“If we’re off even by a quarter of an inch, it’ll screw things up big-time,” Helen had said. “Trust me. This is what the entire house is going to rest on. It’s got to be done right.”
Nate had reluctantly agreed. He was the math and science man. If you hit him hard with numbers and facts, backed up your argument on paper in a scientific way, he’d acquiesce. And yes, in the many months leading up to this morning—in fact, even last night at the motel—Nate had studied countless books on building:Homebuilding for Everyone, Designing and Building a House Your Way, The Owner-Builder’s Guide to Creating the Home of Your Dreams.He’d taken an owner-builder weekend workshop and volunteered a few weekends for Habitat for Humanity, coming home those evenings buzzing with the new high that building gave him, talking nonstop about the walls he’d helped frame, the electrical work they’d roughed in. “It’s the most satisfying work I’ve ever done,” he’d told her.
But Helen had grown up with a builder father. One of her earliest memories was the summer before first grade, when he brought her to a job site and had her straightening bent nails, teaching her the proper way to hold the hammer, his fingers wrapped around hers. She’d spent weekends and summer vacations pounding nails, hanging drywall, framing doors and windows. She’d helped her father repair the damage from shoddy construction: walls that weren’t plumb with cracked drywall inside, windows improperly installed that had leaked, roofs that were collapsing because of rafters that weren’t strong enough. She knew how hard all this was going to be. For months, Nate had gotten a blissed-out, stupidly contented look whenever he talked about building their dream house. Helen loved his enthusiasm and how he waxed poetic about roof lines and south-facing windows, but still, she got knots in her stomach and gnawed on the inside of her cheeks until she tasted blood.
She reached for Nate’s hand now as the cement poured, gave him a nervous squeeze.
We are meant to be here,she told herself again.I am the one who put all this in motion. This is my dream.It was some shit her therapist back in Connecticut had taught her—how she could shape her own reality by giving herself these affirmations whenever she felt the ground shifting underneath her.
Nate squeezed her hand back—once, twice, three quick bursts, like a code, a secret code that saidWe’re here; we did it!She could feel the excitement thrumming through him.
Two of the workmen in yellow boots carefully pulled a board over the rough surface of the slab, making it level.
. . .
She might have been the one to set things in motion, but they were here, really, because of Nate. Almost a year and a half ago now, Helen’s father dropped dead from a heart attack, and Helen—normally so confident about every aspect of her life—felt herself floundering. Helen began feeling stuck and unhappy, believing that there had to be more to life than waking up each morning and going to work, even though it was a job she loved: teaching American history to bright-eyed middle schoolers. Her job gave her a sense of purpose, made her feel genuinely useful and like she was making a difference—but it still wasn’t enough. Her father’s death had been a wake-up call—a warning that she, too, would die one day, perhaps sooner than expected, perhaps without warning, and it was entirely possible that she wasn’t living the life she’d been meant to live. The thought filled her with dread, with a sinking leaden feeling that encroached on everything.
“What is it you want?” Nate had asked one evening. He saw Helen’s new angst as a puzzle to unravel, a problem to solve.
They were sitting in the living room in their condo back in Connecticut. Nate had opened a bottle of wine and they were cuddled together on the couch in front of the gas fireplace, which Helen had never really liked because it seemed a poor substitute for the real thing—a crackling fire and the smell of woodsmoke. Nate bought her spruce and piñon incense to burn while the predictable gas flames were going, which was a sweet gesture but didn’t do the trick.
“What would make you happy?” he asked as he refilled her glass.
She looked at him—her handsome, earnest, problem-solving husband—the absurdity of his question hitting her like a punch in the stomach.
“Happy?” she echoed dumbly. Happiness had always seemed to come so easily to Nate. He found true joy in weekend trips with his birding group (which consisted mostly of senior citizens) to wildlife sanctuaries and state parks to watch and photograph thrushes, Baltimore orioles, and goldfinches; in catching up with his favorite science blogs and podcasts. He found comfort and delight in studying the natural world around him, categorizing things by kingdom, phylum, order, class, and species. During grad school, Nate had a running guest appearance on his best friend Pete’s blog. Pete wrote about environmental issues, but he roped Nate into doing a series of short videos calledAsk Mr. Science.Readers would send in questions like “What’s the deal with frog mutations?” or “What’s happening to the honeybee population?” and Nate would come on, wearing a lab coat to look the part, and explain mutations, biodiversity, and evolution in a down-to-earth, totally adorable yet kind of geeky way.
The world made sense to Nate and his Mr. Science mind; there was an intrinsic order that comforted him and that he seemed to enjoy sharing with others, and he never seemed to feel the need to ask himself the big questions, like “What’s missing?” or “What is our greater purpose in this thing called life?”
Now he blinked at her, nodded, and continued to watch her, waiting for an answer, clearly not going to give up until she gave him one.
She thought of how she spent her days, of her daily drives through the suburban landscape of strip malls, drugstores, restaurants, car washes, dry cleaners—so much light and noise; so many people out on little missions to do their errands, to buy curtains and antacids and pick up their freshly cleaned work clothes before hurrying off to work. It all seemed so meaningless.
What makes me happy?she thought.
The times she was happiest lately were when she did her occasional weekend stints volunteering at the Greensboro Museum, a tiny living history museum that re-created life in the mid-1800s for visitors. In her heavy ankle-length dress and bonnet, she’d dip candles and churn butter while visitors watched. She delighted in answering their questions about what life was like back then, about how the men and women spent their days. She was a historian and early America was her field of expertise, and like Nate playing Mr. Science, she loved to share her knowledge. But what she loved best were the quiet times at the museum, between tour groups, when she actually let herself pretend she’d gone back in time, that life was quiet and purposeful. There were cows to milk, gardens to tend, butter to churn, a fire to build to get dinner started.
As Nate continued to watch her, waiting, she took a long sip of wine, closed her eyes, and delved way back in her mind to the oldest dream she had, born from a childhood of reading the Little House on the Prairie books, reinforced by her college and grad school studies on life in colonial New England and the American pioneers.
She couldn’t very well tell Nate that going back in time would make her happy, so she said the next best thing.
“A house in the country,” she finally answered.
Nate turned to her, surprised. “The country? Really?”
“Yes,” she said. “A place with lots of land. Space for a big garden. For chickens and goats maybe. And a pantry. I’d like a pantry. I want to learn to can my own vegetables. To live more simply, away from traffic and noise.” As she said the words, she felt the truth in them—this was her dream, what she’d always secretly wanted. She looked atthe pathetic gas fire, adding, “And I want a real fireplace that burns actual wood.”
Nate smiled. He set down his wine and took her hand. “Those sound like easy enough wishes,” he said, kissing her fingers.
She didn’t really think much of his comment at that moment.
How would they even begin to make a change like that? Their lives felt set in stone: a nice new condo they’d been on a waiting list for, a new Prius, monthly bills that left them with little extra each month; both of them had enviable teaching jobs at Palmer Academy, a private residential middle school for wealthy kids from all over New England. Nate taught science, and Helen history. Between time at school, commuting, grading papers and tests, and doing lesson plans at home, they easily worked sixty hours a week each. None of that seemed to fit with a quiet life in the country.
But Nate was already formulating a plan. “We’re not nearly as stuck as you think we are,” he said a few days later. He pointed to the pile of envelopes that had begun arriving a few weeks after her father died.
Helen understood. She nodded. She was an only child and her father, a simple man who had lived in the same ranch house forfifty years, driven a battered Ford pickup, and bought his clothes at Walmart, had left her with a surprise. She had been too numb to really absorb it in those days after the funeral when the lawyer first raised the issue, but when she finally was able to bring herself to start going through her father’s files, she was shocked. Helen had had no idea that for years he’d been squirreling money away in savings and sensible investments, that he’d had two life insurance policies with generous payouts, that his modest ranch house in the suburbs, which had been paid off for twenty years, was worth a pretty penny by virtue of its location. It all added up to a generous windfall, and though she had mostly felt overwhelmed by everything, Nate was right, of course. A chunk of money this size could go a long way toward unsticking anything.
The rest of it happened in a blur. One day, Nate brought her a book on home canning. That weekend, he woke her up early on Saturday morning with a kiss and a smile. He handed her a cup of coffee. “We’re going apple picking,” he said. And Helen had loved being out at the orchard, breathing in the crisp autumn air. She’d come home feeling rejuvenated and, following the instructions in her new book, made six jars of applesauce and six of apple jelly. The next few weeks, Nate dove headlong into internet searches on “finding a home in the country” and spent hours on New England real estate sites.
