The Fixer

A short short

     Early in their marriage, Charlie’s wife game him the nickname “Fixer.” She said it with an exasperated smile, but with affection. Their cars were kept spotless, and the lawn was always perfectly edged. He collected the household trash and wheeled the cans to the bottom of the hill for the garbage men to pick up. If he noticed that the neighbors hadn’t rolled theirs down their own driveways, well, he’d do theirs, too. These weren’t the tasks that gave him the nickname Fixer, though. Fixer was responsible for the hot water taps that never quite shut off, the ceiling fan’s pull-cord that had to be pulled gently in just a certain direction to turn on, and the chicken wire attached with rubber bands to keep possums and rats out of the crawlspace.

 

     His wife, and, eventually, his two daughters, watched with suppressed grins as Charlie surveyed his work proudly, pointing out how little it cost him to fix the toilet that wouldn‘t stop flushing, when a plumber would have charged so much for labor and parts. They smiled and nodded and thanked him for fixing the toilet, then his wife called the plumber the next day while Charlie was at work.

 

     When the girls were grown, and had their own houses to look after, Charlie would show up with a tool belt filled with a hammer, screw driver, a few rolls of duct tape and a bottle of wood filler. His daughters would find a small job for him - nothing too dangerous or involving electricity - to make him feel useful and necessary.

 

     When Charlie retired, and became Fixer full-time, his wife developed a cough that soon turned into something Charlie couldn’t fix. Charlie patched together an old two-way radio set with electrical tape and a soldering iron, and gave one to his wife while he kept the other in the garage where he did his tinkering. The thing would squawk and hum when he turned it on or off, so he took to leaving it on all the time, even though it ran through batteries at a rate of a dozen a week. With the transistor on all the while, his wife was able to hear him working - piddling, as he called it. She could tell when his repairs weren’t going well by the number of muttered curses. If something went well, he’d traipse all the way through the house to her bedroom to tell her about it, forgetting about the two-way radio altogether. On his end of the radio, he kept the volume low, disheartened by her increasingly labored breathing.

 

     Several weeks after she passed away, the bank called Charlie about an account that had somehow been missed during probate. Charlie looked at the phone once he‘d hung up, confused, after the bank manager told him the balance and the most recent transactions - a check to Don’s Drywall Company for $250 and a check to Williams & Sons Plumbing for $75 - made a few months before his wife took ill. He picked up the phone again, this time to call one of his daughters. Yes, she told him, yes, Mom had that account for ages, but didn’t want us to mention it to you. It was just a back-up fund, for emergencies and repairs. She put her own money into it every week.

 

     Charlie walked heavily into the bedroom he’d shared with his wife for thirty-seven years. He sat down slowly on the bed, felt as the roughness of his hands caught at the soft fabric of the quilt, and wondered when it was in their marriage that she became a fixer, too.