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Chad

Elaine Barnard

    I was drilling. The wall was concrete. And then it happened. Whoosh. Water spurted through the wall and into Mrs. Grouse’s house, all over her pristine white carpet. “What the hell did you do?” my father yelled when he saw the mess, a mixture of water, concrete, and dirt on her bedroom floor.
    “How was I to know concrete holds water?” I yelled back. Yelling seemed to be our only means of communicating. I think my father yelled at me the day I was born. Maybe it was for joy. But I’m not so sure. My father loves yelling. He thinks it gives him some power over our circumstance which isn’t so great since the Pandemic. We’re a plumbing and heating company. That is, my father owns a plumbing and heating company. I’m hired when nobody else wants the job, sort of a grunt you might say. Standing on a ladder all masked up facing a concrete wall is not anyone’s dream job, particularly not mine. I’m only here because my father yelled, “Get your stupid ass over here. Now!”
    I was home with Mom helping her make Christmas cookies, the one thing she enjoyed doing during the holidays. We were making snowballs. The recipe calls for a lot of butter and sugar. You have to cream it, something Mom found difficult with her arthritic hands. I told her I’d help out. School was virtual these days. I could catch up on my studies later. Besides, I liked being with her. She was a kind of refuge, always warm and encouraging. She helped me believe in myself, my dreams of college and beyond, still kind of fuzzy but Mom said I’d map it all out in time.
    “Now!” my father yelled into the phone once more when I didn’t show up in his calculated time.

    “What were you doing?” he shouted over the hammers and drills when I finally arrived. We were installing this three-duct cooling and heating system in Mrs. Grouse’s home. Why she wanted it I’ll never understand. It was expensive and she was ninety years old. How many years could she possibly use it? If I had all that money, I’d take a trip around the world twice. You can’t see the whole world in one circumnavigation even if Magellan thought he could.
    It was the end of the day when the spurting happened, late afternoon in a Southern Cal winter. It was getting dark when I drilled, when I made that fatal error which my father will never forget. “You should have known concrete holds water,” he said. “Don’t they teach you anything in that chemistry class you think’s so great?”
    I knew enough not to answer. Just stood there, drill in hand, waiting for his blood pressure to normalize. If he had a stroke I’d be blamed for sure.
    The old lady was obviously unsettled. She didn’t cry but nearly. She kept wiping her nose instead, staring at the stains on her once white carpet.
    “Chad will clean it,” my father said trying to console her.
    “Is he a professional?”
    “He’s done a few jobs for me,” my father lied. The truth being I had no idea how to deep clean a carpet. The only thing I’d ever done was run the vacuum for Mom when she was feeling weak which happened frequently these days. Her doctors couldn’t figure it out and my father wouldn’t believe anything, but a touch of arthritis was wrong with her.
    So, there we were, the shadows closing in and the light dimming which made the stains look even worse.
    “I want a professional cleaner,” the lady demanded, not some kid who should be in school.”
    Oh, Chad just graduated,” my father lied again. He knew what a professional cleaner cost.
    The old lady scanned me suspiciously. I was hoping she wouldn’t ask for a driver’s license. “All right,” she finally conceded, “but if those stains don’t come out, you’re replacing the entire carpet. My husband is a lawyer you might recall.”
    “Understood,” my father nodded. “He’ll be here bright and early.”
    “Dad” I murmured on the way home, “I can’t be there tomorrow. I have my SATs.”
    “I thought they were virtual. Take them another time. You got us into this mess, now get us out. You won’t need all that college stuff, anyway. You’re working for me.”
    I felt my stomach cramp. Sweat trickled down my forehead, my neck, soaking my shirt. I wanted to punch some sense into him, some understanding of what I wanted out of life. Instead, when he stopped for a red light, I jumped from the car and vomited on the side of the road. My father did not come back for me.

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