Distracting Dad

Self-righteously he picked up his supplies and, with one final baleful glare at the filling machines, turned away. “I’ll tell you what, anybody takes anything out of those machines before I get back and that woman gets to say I told you so, they’re dead meat. Dead meat,” he repeated, almost wishing someone would try. He was in the mood to take somebody on, no doubt about that.

Nate bounded back up the stairs. He dropped his hamper off at his place, grabbed the mop and bucket and headed down to 2H. No point in putting off the agony.

The door to Allie’s condo wasn’t closed tightly and Nate nudged it open with his foot as his hands were full.

“Yes, well it’s like I was saying, my son seems to be having trouble finding himself a good woman, Allie. Course, he’s looking in all the wrong places. Singles bars.” Ted made a disgusted sound. “What do you get when you pick up somebody at a bar? An alcoholic, that’s what. A good woman doesn’t hang out in a bar, for God’s sake.”

Nate had obviously caught the end of a conversation. Sad, sorrowful and deep, that was definitely his dad and, unless Nate missed his guess, dear old dad was on another one of his rolls, with Nate once again the topic of choice.

“And a man needs a good woman. A wife can make or break a man,” Ted continued to expound. “God knows I’ve tried explaining that simple concept over and over, but Nate just doesn’t seem to get it. I don’t suppose, since you don’t have anyone special…no? Well, maybe you have a friend?”

Nate dropped the bucket on his foot.

He couldn’t believe it. His father was sneaking around behind his back trying to marry him off! If that wasn’t the most underhanded, conniving, manipulative thing the old man had tried yet, Nate didn’t know what was.

And besides, he’d thought of it first.

Chapter Two

With the sound of the clattering bucket, two heads poked into the room. “Wha—oh, uh, Nate, you get your laundry started already?”

Nate righted the bucket, then stood up and looked at his father. “Yeah, Dad, I did. Can I talk to you for a moment?” Nate gestured to the open condo door. “Out in the hallway maybe?”

Ted cleared his throat. “Well now, nothing I’d rather do than have a heart-to-heart with my one and only son, don’t you know. But little Allie here was showing me her bedroom. I gotta tell you, son, it’s a mess. Yes, indeed.” Ted pointed behind him. “I’m afraid our little talk will have to take a back seat. Here, have a look at this.”

Nate shook his head in disparagement. No way was his father getting away with this. “Dad—”

“No, really, come have a look.”

Nate heaved a great sigh and pushed away from the mop and bucket. He could hold his own with the CFO of any major corporation, but with his own father, he was clueless as how to proceed. “Fine, Dad. Let’s see. Show me the mess.”

Allie’s condo appeared to be laid out exactly the same as his own, only reversed. But the décor screamed female in the house. They ought to get one of those decorator magazine editors in here, Nate decided as he reluctantly wound his way through the small foyer, to the efficiency kitchen, and on into the living-dining area and then the bedroom.

Nate took a last look around. Yeah, some editor could do a great series on how the same layout could look totally different with just a few changes in paint and furniture. Nate liked to think of his own place as, well, masculine. Little wonder, as it just so happened his condo was full of what Nate considered manly stuff. Guy choices. Tan carpet, brown leather sofa pit, modern pictures loaded with these really cool geometric shapes in tan, brown and black that didn’t try to be anything other than what they were: cool shapes. There wasn’t a candle in the place, no overburdened silk flower arrangements and definitely no little artsy-fartsy ceramic bowls brimming with stinky potpourri sitting around catching dust, making you sneeze. And pink? What was that? Certainly not a color in Nate’s vocabulary.

Allie’s place couldn’t be more girly girl. Pink might not be the only word in her vocabulary but it was darn close. And knickknacks? Good grief, the woman could open a store. She could stock it for a year out of her living room alone. Nate sniffed in dismissal, turned around and looked up at the bedroom ceiling.

Oh, God. He needed to check his insurance policy. The problem was, he knew he’d taken a high deductible to lower the rates. He hoped to heaven this type of thing was covered, because he suspected he’d exceeded even his exorbitant deductible.

“Holy cow.”

“Yes,” his father agreed. “It’s a mess all right.” He slapped Nate on the back. “Well, we’ve got our work cut out for us, son.”

Nate, his father and Allie watched as a drop of water fell from the stained ceiling and hit the bed with a sodden plop.

Ted scratched his head. “Probably take a while for the water that was already trapped between your floor and her ceiling to work its way through now that we’ve stopped the leak. I hope it doesn’t drip too much longer, though. The carpet’s pretty well saturated already. Know anybody with a wet vac?”

Allie volunteered to ring neighbors’ doorbells while Nate and Ted wrestled the mattress off the bed.

As they struggled to guide their sodden burden through the bedroom doorway, Nate mused that it wasn’t so much the mattress he minded replacing, it was the bed linens themselves. This room too was done in early Easter egg. Come on, pink and yellow and wimpy purple—no, lavender—that was what you called washed-out purple, lavender. Nate decided then and there to just give her the money. She’d have to replace the stuff herself. No way was he going to go into a store and buy pale purple anything. From the looks of things, this Allie woman didn’t have many guys staying over, that was for sure. No guy would sleep in a bed done up like a flower bower. And it smelled…girly in here. Wet, but still girly. Nate sniffed deeply and told himself he didn’t like it.

Ted looked back up to the ceiling as he helped Nate shove the box spring out of the room, and Nate’s eyes followed.

They watched another drop work its way loose from its moorings and do a free fall. Nate winced.

“Hey, look what I’ve got,” Allie called as she appeared in the doorway pushing what appeared to be a giant, lethal-looking vacuum cleaner. “A wet vac. Cool, huh? Mrs. Naderly had one. She said the basement in the house she used to live in before she scaled down to an apartment used to get water. She also has some floor fans to help dry things further after we suck up as much as we can out of the carpet.”

Nate gave her a halfhearted smile. “Great. That’s just really…great.”

Ted slung companionable arms around his son and Allie as though they were the best of buddies. “Tell you what. Let’s handle the carpet as best we can and then while we’re waiting for things to dry up some, why don’t we head to the hardware store? We can pick up what we need to repair the ceiling. If the seams in the drywall start to pop as it dries, we’ll be ready. Get little Allie here taken care of in no time.”

“I really think it might be better if we called in a professional, Ted,” Allie said.

“Dad, since when do you know how to repair plaster?”

“No need to bother some busy construction company when we can take care of this ourselves,” Ted insisted. “They’d never come for something so little, anyway. And how hard can it be?” He gestured toward the ceiling. “It’s not even real plaster, just that drywall stuff. Hell, we’ll go buy a can of that gunk you use, the kind that’s all premixed, and slap some up there. Have the whole thing back to normal in nothing flat. You’ll see.”

“Oh, God. Where have I heard those words before?” Nate asked the heavens.

His father turned on him. “I still say this has nothing to do with anything I did last night. It’s strictly coincidental that your water pipes decided to introduce you to your neighbor the day after I worked on the garbage disposal.”

“Yeah, right. Whatever.”

“It’s true,” Ted insisted.

Nate put his hand up in a “hold it” gesture. “Look, the how is no longer important. The situation exists. Let’s call a plasterer, let him deal with this and I’ll take you both out to dinner. What do you say?”

All Ted had to say was a chiding “Nate—”

Nate turned away from his father while he ground his teeth together. Then he spun back around to face him once more. “Dad, you really need to go back to work. Early retirement was a mistake. You need a life outside of—” Nate gestured up “—making me crazy doing this kind of thing.”

Ted shook a finger at him. “No. No, you’re wrong. All those years I concentrated on my career and for what? I missed my son’s childhood, my wife became a virtual stranger. She pulled all kinds of antics just to be noticed, is my guess. Then when I realized what had happened, arranged things so we could get to know each other again, it was too late. Your mom passed away.” Ted punctuated his words with vehement arm and hand gesticulations. “Well, I’ve learned my lesson and I’m telling you, this is what’s important. My son and the things that affect his happiness. You’re all I’ve got left. You may be a man now, Nate, but I’m still your father. And you know what they say.”

Nate gritted his teeth. “No, Dad, what do they say?”

“Better late than never, that’s what. I may not have always been there for you when you were a kid, but I’ve turned over a new leaf, learned my lesson. You can count on me. I’ll be here for you from now on. That’s a promise you can take to the bank.”

That’s just what Nate was afraid of.

“Now here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll go to the hardware store and then the Sleep Factory. After that, you’ll take Allie and me out to dinner, okay?”

Nate clenched and unclenched his hands several times in frustration. His father really seemed to believe that making him crazy was in reality a way of a father reaching out to his son. How could you argue with a guy for trying to bond with his son? You couldn’t. You’d only lose and look like a heartless jerk in the process. Might as well save some time and cave right then and there. “Okay, Dad, you win,” he said, but he didn’t like it. “Let’s go to the hardware store.”

His father slapped him heartily on the back as Nate gave a last, disgusted look up at Allie’s ceiling. “That’s the spirit, son, that’s the spirit.”

Nate was pretty sure that Allie had called the situation earlier. They should just skip over the screwing-everythingup-royally part and go right to calling in a professional. Save a lot of time, effort and money. He’d seen his dad in action before. It wasn’t a pretty sight. But now, in an attempt to humor his dad, they were going to take a project that would take somebody else a day or two, complicate it, lengthen it and multiply the cost, all by a factor of at least two. Nate sighed to himself. Well, maybe it would work out. If he and his dad hung with Allie for a while, they might meet some of her friends or relatives. An unmarried older female relative with Allie’s spunk might work out real well here.

Nate commandeered the wet vac and extracted a good couple of gallons of water from the carpet while Ted and Allie bagged up her wet sheets, blanket and spread to take to a Laundromat, which had oversize machines that could handle the load, the next day. When Nate felt they’d accomplished as much as possible, he called a time-out. “All right, people, that’s it for a while. It’s getting late and I’m hungry. Let’s head on out of here.” Ted beat them all to the door. Nate assumed he was hungry, too.