Lighting Up Their Days

Do you know what “Oh, no” sounds like, uttered by a contractor as he punches a hole through your living-room ceiling at 8 at night?

“Oh, no,” when spoken by your contractor as he makes way for the skylights he’s promised will take only a few days to install--and when all the materials are bought and the contract is signed--can sound somewhat disturbing.

We hired our contractor (whom I’ll call “Ray”) after one initial meeting. He seemed knowledgeable and forthright and had an easy, eager manner. Ray also gave us a very reasonable estimate of the highest and lowest possible cost . . . exactly within the range of what we could afford.

“That’s it?” my husband had asked warily. “Won’t be any surprise extras or additional costs later? You sure?”

“Absolutely,” Ray assured him.

“He’s very busy,” my husband told me. “But if I buy the skylights and all the materials, he can squeeze us in pretty soon. He said it’ll only take a few days.”

A few weeks later, Ray came by for a closer look. He brought his ladder this time, climbed on the roof, knocked on our ceiling, examined the skylights that my husband had bought, then went home to “firm up the price,” saying he’d call in the morning.

Next morning, after doing a more accurate numbers crunch and consulting with his “old man,” a 30-year veteran contractor, Ray informed my husband that he had been a little “off.” It seemed the job required an extra man and it would take four, five days, tops. And the cost would be about 30% over the highest end of the estimate.

Despite my husband’s very vocal surprise, he still deemed the price fair. And besides, he’d already bought the skylights and supplies.

The following Monday afternoon, Ray arrived with “Andy,” his one-man crew, to drop off his equipment, tape the walls and seal in the living room. Then Ray was called away to another work site. Andy waited for two hours, then disappeared. Ray returned, then went to find Andy. Andy came back, then left to find Ray. By 6 they were both gone for the day.

Tuesday at noon, I called Ray to see where he was. He’d had an overnight emergency at one of the restaurants that he serviced and had been out until 7 a.m. making repairs.

He said that he didn’t want to show up first thing in the morning and be no dang good. I thanked him for his consideration. He said he and Andy would be by around 4. That evening at 8, Ray was ready to punch through the ceiling and “see what we’ve got.”

What we’ve got is a cathedral ceiling, funky in its uneven 75-year-old texture and bowed angles. Looking at the roof, it would appear that it slopes at the same angle as the ceiling. It appears that roof and ceiling would be nearly flush against each other. Ray would simply cut through both, set in the skylights and call it a day . . . or four.

“Oh, no.”

*

A minute later Ray appeared in the doorway of my son’s room as I was putting him to bed.

“Uh . . . when you have a minute. . . . “

I met Ray in the living room. He and Andy stood, flanking a stepladder that reached to a basketball-sized hole in the ceiling.

“Take a look,” he said.

I did.

“Oh, no,” I echoed.

At its peak, the ceiling was, literally, 4 feet from the roof. At the lowest point (and the bottom of the future skylights), the space was nearly 2 feet. A box. The skylights now needed to be boxed. A bigger deal, considering the depth and angles.

At that point, my husband came home. Ray told him to climb the ladder and have a look.

My husband didn’t move, just looked up at the gaping hole in our ceiling.

“What are you telling me, Ray? You gave me the final quote already,” he said.

“I know. I know. It’s just that this is a big job now, s’all I’m saying. A lot more work involved,” Ray replied.

“You gave me the quote,” my husband maintained.

“I know, man. I know,” Ray said. “I’m just saying.”

It was a big job. Each side of each box was constructed with three or four angles, pieced together with half a dozen or so precisely fashioned pieces of plywood, fitted together, literally, like a puzzle.

Ray wanted to match the bowed, rough quality of our 1926 ceiling, complementing the angle of the pitch.

He and Andy usually arrived about noon or 1 or 2 and left at 7 or 8 or 9 at night, always certain to sweep the front steps and driveway of slivers and sawdust and nails. They took care in their work and high-fived each other when a particularly menacing piece of the puzzle was completed.

*

At first I figured we’d let them be. You know, they wouldn’t want any distractions or interruptions. But it soon became clear that they both loved to talk. Ray, in particular. He’d even talk to my 2-year-old, Drake. He’d tell me about his own boys, a 10- and a 1-year-old, and his terrific wife.

My husband or I would make coffee for us all. Milk and sugar? “Yes, please.”

These were nice men, even if they had cordoned off the entire living-dining room area of our modest two-bedroom house, forcing us to live in our not-so-eat-in kitchen and home office. Even if they had initially promised to be gone in four days and this was the eighth. Even if entire afternoons were sometimes lost to unforeseen circumstances--circumstances that included a friend of Ray’s having his car stolen and needing a lift from San Diego, the stolen car’s being found abandoned and needing to be retrieved and said stolen-abandoned car’s becoming home to an irritable female vagrant who needed coaxing out by none other than Ray.

“You certainly are a good friend,” I assured Ray on the phone, as I stared longingly at my dusty, tool-strewn, off-limits living room.

Still, as lax and inaccurate as Ray was in his estimated times of arrival and deadlines, he was an exacting perfectionist in his work.

On about the fifth day, Ray’s wife started dropping by. At first, she’d simply stop the car, kids in tow, and honk. Ray would dash out, give her a quick peck, wave to the kids, then run back up the stairs with the evening’s take-out meal or a couple of cold sodas, her car gone before he reached my front door.

On the eighth day, Ray’s wife and kids showed up at dinner time with McDonald’s. That day they actually parked but didn’t venture past their Honda, car doors flung open behind Ray’s big white pickup. The 10-year-old hung off the roof of the car trying to make his brother laugh while Ray’s wife delivered the food.

I was just getting home with Drake, lifting him out of his car seat. He saw the “baby” and “boy” and raced toward them. He wanted to hold the baby, sit beside the boy, troop them into our backyard, introduce them to the dog.

Same time next day, baby and boy and mom arrived with chips and soda. This time they made it up the driveway as Ray and Andy had a smoke on a nearby pile of plywood.

Drake spied them through the backyard fence and nearly scaled the 6-foot gate trying to get to them. We all hung out in the driveway as the boy shared his Doritos with Drake and Drake patted the ground imploring, “Boy, pleez, sit, me.”

Each day, Ray’s wife and kids cautiously ventured farther, like children slowly gaining confidence to approach the lion’s cage at the zoo. At some point (was it the 10th or 11th day?), we all wound up in the backyard--me, Drake, Ray’s young, soft-spoken wife and kids. Ray’s older son would run circles around the yard, hurling his gangly body against our doughboy pool while Drake alternated between mimicking him and showing the baby how to ride our German shepherd bareback.

They’d play for an hour or so until it was time to carry my tired, weeping son into the house as he wailed, “Boy, baby, more!”

“You think this is unusual?” I asked my husband as we sat in office chairs in our kitchen, dinner plates balanced precariously on our laps.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” he replied. “I think that any minute now, Alan Funt Jr. is going to pop his head out of our oven and try to scare us to death.”

“I thought so,” I said.

As Drake waited at the front window, watching for boy and baby, I’d caution, “They might not be able to come today,” just to ease any potential disappointment. But he wasn’t disappointed, not for a while anyway.

Two weeks after Ray and Andy first arrived, the job was done. They cleaned up and took down the plastic sheets as my husband and I eagerly pushed all our furniture back into place and hung our pictures back on the walls.

Light bathed our once-dark living room through skylights that looked like they were set in their own little rooms. We surveyed Ray’s obvious craftsmanship from every possible angle and formerly dark corner.

The next afternoon, as I turned the corner to our house, I wondered for a moment where Ray’s truck was. I also wondered what I would say to Drake.

It’s been weeks since Ray’s last day on the job. Drake is no longer pining daily, passionately, over baby and boy, although he’ll occasionally wander to the front window and ask brightly, “Boy, baby, me?”

“We’ll see them again,” I assure my son. And we will . . . as soon as we have the money to punch a hole in the dining room ceiling. And the patience.

*

Karen Rizzo is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.