Marble Work
By Nate House
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I’m a student too, but they wouldn’t know that. Not here of course, but at the two-year school downtown. It is a good school, the one downtown, and much more practical. It doesn’t have all the marble on the inside like this school does. This place is covered in marble and cleaning marble is an expensive and time-consuming process. Even the stairs and floors are made of marble and anyone who knows anything about this kind of rock knows that stairs and floors are the worst things to make out of marble. Each step adds to the gradual decay of the stone and every day hundreds of students step on these marble floors and stairs.
The marble here is dirty. It looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since William Penn or whoever it was that built the place. The marble must have been pure white at one point, but it isn’t white now. It is the color of an old person’s uncleaned teeth. It will take us a month to make the marble in this building white again.
I don’t mind the process of cleaning of marble. It is a simple and gratifying technique. We put a special clay over the surface of the marble, spread it on hard and thick so the clay sinks all the way into the pores of the stone. We let it sit for twenty-four hours and then scrape it off. The clay absorbs the dirt inside the stone and when we take it off and wash the walls with nothing but water the marble looks as clean and new as the middle of a piece of marble that has been sliced open.
Few people here, some professors, maybe some alumni, a few parents, notice how clean the marble is becoming. The students don’t notice. To them we are just people who clean the walls; people to step around on the way to class. Even Tommy, the man I work with, doesn’t seem to notice how clean the marble becomes. He only notices that the job is done.
The first building we’re cleaning looks like its part of the school of medicine. I’ve never been a pre-med student so I can’t really say for sure, but the students in this building look as if they are going to become doctors. They wear the kind of clothes doctors wear under their long white coats. There are people dressed like lab assistants carrying containers of mice and rats from one hall to the next. Students carry big biology and anatomy books through the foyer. But I never hear them talking of biology, anatomy or medicine. When I hear their conversations they are talking about parties, how so and so looks, who is dating who, and how they never have any money.Even the bathrooms here are made of marble. The walls of the stalls are dirty but there is no graffiti of any kind. In the bathroom where I go to school there is writing on the cement walls describing things I’ve never done and at what time I’d be able to do them.
I take a class in geology on Wednesday nights at the community college. The class is three hours long and at the beginning of each class we bring in a rock we’ve found during the week to identify. So far I have found granite, crystal and even a piece of garnet, all within the city limits.
The first week we were in this building Tommy and I did the entire foyer. We took down the large paintings of old white men, stacked them in the corner, and spread the clay on the walls. When we took the clay off the marble was at least ten shades lighter than it was before we got there. We did the foyer a small section at a time so as not to disturb the students. It annoys Tommy, having to work around the students. He says it slows the process of the work and that our boss should have scheduled the job for over the summer, but I think it is more than that. Tommy is forty-years-old, fifteen years older than me, and makes three dollars an hour more. He is married, has four kids and never had the chance to go to school.
The students don’t annoy me as much as they annoy Tommy. After all, I understand what they’re doing here. But there is a difference, beyond the marble and neatly manicured grass, and I wonder if it is the difference that annoys Tommy. In these somber and serious halls no one seems concerned or worried about anything and they act like just being inside these marble halls is enough.
The classes let out at the same time and when the doors to the labs and lecture halls open Tommy and I look at each other and stand with our backs against the wall as the waves of students pass. We stand straight and thin as if we are hiding from a stampede. They don’t even notice us. When the wave passes we return to work accompanied only by the sounds of the muffled voice of a professor on the other side of the wall, the hard, quick striking heels of a late student, and the plastic scrapers against the stone.
“Spoiled bastards,” Tommy says when they’ve passed.
It is fall and the students dress in the dark colors of autumn leaves: reds, browns, and tainted yellows on sweaters, turtlenecks, blouses, wool pants, skirts and shoes with circular designs made from indented dots. Their faces are not yet the grim faces of doctors, but the faces of a young crowd that has just exited the movies. One face is different. She comes down the hall on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, looking serious and contemplative. She is young, has dirty blond hair cut to the shoulders, and carries a large gray book in her hands. The first time I saw her she came from the east, passed the slates of marble that were covered in clay, then she passed the ones we had cleaned. She looked at both of them in what looked like curiosity, then at me, and she smiled just a little when she made the connection.
The second time I saw her she walked slower, staring at the wall, and when she reached me, her eyes left the wall, explored the pattern of dried clay on my jeans, then met my eyes for an instant before following the black veins across the cleaned stone. Our eyes locked for a moment, and I told myself as I looked into those dark eyes that next time I would say something.
I went running that night down by the river as I often do. I left the door to my apartment in nothing but shorts, shoes and a sleeveless shirt, headed east down Federal Street as the sun went down behind me. I sprinted the short blocks, stopped at the corners then sprinted again until I reached the river where I can run uninterrupted past abandoned warehouses, small waves, working tugboats, and old men fishing in aluminum chairs drinking out of brown paper bags. I ran until I reached an old broken pier. It is slipping into the river and beside it is a small patch of grass and single tree. I threw small rocks into the river and watched the carp inspect the circles of water with their grotesque whiskers and gaping mouths. I imagined that I would take her there, show her how time after time the carp come to the surface expecting to find food. I would show her the pier and the grass and tell her how it looks like nature is slowly retaking this abandoned part of the city. Together we would look for garnets along the dirty shore and I would explain to her where they come from.
The third time I saw her I was about to say something, but nothing came. She looked down then lifted her eyes as she passed giving me another chance, but I remained silent.
Over the weekend I thought of her and tried to come up with something I thought she’d like to hear. She wasn’t like the others, who could care less about the marble and the things they were supposed to learn. She was thoughtful and sweet, curious about why a student like myself was cleaning these walls instead of attending class. At my apartment I would cook her dinner and explain to her that to me it doesn’t matter which school I go to as long as I was learning. She would be impressed by my rejection of such pretensions. The street outside was quiet and she would tell me how difficult it was to grow up in a rich house and go to rich school. How her parents expected so much of her. I would listen patiently, until she began to ask about the work and if that was how my arms got strong. In my single bed I would allow her to touch them and run her fingers across my chest and she would whisper softly that she never thought it could be like this and when we woke in the morning she would be smiling at the sun reflecting off the bare walls.
I thought I should just say, “Pretty cool, huh?” just to let her know that I knew what she was thinking, but realized that it might sound stupid and she wasn’t the kind of woman who would talk to stupid men. I could ask, “What do you think?” and when she answered, “About what?” I would know she wasn’t only thinking about the stone. Then I thought it would be too conniving. I decided I should just ask her what she was studying.
It’s Monday morning and Tommy and I are more than half way done this hallway. Class lets out and the students come down the hall like newly hatched salmon. She is near the back, talking to a dark haired friend. They have the same gray book in their hands. The dark haired one is taller than she is, wears a short plaid skirt without stockings and a brown cotton blouse buttoned just above where the cleavage starts to show. The blond is wearing jeans that aren’t faded at all, loose enough to be comfortable, tight enough to show strong thin legs and slender hips. She wears a slightly wrinkled white oxford shirt, buttoned to the neck. The dark haired one is talking and the blond is looking at the clay covered wall. They pass Tommy, and the blond begins to slow down. When her right foot is almost directly in front of me I say, “Hey.”
“Hey,” she says and stops.
Her friend stops too and rolls her eyes.
“So,” I say, “What are you studying?”
“What are you studying?” the dark haired one repeats. “Give me a break.” She grabs a hold of the blond one’s arm and drags her down the hall. I look over at Tommy and I see him smiling.
“Nice work,” he says.
By the end of Tuesday Tommy and I have finished three quarters of the hallway. At the end of the day I stand at the end of the hall and the light from the cleaned walls makes the hall look as if it were the middle of day.
“Three more days and we’re out of this preschool,” Tommy says.
He is growing increasingly annoyed at having to stand every time the students pass. The one time he remained on his hands and knees facing the wall he got kicked three times without anyone saying a word.
At night I run by the river and find a piece of coral. I think about giving it to her, but realize it may be too early for gifts.
Wednesday I see her again. She wears a skirt similar to her friends’ and a dark, smooth shirt. It is less wrinkled than the last one and one less button is buttoned. Her friend is nowhere to be seen. She walks past Tommy and when she is directly in front of me I say, “So what do you…” and she quickly looks away and walks down the hall.
I look over at Tommy and he isn’t smiling this time.
“Forget about her,” he says, and goes back to scraping the clay off the wall.
I take the piece of coral to class and show it to my professor. He explains to the class how coral is a living thing and that the whole world was an ocean at one point and that anywhere on the planet it was possible to find traces of marine life.
“But most likely,” he says, “Some kid bought it at the shore and threw it out the window on his way home over the Ben Franklin Bridge and it washed ashore.”
The rest of the class laughs, and I pretended to laugh with them, but deep down I can’t help but feel a little betrayed.
It is Friday and all we have to do is scrape clay off the last ten feet of this wall, clean it with water and this hallway will be done. The foreman told us yesterday that if we finished early today we could have the rest of the day off. I imagine telling this to the girl when she comes down the hall and it would just so happen that she didn’t have any classes that afternoon and we could go to the river or the woods, look for rocks and talk about things we dream about doing. Then I see her with the friend and know it’s impossible. We don’t even know each other and already the friend has come between us.
Tommy and I are on the last section when I see her. The marble is bright and clean and the veins form touching fingers and bolts of lightning. Her and the friend walk down the hall like two high school girls cutting class at the mall. Both of them smiling, talking quickly, their exaggerated walk demonstrating the existence of curved hips and slender thighs. Normally she didn’t come down the hall until at least eleven and it is now only 10:30, and there is no one else in the hall. The blond one has a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand, and her large gray book in the other.
They look at Tommy and as he turns his head from the wall, scraper in hand, they look at each other and laugh. I look at the piece of wall I have cleaned and curse the fact that she is not alone. I hear their soft steps approach and as soon as they pass I turn to see the dark-haired one shove the blond one towards the wall. The gray book drops to the floor, the blonde’s shoulder hits the wall and coffee flies onto the marble, forming a light brown circle against the white stone. Small, light legs of brown run to the floor.
The three of us stand, looking at the stained marble. I pick the book off the floor and hand it to the blond haired girl.
“Sorry,” she says as she takes the book from my hands.
The two of them turn and continue walking. They don’t speak until they reach the end of the hall and its quiet emptiness echoes their innocent voices. I take a rag out of the bucket and wash the coffee from the wall.
“What a bitch” I say, but only Tommy hears.
“Ain’t that the truth,” he says.
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Nate House's fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Troika Magazine, Veins Magazine, Roadbike Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Tribune and many other publications. His novel Float won the Frances Israel Award for fiction. He lives in Philadelphia and teaches Journalism and English at Cumberland County College.
© 2005 Me Three
