Rise: How a House Built a Family(93)
The little tricks and big distractions worked. The inspectors were both surprised and overjoyed to hand over my final paperwork. “This has been a fascinating project right from the start,” the bank guy said, and the city guy nodded in agreement.
I pretended that they didn’t mean the same fascination that kept bystanders staring at a train wreck. But we’d surprised them with success instead, and that made me pretty damn proud.
We did the impossible. We can do anything. Live? Does this mean we are strong and resourceful enough to stay alive?
After school, no one asked if we were going to Inkwell Manor; they just settled in with homework and television. Drew played a video game. In fact, we didn’t set foot on Inkwell property for the next seven days. We still loved it, we still felt more at home there than in our big house filled with bad memories, but we needed to catch our breath before we packed and moved. For the last month of the build, we had loaded up the cars with assortments of household goods and filled the shop and the center of the dining room with boxes and bags. But the bulk of our things would take a truck and a lot of work to get over there.
On the seventh night, after a fajita supper, everyone disappeared into corners of the house to work on projects or hobbies. I missed them now that our joint project was finished, but I also knew that it was healthy for us to have our own interests. We would never lose the bond that the build had created. I felt selfish calling them all to a sofa meeting, but it was time.
“I know we’re waiting for the house to sell before we do a full move to Inkwell, but we eventually have to go over there and finish things up.”
They let out a collective groan.
“It won’t be like before. We don’t have a time schedule. But the things we didn’t have to have finished for our inspection still need to be finished before we can live there. We need shelves in the pantry and all the closets and clothes rods. The last toilet needs to go in, too. It’s all small stuff, but it will make moving in a lot easier.”
They agreed, and we made a schedule. It was slower than I would have liked, but we were truly out of energy and enthusiasm. And we were all a little depressed that the house hadn’t sold yet and we couldn’t move in and celebrate. It felt a little like we had done all that work for no reward. It was a financial hardship to maintain both households, too. But the realtor insisted that an empty house would be even more difficult to sell.
It was several months of full nights of sleep and regular meals before our bruises healed and our muscles stopped aching. We finished most of the extra projects at Inkwell and moved more things over there. It wasn’t until the end of March that we sold the house.
We gathered again for a sofa meeting.
“Are you guys ready to move for real?” I had no idea what I would do if they said no.
Jada leaned in to Hope and pulled her knees up to her chin. They were both watching their feet.
“Spending the night there is going to be so awesome,” Drew said. “After all those months of imagining it.”
“The actual moving part isn’t any fun, but it’s a lot less work than building a house. Let’s start packing tonight.”
They didn’t only pack almost everything we owned into the impressive stack of boxes we’d been collecting for months, they also started disassembling furniture and piling it in the garage. They worked together, barely needing language to communicate. It was an impressive thing to watch.
The next afternoon we started carrying things over in a trailer I had picked up from craigslist. We had planned to rent a truck, but they kept insisting that we just take another load or two by trailer.
“We’ve moved almost all the furniture,” I said at around nine that night. I had just hung up the phone with my mom. She was planning to come help us unpack on the weekend but had started to feel bad again. She’d had pneumonia over the winter and had stayed with me for several weeks while she healed. I had worried about her, but she was tough and never complained. “Should we call it a night?” I suggested meekly to the kids.
“The only thing we have left are the beds,” Drew said. “Why don’t we just take the mattresses over now and sleep there tonight. We can get them all in one load if we leave the box springs.”
I was exhausted, but after months of dragging their feet over the move the kids were practically frantic to sleep at Inkwell. They pushed forward with no complaints. It was just like the build had been: Keep placing one foot in front of the other until the task is complete.
We had filled my library and the dining room with the bulk of the boxes, because they were closest to the front door and I couldn’t walk any farther than that. For the most part we had no idea what was in the boxes. At the beginning we had labeled them carefully, but then we had unpacked the boxes and reused them for so many more trips that every label was a jumbled mess.
“We’ll sort it out later,” Hope said when I pulled kitchen utensils, DVDs, and socks out of a box. “Let’s just get the mattresses in.”
Their euphoria was contagious. I was starting to feel that our long-delayed celebration was happening. A smile spread across my face and didn’t go away. Drew put on a dance mix, and we sang loud enough to be a disturbance. Even though it was way past his bedtime, Roman ran and leapt, and danced along with us. We were free and happy in a way we never would have been in another house. This was our personal space in every sense of the word.