Home Decor

To suggest that Fodie Farnsworth was an inveterate tomboy was a grotesque understatement. While other girls played with Barbie dolls, Jodie was the catcher on a little league baseball team. When middle school chums sought out designer jeans and risqué  tank tops, Jodie  was hunkered down at the local hardware store ogling a set of box wrenches or  brad point drill bits. She was pretty but in an unconventional sense. A mop of auburn hair nipped short hung down over a pert nose and economical features. She favored overalls with adjustable shoulder straps and farmer jeans, tattered  dungarees over dainty blouses and dresses. Following middle school Jodie enrolled in trade school, and after bouncing around for a year or so, finally settled on HVAC and plumbing. In her final year the school apprenticed her out to a local plumbing firm, where she was working alongside other trained professionals.

“Furnace keeps shutting down unexpectedly,” Rob said. Jodie and the journeyman plumber were in the basement of a raised ranch. “The owner says that when he flips the electricity off and on again, it fires up and runs normally for the better part of the day before shutting down again for no apparent reason, so we know it’s not the boiler per se.” Rob was a six foot, burly hulk with a scraggily beard and easygoing disposition. Despite his rough-sawn exterior, the man was painfully shy and ill at ease around women. “What’s wrong here?”

Jodie stared at the spanking new, emerald green furnace that the crew installed only  a week ago. Unlike the older units, which were totally mechanical with transformers, flame retention heads, delayed-action solenoid valves and conventional oil pumps, the Beckett Genisys 7565 model was  computerized and full of nifty gadgetry. “The hydrostat’s defective.” She pointed near the top of the furnace at a small green box with multicolored LED lights that flashed on and off at irregular intervals. “There’s a defective computer chip in the hydrostatic module.”

“Correctomundo!” Rob pursed his bearded lips in a thin lipped smile, and his head bobbed up and down.  “So what do we do?”

“R and R,” Jodie shot back. “Remove and replace.”

A half hour later after the faulty unit was replaced and they packed up all their gear, Rob announced, “We’ll be returning here again next week.”

“What for?”

He pointed at a pile of lumber, mostly dark walnut and cherry boards stacked against the far wall. “The homeowner does a lot of woodworking and the sawdust alone would wreak havoc on his new boiler so we’re installing an external ventilation system.”

Jodie studied the red brick wall in back of the furnace. “But you can’t cut through the fireplace. That would make no sense.”

“Look seven feet up and to the right of the fireplace,” he instructed. “What do you see?”

Jodie surveyed the wall. “Sheetrock plus a row of wooden floor joists.” 

“First,” Rob explained, “with a foot-long drill bit we cut straight through the interior wall, plywood and vinyl siding to the street. With a hole saw we widen the hole and run a sheet metal pipe straight out the house into the back yard, where we can grab all the clean air the boiler could ever need.”

“Then hook the pipe up to the metal plate on  the air intake motor." Greatly enjoying the mechanical problem solving, Jodie cracked a wry grin. “A simple solution for a seemingly impossible problem.” Grabbing a leather tool bag, the girl headed for the door. 

The minutes later they were back on the road in the company van.  “You got a girlfriend?” Jodie asked.  

Rob cringed. “I ain’t nearly as successful with the fairer sex,” he replied laconically, “as with mechanical contraptions.” After a stilted pause he added, “Went to a dumbass dating bar last month. Everything seemed to be going swell with this cute blonde until she asked what I did for a living.” Rob blew out his cheeks, his features clouding over. That pretty much put the kibosh on any future romantic possibilities.”

“Looks like we share a similar fate,” Jodie observed with a sardonic smirk. “And yet, plumbers earn decent money.”

“Yeah but it’s all about social status… image, prestige.” Rob pulled up at a stop sign.

“More like social snobbery.” “Are we in any great hurry to get back to the shop?” Jodie asked.

“No, not in the least.”

“There’s a Tim Hortons two blocks up on the right. I want to talk to you about something.”

• * * * * *

Once they were situated in the coffee shop, Jodie said, "Saturday morning when I came downstairs for breakfast, the doorbell rang, and my mother went to see who was there.” Boris Yellin, the troublesome neighbor from three-doors down, was waiting on the outside landing.  Yellen, a squat, florid-faced man with a pencil mustache and apoplectic personality, was something of an oddity, a curmudgeon who neighbors avoided like the plague. Jodie’s father once made a witty joke about the last name, suggesting that the sourpuss Yellin was always ‘yellin’ his foolhead off’, screeching, squawking, whining and caterwauling at his pitiful dishrag of a wife from morning until night’. 

“He needs to speak with you.”

“I’ve never even spoken to the creep. What could he possibly want from me?” 

“Wouldn’t say,” her mother replied, “but the man insisted on talking to you.” “I left him waiting outside the house on the front stoop.”

Rising from the table, Jodie went to the front door, but the unannounced guest had already let himself into the house and was pacing about the living room floor. Dispensing with any formal greeting or pleasantries Yellen said,  “I seen you driving about in a  van with an HVAC logo.”

“Heating, ventilation and air conditioning,” Jodie confirmed.

The gnomelike man’s choleric head bobbed up and down spastically. “Then you must do plumbing as well.”

“Very little, not much.”

“I got a leaky kitchen faucet.”

“Then you should call a licensed plumber,” Jodie shot back. “I’m just a novice… an apprentice to the trade.”

“Maybe  you could come over and just eyeball the problem. That way I’ll know what to say when I call to talk with an expert.”

Clearly the stingy bastard wanted her to repair the faucet gratis, but that wasn’t going to happen. “I’ll come but you’ll still need a trained professional to give you a proper cost estimate.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled in an ingratiating tone.

Ten minutes later when Jodie entered the Yellin’s kitchen, the first thing she noticed was not the leaky faucet but the outlandish furnishings. There was no kitchen table, per se - at least not in the conventional sense. The couple were using a folding card table on spindly legs in lieu of a hardwood table. Aluminum lawn chairs with flimsy, mesh webbing were scattered about the improvised table. 

“I got some professional hand tools if you need to adjust anything,” Mr. Yellen announced and pointed at a motley pile of gadgets scattered about the kitchen counter. There was a twenty pound Stillson wrench that looked like it had been purchased at a flea market plus a battered phillip’s head screwdriver and  vise grip. “Maybe one of those rubber washers might solve the problem.” He pointed at a collection of mismatched washers lying near the leaky faucet.

“I begged him not to bother you.” Mrs. Yellen, an emaciated woman with a habitually fretful expression, was standing near the stove. “But hell would freeze over before that money-grubbing louse would pay a repairman to replace a goddamn washer.”

“Mind you business, woman,” her husband seethed.

Jodie cracked the cabinet door below the sink, dropped down on her haunches and studied the brass fittings. Straightening up, she shook her head from side to side. “Couldn’t change the washer even if I wanted to, because both brass shut-off valves are horribly corroded. If you tried to close one of those fittings, it might crack and flood the house.”

Mrs. Yellin began to snigger and waved a hand theatrically in the air. “And you thought you’d hoodwink this sweetheart of a  girl into doing your dirty work.”

“Shut up, you snivelling turd!” the husband growled.

“You need a certified plumber," Jodie repeated for the umpteenth time and briskly vanished out the back door.

• * * * * *

“Well, what happened?” Mrs. Farnsworth demanded, once her daughter reached the safe haven of her own house.

“The Yellens are lunatic fringe.” Jodie told her mother what transpired.

“Don’t forget what your father said about that man,” One evening at the supper table Jodie’s father, a clinical psychologist at the Brandenburg Mental Hospital, noted that Boris Yellen was a paranoid personality. 

“He’s schizophrenic?” his wife replied.

“No, no! Paranoid personalities aren’t necessarily delusional, but in many ways they’re far more dangerous, because they collect endless faults and injustices, while displaying persistent distrust of others without sufficient reason. They often believe people are trying to harm, deceive, or demean them, even when there’s no evidence to support these beliefs.” Mr. Farnsworth stabbed at a steamed carrot laced with cinnamon and honey and raised the fork to his lips. “He’s got a gun, a five-shot revolver, that he keeps loaded with the safety catch off in the drawer of his bedside table.”

“How do you know that?” Jodie asked. 

“One summer when I was mowing the lawn Yellen stopped by and mentioned seeing suspicious characters prowling the neighborhood, so he went out and purchased a thirty-eight special along with a box of hollow-point slugs.”

• * * * * *

“Cripes!” At the Tim Hortons coffee shop Rob, who was munching on a chocolate eclair, shook his head in disbelief.   “What a freakin lunatic!”

“I’m not finished,” Jodie replied. “Later that same night after the incident with the leaky faucet three police cruisers pulled up in front of the Yellen’s property. Ten minutes later  a vehicle from the coroner's office arrived.” “The rear of the coroner’s van was cracked open and two uniformed officials removed a metal stretcher, which they wheeled into the lower landing. A short time later they dragged the stretcher back out into the street with a lumpy body covered head to toe with a white sheet.

“Holy shit!” Rob muttered. “Boris Yellen killed his wife!” 

“You spoke too soon,” Jodie cautioned. “The front door opened a second time and a female police officer escorted the handcuffed wife out into the night air.” Jodie cracked a sick, Cheshire cat grin. “Nadine Yellen marched toward the paddy wagon with a gloriously triumphant grin, as though the elderly woman was reveling in a hilarious, rib-tickler of a joke to which neither the police nor staff from the coroner’s office were privy.”

Rob stroked his beard with a thumb and index finger in a repetitive gesture. “You and I spend our days fixing what’s broke and the Yellens waste a lifetime doing just the opposite.”

“Mrs. Yellen will probably live out her final years in the state penitentiary, infinitely happier punching out license plates than living with a paranoid monster,” she observed.

“I don’t think the female inmates do license plates,” Rob corrected. “That nutty  business with the card table and aluminum lawn chairs sort of freaked me out," he admitted. “Hell, if you were my wife, I’d make sure you had everything you wanted in terms of home decor.”

“Really?” Jodie patted the bearded man playfully on the arm. “And if you were my husband, I’d never make snide or demeaning remarks about your frugal spending habits.” 

Rob swigged the last of his coffee and brushed the crumbs from his chocolate eclair up in the palm of his hand. “Say, you wouldn’t want to go out somewhere this weekend… a movie, restaurant?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”