I told my son that I painted Mrs Whitakers house once before, in 1997, before she ever owned it. He asked what that had to do with anything. Everything, as it turned out.
The form she signed with her fountain pen was the historic preservation completion form, required by the city for houses on the register. It was also an acknowledgment of the work and the unpaid balance, which let me, the documented contractor of record, be paid as the law intends. Standard, honest, and binding.
But the Board of Architectural Review came to her house for a different reason. The completion form documents the exact work done and the colors used. And I have painted houses in Charleston for thirty-five years, including that very house in 1997, and my old records showed that certain alterations Mrs Whitaker had taken credit for over the years were never approved by the board at all. She had been passing off unpermitted work as compliant, and her own signed completion form, honestly filled out by me, put the real history on the record.
She told me I should be honored to paint a house on the historic register, and threatened to tell Caroline what kind of family she married into. The board had a few questions about what kind of homeowner Mrs Whitaker had been.
Faced with the board, the inspector, and thirty-five years of my documented work on that street, Mrs Whitaker paid me the three thousand nine hundred twenty dollars, which was already half my normal price, and was suddenly a great deal less interested in my magnifying-glass drips that never existed.
My son and Caroline are fine. Better than fine, now that Caroline has seen how her mother treats the people who work for her, and how my son defended me.
I hand-scraped every inch of that old trim and laid three coats of Charleston Green on the shutters the historic way, the way my hands have done it since before Mrs Whitaker owned the place. I was paid in full, and I was right about the color, and I was right about 1997. A painter remembers a house. This one remembered more than she wished.