“Gather some wood and gum balls then. We’ll have a fire.”
He wove his way around and over walls to the low end of the slab in the garage and headed for the closest sweetgum tree to gather gum balls. Hope joined him, and I put three more nails in the wall with the nail shooter, shouting “Ears!” before each hit. The power behind the echoing blast made me feel strong and capable. Caroline would find excuses to use a tool like this. She would build things just for the joy of hammering them into concrete with a bullet. I had the urge to shout and roar a marine hoo-rah.
We had a late lunch, and then framed walls until more than half of the downstairs was complete. The structure gained stability once we had enough walls to brace and cross-brace each one into one or more of the others. It resembled a spiderweb in ways it probably shouldn’t have, but at least it felt safe. Better overbraced than underbraced, I always say.
It was dark when we started packing up tools. Roman was worn-out. He and I had played for a while in the afternoon and let the older kids lay out a wall and raise it on their own. I couldn’t stop smiling while I watched them push our kitchen up into a three-dimensional space. Their faces were almost unrecognizable. They were not the same kids who had slept with me on bedroom floors with a dresser in front of the door. These kids were self-assured. They were capable of anything. These kids were brave. Invincible.
Roman and I carried snacks, muddy clothes, and the cooler to the trunk. I thought the kids would get the hint that it was time to wrap it up, but they looked determined to see the entire first floor framed, even if it meant working by moonlight. “Get the tools locked up,” I said. “We’ll come back in the morning.”
They let out a united groan, and I could hear their minds whirling for excuses. “We should spend the night out here. Camp out on the slab,” Drew said.
That was exactly the right comment to swing Hope over to my side. “Mommy’s right. Roman looks exhausted.” She pulled the plug on the compressor and flipped the air-release valve.
Jada and Drew sighed wistfully but wound up cords and hoses without complaint. I took two steps toward them, and my vision faded around the edges. A lake of coffee couldn’t compete against the effects of the sleep deprivation I’d been facing for weeks. Add some dehydration and inadequate calorie intake and it was no wonder I was at the edge of collapse.
Roman climbed into his car seat willingly, a sure sign of exhaustion. “It was a best day,” he said. “A best froggy day. A twenty-eighty-five-three-hundred-froggies day.”
“It was definitely a best day.” I drank half a bottle of warm Gatorade, and the spots had stopped dancing through my vision by the time the kids closed the shop door and walked toward us, dragging their feet like zombies. The adrenaline rush of progress had pushed us way further than we should have gone. Every cell was depleted.
The drive home was so silent I thought everyone was asleep, but when I pulled into the garage they were all staring straight ahead, in a sort of shock.
I herded everyone in the door and made them sit at the table. Hershey collapsed two steps inside the door. None of us had the energy to cook. If I had any discretionary cash I would have ordered a half dozen pizzas. Instead, I carried two loaves of seven-grain bread to the table with the family-size jar of peanut butter, strawberry jam, grape jelly, and—my favorite—raspberry preserves. I added a pitcher of Kool-Aid and two pitchers of ice water. Before the peanut butter had made the rounds I had to refill both water pitchers.
We ate in total silence, all adjusting slowly to a new picture of ourselves and our family. The air was heavy with more than just the smell of sweat, mud, and peanut butter. It was charged with an energy from someplace deep, something primitive that had empowered the ancients with the stubborn determination to construct mud hovels with fingernail-scraped earth patted into bricks with calloused hands.
The peanut butter went around the table once, twice, and I stopped counting. Roman fell asleep after eating a full sandwich. When the bread was gone, we carried the jelly to the refrigerator and went wordlessly to showers and baths. Roman woke up enough to sit upright in the tub while I scrubbed him down but fell asleep again while I toweled him off. I carried him upstairs to his own bed, knowing there was no way he would wake up in the night.
We had worked as hard and as long setting the foundation blocks in place, but that work hadn’t been as emotionally draining. The day of framing made the house real. It made our future real. For the first time in years, it made us real. We were relevant. We were alive. And we were going to keep on living.
I stood in the hot shower only long enough to rinse away the grime; I couldn’t stay upright longer than that.
Other people, those whose spirits hadn’t been pulverized, would have celebrated and laughed when the house was enclosed by real walls. There would have been high-fives and pats on the back. Our joy was just as real, but it was the kind you feel when you crawl the last mile on your belly and cross the finish line all the way empty. We would get to that place where we were full of happiness, but first we had to be emptied of sadness.
I fell into bed. Emptied from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
As soon as I closed my eyes, Benjamin was there. I was asleep in seconds, but I saw the right side of his mouth lift in something that resembled a serene smile before he faded behind my dreams.
Sunday began in a series of slow-motion scenes followed by hours in hyperspeed. Breakfast was slow, the bacon salt lingering on my tongue even after I had finished my orange juice and the brilliant-yellow yolk glowing like sunshine on my toast. Drew and Hope were silent, a carryover of physical and emotional exhaustion. Jada crunched the crust of her toast. Crumbs coated her braces, and raspberry jelly dripped into the crease between her thumb and finger. She laughed easily from one topic to the next, even though I was the only one who appeared to be listening and I was mostly pretending. She was sweet perfection.
While the kids packed the car with a cooler and a clingy dog, I slipped out to the front porch for a minute alone to inhale and exhale.
It was ten thirty when we pulled up to Inkwell Manor. The kids hooked up cords and hoses without waiting for my instructions. “Do you want to put up another wall or play with Roman?” I asked Jada, knowing that she felt left out of the fun stuff a lot.
“We’re hunting crawdads,” she said, digging through a collection of shovels, rakes, and hoes in search of small nets on three-foot handles. Over the years, the kids had trapped countless swimming, crawling, and flying creatures in those stained old nets.