On the day after the permits cleared, a mud-encrusted truck pulled up in front of our house. We watched, my husband and I, as leather-booted workmen marched into our living room. They leaned against our walls, waiting, as the contractor slid the blueprints out of a tube. The paper had a translucent, fragile look, like human skin stretched out and dried. The man traced the spidery lines with his eyes, combing his fingers distractedly through his silvery hair. Then he pointed: this doorway, that window. The men launched themselves at our house with crowbars and hammers, bellowing at each other in Spanish.
As our home blew up around us, I turned to my husband. This remodeling project was his idea, his gesture towards reconciliation. As the dust snowed down upon us in choking flurries, he grabbed my hand and pulled me to the door.
The ashy powder drifted into the take-out food we consumed every evening, leaving a chalky taste in our mouths. It aged our clothes to a ghostly gray, and all night long we breathed it into our lungs. It left our dreams desiccated, barren. We spent our days away from the house, but when we came back the workmen were still at it, cutting each day into a thousand sharp shreds. Our lives were nothing but the grinding horror of a table saw.
Then one morning the contractor rolled the plans up into a tight cylinder. What's wrong, I asked the workers, que pasa, I tried. They didn't answer. Instead they loaded up their tools and drove away. The next day a pair of Irish maids arrived, scrubbing all the surfaces clean. We opened a bottle of champagne, my husband and I. We walked around looking at everything, at each other. The floors glowed, the counter tops gleamed.
It is possible to rebuild. My husband says that with the counselor’s help, he has learned to love me more than ever. He was going to end the affair even before the woman called to tell me about it. He’s changed, he says, and it will never happen again. As for me, I’ve learned I must praise his accomplishments, and be thankful. I wasn’t attentive enough to his needs -- this is what the counselor told me. I must, it seems, be more like her, like that woman from his office.
Over time, I’ve noticed some flaws in the design: there are rooms that seem a little cramped. There’s a window that looks out onto a blank wall. Sometimes I think I’ll tell my husband that I don’t like this place – that I don’t want to live here anymore. But every now and then I find a trace of sawdust. It hides under beds and in closets; when I find it, it swirls up, choking me. The dust reminds me of all that we went through together this summer, my husband and I, destroying our home and then rebuilding it. And so I stay, for now.
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