The Bathroom
Hindsight, Chapter 1, Part 2.
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January 2020.
The tile saw squealed and flung a beige stream of runoff across the garage floor. The blade ate into the faux-marble tile, closely following the line Juss had made for him. The ceramic sliver flew off the main body of the tile, and sludge splashed his goggles. That was why he was wearing them.
He turned with the tile in his hand, and saw Juss at the door to the kitchen, waiting for him with another marked tile.
“Last one,” she said.
“Really? Awesome.” He wanted to clean up and bring the car in before the freezing rain started in earnest, which would be any time now, according to the hourly forecast, and backed up by the radar map predictions of a few hours ago.
He took the last tile, and cut the section off. He stood waiting by the screen door waiting for Juss, not wanting to drip his dirt through the house, and not wanting to let too much cold air in. She was taking her time. Was there a problem? Had she measured badly? Would he have to do an extra tile? They still had plenty—they’d over-estimated their needs on purpose.
And then she came into view, and smiled at him as she crossed the long kitchen.
He held out the hopefully-last tile.
“Should be it, as long as it fits!” She winked and hurried away.
He just stood there and waited. For all the discussion they’d had about the bathroom, and whether or not they needed it, Juss had proved herself a dab hand at tiling. She had the eye for it: the eye of an artist. The gentle touch. The sense of scale.
She’d said, “There’s nothing wrong with the main bathroom we already have.” He understood that it wasn’t even really about the main bathroom, although there really wasn’t anything wrong with it, and they did already have it. He knew she was exhausted from the move, and from what had happened to cause the move, and she really didn’t want to have to deal with anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. She needed down time. She needed a hobby. She needed chickens.
And he had been like a dog with a bone. “We have a guest room. Wouldn’t it be nicer to let the guests have the main bathroom?”
“What about the one in the basement?” She was being contrary. They both knew it.
He’d said, “It wouldn’t be fair to make a guest go down there and use it. Seems inhospitable.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that. I was talking about US using it and letting the guests use the main bathroom exclusively.
He’d said, “You want to use that bathroom downstairs?”
“It just needs a good wash. What’s the big deal, for the length of time we’re likely to have a guest? I’d rather go downstairs to shower than go to a tonne of effort on an unnecessary reno.”
And finally she’d humoured him. And as much as she’d said it was an unnecessary luxury, she’d had some pertinent advice along the way. And he could tell she was pleased with her workmanship.
What the hell was taking so long?
And then she came into view. “All done!”
He nodded. They weren’t really done. They were done for the day. The tiles had to sit, the cement had to set, and then the grout had to go in the gaps, and then that had to set. They were still “some days of work” away from being finished.
But he quickly put the tile saw away, giving it a quick wipe, and promising it a proper clean another time.
He took off his outer clothes and just left them in a pile beside the door to the kitchen, and washed up in the laundry room sink as best he could. He put on his clothes from earlier, and grabbed his jacket.
The freezing rain hadn’t started yet. Maybe the forecast had changed after all. But he was still relieved to get the car inside. He was relieved to have a garage, too. And he was relieved to not have anywhere to go tomorrow.
*
After he’d showered he found a cup of tea waiting for him in the kitchen. “Thanks, hon!”
She looked up from her tablet when he walked in, and he sat beside her.
Glancing over, he could see she was on Kijiji. In the chicken section.
“Anything new?” he asked.
“A few. A black copper maran rooster in Thomasburg.” Her tone was grim.
“Is that good?”
“They’re beautiful birds, and the hens are good layers. But I keep hearing bad things about the roosters. I don’t want to start with a mean one, you know?”
“I concur. We should definitely start with a gentle breed.”
“The one in Tamworth is still available.”
“Oh, and what breed is he?”
“Silkie. White Silkie. Hold on.” She found the listing for him.
“Handsome fella. Bit of a punk thing going on.” The chicken’s forehead had a nut-like comb on it, and spiky white hair around it, like someone had run a gelled hand through it.
“He looks sweet, right?”
“Do we want to breed a Silkie rooster to a brown hen? What will happen?”
“I don’t know—that’s why we should do it!”
“Well don’t make any arrangements for a few days. It’s freezing rain tonight, and snow tomorrow, and we ought to get the bathroom done. One day next week maybe?”
“All right. I’ll let him know we’re interested, so he will at least tell me if someone else comes for him.”
He laughed.
“What? Tamworth’s not too far away. We can pop over one afternoon, no problem!”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What then?”
“I’m just happy that you’re excited by it all.”
She smiled, put the tablet to one side, and reached out her hand to him. They looked out on the grey gloom, and drank their tea.
They had been buffeted by outside forces for so long, it was hard for him to just sit and exist and watch the storm gather. This storm couldn’t harm them. Well, he supposed it could, but it was unlikely that the roof would blow off, or a tree would fall on a power line. Rain, freezing rain, sleet, or snow: it would come and it would go. They would weather it together, the calm centre of everything.
Later, Juss let go of his hand and reached for his cold, empty cup, and stood to take them to the kitchen. At the window, she stopped, and sighed.
He got up and wrapped his arms around her from behind. She leaned into him. They looked out over the barren landscape, warm in the living room, watching the wind rattle the naked tree branches.
“Did we make a mistake?” she asked. “Moving here?”
Will considered his words. He always did. Henry had accused him of being calculating, of trying to say the right thing, as if that was a conniving thing. Will simply thought about what he actually felt before he said it. Most of the time. Juss had loved this house as much as he had, more so. Juss had wanted to sell up in the city and move away, and he had counselled against it, for the sake of her relationship with her family. And yet he didn't want to hurt her feelings, or let it sound like he was blaming her. Instead, he looked at it a different way. “We moved here to get away from things, to find peace, to find serenity. Voila!”
She laughed. “Don't you feel ... isolated?”
He thought about the extra materials they’d brought for the reno, to avoid having to make a second trip into town. Meaning Bellville, where the nearest big-box stores were. In Toronto, they would have been only a couple of minutes away from resupplying if there was any shortage. “It’s a bit of an adjustment, sure. But it’s winter in Canada. Would you rather see the snow blow through the trees and over the hills, or between houses and cars parked along the street?”
“We’re forty minutes from the hospital.”
“I know. But we knew that before we signed the papers. Remember how frustrating it was to live two minutes from the hospital, never knowing if there was going to be a helicopter flying in with a patient at 3am? That isn’t going to happen here.”
“We were two minutes away from everything else too ....”
“Except the countryside. Remember the Sunday morning drives, and how your spirit soared when we got to see some green fields? And when we got closer to home, with the trunk full of apples, or berries, or something else from some isolated farm stand, how crushing it felt to see the sprawl, the steady growth of subdivisions, and the destruction of farmland and orchards? You remember what you used to say?”
She nodded. “We are a cancer upon the land.”
“And now we are the land. We’ll get our own berry bushes, and fruit trees. We’ll plant grapes, and corn, and now we have chickens. We can’t change the world, but we can make this little corner of it exactly how we want it.”
She nodded. “I don't need no stinking mall.” She laughed.
“That’s the spirit!”
“It just feels like it’s never going to get warm. I need some fresh air.”
“It’s only January. And it’s only a couple of degrees colder here, and that’s mainly because there’s no urban heat island effect out here. Maybe we should follow Eric’s advice and join the curling club?”
“I’m not stir crazy enough to hang out with curlers! Not yet, anyway! I just ... well ... you know.”
“I know, hon. Time heals all wounds, right?”
“That’s what they say. Maybe one day it’ll happen.”
“Remember how green it was when we first came to see the house. That's how it will be, all summer. If that doesn’t soothe our souls, I don’t know what will!”
*
The furnace room filled two thirds of the basement, the part under the living room and kitchen. The sauna-like bathroom was an enclosed area, and not nearly as glamorous as that sounded. Near the bathroom were all the water supply machines: the softener, the UV filter, the sediment filter. A bit further along the wall was the hot water tank. In the car corner was the electrical panel, which the realtor had pointed out was the most orderly he had ever seen.
And in the middle of the room was the furnace, which rattled you a bit when it came on if you were standing next to it. The noise wasn’t half as bad from upstairs.
The room had been a vast open space filled with possibilities when they’d first seen it. Now there was no place for a bar, or a games room: the space was filled with boxes.
They all had convenient labels, like WILL or KITCHEN or BOOKS or TRIMMINGS. But where was the one he was looking for?
The door to the rec room opened, and he looked up sheepishly at Juss.
She tilted her head slightly. “What are you up to?”
“Um ….” He was rumbled. “It was going to be a surprise. But you’ve caught me red-handed. And I can’t find the bastard thing anyway.”
“Which bastard thing is that?” She was hilarious when she put on that crisp, precise accent.
“The easel.” No point in him beating around the bush.
“Oh!” She came into the room. “Where have you looked already?”
“Feels like everywhere.”
She worked her way between the piles of boxes, reaching, peering, wondering out loud.
Then she said, “Isn’t it this one?”
He worked his way closer to her, and saw that she was right. Together they freed it from the boxes on top of it, and Will carried it upstairs.
There were three bedrooms. The master, the guest, and a third. The third one had been unofficially thought of as an art room. He intended to make that official right now.
There were unpacked boxes in there too, of course. Not quite enough room for an easel. But this was important.
She was there in the doorway, grinning, as he slid the easel out of its box.
It had been his gift to her some Christmasses back, but she’d never used it. So little time. So little opportunity. So little peace.
And here and now, so little room for it. But here it was, the easel in the art room. Even crowded by the clutter in the room, she beamed just looking at it, and came over to him.
“Thank you.”
“You don’t need to wait until summer for some soul-soothing after all.”
She looked around at the boxes. “Do you know which one has the paints in?”
He laughed. One thing always led to another.
Thanks for reading!
Continue reading with the next part on Sunday!
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