The weight of grief pins me against the doorframe, pressing my shoulder blades hard against the wood, rooting me to this threshold between the basement and the workshop. Just six months ago, my father stood here with me, helping to bolt that brown backing against the wall, the kind with holes for hanging tools I still haven’t bought. What’s that backing called again? Some kind of pegboard? Cork, maybe? I can’t believe I can’t ask him. “Vocabulary is everything,” he always said. But now, the names of things and their purposes are buried with him.
Dad believed in a workshop the way some believe in god. Something essential, reliable. When we bought this house last year, he was right here, helping my husband James and me lay out the space, teaching us how to organize, how a workshop could save us on house repairs. I can see the satisfaction in his face, the pride. Man, did it please him. Now I’m staring at an immaculate, unused space, wondering if he left this world disappointed we never built anything together here. I should have asked him to work on a project with me. Goddammit.
The rest of the basement has been a sanctuary of distractions. A ping-pong-slash-pool table, foosball, the couch where James and I sink in to watch movies on the 65-inch screen, a sound system from an audiophile's dream. But none of it reaches me today.
Fifteen minutes ago, James and I came back from the lawyer’s office. My family gathered there together, each of us listening, quiet and a little stunned, as the specifics of the will was read. The old man planned everything, right down to the passwords, utility accounts, each little detail. His credit was pristine, his preparations so thorough, each of us knew exactly what to expect from him, even after he’d gone. He was proud of us, of the lives we led, despite our faults. I realize now, in this doorframe, that I never gave him enough cause to be proud of me in the way he deserved.
In the parking lot, my sister, Emily, my brother, Mark, and I stood lingering, shuffling in the weight of memory. Emily broke the silence. “I keep wanting to call him. I miss hearing his voice on the line, saying the same corny thing every time I called, ‘Hi Dad.’”
In unison, all three of us said something different.
Emily laughed, “No, he’d say, ‘‘If it isn’t everyone’s favorite!’ every time I called.”
“Man,” Mark said, “with me, he’d say, ‘Here’s Trouble’!”
For me, it was, “This better be good!” Our laughter faded, and the silence returned, sweeter than it was before.
Dad left almost everything to Mom, but he’s carved out a few things for each of us. Emily got his SUV, practical and solid, just like him, still running smoothly after a decade of Dad’s meticulous care. Mark got the old bar collection, fine scotches, whiskies, and aperitifs, plus his set of golf clubs, pieces of their favorite time together. I got his desk, the one that had been my fort when I was small, my solitary place, and his library, modest but powerful. There are books so old, passed down through so many generations, they should be behind glass in a museum. Leather-bound, picture-plated volumes of Dickens, a small, soft, calf-skinned-covered collection of Robert Burns, and dusty home-repair manuals by Bob Vila. And that gray, textured, World Book Encyclopedia set. Used by every member of our family, the thick, grainy pages are where I first learned about anatomy, about how bodies are constructed. The human body acetates in those encyclopedias are burned in my brain, a discovery of life and secrets. The inheritance makes sense, makes it clear that he knew us all so well. Each of our significant others received something, too. Emily’s husband, his Lionel train pocket watch. Mark’s wife, his gardening supplies. James inherited Dad’s table-saw and planer.
All three of us children received $50,000. None of us knew anything about the trusts or money, not even Mom. Classic Dad.
James slips through the basement door, lighting a joint. He drapes an arm around me, presses his fingers around my lips, lets me inhale the spliff. I breathe in, thick and slow, my cheek resting against him. “Thinking of building something?” he asks, his voice low.
“I really am.”
I turn and exhale a thick plume, while I kiss him, and picture the scene from an outsider’s view, a smoky embrace in the dim basement. It's something I’ve found myself doing lately - imagining moments as if they’re a distant memory, as if I’m already learning to let go.
The day we move Dad’s table saw and planer into the workshop, I tell James I’m considering taking a sabbatical from work. “Something’s telling me to stay home, focus on something for myself, a project. Read. Build. Prepare.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “So, like, a midlife crisis?”
“It’s not a midlife crisis, James! Just some time off. I work hard. I’ve had a job since tenth grade. I can afford a few months to myself to figure things out, to invest that inheritance wisely. I’m not here to play housewife, and I don’t want to ask your permission to find myself.”
“Don’t people usually do the ‘find myself’ thing before 25?” he teases.
“I’m reconnecting,” I say, rolling my eyes. “How would you like me to phrase it?”
He laughs. “I don’t know. I worry that time off might not be healthy. What are you going to do all day, if you’re not traveling? What’s that saying about the devil eating idle hands?”
“Eating? It’s not eating, you goof! It’s, ‘idle hands are the devil’s workshop.’”
James chuckles. “I think I’m hungry.”
“But, the workshop. That’s it! I want to take time off and create something in our workshop.”
The first week of my sabbatical, we go to the Caribbean, James’ favorite place. I lie on the sand, restless. The calm of the breeze and the rhythm of the ocean stirs something in me, a vague urge towards some project, some purpose. But as the waves break, I feel a faint tinge of emptiness and imagine the desolation after a cataclysm. “What would you need if you survived the apocalypse?” I ask, more to myself than James.
James, reclined with this rum in hand, smirks at me. “Everything! I mean, water would be a high priority”
“Well, say the workshop was a safe zone, and you survived by hiding in there. Now, the apocalypse is over. What’s the first thing you make?”
“Everything,” he repeats. “If I’ve got the tools and materials…” he says, sipping his rum, “What’s the first thing you’d make?”
I think. “A refrigerator?”
“You’ll start with refrigeration? Bold choice.”
“Too hard?”
“You’d need electricity and coolant, for starters. Probably more than can be made from plywood and your dad’s table-saw.”
“Right.” I look out at the sea. “Something simpler. Primal.” I sit up. “I could make a fire, I think.”
“Not that primal,” James says, and I wonder what could fill the void of modern life, while satisfying our cavemen-like bare needs. Humans clutter every available space today. What’s the real necessity in a blank new world? I twirl the beach umbrella to provide more shade.
“Maybe… a wheel!”
“A wheel,” he laughs, incredulous, “I see the potential.”
“I mean there’d be no vehicles left. No gas. Unless there’s a skateboard hiding in the workshop, we’d need to make something to be mobile. I’d reinvent the wheel.”
“That’s pretty good.” James admits.
“My Dad would love that.”
“I’d be impressed, Maggie.”
I glance at him, the sand cool under my fingers. He kisses me in that way he does just to shut me up. I know that kiss well. I’ve considered doing something drastic just to win an argument with James. Building a wheel just might do.
Back home, I tell him over homemade lasagna and garlic bread that I’m going to
build it, a wooden wheel. “I want to conquer something.”
“Conquer what?” he asks, amused. “A tree?”
“Sure. I’ll cut down a tree. And not just for a wheel, I could make a bicycle. Or maybe a unicycle, so I only have to make one wheel.”
“Where will the propulsion come from? A wheel, maybe, but making something that actually moves might be a reach.” James says between bites.
“I’m researching, I’m figuring it out. Think about those wagons, the ones weirdo pioneers trekked across the country in the beginning. Those were made of hickory, and with no power tools. I could cut