Rise--How a House Built a Family

by Cara Brookins

  Tick-tock. Fi-fah.

  Had I heard it ticking even before I picked it up? No, this watch was silent. The tick I heard now wasn’t ten feet away, but right in my ear, as though the hand wearing it were around my throat. It didn’t belong in the peaceful, sleeping house. I didn’t want it there. With a slide, swivel, flip of my excavating stick, I hooked a small, bent nail through the band and pulled the watch to me like a dangerous but familiar fish. The crystal had been smashed, stopping the hands both straight up. Midnight. Was that when the tornado hit? I couldn’t remember for sure.

  Without touching it, I dropped it in a muddy pool and pushed it deep into the soft earth with my stick. Then I lowered a brick on it and piled three more on top of that. A monument, a tombstone, the death of an era.

  Feeling light and noble, as though I had done the lonely house a great service, I went back to my wall and leaned inside. Silence. Beautiful, and complete. The nail in my pocket still felt warm against my palm, and I was fully aware that my thoughts and actions were half crazy. But I’d been holding my sanity together in the midst of craziness for so long. Could anyone deny me a small slip when no one was looking, when I was fully and totally alone for the first time in God knows how long?

  The room felt like coming home. I had an almost overwhelming urge to step inside and sweep away the flotsam and jetsam. While I had never done major home repairs, I knew how to use a hammer well enough that I figured I could put the wall back up if I set my mind to it. The frame looked simple, with Sheetrock on the inside and a flat board under the brick outside. In fact, the kids and I could fix the entire place, make it a home again, hang a bird feeder over the dining-room window and build a matching house for Hershey under the big hickory tree.

  It was ridiculous, of course it was, but I couldn’t shake the idea. I’d fallen instantly in love with everything about the place, even though nothing about it was practical. It was hours away from the kids’ schools and my programming job and freelance work with the newspaper in Little Rock. But what if I found another place like this, somewhere closer, somewhere perfect?

  I turned and walked slowly back to the car, smiling, energized. What if we didn’t find a tornado-ravaged house, but a small spot of land, and just built the whole thing exactly how we wanted it? I looked back. Exactly like this would do.

  I’d grown up in Wisconsin and learned early to use a hatchet to knock small limbs off trees Dad felled for firewood. I had made a built-in bookcase in the first house I bought, and used a jigsaw to make a plywood beanbag toss for the kids. Building a house was just a repetition of those skills: measure, cut, nail. Why couldn’t I build a house?

  I’d hang red drapes in that second-floor bedroom, up high and safe from Peeping Toms, and make it mine. The supplies weren’t the expensive part of building a house, it was the labor.

  Even though I laughed over the image of the kids and me as a construction team, I liked the idea a lot. Sure, it was a little nuts, but it was the first workable plan I’d come up with that fit our limited finances. We could do it. I knew we could. Building a house would prove we were strong. It would prove that despite my stupidity in staying with idiots for so long, I was still intelligent. It would prove so many things—most of all that we were alive.

  The kids slept away the final hour to the cabin while I dreamed up things that feel possible only when you are physically and emotionally exhausted on a road trip. The hypnotic white lines flashing subliminal messages that you are a superhero, that anything is possible, that you are good, that you are worthy.

  “We’re here!” I sang out when I’d backed as close as I could to the path leading away from a quaint board carved with the name Hickory Haven. I’d had to fight the urge to say, We’re home. My new habit seemed to be feeling more at home in every shelter but the place we lived.

  “Camping?” Drew yawned.

  “God, it better not be,” Hope said, nose pressed against the window.

  “Camping!” Jada squealed, making Roman giggle and kick his feet.

  “Marshmallows!” he chimed.

  “Not the rustic sort. I don’t have the energy. See that light?” I pointed down the dark path. “Our cabin away from home. Our weekend retreat.”

  My kids weren’t often complainers. In the way some play the “so many people have it worse than us” game to lift their spirits, my kids lived with a constant mind-set of “we know how bad it can get, and this is nothing.” We didn’t need games to quiet our grievances.

  Drew hauled the cooler while the girls and I toted backpacks and duffels. Roman ran along beside us down the path. “Who! Who! Who!” he chanted, as wide-eyed as the owl he mimicked while fear and excitement battled for command of his mind. He’d never been in a forest at night. Every new noise made him toddle a little faster, but he was growing independent enough to resist clinging to my legs.

  When he veered close, index finger in his mouth and lip quivering over a ghostly scream that had sent a shiver down my spine, too, I gave him an ultimatum: “It’s you or the bag of cupcakes, kid. And I’m hungry enough to make it a real dilemma.” The cabin was in sight by then, and he pumped his legs faster to catch up with Jada and Drew. Hope, my girly-girl, was bringing up the rear. She was a city mouse. But her hesitation was more than an aversion to forest things. She knew the most dangerous part of hiding was that we’d have to go back again.

  We ate, read, ate, slept, and then woke up to eat more before taking a morning nap. When had basic functions like changing clothes become such an effort? The Ozark mountain cabin was the perfect, quiet getaway to spend hours looking out over the mountains contemplating my future. Who am I kidding? That’s what it would have been, without four restless kids.

  I was sitting at the table, arranging silverware into a house plan while Jada and Hope started their tenth snippy argument of the morning. When I started fantasizing about running down the side of the mountain to hide behind a tree until the vacation was over, I jumped up and yelled loud enough to make Drew jump, “Treasure hunt! It’ll blow some stink off you,” giving them the mom-glare that said it wasn’t optional.

  I grabbed a handful of plastic shopping bags. “Best find gets a prize.” Having treasure hunts instead of walks was a habit my mom had started when I was a little girl. Obviously, she had been born an optimist, too. She was in Wisconsin that fall, visiting her siblings. My mom was my best friend—my only friend—but even she didn’t know everything that had happened with Matt and Adam. Shame is the best secret keeper.

  Jada ran ahead, with Drew keeping an eye on her so he wouldn’t have to make small talk with me. Hope helped me with Roman, herding him along the path and pulling him away from a fuzzy blob of fungus and then a pile of scat, all the while planning an elaborate Christmas party aloud. Parties were her thing.

  By the time Jada ran back, crying over a scraped knee, I discovered that my plastic bag was filled to the top while everyone else’s were empty balls in their fists. Roman bawled a sympathy wail for Jada’s knee, so obviously fake I was confident he wouldn’t make his million in Hollywood.

  “Firewood?” Drew asked, his left eyebrow angled up like he’d only just noticed his mother was slap-ass nuts.

  “No. I don’t … I’m not sure…” But then I looked down at the bag full of sticks and knew exactly what I intended to do with them. And I also remembered that—especially with Drew—the time for tall tales had ended. “I was thinking of making my dream house. Like your old Lincoln logs. Remember the elaborate houses we used to make?”

  I found a Band-Aid in my mini backpack and stretched it across Jada’s knee. She ran off down the path without pausing to wipe her tears or pull her pant leg back down to her ankle.

  Drew stretched his stride to put himself halfway between Jada and me, just far enough that conversation wasn’t comfortable. But then he leaned down and picked up a stick, took a few steps, snagged another, and then one more. Hope must have finished her Christmas plan and had moved on to her ideal Christmas w
edding venue—never mind that she didn’t have a boyfriend—complete with wine-colored roses and invitations printed on vintage wrapping paper. All the while, Drew filled his bag with sticks. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Hope gathering them, too. Stop the world and let me off: Hope had touched nature.

  “Pee-pee,” Roman said, tucking his hand between his legs and doing a little dance.

  “You get to pee-pee on your first tree!” I announced, helping him drop gray fleece pants and Spider-Man underwear to his knees. I worried for a split second that he wouldn’t go outside and I’d have to carry a soggy boy all the way back to the cabin. But peeing outdoors is a universal pleasure for human males, and he joined his band of brothers with a deep laugh, chin pressed against his chest.

  By the time our noses and fingers were red and tingly from the cold and Roman had marked his territory on three trees, we headed back to Hickory Haven carrying five bags of sticks, one storm-damaged bird nest, and a handful of the most beautiful rocks Jada had ever seen, which appeared as unique as street gravel.

  “Was the clock right when we left?” Hope asked, adjusting the time on the microwave to match her cell.

  “We’re on vacation,” I answered. “There is no such thing as a clock.” But her forehead had gone all bunchy and she was eyeing the clock on the fireplace mantel, which was off by several hours. So I wasn’t the only one who worried about someone coming in and changing things, moving them around to send us messages. That shouldn’t surprise me. Thankfully she was only worried about the change, though, not reminded of the sound a watch makes right up close to your ear through adrenaline-flooded eardrums.

  “Ours used to change.” She waved at the clocks. “A long time ago. Someone used to come in and change the clocks to all different times.”

  I hadn’t known that, and it bothered me that she hadn’t told me she set them all right. It also made me wonder what else Adam had done that I didn’t know about from all the long years when I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.

  “People could come in from different time zones and set the clocks to their own times. I’ve done that in hotels to avoid jet lag.” I held her gaze. “No one knows where we are. No one was in here.”

  I believed I was telling the truth, and she could see that, but she was still afraid.

  Oblivious to the fungus and a few tiny spiders, Drew dumped his treasure bag onto the small kitchen table. We each took a chair, as orchestrated as though we did this every day of the week, and began stacking the sticks into a floor plan.

  Roman sat at my feet with three inverted pots and a Tupperware bowl, whacking a rhythm with two thin sticks like he’d been born to thump skins in a garage band. Speaking of garages, my three-car stick addition was coming together nicely, but it wasn’t staying together. When anyone breathed wrong, or bumped the table with an elbow, the sticks shifted into an abstract art form. Drew bit his lower lip, inhaled dramatically, and then went back to carefully placing sticks, glaring like his willpower alone would keep them in place.

  “Where’s the closest grocery? We should have Thanksgiving tomorrow,” Hope said from the refrigerator where she was pulling out cold cuts for supper.

  “That’s right. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. The whole trip was last-minute. I was just thinking sandwiches would be simple.” I felt bad. Tradition was important, especially when everything had gone so topsy-turvy. “I should’ve at least grabbed smoked turkey at the deli instead of maple ham.”

  “Jada and I will do it,” Hope said, leveling a glare over my shoulder at Jada, making it clear that despite Jada’s lack of interest in planning or preparing Thanksgiving dinner, she was damn well going to do it.

  I hid a smile. It would be good for the girls to do something together. As the oldest child and a junior in high school, Hope loved taking charge, which never went over well with free-spirited Jada. She was in the sixth grade and exercising her preteen rebellion whenever a task looked too much like work. “There’s a small market about five miles back. It won’t have a great selection, but I’ll bet you guys can come up with something. It’ll be fun.”

  Hope and Jada disappeared up to the loft with a notebook and a pencil to plan our feast. If they made it back down without bloodshed, it would be a miracle.

  “There’s a sewing kit out in the trunk,” I told Drew. “Think we could tie these corners together so we don’t have to build the same thing over and over again?”

  He shrugged and went out with the car keys. When he didn’t come right back in, I decided not to go looking. I hadn’t worked out how to help my man-child through the anger and guilt of the past, let alone how to build a future. We were sitting side by side building a stick house together, like the three little pigs, and maybe right now that was enough.

  I twirled my magic nail—that’s how I started thinking of it, like a magic bean that might sprout a house—between my fingers until Roman noticed and grunted at it.

  “Mine,” he said.

  “Yours,” I agreed, pulling a bait and switch with a cookie.

  “Om-nom-nom.” He rocked sideways while he walked across the room like Godzilla taking Tokyo. “Cookie Monster. Om-nom-nom.”

  Drew pushed through the door with the sewing kit under his arm and a fistful of two-foot-long sticks.

  Roman ran at him, squealing. “Cookie Monster!”

  Since Drew had been the one to make up the game, he gave chase, stomping and roaring while Roman giggled himself into a case of the hiccups.

  I doodled a floor plan on a three-by-five notepad next to the phone. Drew flopped into his chair and stared at the plan before taking the pencil and pad to draw his version on the next page.

  Hope and Jada stomped down the stairs, louder than a herd of elephants. No blood had been shed that I could see, but Jada’s nose was red and her eyes were puffy. I wanted to hug her, but she didn’t ask and I let her keep her dignity. “We won’t be gone long,” Hope said, grabbing the keys from the table and shaking a paper. “We have a list.”

  No one could plan a meal or a party like Hope, but I worried about what would happen when she got to the miniature grocery store and found them lacking most of her essentials.

  “Be flexible,” I told her, thumping my foot against Drew’s shin when he smirked. “It’s not a Kroger. It’s more for emergency camping supplies than holiday feasts.”

  Drew tossed the drawing pad back to me. In his version, he’d labeled the bedrooms with our initials and wrote “Harry Potter Cupboard” next to the staircase, which made me smile. Even after everything he’d been through, he still believed in magic. I flipped to the next page, started with his basic plan, made a few changes, and Frisbeed it back to him. I’d added a room labeled “Future Library,” which could be a bedroom until a kid or two went to college.

  He pursed his lips to one side, biting the inside of his cheek, a habit I’d tried to break him of since his first molars broke through. He nodded and released his cheek without me having to tap it and remind him. On the next page he sketched the front of the house, placing the windows and door so they would match up with what we had wordlessly agreed on for the interior.

  It was nothing complex, just a two-story rectangle with the bedrooms upstairs and the den, kitchen, dining room, and library downstairs. I added shutters to the windows, labeled them “chocolate brown,” and sketched a porch with tall columns. Drew raised his eyebrows and nodded.

  He took the pencil and added a shop. I added a tree house, so he put in a zip line and a rock wall. “Diamond Mine,” I wrote in a circle in the back lawn near the tree house. He added a portal to an alternate reality, but then flipped back to the interior drawing of the upstairs and penciled in toilets and showers while I rolled a ball to Roman.

  What was I thinking? Giving these kids false hope, letting them plan for a future house that was as impossibly beyond our reach as the portal to another dimension. I pulled the nail out, twirling it between my fingers while Roman played basketball in a laundry basket. Th
en he climbed in and said, “I’m a boat. Whee!”

  He jumped, knocking his boat over when the door flew open. He caught himself on his hands but whimpered anyhow. The blood rushed in my ears like a storm. Jada and Hope looked like pack mules, loaded down with shopping bags and pink-cheeked from the walk in the cold. But something was very wrong. Hope’s face was drawn and pale, and I could hear her breath rattling in and out from across the room. Drew stood up so fast his chair spilled over like Roman’s basket boat.

  “Thump,” Roman said, whacking his palms against the worn wood floor. “Thump. Thump. Thump.”

  Drew was behind Hope, locking the dead bolt and stringing the chain in place before I had made it to my feet.

  “What?” I asked in a breathy whisper. “What happened?”

  Hope cut her eyes at Jada. But I waved my hand. “We aren’t pretending anymore. We aren’t covering things up for anyone. We can say things that are true.” I wanted to mean it, to really, fully mean it, but I was still as afraid to speak some things aloud as I was to hear them.

  “I think a car followed us out of the parking lot and all the way until I turned on the gravel drive.” She swallowed hard, hugging the shopping bags hard enough that bread or eggs would have to be salvaged as French toast. “I should have gone another way. I should have tried to lose him.”

  Drew leaned forward, arms waving. “Don’t you ever drive around like a maniac trying to lose someone. You did the right thing. Stay inside. We’re calling the police.”

  Jada let go of her bags and ran upstairs. It was time for me to talk to her. Tell her some hard truths. Not everything. The big kids didn’t know everything, or even half of everything, but enough that she would stay alert. She had been a toddler when I’d married Adam and his mind was attacked by schizophrenia months later. He had turned into someone so terrifying that years after the divorce we still viewed the world through peepholes and rearview mirrors.