Mr. Handy (continued)

Chapter 2--In which the pantry is completed, but not without tears

In spite of the disappearance of service people during the Covid shut-downs, I found a carpenter to build a pantry in the five foot tall hole in my kitchen wall. He said he was busy, but would get to my project in three months. I was delighted. Read the first installment of the story of Mr. Handy here.

The three months passed. Mr. Handy set up his table saw and sander in the basement and started in. Then one day he called me down and gave me a tour of my basement. He had rearranged the boxes and old furniture I had stored there. I felt a little defensive about being an inadequate basement organizer. But I knew he had only good intentions, so I smiled and thanked him.

Later, he interrupted his work to show me the switch-blade with the tip broken off that he’d discovered down there. I told him I’d found it in the bushes in front of the house. I said I used it to open paint cans. I didn’t mention that I considered it my own personal contribution to beating swords into plowshares.

Mr. Handy took the knife home and ground the edge into a new tip. When he brought it back, he also brought me a paint-can-opening tool. He laid them on a piece of cardboard in the basement and labeled them for me, with arrows: For Cutting; For Opening Paint.

It appeared that hiring him to remodel my basement gave him access to remodeling me. I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to jeopardize my pantry by getting mad.

As well as regularly being late on Mondays, Mr. Handy also called me several times to say he’d be delayed because he needed to rescue a young single mother with few resources, a son, and a dying car. I stopped expecting him to show up on a schedule. I showed him my hidden spare key so he could come and go.

He lectured me on how unsafe its hiding place was. He said the woman living in the old school bus painted black across the street could be watching us take it out and put it back.

As he went along, Mr. Handy described for me in detail what was needed on the pantry. I nodded and followed along, appreciating this about Mr. Handy. My late husband Mark had always done the same, involving me in every step of a remodeling project. Mr. Handy showed me that the pantry wasn’t plumb. He couldn’t drywall around the heating vent the way it had been cobbled together, he would need to rebuild the whole opening. I could see that.

Yes, I could see that Mr. Handy was a good carpenter. He was methodical. Precise. Zen, as he trudged up and down my back steps. But I worried, because what he told me would take a half hour inevitably took a full afternoon of his slow, careful, work.

After two months, the project was starting to pull together. The heating vent was neat and tidy. The pantry opening was framed. Its interior was lined with new drywall. One afternoon, Mr. Handy left the first invoice for me . I had to sit down to read it—three pages long, written in tiny, neat printing, detailing each day’s work and the hours and materials spent. I had thought the pantry would cost me $1000. Max $1500. The invoice came to $3000.

The next day, quaking inside but fortified by the extent of the problem, I sat him down to remonstrate with him about his pace. He, in turn remonstrated with me. Undoubtedly he thought if I started meditating I wouldn’t be so emotional. Indeed, before we were done, I burst into tears. This pantry is going to cost me $5000. I haven’t been put on this earth to pay $5000 for a PANTRY!

I didn’t mention that he’d pounded my plowshare back into a switchblade.

He was appalled. Maybe he had never made a client cry before. It must have violated his non-violent values. But he stayed calm. He said I was exaggerating; it wasn’t going to come to anywhere close to $5000. He described in great detail what was left to do and how little time it would take. I nodded, blew my nose, felt both frustrated and embarrassed. But he had just spent several days, at fifty dollars an hour, daubing and sanding the drywall on the back of my pantry. It still had no shelves, no doors.

To save time, I said I would do the painting. I began making the run to Home Depot for missing parts. I eventually told him to skip the doors. I said I would just live with no doors on my now plumb, now properly vented, meticulously constructed pantry with shelves.

He said no, no, he’d figure out a way to make doors quickly and easily. He said he believed in doing the job right and leaving the customer satisfied. He told me he’d only been fired once, by an old woman who said he was being too careful. He laughed heartily at the absurdity of such a thing.

I cried again when he measured wrong and made doors that didn’t fit.

When it was all done, he presented me with an invoice that brought the total to almost $7000.

He didn’t think he had actually promised that my pantry wouldn’t cost more than $5000.

“You did!” I yelled, through more tears. In my head I added, And you said I was exaggerating! That promise had been the only thing keeping me sane as I gritted my teeth and watched him moving serenely up and down my back stairs in his flip-flops day after day after day on his chubby hobbit feet.

He had his values. He bowed his Zen head and accepted my check for what remained of exactly $5000.

I’ve gone another year and a half without getting the final coat of paint on my pantry doors. I can paint, for pity sake. But as my son once said about a meal I served him, It’s not my favorite.

My uneven hillbilly front stairs still welcome my guests. The pillars, such as they are, hold up my porch and any rot is hidden from the naked eye. I’ve passed another winter with the porch buckling and cold air seeping through the crack you could fling a cat through. All of these projects were going to be done with the money that went into my gold-plated pantry. My sisters, who once said to hire a professional, now say, Get their references. I do that. And I stay away from handymen with white hair and flip-flops

Because, as it turns out, a widow in possession of an old house is in want of a fortune.