How to Build a House Read online

  But so what?

  Guys don’t go for me. Period. I don’t distract them. They don’t sneak glances in my direction. They don’t think of me when I’m not standing right in front of them.

  I’m scenery.

  I’m background.

  What happened with Gabriel only happened because it was easy. It started by accident. A hand falling off the edge of the couch and brushing up against me.

  I’m convenient. I’m there. The night in my bedroom when I cried, and turned to face him in the light, and reached for the buttons of his jeans was followed by several more nights when we were near each other with nothing else to do. No place else worth being. Maybe Dad was out. Or Gabriel’s parents were away. We had sex and then it was over. Sometimes it seemed I could have been anyone.

  And Gabriel has been it. That’s all. Even the guy who made Gabriel start fooling around with me again never really existed. Okay, so his name is Will Portnoy, but the part about him having an interest in me was made up.

  Will asked me if I wanted to come over to his house to watch Braveheart, for a project we were doing for world history. Anyway, when I told Gabriel about it I chose to leave out the history project, in a sad attempt to make him jealous that miraculously seemed to work.

  The next weekend Gabriel and Tess and this guy Tess liked named Brady and I hung out at Brady’s house, and when she was outside with Brady talking by the pool and Gabriel and I were inside watching yet another DVD he pulled another hand-slippage stunt that went farther, faster, and with that Gabriel claimed me again.

  For this I have to thank Will Portnoy.

  Long digression, I know.

  Anyway, guys don’t tend to go for me.

  Not that I care. I’m here to build a house. That happens to be for Teddy. I’m not here to date him, I’m here to house him.

  I try out this last line on the group.

  “Whatever you have to tell yourself to get you through the night,” says Captain.

  “So what about you two?” Fight back. Put up a mirror. “What’s going on there?”

  If I thought this was going to embarrass Captain, forget it. He looks at me like, Thanks for the assist!

  “It’s simple,” he says. “I’m crazy about Frances and she’s crazy about me, she just hasn’t quite admitted it to herself yet. For a few more days we’ll play this cat-and-mouse game and then finally I’ll lean in for a kiss and she’ll meet me halfway and we’ll spend the rest of the summer blissfully in love.”

  Frances hides her face in her hands, laughing.

  This is just a more romantic version of what Captain has told me privately over the past few days, but I can’t believe he just said this out loud in front of Frances, not to mention Marisol.

  So this is how a real relationship begins, I think.

  HOME

  I have no memories of Dad with Mom, only memories of Dad and Jane.

  The time Dad rang his own doorbell on their anniversary, his face hidden behind an enormous bouquet of lilies.

  Drinking too much on a New Year’s Eve. Dad changing out of his sweatpants into a tux and twirling Jane around the room to an old Nina Simone record.

  The trip they took without us to Cabo San Lucas and how they came home with colorful shirts, peeled noses and straw hats.

  The way he called her darlin’.

  It was a marriage, like any other marriage, and it seemed real and solid and indestructible.

  It was just there, and it would always be there.

  I asked Dad. I asked him in the kitchen with the melting ice cubes in his Scotch glass and the root beer pooling on the floor. The kitchen was the center of our family life.

  “What happened?”

  Dad’s eyes filled with tears and he pressed his hands into his closed lids, hard.

  “I don’t really know what to say.” He wiped his face on his sleeve. He picked up his glass and shook the ice cubes around and then drank the last drops. “It’s complicated, relationships are complicated. Life is long, and sometimes marriages feel even longer, and people get lazy, and worse, they get indifferent, and sometimes you start to think maybe you’ve lost some part of yourself, that you don’t even remember who you are and what it felt like to be somebody not married to this person, and then some days you love this very same person more than you are able to explain. You’ll be driving in your car at dusk and a wave of warmth will envelop you just because this person exists in the world, but the next day that warmth will vanish again, and the last thing I want to do is say too much, which I’m afraid, at this point, I’ve already done.”

  I looked at my father. I was too young to remember what he looked like while he was coping with what happened to Mom, but it was hard for me to imagine him looking any worse than he did sitting at the counter with snot on his sleeve.

  I thought of him in his tuxedo. Behind the lilies. His straw hat and peeling nose.

  I thought about memory.

  Do we choose our memories? Did I choose these memories of Dad and Jane? Did my mind reject … what? Silences? Disagreements? Departures from the house without a kiss? Late nights stuck at work?

  I didn’t remember those moments. To a kid, how could a silence or a glare or a harsh whisper compete with Dad hiding behind an enormous bouquet of lilies?

  It’s not like Dad and Jane were throwing things or hitting each other or disappearing for days on end.

  I never even thought about them as people in a relationship; I thought of them as Dad and Jane, just Dad and Jane, and this other world Dad was describing now, hunched over his empty glass, was a secret world to which I had no access and wanted none.

  A week later I went to lunch with Jane. Since she left, we’d spoken only to arrange this date. It was implied that this was to be our time for a big talk.

  I didn’t want to go. I didn’t know what to say or how to act. But Dad told me I shouldn’t shut out Jane, that I’d feel better if I spent some time with her, and, well, this is kind of Dad’s whole thing. He’s a psychiatrist. Unlike most kids, I listen when my dad tells me he thinks something will make me feel better, because he’s usually right.

  I got there first, this little restaurant on Montana Avenue that we would go to sometimes for a “girls’ lunch” that always included Tess and Rose.

  I switched my seat. I rearranged my silverware. I folded and unfolded my napkin.

  But the minute Jane walked in and started toward my table, whatever awkwardness I felt melted away. She was no longer the mysterious other half of the secret difficult relationship I had no access to. She was the woman who made me the paper crown on that June Gloom day, and I thought of all the days in between then and now when she was the only mother I ever knew.

  By the time she reached me, without thinking I opened my arms. She held me for a long time. She stroked my hair. She leaned back and looked into my face and said, “Are we getting the usual?”

  That meant the Southwestern chopped salad with grilled chicken.

  “Of course.”

  We sat down. She held on to my hand for another beat, then let it go. She put the menu aside and stared intently at me.

  “Is that a new coat?”

  “Yeah. On sale. Forty-nine bucks. You like?”

  “I love.”

  I smiled.

  “I miss you, kid.”

  I felt the tickle in my nose that signals tears. I reached for my water and took a long drink.

  “It’s a tough time,” she said. “For me. For you. For all of us. I’m here if you want to talk about it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean we can talk. Like friends. Like family. However. Whatever you need.”

  “No, I mean I don’t understand what happened.”

  She leaned back in her chair. Her dark hair was gray at her part and had been for a while now. She took off her glasses, which were black and came up to a point at the sides. The points were decorated with a few small sparkling rhinestones. I never understood
when Jane needed her glasses and when she didn’t, but I hadn’t thought to ask her, and now I probably never would.

  “What did your father tell you? No, wait. You don’t have to answer that. What you discuss with your father is between the two of you. I don’t want to overstep any boundaries.”

  The only way I could see to fill the silence that followed was to answer her question.

  “He gave me some long, convoluted lecture about how marriage is hard.”

  “Well, I guess that about sums things up.”

  “Now what?”

  She reached again for my hand. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I wish I did.”

  I opened my mouth to ask her how Tess was doing but I choked. I could only manage to half-croak.

  “Tess?”

  “She’s angry. She’s hurt. She’s disappointed and upset. She’s going through a really rough time, but she’ll pull through it. She’ll come back around. I know she will.”

  What did that mean? She’ll come back around. To me? I wanted to ask Jane more, but I couldn’t. I guess on some level I knew. Tess had left me, and now, among all the other things I had to cope with, I had to wait for Tess to come back around.

  We sat in silence as the waiter delivered our salads.

  “Harper,” Jane said. “Whenever you want it, whenever you need it, you’ll always have a home with me too.”

  That was a lie, even though she didn’t mean it to be. I didn’t have a home with Jane. When everything else fell away, when all the ties were untied and everything was undone, my only home in the world was with Dad. But I knew what she was trying to say, and I thanked her.

  STEP THREE:

  PUT UP WALLS

  The foundation is done. We put in plastic piping to ventilate the crawl space, the concrete contractors filled in the cement blocks, we spaced out and installed the joists and then put down the floor sheathing, and now there’s a big, solid concrete block with a flat wood top where nothing but weeds once stood.

  I’ve done things in my life, some of them pretty well. I won the spelling bee in sixth grade. I helped my school implement a comprehensive recycling program. I taught my baby brother how to ride a bike. With Tess I made a huge Thanksgiving meal. But I’ve never done anything as impressive as building this forty-by-sixty-foot rectangular concrete block with a flat wood top.

  It’s starting to look like something is really happening. We’ve got this foundation, and there’s the pile of debris from the original house. It was a mountain when we first started, but it’s been getting smaller and smaller every day, like a pile of jelly beans in a heart-shaped box, as the pieces of the Wright family’s former life get hauled away.

  Now we’re starting on the walls.

  We’re framing them with long plywood boards, exterior walls that will close off the house from the outside world, and interior walls to make the private spaces every house needs.

  Captain comes by. “Whatcha doing?”

  His job’s been easy. He’s spent the morning on top of the foundation, marking wall lines with chalk.

  I’m working on the interior walls that will intersect other walls. They’re called butt walls.

  Captain knows this.

  “Working,” I answer. “What’s it look like?”

  “But what are you working on?”

  “A wall.”

  “What kind of wall?”

  I roll my eyes at him. “You are such a juvenile.”

  Teddy steps in front of me, mock-protectively.

  “She’s building a butt wall. Gotta problem with it?”

  Captain puts up his hands. “No, boss. No problem at all.”

  He sits down. Frances and Marisol wander over, with Seth trailing behind them. Ever since it became clear that Frances and Captain are teetering on the edge of coupledom, and ever since Marika let Seth rub in her sunblock and then never spoke another word to him, Seth has been circling Marisol.

  It’s noon. We break for lunch at twelve-thirty. This is when the heat hits its peak and it becomes almost impossible to work.

  “I’m fomenting a coup,” says Frances. “And when I’m the almighty, powerful leader, there’ll be no work between eleven and two.”

  “Did you just use the word fomenting?” asks Captain.

  “Yes, I believe I did.”

  “Fomenting?”

  “It’s a word educated people use.”

  Teddy chimes in. “It’s one of those words that seems to exist only in relationship to another word. Like, you only ever hear fomenting with the word coup.” He lifts his T-shirt to his face and wipes the sweat from it. “Like how you only hear pro fusely when you’re talking about sweating.”

  This strikes me as unbelievably kind. He’s bailing Captain out. Trying to keep him from looking stupid in front of Frances.

  But Captain’s unfazed. He’s used to Frances’s sarcasm.

  Marisol removes her baseball hat and sighs. “I miss San Francisco. In the summer a fog settles in and it gets so cold you have to wear a fleece jacket.”

  “I miss Salt Lake City,” says Seth, whose round face is an unhealthy shade of purple. “The actual Salt Lake our city is named for smells like sulfur and is filled with gnats, but right about now I’d jump in headfirst.”

  “If it’s just a little cool-off y’all are after, I can make that happen,” Teddy says. “There’s a pond about a ten-minute walk from here.”

  “We’re on the clock until twelve-thirty,” I point out.

  Captain jumps up. “So what, Girl Scout? Desperate times call for desperate measures. And this heat is des-per-ate.”

  “Let’s go,” says Frances.

  “Lead the way,” says Marisol.

  Teddy turns to me. “I can’t do this without my double-y partner. You in, Harper?”

  I take off my goggles. It’s a small miracle nobody mocked me. I’ve been wearing them for the entire conversation. “Oh, all right.”

  The pond is almost too warm, but it still feels great. Frances and Marisol and I formed a huddle and determined that we were all wearing less-than-revealing sports bras. So we took off our T-shirts to a loud chorus of whistles from Seth, Captain and Teddy. They’ve removed their shirts too, even Seth, who looks fine. Not fine, but he looks okay without his shirt on. I’d tell him that if I wasn’t certain it would mortify him.

  Frances suggested that the guys strip to their boxers, but Seth looked like he’d rather kill himself, Captain said he was going commando and Teddy confessed to wearing briefs.

  “Briefs, dude?” Captain asked.

  “Sometimes a man needs a little extra support.”

  So we all jumped in wearing our shorts.

  After swimming around for about half an hour, I get out to dry off, and for the first time since I’ve been here, the midday sun feels good. Teddy gets out of the pond too and sits next to me on the grass.

  “That was nice,” I say.

  “Yeah, it was.”

  “It’s so beautiful here.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do.”

  “I guess I used to think so too.”

  One of our typical silences settles in. Teddy reaches for his T-shirt and pulls it over his head.

  “The last time I came swimming here was last summer. I took my sisters and their best friend, this funny-looking girl named Belinda with red hair. Alice and Grace used to love sleeping over at her house. They said her dad made the best pancakes. They couldn’t get over the idea of a dad cooking. Our dad can’t make toast.” He stops and squeezes some of the excess water from his shorts. He looks out toward the pond. “Now they’re both gone. Belinda and her dad who made great pancakes.”

  Nine people died in April. Bailey has a population of just under one thousand. I guess if I’d stopped to do the math I could have figured that Teddy would know some of the people who didn’t survive.

  “My sisters couldn’t sleep for two months. Part of that’s from the moving around. We spent the first few nights
with some friends. Their house sat about twenty feet outside the path and it was totally untouched. Not even a crooked picture on the wall. Then we moved to another friend’s. Even after we got the trailer and got all settled in, still they couldn’t sleep.”

  “So how’d they start sleeping again?”

  “I build them an invisible wall. When they’re both in their beds and they turn out the lights, I go in and put up a wall around them that keeps out bad dreams, monsters, tor nadoes, everything.”

  “What’s it made of?”

  He looks at me and smiles.

  “Invisible bricks.”

  We watch as Captain climbs out onto a branch of a tree and swings with both arms. It looks dangerous, but he lets go and lands with a splash and comes up laughing.

  “What’s it like?” I ask.

  “You mean a tornado?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like nothing you’ve ever experienced. I mean, I know you have earthquakes out where you’re from, and I’m sure being in an earthquake is no party, and maybe a tornado is no worse, but it’s certainly different. It sounds like a locomotive. It smells like hell. And when you’re in the middle of one, it feels like the fingers of a giant hand have reached under your home to rip it right off the foundation.”

  “That sounds terrifying.”

  “It is. And what it leaves behind is impossible to describe. Remember, we’ve been cleaning up already three months now, pretty much full-time, since before y’all got here.”

  Everyone is out of the water now, and they’ve all picked a spot of grass a safe distance away from where Teddy and I are sitting. I look over at them just in time to catch Captain exaggeratedly moving his eyebrows up and down and puckering his lips.

  Suddenly it all seems too stupid, his taunts about Teddy and me. There isn’t room for that kind of thing when your world is falling apart. You may think there is, and think it’s what you need, and that may send you running off to your oldest friend, and it may make you turn your naked body to his, but you’d be making a big mistake.