“Some garlic bread would be good,” Dad said. “Get me a piece of paper and I’ll draw what I came up with for the water heater in the attic and some storage up there. I might have the knee wall figured out in your room, but the rafters are going to be hell. No way around it.”
“I’ll make cookies,” Roman said.
“First let’s make your spaghetti.” I tweaked Roman’s nose. “One crisis at a time.”
“One cookie at a time,” he agreed, hands on his hips and nodding like a bobblehead all the way to his booster seat.
* * *
I couldn’t remember if March came in like a lion or a lamb, but April was all lion. We had been deluding ourselves with the rosy idea that the second floor was going to be exactly like framing the first floor. Crawling around on the ceiling-joist beams, we all learned valuable lessons. First, the kids learned how terrified of heights I was, a fact I had hidden well to that point. And second, a glaringly obvious thing we had all overlooked: In order to build the second floor, we had to somehow move all the lumber for the floor, the walls, the ceilings, and even the entire roof from the muddy spot outside the garage up to said second floor.
Dad gave us some great suggestions, but he wasn’t going to be able to lift as much as he would like to. He was still unsteady and tired easily. I dubbed him the project supervisor. A lifetime of yelling instructions at Green Bay Packer coaches through his television screen had primed him for the job.
“Can’t we hire a crane?” Hope asked. But she knew we hadn’t budgeted that. Paying for the joist construction and delivery had put us at the red end of our budget.
“This is an old-fashioned build. Like the pyramids. All hands on deck. We can do anything.”
“I wish we had more hands,” Jada said under her breath.
So did I.
Drew called a couple of friends over for a few hours on Saturday. In exchange for some sandwiches and sodas, Taylor and Bret spent the day hauling lumber. I could tell by the look in their eyes that they wanted to flee, but I made the best use I could of their help for the day. The boys had spent precious few hours in the sunlight away from their computers, so introducing physical labor was a shocker. I kept Taylor on the ground with me, hoping his exceptional height would be useful. We slid a four-by-eight sheet of tongue-and-groove plywood off the stack and lifted it so we were left holding a four-foot side. Drew and pasty-white Bret each grabbed a corner and pulled it up, making a stack up top. We tacked a couple of boards in place so they would have a safe, elevated work space, and then carried on moving nearly two-thousand square feet of plywood up to the elevated platform.
The boys were eating a mountain of turkey sandwiches and dreaming they were done working for the day when I remembered the bathtubs. We had my oversize garden tub and a traditional bathtub-shower combo to move upstairs, and I had been wondering how the kids and I would get them there on our own. They had to be framed in the rooms where they would live because they were too large to fit through finished doorways. Getting them up before the walls were framed was essential. I kept an eye on the three sandwich-vacuuming boys and waved them over when they stood to leave. “We have just two quick things to move up and could really use your help before you go.”
To their credit, both boys smiled politely. They weren’t quite as good at hiding their true feelings when I led them to the shop and pointed to the final two things. But they dug right in and moved the tubs to what had become known as our launching point outside the garage. It took nearly an hour to get the garden tub properly tied, and we ended up using a couple of long boards that would later be part of the roof as a ramp to pull the tub up. The smaller tub-shower combo was much lighter, and since we had the ramp system in place it took only fifteen minutes to get it up to the second floor. The tubs looked like an odd art project balanced on the ceiling joists before the floor was even in place, but this build was nothing if not odd.
By the time I turned around, Taylor and Bret had made a remarkably fast and quiet escape backing down the long drive. I waved, but I’m not sure they ever looked back.
We had nothing left to lift for the day, and it was a good thing. I couldn’t stand fully upright for the next two days and could barely sleep through my back spasms, which strengthened whenever I thought about all the lumber for the walls we still had to lift after the basic plywood decking was in place.
Screwing down the tongue-and-groove plywood for the subfloor was actually a lot of fun. It was fast progress once we got a system going, and it felt good to be up in the sunshine. But before we could move the rest of the lumber up, the spring rains picked up again. Work gave me a new project writing software for the city parks and recreation department. It kept my mind too busy to go mad with restlessness and guilt over lost time on the job. Dad made endless plans on scrap pieces of paper and cardboard, writing figures and prices in the margins. I offered him whole stacks of brand-new paper, but he is a recycling king all the way through. The rain gave him the time he needed to rest and rally for another round of work.
Pete called on a rainy afternoon. I hadn’t heard from him in so long that I had worried we’d lost him for good. “I can come out and frame the stairs tomorrow. That work?” Pete asked. “Buddy of mine can help. Twenty-five an hour, each.”
“Okay, but only if you can both work really, really fast.”
He laughed like I was kidding.
The pair showed up the next day right on schedule, which was a surprise. The friend, who was introduced as Reggie, quickly became known as a Re-Pete. Pete and Re-Pete were the biggest love/hate paradox of my life, both my saviors and my downfall. Re-Pete had clearly spent a lot of time lifting weights and no time lifting a hammer. He eventually figured out what Pete needed him to do, but I was paying them both a lot of money for on-the-job training and explanations, not to mention dozens of Pete’s famous anecdotes. I was a big fan of stories, but Pete couldn’t walk and talk at the same time. Not a hammer was raised while he dished out tales about the cows and puppies of his youth. “Know what I mean?” he would ask for the tenth time in a short conversation, and I would nod vigorously, which he promptly mistook for enthusiasm when what I meant was I’ve already paid thirty dollars for this story, get on with it!
When we finally had the two-by-four rough staircase built, it was a double-edged sword. We could easily haul supplies—and my aching back—upstairs. But Roman could also go up to the enormous, empty floor where any two-year-old would love running laps. The front corner was nearly twenty feet off the ground, and that was heart-attack height for any mom.
“It’s great motivation to get the walls up!” Drew declared. And he was right. Dad helped us mark everything with chalk, altering our plans significantly for the upstairs based on things we’d learned building the first story. Projects always looked a lot different in 3-D. We also found out how difficult it was to line up key upstairs walls over the downstairs counterparts so that plumbing and electrical could run straight down through. This had been easier to draw on paper than it was on plywood with a chalk line, but we eventually managed and started hauling two-by-sixes up, some by the stairs and some over the side of the garage. Each method had supporters, but in the end both were plain old hard work.
“Before we start framing, we have to figure out this final wall in my room.” I pointed to a spot on the subfloor where I imagined that the wall should go. Inkwell Manor had a side-facing garage, and it was a full two stories everywhere except over the half of the garage at the front of the house. This would give the roofline some visual interest and make the house into something other than an enormous box. But even though I had looked through a dozen books and Web sites about building a short knee wall on that end of my bedroom and a steep pitched roof over that part of the garage, I still had no real concept of how to do it.
Dad ran his hand down his face and sat in a lawn chair on the opposite end of the enormous subfloor, so we had to shout a little to hear each other’s pathetic ideas, all starting with
“What if” and “Maybe.”
We weren’t making any progress. Finally, Dad lifted his palms in surrender and shrugged his shoulders. “The easiest thing is to just put another room there. You already know how to do that. Frame the walls all the way out and the roof straight across. Put a door in from your room.”
“Another whole room? I don’t really need that.” But I was already making plans for it in my head. “And it will be a lot more expensive to do another whole room.”
“Not really,” Dad yelled. “The steep rafters, extra plywood, and shingles were going to be a lot more expensive, so you’ll save some there. I’ll bet it would be hell to shingle at that angle, too. You’d have to hire someone with a bucket truck. Really it’s just the price of a little extra Sheetrock, flooring, a window or two, and your brick.”
I paced the area that was supposed to be part of the outdoors but just might turn into another part of Inkwell. I wasn’t convinced.
“Either that or hire someone to tell you how to do it the way you planned,” Dad added, going for a wrap on the hard sell.
Pete didn’t really know how to build what I had drawn for him, but said he could probably figure it out. I knew for sure that would cost me more than the windows and Sheetrock for the extra room.
I nodded at Dad, and we finished chalking the lines for walls.
Dad was up and moving around almost as good as new over the next few days. We framed the entire upstairs in a weekend. I renewed my incessant chant of “If it starts to fall, just let it go!” with every exterior wall we raised. My voice was more frantic than ever as I imagined my kids plummeting over the side. Finishing the upstairs was a grand accomplishment, but with sixteen-inch spaces between the studs it wasn’t enough to keep Roman in, so he wasn’t allowed upstairs without holding someone’s hand, not until the plywood was in place. It took only three tries for us to figure out that we couldn’t manage that on our own, so I called Pete back before we headed home late that Sunday.
“Re-Pete can help again, too,” he said.
I hesitated, but decided I could be straightforward, since I was technically the boss. “Re-Pete doesn’t seem to know a lot about building. Seemed more like a gofer than a builder.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “He has a lot to learn. Tell you what. Pay him ten an hour while he’s learning.” Re-Pete was still getting the better deal, but I agreed to the terms, ever optimistic that things would go better than the facts suggested.
Pete and Re-Pete only took a week to get the plywood on the upstairs, which was a record when it normally took me a week to get them to show up. Drew helped them with a lot of it, working after school until dark. If he hadn’t been there pushing them forward and forcing Pete to work while his lips moved, it would have cost me triple in both money and time.
Dad worked from the ground most of the time, drilling holes in plywood and planning new and better ways to get the job done. He spent plenty of time on a ladder, too, and nothing I said would keep him down. “I’m only going up a little ways,” he’d say. “This is nothing. I’m doing fine. MS means I feel like shit if I’m sitting at home or working, so I might as well be working. I rest when I get tired.”
We spent a day cleaning up after the plywood was up and the ladders were happily pulled down for a while. We were eating lunch when a neighbor stopped by with his son. We’d met the son once before, but I couldn’t remember his name and was too embarrassed to ask. The son was looking for work trimming trees, and he wondered if we needed anything tidied up. We didn’t, but they enjoyed looking around the house, so I took them upstairs for a full tour.
“What we need is some help building the rafters. Any chance you know how to do that?” I asked, blinking often to keep the hope from dripping out of my eyeballs and pooling at their feet. They shook their heads in unison—the dad stepping square in a puddle that the son had just sidestepped.
“You really do need a roof, don’t you!” he said, and thankfully didn’t turn in time to see me roll my eyes like Hope.
“What about these windows and the doors downstairs? When do you cut those out?” He knocked on the plywood covering one of my bedroom windows.
“It’s on the to-do list. But honestly I sort of suck with the reciprocating saw. It has a lot more muscle than I do,” I admitted, stepping in a puddle on purpose.
“Probably take me less than ten minutes to do the whole house with my chain saw,” the son said.
I raised my eyebrows, and probably dropped my jaw, too. “You could cut those out with a chain saw? No way. Not possible.” I really thought he was kidding, maybe a little cruelly even, messing with the woman who knew nothing about building a house but was trying to do it anyhow.
“Really. An hour tops.”
I bit my lip. When a thing sounds too good to be true … But then I thought, What the heck? He wants to try it, let him try it. What could possibly go wrong? “How much?”
“Fifty bucks. Doors and windows. Neat and trim.”
We shook, and he disappeared down the stairs. I stayed in my room, too embarrassed to go down and admit to the kids and Dad that I was stupid enough to believe that this nameless guy could do construction work with his chain saw. Five minutes later, he fired up his chain saw in my bedroom. I shook my head: There’s a thing not every girl can say with a straight face.
It took him about a minute to cut the first window, but the others went faster. He just dipped the tip of the chain saw through the wood and sliced down like he was drawing a line through butter. The perfect rectangle fell out somewhere around the kitchen downstairs. Definitely something to warn the kids about.
I ran for the stairs. Drew and Dad were already rounding the top of them, eyes wide. I grinned and left them to watch while I ran to warn the others. Jada and Roman came up to watch while Hope covered our lunch to keep it sawdust-free.
The entire process was so much fun to watch that I forgot to time him, but it couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes to do the entire house. He even ran from window to window to prove his point. The same job would have taken Drew and me a whole day of wrestling with the reciprocating saw. We would have left a jagged mess of wood along the edges and maybe a lost finger in the mix. The day was on my short list of favorite building days to date.
“Don’t suppose you want to come back later and carve that hickory out front into a large inkpot and feather?” I laughed, happily handing him his fifty bucks.
“I’m not much of an artist. But if you need a hand with any other quick cuts like that, holler at me. That was fun!” He was grinning as wide as I was. “Wasn’t really sure it would even work. Never done anything like that before.”
Well, great. I’m glad he didn’t lose a limb in the process. But really, even his confession didn’t stop me from smiling.
“Worth every penny just for the entertainment value,” Dad said, grinning wide.
–16–
Fall
Firefighters Have Hoses
The spring talent show at Hope’s middle school was a lot more entertaining than I had expected. Watching handfuls of awkward twelve-year-olds dance, sing, and act was a lot more fun from the parent side of the bench than when I had been a shy child working up the courage to take a stage. Jada had loved it the most. As a first grader, she had been starstruck watching the big kids.
She chattered and sang song bits all the way home.
“Mommy?” Hope’s voice edged up, laced with fear.
Fortunately, the kids were paying more attention to where I was going than I was, because as I drove up our driveway, a red Honda headed down it straight for us. It was Adam’s car, of course.
I backed out without looking for traffic, then took off down the road, dialing my cell while I took a corner through a neighborhood and toward town. If I had taken time to think it through, I would have headed straight for Ivana’s. Her house was only a mile from mine, but in the opposite direction and there was no easy way to turn back now. Sophie’s house was n
early ten miles away.
“Where are we going?” Jada asked. “I thought we were going home.”
I was relieved that she had been too distracted to notice his car, as though ignorance were a thing powerful enough to keep her safe.
“Shhh, I have to make a quick phone call,” I said, which was true, but I was also avoiding their questions for as long as possible. I glanced in the rearview mirror and ran my fingers through my hair as though primping was on my mind instead of a potential high-speed chase. Adam’s car pulled closer.
“Still there,” Drew said.
“How is getting away so easy in the movies?” Hope asked, her breath rapid and shallow, at the edge of panic.
I took three more turns and came out in another neighborhood. Ivana’s home and cell number had rolled to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
Sophie picked up her cell on the third ring.
“He was waiting for us at the house,” I said, as panicked as Hope had sounded. “I know you don’t want me to call the police. I promised I’d always call you first. But we’re in the car, and he’s chasing us. You have exactly two minutes to get him away before I call the police.”
“I’ll call you right back,” she said, but then cleared her throat and wasted several precious seconds to add, “Thank you, Cara.”
I hung up.
I couldn’t shake the image of him in that hospital, so doped up that he couldn’t lift his feet or his lower jaw. Maybe that was the real reason Sophie had taken me there. To make me pity him—and her—enough to cut him some slack. But a car chase was a lot to ask of anyone. Even someone who had once made big promises.
My phone rang. It was Sophie.
“Still there,” Hope said at the same time I said, “Hello?”
“He left his cell at the house. Mom answered it,” Sophie said.
Ivana was home but hadn’t answered when I called. So she was screening my calls. I didn’t mind much since I didn’t want to talk to her either, but this was an emergency. She should know I wouldn’t call for idle chatter. I never had.
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