The Dream Home

Alder left the meeting feeling nauseous. Looks of shock and anxiety on the men and women he had worked beside for the past four years triggered his panic. He had just bought a new car and worried about how he would afford the payments. The market had crashed and Countrywide was closing its offices all over the country. Jack and Alan had been picked up by Bank of America, but the rest of the office had been let go with several months of pay and no future prospects. He didn’t want to tell Laurel.

On his last day at work, Alder felt positive. He’d made a plan. He’d bought The Efficient Carpenter, Building Your Own Home For Dummies, Housebuilding: A Do It Yourself Guide, and a plot of land on the outskirts of town with his severance package. Amidst the panic and planning of the weeks that followed the announcement, he’d remembered a dream that he and Laurel once had, long before the realities and distractions of the daily grind had sapped his ambition. He would build their dream house. He would spend a year outside, cutting lumber, laying wire, caulking, carpeting, digging, sanding, painting, doing everything himself, the way that he and Laurel dreamed about.
When she heard the news, she exhaled through the pinpricks of adrenaline that shot through her fingers, chest and nose. She held his hand. She kissed the tear on his cheek and told him they would get through it together.

The land Alder bought came with a dilapidated cabin. A small kitchen with a stove that wouldn’t hold a turkey and nowhere to put the toaster or the french press. A living room. A bedroom. A bathroom, with no bath.

“It’s only a year?” she asked.

“It’ll be done before you know it!” He squeezed her shoulder gently and let the February wind sweep them inside.

The walls contained her. Boxes stacked to her head, blocked her view. Boxes and walls and acres of trees between her and the life they had known.

It wasn’t long before the doubts formed; fermenting, ballooning, and spraying their spores into his blood. Heavy, filling him with leaden dread. The walls of the cabin, like an unwanted nurse with cold hands and a cot in the living room, kept him inside. The project was immense. He was a child with tinker toys.

And Laurel at the loveseat. Laurel by the stove. Laurel and her magazines. On her hands and knees, scrubbing the grout between bathroom tiles. Patiently waiting.

She knew he wasn’t on schedule. In six months he’d only managed to scout a plot to build the house on. He told her that this was the hardest part. There had to be good light. There was a view to think about, an energy to comply with. The cabin creaked under the weight of his dream and she was trapped behind its yellowed, cracking paper and weathered boards. She was almost 33 and she felt the years that stood between her and children.

She couldn’t recognize him anymore; a quiet twin with shadows in his eyes. Dream walls erected above his reach. He knew how to process a lien, how to identify the market niche, but construction was beyond his ability. He couldn’t tell Laurel. She had been so supportive, a model of patience, but he sensed that a shift was occurring. A contractor wouldn’t fit the budget. Friends in construction? Perhaps classes to take. An apprenticeship, or a course at the J.C.? He would become lost, weighing the possibilities.

A monotonous job at Cuppola Insurance became the highlight of Laurel’s days. Immersed in the office drama, she could forget about the ghost back home. She spent the shrinking evenings of fall in the kitchen with a mug of tea and the phone. Complaints collided with rafters as Marie Callender’s lasagna heated in the oven. One night, while talking to her mother about how much she missed living in town, she discovered that the latch to the kitchen door had broken when it swung open and refused to shut. Something had loosened. The latch wouldn’t slip into the hole in the strike plate. As if the cabin was telling her, “You’re free to go now.”

Little bits and pieces of the cabin gradually gave in. A leaking pipe under the sink, dead bulbs just out of Laurel’s reach, clogged gutters, cracked window panes, stains and holes.

“Can’t you at least keep this cabin from falling apart around us?” Laurel asked.

“I’m trying! Can’t you see how much I have to do? I have a house to build.”

“Trying? You do nothing all day while I go work a dead end job I hate. I’m the one working to pay for this disaster. The foundation isn’t even done.”

“Don’t you think I would work faster if I could?”

“I don’t know what to think! But this isn’t my life. This isn’t where I wanted to end up. This wasn’t my plan.”

The fights happened more frequently. She needed him to understand how unattractive his apathy was. He needed her to listen patiently and suggest solutions.

The week leading up to Valentine’s Day was cold and wet. A winter storm was passing through, pushing wind through gaps in the walls, piling eucalyptus leaves on the roof, rattling against the window panes. Laurel had been standing in the kitchen, chopping up carrots and onion for a roast, thinking about the past year. A whole year had gone by since they moved in, with only a freshly laid foundation to show for it. She had watched Alder transform into a quiet, still fixture in her life; as if here were merely an appliance inside the cabin.

She turned on the gas and struck a match, feeling weighty love for her missing husband. She knew it was time to leave, with or without Alder. As she bent toward the stove, a gust of wind rushed through the crookedly closed window, blowing out the flame. She struck another match and it was immediately extinguished. Laurel felt heavy and could barely lift her arm. She wanted to get the food started so she could lay down with a book and a bottle of Pinot, but the wind was mocking her and she couldn’t get the stove to light. Each of four matches was extinguished just before the flame could ignite the gas. Tears pressed their way out of her eyes, blurring the spokes of the range top. She choked on her breath, feeling cool wet trails winding their way to her chin. She set the matches  on the counter, poured a tall glass of wine, and headed for the couch.

Had the cabin guessed at her mood? In awe, she stared at the couch, at the pale blue and white stripes which had turned dark in a growing circle. Drops of water fell from ceiling to sofa, making a muted pat-pat upon the fabric.
 
It took Laurel only four days to find an apartment in town that would hold the two of them, but that she could afford on her own. It took two more days to work up the courage to talk to Alder. On February 13, she found him sitting on the couch in the dried tears of the cabin.

“Hon, can we talk for a minute?” she nervously asked. Her breath was shallow, pushing its way out, around the huge words that she didn’t want to speak.

“What’s up?”

She exhaled. Blinked. “I can’t do this. I can’t live here. I can’t watch you spend your days staring at the wall, or wandering the property. I’m 33. I want a family, and this isn’t the place to raise one.”
“We’re not raising kids here, we’re raising them in the house! You wanted this, too!”

“I want a house, not a cement square! How long am I supposed to live like this? I’m miserable.”

“I am doing my best.”

“It’s not enough!”

He stared at her slippers. She nervously shook her heel.

“I found a place in town,” she said. “It’s small, but it’s clean and warm and safe. I already put down a deposit and I’m moving there tonight. I’ve had it with the cold and the wet. Alder. I love you. I want you to come with me.”

This is the time to tell her, he thought. Tell her about how much harder it was to build than you’d realized. Tell her you didn’t want her to hate you for moving her out here, spending so much on an impossible dream. 

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Tell her.

“Well,” she straightened her posture, “I’m leaving. Call me when you snap out of this.”

 She put on her shoes and grabbed her purse, slamming the door behind her. The roof creaked under the weight of wet eucalyptus leaves and years of neglect. Alder thought he saw the walls shudder. His throat was tight. He couldn’t breathe, but his heart was slamming blood into his arteries. He heard the car door slam and the engine turn on. The cabin groaned. The roof cracked, bending metal supports, splitting beams, shearing off screws, water pouring through, loud like the blood in his ears, crashing down upon him.