Kit
Monday night, tired from the weekend of unpacking and a long day of work, I’m alone in the house, eating takeout at my dining room table that’s still got a few unpacked boxes stacked on top. It sounds depressing, but for a girl who’s never had a place to call home, right now it feels perfect. I’m happily paging through my favorite issue of the city’s weekly alternative newspaper, which I’ve picked up religiously every Monday since I first moved here. This is the best issue, a once-a-year summary that details what locals have voted as their trusted favorites—everything from eyebrow threaders to heart surgeons. I have this dream—it’s ridiculous, really—that someday I’ll know enough about this place to call myself a longtime local. To be able to recommend my favorite burger joint or mechanic or dermatologist.
Right now, sitting in my historic house in the neighborhood I’d long ago picked out as my favorite, I feel one step closer. I’m a local somewhere! It feels so good that I laugh a little, the sound echoing in the still bare-walled house.
It’s the echo that motivates me to get to work on a little more unpacking. Zoe and Greer had been champions all weekend, helping me settle the most important rooms—the kitchen, my bedroom, the bathroom upstairs. But I’d put off the dining room, eager to work on this by myself. In here is one of my favorite features of the house, built-in china cabinets with arched glass doors on top, cabineted shelving below. Unlike the rest of the house, these look like they’ve been recently tended to—a fresh coat of white paint on each, the shelving sturdy and clean.
But as I unwrap a few of the cups and saucers and serving pieces I have, it becomes painfully clear that these are neither nice enough, nor copious enough, to fill out those shelves. It’s not as if I have family heirlooms for this house. Even if such things existed in my family, my dad would’ve hocked them long ago for money. It all looks a little sad in there, actually, and I’m hit with a stab of nagging doubt. You should’ve bought a condo. You don’t have anything to fill this place up with. You’re not any good at making a house a home.
It feels a little cold, a little lonely in here now. I wish I could call my brother. I think he might be the only one who could possibly understand how I’m feeling, the growing pains of settling somewhere permanent, but his last email said he’d be unreachable by phone for the next couple of weeks, a refrain he’s been using more often than usual in the last few months, ever since I first tried to talk to him about what I want to do with the rest of my winnings. It’s hard to think about Alex, about Alex avoiding me because of the lottery, a pebble in my shoe I can’t seem to get rid of.
The china cabinets I’d so admired look too stark now, too white. Plus, they’ve got these modern, stainless steel knobs for handles, an obvious replacement that doesn’t fit the aesthetic of the house, deadening all the historicity of those built-ins.
And it’s this—musing on my boring cabinet knobs—that makes me think of him. Of the package I received at work today.
Marti, our department secretary, had delivered it when I was taking a late lunch—basically, this means I was stuffing trail mix in my mouth while doing data entry at my desk. Marti is what Zoe calls my BFAW, my best friend at work, which is absolutely true, and probably was even when I was a grad student here. There was definitely a dearth of women in my department, but it wasn’t just shared chromosomes that drew me to Marti—she was hilarious and gave exactly zero shits about what people thought of her, and had no problem checking the egos of some of the more notorious faculty.
She’d come in, holding out a cushioned manila envelope to me, her eyebrows raised suspiciously. “Mail call. Some tall drink of water brought this to me, asked me to get it to you.” She makes the same sound she makes when she eats one of the Reese’s cups from the bowl I keep on my desk, a sort of mm, mmm, MMM! exclamation. “I got a hot flash looking at him, and he’s not even my type.”
Ben Tucker, I’d thought immediately, and I’d tried to look casual as I swiped the package from her. My name—at least the name I publish under, E.R. Averin—was printed across the front, but there’d been nothing else to indicate the sender. “Okay,” I’d said, setting it down on my desk, which was a mistake, because however well I’ve kept the secret about my lottery win from everyone I work with, I’m a soft touch when it comes to gossip of the relationship variety, and me not being curious about some hot guy hand-delivering me a package was very unusual behavior.
She’d crossed her arms and opened her mouth to speak, but I’d been saved by the bell, or, at least, by Dr. Harroway sticking his head in my office to tell Marti he’d broken the copier, again. The man does not understand why you can’t put staples through the feeder tray, I swear to God. She’d narrowed her eyes at me, snagged a Reese’s cup, and mouthed Later at me with what was, frankly, a disconcerting level of seriousness.
I’d waited until I was sure she was down the hall, then closed my door to open the package. Inside had been three brushed-brass file cabinet handles, exactly matching the two remaining I had on the lab cabinet, a business card, and a note:
These should fit your cabinet—Shaw Walker, 1959. The university used to order all their furniture from them.
I was the worst kind of incompetent on Friday, and I am sorry. Currently making my way through your very impressive backlist, Ms. Averin. You will not hear from me or anyone at Beaumont until I have a better, shall we say, “handle” on things.
With apologies,
Ben Tucker
Damn, I’d thought. Very good apology.
I’d put the handles on the cabinet before I’d left work, a little huffy, actually, that they’d fit so perfectly. But I’d tucked Ben’s note and business card into my jeans pocket.
I take it out again now, wondering how he found file cabinet handles from 1959. Okay, I might also be thinking a little about the way he’d looked standing in the doorway on Friday, his tall-drink-of-waterness, memorable enough that I’d thought of him quite a few times over the weekend.
His handwriting is bold, straight up-and-down, all capital letters, similar to a drafting hand. I trace the tip of my finger over where he’s written my name—Ms. Averin. If Ben Tucker could find old file cabinet handles, maybe he can tell me where to find old china cabinet knobs. And also I should thank him. That seems like the right thing.
I tap the edge of his business card against the note. I’m definitely making an excuse to call him—but suddenly it’s so quiet in here. I swipe my phone off the table before I can think better of it. As soon as it starts ringing, I want to hang up, but then remember that a great crucible of modern technology is widely available caller ID. Have to go for broke, then.
“Ben Tucker,” he says when he answers, his voice a deep rumble. It seems to scrape me in the same place it had last week, right at the base of my spine.
“Hi,” I say, and immediately slam my eyes shut. Hi sounds silly, too informal. I clear my throat and try again. “Hello. This is Ekaterina Averin.”
There’s a pause on the other end, a little longer than is comfortable for a phone conversation. I think about clarifying, maybe explaining that we’d met on Friday, though if I have to do that, this guy’s more incompetent than he’d let on—and frankly, he’d let on a lot. But then he says, “Ekaterina,” a little slowly—but he’s pronounced it exactly as I do, and I’m grateful for that. Mostly people ignore the first part, the quick, breathy Eh, and go straight to Katerina. “Beautiful name,” he says.
“People mostly call me Kit,” I say. “Fewer syllables.”
“Okay. Kit, then. But I don’t mind the syllables.”
“I wanted to call and say thanks for the handles you sent. They were perfect.”
“Great,” he says, but he sounds—I don’t know. A little distracted, maybe? That’s annoying—you’d think after everything he’d want to make a better impression. “I’m so sorry,” he says, and I think he’s about to redo the whole apology again. “Can you just—can you hang on one second? Please.” It’s the please that gets me. It sounds how the word is meant to sound—a real plea for something.
“Sure,” I say, and expect him to click over to another call. But I hear the phone being set down, the rustling of clothes, another man’s deep voice. And I can hear Ben when he says, “Come on, Dad. You need to take one of these tonight.” The other man—Ben’s dad—grumbles back, and right when I think maybe I should set my own phone down, maybe I’m hearing something I shouldn’t, there’s another rustle and the phone is muted. I’m both relieved and disappointed.
It’s another minute before he comes back on. “I’m sorry,” he says again.
“That’s all right—I could call at another time. I didn’t realize you’d be busy. Well, that’s silly, I should’ve realized that, it’s eight o’clock. It’s not like you don’t have a life.” I clamp my mouth shut. Too much. I’m a terrible phone talker.
He chuckles. “I don’t have much of one right now. My dad had an accident recently, and he’s a bit of a challenge to—you know. Manage.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling like the worst for calling. About freaking file cabinet handles. “I’m so sorry to hear that. I can let you go.”
“No, no—it’s all right. He’s okay. He had a fall last week, needed a couple of surgeries. But he’s okay,” he repeats this part a little forcefully, convincing himself, maybe. “I’m in town to help out for a while.”
It’s my turn to pause, to draw it out. “And to recruit me?”
“Recruiting you is something that came up more recently. Listen, Kit, on Friday—”
“I got your package. And your note. I appreciate the apology.”
“Right, okay. Good.”
“I’m actually calling about the handles you sent. About how you found them.”
He laughs, but I’m not in on the joke, so I stay quiet. “Well. One of the things I’m helping out with while I’m here is my dad’s business. He owns a salvage yard on the south side. Tucker’s Salvage.”
I’ve heard of it—in fact, I’m pretty sure Tucker’s Salvage is in that local favorites paper I just looked through, but I’ve never been. “And you guys have old cabinet handles?”
“We have everything. We do architectural salvage, so we’ve got everything from old building materials to antique furniture and light fixtures. Some stuff we restore, some stuff we sell off as is, some stuff we have parts for. Like your cabinet there.”
Well, damn if an architectural salvage yard doesn’t sound like just the place for someone who’s recently bought an old wreck of a house. “Aha. And—can anyone come by? To have a look at what you have there?”
“You have a need for salvaged parts?”
“I do,” I say, and my voice sounds a little petulant, a little defensive. What business is it of his, what I need? Maybe I’ll try to go at a time when he’s not around. He can’t possibly be there all the time.
“I’m there open to close pretty much all this week, and would be happy to show you around.”
Shit. “Oh. That’s very nice of you, but I don’t think it’d be right—”
“No expectations. I won’t say a word about Beaumont to you, not unless you ask me.”
I lean down and touch the plain, boring handle that’s currently keeping place on my beautiful, original, built-in china cabinet. I know there’s probably antique handles and doorknobs online, but I’m a materials scientist. It matters to me to hold things, to touch them, to feel their weight. I’d rather see this stuff in person before I buy it. “I guess I could come by,” I say, but then quickly add, “I’m really busy though. I could come on my lunch hour, maybe on Thursday.”
“I’ll make time,” he says firmly.
Once we’ve settled the details—when I’ll be there, where to find him once I come in—there’s really nothing more to say, but I feel a strange reluctance to hang up. It was nice, for a few minutes, to have his voice in my ear. It seemed to dull the echo I was feeling in the house before I called.
But that’s ridiculous, completely ridiculous and needy, and also inappropriate given that what I’m most interested in from Ben Tucker is for him to leave me alone about his stupid job offer. And that I get to look at his doorknobs, or whatever. So I say, maybe a little more abruptly than is natural, “Thank you very much. See you Thursday,” and disconnect.
I open the music app on my phone and turn the volume up loud. Then I get back to the job of making this place a home.
* * * *
When I drive up to Tucker’s Salvage on Thursday, I’m resolved to make it a short visit, frustrated that I’ve spent too much time since Monday feeling flushed and fluttery whenever I’d thought of Ben, at one point seriously considering asking Marti whether I might be having hot flashes. Plus, I feel a little disloyal—is going to see Ben a suggestion that I’m open to his recruiting? The thought has plagued me, and I’ve not even told Zoe and Greer about this visit, so determined am I to make this outing a mere formality. I’ve come a little early, having wrapped up my morning work, and I figure that I’m fulfilling another task. I said I’d be here, and I am, and I’ll make it quick.
But when you take one step inside Tucker’s, you get the sense that there’s no way to make it quick. The building itself is probably the size of a football field, and the space that greets me is sort of a large anteroom—there’s an L-shaped set of glass cases, the kind you’d see in a jewelry store, behind which is what looks to be an office. All around me are large, gorgeous pieces of refinished furniture, set out to create aisles and alcoves within this large room. Above me hang pendant lights and chandeliers of all types, some of them casting prisms of light on the concrete floors and along the walls. Along one wall—top to bottom—are shelves lined with labeled bins, the sign above indicating that this is where you search for Hardware.
I look down at the crystal doorknob I’m carrying, the one I brought from my upstairs bathroom. I’m supposed to find a match for it in there?
It’d take at least a full day to get through this front room alone, and I can see beyond that the warehouse is full up, and I feel simultaneously overwhelmed and intrigued. I want to look around, to explore this place that’s probably full of treasures, but I don’t much feel like doing it around Ben Tucker. I don’t think I should betray that kind of enthusiasm in front of him.
“First time here?” comes a voice from behind me, and I jump, almost dropping the doorknob. When I turn around, I find myself—well, not face to face, yet, until I look down—with a man in a wheelchair, his left leg extended and elevated, his left arm held close to his body in a sling. He has graying hair and kind, blue eyes, and I know right away that this is Ben Tucker’s father. I’ve thought of Ben’s face that much since last week, which is probably not a good sign.
“Oh, hello. Yes,” I say, “It’s my first time here. It’s—ah. It’s big.”
The man chuckles, uses his right hand to move the lever that propels his chair forward, and then extends it to shake mine. “I’m Henry Tucker. This is my place.”
“I’m Kit. This is wonderful,” I tell him, shaking his hand and looking around again. “I had no idea this was here. I came to look for—”
He cuts me off before I can finish. “For my son? You’re the one he’s been telling me about this week.” He smiles up at me, a teasing glint in his eye. “Says you’re smart, and also immune to his bullshit.”
“Oh. Well. I suppose I am,” I say, feeling a little proud of myself under Henry Tucker’s regard. “I’m sorry about your accident,” I blurt, and then feel awkward for doing so. I mean, the wheelchair and casts don’t make it any kind of secret, but maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it.
He shrugs the best he can, given the sling. “These things happen. It’s just that when you get old, they happen and you’re probably going to break something. You ever break a bone?”
“No,” I say. “I’m a pretty risk-averse person. My brother used to make me wear a bike helmet when I played kickball as a kid.”
That makes him laugh, and once again, I feel that weird surge of pride. It probably feels good to laugh when you’ve been laid up, and I’m glad to be the one who’s done it.
“Dad?”
That’s Ben’s voice, echoing from somewhere in the depths of this giant building, and I feel a spike of nervous energy. There’s a thunk thunk thunk, heavy steps sounding on a metal staircase, but from where I stand, I can’t see it. I didn’t even realize there was a second floor in here. I immediately raise a hand up to my hair, smoothing it, and then I straighten my glasses. I completely fail at not blushing when I realize that Henry Tucker has caught me primping, but I clear my throat and give him a side-eye that’s meant to communicate something like don’t make any assumptions, mister. But probably it does not communicate that. Probably it looks like I have lint in my eye.
Ben strides in from somewhere deep in the recesses of the warehouse, and—wow. He looks different. The Ben I saw last Friday was the kind of handsome that made you do a double take, a lean, polished, practiced look that reminded you of high rises and fast cars and dimly lit restaurants. But this Ben—this is the kind of handsome that gets you right in the stomach, that makes your knees feel weak. His dark blond hair is messy, a slight curl at the ends, his face more tanned than it had been when I’d seen him last week, his square jawline shadowed with stubble. His gray t-shirt bears a strip of paint across his right pectoral, which—damn. The man has a chest. And shoulders. You could see it the suit, sure, but in the t-shirt, you could see it. I picture, for a flash, my hands spread across that chest.
“Hi,” he says, and oh, that smile. Like he’s genuinely glad to see me. “I see you’ve met my dad. Who is not supposed to be at work this week.” Ben gives a scolding look down at his father, who waves an annoyed hand in Ben’s direction.
“I’m renting this baby for sixty bucks a day just so’s I can be right here where I can see you, kid,” says Henry, tapping the chair with his good hand. “So you don’t go selling any of my treasures on the cheap. Again.”
“Dad, that was a good sale. You weren’t going to get two grand.”
“I could’ve got twenty-five hundred! This sideboard,” he says to me, as if we’ve known each other forever, as if I’m part of these conversations all the time, “you should’ve seen it. Mid-century modern, teak. Almost perfect condition—”
“One of the legs was missing!” Ben exclaims.
“It was a small fix! I could’ve fixed that myself, you know. If you had any sense, you could’ve fixed it.” He grumbles this last part, and Ben rolls his eyes.
I am enjoying myself immensely.
But then Ben turns his attention on me, and I drop the smile I now realize I’d had plastered to my face as I watched their exchange. “Sorry about this. We’re—you know. Adjusting to all this time we spend together.”
“That’s all right,” I say. “I get it.” But I don’t get it. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve spent any extended length of time with my own father. Mostly it was only me and Alex, and I never got sick of him. Now I feel uncomfortable—I’m the awkward plus-one in this comfortable family moment.
“Dad, how about you go back to the office and keep working through those receipts?”
“Oh, I see. You’re giving me tasks to placate me. Or else you’re trying to be alone here with this lovely lady. This reminds me of the time you were in ninth grade and had that redhead come here after school.”
“Jesus, Dad. You are the worst.”
I laugh, in spite of myself, and then put a hand over my mouth. Ben getting knocked down a peg—by someone who so clearly loves him, where the feeling is still light and jovial—makes me feel a little less nervous here in this big space, in his space. Henry winks at me and rolls away, the mechanized sound of the chair fading as he maneuvers himself around the glass cases toward a back room.
Then it’s just me and Ben, and he looks down at the floor and runs a big hand through his hair, shaking his head. “You’re early,” he says.
“Um, sorry?” I say, but I don’t really mean it.
“I wanted—I was going to be down here to greet you. My dad, he’s—he can be a lot.”
“He’s great. He makes a good first impression.”
Ben’s answering smile is crooked, sheepish. I like it so much that I can’t help but smile back.
“So,” he says, taking a cautious step toward me. “Hardware.”
He leads me back toward the wall of bins, steps away to pull over a ladder on wheels, the kind you see in one of those big-box hardware stores. “Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re looking for?”
“Well,” I say, twirling the crystal doorknob in my hand, “Now that I see how big this place is, I guess I’m looking for a lot. Doorknobs, cabinet handles, switch plates, that kind of thing…to start.”
“To start?”
“I’m hoping to find things that are, well, if not completely consistent with, then at least adjacent to the time when the house was built.” I twirl the doorknob in my hand again, welcoming its weight, and clear my throat. “I bought a house. Very recently.”
He gives me a long look, and I imagine this is not welcome news for him, given his recruiting goals. It’s probably much easier to recruit someone who hasn’t just purchased a home in an area you’re trying to get them to move away from. I expect, maybe, that he’ll be less helpful now, because let’s face it, I’m sure part of the reason he’s had me come out here, despite his promise not to talk about Beaumont, is to show me that he’s worth listening to.
“Congratulations.” He extends a hand toward me, palm up, and I have this odd moment of confusion, wondering if I’m supposed to shake it, and then he says, “Maybe you could let me have a look at that.”
Right. I hand him the doorknob, watch him as he turns it over in his hands, furrowing his brow in concentration. “This is Russell and Erwin,” he says, as though I’m supposed to know what that is. “Do you have other pieces like this in the house?”
“Some. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge, honestly—there’s things like this, and then some, you know, really cheap replacements here and there.”
“When was the house built?” He’s pushing the ladder down the wall a bit, climbing on the first step to look down at me before going any farther.
“1870. It’s a row house, Queen Anne style.”
He nods, and I can see his mind working. “This is probably original,” he says, climbing up the ladder and reaching toward one of the uppermost bins. I see a flash of his taut stomach and avert my eyes. Reluctantly.
When he comes down, he’s holding a bubble-wrapped package, and he sits on one of the lower steps of the ladder so that now I’m looking down at him as he unwraps it. He holds it out to me, an exact match for the doorknob I brought in. Those eyes. “Wow,” I say, and am mostly referring to the doorknob.
“I’ve got a lot more up there. These show up a lot, probably from houses in the area built around the same time as yours.”
“That’s—that’s great. I didn’t really count, though, before I came in. And there’s all the other stuff I should look for too. I should’ve made a list, I guess.” But I thought I was coming here as a formality, I don’t add.
“Well, we could start by checking out some of the things that match the style of the house. My dad organizes things mostly by period, so that shouldn’t be too hard. And Russell and Erwin did all kinds of hardware, so we could start by looking there…”
And he’s off, moving down the wall with his ladder, pulling out bin after bin to set on the floor, and I should say that this is all too much trouble, that I can’t stay long, that I’ll have to come back another time. But it’s easy to get pulled into this orbit, and before I know it, I’m kneeling down on the hard concrete floor, carefully unwrapping filigreed switch plates that Ben says were manufactured right around the same time as the doorknob, and would I also want to look at some hinges? Hinges? I think. Hinges sound awesome, as long as you’re still within smelling distance, because frankly, you smell amazing.
It’s like this for a few minutes, Ben crouched next to me, occasionally bringing me another bin, and I feel a giddy sense of excitement about the possibilities of this place, about what I could find here for my house. At one point, I unwrap a hinge—a hinge, who knew?—that features a delicately carved leaf pattern, and in my surprise at the work put into something so largely unseen, I say, “Look at this,” and hold it out to Ben.
There’s this moment where our eyes lock, and we’re both smiling, sitting here like we’re two kids who found a buried treasure, and I forget all about Ben being such an idiot last week.
And then the yelling starts.