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(Excerpted from Lost Arrow and Other
True Stories. "Baby Job" originally appeared in the Christian
Science Monitor.) to purchase
Lost Arrow and Other True Stories Baby Job I just finished a baby job. That's where people who are about to have a baby decide to remodel their kitchen. In this case the project was in West Seattle, a modest ranch house on a hillside overlooking Puget Sound. The house had picture windows and a deck toward the water, which was nice for sunbathing on warm afternoons and for evening barbecues and for sitting in deck chairs and talking to friends while the water and sky slowly turned red and the sun slid down behind the Olympic mountains. The kitchen, however, was dark and small and looked the other direction, toward the driveway and the recycling bin. The kitchen was not ideal, but it had been OK with my friend and his wife. He ran his own company doing custom software, and she was an engineer--a couple of high-powered professionals, neither of whom spent much time in the kitchen. Only now they had decided to have a baby, their first, and wanted to clean up a few details. Nothing big, they said, just some new paint and a couple of lights. Also a skylight in the dark corner by the fridge. Time was of the essence. First we ripped out the ceiling for the skylight. Loose insulation fell into our shirt pockets. We installed the skylight, patched the three tab roofing back in, and also built a wing wall, something to more completely separate the kitchen from the dining room. "That new wall is too confining," the woman said the next day. So we tore it out, and after work she took another look. "I still feel closed in," she said. We tore out the existing wall as well as some cabinets and an oven. The wall was holding up the ceiling at one point, so I left a couple of studs in place to serve as a post. With the wall gone, the kitchen looked into the dining room--what they call an open kitchen, a fashionable thing out here in the West where spontaneity and talking-to-the-cook are very big and no one minds staring at dirty pans while eating a meal. The woman liked the idea that she could see Puget Sound while she cooked. The construction would be a bit more complicated, but not too bad. At least--thanks to our post--we didn't have to make any structural changes. By now it was Friday. Our new layout was a success, only the woman didn't want the post. Why have an open kitchen with a view of Puget Sound and then leave a post in the middle of it? I hustled off to the lumberyard in my old truck to get a beam, a big one, which I managed to purchase before the yard closed. I had to get this thing in, and it was late, and all my guys had gone home. So I called a friend whose fourteen-year-old needed something to do. I picked up the kid, he insisted that I give him comic books as compensation, and, when we reached the job, I put him on one end of the Doug Fir 4 x 12. We shoved the beam into the low attic, dragged it down to the chimney, worked it around the corner, and set it in place. We removed the post, and hit the comic book store on the way home. When I came back on Monday, the people were even in more of a hurry. We weren't halfway yet. We got the electricians in and out and started slapping wallboard on the ceiling. The wire boys had centered four lights over the island. "Those lights are a little busy," said the woman. So the next day I removed two lights and repositioned the others. I was at the lumberyard when the husband phoned home. My carpenter took the call. "We've got this baby coming, you know," said the husband. On the window sill there was a postcard. "Greetings to the Bump," it said. That evening the wife came home from work early. The bump was getting bigger. "Don't rush," she said, "I've got 24 days." "Yes, ma'am," I said. But I thought: look in a mirror, lady. That kid's going to come any minute and you don't have a refrigerator, or oven. And the sink is on the way out and the living room is stacked with furniture six feet deep with an inch of dust on top and your husband is in a nest-making frenzy. "I'd hate to bring a kid into this," the husband said the next morning. We nailed and finished the wallboard. They hired a painter. We put the subfloor down, and the vinyl guys dropped in and did their thing. I put the venting in for the range. On Friday, the plumbers came to do the gas and the electricians to trim out. The cabinetmaker was gluing plastic laminate to the counter top and installing a tile backsplash and window sill. "Can't we get some more people in here?" the cabinetmaker said. The crowding didn't bother me. I was worried about appliances. We were supposed to install a new oven, but where was it? At last the delivery van came, I uncrated the oven, shoved it in, then checked the burners on the range. The furnace all of a sudden didn't work but the electrician was here, and I had him fix the thing. Babies need heat. By the time we left, it was a kitchen once again. Two days later the baby was born, a big boy, eleven days early. On Monday, the cabinetmaker and I arrived to take care of details before mother and child came home. The father was hustling back and forth from the kid's room to his tool box to his car, making sure that junior's crib, his night light, and his rattle were in perfect working order. His sister was shoving furniture around. "The furnace doesn't work," the father said. There was no time to find an electrician or heating guy, and, hey, I'm a carpenter, not a mechanic. But I swallowed my panic. "No problem," I told the father. On the furnace I found a switch that someone had turned off over the weekend. A few minutes later, warm air rushed through the heating ducts. The father changed into slacks and a pink dress shirt. I heard him talking to his sister in the kid's room. "I can't believe it," he said. "In an hour the baby will be here, right here." The nest was ready. The sister left to buy groceries, the husband to pick up mother and child. The cabinetmaker and I began to breathe again. Then the phone rang. It was the new mother, speaking with an air of sleepy calm. "I've been thinking," she said, "about the tile on the window sill." Author's Bio Did you like the story "Baby Job" from the collection Lost Arrow and Other True Stories?
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