Rise: How a House Built a Family(7)

I leaned in to see a family photo hanging firm and straight even while the wall disintegrated around it. Dirt clung so heavy on the glass that the people were only silhouettes, but I could see them clearly in my mind’s eye. Man, woman, two kids, and a dog. And the woman wore a deep-cut, V-neck shirt. No turtlenecks for her. Caroline, that was her name, or that was what I called her, anyhow. It was a strong name with a lot of history. Someone named Caroline would cross in a wagon train to the west. She would continue with the kids and oxen even after her husband died of pneumonia during a winter storm. She would build her own damn cabin and plant a garden to feed her kids. Someone named Caroline would live.

This someone named Cara had every intention of living, too, even if she was slower to find her strength than Caroline would have been.

A glimmer in the leaves and rubble near the toppled nightstand caught my eye. Jewelry, I thought, maybe something meaningful. Maybe something of Caroline’s. Using a long piece of mint-colored crown molding, I swatted away a chunk of plaster. It was a watch.

Tick-tock. Fi-fah.

Had I heard it ticking even before I picked it up? No, this watch was silent. The tick I heard now wasn’t ten feet away, but right in my ear, as though the hand wearing it were around my throat. It didn’t belong in the peaceful, sleeping house. I didn’t want it there. With a slide, swivel, flip of my excavating stick, I hooked a small, bent nail through the band and pulled the watch to me like a dangerous but familiar fish. The crystal had been smashed, stopping the hands both straight up. Midnight. Was that when the tornado hit? I couldn’t remember for sure.

Without touching it, I dropped it in a muddy pool and pushed it deep into the soft earth with my stick. Then I lowered a brick on it and piled three more on top of that. A monument, a tombstone, the death of an era.

Feeling light and noble, as though I had done the lonely house a great service, I went back to my wall and leaned inside. Silence. Beautiful, and complete. The nail in my pocket still felt warm against my palm, and I was fully aware that my thoughts and actions were half crazy. But I’d been holding my sanity together in the midst of craziness for so long. Could anyone deny me a small slip when no one was looking, when I was fully and totally alone for the first time in God knows how long?

The room felt like coming home. I had an almost overwhelming urge to step inside and sweep away the flotsam and jetsam. While I had never done major home repairs, I knew how to use a hammer well enough that I figured I could put the wall back up if I set my mind to it. The frame looked simple, with Sheetrock on the inside and a flat board under the brick outside. In fact, the kids and I could fix the entire place, make it a home again, hang a bird feeder over the dining-room window and build a matching house for Hershey under the big hickory tree.

It was ridiculous, of course it was, but I couldn’t shake the idea. I’d fallen instantly in love with everything about the place, even though nothing about it was practical. It was hours away from the kids’ schools and my programming job and freelance work with the newspaper in Little Rock. But what if I found another place like this, somewhere closer, somewhere perfect?

I turned and walked slowly back to the car, smiling, energized. What if we didn’t find a tornado-ravaged house, but a small spot of land, and just built the whole thing exactly how we wanted it? I looked back. Exactly like this would do.

I’d grown up in Wisconsin and learned early to use a hatchet to knock small limbs off trees Dad felled for firewood. I had made a built-in bookcase in the first house I bought, and used a jigsaw to make a plywood beanbag toss for the kids. Building a house was just a repetition of those skills: measure, cut, nail. Why couldn’t I build a house?

I’d hang red drapes in that second-floor bedroom, up high and safe from Peeping Toms, and make it mine. The supplies weren’t the expensive part of building a house, it was the labor.

Even though I laughed over the image of the kids and me as a construction team, I liked the idea a lot. Sure, it was a little nuts, but it was the first workable plan I’d come up with that fit our limited finances. We could do it. I knew we could. Building a house would prove we were strong. It would prove that despite my stupidity in staying with idiots for so long, I was still intelligent. It would prove so many things—most of all that we were alive.

The kids slept away the final hour to the cabin while I dreamed up things that feel possible only when you are physically and emotionally exhausted on a road trip. The hypnotic white lines flashing subliminal messages that you are a superhero, that anything is possible, that you are good, that you are worthy.

“We’re here!” I sang out when I’d backed as close as I could to the path leading away from a quaint board carved with the name Hickory Haven. I’d had to fight the urge to say, We’re home. My new habit seemed to be feeling more at home in every shelter but the place we lived.

“Camping?” Drew yawned.

“God, it better not be,” Hope said, nose pressed against the window.

“Camping!” Jada squealed, making Roman giggle and kick his feet.

“Marshmallows!” he chimed.

“Not the rustic sort. I don’t have the energy. See that light?” I pointed down the dark path. “Our cabin away from home. Our weekend retreat.”

My kids weren’t often complainers. In the way some play the “so many people have it worse than us” game to lift their spirits, my kids lived with a constant mind-set of “we know how bad it can get, and this is nothing.” We didn’t need games to quiet our grievances.