The weekend started out
awesome. Scott and I found some time to go out, something we hadn't done for
months. We left the kids with a sitter and saw the Book of Mormon, then lingered over drinks.
It was
nice to talk for once about something other than the house. Or the other house.
Or the logistics of managing the family. Or money. Or the punchlist that Igor
has barely dented.
We talked instead about how lobster bisque
should have real lobster in it rather than those tiny shrimp. About some
lasagna recipe Scott had read about and wanted to try and make over the
weekend. About how Matt Stone and Trey Parker have become the greatest
satirists of the modern age, and how somehow they are also capable of writing
awesome musicals.
Scott
watched the kids the next morning while I taught yoga, and again in the
afternoon while I did a teacher training at my gym. He'd given me an extensive
list of lasagna ingredients to bring home with me.
I was
feeling good, lighter somehow than I'd felt in a while, looking forward to some
lasagna on a rainy October Saturday night.
And
then I got the following text:
I
wasn't sure what to think. The hasty, uncorrected spelling errors from my meticulous
husband indicated a sense of urgency, but I wasn't sure if was the kind of
urgency that said, “Come home and manage your children” or “Come home and help
me build an ark.”
:::
It
took forever for me to get home. Rain was pouring from a leaden sky, at times
overwhelming my windshield wipers. I'd run into some construction as well, as
the city makes its last mad dash to repair the streets before winter. Scott
called me just as I was turning in to the alley.
“I'm
almost home,” I said by way of greeting.
“The
house is destroyed,” Scott said.
Scott
uses the word “destroyed” more loosely than I do. He might say “The car is
destroyed” meaning it's full of garbage. Or he might say that Kai destroyed his
dresser, when what he really means is that Kai chipped the paint off of it, and
while it's true that it's no longer pristine, it still functions as a dresser.
And if
I still wasn't sure about the nature of the destruction, or my role in its
aftermath, I was made aware in that moment.
Because
it sounded to me like Scott might be crying.
:::
I
raced into the house and up the stairs to find him. He pointed to the ceiling
in Kai's room, which is right under the room that Kai flooded. My heart sank. Water
was dripping though the can light onto the wood floor below.
“Find
a way to make this stop,” he said, trusting a towel in my direction and running
back upstairs.
I went
down to the kitchen for some Tupperware bowls and the ladder and went to work.
I found another leak in the kids' bathroom. I wiped away the excess water,
removed the can from the ceiling, mopped up the floor. When I was satisfied
that the situation was no longer urgent, I went upstairs.
Our “penthouse”
is a room on the roof that leads to the roof deck. It's meant to be a party
room, outfitted with a wet bar.
Scott
was on his hands and knees soaking up water with paper towels. It looked like I
missed the lion's share of the drama. Outside on the roof was a soggy pile that
looked like it was just about all of our cloth towels.
“Where
are the kids?” I asked.
“I
think they're downstairs in the basement,” Scott said.
I
nodded, wondering what sort of ministrations they were needing right now.
“What
happened?” I asked.
“Kai
put the stopper in the wet bar sink and started the water.” Anger gave his
words a staccato edge.
I
sighed.
“How
did you discover it?”
Scott
shrugged.
“Kai
was gone,” he said, “and I heard a noise.”
Scott
had come upstairs to find Kai with his feet in the sink, water spilling up and
over the rim of the sink and onto the tile floor.
The
noise Scott had heard was water cascading over the lofted ledge, creating a perfect
waterfall onto the floor below.
:::
Scott
and I worked together in silence for a while.
“This
was the dumbest thing I've ever done,” he said. “We were comfortable. We had
money in the bank.”
I
stuck the edge of a paper towel under a crack in the baseboard and watched as
the water soaked into it.
“I
should have known that Kai would just destroy everything.”
He was
talking about the buying the house.
I
think.
:::
I
finally went downstairs to find Kai.
“What
did you do upstairs?” I asked him.
“Uh,
nothing,” he said.
“Did
you turn on the water?”
“No,”
he said.
I
looked at him for a long moment. “Come on,” I said.
I took
him upstairs with me and showed him where water had come through his ceiling,
and into the penthouse where Scott was still working.
“Kai,
you're not allowed up here without a grown-up ever again,” I said.
“Okay.”
I cast
about for a punishment that would really make him think about what he'd done.
“And
no iPad for a week.”
“A
week?” he asked.
“You
can have it back next Saturday.”
“But I
am sorry,” Kai said.
“This
is going to cost us thousands of dollars, Kai,” Scott said.
“I am
so sorry,” Kai repeated.
I
squeezed his shoulder. “Thank you for saying that,” I said.
Kai
went back downstairs. I looked at Scott.
“Still
want to make a lasagna?” I asked.
:::
On
Sunday morning, I found water marks on the ceiling in both Kai's room and the
kids' bathroom as the water found the lowest point and began to settle.
We
also discovered that the furnace in the penthouse us leaking condensation,
something that is unrelated to Kai flooding the house, and something we never
would have found if that hadn't happened. Which is something. I guess.
I took
the kids with me to work in the morning, and to Monkey Island in the afternoon,
assuming that Scott needed some time alone. I wasn't sure if Kai understood his
punishment or not, but he didn't asked me for the iPad all day, which is
probably some kind of record.
I
don't, however, have any idea how we are going to keep Kai from doing any more
damage to the house. It's as if he just can’t help it, as if he follows a
thread of a thought with such singular focus that he doesn’t even realize he’s
creating white water rapids down our brand-new oak staircase. He doesn't
destroy things maliciously. He does it because he gets an idea and is oblivious
to anything else.
A rogues gallery of past mischief:
This is not the first time Kai has enjoyed some sink action. We often came upstairs to find him doing this at our old place.
Can sculpture. What do you mean "clean it up?"
Why I have to hide my Sharpies.
Yes. That is my son. Naked. Sitting on the counter. Holding a paring knife with which he plans to cut that apple. Me, "Kai, you can't cut this apple by yourself." Kai, "But I wanted an apple." It doesn't occur to him to bring it to me for help.
:::
He
climbed up onto a stool at the kitchen island Sunday morning, reaching for the handheld
spray nozzle, drawn yet again to the sink by some force the rest of us can't
see and don't understand. He wrapped his hand around the nozzle, wearing the
same expression of joy and relief that Gollum had when he finally got his hands
back on the Precious.
"Kai!"
Scott
and I both yelled his name, flung it sharply through the air.
Kai
started, and then put the sprayer back in its cradle.
"No
more water," Scott said.
"Okay,"
Kai said, slithering back down to the floor. He ran back into the TV room.
Scott
and I watched him go.
Later that night, I told him we needed to do some homework on the iPad.
“Is it Saturday already?” he asked. And I realized he did understand.
I cringed a little, though, explaining that we were going to use the iPad only to do math, which is like telling my husband that he is only allowed to use his Porsche to get tacos.
He asked for a book at bedtime for the first time in a long time. He chose, “I Love You All the Time,” a book meant to reassure children that no matter what they do or where we are, we always love them. Scott and I read to him with a great deal of sincerity.
“I love you all the time, too,” Kai said.
And in that moment we had a silver lining to the whole episode—that he understands the mechanics of screwing up and getting in trouble, that there are consequences, that he has to earn back our trust, but that he never needed to question our love. Isn’t that what we thought parenting would be before we realized parenting was nothing like what we had imagined?
I just wish we could have had that moment without destroying the new house.
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