Sometimes, Gab is Not Necessarily a Gift

My mom is having some work done. Not the fake facelift that her doctor told her he was doing on her face when he carved off her lingering lesion. No. Actual work. On her house. She has a guy she calls for these odd jobs. He works on his own, sometimes with his son, and he has a truck with his name and "Handyman Services" on the side.

I call him Chatty Handy.

He's the guy who replaced the silver aluminum drain plug thingy in my mom's white family-room bathroom sink with a blue one. She didn't know until after he left and she went in to check on the job. He's also the one who asked her for a check to take to the lumberyard, and she refused. She showed him! She rode along with him and wrote out that check herself.

Today Chatty Handy was scheduled to fix three things. The DISH man had told Mom she had a leaky hole in the roof near her chimney. Mom said there was a crack in the foundation under the windows to her family room. The furnace in the basement does not blow hot air the way it used to, also according to Mom. Chatty Handy was due to arrive with his son between 8:00 and 8:30 this morning.

I called Mom to see if she needed anything from the store. I was going back to tend her stitches, having removed her bandaid yesterday and slathered her with triple antibiotic ointment. I also told her to keep her hair off those stitches, and fished a cap out of her hall closet to keep her from wearing a hairnet kind of shower cap thingy she wears when she cooks. When I called around 9:00, she said she had been in the yard talking to Chatty Handy, who was going up on the roof. What they had been doing the other 30 or 60 minutes, I'm not sure, but I suspect they were chewing the fat.

I did not arrive until going on noon. Mom was not sitting on the porch waiting for me as usual. Nor was she standing in the door, asking if I wanted help bringing in the bananas and Little Debbie Swiss Rolls I had picked up for her. I grabbed the bags (of course I got her a treat of Fiddle Faddle and a can of beer nuts, because she's my mom, and she's housebound for a few days) and went on in.

Well! Chatty Handy was standing right there in the kitchen, jawing away, and he SCREAMED that I had scared him to death when I came in. Let the record show that the big wooden door was open, and all I did was click the latch on the full-length glass storm door, in plain sight of them, to walk in. That is my right, I think, as the new Thirteen-Dollar Daughter.

Mom kept trying to scurry Chatty Handy on his way so we could get down to wound care. I had groceries suffocating under two winter coats in the back of T-Hoe. Chatty Handy does not pick up social cues very well. He kept on with a long-winded tale of some stroke victim without the use of her arm, and how one side of the brain controls the opposite side of the body, and how there is medicine that can do wonders with a stroke if given within one hour, and how with rehab, this lady might actually recover and be better than before, because that's what happens when a person survives a stroke. I'm shocked that he doesn't just chuck this whole handyman business and go on the lecture circuit with a medical team.

Finally Chatty Handy made an exit, as I kept my head down, not engaging him, readying a box of bandaids, a tube of triple antibiotic ointment, a roll of paper towels, a cup of water, and a drinking straw. "Hey! I have a boo boo on my hand? Think I can get a bandaid?"

"No." That's it. Not engaging. I did not even look toward his hand. It could have been hanging by a sinew, and I would not have treated him. I thought he was just joking. He can get his own wound care specialist while he's hanging out with the stroke team.

No sooner had I started wiping away yesterday's ointment than Chatty Handy returned up the steps from the family room.

VAL: "Am I parked in your way? Do you need to leave?"

CH: "Oh, no! I still have to fix that foundation and the duct work in the basement. I guess I'll do it better if I take my tools." Chatty Handy headed out front to get his stuff from the truck. Who knows what he'd been doing for four hours. Talking, is my guess. He must have gone around the front of Mom's split-level home, because we were happily without his company for a good five minutes.

I was just rinsing soapy water off Mom's stitches by dribbling water from a drinking straw when I saw Chatty Handy come in the sliding doors off the family room patio. Up the steps he came. "I just wanted you to know that I filled in that crack. I used the baggie you gave me, and cut off the corner, and squirted it in the crack. I dug as far back as I could and pulled out all the broken stuff. I have an ice pick that I used. Here..."

MOM: "Oh, you used an ice pick? No! You don't have to show me."

Chatty Handy dug into his tool bag and brandished the ice pick like it was a prize-winning large-mouth bass. "Yeah. You should be all right unless you notice your carpet getting wet. Or a smell, like mildew or mold."

MOM: "So it will be fine unless I smell mildew. I'll remember that."

CH: "Just between you and me, we've had a bathroom issue at home...that's all I'll say...but I told my wife, 'Quit spending so much on all those cans of air freshener. Just buy one of those wicks and set it on top of the air conditioner.' She said, 'Won't the dog bother it?' And I said, 'If he does, then he deserves whatever problems it gives him.' You know, you can also buy those filters to put on a furnace that spread a fresh smell."

MOM: "So it should be fine?"

CH: "Yes. I'll go to the basement now. That will give that patch time to set up."

VAL: "MOM! Don't engage him! He'll only talk more!"

MOM: "Well, I didn't think I was...but he just goes on and on."

I had finished rinsing, and was fanning Mom's face with a folded paper towel to air dry it before applying the ointment. Here was Chatty Handy yet again, standing on the steps to the kitchen.

CH: "Did you kick up the thermostat like you said?"

MOM: "Oh, yes. It's on 78."

CH: "That's good. I don't want to get blasted in the face while I'm working on the duct. I'll let you two get on with your visiting."

Let the record show that I was FANNING MY MOM'S FACE WITH A PAPER TOWEL. It's not like we were having tea and cucumber sandwiches.

VAL: "MOM! You are an enabler. You don't have to respond. Be quiet, and he will get uncomfortable and stop talking and get back to work. You are both enablers. You feed on each other. I swear. You two will still be here in a year and a half, him working on those three jobs. I am going to have to call your neighbor across the road, and have him come over here and put a stop to all this visiting."

The end is coming tomorrow. IF Chatty Handy is done.