We have a large, one-story house with a basement under most of it. About 800 square feet is finished space. The rest is broken into a series of storage and utility rooms; lots of good space, including direct entry into the garage through the laundry room.

When we purchased the house in December, 1986, the finished basement (still in it’s original form) had paneled walls, tiled floor (unfortunately, we later discovered, laden with asbestos, which we had properly removed), a large solid mahogany bar with working sink, small fridge, hidden wine racks and glass washer behind on the upper level. The lower level had a working fireplace. We were told the original owners (we are only the third owners of this home) had the room decorated like the Copacabana Night Club.

I returned to work just as we began renovations in the main part of the house. David was 18 months old. We hired a full-time nanny. She lived in this space. There was also a half bath outside the hallway. She used a guest bathroom over the garage to shower each evening. During a renovation in 1991, we turned the half bath into a full bath, but that was not the case during the time we had nannies and Dan’s sister living in this space.

It was quiet, private space with entrance through the garage. We didn’t track comings and goings. Jill, our first nanny, who stayed almost two years, was able to provide furniture – the couch, a bed, some chairs. We brought in the large, old TV.

Jill was wonderful with David, but there were other things afoot with her. I wrote about her in Jill-Sharon. Yet I was truly sorry to see her go. Astonished when she turned up working for a family in Cambridge several weeks later. As I wrote in the other story, though we had no real trouble with her, we came to the conclusion that she was high-priced call girl. She gave me two weeks notice and left all the furniture behind.

I, however, had a full-time job and had to scramble to find a new nanny on short notice. I put ads in papers (quaint, I know). I wasn’t making enough money to go through an agency (which required a huge fee). I got little traction. Eventually, I got a nibble from a college girl from Colorado who was chasing a Harvard man. They had dated the previous summer when she worked for a dentist’s wife. She was still hot for him and wanted to come back. She was already in town, staying with the family, who no longer needed her service, but she was paling around with the wife (!). The Harvard man had moved on; she was trying to lure him back. If this sounds like a soap opera…well it was. The wife gave her a good reference so I hired her. At this point, I was desperate.

She was the product of divorced parents and painted a rosy picture of getting along with both (each had remarried, and she had a little half sister whom she babysat a lot; that “happy” domestic scene was also a lie).

She needed a lot of supervision. She liked to play, but wasn’t the mature woman I had previously with Jill, who was 27. Gretchen was 19 or 20, going into her Junior year of college and underage.

On my way out one day, I, again, noticed she’d left the lamp on her end table turned on. As I went to turn it off, I noticed she’d obtained a fake ID- she had left it out on the end table (drinking age was 21 in Massachusetts). I was upset. I confronted her and told her about in loco parentis. She lived in my home, I was responsible for her. She protested – all the kids had them, besides, she was going drinking with the dentist’s wife (whose marriage was falling apart). And the Harvard guy she desperately craved wanted nothing to do with her, so she was on the make. Good grief!

I had a young, pleasant guy working in my office. I have no idea why, but I introduced her to him. The next thing I knew, he was also sleeping in my basement. If he was late coming into the office, people would look for me, “Where’s JP?” Suddenly, I was responsible for both these kids, plus my own 3 year old, all while trying to do my job.

I became pregnant during that summer and suffered from terrible “morning” (all day) sickness. The smell of her perfume set me off and I had to ask her to refrain from wearing it. She was set to study abroad at the Sorbonne in the fall. She was supposed to go home to Colorado to pack up for the trip, but her father discovered it was cheaper to fly from Boston than from Denver, so changed her plans. She was furious. She couldn’t go home to collect what she wanted to bring to Paris, or say good bye to her family. I don’t blame her for her outrage or hurt feelings. Her mother had to send all her winter clothing to my house and she had to pack accordingly. Again, she was caught in family drama. Unwittingly, I got caught too. I was the adult figure in her life; I had asked her to stop wearing her beloved fragrance. She took her rage out on me.

JP helped her pack up her belongings and the items that wouldn’t go to Paris were packed in boxes that stayed in my basement for a while, waiting for him to take them and ship them back to her home. I was sick, had “baby brain” and the company I worked for was in turmoil. I was soon laid off. I wasn’t looking through my jewelry box or wearing certain clothing items.

I first noticed my high school class ring was missing, then my father’s high school class ring. And the monogrammed circle pin my parent’s gave me for my 16th birthday. None of the items were particularly expensive. They had great sentimental value and were irreplaceable. Her boxes were still in my basement. I asked JP if Gretchen had raided my jewelry box. He looked at me with a straight face and said no.

Months later I discovered a sweater purchased in Paris in 1983 was missing. That was valuable. It was cashmere with suede and leather insets, a unique piece. Here I am wearing it in November, 1985. It looks over-sized now, but it was very chic at the time. I was heartbroken. I had also been played for a sucker.

Long after the boxes had been shipped back to Gretchen’s home, JP confessed that she HAD stolen the various pieces from me. Now, he felt terrible for lying to me and apologized, but the damage was done. I thought about contacting her parents, but didn’t. Would they go through the boxes to find my little bits of jewelry? How would they punish this girl that they were already emotionally abusing? I let the matter slide. I was sad about losing my ring and pin, but my father died shortly after Jeffrey was born. His class ring was a tangible link to him that was gone forever.

Next to use the space as her home was Dan’s sister Carol, who lived with us for about 6 months in 1989. She was on-again, off-again with a guy in Washington, DC that none of us approved of. To get away from him, she moved back to Boston, came to work with Dan at Index Systems and lived with us while she saved enough money to get an apartment with friends.

Carol has always been great with kids and she was with ours. We didn’t charge her rent, but asked her to babysit on Saturday nights, which seemed like a good deal. She could come and go as she pleased, join us for meals, generally enjoy being part of the family. We loved having her around. Soon, she did move nearby with friends, but we continued to see her.

We did a huge renovation of the basement in 1991, including changing the half bath to a whole bath and putting in a comfortable sofa bed in front of the big TV screen. The surround sound system was Dan’s request for his 40th birthday. I used money I’d inherited from my father for all the renovations. Carol helped me plan Dan’s surprise 40th birthday party down in that space, welcoming guests through the garage door entrance, so that Dan would be surprised –Happy 40th!.

We enjoyed seeing Carol, even when she announced her engagement to the guy no one approved of. We all went to Washington, DC for the  small wedding. David was her ring-bearer. She had two nice kids with him, but the marriage didn’t last. She moved in with her parents in Florida and followed her mother to Kansas when Gladys moved there toward the end of her life. Carol lives there today, working as an administrator at a Jewish day school. She’s always been great with kids.

 

OK, I admit it. I’m not competent at assembly projects, although I do live with one gigantic IKEA wardrobe that I managed to put together by dint of much time, sweat, and profanity.  I am repurposing for “Retrospect” this poem that I wrote a number of years ago.

WRITER’S WORKSHOP (Deer Isle, Maine)

The view across the bay is stunning
The dormitories spare but inviting
The grounds are festooned with a cornucopia
Of sessions in sculpture, and painting, and woodworking, and glass blowing.

I ask if I may visit the writers' workshop
And am directed to slide open a tall, hefty door
Wooden, with vertical slats
I can barely move it.

Have I opened the wrong door, then?
The students in this workshop
And perhaps the instructors, too, for I cannot tell which are which
Are busy with chisels and hammers and files and wire cutters
At first they appear to be carpenters or sculptors or metal workers
OR laboring perhaps at a medieval craft I'm not familiar with
"I was looking for the writing workshop," I say
To a pony-tailed fellow
Who's cranking a vise gently but firmly closed
"You're in the right place," he tells me
"We wrote rough drafts last week, and now we're getting them smoothed up a bit."


I move around the workshop
A woman with goggles and an apron 
Has the first chapter of a novel
Whirring around a metal lathe
She pokes at it lovingly, with a file
Shavings fly off in all directions
She clicks the machine off and re-examines her work.
"Still too sentimental," she mutters to herself
And clicks the lathe on again and chooses a flatter, wider file.

A playwright has what look like calipers but are not
"Motif detectors," he rasps
"State of the art
"Hand designed by a guy who used to be a palace guard for the Emperor of Ethiopia"
"I always wondered what happened to those guys after the military coup," I say, and ask him thename of his play
"Renegade," he says.
"I like that," I say. 

There's someone pushing lines of dialogue closer together
By heating them till just below the melting point
And cooling them with a bellows
"The scene was too long," he says
"But not too full"

 

I return to the pony-tailed fellow
And peer closer at what he's gripping in his vise
It's a short story
He cranks the vise 
Takes out a very delicate-looking saw
Drawing the saw in slow, smooth motions towards his chest
He opens a nice groove in the manuscript
Deftly then he moves the tool forward and back, forward and back
Two paragraphs fall to the floor in one piece
And are tossed in the recycle bin
I ask him if he ever considered drawing a line with a pencil before cutting
Sheepish, he smiles. "Brilliant! I could tell you were a writer when you walked in."
He asks me if by any chance I am Stanley Elkin;
He heard Stanley Elkin might be paying a visit at some point
Tells me I resemble him 

I don't know who Stanley Elkin is
I find out later he writes short stories and novellas
But I tell him I know for a fact
That Elkin always makes his cuts with a pencil

Ivo Zdarsky wasn't just building a plane. He was building an escape to freedom.
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I’m handy. I began early, learned how to use hand tools from my father, a hands-on electrical engineer who designed and built prototype instruments to measure outcomes of physics and biology research projects. I’ve constructed everything from mercury barometers to mine shafts to cherry wood cabinets, from stage sets and circus rings to birch plywood captain’s beds, from community centers to kitchens. I’ve rebuilt an engine for a 1956 Chevy and another for a 1936 Chrysler.

These days I refuse to assemble anything. I was cured of ‘some assembly required’ by the fiendish contraptions offered by Ikea, founded by a Swedish Nazi sympathizer. He was clearly as vicious in his furniture-assembly practices as he was in his political sympathies.

*

But enough about circus rings and Swedish do-it-yourself. I want to take us to another world, where ‘some assembly required’ takes on a very different form. Years ago I made a second trip to Cuba, to attend a Cuban-American writers conference in Havana.

We’ve all seen pics of flashy American cars restored on the streets of Havana. But behind them all, there’s a Cuban mechanic.

Cubans make the best mechanics in the world. If you’ve ever had to keep an old car running, you know what I’m talking about. You don’t have the right tools. You work in the street. Your feet stick out in traffic like a couple of ducks.

Because of the blockade and the economic embargo, there have been no new cars or parts coming from the United States for over 50 years. Every piece that breaks has to be manufactured from junk or scabbed onto the machine from other relics. Parts from dead and dying creatures are spirited away to be grafted onto other, more deserving vehicles.

Havana is full of old cars. Parked at the curbs like memories, ancient Fords, Chevys, and an occasional Edsel jockey for space with more recent generations of Russian Volgas and Italian Fiats.

In America, these old cars flash dollars and cents. According to the law of supply and demand, even a derelict version of one of Havana’s American cars would command an obscene price tag from nostalgic collectors. A 1950 Plymouth, its Mayflower hood ornament under full sail, advertises the birth of the Maytag, the Kelvinator, and the single-family home. The tailfins on a ‘58 Dodge Coronet celebrate America’s entry into the space race. A ‘55 Chevy triggers flashbacks to Ozzie and Harriet.

In Cuba, old American cars don’t retire in polished glory to meticulous garages and automotive museums. They’re everywhere. “Mira, compañeros,” I shout to my friends as another American dinosaur roars past. “Look at that Chrysler New Yorker!” The smoke from its passage rises to join the cloud of sulfates hanging under the Vedado district’s graceful trees. I don’t care about the smog. I breathe it in like perfume and laugh with delight. I can recognize every model, every year, the lines of the bodywork surging up from the archives of my adolescent past like a Marilyn Monroe pin-up.

By the simple miracle of their rattling passages through Havana’s streets, Cuba’s cars confirm that Cuba’s revolution is alive, hanging on, making it. Havana’s mechanics are thumbing their nose at the American blockade. They have learned how to pick the bones of their vanquished oppressor.

But what about the Cubans? How do they feel about their old cars? Are they inspired by their own ingenuity? Do they celebrate tiny victories over worn-out shock absorbers, disintegrating carburetors, and slipping clutches?

Some mechanicos are proud. We drove to uno partida de beisbol at Havana’s Estadio Panamerica in a Plymouth that was 50 years old and looked brand-new in dim light of the Cuban night. The old car rode like a Sherman tank but the tape deck was digital. We listened to Chico O’ Farrell play the saxophone while every pothole in the road transmitted itself through the chassis to the steering wheel and the seats.

“¿Original?”I asked.

“Con seguro,” the driver replied. “Puro.” He laughed and patted the dashboard.

Others were modest about their ingenuity. After the game, we flagged down a young guy in a Studebaker. It was Saturday night and there wasn’t a cab in sight. We asked the driver if he would take us to a restaurant.

“No problema,” he replied and glanced in the rear-view mirror for the cops. As in America, it is against the law for unlicensed Cuban drivers to accept fares. We piled in and bumped down the boulevard. The driver shifted the gears with a lever mounted on the transmission hump. From some deep pool, I pulled the recollection that these old Studebakers all had column shifts.

“¿Original?” I asked and pointed to the gearbox.

“No, no,” he replied and grinned. “Volga, Rusia, todo. Motor, caja, transmission.” My jaw dropped in amazement. This guy had completely replaced the 50-year-old organs of the Studebaker with a 30-year-old transplant from a Soviet passenger car. It was an impossible task. The cars were different sizes. The engine mounts wouldn’t have fit. Did he have to shorten or lengthen the driveshaft? How did he get the shift lever to surface at the right place beneath his hand?

He was a fourth-year engineering student and had done all the work himself. Over and over, I congratulated him on his ingenuity while he laughed and shook his head. “Insignificante,” he said. “Es necesario, simplemente.”

The next day, I spotted a ‘48 Buick Special sitting by the curb of a narrow alley. The Buick’s grill had long since disintegrated. A bundle of one-inch galvanized pipe sprawled through the broken-out rear window, waiting to be delivered somewhere. The once-skirted and chromed wheel wells had been torched into ragged half-circles to allow for larger wheels to be installed on the axles.

Three men squatted on the ground in front of the Buick. All three were dressed in ragged t-shirts and cut-offs. All three were slathered with grit and oil. Two of them held the knuckle of a universal joint on a paving stone that had been torn up to form an anvil. The third man beat on the joint with a broken ball-peen hammer. The men grimaced while the universal joint jumped and shifted beneath every blow.

“¿Original?” I asked, and laughed.

The hammer stopped in mid-air. Three strained and grease-stained faces looked up at me. There was no acknowledgment, no reply. Instead the three men turned away and resumed their task. There was no solidarity here, no revolution to celebrate. There was nothing to laugh about.

# # #

* “Los Mecánicos” was published with the title “Under Havana’s Hood” in Cuba, a Travelers Tales anthology.