Bikers were painting my dead mother’s house pink at 4 AM and I didnn’t know any of them. I counted nine of them. I didn’t know a single one.
My mom died on a Tuesday. Pancreatic cancer. She was 67. I flew in from Seattle for the funeral and stayed to deal with the house.
I hadn’t been home in three years. My mom and I weren’t close. We had our reasons.
I thought I’d sign some papers, clean out her things, and list it by Friday.
The house was worse than I expected. Paint peeling off in sheets. Gutters hanging loose. The porch railing was rotted through. She’d been sick for over a year and there was nobody to help her keep it up.
Or so I thought.
The first night, I fell asleep on her couch surrounded
by boxes. I woke up at 4 AM to the sound of something scraping against the outside wall.
I looked through the window and my heart nearly stopped.
There were motorcycles lining the street. At least nine of them. And there were men on ladders. On the porch. Along the side of the house. In the dark. With work lights clamped to sawhorses.
They were painting \
my mother’s house. Pink.
Not salmon. Not blush. Bright, deliberate, unmistakable pink.
I grabbed my phone and almost called 911. Then one of them saw me in the window. Big guy. Gray beard. Paint roller in his hand.
He didn’t run. He just nodded at me and went back to painting.
I went outside in my pajamas. Barefoot. Shaking. Not from the cold.
“What are
you doing?” I said.
The big guy climbed down from his ladder. Wiped his hands on his jeans. Looked at me with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen on a man that size.
“You must be Claire,” he said.
“How do you know my name?”
“Your mama talked about you every single day.”
“Who are you? Why are you painting her house? Why is it pink?”
He reached into his vest pocket
and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Handed it to me.
“She gave us this eight months ago,” he said. “Before she got too sick to talk. Made us promise.”
I unfolded it. My mother’s handwriting. Shaky but clear.
It was a list. Twenty-three things. Numbered. The first one read:
- Paint the house pink. I always wanted it pink but Ray said it was trashy. Ray’s
dead now and so am I. Paint it pink.
I looked up from the paper. At the bikers on ladders. At the bright pink paint slowly covering the house I grew up in.
“Who are you people?” I whispered.
“We’re the Monday crew,” he said. “Your mama fed us lunch every Monday for eleven years. And we took care of whatever she needed.”
I had no idea. I didn’t know any
of it. And that list had twenty-two more items on it.
Walt brought me a folding chair because I looked like I might fall down. He set it on the porch and I sat there in the dark watching strangers paint my mother’s house while he told me everything.
It started eleven years ago. Walt’s motorcycle broke down on the county road about a mile from here. He
walked to the nearest house. My mother’s house.
“She was on the porch shelling peas,” Walt said. “I was in full leather. Patches. Bandana. Probably looked like trouble. Most people would have gone inside and locked the door.”
“What did she do?”
“She said, ‘You look hot. You want some lemonade?’”
She gave him lemonade. Then lunch. Then she drove him to
the auto parts store in her station wagon while he sat in the passenger seat holding a plate of leftover meatloaf she’d insisted he take.
“I came back to fix the bike the next day,” Walt said. “She fed me again. I noticed her porch steps were rotting. I fixed them. She said I didn’t have to. I said she didn’t have to feed me either.”
It became a thing
Walt came back the next Monday. Brought a friend. My mother fed them both. They fixed her gutters.
The next Monday, four bikers. She made pot roast. They raked her yard and patched a hole in the garage roof.
Within a few months, it was a standing appointment. Every Monday. The crew would show up at noon. My mother would have lunch ready. Soup in winter.
Sandwiches in summer. Always pie. Always enough for everyone, no matter how many showed up.
After lunch, they’d work on whatever needed doing. Plumbing. Painting. Electrical. Yard work. One of them rebuilt her entire back deck.
“She never asked,” Walt said. “We just did it. And she never stopped feeding us.”
I stared at him. “Eleven years?”
“Every Monday.
Rain, snow, hundred-degree heat. We never missed. Neither did she.”
“Even when she was sick?”
Walt’s face changed. “When she got too sick to cook, we brought the food. Set it up in her kitchen. Ate with her. She’d sit at the table and tell us stories.”
“What kind of stories?”
“About you, mostly.”
That hit me harder than I expected.
The sun came up while
we were talking. The house was half pink. The bikers were still working, moving with the efficiency of men who’d done this kind of thing together a thousand times.
I looked at the list again. Really read it this time.
- Paint the house pink. I always wanted it pink but Ray said it was trashy. Ray’s dead now and so am I. Paint it pink.
- Fix the porch railing
before it kills somebody. Walt knows which boards are bad.
- Plant the rosebushes. They’re in pots in the garage. I bought them two years ago but couldn’t get down on my knees anymore. Put them along the fence where they’ll get morning sun.
- Donate Ray’s clothes to the shelter on Fifth Street. Should have done it ten years ago. The green jacket can go in
the trash. He looked terrible in it but wouldn’t listen.
I almost laughed at that one. My mother’s voice was all over this list. Practical, specific, and a little bit sharp.
- Give Walt the pie recipes. ALL of them. He’s been asking for six years. Tell him the secret to the crust is frozen butter and a tablespoon of vodka. Yes, vodka. The alcohol bakes
out. Calm down.
Walt was reading over my shoulder. “I knew there was a secret,” he muttered.
- Return the library books on my nightstand. They’re three years overdue. I’m sorry, Mrs. Patterson. I kept meaning to bring them back. I’m a terrible person.
- The leak under the kitchen sink isn’t actually the sink. It’s the pipe behind the wall. Eddie will know
which one. Don’t let anyone else try. They’ll make it worse.
A tall biker with a red beard looked up from his ladder. “That’s me. She’s right. I do know which one.”
That was Eddie.
- Give the blue quilt in the hall closet to Eddie’s wife Maria. She said it was beautiful once and I always meant to give it to her but kept forgetting. Tell her my grandmother
made it. Tell her to use it, not put it away. Quilts are for using.
Eddie set down his roller. Didn’t say anything. Just nodded and went back to work. But I saw him wipe his face with his sleeve.
I kept reading. Item after item. Each one specific. Each one revealing something about my mother I didn’t know.
She wanted a bench under the oak tree in the
backyard. She wanted her old records donated to the music shop downtown because “someone should dance to them.” She wanted the attic cleaned out and the Christmas decorations given to the church.
She wanted the vegetable garden rebuilt because the neighborhood kids used to steal tomatoes every summer and she pretended not to notice because she thought
it was funny.
She wanted someone to fix the doorbell because it had been broken for four years and she’d been too stubborn to mention it.
Every item was like a window into a life I’d missed. A life my mother had built after I left. After my father died. After she was finally free to be whoever she wanted to be.
I just wasn’t there to see it.
By noon, the
house was pink. Completely, unapologetically, brilliantly pink.
It looked ridiculous. It looked beautiful. It looked exactly like something my mother would have wanted if anyone had ever asked her what she wanted.
Nobody ever asked her what she wanted. Not my father. Not me.
The bikers climbed down from their ladders. Cleaned their brushes. Stood in the
yard looking at their work.
“She’d love it,” Walt said.
“She would,” I said. And I meant it.
They started packing up their tools. I realized they were going to leave. Come back another day for the next items on the list.
“Wait,” I said. “Please. Come inside. Let me make you lunch.”
Nine bikers looked at me.
“It’s Monday,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
Walt smiled.
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