Need a little escape today?
I’ve got something for you. It’s a piece of flash fiction I wrote in 2014 called Walls. (It won an award back then and got published too. Fun times.)
Disclaimer: if you’re looking for something rainbowy and unicornish to read, this isn’t it. (But maybe it gives you hope for your next home renovation.)
*****
In many ways, it made perfect sense to tear out the walls down to the studs. Beatrice needed the change, the newness. Even the old drywall reminded her of Hank. Was renovating a bathroom such a big deal? For years, he’d said so. She remembered the last time she’d asked.
“Don’t have the money right now,” he said, a sneer playing on his lip.
“But I’ve put away a little.” Beatrice pulled a wad of cash from her bathrobe pocket. What she meant was enough.
He peered at her through narrowed eyes, his mouth hard. “Where’d you get that?”
“Some from the rummage sale a couple years ago. Some from gifts. My birthday, Christmas, you know.”
“You been keeping that when the door needed fixing? And my truck got that ding?” He extended a hand. “I’ll take that.”
Her smile slid off, and she dropped the roll of cash into his palm.
He counted out the bills, keeping the number to himself.
“What about the bathroom?” she said, her tone set to neutral.
He snorted. “What about the bathroom?”
After thirty-five years of marriage, she was used to his sarcasm. It didn’t slice into her anymore, but his mimicry still shredded her. She turned away, hot tears breaking free. She clenched her teeth.
That was the last time she’d asked about the bathroom. And only four months before he was gone.
Now she watched the handyman. Dust thickened the air as the man hacked through the walls. Hank’s walls. Now hers.
Hank. She recalled the day of his funeral.
“Did you know he had heart problems?” her friend asked, flanking her near the casket.
“Most of the men in his family went that way,” Beatrice said. “He never got checked.”
“Well, I’m sorry. So sudden.”
She squinted at his waxy face. “I know.”
Well-wishers told her what a guy he was—how solid, how predictable. She nodded and accepted all the hugs paid out to her.
Her grown daughter stared at Hank’s body. “Mom. He never wore a suit in real life. Why now?” Krista had her dad’s way, his eyes.
“They just do that. It’s an expectation.”
“Well, it’s stupid. This looks nothing like him.”
Beatrice gave her girl a half-hug, and more people pressed in around her.
“He sure had a way about him. That sense of humor,” a friend of Hank’s said, shaking his head.
Beatrice frowned. Sense of humor? Hank breathed earth’s air just last week, and she couldn’t remember.
She couldn’t remember him.
In the sanctuary, the pastor talked about life, about being reunited with Hank one day. Beatrice wondered...
When the service ended, six of Hank’s buddies carried his body away. Her gaze trailed after the coffin.
There he goes.
As people filed out, she abandoned her pew and walked into the room where the refreshments would be served. Ham on buns, potato salad, pickles, cake. Hank’s favorites. She made her way into the church’s kitchen, tied on an apron, and busied herself filling the platters.
“What are you doing back here, honey?” a woman asked.
“Serving,” Beatrice said.
“Not today. You sit down. But take some food first.”
She straightened the edge of the first layer of buns. “But I’m on the schedule.”
“Not at your own husband’s funeral.”
Beatrice took off the apron and hung it up again. Now what?
The evening of the funeral, emptiness warmed the house. Krista had bolted after the burial. Beatrice understood. She wanted to be alone too, so she refused her friends’ offers to stay with her.
She walked from room to room and inhaled the quiet, the peace. When she reached the bathroom, she sat on the closed toilet lid and stared at the faded blue wall—imagined it gone. The red tape had been pulled away, the shackles unclasped.
Beatrice waited out the weekend and on Monday morning made the call. “I’d like to have my bathroom renovated.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your husband’s passing,” the man on the other end of the line said. “We read about it in the paper and—”
She strode to the bathroom and peeled back the shower curtain for another look. “Could you come this week and do it?”
“We do an estimate first. That’s how it works. But we could take care of it this week. Least we can do.”
“Okay. Any day is fine.”
Beatrice figured she had enough credit on one card to cover it.
Now excitement bubbled through her as she watched the demolition. The crumbling walls.
“What on earth?” The handyman stopped and squatted, zeroing in on one area of the rubble.
“What?” Beatrice edged closer. Through the dust, she eyed bundles—many bundles—of something.
He turned toward her, clutching dusty handfuls of green bills held together by rubber bands. “And there’s more.”
Among the stacks once hidden in the wall, Beatrice spied a single roll of cash—her cash—and the hole that led into Hank’s closet.
She swallowed, her eyes wide. It was never about the money.
Only about the walls.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.