The Shirleys

Skip’s wife Shirley finally lost it. She lost her cool. She lost it on their fifty-seventh anniversary. She wanted a gathering, a celebration. She invited people - even the young, shiny new neighbors from California.

 “OK,” Skip said, “But Phlip and I gotta work it. We’ve gotta finish the Agate Beach job. But I’ll be home by three thirty. I promise.”

 “Skip,” Shirley entreated, “People are coming over. For once? Just this once, no work clothes? OK, hon’?”

Shirley’s entreaties about Skip’s work clothes were usually stern warnings, but changing clothes before he got home was just another dead-tired, end-of-day task that Skip always easily blew-off. It was a lot easier to come through the kitchen door and be handed a half-frozen beer and crack it and sip and kill the every-day-every-fiber pain in his high-miles muscles.

So this time, like he promised, Skip showed-up home from Agate Beach at three fifteen. He stepped through the front door in his dusty work clothes on their fifty-seventh and cracked a beer - and shrilly, right in front of guests, Shirley read him The Riot Act. Skip still remembers every word of The Riot Act. Now, Skip buys a new suit every fortnight, oftener for special occasions like anniversaries. Every second Monday, over at Copeland Lumber, he buys a new, pure white, paper-like Tyvek cover-all suit – one for Phlip, too. With his Contractor Discount, just fourteen bucks apiece.  Skip knows coming through the kitchen door in his oo-too-clean Tyvek’s kina smart-ass, but their oldest son Lonnie’s life just never really jelled and, one day in a fit of desperation sixteen years ago, Shirley’d promised Lonnie’s wife Shirley that “surely” Skip and she’d “help” with the house payment.

 Lonnie was an artist. On the living room wall, Skip had a Purple Heart from Korea. A bullet with Skip’s number on it ploughed right through his left femur and kept going. Working with Phlip now, who was even older and said he had ”vertigo”, Skip did all the ladder work. Ascending ladders, Skip felt The Leg big-time.

But what he saw in Shirley’s eyes, the tenderness Skip saw every month after his wife wrote his daughter-in-law “The Check”, the way she looked at Skip, he hoped their life together never would end. They no longer told each other “I love you”; to Skip, it just didn’t seem adequate. That day, on their fifty-seventh, the passion in the way Shirley read him out brought tears to the drywall dust around Skip’s old eyes.

Back in the seventies, Skip & Phlip met at what Skip told Shirley was “just a big hole” – the Grand Canyon. Skip & Phlip didn’t have all that much to say to each other. It was the wives – the pair of them – that brought those guys out of their “GI Blues.” Both wives Shirleys. On that trip, it didn’t matter whether Phlip or Skip said “Hey, Shirley?”, one or both Shirley’s would answer sweetly, “Yes, dear?” Better yet, with only “Yes, dear?” to go on, Skip couldn’t tell their voices apart. Skip couldn’t remain his dead-pan self. From the Grand Canyon trip, both Skip & Phlip came home grinning.

In ’79, Skip & Phlip started a dry-wall business together. After a local landmark, they called their enterprise Desolation Saddle(DS) Finishing. They finished interior walls in new construction. They earned a reputation. Decades later, work poured off the grapevine at them. One day, back on his eightieth, Phlip told Skip, “I feel like I could go on forever, but when Lonnie gets his dab of Social Security, that’s it. Just so ya know.”

 Recently, Phlip had become - taxing. He showed-up late. Sometimes, when Skip asked Phlip for a hand with something, Phlip acted like he didn’t hear. One day Doug, the manager of the lumber yard asked Skip, “What’s going on with Phlip?” For a great many years, DS Finishing had used the same Hanger – who Skip called a “gem of a young fella.” Clark, their Hanger, never washed his socks - just threw them away after a week. But dependably, with screws, Clark used to “hang” all the heavy sheets of drywall onto the bare framing. Recently, while Skip was off getting a Colonoscopy, Phlip and Clark had gotten into it in rather a visceral way over Clark’s screw spacing. It wasn’t the first time. Phlip said Clark was using too many screws. Right then and there, Clark quit.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, Phlip!” Skip yelled the next day. “You’re seeing the same help-wanted signs all over the place I am. If Shirley and I stop making Lonnie and Shirley’s house payment…without Clark, DS Finishing is going to have to buy a hydraulic ceiling jack. Like thirty-seven hundred bucks! What are we gonna tell Shirley?”

Taping toward a corner, Phlip had just started mudding a horizontal joint about thirty feet long. Waiting, Skip watched Phlip’s pure white head move steadily along the wall as he taped. Skip waited, but he didn’t hear anything until Phlip nosed into the corner. He heard Phlip mutter, “Nothing, asshole. Not tellin’ her anything. To hell with goddam DS Finishing.”

Last time Phlip called Skip that was about twenty years ago. Their blind ambition had worn both of them out; they were getting pounded into the ground by the pace of the jobs they were taking on. But Skip and Shirley had been able to save Lonnie and Shirley a down payment on a house and “the kids” were “in”.

In their one, twenty-years-ago scuffle, with a right-handed upper-cut, Skip broke Phlip’s new bridge work right in half. They both felt like fools. What were they going to tell the Shirleys? Skip worked out a sneaky, cash payment plan with Phlip’s dentist. They didn’t tell the Shirleys anything. Skip and Phlip didn’t have the heart to tell them. After their fight, they both called home and went drinking together at The Flounder Inn and went back to work the next day feeling even worse. But they never told on themselves. The way they both loved their Shirleys!

Day after Phlip said, “To hell with DS Finishing,” he didn’t show up on site at all. But the lumber yard truck did. By themselves, Skip and the driver unloaded the truck and packed all the drywall into the house. By lunch Skip was finished-off for the day. He was mad. He was in misery. He couldn’t stand to start to hang the heavy sheets.

Instead, he went gunning for Phlip.

It was a long, stupid drive. Phlip insisted on living clear the hell up in Otis. Nothing there. Stupid place with nothing but a Chevon/convenience store on one side of Highway 101 and a shack of a café on the other. Coupla years ago a lotta “Otisites” got burned out by forest fire. But for more than fifty years, to Phlip and Shirley, Otis had been “over town.”

Skip caught up to Phlip. Phlip was the same as Skip – never wore anything but work clothes.

But there Phlip was, standing in his driveway all duded-up in his pure white Tyvek, his pure white hair all combed and not even his old Skagit Logging ball cap. He didn’t look at Skip. Skip & Phlip watched two men load Shirley into the back of a long black hearse. Never looking at Skip, Phlip got into the hearse with the two men. Skip didn’t know who – himself or Phlip – or Shirley - was more alone.

Watching the hearse slide away toward the stop sign, then make a right onto Highway 101 brought tears to the drywall dust around Skip’s old eyes.