It got so bad that they took shifts in the kitchen so they wouldn’t have to see each other. He was out of work and Barb was out of her mind, first with the sourdough bread baking, then with the chocolate tempering, and now quilting. There were four quilts spread out in various states of unrest over their 900 square feet of house. They weren’t going to make it, he concluded. Thirty-seven years of marriage and it wasn’t death that would part them, it was quilting.
He needed to power-wash something.
The sidewalk ran between the house and the gate. The cinder block sat at the gate end, where the cement widened into a kind of threshold. He used it to hold the door open for repairmen. When they could afford repairmen. He started there, at the block, but didn’t move it. Barb was always telling him to move it. But the exterior was his domain. So he left it sitting on the sidewalk and washed around it out of spite. And the spite and anger were a comfort. And the spot of old blood on the corner of the block was a comfort, too, in a strange way. Their son had stubbed his toe on it, ripped the nail clean off. It was during the brief month their son had been sober. By the time he noticed the stain, the month had passed and it had permeated the pores of the concrete.
When he was good and ready, he pushed the cinder block aside. He liked the rough scraping sound it made. He expected there to be collected dirt underneath, pill bugs maybe. But he didn’t notice that. He saw a circle of clean cement and a dark rectangle of dirty cement at the center where the block had been. And the dark rectangle resembled the quilt scraps that had been cut from their son’s fine wool suits. And it reminded him of the rectangles he’d cut out of construction paper when he showed his son how to make block letters for his U.S. state presentation in fifth grade. Make some letters and you built yourself a word, he recalled telling his son. Make some more and you had a heading. Cut them large and you could string them together into a banner: Happy Birthday. Happy Graduation. Congratulations on Your First Job.
Make enough of them and you could build yourself a whole life. Or end one.
The spite and anger sputtered in him. He was an engine choking. He reached for the cinder block, started to pull it back over, and stopped. What he saw was so simple as to be profound. The block looked like the letter B.
B for Barb.
You have to face the truth, she’d told him. And this felt like truth.
The sidewalk was dirtier, darker where it began its run to the house. He set the block there, where it would show up best. He washed around it again, but this time he washed the two holes in the middle of the block, too. When he moved it, there was a letter B on the cement sidewalk.
B for Barb, like the barb on a barbed wire fence. B for Barb that you had to handle just right or she punctured you. B for Barb that didn’t break. Just baked and tempered. Quilted. As if cutting up their son’s clothes and piecing them back together in those Frankensteinian creations would make him whole again. As if the quilting patterns—Triangle Jitters, Flying Geese, Drunkard’s Path, Road to Redemption—could redeem him.
You have to try, she’d told him.
He positioned the cinder block to the right of the B and washed around it again and in the two holes. When he removed the block, he power-washed the dark line at the bottom to make an A.
Barb, who had no right to cut up his shirt, the one he’d been wearing the day their son died, and put it into her quilting squares. She’d shrugged. She’d cut up her shirt, too.
We never wore them, she’d said.
He shifted the cinder block over again. He made another A and then washed a notch out of the right side to turn it into an R.
What didn’t kill you made you stronger.
He moved the block again to make another B. BARB.
She was stronger. He hadn’t decided which way it would go for him.
And then he washed the rest of the sidewalk clean.
By the end, he knew she was watching from the kitchen window. Thirty-seven years had taught him the way the air charged when she fixed her eyes on him. He switched off the machine and took his time shutting off the water, removing the hose, wrapping the cord up around the back. He was nervous. Like that day when he’d found her sitting on the swings near the hopscotch boards. He was nervous, but he turned. He faced her. He was outside. She was inside, with the window in between them.
It was only them that day at the playground and it was only them now. Then he was nineteen and had his whole life in front of him and he’d wanted Barb in it. Now his whole life was Barb and he felt the vulnerability of that closing in. All his eggs had shifted to one basket.
He put his hand over his heart like he’d been shot by an arrow. It was a risk then and a risk now. He opened his arms wide.
Her eyes flicked down to the sidewalk. Her hand came up off the counter. It floated in front of her like a divining rod. She raised her fingers to her lips and then pressed them to the window. She held the kiss there until he clasped his hands together and caught it.
He put the power washer in the shed. He put the cinder block in, too. He’d taught his son the importance of cleaning up after yourself, to finish what you started.
And then he went in the house to begin again.
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