The State of Mind Called Age

It was after lunch that Walt saw the woman sitting on a lawn chair on his neighbor's patio as he was walking back to his garage. His neighbors were a young couple so she might have been a babysitter except for one thing. His neighbors were what some people called "DINKs", the acronym for Dual Income - No Kids. He didn't know them other than one introduction after they bought the house and moved in. They were Brad and Jamie Hergens. He'd not seen a sign that said the house was for sale so the woman wasn't a new owner.

The husband was a senior buyer for a company that made home appliances in both the US and in Europe. The wife was an assistant controller for the same company. Walt figured their income must be at least a quarter-million a year, because the asking price for the house had been six hundred thousand. His own house was valued at about four, but he and Betty had bought it thirty-five years before. They'd paid a hundred and fifty then because it was one of only two houses in the new suburb, and because mortgage interest rates were still pretty high the builder wasn't having much luck with the two hundred thousand he was asking for the house. He needed money in order to pay his construction loans so he knocked fifty thousand off the price. It was inflation over the years since that contributed to the increase, that and the lack of enough housing for the growing city of which the suburb was a part.

Walt thought of walking over to find out why the woman was there, but then figured it was none of his business. Judging by her salt and pepper hair, she was an older woman. She could have been a housekeeper taking a break or someone just visiting, though it seemed odd for her to be there by herself if she was either. Both his neighbors worked during the day. They left for their offices at eight and seldom got home before seven in the evening. He'd never let a housekeeper alone in his house even if he had one he trusted, and he didn't know why someone would come to visit in the middle of the week if the couple was there only at night.

She also hadn't seen him, and if he walked over to talk to her, he might scare her. Walt just kept walking until he came to the door of his garage. Once inside, he walked to the workbench and the plans for a new deck he'd left there the day before along with the building permit from the city. The deck that had come with the house was twenty-four feet long and extended out from the house by twelve feet. It was now over thirty years old, and was basically falling apart. He and Betty hadn't used it much for that reason, and he hadn't had time to replace it when he was working. Now that he was retired, he did.

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Walt had gone to college to become a mechanical engineer after a four-year hitch in the US Army. During that four years, he'd spent a year in Vietnam hoping he'd live through the next firefight. After a year there, he'd spent another year at Fort Dix as part of the Basic cadre. After that came a year and a half in Germany where he impatiently waited for his enlistment to end. He was tired of other people telling him what to do.

When he got out of the Army, he enrolled in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois, and graduated four years later. Along the way, he met a petite little brunette named Betty who worked as a secretary to the Dean of the mechanical engineering department. It was hard fitting their relationship in between his studies and the part-time job he had, but he'd decided early on that she was the one and she was in more than agreement.

Sherry was born two years after Walt and Betty were married and everything seemed to be going his way. For some reason he never really understood, Betty's doctor said it would be risky for her to have any more children, but other than that, life was good. Then, on October 15, 2007, Betty was coming home from grocery shopping. The coroner said she probably veered into the other lane of the highway because she had a minor heart attack. If she'd not been driving, the heart attack wouldn't have been fatal. As it was, she'd hit the delivery truck head on. Walt was sixty at the time and Betty was fifty-eight.

For the next five years, Walt kept working mostly so he'd have something to do with his time. By the time he turned sixty-five, he was comfortable living on his own again and was becoming dissatisfied with his job. The push in industry was to offshore as much manufacturing as possible in order to lower cost and maximize profits. Instead of directing the operations of manufacturing plants across the US, he was arranging for tooling and machinery to be shipped from those plants to plants in Asia and Mexico. He decided to retire.

Walt was smart enough to know that he couldn't just sit in his living room and watch television once he stopped working. He'd known a plant manager who'd done that. The man apparently had no hobbies or other outside interests. All he did was work. When the man retired, he lasted six months. His wife found him in his recliner one afternoon, dead of a heart attack.

So he'd have something to do with his time, Walt had returned to doing what he started out to do, that being designing and building things. Instead of designing and building machinery for industry, he started designing and building things for himself. Over that winter, he designed a new deck and drew up the plans for the building permit.

He had other projects in mind as well. Betty had always wanted a gazebo in the back yard, and Walt had always wanted a workshop to use for small projects when it was raining or during winter when it was too cold to work outside. He figured if he didn't replace the deck first, he'd end up falling through it someday, so as soon as the spring rains seemed to have stopped, he applied for a building permit, and once he had it, placed an order for the lumber he'd need.

The deck was about three feet off the ground to match the elevation of the house. It had taken a week to tear off the old deck and since he was sixty-six by then, the work was pretty tiring. He felt good about it though. His muscles might have been a little sore, but his days went by quickly.

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The day he'd seen the woman, he was in the process of setting the posts that would support the new deck. He'd returned the rented post hole auger the day before so he'd spent the morning carrying the new posts from the empty garage bay where Betty's car had sat to the house and lowering them into the holes. In the afternoon, he planned to mix the bags of concrete in the concrete mixer he'd bought and then fill the holes around the posts to anchor them in the ground.

Walt was working on the second post, using his post level to make sure it was plumb in both directions and then holding it there with boards attached to stakes in the ground. He nailed in the last nail and then heard a woman's voice behind him.

"I haven't seen a man work this hard since my Willie built a family room on our house."

He turned and saw the woman he'd seen next door standing there.

Walt hadn't really seen her the first time. He'd noticed her hair, but she had been facing mostly away from him at the time, so her hair was about all he could see. Now, up close, he did look.

She looked about his age, maybe a little older, but it was hard to tell. She didn't appear to be wearing much in the way of makeup, and most women used makeup to make themselves look younger. Walt knew she wasn't much younger though. She was wearing a T-shirt that fit well over breasts that looked a little lower than some, and her shorts, while pretty conservative, still showed him part of her thighs and her calves. Both were soft looking but with some little wrinkles in her pale skin, especially at her knees.

Walt returned the woman's smile.

"Well, it looks hard, but it's more about keeping everything lined up than actual work."

The woman smiled again and held out her hand.

"I'm Sandra Reynolds, Brad's mother, but Sandra sounds old so I go by Sandy. Who is this hardworking man I'm talking to?"

Walt took her hand and was surprised at how strong her grip was.

"Walt, Walt Jameson. I haven't seen you around before. Have you decided to live with them?"

"No, I'm just staying here and house-sitting. Brad got transferred to his company's office in Scotland and Jamie will work there too. His boss said he needed some international experience if he was going to get any higher. They'll be there for a year and weren't comfortable leaving their house with nobody there for that long or renting it to someone they didn't know. I didn't have anything better to do, and my daughter and her husband are probably happy I'm gone."

"You live with them?"

Sandy nodded.

"Yes, once our kids were gone and Willie died, I kept living in our house for the next six years, but once I turned sixty, my daughter was worried about me being alone. She thinks I'm too old to do that. Mandy and her husband own a duplex and their renter moved out. They didn't really need the money, so she talked me into renting my house and moving into the duplex. I've been there for three years, but I know it's been uncomfortable for Mandy to have me so close.

"I like to bake, and before I moved in with them, about once a week on a Saturday or Sunday, I'd bake a cake and take it over for them. At least a couple times I think I got them out of bed in the middle of the afternoon. Mandy would answer the door, but her hair was a mess and she wasn't wearing much besides a T-shirt and sweatpants. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that. She's always been sort of a free spirit that way. I thought I taught her right and I guess she did hear part of what I said. At least she didn't get pregnant before they got married.

"After I moved in, I could tell it was a strain on her and me. Mandy would ask me every Saturday if I was going shopping. I knew what she was really asking. I started going out after lunch on both Saturday and Sunday to give them some time alone, but there's only so much an old single woman can do by herself. I got bored after I went to the same museum the third time.

"Well, I've probably bored you enough by now. I just thought I'd come over and introduce myself since I'm going to be here by myself for the next year. I'll let you get back to work now."

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As Sandy walked away, Walt realized he hadn't been bored, not at all. After Betty, he hadn't really thought about another woman. Betty had been his life and it was like he would have been cheating on her. That feeling passed after a couple of years, but he was over sixty and all the women he saw at his office were either too young or were already married.

No, Sandy wasn't boring at all, and she didn't look old. Walt had liked the way she'd been so direct when she talked. She hadn't been bashful when she walked across the yard to introduce herself. When she told him about getting her daughter out of bed in the middle of the afternoon, she hadn't actually said she thought her daughter and her husband were probably having sex, but there wasn't much doubt that that was what she was saying.

As Walt mixed two bags of concrete and then poured them around the post he mused that if he'd been younger...but then, he wasn't and Sandy was probably past the point of needing a man in her life just like he was past the point of needing another woman.

Walt finished setting the last deck post about five that night. After double checking that they were all plumb, Walt used his chalk line and line level to mark where the top of the posts would be. He'd put a nail into the ledger board he'd bolted into the house, then put the loop of the string over the nail and then walk to the far end of the deck. It took some adjusting after he tied the string around a post, went back to look at the line level, then moved the string up and down until the string was level. Then, he'd make a mark on the post an eighth of an inch lower the top of the deck plus the heights of the beam and joist. That would slope his new deck away from the house and carry off any rainwater.

By six, he had all five posts cut to length and the post caps screwed into place. He went inside, took a shower, and then put a frozen chicken alfredo dinner in the microwave. After a movie on TV, he was in bed and asleep.

The next morning, Walt had started screwing the joist anchors that would support one end the beams into the ledger board when he saw Sandy walking across his lawn again. She wore different shorts and a different T-shirt, and she had a glass of something in each hand.

"I saw on the weather report that it's going to be hot today. I stepped outside to drink my morning coffee at seven and found out it's already hot. I've seen you working out here since then and I thought you might like a drink. It's iced tea. My Willie always liked iced tea when it was hot outside."

Walt couldn't think of any reason to tell Sandy no and it was getting hot, so he thanked her as he reached for the glass she offered.

"Well, thank you, but you really didn't need to do this. You must have better things to do."

Sandy smiled.

"No, it's just me in that big house and I don't have much to do except eat and sleep."

She chuckled then.

"Until I saw you out here working, the high point of my week was doing my laundry on Saturday morning. Watching you is a lot more fun than washing my underwear."

Walt didn't quite know how to reply to that, so he handed his glass back to Sandy and laughed.

"I thank you for the iced tea, but I need to get back to work if I'm going to finish this deck before it starts to snow."

Evidently Sandy wasn't ready leave because she asked Walt what he was going to do next. Walt pointed to the post caps on the posts.

"I'm going to put in the beams that will hold up the joists that support the deck."

Sandy wrinkled up her brow.

"What's a beam?"

"It's two boards that run from the house to each post and then sit on the post cap of each post."

Sandy looked at the house and then the posts.

"Looks like they'll have to be pretty long to do that. Won't that make them bend in the middle?"

Walt smiled.

"Yes, they would if they aren't large enough. Each beam will be two, two by twelve's. They'll be strong enough for about four times the weight that they'll ever see."

"Won't they be heavy?"

Walt nodded.

"Yes, but I'll put one end in a joist hanger on the house and then lift the end by the post and sit it in the post cap. Then I'll go back and nail it to the joist hanger on the house."

Sandy frowned.

"That looks like a lot of work to me. You sure you can do that all by yourself? I don't want to tell you what to do, but like I said, I don't have much to do all day and I could help you. It would give me something to do besides watch TV and it might be fun. At least I'd learn something new."

When Walt didn't say anything, Sandy grinned.

"If I can't help you, would it be alright if I just watched? I washed all my underwear yesterday."

Walt said he didn't care if she wanted to be bored all day, and went back to attaching the joist hangers to the ledger board. After he'd finished the second one, he saw that Sandy had brought her lawn chair from her patio to his back yard. She was sitting there with her right leg crossed over her left knee. Her shorts weren't very tight around her thighs, so he could see most of her right inner thigh.

As he put the third joist anchor on the house, he was thinking again that if he'd been younger, he'd probably have been thinking about how that soft thigh would feel to his fingertips. He'd always loved sliding his hand up Betty's inner thighs. She'd loved it too unless he did it at the beach. Then, she'd brush his hand away and tell him people would see them doing that. He found himself wondering if Sandy would do the same thing. Probably, he thought. Women as old as Betty and Sandy had been taught that a man touching a woman like that was something that should be done only in the bedroom, or at least inside where no one could see.

When Walt had finished putting the joist hangers on the house, he looked at his watch. It was eleven-thirty, sooner than he usually ate lunch, but too late to start putting the beams up. He walked over the where Sandy sat.

"I think I'm going to grab a bite of lunch now and then start putting up beams this afternoon. It'll probably be about one, if you're not already bored silly."

Sandy grinned.

"No, I'm not bored. I'll be back at one."

After lunch, Walt walked to the open bay of his garage where he'd put his lumber to keep it out of the rain, and started carrying the two by twelve pressure treated boards to a convenient place beside the deck. He smiled when he picked up the first one. Sandy had guessed right. The twelve-foot long boards were heavy, but more awkward because of their length.

He was putting the first one down on two scrap two by fours he'd laid on the ground when Sandy walked over from her back door.

"Looks like you're having trouble. Why don't I grab one end and you take the other?"

Walt thought that Sandy sure was pushing to help him. He didn't know why, but this was the second time she'd asked. If he said no, she'd probably think he didn't like her, and he couldn't imagine living next door for a whole year to a woman who thought that.

"Well, I guess it would make it easier. Just don't strain yourself, OK?"

Sandy just laughed.

"I may look old, but I'm not weak and feeble. Let's get started."

As Walt picked up his end of the next board, he was thinking that Sandy didn't look old, not the way the thought old should look. Her hair did have some silver in it, but the rest was shining brown that brushed her shoulders. She did have some lines in her face, but she wasn't some wrinkled up old hag. She wasn't skinny by any stretch of the imagination, but she wasn't fat either. Sandy's tummy did stick out a little, but that would be because she'd had two kids.

She just looked like a woman who'd grown over the years as a result of having children and the fact that as people aged, they tend to put on a little weight. He weighed about twenty pounds more than he did at forty.

With both of them carrying, it didn't take long for them to get all the boards stacked and ready. Walt then drove his lawn tractor and trailer to the garage, loaded his sawhorses, several power tools he'd need along with an extension core, and then boxes of nails, bolts, washers, and nuts onto the trailer. When he stopped and shut off the lawn tractor, Sandy was looking at the posts and then at the boards.

"These boards look too long for where your posts are. Are you going to have to saw each one off?"

Walt shook his head.

"No. They're about a quarter of an inch long, but that won't matter. The old deck was twelve feet long and the posts are ten feet from the house. I'm going to overhang the beams by two feet. You'll see how that's going to work once I start putting the joists on."

Walt started to pick up one end of a board, and Sandy quickly picked up the other end.

"I don't know what I'm doing, but I can still help. Lead the way."

After Walt had sat the board in the joist hanger on the house, he walked back to his trailer and picked up his battery powered impact driver and a box of screws. When he turned back around, Sandy stood beside a post and still holding up the board.

"Sandy, you could have sat that board on the ground. It has to be getting heavy."

Sandy grinned.

"I told you I don't know what I'm doing. You didn't say what I should do, so I just kept holding it up. What comes next?"

"Well, I'll put it in the post cap. Then we'll sister another board beside it and then screw both boards to the joist hanger and to the post cap."

He took the board from Sandy, lifted it between the ears of the post cap and set it down.