Home for the Haunting(2)

But, like me, he appeared able to see—or hear, or maybe smell?—ghosts.

This morning, Dog’s barking got so bad I had to confine him to the car. The canine lovers in the crowd kept visiting with him through the half-open window, sneaking him snacks, and glaring at me for being mean. Luckily, as an experienced general contractor, I wasn’t fazed by dirty looks.

And, in any case, the ghosts next door were not my problem; not today. Today I had three dozen volunteers to coordinate and put to work before their enthusiasm flagged, plus a house with peeling paint, a warped roofline, and a sagging porch to repair and spruce up, a wheelchair ramp to build so the disabled homeowner would no longer be a virtual shut-in, and one weekend to do it all.

Which explains why I was hiding in a plastic outhouse. I needed a moment to steel myself to ignore the neighboring spirits.

“Sooo,” my friend Luz said, catching me as I emerged from my ignominious Port o’ Potty break. She was clad in the bright yellow T-shirt of the “Tool Czar” because, by gosh, if I’m going to sink into the quicksand of do-good volunteerism, I’m taking my friends and family down with me. In fact, after my father razzed me one time too many about “giving away” my services, I had goaded him into signing up himself. As the (unofficially) retired founder of Turner Construction, Dad brought a wealth of construction know-how to Neighbors Together, and Ashley had swiftly appointed him house captain for the renovations of the sweet rose-covered bungalow across the street—a project that appeared to be humming along quite nicely, darn it all.

We had a friendly rivalry going: Team Mel vs. Team Bill, Turner vs. Turner. Whoever finished first won control of the television remote for one full week. If Dad won, he swore he would watch repeats of NCIS from dusk to dawn. If I won, I vowed to keep the normally blaring television turned off.

The stakes were high.

I had also strong-armed my friend Claire, a landscape architect, into running a yard crew. She was gleefully barking orders to a group of New Age Berkeley types planting a drought-friendly garden of native California grasses and flowering bushes. My buddy Stephen, a clothing designer by aspiration and a barista by trade, was the project’s health and safety coordinator. I considered it perfect casting: Stephen was a world-class hypochondriac who fussed over the smallest splinter with a wad of gauze and Neosporin. He also roamed the jobsite slapping gobs of sunscreen—donated by a civic-minded local drugstore—on necks and noses. Although it was only April, the sun shone fiercely on the jobsite, which meant reminding everyone to keep hydrated as well.

“The frat boys have arrived,” Luz said, nodding toward the street, where half a dozen young men in UC Berkeley T-shirts and Bermuda shorts lounged against a huge SUV. Others were stretched out on the dry, brown, sorry excuse for a lawn, apparently napping.

“Oh, good. They were supposed to be here two hours ago.”

“Yeah, well . . . ,” continued Luz, “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but half of them appear to be hung over. Drunk frat boys—what’re the odds?”

“Isn’t the fraternity here to do community service because of an alcohol infraction?”

She grinned. “Gotta love college students.”

“If half are hung over, what about the other half?”

“Still drunk.”

“Let me get this straight: You’re saying my dad’s assigned the engineering students, the Eagle Scouts, and Turner Construction’s finest, while I end up with drunken frat boys and a sorority of girls more interested in fashion than construction?” I washed my hands with the hose in the jury-rigged stand on the lawn and clamped my mouth shut to keep from repeating one of my father’s favorite sayings: No good deed goes unpunished.

“And this surprises you how, exactly?” asked Luz, lifting one eyebrow. “He’s a crafty old coot, your dad.”

She was right about that. While I had been busy wasting time working for a living, Dad had cozied up to the Neighbors Together point person and nabbed all the skilled volunteers. I’d been so consumed with bringing to conclusion several of our company’s paying projects that I hadn’t noticed when he had also convinced our best construction workers, even my stepson Caleb, to join his team.

I’d been lucky to get Luz. She was my best friend, but she and my dad adored each other, and at times I suspected he liked her better than he did me. Fortunately, my semi-sort-of boyfriend, Graham, was out of town. I’m not sure I would have liked the outcome had his loyalty been tested.

“Hey, Mel?” Monty Parker, the homeowner, rolled up to the front door, two large, scroungy-looking dogs of dubious ancestry attached by leashes to his wheelchair. After a motorcycle accident had paralyzed the forty-one-year-old a few years ago, he had lost his job and couldn’t afford to maintain his home, much less build an access ramp or make other necessary modifications to adjust to his new circumstances. That was where Neighbors Together came in.