The mother of my brother in laws wife stood up from her chair in the corner of the living room with a framed photograph pressed against her chest. She is eighty one years old, a small woman with fine white hair, and she had said almost nothing all afternoon. She walked, with the help of her cane, to the mantel in Springfield, and she set the frame down in front of the whole family. It was a picture of a modest white house with green shutters and a new roof. She said, “Doug, I would like you to look at this.”
Doug, the surgeon, my brother in law, had been telling a story about how some men use their hands to save lives and some use them to nail shingles. He stood with a glass of scotch by the bookshelf, and I watched his face change as he turned to look. His mother in law, whose name is Dorothy, was gripping her cane with both hands. She said, “Do you know whose house that is?” Doug said, “I have no idea.” She said, “It is mine, Doug. Or it was. It is the house on Grant Street where I lived for fifty one years.”
She said, “Two winters ago, my roof gave out. A big storm came through in March and I woke up to water running down the walls of my bedroom. I am a widow. I have a small pension. The first man who came to look gave me a quote of eighteen thousand dollars. I did not have it. I sat down at the kitchen table, and I thought, well, Dorothy, this is the end of the house.” Her voice was soft but clear. “That afternoon a young man came to the door and said he could see the damage from the street.”
A good roof over a lonely head is the kindest sort of work, and the years it buys cannot be counted by the man who nails it down.
I looked at my son Kevin. He was standing by the stairs in a clean shirt, his big roofers hands hanging at his sides, his face scarlet. Dorothy said, “He did not ask who I was. He did not ask whether I could pay. He climbed up and had a look, and he came down and said, Maam, I can fix this. I asked what it would cost. He said, Let us talk about that when it is done.” She smiled. “It took him nine days. He and two other boys from his crew. They worked after their regular jobs, until it was dark.”
She went on. “He put on a whole new roof, with new boards underneath, because the old ones were rotten. He replaced the flashing, and the gutters, and the chimney cap. When it was finished, I tried to hand him a check, and he put his hands behind his back. He said, It is a gift. He said his grandmother had lived in a house like mine.” She touched the frame. “I tried to find out his last name, but he would not tell me. I did not learn it until today, when I saw him standing beside your wife, at the front door.”
Doug had lowered the glass to his side. He said, “Dorothy, I had no idea.” She said, “No, dear. I never told you. I did not want to burden you.” She looked at him steadily. “But I think I should tell you the rest, because it is the part that matters.” She drew a breath. “Last month the house was appraised. You may remember that I wished to sell it and move into an assisted home. The appraiser said the roof was in perfect condition, and that without it the house would have been worth nothing.”
There was a hush. Dorothy said, “It sold for two hundred and forty thousand dollars. That money is what pays for my room at Maple Court, and my nurse, and my medication. It is what lets me live out my days with some dignity.” She turned, and her eyes found my son. “That is what he gave me. Not a roof, Doug. Years of my life.” Doug set the scotch on the shelf. His face was a mess. He crossed the floor with a trembling hand, and he did not say a word, because there was no word for it.
He took my son by the shoulders, and then he did something remarkable. He laughed, and wept, and pulled Kevin into an embrace. When he stepped back, he said, “Kevin, you have spent your life with your hands in the weather so that other people could stay dry. I have spent mine inside a building. I think I may have had it backward.” Kevin shook his head and said it was all right. Doug said, “No, son. It is not all right. But it is going to be.”
The next Saturday Doug showed up at a job site at six in the morning in a pair of borrowed work boots. He carried bundles up a ladder for eight hours and fell off the bottom rung twice. His hands blistered. His back ached for a week. He came back the Saturday after. He had decided that he wanted to learn the trade, even a little, even badly, so that he would never again speak of it without knowing what it cost a man. My son, who is a patient teacher, put him on the easy slopes.
They roofed three more houses for widows that summer. Doug paid for the materials and Kevin donated the labor, and together with the crew they called the program Grant Street, after the first house. There is a small sign in the truck window of Kevin now. Dorothy keeps the photograph of her old house in her room, on the dresser, next to a picture of her late husband. She says that when she looks at the one, she thinks of the other, and that both of them kept the rain off her.