How to Build a House (6 page)

“A song?”

“Yeah, I write music. It’s sort of my passion.”

“What kind of music?”

“Anything. Everything. I love it all. Hip-hop. Bluegrass. Jazz. I even love the whiny chick singers. Well, some of them.”

“How do you feel about country music?”

“Love it.”

“Ugh.”

“You obviously don’t know good country music.”

“Oh, I know country music. And it isn’t good. How do you feel about a barbershop quartet?”

“I don’t know…. We don’t even have a barbershop in this town.” He smiles at me. “So, do you have one?”

“A barbershop?”

“No, silly. A passion.”

Nobody’s ever asked me that. I run through a list of answers in the search for something funny. Casually funny. I want to seem as relaxed and sure of myself as he does.

Garden gnomes.
No, that’s just stupid
. Strong coffee.
That’s a cliché
. Talking-animal movies.
I hate talking-animal movies
.

Then it strikes me.

Of course I have a passion. For as long as I can remember it’s been my passion.

“The planet.”

“Care to be more specific?”

“Sure. The planet and how we’re ruining it and how it may not be livable by the time our children are approaching middle age.”

“Are you saying you see children in our future?” He smiles at me again.

“Ha, ha,” I say. “Joking is a luxury of living in a sustainable environment. This won’t seem so funny years from now. Trust me.”

He leans forward on his shovel and I take a good look at him. His skinny arms and big Adam’s apple. The sweat at his hairline.

“Yeah.” The light goes out of his eyes.

It’s one of the hazards of having the planet as my passion. Talking about global warming can be kind of a downer.

He shakes his head and wipes his brow with a bandana from his pocket. “So, where you from?”

Here we go.

“Los Angeles.”

“Cool.”

“Compared to here, yes, it is.”

“Amen.” He goes back to raking. I think I’m in the clear until he asks, “Any brothers or sisters?”

You’d think I’d have a canned answer. I’ve been dreading this question since I boarded my flight to Memphis, but I never bothered to work out what I’d say when it came up.

He eyes me.

“I only ask because I’m living in a tiny trailer with two nine-year-old girls and I’ve taken to wishing I’d been an only child.” He smiles a crooked smile. “But anyway, it’s not such a complicated question.”

HOME

On the second Saturday after Dad dropped the bomb, Tess and I went to the same party. We had the same friends. We went to the same parties. That wasn’t going to change.

But this time we got dressed in our rooms in our separate homes and drove in our separate cars.

I counted on Tess. I counted on her to tell me what to wear and how to do my hair. She always put on my mascara. I have this weird thing about eyeballs. Even watching somebody else put in contact lenses makes me want to hurl. But Tess had a magical way with the mascara brush. She would talk to me in this gentle voice and tell me something totally stupid and distracting and somehow I’d survive the dangerous proximity of brush to eyeball.

“Voilà!” she’d say. “You look fantastic.”

I never saw what the big deal was with mascara. It doesn’t seem to change anything. I haven’t worn any since Tess moved out.

The night of the party, Gabriel picked me up.

It had been seven days since Gabriel and I had sex and things had been strange between us all week. It was like reliving the period following the hand-to-breast incident of eighth grade, except this time we didn’t stop talking to each other. This time we talked to each other as if nothing had happened.

For the last year we’d been fooling around. And that’s all it was.
Fooling around
. We made out every now and then. So what? Couldn’t friends fool around without it turning into a big deal?

Tess asked me all the time what was happening with Gabriel.

“Nothing,” I’d say.

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s casual. Whatever.”

“Is that all you want from him? Something casual?”

“I don’t know. We don’t really talk about it.”

But now we’d had sex. Didn’t that scream
It’s time to talk
?

Gabriel rang the doorbell. He never did that. He never asked if he could have something from the fridge or if he could use the phone. He’d kick off his shoes and leave them in the middle of the room and he’d help himself to music from Dad’s vast collection of female soul singers.

Tonight things were different. Gabriel was ringing the doorbell and I was nervous.

“Gabriel, my man!” I heard Dad say. Their hands slapped in a high five. Why did Dad insist on turning all supermacho around Gabriel?

I wondered what would happen if Dad knew. How differently he might greet Gabriel at the door.

“Arthur,” Gabriel said as I was entering the room. “Might I say, you are looking quite well this evening. Quite well, all things considered.”

Nobody but Gabriel calls Dad Arthur. To the rest of the world he’s just Art. But early on, Gabriel adopted this phony formality with Dad that stuck.

“All things considered” was as close as Gabriel was going to get to telling Dad he knew what was happening with Jane and that he was sorry.

Dad’s macho grin slipped away, and he grabbed Gabriel in a big bear hug. I was fragile those days, to say the least, and the sight of this embrace almost undid me.

We took my car because Gabriel’s barely holds together with duct tape. He smelled like shaving cream. He’d missed a spot just above his upper lip.

I thought maybe in the car, in the green glow of the dashboard lights, that he might bring up whatever this was that was happening with us. We might finally talk.

We talked about Dad and Jane.

“How’re you holding up?”

I’m not. I’m falling apart
. “Fine.”

“Really?”

“What?”

“You look like a mess.”

“Thanks. Just what I needed to hear.”

“You know what I mean. I don’t mean how you
look
, I guess what I mean is how you
seem
. You
seem
like a mess. You
look
hot. The guys are going to be all over you tonight.” He gave my knee a pat. A friendly pat.

It deserved a snappy comeback, keep it light, but I was silent.

Last weekend he’d come over because I’d called him in tears. I didn’t usually lean on Gabriel that way, but I didn’t know who to call. Tess was gone. I never even saw her leaving. Jane packed her things while we were both at school. Dad said they’d be back in a few days to collect the rest.

“It’s best if everyone just takes a breather,” he’d said.

Gabriel came right away and found me in my room. Dad let him in and then went out for a drink. He never minded leaving me alone in the house with Gabriel.

I was lying on my bed, face splotchy, eyes sore. I’d never cried in front of Gabriel.

He rubbed my back, mumbling something about how life really sucks.

I lifted up my T-shirt so that he could rub my bare back, so that I could feel his touch.

It felt really nice.

Really, really nice.

I unhooked my bra so that he could rub my back without anything getting in the way. Soon I wasn’t thinking about Dad and Jane and Tess. All I was thinking about was Gabriel’s hands on my skin.

I turned over.

Gabriel looked surprised. The lights were on. The lights were never on. I could see his face. I lifted my shirt over my head.

He continued to touch me.

I started to unbutton his pants. And then, since everything was different, since everything had changed, I did something I never did with Gabriel. I talked to him, about us, right there in the light.

“I want to,” I said. “I want to do it tonight.”

The party was huge. We had to park five blocks away and even from there we could hear voices. I had an impulse to take Gabriel’s hand. He’d rung the doorbell. He’d picked me up to go to a party. This night had all the elements of a date. But I couldn’t do it.

There was a crowd swarming the front lawn and jamming up the entryway and I could see people through the second-story windows. I went around to the backyard and bumped into Tess.

All these people. Hundreds of them, and Tess and I find each other right away. Perfect.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey.”

I was hoping she’d be wearing something new again. That was a good icebreaker. But she was wearing a striped dress she’d had for over a year and old black boots.

“What’s up?” I asked.
What’s up?
How lame is that?

I tried to read her face. It was a closed book.

“I can’t really handle this tonight. I just want to have a good time. I need to have a good time. You understand.” She aimed for a smile but missed. She walked away.

I looked around for Gabriel. He had disappeared somewhere into the crowd. Our date had ended. I looked around for anyone. Somebody who knew me.

I was alone.

HERE

On Tuesday morning I take my coffee outside. I’m drinking it out of a travel mug I bought at the convenience store; I can’t bear to use one more foam cup.

I find Linus sitting cross-legged on the cement by the pool with his eyes closed, his palms raised out and up, much the same way he was on the first day we arrived. I tiptoe over to a lounge chair, ease myself into it and spill hot coffee on my bare legs.

I shout out something totally foul.

Linus stands up and hurries over.

“Everything okay here?”

“Yeah. Ouch. Sorry. I just spilled my coffee.”

He grabs a towel and soaks it in the pool, then hands it to me. I put it on my legs. Relief.

“In my experience,” Linus says, “the coffee here is barely lukewarm.”

“Today the gods conspired to make it scalding hot.”

“Let’s take a look.”

I pull back the towel. I’m pink.

“I think you’re going to be okay.” Linus smiles and drags a lounge chair next to mine. “So tell me, Harper Evans from Los Angeles, California, how’s everything going for you so far?”

“Pretty good. I kind of like it here.”

“Good to know. What do you like about it?”

I have to think. I don’t really want to say anything about coming to the middle of nowhere where nobody knows me or knows anything about what my life used to be.

“I like the crickets. Or the cicadas, or whatever they are. I like the sounds all around. The buzzing. It feels like the earth is alive here. It’s kind of easy to forget that in Los Angeles.”

He smiles, leans back in his chair and closes his eyes to the sun.

I remember how I felt when I cut the wood. “And I like the worm-drive saw.”

“There’s a reason they call them power tools.”

Now I lean back in my chair.

I sneak a look at him and I notice that he has a tattoo.

glad

Large cursive letters on his right arm, just above his farmer’s tan.

It suits him. He seems happy, or glad, pretty much all the time. Or maybe
serene
is the better word. Why didn’t he think to tattoo
serene
on his arm?

I think about asking him why he chose
glad
, but I decide against it. Like I said, I can be annoying about language. I ask him instead about this ritual with the closed eyes, folded legs and outstretched arms.

“Oh, it’s just something I try to do every day. Find a quiet moment and say this thing. It’s sort of like a prayer, I guess. A mantra.”

“So I interrupted your morning mantra all for a lousy cup of coffee?”

“A lousy cup of
hot
coffee. Hey. It’s been my pleasure. Every day is filled with opportunities to take a quiet moment and I’ll just grab another one later.”

It’s time to go out to the bus.

As we’re walking away from the pool, me creeping because my legs still sting, Linus asks, “How’s it going with Teddy? I know you were reluctant to work with him, but I had a feeling you’d do well together.”

“He’s fine,” I say, and then I feel my cheeks turn pink. They match my legs. My answer is a double entendre.

To Tess, guys are never “cute” or “hot” or “sexy.” They’re “fine,” as in “Ashton Kutcher may have the IQ of a banana slug, but he’s
fine.”

I smile even though Linus couldn’t know why what I’ve just said is kind of funny. Only Tess would understand.