The Gin and Chowder Club

18

The following Tuesday, Asa skipped his morning run. A heat wave was in the forecast for the Cape and the Islands, and he wanted to get an early start. He filled his jug with ice water and packed an empty water dish for Martha. He wondered if he should leave her home on such a hot day, but when he saw the longing in her eyes, he relented. “Make sure to find a shady spot,” he warned. She wagged her tail, and he helped her into the truck.

Fifteen minutes later, Asa pulled into the hardware store. Martha leaned out the window. “Be right back,” he called. He bought the paint, Antique Barn Red, and two brushes. He came out, put them in the truck, and walked quickly to the deli next door. He noticed how warm it was already and noted that he wouldn’t be able to leave Martha in the truck at all later. He ordered two sandwiches for lunch and poured a black coffee while he waited. He also bought a quart bottle of Tropicana. He went out to the truck, loaded his cooler, and climbed in. “Good girl,” he said, gently pushing Martha over to the passenger side. She wagged her tail and resumed her position as copilot with her head hanging out of the red ’53 pickup.

When he pulled up to the house, Asa saw the turquoise Bel Air parked in the driveway, and his heart raced. However, he was determinedly resolved to stick to his plan. He parked the truck, helped Martha out, and put his cooler in the shade. As he walked toward the garage to get the drop cloths and ladder, he noticed the water hose was snaking up over the stone wall and into the backyard. As he walked up the path, he saw Noelle giving Martha a drink from the hose.

She looked up and smiled. “Well, good morning! I was just innocently watering my garden when this big black beast came bounding up behind me!”

“Sorry. Did she startle you?”

“Only a little.”

“I didn’t expect you to be home today. Is it okay that I brought her?”

“Oh, it’s fine. She’s such a sweet old girl,” Noelle said, rubbing Martha’s head. “Anyway, I’m home because one of the other nurses needed to switch days this week. I wasn’t sure if you’d be coming, but I thought if you did, I could help you paint.”

This unexpected turn of events caught Asa off guard. He faltered but regained his composure enough to answer, “I’m sure you don’t want to spend your day off painting in the hot sun. It’s supposed to be miserable today.”

“Well, I don’t want to cramp your style, but I’m happy to help.”

Asa didn’t know what to say. Finally, he managed, “Well, if you’re sure it’s what you want to do.”

“I’m sure-I just have to change.”

Asa was stirring the paint when Noelle returned with Martha at her heels. She had on a pair of worn tan shorts and one of Nate’s old white V-neck T-shirts. Looking up, Asa decided that Noelle would look beautiful no matter what she was wearing. This isn’t helping, he thought. At the same time, he wondered how he was going to get through the day.

The morning flew by, and Asa found that he had never enjoyed painting so much. He had dragged a second stepladder from the basement, and they had started out at opposite ends of the house.

At the outset, Asa had teasingly challenged, “Bet I can beat you to the front door.”

“You’re on!” Noelle had replied, laughing. “But if you get any red paint on my blue hydrangeas, you automatically lose.”

The trim around the windows had always been painted the same shade of red as the clapboard, so the job was simple. They worked steadily all morning, and an easy conversation ensued. Asa found himself often stopping to watch Noelle paint and to listen to her tell stories. It was a comfortable feeling, almost like old times.

Over the course of the morning, Asa learned that Noelle’s father had been a Baptist minister and that her mother had spent her life “serving others.” Noelle and her older brother Pete had been raised in a home where the needs of others were always put first, even when their own needs were barely being met. However, Noelle recalled that there always seemed to be just enough. She laughed and said, “Every meal was like the loaves and fishes. No matter how many sat around our supper table each night, there was always plenty. And my mother was such a good cook that we often had folks stop in who didn’t really need a meal. It just smelled so good outside that they found a reason to knock!”

Asa laughed at this, his own stomach rumbling at the mention of food. “So, you were a preacher’s kid?”

“Yup,” she laughed. She hadn’t heard the term in a long time.

The two worked quietly for a while, and Asa tried to picture Noelle as a young girl sitting in an old white New England church. He saw her head solemnly bowed in prayer, her hair in pigtails. He pictured her giggling in the front pew just like any other preacher’s kid who thinks they own the place. He smiled and wondered how well she knew her Bible.

He looked over, cleared his throat, and started reciting, “Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles…” But then he faltered.

Noelle looked up, smiling, and picked it up. “Surely you remember Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Job…”

“Of course I do. Psalms, Proverbs…” Asa stopped again, grinning.

Noelle easily recited the rest of the books in the Old Testament, and Asa laughed. “Oh, well, I used to know them.” Noelle paused and then started in on the New Testament.

Asa held up his hand, “All right, all right, you win. You don’t need to show off!”

They went back to painting, Asa still trying to picture a younger Noelle. There was so much that he didn’t know about her, and he suddenly wanted to know everything. He wondered if her parents still lived in Maine. He decided to ask, and when Noelle told him that they had both passed away when she was in nurse’s training, he wished he hadn’t. Asa said he was sorry, and Noelle assured him that it was long ago and that they had lived full lives. She went on to say that after her mother died, her father, despite his deeply religious background, had been a lost soul and had died less than a year later-on their wedding anniversary. Asa tried to imagine the love-and loss-Noelle’s father must have felt to die of a broken heart.

Asa’s stomach had been rumbling for an hour when Noelle finally offered to make sandwiches.

“I brought lunch,” Asa said. “In fact, I have two, if you’d like one.”

“I’m sure you brought two because you can eat two.”

“Actually, I skipped my run this morning, so I really don’t need to eat both of them. You’re welcome to have one.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want to have lunch up by the pool?”

“Sounds good. I’m just going to get some iced tea. Want some?”

Asa pulled the bottle of orange juice out of his cooler. “I’m set,” he said. “Thanks anyway.”

“You certainly come prepared.”

Martha followed Asa up to the pool, and Noelle joined them a few minutes later. She was carrying a large glass of sweet tea and a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “These cookies are not holding up very well in this heat. You’d better eat them.”

Asa looked at the melting chocolate. “Oh, we won’t have any trouble with those, will we, Martha?” Martha wagged her tail agreeably, happy to have her name mentioned in close proximity to the word cookies. Asa handed Noelle one of his sandwiches and leaned back in his chair in the shade of the umbrella. Noelle took half and wrapped the other half back up.

The air was heavy with the monotonous trilling of crickets and the hum of laboring bees. The unmistakable sounds of a steamy July day, sounds reminiscent of simpler times, Asa thought, absently composing. The wings of the season, droning endlessly, blissfully ignorant of summer’s fleeting hours…

They sat in a comfortable silence for a while, eating their sandwiches. A bluebird alighted on the wooden gate and burst into a song. “Look!” Noelle whispered. Suddenly, his mate called from the tree line, and the flash of cobalt