Rise: How a House Built a Family(51)
“It was definitely a best day.” I drank half a bottle of warm Gatorade, and the spots had stopped dancing through my vision by the time the kids closed the shop door and walked toward us, dragging their feet like zombies. The adrenaline rush of progress had pushed us way further than we should have gone. Every cell was depleted.
The drive home was so silent I thought everyone was asleep, but when I pulled into the garage they were all staring straight ahead, in a sort of shock.
I herded everyone in the door and made them sit at the table. Hershey collapsed two steps inside the door. None of us had the energy to cook. If I had any discretionary cash I would have ordered a half dozen pizzas. Instead, I carried two loaves of seven-grain bread to the table with the family-size jar of peanut butter, strawberry jam, grape jelly, and—my favorite—raspberry preserves. I added a pitcher of Kool-Aid and two pitchers of ice water. Before the peanut butter had made the rounds I had to refill both water pitchers.
We ate in total silence, all adjusting slowly to a new picture of ourselves and our family. The air was heavy with more than just the smell of sweat, mud, and peanut butter. It was charged with an energy from someplace deep, something primitive that had empowered the ancients with the stubborn determination to construct mud hovels with fingernail-scraped earth patted into bricks with calloused hands.
The peanut butter went around the table once, twice, and I stopped counting. Roman fell asleep after eating a full sandwich. When the bread was gone, we carried the jelly to the refrigerator and went wordlessly to showers and baths. Roman woke up enough to sit upright in the tub while I scrubbed him down but fell asleep again while I toweled him off. I carried him upstairs to his own bed, knowing there was no way he would wake up in the night.
We had worked as hard and as long setting the foundation blocks in place, but that work hadn’t been as emotionally draining. The day of framing made the house real. It made our future real. For the first time in years, it made us real. We were relevant. We were alive. And we were going to keep on living.
I stood in the hot shower only long enough to rinse away the grime; I couldn’t stay upright longer than that.
Other people, those whose spirits hadn’t been pulverized, would have celebrated and laughed when the house was enclosed by real walls. There would have been high-fives and pats on the back. Our joy was just as real, but it was the kind you feel when you crawl the last mile on your belly and cross the finish line all the way empty. We would get to that place where we were full of happiness, but first we had to be emptied of sadness.
I fell into bed. Emptied from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
As soon as I closed my eyes, Benjamin was there. I was asleep in seconds, but I saw the right side of his mouth lift in something that resembled a serene smile before he faded behind my dreams.
Sunday began in a series of slow-motion scenes followed by hours in hyperspeed. Breakfast was slow, the bacon salt lingering on my tongue even after I had finished my orange juice and the brilliant-yellow yolk glowing like sunshine on my toast. Drew and Hope were silent, a carryover of physical and emotional exhaustion. Jada crunched the crust of her toast. Crumbs coated her braces, and raspberry jelly dripped into the crease between her thumb and finger. She laughed easily from one topic to the next, even though I was the only one who appeared to be listening and I was mostly pretending. She was sweet perfection.
While the kids packed the car with a cooler and a clingy dog, I slipped out to the front porch for a minute alone to inhale and exhale.
It was ten thirty when we pulled up to Inkwell Manor. The kids hooked up cords and hoses without waiting for my instructions. “Do you want to put up another wall or play with Roman?” I asked Jada, knowing that she felt left out of the fun stuff a lot.
“We’re hunting crawdads,” she said, digging through a collection of shovels, rakes, and hoes in search of small nets on three-foot handles. Over the years, the kids had trapped countless swimming, crawling, and flying creatures in those stained old nets.
“I want green,” Roman said, pointing at the blue one.
“Just stay by the ditch, not the pond. Don’t let Roman anywhere near the pond.” It was a mom thing to say. An ordinary warning exactly like countless others I’d issued over the past seventeen years. But this time my throat squeezed closed and a knife of pain rocketed through my stomach. Things were good, which made me terrified that they would swing back to bad in order to set the universe at ease. Long ago, Adam had given me a scare about drowning kids that still hit my gut hard when I least expected it.
I leaned against the tool bench, head low like I was looking at something important and very, very small next to the vise grip.
“We need to start planning the staircase,” Drew said. “The downstairs is almost finished!”
I forced myself upright. This was no way to live. It was time to focus, push forward, grow up. We were alive, and we might as well live. Growing old isn’t for sissies, my grandpa used to say.
“I’m still researching the stairs,” I said. “My math keeps going all wrong when I try to plan them. Every try ends with new numbers.” I had left two messages asking Pete for help but hadn’t heard back. “This skeleton frame may look complete, but it’s just the first step. We have to add the top plate and ceiling joists next. And add the Sheetrock nailers and support nailers for curtain rods, towel holders, and shelves. There are holes to drill for plumbing and electric. The plywood has to go up on the exterior before we do the joists. Remember how unstable the shop was when we put the rafters up before the plywood? We don’t want to try that here. Oh, and we have to mark every light switch and outlet since we don’t have a formal electric plan. Trust me—we aren’t going to run out of work before the stairs are built.”