Tulipwood

"Hey, Kid!" The woman's menacing tone voice brought Frankie Dexter up short before he even made it halfway across the darkened lawn. Frozen in place, the fifteen year old peered about but couldn't see a thing, not even the scraggily weeds beneath his feet. No street lamps existed this far down the road, and the thin sliver of a moon was wreathed in clouds. "Why are you on my property?"

What if the owner of the disembodied voice had dialed 911 from when she saw him prowling the street and already notified the police? Maybe the cops were on their way and she was just stalling for time until the authorities arrived.

"I'm going to the 7-Eleven," Frankie mumbled.

A skinny blonde in her late thirties stepped down from the front stoop of the Lomax place. The owner, Edgar Lomax, had suffered a stroke and passed a while back. The blonde, his common law wife, settled in five years earlier. The reclusive woman lived alone, having nothing to do with any of the neighbors. "Convenient store’s that way."

Though he couldn't see the outstretched arm, he knew that she was pointing down the street in the opposite direction from where Frankie was headed.
The sound of wolfish laughter shot through with vulgarities filtered through the wooly darkness along with the clatter of an empty beer can skittering across the asphalt. "Can't get to the 7-Eleven that way."

"Why's that?" The gravelly tone was downright inhospitable.

"The McElroys are out on their front stoop drinking."

A Friday night ritual, the McElroy clan would be sitting out on their front stoop, drunk and looking for trouble. The front lawn was probably littered with crushed beer cans and cigarette stubs. The old man was out of prison a year now. The oldest son worked at the gas station three blocks down from the Kentucky Fried Chicken. The younger boy dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade. He didn't work and had been in and out of trouble with the police since eighth grade.

Frankie had considered running the gauntlet - casually meandering to the end of the street and continuing down Oak Hill Ave to the center of town. The ex-con father would give him a dirty look or flip him the bird. The demonic sons would hurl insults and challenge his sexual orientation along with a few choice obscenities. Or, for the sheer fun of it, they might beat the crap out of the fifteen year old boy. There was another burst of foul-mouthed laughter followed by a loud guffaw. The McElroy's took great pleasure letting the community know they held everyone in utter contempt. "It's almost eleven o'clock," The nastiness in the woman's tone ebbed. "What the hell are you doing out this late at night?"

It was a perfectly reasonable question. Frankie took a deep breath air and considered his options - the truth, a flagrant lie or a hodgepodge of supercilious nonsense. “My mother is home drunk. My father's got a girlfriend, and I just didn't want to hear it anymore."

The crickets were chortling away, a rhythmic, high-spirited cadence. Down toward the end of the street one of the McElroy degenerates howled like a lunatic at the wispy moon. The outburst triggered another wave of smaning and crude laughter. Frankie was stuck in a nether world. The boy certainly didn't want to home while his parents were sniping at each other. He couldn't make it past the McElroy's place without considerable risk. And now the deceased Edgar Lomax's live-in girl friend had just caught him trespassing.

"What's wrong now?"

"Nothing," Frankie blubbered. He had begun crying rather noisily, making embarrassing snuffling sounds through his soggy nose. "Everything's just peachy keen!"

The skinny woman quickly closed the distance between them. Wrapping her arms around Frankie's waist, she pulled him up against her. "Poor baby!"

No one other than his mother had ever held him like that. The crickets continued their nocturnal symphony shot through with a slurry of four-letter word as discordant counterpoint from the far end of the street. But nothing mattered anymore. There in the pitch black on Edgar Lomax's front lawn, a woman was cradling Frankie up against her chest and crooning unintelligible, infinitely reassuring sounds in his left ear.

"Hey kid, you're squeezing the life out of me!"

Without realizing it, Frankie's arms had snaked up behind the woman in a fierce bear hug. She broke away and held the boy at arm's length. "The McElroy party doesn't seem to be winding down any time soon," she noted with a flick of her head in the direction of the late night revelers. "Would you like to join me for a cup of coffee?"

Frankie wiped the tears away with the heel of a hand. "Yeah, that would be nice."

"I'm Kendra Ryder."

"Frankie… Frankie Dexter." She led the way into the kitchen, which was rather neat and tidy. A Tiffany lamp with a multi-colored glass shade threw a dim warmth across the room. She put a pot of coffee on to perk. "I'll be just a minute."

Retreating into the bedroom, the woman emerged five minutes later. Something was different about the way she looked. She hadn't changed her clothes or makeup. Her ratty hair was still unbrushed. "Coffee looks about ready."

Kendra Ryder, who wore a pair of jeans and cotton blouse, was rather harsh looking. A smattering of laugh lines and crow's feet dimpling the corners of the watery blue eyes; a certain feminine delicacy in the thin lips and squat nose was offset, neutralized by a brittle obstinacy in the pokerfaced expression. The skin was pale, translucent. Frankie noted a fleeting prettiness but only when she smiled, which she didn't seem to do that often.

Kendra set a plate of Oreos on the table between them and then began picking at her fingernails. "Glue… epoxy," she said by way of explanation. "It's a bitch trying to get this stuff off your nails. Mineral spirits doesn't really help and the more volatile stuff like lacquer thinner just burns."

Frankie was trying to figure what the woman had been doing that her hands were so frightfully calloused, but she didn't readily volunteer additional information, and the boy didn't feel comfortable asking. A short while earlier he was standing in the yard next to a forty-foot, white mulberry tree bawling his fool head off, and now he was sipping coffee and nibbling cookies. He felt strangely safe, no longer vulnerable. All the anxiety and confusion had sloughed off like so much dead skin.

A timer on the microwave suddenly beeped. Kendra rose. "This won't take long," she said, disappearing down a narrow stairwell just off the kitchen. When she was gone ten minutes, curiosity got the better of the boy. Unlike the kitchen, the unfinished basement was flooded with a bank of fluorescent lights. An array of woodworking tools - table saws, belt sanders, jointers, planers, drill presses and a six-inch Ryobi band saw - were arranged about the concrete floor. Kendra was releasing the pressure on a steel clamp. Lifting a square block of solid maple, she turned the surface over to reveal a parchment-thin web of blue masking tape rimmed with glue.

She looked up and smiled when he approached. "Here's the fun part." She began gingerly peeling the tape away to reveal a decorative mosaic of exotic woods arranged in an intricate pattern not unlike a patchwork quilt. "That's bubinga," she pointed to a dark wine colored wood shot through with black, "a form of African rosewood. The golden veneer with the pale flecks is Brazilian satinwood." She eased another strip of tape free of the surface and tapped a greenish, scaly wood that ran around the perimeter of the design creating an inlaid, quarter-inch frame. "This here's a domestic species… sassafras." When the last piece of masking tape had been removed, she wiped away some excess glue with nail polish remove and laid the rectangular object aside."

"But what is it?"

"A keepsake box," the woman replied.

"Where's the lid?"

Kendra pointed at a band saw in the far corner of the room. "Tomorrow morning, I'll saw the lid free of the carcass, round over all the sharp edges on the router table and insert the brass hinges.

On a separate work table a grouping of ornate jewelry boxes were arranged in various stages of completion. "Did you paint the woods?"

Kendra flashed a closed-lipped smile. "No, they're exotics. That's exactly how the lumber looks in its natural state. After sanding, I wipe them down with light Danish oil to bring out the lustrous warmth of the grain but nothing more."

"But where did you - "

"Edgar," Kendra interjected, anticipating his train of thought, "was a master woodworker. We met at a craft fair. I was selling crappy jewelry at the time. After we started dating, I took over finishing and placing the merchandise in art galleries. By the time Eddy took sick, I had already picked up enough of basic woodworking skills to actually design and build boxes Reaching up she yanked on a chain and the overhead lights went dark. "We met at a rainy craft fair," Kendra repeated. They were sitting back in the kitchen. "Not terribly romantic by most people's standards." She glanced at a clock over the stove. "Your parents are probably wondering where you are." The implication was fairly obvious.

"What do you do with the jewelry boxes?"

"I already told you… sell them through art galleries, flea markets, craft fairs, whatever." She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes with her glue-stained fingers. "You gotta go home now."
"Can I come see you again?"

"I dunno," she hedged. "Maybe, if your folks don't mind."

"Yeah, they won't care."

"And you can't go anywhere near the tools. They're dangerous as hell." Kendra held her hands up in front of his face. "How many fingers?" Frankie counted ten, all intact. "Touch any of my power tools, and that will be the last day you ever set foot in this house."

Frankie lingered in the doorway. "I wonder if the McElroys are still partying."

Sensing his reluctance to leave, Kendra disappeared back down the stairwell. When she returned, the woman was holding a small strip of cream colored wood delicately veined with orange. "Smell this." She stuck the milky wood up under his nose.

"I don't smell nothin’."

Kendra scuffed the wood with a piece of 120-grit sandpaper she was holding in her free hand and extended the wood a second time.

"Cripes!" An intoxicating sweetness wafted through the room life an expensive, designer perfume. "It's tulipwood and, like bubinga, also from the rosewood family." She handed him both the sliver of wood and the sandpaper. "Next time your parents have a tiff or the McElroy clan is stirring the pot, take a whiff of tulipwood and it will calm your nerves." She gently pushed him out the door into the warm night. "Goodnight, Frankie Baxter and I hope your parents can work things out." Kendra stood out on the landing and watched the young boy reluctantly shuffle off down the empty street.

* * * * *

"You got in late last night," Mrs. Dexter was in the kitchen cooking waffles. She added a tablespoon of vegetable oil to the mix, an egg and a splash of milk. With his brown hair and fair complexion, friends claimed said Frankie was the spitting image of his mother. They both had dimples that surfaced when they smiled and a malleable softness about the mouth.
"I met the lady who lives in the slate blue cape."

"The Lomax place?" His parents still referred to it as the Lomax place even though the owner was long dead.

"She does fancy woodworking… said I could come back and visit as long as I got your permission." Before his mother could respond, Frankie jumped up from the table and ran out of the room. He returned a moment later holding the slender length of tulipwood and the sandpaper. "Here, smell this." He rubbed the sandpaper over the surface briefly and held it up to his mother.

"What a delicious scent!" Mrs. Dexter grabbed a whisk and stirred the batter to a frothy consistency.

Frankie told his mother how Kendra took over the woodworking business after Edgar took sick. "She said I had to get you permission," Frankie repeated.

"Well, I don't know," his mother wavered. "A woman living by herself and…"

"For God's sakes, she's older than Aunt Helen!" Aunt Helen was Mrs. Dexter's younger sister.

"I'll think about it," his mother replied evasively, "and let you know later tonight." Spraying the waffle iron, she poured the batter onto the griddle and lowered the lid.

Frankie was about to argue the issue but held his tongue. His mother wasn't being contentious and seemed genuinely pleased with the fragrant tulipwood and the notion of a woman building ornate boxes. "Well, that lays one mystery to rest."

"Which is?"

"Many times when I passed the Lomax place coming home from market," his mother remarked, "I heard the sound of heavy machinery and wondered what they were doing. Now we know."

Frankie went upstairs and lay down on his bed. An older woman had held him tight up against her wiry body. This was unfamiliar territory. He had to think it through. Not that there was anything much to think about. Kendra had pulled him close in the darkness out of pity not lust. The 'poor baby' was clearly meant as an expression of sympathy and maternal affection. The way she held him, Frankie could feel every crevice, fleshy bulge and contour of her body.

"Aw, shit!" It suddenly dawned on him what changed when Kendra ran off to the bedroom, slamming the door shut. She had slipped on a bra. Even alone in his own bedroom, the stolid, middle-aged woman's sense of modesty and decorum caused the boy to blush self-consciously.

The Lomax place resembled a safe haven, a protective womb. The several hours spent there was like a dream - unfortunately, a dream that, like most pleasant fictions, didn't last. Before leaving the basement, Kendra had shown him a crate full of finished boxes. The artwork was meticulous. Marquetry - the handicraft dated back to the Middle Ages - was the name of the technique she used to puzzle the tiny slivers of wood into intricate design patterns.

After the glue dried, Kendra sanded through eight, increasingly finer grades of sandpaper ranging from two-twenty to fifteen hundred before applying Danish oil. "Chatoyance," she spoke softly rubbing a thumb lovingly over a glassy wooden surface. "From the French œil de chat, meaning cat's eye." "You sand the wood until it's so smooth that, when the finish is applied, the surface flings the light back at you in shimmery brilliance." She held the box up to the light and the decorative surface exuded a luminous glow that caused Frankie's breath to catch in his throat.

In the early afternoon, Mrs. Dexter went off somewhere and didn't return until late in the afternoon. "Did you know the police were called over to the McElroys' place last night?"

"How do you know?"

"The Hispanic lady who lives diagonally across from them works behind the deli counter in the market. She says the two brothers got plastered and started beating on each other. They're out on bail now."

"What about Kendra, the lady who makes the fancy boxes?"

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Baxter replied almost as an afterthought. "You can spend time over there but don't go near the machinery. Now I've got to make supper." Frankie's mother shifted the several bags she was balancing in her arms and headed in the direction of the kitchen.

Later that night while he was lying in bed, Mrs. Baxter came into the room. "Kendra goes to church Sunday mornings over at Saint Stevens, and she also volunteers stocking shelves at the library Wednesday afternoons." After a brief pause, she added, "Ryder… her last name is Ryder. Kendra Ryder."

"How do you know this?"

"If you go to visit and hear machines running down in the basement," she sidestepped his question, "don't set foot in the house until the electricity is turned off and the noise dies away."

"Okay."

"I'm doing laundry in the morning. Do you need any clothes washed?" Frankie had a bad habit of burying dirty laundry under the bed.

"No, I'm fine," the boy replied. Mrs. Baxter went away.

* * * * *

"Your mother came to visit," Kendra said the next time Frankie stopped by. It was a Thursday afternoon. The black sky had been spitting warm rain off and on all day. Rain was the kiss of death to crafters. The previous Saturday, Kendra had set up her ten-by-ten foot canopy at the Stonington Craft Fair only to see her business literally washed away by a torrential downpour. Eighty-seven soggy exhibitors spent the day staring bleakly at one another in an otherwise empty field. Only a small handful of diehard customers, sporting rain gear and umbrellas, visited the fair. They didn't linger and nobody was in a buying mood. Luckily, the fair extended straight through the weekend, and Sunday Kendra was able to recoup the loss and turn a small profit.

"I gotta cut slots for the brass hinges," Kendra said. "Sit over there," she pointed at a folding chair a good thirty feet away from the drill press and don't belch, fart or pick your nose."

As she explained it, the razor-sharp slot cutter, which measured a meager three inches in diameter, was, far and away, the most dangerous tool in her arsenal. The Delta, ten-inch table saw made a god-awful racket and ripped through rock maple with lethal indifference. But the stock could be guided safely along a metal fence or navigated across the carbide tipped blade with a miter gauge. The tiny slot cutter afforded no such luxury. Kendra fashioned a right-angle brace from scrap lumber and clamped the lids onto the brace before cutting slots. Reducing the speed on the drill press to a sloth-like six hundred rpm's, she inched the wood across the table until the horizontal blade barely kissed the grain. Then she locked her elbows rigidly against her sides and eased the wood forward in tiny increments. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. When the blade cut to a depth of half an inch, she pulled back, freeing the stock from the whirring blade.

"What's that for?" Frankie gestured at a can of silicone spray that Kendra waved over the slot saw.

"The slippery silicone lubricates the metal teeth so there's less chance of the wood seizing up in the middle of a cut."

"What if the blade grabs the wood?"

Kendra cracked a gritty smile. Rummaging around on the floor under the workbench, she located a badly shattered box with an amboyna burl lid. "If the slot cutter blade seizes up, you concede defeat and let go."

She handed him the ruined box. The orangey wood was speckled with reddish-brown, black and gold highlights. "Amboyna burl is imported from the jungles of Cambodia. The sheet of veneer that came from set me back a pretty penny."

Later that night at home Frankie could still picture the willowy woman hunched over the drill press, her elbows straight-jacketed against her slender waist. Just before she pressed the wood up against the slot cutter, Kendra filled her lungs with air. Listening to the mute language of the slot cutter blade as it blindly wormed its way through the black walnut casing, she didn't breathe again until the cut was complete. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck.

* * * * *

In September, Frankie returned to school. He dropped by the Lomax place a couple days after school. One afternoon as the boy was approaching the slate blue house, the front door opened and a middle-aged man bustled past him. Climbing into a Buick convertible, he slammed the door and drove off in a rage.

Kendra was in the kitchen. A rather imposing tea box fashioned from red birch was resting on the counter alongside several sheets of flamboyant handmade paper. "I found these beauties," she said as soon as Frankie entered the room. "at the Rode Island School of Design."
"Nice stuff!" Frankie gazed at a velvety, cream-colored sheets.

"A slurry of twigs, leaves and flower petals are added to the moist pulp so that, when it dries, the paper has an organic, three-dimensional quality." She transferred a piece she had already cut to the top of the unfinished tea box. "I'm thinking of using the paper as the medallion to showcase the wood."

Kendra had told Frankie on more than one occasion that 'presentation' was everything. The artisan needed some central theme or unique feature to draw the consumer in. "Yeah, I get it. The mint green and dark purple…that’s swell!"

She lay the paper aside. "Of course, we can't use wood glue... too brittle" She was thinking out loud. "Maybe an acid-neutralized PVA."

"What's that?"

"Water-based white glue with a vinyl additive." She turned and smiled at the boy, a conspiratorial gesture. "Did you get a chance to meet Edgar's brother as he was leaving?"

"He almost knocked me over."

"Yes, well, the man was a bit upset." Kendra rolled the exotic, handmade papers in a bundle and fastened them with a pair of elastic bands. "He wants to put the house on the market… gave me thirty days to pack up my belongings and clear off the property." She sipped from a cup of coffee. "After he took sick, Edgar warned me that his family was a bunch of greedy bastards, and they might try some funny stuff. That's why he went to an attorney and redid his will; signed the property over to me, free and clear."

"So the family can't kick you out?"

Kendra raised her hands, palms up, and smirked impudently. "Not in thirty days, not in thirty years."

For the second time since he met the hardscrabble woman with the unlovely features, the boy burst into tears. Kendra reached out and pulled him close. "I ain't going anywhere, so don't you worry."

Only when he had gotten his emotions back under control, did she gently pull away. "The Boxboro juried art festival is coming up next month."

"Yeah, you already told me." Frankie blew his nose and dabbed his cheek with the back of a hand.

"Well, I sure could use an extra pair of hands and I'm willing to pay."
"Okay."

"I'll need someone to sand and finish, while I get the rest of the inventory together. Can't afford to pay you much better than minimum wage, but - "

"Yeah, I'll do it. When can I start?"

"Unless you're planning another emotional meltdown," Kendra tucked the red birch tea box under her arm and headed for the basement, "you can get to work now."

* * * * *

Later that night, Frankie told his mother about his new, working relationship with Kendra Ryder. "So everything's going good over there."

"Yeah, real good."

"You staying away from the power tools?"

"She lets me use the stationery belt sander but that's pretty safe."

"Good." His mother wet her lips. "Your father called from the office. He won't be coming home tonight."

"Okay."

Frankie turned to go, but his mother brought him up short. "I suppose he's spending the night at his girl friend's place." Her voice was devoid of anger, no hint of bitterness. "So it will be just the two of us for supper."

He eyed her uneasily. "You're not going to drink, are you?"

"No, not tonight." The woman pursed her lips and gazed pensively out the bay window. "I still care about your father but he's all mixed up."

"What if he wants a divorce?"

"That will be his choice to make," his mother replied evenly. "At some point he'll have to choose. I don't want to look back twenty years from now and discover that our happiness was held hostage by a man who put his own needs before those of his family. Either way, we can make a life."

They ate supper alone. Somehow it didn't feel so bad. Frankie sat in the kitchen while his mother did the dishes. "Don't you have homework?"

"Already did it."

Frankie's mother squirted a stream of dish detergent into the sink. "Be nice to the Ryder lady." She was facing away when she made the odd remark, and Mrs. Dexter blurted the handful of words with an abrupt severity that caught the boy off guard. He stared open-mouthed at his mother's backside. "I want you to be nice to the lady who lives at the Lomax place," she repeated.

"Why wouldn't I be," he stuttered. His mother reached for the sponge and began scrubbing a Pyrex baking dish. He waited. After Mrs. Dexter finished the dish, she washed the rest of the plates and rinsed the sink. Approaching the kitchen table, she cupped her son's face in her moist hands, planted a kiss on either cheek and said, "I gotta throw a load of laundry in the dryer."

Frankie went upstairs and took a shower. Then he got in bed with his tulipwood. He had already used up the old piece and Kendra sliced him a new one off a three-foot slab. He scuffed the surface and raised the pungent wood to his nose. Yes, that was better.

Be nice to the Ryder lady. What the hell did his mother mean by that moronic remark? Kendra was the nicest goddamn person he had ever met! No one had to tell him to be kind, or generous, or decent or anything! Frankie felt a lump growing in his throat. He scratched the sassafras a half dozen times for good measure, rolled off the side of the bed, went and found his mother in the laundry room. "The Ryder lady,… why did you say what you did?"

Mrs. Dexter had finished with the dryer and had moved over to the ironing table. She added a cup of distilled water to the steam iron and raised the temperature to the cotton setting. "I forgot that Kendra volunteers over at the library and ran into her when I returned some books earlier today." She pressed down on the steam button and a puff of watery vapor burst from the sole plate. "Anyway, we got to shooting the breeze the way women do and one thing led to another."

Frankie's mother spread a plaid, perma-press blouse over the nose of the ironing board and made a tentative pass. "Well, the conversation turned to a certain fifteen year-old boy and she kept going on and on about what a swell kid you were." Finishing with the blouse, she grabbed a pair of black slacks. "Then the woman goes all mushy on me and confides how she and Edgar Lomax were planning to start a family of their own right before he took sick and how she looks at you almost like the son she never had." Only now did the woman set the iron aside and look her son full in the face. "I'm only sharing this because you forced the issue. What I'm telling you goes no further than this room."

"Kendra… she really said all that?"

His mother turned back to the ironing. "No further than this room, mind you!"

Still later that night while teetering on the cusp of sleep, Frankie tried to reconcile the notion of the utterly fearless, taciturn female hunched over a slot cutter chucked into a drill press lumbering at six-hundred rpm's and the mushy volunteer at the Brandenberg Public Library.

* * * * *

Kendra had signed on for a couple of local craft fairs. The third Sunday in October, Frankie helped load the rust-pocked Dodge Caravan and spent the day watching her greet customers and sell merchandise. As Kendra explained it nobody bought the big stuff. The elaborate, mixed-media tea boxes and multi-drawer jewelry cases sold reasonably well through the chic galleries on Cape Cod and Newport but were outside the price range of the average craft fair shopper. "They usually stop to ogle the really fancy stuff and admire the workmanship, then settle on a smaller keepsake."

She also set out items each show as a 'lost leader', cheaper items she sold for cost and never really brought in any profit. The sign over a hexagon-shaped ring box fashioned from bird's-eye maple read:

Clearance Sale!!!
Ten dollars while they last!!!

A dozen or so ring boxes were spread out on the table. "Customers view the ring boxes as a solid bargain so they grab them up. Meanwhile, more people crowd under the canopy to see what all the fuss is about, and medium-priced items start flying off the table. Even if I lose a few bucks on the ring boxes, I recoup the loss twice over on pricier stuff that gets tacked onto the initial sale."

Kendra gestured with a flick of her eyes at a lanky older man sitting on a director's chair next to a tent full of watercolors. "That jerk isn't going to sell crap!"

"How can you be so sure?"

Kendra smiled at a woman pushing a baby stroller past her booth. The woman nodded amiably but didn't slow down. "You see how the sourpuss sits with his nose buried in the newspaper?" Sure enough, the fellow was leaning back in his chair, ignoring the customers streaming down the walkway. The artist's expression was sullen, disinterested. "Customers aren't stupid. They can tell when a vendor is giving them the holier-than-thou cold shoulder." Kendra waved a hand emphatically in the air. "By five o'clock, you will be able to count the number of sales that fool has made on the fingers of one hand."

A young woman approached and was staring at an unusual box with green, gold and black highlights. "That's paldao," Kendra explained. "The wood is harvested from the jungles of Indochina. It's a dangerous wood to harvest, and most natives won't go anywhere near a paldao tree."

"Why is that?"

"Boa constrictors."

The woman flipped the lid up then ran her fingertips over the crushed velour interior. "You're joking." Kendra grinned and shook her head slowly from side to side.

The woman left but returned an hour and a half later. "About that tree and the snakes… you were pulling my leg, right?"

"The boas hang from the trees searching for prey; the natives, who are animists and believe in voodoo, are terrified of the snakes. The logging companies had an awful time finding loggers willing to go into the jungles and cut down the trees." The woman promptly pulled out her wallet and paid cash for the paldao box. By closing time Sunday night, Kendra had pocketed fifteen hundred dollars. Peeling five twenty dollar bills off the roll, she handed the money to Frankie. "What's this for?"

"Your take. Now help me break down the tent and pack up all this crap so we can get home."

* * * * *

Saturday morning the phone rang. "Hello, son, is your mother there?"

Frankie went upstairs. "Dad's on the phone."

Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Dexter fixed herself a cup of tea, went out to the retrieve the newspaper that the paperboy flung in the bushes and sat down at the kitchen table. "Apparently it's not going so hot with your father and Phyllis."

Frankie cringed. This was the first time his mother had ever mentioned the 'other woman' by name. His father moved in with her six months ago. They hadn't been getting along for the past three. Over the weekend the girlfriend threw him out, and Mr. Baxter had taken a one-room efficiency apartment at the Motel 6. Now he wanted to come home.

"What now?"

"I told your father that, in his absence, things had changed… we had moved on with our lives." She ran a poised finger around the rim of the cup. "I explained that, if he came back, there would be no more nastiness, no more hurtful bickering." Opening the newspaper to the editorial page, she scanned the offerings. "I also explained that I wouldn't tolerate any more deceitful hanky-panky. The next time he screws up will be his last."

Later that afternoon, Frankie's father returned dragging an overstuffed Pullman suitcase. He looked tired, bedraggled like a beaten dog. Mrs. Baxter was civil and courteous. She even fixed him a roast beef sandwich on sourdough bread with a slice of pickle and can of diet Coke. She didn't make a big deal about his arrival. He wasn't the prodigal son or some long lost relative. She didn't berate him or rub salt in his middle-aged wounds. What his mother said earlier in morning as she leisurely thumbed through the Brandenberg Gazette was true; in his absence, things had changed.

* * * * *

The first week in December, Frankie stopped by the Lomax place. The door was open but the basement was empty. He glanced in the bedroom. Kendra was lying under the comforter with a box of Kleenex balancing precariously on her chest. "What's the matter?"

"I gotta bad cold. Bronchitis."

The boy placed a hand on her forehead. "You feel hot."

"I was up to a hundred and three last night, but the temperature came down since then."

"What about the Litchfield Christmas Fair?"

"I dunno," she said listlessly.

Frankie went and sat on a chair in the far corner of the room. "You got food?"

"Yeah, I went to the market just before I got sick. There's plenty to eat… just can't keep anything down, that's all." The woman coughed spastically, blew her nose and lay silent. Five minutes later, Kendra Ryder began snoring softly. On the night table was a framed photo of Edgar Lomax. Heavyset with a dark beard and plaid flannel shirt, the unsmiling hulk of a man resembled a backwoodsman from the hills of Appalachia. This was the man who taught Kendra Ryder to cut finger joints, miters, dovetails and mortises. This was the man who died before he could give the woman what she wanted most in the world.

Frankie went home and told his mother what had happened. "When is the Litchfield Fair?"

"This coming weekend. It's an indoor event at the art center. The booth fee was two hundred dollars."

Mrs. Dexter groaned. "Maybe she could tell them what happened and get a refund."
"It's a fancy-schmancy, juried art show," Frankie explained. "By invitation only… no refunds."

Mrs. Dexter blew out her cheeks. "Tough luck!"

Thursday Frankie's mother came into the bedroom as he was climbing under the covers. "How's the Ryder woman doing?"

"Much better, but she's still too weak to work the fair." He breathed out heavily making a disagreeable sound. "She spent the whole month making inventory for the show, and now she'll have to eat the loss. What a waste!"

His mother picked up a pair of Dockers slacks, folding them on the crease. "You know how to manage the booth, right?"

"Yeah, but each crafter has to set up, greet customers, track sales … "

Mrs. Dexter hung the slacks in the closet and turned to face her son. "I told your father about the Ryder woman taking sick, and he suggested that, if she got permission from the sponsors, maybe we could manage the booth in her absence."

Frankie's brain flickered, momentarily dimmed then grew white hot again. "I can sell. That's no problem as long as somebody helps bagging, collecting the money and sales tax."

"What's Kendra's telephone number?” Mrs. Baxter shuffled to the door. “I'll call over there now and let her know."

When his mother was gone, Frankie reached under his pillow and fingered the milky white shaft of Brazilian tulipwood. He ran his over the surface of the redolent, ornamental wood - the talisman of a kinder, gentler universe – but left it where it lay.