On the right side of us was another room, filled with paint cans, brushes and tools (hand tools as well as big, heavy power tools with lots of cords). The fireplace in that room looked grimy and as yet untouched but refinished, it’d be gorgeous. Beyond that room was an open doorway which led to a kitchen.
Hector’s hand at my back guided me down the steps and we stopped. He headed left, I heard the rustle of plastic and I turned to watch him.
He was uncovering a big, overstuffed armchair covered in midnight blue twill. Once uncovered, he dragged it into the empty but renovation implements room and positioned it in the center.
On the way back, he shrugged off his jacket and threw it on the banister. Then he came to me, walked around me, pulled off my trench, tagged my purse, threw my coat on his and hooked my purse straps around the newel post.
After doing all of this, he grabbed my hand, strode to the chair, sat and then tugged my hand again sharply until I went off-balance. His hands went to my waist and he guided my body until I was seated in his lap.
I didn’t protest any of this not because I didn’t want to but because I was coming to terms with the fact that, obviously, Hector was fixing up his own house.
This affected me deeply, for two reasons.
First, for as long as I could remember, my father had a personal groomer who came to the house every two weeks. She trimmed my father’s hair, gave him a clean shave and finished off with a manicure. My father’s fingernails were perfectly clipped and shone so brightly it was almost like he was wearing a coat of clear polish. As far as I knew, he never picked up anything but a fork, a pen, a book or a golf club in his life. Never a hammer or a paint brush. Never. He’d also never operated anything with a cord except, perhaps, his razor (though, I must admit, I’d not familiarized myself with his personal hygiene).
In fact, most every man of my acquaintance was much the same.
Second, because of the above, when I was seventeen or eighteen I had this stupid, silly, girlish, in the very, very back of my mind daydream that one day I’d find a real man. A man so unlike my father as to be his antithesis. A man who was strong enough to take me away from my horrible life living in my beautiful but cold ivory tower with bad people swarming around me like killer bees. We’d fall in love and he’d whisk me away, we’d buy some junker bungalow that we’d fix up, intermingling our renovation efforts with having and raising a plethora of children who we would spoil rotten and love to distraction. Often we’d cease our duties, laughing at each other, paint dabs on our cheeks and dust in our hair, while our children frolicked amongst our jumble of restoration paraphernalia.
A jumble that looked an awful lot in my head like the house I was sitting in at that very moment.
That dream died ages ago; in fact until just then, I’d forgotten I’d even had it.
“Sadie?” Hector called.
I gave my head a little shake and looked at him.
“What?”
“You looked miles away.”
I wasn’t miles away, I was right there.
In fact, my whole life, I never felt as right there as I did at that exact moment.
“Are you fixing up your house?” I couldn’t help but ask.
He looked around at the abundance of evidence of this very fact obviously scattered around us, his mouth twitched and his eyes came back to me.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said softly, not knowing what else to say but for some reason I could feel my heart beating in my throat.
One of his hands slid slowly up my back, the other arm came to rest across my lap.
“You okay?” he asked, his eyes doing a scan of my face.
No. No, I was not okay. It hit me that I didn’t even know what “okay” felt like. I’d never actually felt “okay”.
At that precise moment, however, what I felt like was asking Hector if I could paint his living room. And that, I figured, was probably seriously not okay.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Sadie,” he said softly.
I focused on him, noticed he was watching me closely and I wondered what he saw.
“What did you think of me when you first met me?” I asked before I could think better of it.