Famous Builder by Paul Lisicky

Author:Paul Lisicky [Lisicky, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Artists; Architects; Photographers
ISBN: 9781555979300
Google: cKVVCgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B013P2ESSO
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2015-09-01T07:00:00+00:00

RENOVATION

The Anchorage Point house smells weirdly lemony inside as if a can of latex paint had been left open and allowed to sit for weeks. The electric baseboards tick; kerosene fumes permeate the atmosphere. Although it’s bone-chilling damp, Bobby and I sweat through the layers of our shirts, working harder to keep ourselves warm. Outside, the lagoon is already turning to ice. The phragmites on the opposite bank have browned, the marsh grass in the distance flattened like a tatami mat. The sky above the bay looks swollen, as if it’s actually inhaling all that freezing salt water, but somehow we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. So what if the heat doesn’t quite work, that our father drained the pipes for the winter months ago.

I walk inside the laundry room to pee inside an emptied coffee can. When I come back to the living room, Bobby’s already at it, slamming the plasterboard with a crowbar. Powder settles on our lips and lashes. Powder settles on the gray-beige carpet, the sofa from our old house in Woodcrest, the dried palm tray from the Florida Keys that my mother allegedly hurled at my father during a fight a dozen years ago—an incident which they periodically refer to with quiet, gleeful affection. I reach for the nearest hammer. Bobby and I know that we could have covered everything with tarps from the boat (it’s up on sawhorses in the driveway), but the operation must be achieved efficiently, swiftly, so that it’s too late to turn back. Our father hasn’t quite said yes to Bobby’s plan to switch my bedroom and the kitchen around. Maybe he doesn’t quite believe we’re going through with it. Or else he’s too wrapped up in his To Do list to take our plans seriously. But we’re trying to get as much messy work out of the way first, to prove to him how beautiful the house will be before he has the chance to resist.

Which he inevitably will.

Bobby’s sixteen; I’m seventeen. This is how the two of us plan to spend our weekends for the next four months.

The wall between the living room and bedroom is already half down before I strike it with my own hammer. My wrist hurts. We whoop, holler. I strike again, and then again. We laugh. Take that, I say, to the outrageous nervousness inside my gut. Take that, I say, to cheapness, control, the cold deep whirlpool that wants to take everything down inside it—what Mrs. Fox knew too well. Take that. We work through a storm of grit, a fierce white blizzard that’s transforming us into snowmen, but we’re entirely involved, committed to our project, even though Bobby hasn’t finished drawing up his plans, and doesn’t know how to manage the wiring, or how on earth he’ll get a sink to run water where my bed once stood. He yanks nails from the wood, the exposed studs sighing (how human, vulnerable they sound), as if he’s pulling out the house’s back teeth.

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