stereo, muffled only slightly because the windows were rolled up. Ray pulled the Honda up to Mikey’s curb and the thumping music fell off as he parked. Mikey hopped down the steps to meet him at the gate in the chain link fence.
“Nice,” Mikey said, nodding at the car. “Your music.”
Ray grinned sheepishly. “Pantera.”
They made short work of replacing the spindles—it would have taken Mikey four times as long on his own. He learned to use the countersink to predrill the holes, hiding the screw heads completely. It was sort of impressive. Ray double-checked everything as they screwed each piece in with the level that he had on his keychain—of course he had a level on his keychain. And they didn’t even need the masonry adhesive.
“Keep it in your garage, though,” Ray said. “The next thing that’s probably going to happen here is those—” he nudged the at the bottom of the newel posts with his foot—”getting a little loose. And you can fix that right up with the adhesive.”
“So, you’re, like, my first guest here?” Mikey managed to say as Ray followed him to the kitchen to get the six pack out of the fridge, but the end of his sentence trailed up awkwardly like it was a question.
“Seriously?” Ray asked, grinning. “Well, you got it looking good.”
Mikey made a noncommittal noise. “I guess I was pretty freaked out by how it looked, at first. But fixing it up hasn’t been so bad. I mean, there’s other stuff I have to do, like, deal with the sprinkler system, but a lot of the other problems can wait. All the important stuff is working okay.”
They drank the beers out front, first leaning on the now-sturdy railing and then sitting on the steps, chatting idly, looking out over Mikey’s sad lawn, showing through with patches of bare dirt as the grass slowly gave up the fight for this season.
At that moment, Mikey thought, it didn’t seem so bad—like, not the actual worst thing in the world—to have this house and to be looking at fixing it up. He had a hardware store close by, and maybe Ray could be cajoled into being an extra set of hands on some other projects. Yes … he would definitely have to manufacture some ways to get Ray over here more.
“Do you like kids?” Mikey asked.
Ray raised his eyebrows. “Um, yeah. I have a bunch of nieces and nephews. They’re pretty fun.”
“I have this niece. She’s four. My brother lives pretty close, and I want to make sure she can, like, come over here and hang out. And have fun.”
Ray nodded, looking out over the yard. “Well, so, you have a backyard, too, right? You could put in a swing set. They have ones that aren’t too fancy, not that expensive. I did one for my older brother, his kids loved it.” He shrugged. “If you wanted, I could help you do something like that.”
“Mmm.” Mikey said, imagining it. Perfect.
“Yeah,” he said to Ray. “Yeah, that could be pretty cool.”