"Your house looks really good." Olivia laughed, a real one, full and warm, the kind that changed her entire face. "Thank you, Ava. My dad is good at fixing things, Ava said with the air of someone presenting a sales pitch she had carefully prepared. He fixed our dishwasher and the porch step and once he fixed a car engine with a paperclip, but he says I'm not supposed to tell people that because it sounds made up. Ava Marcus said it was a metaphor, Dad.
It was an exaggeration. Same thing. Olivia was trying not to laugh and losing. She looked at Marcus with bright eyes and said very carefully in a voice pitched low enough that it was just for him. She's something else.
Every single day, he said. And the way he said it, exhausted and adoring and completely helpless against it, made Olivia smile in a way that stayed on her face long after Ava had scrambled back down from the fence and gone inside. They finished the second coat by noon. Olivia stood back and looked at the wall with her arms crossed and one hand up touching her chin. The way a person looks at something they care about.
It's better than the original, she said. The original was your work. And now it's yours, too. He didn't know what to say to that, so he started cleaning the brushes. Behind him, he heard her moving, heard the familiar sounds of someone packing up supplies, and then he heard her say quietly, almost to herself, "Thank you, Marcus." Not for the wall.
He knew that without her saying it. He turned around. Don't thank me yet. Wait until you've seen it in morning light. Sometimes fresh paint looks different when the sun hits it.
She looked at him with those eyes. Is that your professional opinion? That's my father's professional opinion. He said, "Never judge a paint job until it's had a whole night to breathe." She tilted her head. Your father sounds like a smart man.
He was a pause. He passed six years ago. Heart attack. He shook his head slightly. Never went to a doctor voluntarily in his life.
Said doctors were for people who'd given up. Olivia made a sound that was half laugh, half something sadder. My mother said the same thing right up until she couldn't hide it anymore. They were standing three feet apart in the narrow sideyard, and the space between them felt charged with the particular electricity of two people who have been telling each other hard true things and are now suddenly aware of exactly how close they're standing. Marcus picked up the drop cloth.
"I should get home," he said. Ava has homework on a Saturday. She forgot to mention it until this morning, which she does every week without fail. Olivia folded her arms over her chest, leaning slightly against the wall, and there was something in her posture relaxed, open a quality of ease she hadn't had that first morning that caught in his chest. Same time next weekend, she asked.