Rise: How a House Built a Family(63)

“Are you still there? Don’t go to the police. He’s here and he knows he has to stay here. He isn’t going anywhere. I’ll sort this out with him. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, not even sure if the whole word got out before I had disconnected. I turned the ringer off and pulled into a parking lot, not even looking to see where we were.

“Pizza!” Jada yelled.

True enough. We were at a pizza joint. I handed my billfold to Hope. “Get two. Jada can go with you.” I was still crying and wasn’t sure I would ever stop.

I waved at the radio and Drew turned it on, starting with “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” which only made me cry harder. But that turned out to be the last outburst. I found a tissue package of questionable age in the back pocket of my seat and cleaned myself up.

Drew handed me a bottle of water, also of questionable age, that tasted like the hose water of my childhood. I smiled.

The pizza made it out in record time. No one had mentioned that they were hungry, but stomachs rumbled all the way back to the house.

I slowed at the end of the drive, planning to get the mail.

“I’ll walk down and get it,” Drew said. “Let’s get this pizza in before Jada’s stomach chews its way out to the box. I’ve never heard so much grumbling in my life!”

She kicked his seat. “We got the little packages of Parmesan cheese!”

I smiled back at her just in time to see her licking her lips. Who cared what chaos was brewing around us? A mini package of smelly old Parmesan cheese was enough to bring us around. We were too used to this. Too pliable from too many traumatic events.

We were also too deep to climb out. Too aware that sometimes the only safe place was behind a false smile.





–17–

Rise

What Is Down Must Go Up

Before we had boxed in the upstairs for good with plywood, we had enough sense to push the ceiling joists up through the studs. They were eighteen-foot two-by-tens and would have been difficult to get up the stairs and then turned to an open room where they could be fed up to the top of the walls. They sat in three stacks in my bedroom, and Roman had strict instructions to avoid them and the open windows, but otherwise he was finally free to run and play upstairs. I was relieved beyond words. The only thing we were missing to have the house in the dry was a roof.

Jada and I spent a Wednesday evening lifting the ceiling joists up to Drew, who straddled the middle of the wall between my bedroom and Roman’s. Since it turned out to be the best place in the house to feed them up, we decided to put them all up there and then disperse them along the length of the house later when we nailed them in place. It was getting dark, so the goal was just to get them up there. My dad had gone back to the house to rest, and we were anxious to join him. We worked by the car headlights for the final stretch. By the time we had the last board up and our muscles were screaming, the thunder and lightning started. I hated the idea of leaving all those expensive boards up there in the rain after working for so many months to keep them dry, but the framed house had survived dozens of storms. We congratulated ourselves on a job well done over a handful of beef jerky and headed downstairs.

Roman and Hope had swept up the downstairs, an endless chore with mud, leaves, and sawdust covering everything anew each day. Roman was bouncing a dozen quarter-size Super Balls in crazy patterns through the house. It was clearly driving Hope nuts, but he was giggling so hard that no one with a heart would ask him to stop.

Hershey was flat on her side in the dining room. A small patch of hair was permanently missing next to her spine, but no one ever mentioned it. A Super Ball bounced off her hindquarters and her eyes barely flickered. Good old dog, she was. No doubt about it.

“Get all of them, Roman. There’s still a red one in the den,” Drew said, holding his hands out, already overflowing with balls. I had the ridiculous idea that they were cleaning up until Roman dropped a red ball in Drew’s hands and he yelled, “Watch out! Here they go!” He flung the balls as hard as he could across the room.

Roman screamed in delight, running after them and then turning tail and running back when they leapt back at him, a delirious mix of terror and joy across his face. The balls ricocheted off studs, and each set out on its own wild path, thumping against us and Hershey, and then finally all rolling across the concrete, seeking out a low point. The shop lights hanging from studs with too-bright bulbs doubled and tripled the effect of the balls with wild shadows.

“Again!” Roman screamed, handing a green and white marbled ball to Drew. “Do it again!”

Hope rolled her eyes; the chaos was too much for her ordered mind. The rest of us were all in, gathering the balls and depositing them with Drew. I caught Hope’s eye and nodded up the stairs. She tiptoed up, and I knew she would go to her own room.

Drew put in four more rounds of ball-tossing glee, which had us all running and screaming after them like Roman had and then running back the other way. We could have gone on longer even though we were tired and hungry, but Hope came down to announce that the rain had really started. Even without the roof, it would be a while before it made its way down through the tongue-and-groove flooring upstairs to cover the slab. But it would, and we would have yet another mess to clean up. Sounding like broken records, we drove home, talking all the way about how much we needed a roof.

Jada was the first to throw up that night, but Roman wasn’t far behind her. Hope started closer to sunrise, and I was glad she at least had some sleep. Drew said he felt fine and went on to school. I couldn’t blame him; I would have run for the hills, too, if I had the chance. By noon, I was throwing up in between cleaning up the kids and handing out cans of ginger ale.