Michigan Weather and Women: Part 1

Love, bastards, and what we leave behind.

Based on a post by CleverGenericName, in 4 parts. Listen to the
Podcast at Connected.

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The Plumber, The Painter, and the Wind off the Lake

Prologue

I have never been much for
following instructions or doing what I'm told.

In eighth grade, we were assigned
to make a volcano in science class. I figured that if the eruption looked good
with a couple of tablespoons of baking soda, then it would look even better
with the whole container! And what better place for a natural disaster than the
teacher's desk at the front of the class. I was right; the whole container of
baking soda produced an impressive explosion. What I didn't count on, however,
was it producing a week-long suspension from school and a beating from my
mother.

In high school, we had to take an
art class to graduate. Our teacher loved still life drawing and would ramble
endlessly about how it revealed the beauty that is in the everyday objects that
surround us. I guess he wanted us to reveal the beauty in the bowl of fruit
that he had put in the middle of the classroom, but the most beautiful things
that I could see were Brittany Johnson's D-cups which filled out her sweater
gloriously. At the end of the class, there were 29 drawings of a bowl of fruit
and one drawing of a beautiful girl's smile (amongst other details). Although I
was suspended for two days, I got a date with Brittany who loved my drawing, so
I feel like I came out ahead on that one.

In my last year of school, the
final mathematics exam asked the following question:

Determine
the points of intersection between the following parabolas and lines.
Illustrate fully.

While the other students slaved
away to solve the listed problems in the allotted time, I fully illustrated a
drawing of our math teacher, Mr. Aaronson, dancing a slow waltz in a field of
sunflowers with Mrs. Stevens, the geography teacher. It was the worst-kept
secret in the school that our two shyest teachers had massive crushes on each
other, and after four years of watching them pine away, I thought they could
use a little push.

I failed the test, but Mr. Aaronson
showed my drawing to Mrs. Stevens during a particularly dull staff meeting, and
when it made her blush and smile, he finally got up the courage to ask her out.
They are now married and have a little girl who is as cute as a button. At the
end of the year, Mr. Aaronson asked me if I planned to pursue math in the
future, and when I assured him that I did not, he gave me a passing grade.

So, what was my problem, you might
ask? Was I just one of those kids who didn't give a shit and was destined for
mediocrity or failure in life? Like many things, the answer is more complicated
than it might first appear, but I am getting ahead of myself. Our story starts
on an unusually cold and blustery afternoon in late October, on the north-eastern
shore of Lake Michigan about a half hour's drive north of Petoskey, just
outside a village called Good Hart.

Chapter 1.

It had been a busy day. The perfect storm of an early season
snap freeze, strong winds, and lake-effect snow meant that there was a couple
of inches of snow on the still soggy ground, along with a number of leaky or
burst pipes, malfunctioning valves, and boiler issues as people cranked their
heating systems up to full for the first time that year. As a plumber, though,
I didn't mind. It just meant more work for me, which was always a good thing.

At only 25 years of age, and despite being a master plumber,
I was generally the last choice for folks to call, even in an emergency. Anyone
with money chose one of the larger and more established plumbing contractors,
leaving me with the jobs that they didn't feel were worth their time or effort.
That's how I found myself pulling into the laneway of an older house, just off
Lamkin Road down by the lake, late that Friday afternoon. It was my last job of
the day, but I would be working over the weekend to catch up on my backlog, so
I wanted to get it done.

The house looked like it hadn't been updated since it was
built, likely in the late fifties or early sixties, other than a couple of
coats of paint and a new roof when the original finally gave up the ghost. The
front gardens were neatly tended, however, and the property itself was
stunning, with panoramic views in three directions out over the lake. The sun
was just beginning to dip toward the western horizon as I drove up, so the
trees cast long shadows across the laneway.

The house was owned by Mrs. Wilma C. Anderson, who had
called me earlier in the day to say that some of her radiators weren't working
and that her boiler was making one hell of a racket when she turned it on. I
told her to shut the system down and that I would look at it by the end of the
day. She sounded quite elderly, and I didn't like the idea of her going without
heat for a night during a cold snap.

I rang the doorbell and waited until a tiny wisp of a woman
answered. She couldn't have been more than five feet tall and looked older than
the hills, but her face was full of life, and her eyes had a twinkle that spoke
of humor and mischief.

"Hi, Mrs. Anderson, I'm Davis Crawford. You called
earlier about some issues with your boiler and heating system. How can I
help?"

Mrs. Anderson gave me an appraising look.

"I wasn't expecting you to be such a handsome young
man. If I were fifty years younger, I would tell you exactly how you could help
me, and then I'd teach you a trick or two I learned over the years. But I am
too old for that kind of foolishness these days, so I will just have to make
use of your plumbing expertise instead. And please, call me Wilma."

I couldn't help but laugh and blush at Wilma's surprisingly
raunchy sense of humor. I liked her immediately.

"Let's try that again. What seems to be the
problem?"

"Well, the biggest problem is that I am 91 years old
and dying of cancer. The doctors give me less than a year to live. But aside
from that, I really can't complain. I have had a good run of it."

I cocked my head to one side and gave her a bemused look.

"Oh, you were wondering what the problem is with my
heating system. Well, I turned it on this morning when I got up, and the boiler
sounded like there was someone trapped inside of it trying to hammer their way
out. There was a worrisome hissing from some of the radiators, as well, and
they weren't heating up worth a damn.

"My husband, Phillip, used to take care of those things
for us, but he has been gone for almost five years now, so I hate to think what
you will find when you look around."

"I'm sure I can help you, Mrs. Anderson,;"

"Wilma, please."

"Sorry, Wilma. Why don't you show me to the basement,
and I will try to figure out what's wrong. Then I can get started on fixing
it."

On the way to the basement stairs, Wilma led me through her
crowded but orderly living room. I couldn't help but notice the paintings on
just about every surface of its walls.

"You have a real eye for art, Wilma. Those paintings
are beautiful."

Wilma smiled wistfully at me and got a faraway look in her
eyes as she replied.

"Phillip and I were artists. I guess I still am, but I
haven't felt much like painting since he passed on. Phillip painted portraits.
He made a surprisingly good living at it; you would be amazed at what rich
people will pay to see their lives immortalized in oil on canvas. I never had
the knack. Phillip could make even the most corpulent and corrupt industrialist
appear regal and wise. I could only ever capture what I actually saw in them,
and I quickly discovered that they did not enjoy, or pay for, that kind of
introspection.

"So, I painted landscapes, and there is always a market
for those. But I kept some of my favorite pieces, over the years, as you can
see."

As Wilma spoke, I took a closer look at the paintings. One,
in particular, was striking; a portrait of a beautiful young woman, in her late
teens or early twenties, with a stethoscope around her neck and her blonde hair
pulled back into a tight ponytail. She was wearing a loose hoodie and was
curled up in an Adirondack chair, reading a book. It was not what you would
expect from a formal portrait, but it seemed to c