The worst part was the guilt, how lazy and naïve the couple knew they had been. Common damn sense said there was lead in the old coats of paint. But they hadn’t just closed their eyes to save some money, they’d opened their windows every day after the workers left, even brought the baby into the yard one day, with all that dust in the air. So they spent a lot of time making themselves sick reading about kids and lead, and walked around saying they were going to kill themselves if they had poisoned that baby.
I won’t go into it, I told our guests, because attorneys got involved and there were some twists and turns, but the lead stuff worked out. The baby’s level was fine, the couple got their deposit back, the roofer paid an EPA-certified company to remediate the soil. And the house, which had been sitting there half-scraped for three months, turned out perfect. The couple gambled on this unusual, azure shade of blue and it looked great, people loved it. Really, strangers rang the doorbell to say how much they liked this color.
“Well thank goodness for that,” the husband said, planting his palms on the table and looking at his wife.
“Now,” I said, “fast forward to January.”
The husband continued looking at his wife. To be clear, I wasn’t suffering from the delusion that these were two lonely ship hands eager to stay up all night listening to a grizzled seafarer spin a yarn. I was telling a story to strangers about people they didn’t know, so I was keeping it simple. In fact, I was on a faster pace than the bed-bug anecdote, which these two had probably relayed to everyone in proximity the past month, whereas my story was a one-time deal, for their ears only. Besides, what I’d told so far had no point whatsoever. If they expected me to end there, they must have sized me up as a very poor storyteller.
Recognizing the shift, my wife told me to hold that thought, honey, and suggested some dessert. By now the couple were half out of their chairs, shaking their heads. A half-hour earlier I’d been gritting my teeth, willing them to eat faster, knowing the longer they stayed the less imaginative and more conception-oriented my wife would be in bed. Now I had a story to tell.
“Hold on,” I said. “This is where it gets good.”
They shrugged, sat back down. “No, thank you,” the wife said. “That sounds delicious, but we’re trying to give up sugar.”
Okay, I said. January. Late one Friday afternoon the home phone rings, but the mom, let’s call her, has just gotten home and she’s thumping snow off her shoes and completely lost in thought. The answering machine kicks in and it’s the pediatrician’s office, presumably checking on the ten-year-old, who just got over a nasty case of stomach flu, but right before the nurse hangs up the mom remembers the baby’s one-year check-up, the nurse pricking his toe for a follow-up lead test, and she grabs the phone. The results are a little high, the nurse tells her, a seventeen, they like to see under five, protocol is they have to repeat the test with an intravenous blood draw, can she bring the baby in tomorrow morning?
Our guests sat back, eyes wide open.