How to Build a House Page 12

  But I guess I don’t have to bring up the question of sex. Teddy will. He’s a guy. All guys ever think about is sex. And Teddy’s enough of a grown-up to think about it and talk about it.

  “What have you been thinking about?”

  “My aunt Abigail.”

  Never, in a million years, would I have guessed that these would be the words that would come out of his mouth right now.

  “What about your aunt Abigail?”

  “She’s my mother’s sister, but I’ve never met her. My mother doesn’t speak to her and hasn’t for twenty-two years. The truth is, I don’t even know if she’s alive or where she is, because my mom’s parents are dead, so there isn’t any tie left to her. The point is, she’s my mom’s sister, and they used to be pretty close when they were kids, and now they don’t know each other anymore.”

  “What happened?”

  “When my mom met my dad and they fell in love, she didn’t have the greatest reaction to a black man dating her sister and Mom never forgave her for that.”

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  “Does it?”

  “It does to me.”

  “I don’t know…. I mean, sure, obviously racism is in excusable, and I certainly don’t mean to be apologizing for it, but maybe it’s something she would have gotten over. Maybe if Abigail had gotten to know Dad, and realized he’s just Dad, then maybe there’d be that much less racism in the world. Anyway, what I’m really trying to say is that Mom lost a sister, and she didn’t even put up a good fight. I’ve watched her be sad her whole life because of that. She has a hole in her nobody can fill. And now it’s just too late.”

  Talking about sex would have been less confusing for me than figuring out how to respond to this story.

  I’m quiet for a long time.

  “Tess did things to hurt me,” I finally say.

  “Maybe that’s because she was hurting too.”

  He slides his chair even closer and puts his arms around my waist. “You need to fix this.”

  I stare at the planes of his face. His lips. A small cluster of freckles near his left eye.

  “You’re not normal,” I say.

  “Normal’s overrated.”

  “How come you’re not trying to figure out how to get me to let you crash in my room for the next few nights?”

  “Oh, I already have that covered.” He pulls me even closer.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.” He kisses me just above my ear.

  “So what’s your plan?”

  “I’m just going to ask, like a good Southern boy,” he whispers in my ear. “Real nice and polite-like.”

  HOME

  When I came back that night, Dad was still out. Cole was asleep. I paid the babysitter from the rolled-up wad of bills we kept in the drawer with the tinfoil and plastic bags. I opened the refrigerator and stood there, letting the cold escape onto my face and into my lungs. I went and sat at the counter. Pavlov curled himself at my feet.

  I waited for what felt like a long time.

  Dad’s key in the front door made Pavlov’s ears stand up, but the footfalls were Dad’s, so he settled back down to sleep.

  “Hi, honey.”

  There was Dad, facing me, his keys still in his hand.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Here we were. Back in the kitchen. Just like we were months earlier. But this time he was standing and I was sitting. And this time I was about to surprise him.

  “Tell me about what happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean,” I said, and I looked at him, hard. His face fell and he put his keys on the counter.

  “I’m an asshole,” he said. “That’s what happened.” He pulled a stool around and sat down facing me.

  If he was looking for me to contradict him, he was looking in the wrong place.

  “Go on.”

  “I’ve screwed up everything. Everything. I’ve even screwed this up, right here. This isn’t how we should be having this conversation. You shouldn’t be coming to me with this. I should have just told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “Told you …”

  “That you had an affair?”

  “Yes.”

  “With your patient’s mother? Isn’t that just a little unethical?”

  He winced like he’d just been bitten on the face.

  “Yes. It is.”

  I tried to calculate how many minutes, hours, days I’d spent feeling sorry for Dad. How I tried to wish his dark circles away. The hair back on his head. The pounds back on his disappearing frame.

  I was trying to work up some anger. But when I reached for it, I grasped only air.

  I thought of this picture I have of Dad and me when I’m about three. We were at a party for a college friend of his where children probably weren’t welcome, but in those years Dad never went anywhere without me. I’m in his lap and he’s clutching me around my waist.

  That picture always confused me. From one angle it’s sad: Here’s this man who’s lost and has nobody in the world but this three-year-old with a sour expression, tangled hair and a shirt that clashes with her pants. From another angle, it’s beautiful: Here’s this man and this child who have each other to cling to through whatever the world can conjure up.

  Dad is all I have.

  “I really thought you loved her.”

  “It’s so much more complicated than that, Harper. Of course I loved Jane. I do love Jane. I wish things were that simple. I wish it were as simple as having an affair. An affair isn’t everything, you know. It’s just one small part of a much more complicated picture.”

  “So are you still with the patient’s mother?”

  “I wasn’t ever ‘with’ her.”

  “Explain that one, Dad.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “I bet.”

  He reached for my hand but I yanked it away.

  “Look, like I said, an affair isn’t everything. It’s more like a symptom.”

  I felt totally and completely exhausted. I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t expect you to.” He attempted a weary smile. “Give yourself a break. Don’t try to figure everything out. I know it’s your impulse, but fight it.”

  I scratched with my fingernail at a dirty spot between the tiles on the counter, not wanting to look at Dad. Not knowing where to look.

  “Also, I’m not too keen on you figuring out that I’m a terribly flawed human being.” He paused until I lifted my eyes to meet his. “I much prefer being Superdad.”

  I stood up to go to my room, but then suddenly I was moving toward my father, and collapsing into him like a child, crying tears stored up from everything that had happened that night, and over the past weeks, and months, and years of my life.

  HERE

  Right before Teddy’s due to pick me up for dinner, there’s a knock on my door.

  Seth. He tells me I have a call on the pay phone in the hallway, and then stretches his neck to see beyond me into my empty room.

  “She’s gone, Seth. She went home to visit her boyfriend.”

  “Oh, right.” He stands in front of me, dejected.

  So it’s finally taken this, me boyfriending Seth, for the reality of Pierre to sink in. I feel bad for him. Big, bulky Seth suddenly looks so small standing in my doorway. I put a hand on his shoulder and give it a squeeze.

  “She’ll be back in a few days, you know, and when she’s back you should come by and hang out.” I can almost feel Marisol’s elbow in my ribs even though she’s half a continent away, but I can’t help it. I just can’t stand Seth’s look of crushed hope.

  I assume it’s Teddy calling to tell me he’s running late. He’s the only one who ever calls me here. I call Dad on Sundays; he never calls me.

  I pick up the phone. “Is this a formal affair, or will cargo pants and a tank top do?”

  “I have absolutely no idea, but my general phi
losophy about such things is that it’s always better to be overdressed than underdressed.”

  “Jane?”

  “Hi, Harper. Is the tank top a spaghetti-strap number, or are we talking wifebeater? It makes all the difference.”

  I’m caught completely off guard. It’s like I’m listening to a voice from beyond, and what I learn standing with my mouth hanging open in the motel hallway is that when talking to the ghost of someone you used to know, it takes a while to find the right words.

  All I can come up with is: “How are you?”

  “That’s what I called to ask you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Just fine?”

  “Better than fine, I guess.”

  “Sounds like it. At least you’re off to an event of some kind at which a tank top may not be suitable. I’m looking ahead to a night in my pajamas eating frozen enchiladas.”

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Cole’s with your dad. Rose went on a road trip to visit a boy from school who lives in Chicago. She’s driving that old station wagon with a friend, but she may be stuck in Colorado and I’d never know because she doesn’t bother to call.”

  There’s a pause during which Jane seems to take a sip of something hot.

  I manage to ask, “And Tess?”

  “She’s working at this restaurant in Malibu. It’s really more like a diner, complete with a fifties motif, but the burgers cost fifteen dollars, so I refuse to call it a diner. She’s on the two-to-eleven shift.”

  “Oh.”

  “You should give her a call. At the very least to tease her about her uniform.”

  “Sure. Maybe.”

  “She misses you.”

  My skin itches. My mouth is dry. I want to get off the phone. I need to get off the phone.

  “I know it’s not really my place, Harper, but I thought it important that you know that. If she won’t tell you, I will. She misses you. And by the way, I miss you too.”

  Just as I’m about to disappear into a wordless hole, a dark place of grief and longing, Teddy rounds the corner and smiles broadly at me.

  I stand up straight. Words come.

  “I’ve got to go, Jane. Thanks for everything.”

  “I just thought you should know.”

  “I mean, thanks for being my mother.”

  “I’m not done with that part yet, I hope.”

  “Good.”

  I put the phone back into its cradle as Teddy reaches out and grabs me around my waist.

  A heavy thunderstorm struck this afternoon and the ground is wet. The cicadas have quieted down and there’s a pleasant breeze outside. Alice and Grace made colorful paper lanterns and Coach Wes helped hang them this afternoon. The light they cast is lovely. It’s like eating at a tropical cantina.

  Diane has prepared another of her fantastic meals. We hold hands while Coach Wes says grace. The Wrights do this every time they sit down to eat and I’ve come to sort of enjoy it. I hold Teddy’s hand in front of the world. I pause and appreciate what it feels like to sit down to a home-cooked meal with a family.

  Tonight Coach Wes says, “Father, thank you for this bounty of food and love and for the young people around this great country who stepped out of their lives to help rebuild ours. And thank you for introducing Harper into our home, may she keep that crazy smile on our Teddy’s homely face. Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  I’m a wreck all through dinner. All I can think about is tonight. My anonymous room of polyester curtains and tacky art, with Teddy in it. The hours we’ll fill together. I hardly eat a thing. Coach Wes takes notice.

  “What’s the matter, Harper, don’t you like my wife’s cooking?”

  “No … it’s not that, it’s just that I had a big lunch.”

  “Diane doesn’t take kindly to folks not eating her food. You better at least hide something in your napkin.”

  “Wes! Leave the poor girl alone. Something’s bothering her and she doesn’t have much of an appetite, that’s all.”

  My face is flushing.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Alice. “Is it Teddy? What did he do? You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Go on,” says Diane. “Tell her. Alice is a wonderful keeper of secrets.”

  “There’s something called boundaries, everybody.” Teddy lays his palms flat on the table. “You should really look into them.”

  “All right, all right, I’ll eat!” I say.

  They all cheer. I’m suddenly at ease. Teddy gives me a radiant smile and a look passes between us. It feels as if we’ve been exchanging glances filled with understanding forever.

  We have dessert and mint tea. Alice and Grace tell stories from camp. Diane talks about the temporary clinic. Today she saw a man from one of the other local building projects with a nail through his thumb. She shakes her fork at Teddy and me and tells us we should always pay careful attention when we’re working on the house, especially when using the nail gun.

  Teddy brings out his guitar and sings a blues song, something about his baby who done him wrong, and Diane harmonizes, and a few neighbors gather around to listen.

  After the table is cleared I take a walk with the twins so they can show me a fort they’ve been building in a patch of trees on the property.

  I expect to see a sheet serving as the roof and some branches for walls and maybe an old piece of carpeting for the floor, like the kinds of forts Tess and I used to build in the backyard. But instead what they lead me to is a beautiful little house, painted bright pink, with four walls and a roof and a plywood door on hinges and a cutout square for a window. It’s just big enough to fit both girls and a small child-sized table and chairs.

  “How did you guys build this? It’s amazing.”

  “Teddy helped us,” they say in unison.

  “And some guy with a red beard,” adds Grace.

  “Linus,” I say, and I give the walls a shake.

  Solid as anything.

  We walk back to the trailer and I hug Teddy’s family goodnight. We climb into the truck. We turn onto the dark road, damp gravel crunching underneath the tires. My room is empty. I tidied it this afternoon for Teddy.

  I’m not a tidier.

  We stop at the intersection with the road to the motel. Teddy flips on his left-turn blinker even though there’s no other car in sight. The click-clacks rattle the silence of the cab. He lifts his foot off the brake and makes the turn.

  “Listen,” says Teddy, and he pops a tape into the tape deck.

  I stare at it. “A tape deck? I thought these things were an urban legend.”

  “It’s an old truck. Not the point here.” He adjusts the volume. “I want you to hear something.”

  A few notes plucked on a guitar and then a voice comes in:

  I saw you dancing,

  You were dancing,

  Over the water, over the waves …

  “Hey, this is the song you sang on the pie night.”

  “The pie night?”

  “Yeah, that’s how I think of it. The pie night. The night you came to my room and brought Jack Daniel’s and ate pie and played this song on the guitar. I thought you wrote this.”

  “No. I may be cool, but I’m not that cool.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s country music, baby.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  We listen in silence for a minute. I thought country music was all twangy guitar and do-si-do-your-partner. I never knew it could be like this.

  Teddy reaches over and slides me closer to him. “Every time I hear this song now I think of you. I go around humming it in my head all the time. All day long. It’s like a mantra.”

  “Everyone has a mantra but me.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The song ends and Teddy pops the tape out.

  “See? I’m trying to be all romantic and you’re busy dogging my tape deck.”

  “You’re ri
ght. Sorry.” I run my hand over the part of the dashboard with the tape deck in it. “You know—” My throat catches and I clear it. “I’ve always wanted there to be a song that made somebody think of me.”

  We’re parked in front of the motel. He leans in and we kiss. He holds my face in his hands.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” I say in an almost-whisper.

  “It’s easy. You pull on the handle in one smooth motion, you push the door away from you.”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know how to sneak you in, and what to say to Linus when he knocks for lights-out, or how to face your parents.”

  “Harper—”

  I put up a hand to indicate I’m not finished yet.

  “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be with you tomorrow. I don’t know how to have a relationship that means anything. I don’t know how to have somebody want to be with me. I don’t know how I’m going to pack my bags at the end of this summer and go back to my other life.”

  He grabs both of my hands and moves his face closer to mine so that I can’t do anything but look back at him.

  “Why don’t we just hang out?”

  “Hang out?”

  “Yes. We’ll just hang out tonight. That’s it. I promise.”

  This turns out to be a lie too, but it’s the kind of lie that’s easy to forgive.

  HOME

  At least Gabriel tried to explain himself, which is more than can be said for Tess. He cornered me in the parking lot before school started Monday morning.

  “I tried calling you all weekend.”

  I kept walking.

  “Why are you ignoring me?”

  I picked up the pace.

  “We were just making out. So what?”

  I thought I’d look like an idiot if I started running, so instead I walked as fast as I could, and it looked like that crazy power walk you see middle-aged Beverly Hills women doing in their velour sweat suits, with huge swinging arm motions, so I ended up looking like a bigger idiot than if I’d just taken off at full speed.

  “Harper, c’mon.”

  Gabriel dropped a book, bent down to get it and then had to sprint to catch up.

  “It’s not like we’re going out or anything. We’re friends. We’re old friends.”