“You mean if we ever figure out how to install the locks,” he said, and I realized I was getting used to the exasperated tone he had fired at me for the last few days.
“Don’t forget, we’re also assuming no one knows how to throw a brick through a window,” I added, matching his irritation and raising it three exhaustion levels. “While we’re at it, let’s assume no one can use a reciprocating saw to cut straight through a wall any time they damn-well please.”
That took him off guard, and I regretted the small truth. We were building Inkwell Manor to feel safe, to forget that a crazed man with power tools might hack his way through our carefully measured walls and back into our life.
“I know it’s slow, but we’re making progress. You want to work upstairs or down?” I asked. Now that we were back to slow-moving projects, it was all work and no fun.
He wiped his face, and I pretended not to notice that he had drawn another Egyptian slave symbol on the back of his hand. He’d been doing it for at least a week. We moved through the day like we were marching in pudding.
Off like a herd of turtles, my grandma would have said.
By the next weekend, most of the sewer lines were complete. We finished running black iron pipe for the natural gas, and I had a hard time shaking the feeling that I might blow us all to the moon. A water leak would be unfortunate, but a gas leak was scarier than an ex with a thing for knives and coded messages.
On Friday, the realtor showed our old house to a young couple with three small girls. I was equally terrified that it would sell and that it wouldn’t. If they bought it, we’d go from being buried under a mortgage we could no longer afford to living free and clear at Inkwell. The trouble was, we would have no place to live until the build was finished. While strangers tiptoed through our bedrooms, we drove to a nearby park and watched Roman swing—“Too high!”—until the realtor gave us the all clear. Living in a house that was up for sale made us feel displaced. We had two houses but no home. The kids retreated to their rooms after a late supper, with Roman following Jada to her room.
I welcomed the quiet sunset, hoping that Caroline would ride down on the final rays to cheer me and pass on some strength. I cleaned the kitchen under the haze of orange sun, disappointed that my imaginary friend hadn’t stopped in for an imaginary pep talk. The last yellow-green of daylight streaked the horizon while I tied the trash bag closed, feeling fortunate to live in a time where trash bags were infused with mountain-fresh Febreze. “Come on, Hershey. Let’s get this bag out, girl.” I whacked my palm against my leg and she beat me to the door, tail thumping the wall.
It was a beautiful night, clear and so filled with starlight that I believed Caroline was with me after all. I walked around to the side of the garage to drop the trash in the can, but no one had brought it up from the road. We had a system for whose turn it was, just like the system for the dishes. A block of wood sat in the kitchen window with the older kids’ names stamped on different surfaces. After they unloaded the dishwasher, they flipped the block to the next name;—forget to flip it and you were up twice. A cruder chunk of wood in the garage served the same purpose for trash. I didn’t have the energy to drag one of them out and didn’t really mind the walk anyhow.
Hershey trotted beside me, sniffing after a chipmunk or rabbit trail every ninth step, gravel shooting back from her paws when she launched on each new path. Freshly mowed grass and wild onions reminded me of my mom’s potato soup, and the chorus of night insects boldly shouting things they never said in daylight made me smile. I was practically skipping by the time I reached the can. A fire-ant hill had started beside it, and I made a mental note to poison it before it spread. The bites annoyed the kids and left large welts on me, an allergic reaction never quite bad enough for Benadryl but driving me half mad with itching for a week or more.
I tossed the bag in and left the can at the street. Dragging it back up the gravel would interrupt night sounds, and I was in the mood to listen. I threw my hands in the air, eyes on the stars, and felt a yell bubbling in my throat. I held it in, wondering what it would say if I let it out, wondering if it would be in an ancient tongue. The things in my mind and heart had started to feel more and more foreign, but in the thrilling way of new discovery; I no longer felt like a lost, frightened soul. I had found a home inside my own skin for the first time. Things were a long way from perfect, but they were trending in a direction I knew I could live with. My mom was right. We really were going to be all right.
The next morning, Hershey wanted out the front door instead of the back, which was more likely to signal bad news than good. Labradors rarely break their obsessive patrol paths without reason. The kids had started summer vacation—well, if you could call anything about our life a vacation—so I made a to-do list for them before I opened the front door a crack. The welcome mat was a clean series of black quatrefoil blocks on a cream background. No scary messages. No signs. No real reason for me to still be looking for these things. I pulled the door open and stepped out, one foot on the mat and one on the threshold.
The long, narrow porch had a small bamboo table and two matching chairs on the far end. It had been my birthday present three years ago, a little spot to read with a lemonade. A tall, iced lemonade with a red-and-white-striped straw. I closed the door, not only the cheery front door of the house, but the door that led to scary thoughts about things left on doorsteps and last straws. I was sick and tired of spending brain cells on the past.
I stumbled my way through an interview on my lunch hour at work. To bring in extra grocery money, I was freelancing for the state paper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, writing front-page features for their inserts. Local human-interest stories were a nice diversion from the chaos of our own story, but I had a hard time being objective with story arcs just then, not to mention how hard it was to stay awake and meet my deadlines after working past dark on the job site and rising before the sun for my programming job. I cheated by listening to the most important part of the subject’s answers and then writing half the article during the interview when they carried on about less pertinent details.
We went to the job site in the afternoon and wished we could have gone in the morning instead. Late June in the South wasn’t any cooler than July would be; in fact, it often felt steamier, because the summer rain clouds hadn’t evaporated. My hair curled into tight spirals in the humidity. As much as I would have liked to use the heat as an excuse to work inside, we had too much to finish outdoors.