you plant asparagus you don’t eat it the first year. If you’re smart, you don’t eat it even the second year. When you plant asparagus, you’re making a bond, to be there when it’s time to harvest it, at least three years on.
* * *
While I planted, Karen and Helen planned the house we’d build. They located a place for it, a nearly flat spot close to the firepit, just below the garden. In fact a swamp, but Helen said it didn’t matter because we’d build the house on piers. She said it was better than up on the ridge because we wouldn’t have to haul lumber so far. Karen didn’t say much. She drew pictures: one large room, a kitchen and living room connected, and a second story, a loft with two bedrooms, separated by a partition. Post and beam. Two hundred and sixty square would be the footprint. Only slightly bigger than the cabin Perley had been born in at the Land Trust, but this one would be ours. Ours and Helen’s.
In May, we borrowed a generator from Frank. Helen bought a cheap set of power tools. We were getting everything used, on the cheap, or borrowed. I hadn’t been to work in three months, but my boss at the hardware and salvage store raised an eyebrow and gave me the employee discount. Still, Karen and me were getting low on funds, not that we ever talked to each other about it. I don’t know if she remembered that we still owed a month’s rent at the Land Trust. I waited for her to bring it up, but she acted like life began and ended on Helen’s slope. She hadn’t talked about the clinic since the baby was born. Me, I couldn’t see leaving Perley, not yet. He still wanted milk every forty-five minutes. Besides, who would I leave him with? Karen and Helen were too busy building the house to look after him, so I got busy, too. The sooner we had the place finished, the sooner we could think about other things. With Perley strapped to my back, I dug post holes, hauled lumber, and drove nails. Perley didn’t mind me hammering. He’d swing his legs back and forth against my hips as I knocked nails in. He and I stood back while Helen and Karen mixed concrete and used the circular saw.
I noticed right away that Helen acted as lead carpenter, which didn’t make sense. Rather than half knowing how to build, I saw that, as with many things, Helen wouldn’t allow any part of herself not to know.
I dug holes for the piers, while Karen mixed concrete in a wheelbarrow. She tossed me a tape measure. “Make sure those holes are deep enough. Remember we have to get below the frost line,” she said. But Helen took the tape measure. “They’re deep enough,” she said. “Can’t be perfectionists about every little thing. Not if we want to get this thing up before winter.” I looked at Karen, but she became busy with the concrete, trying to mix more water into a dry crumbling heap that Helen had declared ready to be poured.
By June, the frame was up, and we’d wrapped the place in used billboard canvas, so an enormous pixelated hamburger stared us in the face. We tacked plastic up on the walls. We were still waiting for siding that Mike from the gas station said he could get cheap off this guy once he helped him take down a barn. Helen hauled garbage bags of cellulose insulation up the hill, wheelbarrowed them down the trail to the house site.
“Just what is that?” asked Karen, turning off the generator.
“It’s the latest,” Helen said. “Eco-friendly. Way easier than spending all day cutting up foam boards. Read the package. It says we just blow this stuff in.”
“Blow it in with what?” asked Karen.
“We’ll rent a machine,” Helen said. “Trust me, this stuff is cutting-edge.”
“You’re supposed to wait to put that stuff in until the siding is up,” Karen said, but Helen shook her head.
“We’ll insulate first, then get to the siding later on,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. It’s industry standard.”
I waited for Karen to say, What the hell do you know about industry standard? but Karen, usually so tough, had lately turned meek. The only ferocity she showed was in pulling the cord on the generator so hard she almost broke the damn thing. Then she went back to work.