Chapter 31

For the first ten days after the divorce, Melissa had sat in the house in a state of numb shock. She ate when told to eat, slept when told to sleep, and stared at the wall the rest of the time. With just a few words from her mother, she had gone from princess to trash that had been thrown away. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the enormity of it all.

Jerry had stayed in the house every night since Melissa was terrified of staying in the house alone, particularly at night. However, he couldn’t remain trapped in the house forever. She had to start taking care of herself. That evening, he announced that he was going over to Henry’s house with Bill. It was Friday night and they had work to do.

The choice between staying at home alone and going out in the neighborhood terrified Melissa. Only a little less afraid of being out in the neighborhood with her father, she followed Jerry and Bill out of the house. It was the first time in ten days that she had stepped outside.

It was dark by the time she followed them down a driveway to a detached wood garage behind a house several blocks from where they lived. Even after the little time she had spent in the neighborhood, she recognized that this house was in better shape than those around it were. Ruining the image of a nice house with a white picket fence were several extension cords running out from the house to the garage.

When he saw his friend, Jerry waved and called out, “Hello, Henry. We’re here to finish the fountain.”

Stepping out from behind the fountain, Henry replied, “Good to see you. I was wondering if you’d make it tonight.”

When Henry had stepped out, Melissa had her first look at the big man. She swallowed heavily taking in his size. He was the biggest black man that she had ever seen. She couldn’t believe it when her father said, “Good to see you. We figured that a little runt like you wouldn’t be able to load it in the truck without some help.”

Henry noticed Melissa peeking around from behind her father. Knowing the answer, he asked, “That your daughter?”

“Yes,” answered Jerry as he stepped away so that Henry could see her better.

“Is she the one that called my girlfriend a nigger?”

Jerry didn’t answer, but looked over at Melissa to see her reaction. He and Henry had talked about that incident in depth. Henry was angry, but Sharon had calmed him down about it. He understood that Melissa’s statements didn’t reflect how Jerry felt about the people around him. He had even laughed when he heard that Jerry had given Sharon permission to slap the kid.

Trembling in fear, she stared at the black man. She had known that her father was a big man, but having been around him all her life, that fact had not truly registered. Looking at Henry, she realized just how frightening it was to look at a big man who was angry.

In a very weak voice, she answered, “I don’t know who your girlfriend is.”

“It’s Sharon,” interjected Bill as he watched his sister squirm under the glare from Henry.

“Oh, I guess I did,” answered Melissa as she covered her mouth with her hand. She made a mental note to never make that guy mad at her. Judging by the look on his face, she realized it was too late. She swallowed when Henry flexed his arm muscles.

“That’s not a very nice thing to say to someone,” commented Henry, his gruff voice rumbling from the garage. He narrowed his eyes as he looked over the young woman. She was attractive in a white middle class cheerleader sort of way. He knew that the kids in this area would eat her up and spit her out for saying something like that to one of them.

“I guess not.”

“You guess?” bellowed Henry. He took a couple of steps closer to her and then asked, “Don’t you know?”

Standing to the side, Bill smiled as he watched his terrified sister stare at Henry like a bird in front of a cobra. Jerry stepped out of the way so that she was facing Henry directly. Bill took a little pleasure out of seeing his sister realize that her father wasn’t going to rescue her.

Melissa, nearly scared enough to wet her panties, answered, “I know. It was a horrible thing to say to her.”

“Have you apologized to her?” asked Henry with a glare. He placed his hands on his hips and spread his legs shoulder wide. The pose only made him look larger and the muscles bulge out even more.

Licking her lips nervously, she answered, “Not yet.”

“What are you waiting for?”

The question took her by surprise and, without thinking, she answered, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to her,” corrected Henry. Shaking his head, he made a growling sound.

“I will,” she replied.

“It had better be a good one. Can’t be friends with you until you become friends with my future wife, and you don’t want me as an enemy,” growled Henry. The animalistic nature of his voice conveyed a greater threat than the content of his message.

She stared at him unable to believe anyone could be that huge. It wasn’t that he was all that tall, although he was. It was that he was broad with muscles that seemed to be built on top of muscles. Two average men could stand side by side and only begin to match him.

Her gaze shifted from Henry to her father. It was at that moment that she realized her father was the same size. Growing up around her father had made her oblivious to his size other than as a source of insult. Only now did she understand that if her father had ever really lost his temper with her mother, she would have been snapped in two, like a toothpick.

Bill stood off to the side watching the look on his sister’s face. She had that look on her face that indicated she was seeing a big man for the first time in her life. Moving over to Henry, Bill asked, “Are we going to finish this thing tonight?”

“You bet. Got to get some money to pay for the wedding,” answered Henry with a smile. His easy conversational tone of voice when talking with Bill contrasted sharply with the tone of voice used with Melissa. Putting a friendly hand on the boy’s shoulder, he led Bill over to the fountain.

Melissa watched as Bill walked next to Henry without a concern in the world. Bill wasn’t quite the same boy that he had been the night his mother had taken the baseball bat to him. She saw that he had grown. In fact, she realized that he was now bigger than most of the guys in her grade.

Unable to help herself, she muttered, “Damn, he’s going to be as big as the gorilla.”

Jerry looked down at Melissa and asked, “As big as whom?”

“You,” answered Melissa.

“Ah, so I’m still ‘the gorilla’ in your mind,” commented Jerry shaking his head. He wondered how long it would be before she ever called him dad.

“I don’t know what else to call you,” countered Melissa. Her whole life, her mother and she had referred to him as ‘the gorilla’ and now she didn’t know what else to call him.

“You could call me, dad or father,” suggested Jerry barely showing any surprise that she didn’t know any other way to refer to him.

‘Dad’ sounded too friendly and Melissa wasn’t sure that she wanted to be that close to Jerry. That left ‘father’ as her other choice. She tried it on, “Okay, father.”

Jerry grinned and said, “That’s nice.”

Melissa didn’t know if she liked it or not. Life had thrown her a few curves over the past ten days and she was still trying to recover her balance. She had lost her grandmother, but that hadn’t really bothered her as much as learning how little her mother cared about her. She had thought that they were the best friends in the world. She had wanted to be just like her mother in every way. After her recent experience, she wasn’t sure that was such a good goal.

Lost in thought, she didn’t notice Jerry enter the garage. When she finally pulled herself together, she watched as the three males discussed the lighting fixture for the waterfall. When Henry moved out of the way, she saw what they had been working on for the first time. She froze in place as she stared at it.

Stepping forward, she asked, “Where did you get that?”

Looking over a Melissa, Jerry answered, “Bill and Henry made this one. It’ll be done as soon as they finish wiring the light fixture.”

Mouth open, she asked, “Do you know how much that is worth?”

Chuckling, Henry answered, “This one is worth exactly eight thousand dollars retail, and four thousand from the factory.”

With a surprised look on her face at the fact that he knew how much it was, she said, “Bonnie’s parents got one a couple months ago. It cost them sixteen thousand dollars.”

Henry asked, “Did it have a copper center overlaid with gold leaf?”

“Yes,” she answered confused by the fact that he knew exactly what her friend’s parents had purchased. She had gone over to their house and stared at it in envy the night they had it installed on their living room wall. She had told her grandmother about it and they had gone out and ordered one that same day.

Bill said, “That was the third one that Henry and Dad built.”

The announcement staggered Melissa, shocking her beyond anything that she had seen or heard over the past few weeks. Those wall-mounted waterfalls were rapidly becoming the hottest items in town and ‘the gorilla’ was one of the artists behind them. It didn’t make sense to her.

Henry ran a hand over the wood and said, “I do the woodwork. Jerry and Bill do the metalwork. This is Bill’s first.”

She stepped closer and examined the dimpled copper plate that hung down the center and the polished wood frame. It was a work of art. Her brother had done that? It was hard to believe that her little brother had made that gorgeous piece of art.

Confused, she said, “Wow. It’s really pretty.”

Grinning at the unexpected compliment, Bill said, “Thanks. I’m still learning about metalwork. Dad’s are usually more complex, but he can’t do much until he gets the cast off.”

Deciding that she was going to show off her knowledge about these wall waterfalls, Melissa said, “Grandmother ordered one by the Sharjen Company. I understand that they are the best artists when it comes to these things. Do you know anything about their work?”

Surprised, Jerry burst out laughing while Henry chuckled and turned his back to Melissa. As the laughter overwhelmed him, Jerry had to sit down on the floor as tears ran down his face. The grin plastered on Bill’s face was so large that it actually hurt.

Wondering if she was smart enough to figure it out on her own, Bill answered, “The two guys that own Sharjen named the company after their girlfriends: Sharon and Jenny.”

Confused by their reaction to her question, Melissa barely listened to Bill’s answer. After a minute, she realized that there was something familiar about the names he had mentioned. It took her another minute to realize that Sharon was Henry’s girlfriend and Jenny was her father’s girlfriend.

Mouth open, she asked, “You don’t mean?”

Nodding in appreciation of the cosmic joke, Bill said, “Yep. Grandmother ordered this one.”

Henry, trying to stifle a laugh, croaked, “Oh, the irony.”

“Who said that God didn’t have a sense of humor?” asked Jerry as he held his side. He had a stitch from laughing too hard. Tears were running down his face as he gave himself over to the humor of the situation.

It took almost a half an hour for the three men to collect themselves enough to continue working on wiring the lighting system. After Bill finished soldering the wires, he stepped back and announced, “It’s done.”

Henry plugged in the cord. He watched as the lights came on and the water started to run down the face of the copper plate. The waved pattern of the central dimpled copper plate broke the flow of water into an intricate array of droplets that caught the light and reflected it. From the catch pool at the bottom, the sound of drops hitting the water gave forth the sound of a spring shower.

Bill stepped back and looked at the results of all his hard work. With a smile plastered on his face, he said, “Yes.”

Jerry put his hand on his son’s shoulder and said, “You did a good job, Bill.”

It wasn’t possible for Bill to stand up any straighter than he could, but he felt as though he had grown a foot from his dad’s praise. Henry, arms folded across his chest, rocked back and, smiling, said, “Outstanding.”

Looking down at his feet, Bill replied, “Thanks.”

Melissa had been sitting off to the side well out of the way working men. She was thinking about how her life had changed over the course of the past two weeks. Her grandmother had died, she had moved into a slum, angered all of the neighbors, spent two nights in jail, been abandoned by her mother, and had discovered that her father and brother had talents that no one had suspected. She looked over at the finished product. There were no doubt that it was a major work of art.

Unplugging the cord powering the waterfall, Henry said, “All we’ve got to do is wrap it for shipping. Tomorrow, I’ll take it down to the store and deliver it.”

Squatting down, Bill reached under the base of the wooden frame and turned the knob that would allow the water in the catch basin to drain into a plastic bucket. While the water drained, he picked up a towel and started drying the interior of the fountain. With a critical eye, he examined the surface of the copper looking for any scratches or other imperfections in the varnish that would allow the metal to oxidize.

Jerry fetched the roll of masking tape while Henry cut some cardboard to make pads for the corners. As Henry worked, he said, “Melissa. Why don’t you go in the house and get us some Cokes?”

The neatness of his house was not the first or the last surprise of the night. The conversation among the three men flowed as they discussed their goals. She listened to the talk, surprised by the kinds of things they thought were important. Perhaps the most surprising thing she observed was their obvious pride in their work.

Melissa sat on the futon watching a television show while Bill and Abe were in the backyard clearing the trash from behind the house. The program was lame and she was bored out of her mind. She had done all of her assigned chores, hating them as she had performed what was expected of her. The only reason she had done them was to the break the monotony of sitting around the house.

Bored, she went to the back window and watched the two boys working. They had their shirts off as they attacked the tall grass with a pair of weed-whackers. A couple of the neighborhood girls were watching them. They were posed and putting on a major display of their bodies to the teenage boys. The boys had noticed, but kept to their task feeling that it showed off their muscles without being too obvious. They knew that the girls would wait for them to finish.