Faucet installation would normally be simple, but we were installing our faucets in four-inch-thick concrete countertops. I had made inset circles out of larger pipes so that the thickness immediately around the faucet handles and spigot would be closer to that of a granite countertop, but they should have been slightly larger in diameter. I ended up flat on my back under the bathroom sinks with a hammer and large flathead screwdriver, chiseling away concrete in tiny chips, terrified that I would hit too hard and shatter the counter. There was no way to patch it: A break would mean starting over. A break would mean we didn’t pass inspection.
Safety glasses kept my eyes clear, but I had dust and chunks of concrete in my hair, mouth, nose, and ears. By the time we finally got the faucets in, it was ten P.M. and we still had the drain lines and toilets to install. The stove top had gone in the night before, so we broke it in making a giant pot of ramen noodles, nobody’s favorite but they were quick and easy. The only other food we had in the house was hot cocoa, so I warmed a pot for dessert and we drank it from plastic cups.
Roman went to sleep on a pallet upstairs, and the rest of us went back to work. At two thirty A.M., Drew carried in the last toilet. “This is it!” he said, an enormous grin shining under exhausted eyes. Then he pulled the box off the toilet and said, “Crap! This totally sucks!”
“What?” I asked, my face draining as pale as his before I even knew what was wrong. We were too close to run across a problem now. One more step. Only one.
“The entire base of this toilet is cracked. We have to return it.” He balled up a wad of bubble wrap and threw it at the wall.
I held in a laugh. As violent acts of temper went, bubble wrap was pretty lame. Or maybe the laugh trying to steal out was actually hysteria. It seemed impossible that the very last task for the night had gone wrong. “The hardware stores won’t open until seven,” I said, wiping a hand over my face. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“Can you have them come later tomorrow? Instead of seven A.M.?” Hope asked, a paintbrush in her fist and a fresh coat of paint covering the entire front of her shirt, her left arm, and both thighs. “If you call them?”
I shook my head. “We’re first on the schedule.”
“Surely they’ll understand. The other toilets work. They can see we know how to install them, and that we’ll get this one right, too,” she argued.
Both Drew and I shook our heads. “That isn’t how inspections work,” Drew said. “They have to check off every item.”
We had to pass. We were not going to delay it by a week or a day. We couldn’t. Emotionally, we couldn’t handle another minute under a ticking clock. “We have to make sure he doesn’t flush this one,” I said, opening the box with the wax ring and handing Drew the flex pipe. “Let’s install it as though everything is fine. Just leave the water off so the bowl doesn’t fill and leak. I have an idea.”
Drew installed the toilet while I went out to the shop for the tissue holder and the towel rod. They didn’t have to be installed for the house to pass inspection, so they had been knocked off the essentials list, to be finished at a later date. He was hand-tightening the bolts for the tank when I walked back in.
“We’re going to close the lid and cover it and the back of the tank with screws and parts from these,” I said. “No one would want to move all that stuff to check it. We’ll make sure he does upstairs first, so he’s flushed a couple toilets. Then we’ll keep talking to him, distracting him, so he can’t even remember if he has flushed this one.”
“What about the baseboard in Drew’s room?” Hope asked. “We don’t have any more finishing nails and the last two pieces aren’t up.”
“I don’t even know if they have to be.” I looked at the ceiling, hands on my hips. I was dizzy and nauseous from exhaustion, and we had to be back for the inspection in only a few hours. “We’ll station Jada in that room. I’ll take you all to school late, after the inspection. She can stand in the corner and hold the trim up with her feet.”
We had more secrets, like that the sinks weren’t attached to the countertops and would slide around if anyone bumped them. But nothing major was wrong with the house that we knew of. If we could slip these minor issues past the bank and city inspectors, we would be set with a certificate of occupancy for our own home. Not just any home, but one we built with our own hands. If the cells in my cheeks weren’t too depleted to respond, I would have smiled. “Let’s go back to the house and get a couple hours of sleep.”
The little tricks and big distractions worked. The inspectors were both surprised and overjoyed to hand over my final paperwork. “This has been a fascinating project right from the start,” the bank guy said, and the city guy nodded in agreement.
I pretended that they didn’t mean the same fascination that kept bystanders staring at a train wreck. But we’d surprised them with success instead, and that made me pretty damn proud.
We did the impossible. We can do anything. Live? Does this mean we are strong and resourceful enough to stay alive?
After school, no one asked if we were going to Inkwell Manor; they just settled in with homework and television. Drew played a video game. In fact, we didn’t set foot on Inkwell property for the next seven days. We still loved it, we still felt more at home there than in our big house filled with bad memories, but we needed to catch our breath before we packed and moved. For the last month of the build, we had loaded up the cars with assortments of household goods and filled the shop and the center of the dining room with boxes and bags. But the bulk of our things would take a truck and a lot of work to get over there.
On the seventh night, after a fajita supper, everyone disappeared into corners of the house to work on projects or hobbies. I missed them now that our joint project was finished, but I also knew that it was healthy for us to have our own interests. We would never lose the bond that the build had created. I felt selfish calling them all to a sofa meeting, but it was time.
“I know we’re waiting for the house to sell before we do a full move to Inkwell, but we eventually have to go over there and finish things up.”
They let out a collective groan.
“It won’t be like before. We don’t have a time schedule. But the things we didn’t have to have finished for our inspection still need to be finished before we can live there. We need shelves in the pantry and all the closets and clothes rods. The last toilet needs to go in, too. It’s all small stuff, but it will make moving in a lot easier.”
They agreed, and we made a schedule. It was slower than I would have liked, but we were truly out of energy and enthusiasm. And we were all a little depressed that the house hadn’t sold yet and we couldn’t move in and celebrate. It felt a little like we had done all that work for no reward. It was a financial hardship to maintain both households, too. But the realtor insisted that an empty house would be even more difficult to sell.
It was several months of full nights of sleep and regular meals before our bruises healed and our muscles stopped aching. We finished most of the extra projects at Inkwell and moved more things over there. It wasn’t until the end of March that we sold the house.
We gathered again for a sofa meeting.
“Are you guys ready to move for real?” I had no idea what I would do if they said no.