Sometimes when
my wife returns home from shopping excursions she entertains me
with accounts of chance encounters with strangers. In the years
I was writing a column for the Houston Post, one such was Bonnie
Franklin's father. But her notes turned out to be better than
anything I could have written so I quoted her verbatim in the
column, giving her proper attribution, of course. So a few months
later, when she had a memorable chance encounter with Boris, I
asked her to write an account of it for me. This is it:
"I went over to Florence's
(our niece) to drop off some books and papers (Variety
and Women's Wear Daily, which she traded with our niece
for The New York Times) I had for her.
When I got to her house,
I saw she wasn't home (by the red light on the alarm system),
but the refrigeration repair man was in the driveway. I told him
I would let him in the house.
(She normally would
not let a stranger in our niece's house, but this gent had a nametag
and a company logo and besides my wife knew our niece's icemaker
was often on the fritz.)
I turned off her alarm
system and unlocked the door. The nametag on his shirt said Boris.
He had obviously been there before because he went right to the
icemaker in the den. He checked it and told me in a heavy accent
— he didn't talk like me — that it needed a new motor.
'This icemaker,' he
said, 'is the Rolls-Royce of icemakers. You fix one part, then
another part breaks. Very expensive. Better to put in a cheaper
icemaker because this one is complicated to fix. Is it under warranty?'
I said I didn't think
so but he would have to check with Florence.
'She's your daughter?'
he asked.
I said no, she was
my niece, and it was lucky I had come by so he could get in to
fix the icemaker.
'I have the model number
and I will call and see how old it is,' he said. 'Can I use the
phone?'
'Sure,' I said.
He dialed his number
and, while waiting for the call to go through, he looked up at
the wall opposite him.
'Is this by a famous
painter?', indicating a painting on the wall.
I said 'I don't know
how famous, but it is by a well-known artist.'
'What is it?' he asked.
I said it was a modern
painting.
'Can you see anything
in it?' he asked.
I said, 'You have to
look at it carefully and then you will see a man upside down and
other figures.
'I wouldn't have it
in my house,' he said.
He walked to the living
room and looked at the other modern art on the walls. 'What do
young people see in this?' he asked.
I said, 'You probably
like the Old Masters and still-life paintings, where a face looks
like a face and an apple looks like an apple.' Then he inspected
the standing sculpture.
'This is nothing but
concrete,' he said. 'It's a mess.'
I said, 'You just don't
like modern art.'
Then my niece arrived,
asking all kinds of questions about the icemaker. He reported
everything to her. She said, 'I'll look up the papers, but I'm
sure it's off warranty.'
(Things are always
off warranty when they break.)
'Oh,' she went on,
'I bought the best loaf of bread. Grainy. No salt or sugar. Take
some.'
I said I wasn't hungry
but I’d try a piece. And I gave Boris a piece.
He said, 'Very good
bread.'
I asked him, 'Do you
want a little butter on it?'
He said, 'Oh, no, but
it's very nice.' He
left, promising Florence he would call her back.
She turned to me and
said, 'He seemed to have had a good time talking to you.'
I said, 'Yes, he stayed
a long time. But he hates your art.' "
On rereading this,
I see she has left out a part she had included when I asked her
to please put it down on paper. This is about our niece's husband.
Maybe she left it out on purpose, not wanting to disclose a family
matter in a hometown newspaper so if that was her reason, everyone
should be advised she is not responsible for it getting into Senior
WomenWeb. The blame is all mine. This is the part she left
out:
"Boris told our
niece, 'Somebody pulled down a wire in the icemaker.'
'That was my husband,'
our niece said grimly. (She is petite but can do grim at least
as well as any large person.)
'He's never going to
touch this icemaker again!' "
And I'll bet he
won't either. Not while she's around. Also, I'm kind of hoping
he won't see my wife's account of her conversation with Boris.
It's not that I'm concerned about him learning what Boris thought
about his art, which cost more than the icemaker even if it was
the Rolls-Royce of icemakers.
What I'm concerned
about is Boris' bill. I'm sure Boris was charging for his time
while he was speaking with my wife and commenting on modern art.
Refrigeration persons do charge by the hour
David Westheimer,
SeniorWomenWeb's resident male, lives with his wife of 57 years,
Dody, in the same Los Angeles apartment they moved into from Houston,
Texas 41 years ago. Their son, Fred, is a Senior Vice-President
at the William Morris Agency and his younger brother, Eric, is
a veterinarian. Succeeding generations include five grandchildren
and two great-grandchildren. As a journalist, David worked for
Oveta Culp Hobby.
At 85, David Westheimer
continues to write, and not just for Senior Women. The Great
Wounded Bird, his recollections of World War II, is winner
of the Texas Review 1999 poetry prize, published by Texas Review
Press and may be ordered from Amazon Books, where it has surged
to 821,374th on their sales list. It is also listed with Barnes
& Noble and Borders Books. David's latest novel, Delay En Route,
is hovering at 1,419,004th on Amazon's list.
Poet and novelist,
David is a retired Air Force Officer. He can be reached for a
repertoire of feigned curmudgeonly remarks at: DWestheime@aol.com.
