How to Build a House Read online

  She hits him in the chest and laughs.

  We get lost in the music and our conversation falls away. I watch Teddy watching the band. His eyes are big and unblinking and he’s subtly moving his body to the rhythm of the music and every now and then he shakes his head and breaks into this huge grin, like they’ve just let him in on an inside joke.

  “These guys are outrageous,” he shouts in my ear. “Amazing. I can’t believe I was about to go to sleep for the night. If you hadn’t called I would have missed this.” He puts one arm around me and his other arm around Marisol and squeezes us.

  Alicia comes back with our food, and despite the fact that, like Frances, I’m not hungry, I clean my plate. We all do.

  The band breaks again just after one.

  “We’ll be back,” says the fat guy on guitar, who also sings lead vocals. “Thanks!”

  Frances looks at her watch. “They’re coming on again? I’m impressed.”

  “Good luck finding a club in Providence that rocks like this on a Wednesday night,” says Marisol.

  “Providence?” asks Captain.

  “That’s where Brown is,” says Frances.

  “Oh, right.” His face falls for just a second, but then he perks up. “Question: When Brown hears about how you spent your summer, and they admit you because they’re stupid enough to think you did it out of a sense of greater good, and you move to Providence, does Providence officially become the city, or is that title still reserved for New York?”

  I don’t hear her answer, because an idea comes to me that’s like thunder in my head.

  A fabulous and slightly crazy idea. If I voiced it to the group I know how it would play out: Frances and Captain and Marisol would cheer me on and Teddy would say, No way, uh-uh, not a chance, don’t even think about it, and then I’d have no choice but to listen to Teddy.

  So instead what I do is excuse myself from the table and make like I’m going off to the bathroom.

  I find the band sitting on some sofas in a small private room in the back. There’s a velvet curtain I have to push aside and I stick my head in. It takes more courage than anything I’ve done tonight, but I take a deep breath.

  The fat guy on guitar and lead vocals is called Phantom. He follows me back to the table and I introduce him to Teddy, who stands up and shakes his hand.

  “You guys kick ass,” says Teddy.

  “Thanks, Dog,” says Phantom. “So, your lady friend says you play a mean guitar.”

  “I’m all right,” he says.

  “He’s awesome,” says Captain. “And way too modest.”

  Phantom pushes his dark glasses up on his head.

  “I was thinking you might want to sit in for a song or two. I’m really more of a singer, you know what I’m sayin’? I like to give it all to the vocals, so why don’t you come on up and give me a break on guitar.”

  “No way.” Teddy’s look is a mix of panic and elation, but Phantom is already pulling him by the sleeve, back toward the private room.

  About fifteen minutes later they take the stage. Phantom introduces Teddy, and Teddy strikes the first few chords of a song that everyone seems to know but me. It must be a cover, because he plays effortlessly, and he’s even singing some of the backup vocals.

  It’s late now, really late. The place is empty save for three tables and a few people sitting at the bar. I’m as excited as if Teddy were playing a sold-out show at the Staples Center.

  On the way home our friends fall asleep in the backseat of Coach Wes’s car.

  I’m not tired.

  Teddy watches the road. I watch him. He looks over at me and smiles. “What?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing,” I say, even though tonight was as close to the opposite of nothing as I can imagine.

  We aren’t home yet, the night hasn’t ended, and already I’m reliving it. The sneaking out and the food and the music. Teddy on the tiny stage. The standing ovation we gave him when he returned to our table. Phantom punching Teddy’s cell-phone number into his own. How Frances said this was the best night out she could ever remember having, and the extravagant bow Captain made following this pronouncement.

  I think about how we can’t always live in the moment because moments pass, and when we’re lucky, we have the kind of moments that we can’t help wanting to go back to. We think about them, remember how they felt, and when more time passes we tell stories of these moments that are worth reliving, and we tell those stories to the people we love, and tonight I find myself wishing that I could go home and tell this story, and relive this moment, and I think of Tess.

  Over the next few days we finish the roof. We hammer on the shingles. Siding goes up. Windows get framed in white trim with dark green shutters. The major exterior work is done, but we still have a ways to go inside. Sanding, staining, painting, hanging doors, adding fixtures and knobs and light-switch plates.

  It’s evening. I’m at Teddy’s. Darkness is still a few hours off. I love the colors at this time of day. Gold, green, amber. The sky in Technicolor turquoise. Way off in the distance one angry cloud hangs over someplace else. Gunmetal gray.

  Diane has a pot of chili on the stove with a smell so big and deep it crosses state lines. We decide to take a walk to see the house. Coach Wes stays behind to keep an eye on the chili.

  “I was up there earlier.” He shoots us a thumbs-up. “It’s looking good.”

  The twins run ahead on the path, sun-streaked hair flying behind them. They’ve lengthened this summer. I’d forgotten how quickly your body can change on you when you’re only nine years old.

  They weave in and out of each other’s path. Their movements look choreographed. But it’s just a natural dance of sisters who anticipate each other’s next step.

  They start racing around the house, peering in each window.

  We stand back.

  “Oh, it’s looking just lovely,” says Diane. She places her hand on my shoulder.

  Lovely might be a stretch.

  The house is boxy and simple with an A-line roof. You could pass it on any street in any city or any town, and you’d probably never give it a second look. It blends in. You might call it nice, average. Not lovely.

  “We wanna see our room!” shouts Alice.

  “There’s nothing to see yet,” Teddy says.

  “We don’t care!”

  They run inside. They’ve looked at the plans. They’ve been in the house when it was still a skeleton. They know how to find their room.

  We go in after them. While Teddy takes Diane into the master bathroom to ask a question about shower tiles, I find the twins. The carpeting hasn’t been installed. The floor is bare and I worry about splinters when I see them lying down on opposite sides of the room staring at the ceiling.

  Without saying anything they get up and switch places.

  “This way,” says Alice.

  “Yeah, this way,” Grace agrees.

  They’ve chosen their sides.

  I sit down between them. “So what are we doing about color?”

  “We want the pink we used for the fort, but Mama says no,” Grace says.

  Alice adds, “She thinks we’ll grow out of bright pink in a minute and she doesn’t want to have to repaint the room anytime soon. She says we’re fickle.”

  “She says we have to have something neutral.”

  They both make a face.

  I make a face too. “I hate neutral.”

  “Yeah, we hate neutral.” Grace frowns. “What are we going to do?”

  I forget about splinters and lie down like they did, flat on my back. “We’ll think of something.”

  The tornado-safe room finally gets delivered. We were expecting it a few weeks ago, and maybe it’s this buildup, but somehow I imagined it as grander. It’s nothing but a large metal container. A rectangular box with slits in the sides for ventilation. When I see it I find it hard to believe that everything comes down to this; that if another tornado with the same force as the one this p
ast April hit again, this box might be the only thing left from our entire summer’s worth of work.

  I stand outside where the delivery truck unloaded it onto the driveway. I flip through the accompanying literature as Linus looks it over.

  “Couldn’t we have built a safer house?” I ask. “Why not a tornado-safe house? Why just a tornado-safe room?”

  The picture on the front of the booklet shows an outline drawing of a family of five crouched together inside the container, knees pulled to their chins. A corporate idea of a typical family who looks nothing at all like the Wrights.

  Just glancing at this fake family and their proximity to each other makes me claustrophobic. I toss the booklet back to Linus.

  “It’s kind of an exaggeration, calling this thing a room, don’t you think?”

  He raps the top of it with his knuckles. “This thing saves lives. We could never build a house as strong as this.” He opens the door, gives it a shake. Closes it again. “At the first tornado warning you run, lock yourself in this baby, and whatever may come, you know you’re gonna be okay.”

  “What if there’s no warning?” I ask.

  Linus shrugs. “Then you hang on tight and pray for the best.”

  It turns out that this tornado-safe “room” doubles as a kitchen island. We anchor it right in the middle of the kitchen and Linus explains that we’ll cover the top with thick wooden butcher block.

  I picture Diane chopping vegetables on top of this safe room. Dicing. A bowl filled with fruit. A vase with flowers. Maybe this is where the family will leave each other notes when they have something important to say.

  At the end of the day I open the door and peek inside, but it’s too dark in there to see a thing.

  I’ve noticed that Captain and Frances have been bickering lately.

  At lunch he called her stuck-up and she called him unsophisticated and they tried to make it seem like it was all in good fun.

  Today I’m on landscaping duty. I dig my hands into the soil. I roll it between my fingers. I take my time. I’m overly careful. I try to slow everything down, to appreciate these last days, the way the earth feels in my hands.

  I plant butterfly bushes, lantana and a trumpet vine that will grow someday and wrap itself around the posts of the front porch where Captain is sitting, taking a break from sanding and looking uncharacteristically forlorn.

  “Everything okay with you and Frances?”

  “No, not really.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Oh nothing, other than that we’re getting ready to break up.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because we have to. I’m going back to Florida and she’s going back to that loud, noisy, disgusting city of hers and we probably won’t ever see each other again.”

  I sit down next to him.

  “Why does this have to be the end? It’s you and Frances. You guys are great together. Can’t you find a way to make it work?”

  Captain smiles at me and gives me a playful shove. “You’re sweet.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean you’re naïve. This is just a summer thing. It’ll always be only a summer thing. It can’t be more than that. And I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it’s the same for you and Teddy.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Sure it is. Look, summer flings are great. They’re easy. The saying goodbye part is a bummer, but everything leading up to that is great because you exist in this special place, this time out of time, where it doesn’t matter that what happens doesn’t matter.”

  He stops and makes a face as if he’s confusing himself, but he’s not confusing me. I’m having no problem following Captain. The thing is, though, I think he has it all backward.

  “Everything matters here. What we’re doing here matters. It’s what’s back at home that doesn’t matter anymore.”

  I know how crazy I must sound, but I don’t care, because what I’m saying is the absolute truth. Look to this day, for it is life. What matters is here and now.

  “You’re a great friend, Harper, so I don’t mean to sit here and take a big dump on your happy parade, but did it ever occur to you to wonder why Teddy is so perfect?”

  “That’s just who he is.”

  “I’m not saying he’s not a great guy, I’m just saying that you don’t have to really know him, or know the difficult things about him, and you don’t have to ask the questions nobody wants to ask about their own relationship, because this is all temporary. It’ll be over soon enough.”

  I put my face in my hands. “This matters to me, Captain. It feels like the most important thing that’s ever happened in my life.”

  He wipes his palm on his shorts and then gently rubs my back. “I’m not saying it isn’t important. I’m just saying it’s going to end, because it has to, and you have to go back to the real world and your real home and your real life.”

  Or maybe I don’t, I think. Maybe I’ll just stay. Right here. In the space where new homes are built from nothing. In this place where I am finally able to be happy again.

  On Sunday I go out into the hallway to the pay phone to make my weekly call to Dad, but instead I dial the first nine numbers of Tess’s cell. I stop short of dialing the final number.

  8.

  There it is, right in front of me. 8. An upright infinity. With just a little more pressure from my index finger it would make a tone, the 8 would complete her number, some unfathomable network of satellites and towers would connect me to Tess. I could reach her.

  Then what?

  I hang up.

  I read the graffiti etched into the Plexiglas of the phone shelter. I know it all by heart now. I know that KJ is a CRA-Z BTCH. I know that EVERCLEAR RULEZ!!

  I dig my room key out of my pocket. I’m surprised at how easily the Plexiglas gives under its pointed tip. I carve HE+TW 4EVER.

  I look at it and immediately wish I hadn’t done it. I wish I’d just kept my key to myself. I’ve desecrated public property, and maybe even worse, I’ve lied to a whole generation of future pay-phone users. We won’t be together forever. I’m going home soon.

  I call Dad.

  “It won’t be long now,” he says.

  I sigh. “So everyone keeps saying.”

  “Why so down?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Is there any other way to talk than honestly?”

  “You seem to think so.”

  “Ouch. I guess I walked right into that. Let’s try again. What’s bothering you?”

  “I don’t want this summer to end.”

  “I’m glad you’re having a good time, sweetheart. You deserve it.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I don’t want to leave here. I don’t want this to be my temporary life. My life here is better than it is back home. I want to be here, I want this to be my life.”

  Now Dad sighs. Long and deep. “You can’t run away from your real life just because things got hard, Harper.”

  I let that sit there in between us for a beat.

  “There’s some irony in this nugget of wisdom coming from you, Dad.”

  “All right, that’s enough now.” Dad’s voice is cold. Sharp. I can count on one hand the number of times he’s taken this tone with me.

  Dad starts to talk, another version of an apology, but one with impatient undertones. He says again how sorry he is that my life didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, that he’s sorry to have let me down, but just as there are things about me I claim he can’t understand, there are things about him I can’t understand, and our task in this life is to love each other in spite of these things we can’t understand.

  I realize before Dad is done talking that I shouldn’t have called him at all. He’s not the one I really wanted to talk to. I’m not mad at him, I’m mad at myself for not dialing that 8. I’m mad that I’m too much of a coward to take the first step with Tess. I’m mad that I’m already missing Teddy, even though he’ll be here soon
to pick me up for dinner with his family.

  I think ahead to the rest of my night. I’ll sit through dinner and watch the Wrights, and tell myself they’re perfect, when of course there’s no such thing as a family who has everything, but I’ll still long for something that’s been gone from my life since well before October, and maybe was never there at all.

  I don’t know how long Dad has been done talking. How long there’s been silence on the line between us.

  “Dad?” I ask. “Are you there?”

  “Yes, Harper. I’m here. Of course I’m here.”

  Monday morning I ride with Linus into Jackson to pick up the butcher block that we’ll use to cover the tornado-safe room.

  The highway is a flat blur of green trees. The news is on the radio, and the bits and pieces that find their way through the morning fog in my head seem to be coming from a distant land. I’m far away from everything. Nothing that this radio woman with the commanding voice and vaguely European accent says seems to have any relationship to me or to this life that I’m living.

  Then she says the word Kyoto.

  I try to tune in, but I’ve missed the story.

  There was a time when I would never have missed a story about global climate change. But this morning I’m too lost to pay attention to the things I once cared most about.

  It’s ten o’clock now and the news station has turned into a country music station and I switch the dial to Jesus radio.

  “Excited to go home?” Linus asks.

  This feels like one of those questions that doesn’t really need an answer, like when someone asks you if you have a cold right after you’ve blown your nose. He’s just letting me know he’s caught my mood.

  I answer anyway.

  “Dreading it. You?”

  “This is home.”

  He doesn’t mean Tennessee, he means working on houses. I pretty much picked this up from his bio. This is what he does all the time. This is his entire life.

  From the outside, it looks pretty lonely.

  “What’s with your tattoo?” I finally ask.

  He takes his left hand off the steering wheel and he rubs the spot on his right arm where the letters are, and then he holds his hand there, squeezing it hard, until his knuckles go white.