Temporary Bracing

The Habit

Chapter 33: Temporary Bracing

The house looked injured from the street.

Not gravely. Not theatrically. But enough that people slowed half a beat when they walked past, the way they do near any visible sign that a familiar structure has been forced to admit weakness in public.

The temporary post at the south corner was pressure-treated and unmistakably new. The opened trim revealed darker wood behind it. A section of decking had been lifted and stacked near the porch rail like a row of extracted teeth. Noel had to remind himself each time he pulled into the driveway that the incompletion was the repair, not its failure.

He began using the back door without fully deciding to.

This, he knew, was ridiculous. The front steps were safe. Darren had checked the load twice before leaving. The porch was not collapsing. But entering through the back let him avoid looking directly at the exposed corner, and avoidance has always advertised itself first as convenience.

Edna noticed on Tuesday.

She was coming up the side yard with a Tupperware container when Noel emerged by the trash cans carrying a bag of coffee grounds and eggshells for the compost pile he maintained without passion and with moderate competence.

"Are we doing side-door religion now?" she asked.

"It's closer to the cans."

"It's cowardice with mulch on it."

She handed him the container.

"Chicken and dumplings. Bring my bowl back before Pentecost."

He took the bowl.

"The front is fine."

"I know the front is fine," Edna said. "I'm talking about you."

She left him standing by the cans with the dumplings warm through the plastic and the side yard feeling less like a route than a diagnosis.

That night Lila called during dinner because, as Renee explained in the background, she had decided architecture required an update.

"Did they cut the house open?" she asked.

"A little."

"Did it cry?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

Noel looked toward the front windows.

"It made some old-house language."

"Mama says that's not an answer."

"It's the best one I have."

He described the temporary post. The jacked corner. The boards stacked by the rail. Lila took the news in with reverent enthusiasm.

"So it has braces."

"Temporary ones."

"Temporary still counts."

Noel smiled despite himself.

"I guess it does."

"When I had braces on my teeth the orthodontist said you have to make room before things can line up right." She lowered her voice into the confidential seriousness children use when conveying specialized expertise. "I think houses probably hate it the same amount."

Renee took the phone back long enough to say, "Also, our landlord is doing a showing on Saturday, so if you hear me sound violent in the next week, that's why."

Noel paused.

"You moving?"

"Not yet. He's just making noises about selling the place. Which in landlord dialect means I should start practicing concern."

After they hung up, Noel stood in the front room a long minute with the phone in his hand.

The opened porch corner.

The showing in Memphis.

The strange convergence of front-facing weaknesses requiring strangers to acknowledge what they had previously been able to ignore.

On Saturday Darren came back with the new post and a bag of mortar mix. They removed the old post entirely. The bottom came away in Noel's hands with a softness that still shocked him, though he had already seen the black screwdriver tip and the damp grain and the story water had been telling.

"You think anything's holding because it's vertical," Darren said. "Half the time it's just habit and paint."

They chipped out the top mortar, reset the pier cap true, cut the new post, and stood it in place. For one brief and almost comic minute the beam hung between the jack and the post like a man deciding which truth would be easier to live with.

Then the load transferred.

The change was small. Audible more than visible. A settling note through the timber that sounded less like surrender than agreement.

That evening Noel made himself carry a chair out the front door and sit on the porch facing Linden with the temporary bracing still visible. Leon nodded from his driveway as if the act counted for something.

It did.

He was not waiting until the house looked finished to inhabit it.

That night he wrote:

After three days of using the back door like a man avoiding his own diagnosis, I sat on the front porch anyway and let the street look at the temporary bracing. Lila says houses with braces probably hate the process and need it just the same. Memphis may have to start looking for another place before summer if the landlord keeps doing what landlords call improvements.