Rise: How a House Built a Family(58)

To keep us safely on the ground as long as possible, I directed everyone to finish the nailers for Sheetrock and supports for towel and tissue holders. We planned gas lines and water lines even though we were nowhere near ready to install them.

Dad must have suspected what I was up to, because he started telling the stories about when he was drafted during the Vietnam War. They were stories about basic training, protests, and race riots in the capital. He told about hearing a visiting marine in basic who announced they didn’t have enough people listed as ground infantry in the marines and were going to move some of the army guys over. “You, you, you, and you,” the marine said, pointing right down the line of draftees. The next guy in line wavered, weak with relief. Dad said he would never forget the look on the guy’s face. To be one finger point away from almost certain death and escape. It changes everything.

The stories varied, but the theme was consistent and relevant. Dad had been told by friends to keep his gaze steady and blank and never volunteer for anything. But he was my dad, so he rarely listened to advice even if it felt sound. He was restless and bored, so he held his hand up whenever they asked for a few volunteers, even if he knew he had no idea how to complete the task. Most of the time, he ended up in a better place because he jumped in and took action. He carried better weapons, learned more skills, and was well respected.

So when another guy showed up, pointing and assigning each draftee to their next duty base, Dad and a couple of other guys received a different assignment from everyone else in training. He was sent to Langley, Virginia, to take a position in the presidential honor guard, while most of the others went straight to Vietnam.

Dad was telling me to get my hand in the air, take action, quit staring straight ahead to avoid the beady eyes of danger. I might avoid the potential of a few bad things that way, but I was also avoiding the good.

I came home from work on a Wednesday, resolved and determined to get the second story under way. Dad had been spending his mornings at the job site and then coming home for a nap before heading back out with us for the late afternoon and evening. As soon as I entered the house that day, I knew something was wrong. A bowl of soup was half spilled on the breakfast bar in the kitchen, and everything was dark and quiet. Hershey cowered down, tail between her legs, and led me up the stairs.

My legs went numb. I was thinking of Adam, wondering if he had come back and done something terrible. By the time I reached the top of the stairs I knew thoughts of Adam were half distraction to keep myself from thinking about Dad.

I found him curled in a bed we had set up for him in our playroom. I’d never seen my dad look so small. He had pulled a quilt over his head and he was crying. “MS attack. Have to rest,” he said. “Sorry.”

The world spun wildly around him, rising and falling on waves that left him nauseous and weak. His words came out slow and slurred, and half of his face slumped in a mild palsy. With the help of an eye patch, his dizziness subsided after a couple of days and he was on his feet again. The attack had taken a toll, though, and I knew that every attack meant additional, permanent nerve damage.

The attacks would keep happening, no matter what he did, but there was no denying that stress made them worse. I worried that I had caused it. My crazy project had taken him down a notch, stolen away some of his life.

We were all tired and we were nowhere near the end. Was it worth it? For a house? Nothing more than a damn house?

But somewhere deep I knew that we were building more than that and we had no option to quit. The supplies were piled up and we still couldn’t afford to hire someone else to puzzle them all together.

Sometimes, when you raise your hand and jump in, there is no going back, no way out. And sometimes, that’s exactly the sort of commitment a person needs in order to make a profound life change.

It was time to move forward and up, so that’s exactly what we did. Dad was at least as stubborn as I was, so he was right there with me. “I’ll go out to the house with you this weekend, make a plan for the next stage,” he said while Roman and I were planning supper on a Friday night.

I nodded, avoiding his eyes and my own guilt.

“I want peanut butter and eggs!” Roman said.

“Don’t you want turkey?” Dad asked, smiling crookedly.

Roman rolled his eyes. “I can’t eat more turkey in my life.” Then he raised his eyebrows and grinned. “Can we have cookies?”

“Maybe one cookie after supper. Spaghetti sounds good. Everyone likes spaghetti.” It was one of my dad’s favorites and he hadn’t been holding much down lately.

“Some garlic bread would be good,” Dad said. “Get me a piece of paper and I’ll draw what I came up with for the water heater in the attic and some storage up there. I might have the knee wall figured out in your room, but the rafters are going to be hell. No way around it.”

“I’ll make cookies,” Roman said.

“First let’s make your spaghetti.” I tweaked Roman’s nose. “One crisis at a time.”

“One cookie at a time,” he agreed, hands on his hips and nodding like a bobblehead all the way to his booster seat.

*

I couldn’t remember if March came in like a lion or a lamb, but April was all lion. We had been deluding ourselves with the rosy idea that the second floor was going to be exactly like framing the first floor. Crawling around on the ceiling-joist beams, we all learned valuable lessons. First, the kids learned how terrified of heights I was, a fact I had hidden well to that point. And second, a glaringly obvious thing we had all overlooked: In order to build the second floor, we had to somehow move all the lumber for the floor, the walls, the ceilings, and even the entire roof from the muddy spot outside the garage up to said second floor.