Construction Paper

The Habit

Chapter 43: Construction Paper

The assignment arrived in July by way of a bright orange folder labeled SUMMER BRIDGE, which sounded to Noel like a municipal project and turned out to be worse.

Lila spread the papers across Renee's kitchen table on Morrow while Noel adjusted the back door strike plate and listened.

"Reading log," Lila said. "Math facts. Write about your favorite place. And this."

She held up a sheet titled MY FAMILY TREE.

The worksheet had a cartoon trunk and branches with blanks for names arranged according to a theory of family that had either never met reality or chosen to resist it on doctrinal grounds.

"I hate this already," Renee said.

"Can I put Bishop on a branch?" Lila asked.

"No."

"Then the worksheet is too strict."

Noel set down the screwdriver and came to the table.

The blanks waited there with institutional innocence. Mother. Father. Grandparents. No margins for half-siblings, neighbors who fed you, dead people whose love and damage shared the same handwriting, or men on porches who had become uncles by repeated use rather than legal architecture.

"We don't have to do it their way," he said.

Renee looked at him.

"It's a worksheet."

"So improve it."

Lila's face lit with the dangerous delight of sanctioned revision.

They got out construction paper.

Green for a bigger tree. Brown for a trunk broad enough to hold more than one story at once. Renee wrote names in careful black marker. Lila cut leaves too large and glued them anyway. Noel drew extra branches where the printed version had decided no complexity would be tolerated in public education.

Ruth went on one branch.

Elton went on another.

Renee on hers.

Lila at the center because that was where she lived, whether the worksheet grasped the principle or not.

Edna received a branch labeled NEXT DOOR / FEEDS PEOPLE.

Leon got one too after Lila argued persuasively that gardens and weather advice constituted family-adjacent governance.

Noel's name went where his hand hesitated for half a second before writing it: beside Renee on a branch extending from Elton and therefore from history, but with a second line in Lila's handwriting that reached sideways and said UNCLE NOEL.

"Can I do that?" she asked.

He looked at the tree.

"Yeah," he said. "You can do that."

The paper buckled slightly where the glue went on too wet. The leaves sat at conflicting angles. It looked nothing like the worksheet and much more like an actual attempt.

When they were done, Lila carried it to the couch and studied it from a distance as if checking for structural failure.

"This is better," she said. "The other one acted like only dead people count if they have the right title."

Renee laughed once, then wiped at her eye in the same motion and got annoyed with herself for the timing.

"You are exhausting," she said.

"I am correct."

Noel went back to the back door.

The strike plate needed only a slight adjustment. Two screws loosened, metal shifted a fraction, screws reset. The latch caught clean after that. He opened and closed the door twice to hear the difference.

Behind him the family tree dried on the table.

Not accurate in the bureaucratic sense. Accurate in the load-bearing one.

That night, back on Linden, he took the red-handled screwdriver from the truck console and put it in the kitchen drawer beside his own tools, not hidden, not elevated, simply entered into use.

Then he opened the notebook.

Kids given a worksheet about family will tell you fast whether the template knows what it is talking about. Today we cut a bigger tree out of construction paper and gave Lila more branches than the school form allowed for, which felt closer to the truth than pretending titles are the only things that hold. I let her write Uncle Noel beside my name and found out the word still sits easier in my chest than I expect each time.