The setup was equally awkward in Lars’s and my “new” bedroom. The nursery-themed mural, of course, made no sense in a master bedroom. The way our furniture had to be arranged in the small room, the mural was directly over my head when I lay in bed—the cow jumping over the moon was the last thing my worn-out eyes saw before they closed at night. But we were too exhausted and overwhelmed to do anything about it. All we were trying to do was get through one day and one night at a time.
Within months we were overrun with baby things everywhere in the apartment. It wasn’t long before we needed three high chairs and three walkers. We kept the pram—enormous, large enough for two babies side by side and one more at their feet—in the living room, where it would be handier than if we kept it in our storage unit out back. Long ago, in the naive days when we thought we were having only one baby, Lars had constructed a beautiful, highly polished wooden cradle. That, too, we kept in the living room, and it made a handy spot to place one baby when my arms were full with two more.
Poor Aslan hid anywhere he could to stay out of the fray. Sometimes I forgot to feed him, and he would meow loudly in my ear at night, just when I’d finally fallen asleep. It would have been better for Aslan if I’d shipped him off to some nice unmarried woman like I used to be, allowing him to resume the quiet life he’d once had. But Frieda was allergic to cats, and I didn’t know anyone else who would take him. So we kept him, and I hoped he wouldn’t get so angry with me that he’d run away.
“We need that house,” I’d said when the babies were three months old. “We need that house, Lars, and we need it soon.”
We were feeding the babies their bedtime bottles. I was holding Missy; Lars had Michael. His turn already finished, Mitch was curled up and snoozing beside us in the cradle in the crowded living room.
Lars nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“I know we wanted to wait awhile, but I just don’t see how we can,” I went on. “If we can’t afford to build right now, we ought just to buy some other house and build in a few years.”
Lars shook his head firmly. “Nothing doing,” he said. “We only need to find the right plot of land.” His look was pensive. “We’ll know it when we see it.”
He looked so dreamy, his blue eyes lost in imagination. “But can we afford it?” My words were hesitant; I didn’t want to break him out of his reverie.
He shrugged. “If we do it right, we can. The house doesn’t have to be enormous. Just big enough to comfortably raise these three little folks.”
“Still, a custom-built house . . .”
“And some things I could do myself,” he interrupted, looking over at Mitch. “I built that cradle, didn’t I?”
I didn’t want to be discouraging, but a cradle is hardly a house.
“I helped my father build, back in Sweden,” Lars went on. “And I did construction here, too, in those early years.” He looked thoughtful. “I’ve let them go, those skills. But I don’t think they go away forever. It’s like riding a bicycle.”
This made me shake my head wistfully. Only several months past giving birth to triplets, I had not been on my bicycle in close to a year. But it was still in the storage unit of our apartment building. I could never give it up.
“And your heart?” I questioned. “What of that? I don’t think you ought to be doing heavy construction, Lars.”
“I’ll leave the heavy work to others,” he assured me. “I’ll just do the inside things, the finish work.” He shifted Michael gently to his shoulder for a burp. “Just the fun parts, I promise.” He smiled at me. “I’ll build you that green bathroom you said you wanted, when we were in Paris.”
I smiled, too, remembering that. It had not even been a year and a half since our honeymoon, but already it seemed like a long time ago.
I looked down at Missy’s sweet face. Her eyes were half closed and the bottle’s nipple fell out of her mouth, dribbling formula down her chin. I wiped it with a burp cloth. “I’d say she’s done,” I whispered.
Lars laughed. “Him, too.” He rose slowly and kissed Michael’s forehead. “Time for bed, little ones.”
Once we’d made the decision, we looked at plots of land west and south of town, where so much new construction was going on. It took us a while to find the right lot.
“It doesn’t feel right, not yet,” Lars said on more than one occasion, as we climbed back into the car after walking an empty property—the babies at home with my mother and father, because who wants to lug three infants along on such excursions if they don’t have to? Thank goodness for my young, energetic, do-anything-for-me parents.
I remember finding the property on Springfield Street. We had looked at several other lots in Southern Hills, but when we found Springfield Street, we knew it was the right lot for us. We loved the way the lot was situated slightly on a rise; Lars said we could build a split-level house on such a plot of land, with the higher part of the house nestled against the hill. It was only a few blocks to a newly opened public elementary school. The neighborhood had only a few houses then, but there were others under construction; we would be in good company. “The kids can grow up here,” Lars said with satisfaction as we walked around the empty lot. “This will always be home for them.” He looked into the distance, the empty spaces between us and the mountains. “They’ll have what I never had.”
I took his hand. I wanted so badly to give him this opportunity, to give him the chance at something permanent, something he could build for our family and hold on to forever.
Once we had purchased the land, Lars worked night after night on the house’s design. He pored over sketches and blueprints in our small living room on Lincoln Avenue, going over every detail. I tried to stay out of his way, ensconced in our tiny kitchen or the bedroom, but sometimes a trip through the living room was necessary for one reason or another. Whenever I passed by him, Lars would look up, his eyes shining with eagerness and love.
The day we broke ground, we were all there: Lars and I, the babies, my parents, the job foreman, and the construction crew. Everyone clapped when the diesel engine on the backhoe roared to life, when the first shovelful of earth was removed to dig our basement.
I remember that the neighbors strolled by, the Nelsons. George and—well, of course, her name is Yvonne; how could I forget that? George and Yvonne came by, introduced themselves, pointed out their house at the end of the block. “Such beautiful babies,” Yvonne said longingly, admiring the triplets. Yvonne was young, in her early twenties, I guessed, and pretty, with brown, curly hair, long eyelashes, and indigo Elizabeth Taylor eyes.