Building a Home with My Husband (16 page)

When I rode the buses with Beth, I came to feel a tender admiration for her boyfriend, Jesse, so after I stopped riding, I was happy to comply with Beth’s wishes to turn our visits with each other into visits with the two of them. I found him to be a soft-spoken, gentle-souled man, one who would talk about watching deer in the woods, riding his bike around town, staying up late to see the news about the war. Sometimes he would tell me stories from his childhood: wrenching tales of family troubles, an accident that left him blind in one eye, living for a while on the streets. I knew that a beloved uncle had been murdered when Jesse was a boy. Recently, a brother with whom he was close also died under suspicious circumstances. I knew as well that Jesse had never received grief counseling for these losses, and that when I suggested that he might benefit from talking to someone, he would agree, but then a few days later do an about-face. I could hardly insist that he get help, so I just listened when he wanted to talk, which was usually while Beth ran around Wal-Mart and he and I stood in an aisle, my heart going out to him.

Then about a year ago I noticed a change. Was it untreated post-traumatic stress? Did he have some condition that I lacked the knowledge to understand? Was he mimicking the behavior of someone he knew at some time in his life, or disclosing a part of himself that he had kept from me? All I knew was that an unfamiliar pattern emerged: whenever I drove to see them, Jesse wouldn’t be waiting with Beth at the bus station, as he’d said he would. He’d show up ten minutes later, or a half hour, and then he’d be surly, cursing, belligerent. Sometimes he’d even eye us from a distance; then, as we headed down the sidewalk toward him, he’d jump on his bike and ride away. It was as if he’d become a different person. One day I actually saw the transformation happen: as he sat in the back of my car, his face switched in a second from the tranquil, kind face I knew to one filled with meanness. I didn’t recognize him. Nor was I feeling my earlier trust, or any pleasure in my visits.

It didn’t help that Beth insisted at each no-show that we drive around looking for Jesse, and then, when we came upon him, simply ignore his foul mood. I would tell her I was getting way too frazzled and plead with her to just turn the visit into a time with me, but her mind was on a single track. I would also ask him before every visit if he really wanted to join us. He would say yes, yet the problem would recur. Then I started asking if he would consider talking to his aide, a doctor, anyone, about why he’d changed so suddenly. He’d promise he would—and then be even more extreme when I came by again. I felt completely over my head.

Then around the time when I was packing up the house to move, I had lunch with a professional who works with Beth, and poured out my frustration. She suggested that I might benefit from speaking with her former colleague, Craig, a social worker with expertise in helping people who haven’t responded to traditional therapeutic treatments. People who might, in some ways, be like Jesse. I contacted Craig, and, since he lives far away, we began to meet over the phone.

In our conversations, he’s been telling me that there are several important things to keep in mind when interacting with Beth. One is to give her unconditional positive regard, which is to indicate at all times that I care about her, and that there is nothing she can do to make that caring go away—a suggestion that’s useful for interaction with any loved one. The same is true for the second tip he’s been giving me: that my time is as valuable as hers, and if I’m not enjoying myself, I need to address that with her—in a way that won’t be bossy or leave me feeling guilty. Most of our conversations have concentrated on the specific approach I can take to doing this, but at the heart of it lies my own understanding of what I want when I see my sister—which is, I now know, to see
her.
My responsibility is to Beth, not, as much as I care for him, Jesse. So, Craig said, I have a right to tell her that “Jesse isn’t being the kind of person that I want to be with right now. When he can show me that he is, I’ll want to spend time with him again. But for now, I need to see you without him around.”

When Craig first gave me this advice, I worried that Beth might just choose not to see me anymore. But that was a risk I had to take. I called Beth and told her, and it turned out that she had expected something like this. In fact, she did not argue with me at all. She just asked what we would do together if we weren’t with Jesse. I said we could still visit her favorite drivers, and we could go shopping, and I could take her for ice cream or to the movies. Immediately our visits became as peaceful and fun they used to be. Yes, I was sad not to have my almost-brother-in-law still in my life. But I was also relieved. It’s like what Hal said in the old house: you have to give something up to get something else.

Back on our street after my walk, I see Ginny sitting on her front porch, watching Eliza ride her bicycle in small circles. I go over, and we pick up where we left off last night. The dog belonging to one of the unruly neighbors is barking away, but when I sit down on the porch beside my new friend, I completely forget to hear it.

 

Some days later, when I meet Hal after work for our weekly grocery shopping, he greets me in the produce aisle by saying, “Well. We’ve just hit Problem Number Two.”

He discovered it, he tells me, at the job meeting this morning. His drawings called for conduits to be installed through the new foundation so that lines could later be run into the backyard for lighting and the HVAC unit. At every meeting he’d asked the job supervisor, Henry, when the conduits would be installed. Henry had said the equivalent of, “Uh, we’ll get around to it.” This morning, when Hal saw that the footings had been poured and the area under the slab filled in with stone, he asked if the conduits were there. “And Henry’s jaw dropped and a fly popped out.”

“You mean he screwed up.”

“That’s right.”

“So is this poor coordination?”

“Yeah. Sometimes poor coordination equals dumb forgetfulness.”

“I thought you said Dan was good.”

“Dan delegated it to Henry, and Henry messed up. But they’ll fix it.”

“Who pays for this?”

“They will.”

“Is this bugging you? It’s bugging me.”

“I’ll subcontract the being bugged to you.”

“Please don’t be blasé. This is our house. It’s a ton of money. Our lives are in limbo.”

“But what’s the point of worrying? So far our problems are minor. None of them is worth getting bent out of shape about. If I ever thought it was worth worrying about this kind of stuff on a job, experience has taught me otherwise. Anyway, I have a good feeling about this. No one’s acting devious or manipulative. No one’s drinking or not showing up. Dan’s totally on the ball. Okay, Henry’s a bit of an issue, but I can work with that.”

“So I should just relax? Trust that we won’t get to Problem Number Three?”

“I can’t tell you that for certain. But it just doesn’t seem as if it’s going to go that way.”

I look away. A middle-aged woman is examining a grapefruit. An elderly couple is picking through string beans. Maybe a plumber once flooded their kitchen, but you’d never know it to look at them.

“So?” he says, brushing my hair aside and looking into my face. “Not to worry?”

“Maybe this isn’t a dramatic phase, but that doesn’t mean there’s no drama playing out in me.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s always a little weird when your inner wife begins to crumble.”

“Save me, please,” I say, smiling and pushing him away.

“Got you to laugh,” he says, pulling me back. “My lovely inner wife. Now, can we get on with our shopping?”

 

So, okay. I won’t worry about the job. I’ll distract myself by obsessing about something else, which, wouldn’t you know, requires no effort. Whereas I spent the demolition thinking about children, it turns out that I’m spending the roughing-in having more sessions with Craig, visiting with Beth, talking on the phone with Laura, flying around the country to speak to groups and families who are cohesive or fractious, and coming home to a troubled neighborhood. People getting along, or not getting along, is simply what’s in the air. Plus, it’s the stuff of my conversation, even when I’m not with Hal: more and more often I find myself crossing the street in the evenings to hang out with warmhearted, hospitable Ginny. There, as Eliza draws pictures, we indulge in long discussions about our families, teaching, the conflict on our street. We still don’t know what we can do about the difficult neighbors. But, as I tell Ginny, I often haven’t been able to figure that out with people I know a whole lot better, the siblings with whom I once shared a roof.

Actually, I tell Ginny, I finally understand some things about Laura. Like Beth and me, Laura and I remained distant for many years of our adulthood. We still called each other and visited when she made her annual return east from Arizona. But I was self-conscious about everything I said, because often I inadvertently offended her. Then when she’d express her annoyance, I’d despair that we were clashing again. Neither of us would know how to turn the conversation around, and the resulting strain would last until one of us, usually me, would send a card or make a call. How could this be? We thought so much alike, we loved each other, we were both trying, yet the bond between us was so twisted, it’s a wonder we held together at all.

But a few years ago, the pattern changed. It became evident that Laura was no longer taking offense as easily as she once had, nor did she seem to hold on to anger toward me. When I eventually asked what happened, she admitted that she’d felt so lonely and burdened and unattended to in her childhood that she’d long had difficulty trusting anyone in the family. She told me, too, about a few incidents from our early adulthood that loomed large for her but that I had forgotten, moments when I had let her down, thus reinforcing her mistrust. She’d never said anything at those times, so neither the apology that might have lightened her pain nor the self-reflection that she might have inspired in me came to pass. Ten years went by. Twenty-five. Finally, she dated some men who, for all their flaws, loved her with the wholeheartedness she deserved. She also saw a counselor who offered her specific guidance. And she began to value those cards and calls from me. Little by little, her mistrust ceased, which in turn made the sparks between us cease. We began speaking more often—to offer support, give each other reality checks about our family, celebrate each other’s victories, comfort each other’s pain. Whatever liking we’d lost over the years fell back into step with our love.

Max, on the other hand, has become inscrutable to me. Sometime, maybe after he got married, maybe after his children were born, he grew inconsistent about responding to my calls and e-mails. He seemed disinclined to see me, too, and the few times we did felt awkward. I tried to understand what had soured him, but he insisted that nothing had. For several years now, I almost never hear from him, and since he seldom responds to my efforts, it appears that our relationship is simply fading to black. I agonize over this. Did I do something that was searing to him, but that, as with Laura, I’ve forgotten? Is his pain from the family just so great that he cannot bear to be around us, or at least me? Does his silence have nothing to do with me? “You can’t know,” Hal has said more times than I can enumerate. “Any more than you could with Laura, or Beth, or Jesse. Until he tells you, you just can’t know.”

I don’t want to tell Ginny about Max—it hurts too much. So I’m even gladder than I would otherwise be when Eliza interrupts our conversation to show us her artwork, and then sing us a song, and then demonstrate her gymnastic moves on the floor. By the time I remember that I’m avoiding saying something, I’m crossing the street back to the rented house.

I stop at my curb and look at the houses along this cul-de-sac, some with neighbors who open their hearts and lives to me, some with neighbors who appear not to care that they live beside other people. If actual brothers and sisters can’t sustain a relationship, and neighbors fail to value harmony, then what’s the likelihood that the workers in our house will get along? The sky hovers over the street, cloud-smudged and gray, and I let myself inside with no answer.

 

Then one afternoon in mid-October, Hal and I go for a walk, and a very different kind of surprise occurs.

In a way, the walk itself is a surprise. Despite the effort we made at the beginning of the roughing-in to be fully back with each other, Hal and I are finding it harder and harder to spend time together. I’m traveling, and he’s working full-time at his job, then going to meetings with Henry and Dan, or doing drawings for the kitchen cabinets, or researching online options for energy-efficient dishwashers. So this walk would have been notable anyway, simply because we’ve been taking so few.

Perhaps that’s why, when we leave the subdivision, we head in a direction I haven’t taken before. Because this part of the state is very established, we expect to see only fifty-year-old subdivisions, so we’re taken aback when our wanderings lead us to a tucked-away plot of land where new houses are under construction. Unlike the houses going up when I was eight, these are close to finished. In fact, as we stroll along, we notice that a few are already occupied. One door is ajar, and when we glance toward it, we see two little girls framed by the storm door, playing in the front hallway. They’re seated on some oversized balls and are bouncing around, so caught up with each other that they don’t see us.

What a funny switch. Here I am, out in the construction, looking inside to children. I flash again to the image of myself with my siblings when we were little, playing around the just-framed houses. It makes me smile, remembering that time. Even if we’ve all grown up now, and might never play together again.

“So,” I say to Hal, “have we hit Problem Number Three yet? People not getting along?”