Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [192]
“Hello.”
“You’ve got to come over. You’re missing all the prefight footage, man. This is going to be a fight.”
“I’ve been here fourteen hours, Pop, and I’m still not done. I just don’t think I can make this one.”
“You’re going to regret it.”
“I know.”
“You see De La Hoya? Man, he looks in great shape.”
I imagined Pop in front of the TV in his wheelchair, watching the hype I too loved to watch. I told him maybe I’d make it over if he stopped interrupting my damn work.
“Good,” he said, and we hung up.
Thirty seconds later the phone rang again. I had just knelt at the wet saw and flicked it on. I left the blade whirring and picked up Suzanne’s phone.
“They’re saying this could be one of the great fights. You’re going to regret it if you don’t come over.”
“Pop, let me work and maybe, maybe, I can come over.”
He said more things about what he was watching. The blade kept spinning. The mortar was hardening in its bucket in front of Suzanne’s open oven.
“Pop, stop calling.”
He laughed, and we hung up again and in the next twenty minutes he called two more times. If I hadn’t been so tired, this might have been funny. Each conversation went the same way and ended the same way, Pop excited and intent, nearly urgent in his request for me to come over, me tired and cranky and barely able to hold a respectful tone.
After he called a fifth time, I hung up but kept my hand on the receiver. My lungs were raw and the overhead light was too bright and my ears were ringing slightly. Suzanne’s kitchen was almost warm now from the oven, and the air had the wet-stone scent of drying mortar, the damp cotton of my sweatshirt, the broken bone of cut porcelain. I hadn’t seen Fontaine or the kids all day and night, and soon I’d be thousands of miles away from them and gone for days, but Pop had used the same word each time he’d called. Standing alone in Suzanne’s quiet house I could hear his voice saying in my ear: You’re going to regret it if you don’t come. I think you’ll regret it, son.
I walked over to the oven. I shut the door and turned off the heat. I stepped into the cold bathroom, glanced at the section of subfloor I’d yet to cover, and switched off the light. In the front room where my wet saw was set up, I unplugged it and the halogen lamp and left my hand tools where they were. Normally, I’d clean up the site; I’d empty the wet saw tray and wipe down the motor, blade, and frame; I’d roll up cords and dump the tile debris into a barrel and sweep the floor and put away my tools. I sure wouldn’t leave wet mortar in a bucket where it would dry and harden and have to be tossed. I wouldn’t leave a floor undone that I’d promised my grouter and plumber would be ready. But I did. I turned off the kitchen light and locked the door and left everything just the way it was. Then I drove to my father’s house.
HE GREETED me at the door smiling in his wheelchair. He was wearing charcoal sweatpants and a black jersey made from some kind of shiny material not unlike satin. This was something Jeb and I would tease him about, that he liked to wear soft clothes and sleep in satin sheets.
He reached up and hugged me and slapped my back. “I have one beer. You want it?”
I did. I cracked it open and followed him in his wheelchair down the short ramp into his living room. He positioned himself in front of the flickering TV. The volume was low, and two boxing commentators in tuxedos were speaking earnestly into the camera. I sat on the couch in my work clothes, still damp from the porcelain mist, and I took a long drink from my beer and was glad I had come; Suzanne’s bathroom would just have to wait till I got back. In the morning I’d make some calls before I left for the airport.
Pop said, “Who’s going to win this?”
“De La Hoya.”
“I think so too.