Famous Builder

Junta

New World

Famous Builder 1

Naming You

Luck Be a Lady

Famous Builder 2

Wisdom Has Built Herself a House

Renovation

Captain St. Lucifer

Same Situation

Mystic Islands

Afternoon with Canals

Pygmalion Salon

Famous Builder 3

Refuge of the Roads

On Broadway

I.

“Lisicky.”

What?

I try to project my name toward the ridged roof of my mouth. I try to keep my jaw loose, my eyes animated, secure. I think: Smith, Stevens, Bishop.

“Li-sick-y,” I say again. “Paul Lisicky.”

How do you spell that?

I note the hushed quality of the bank teller’s voice, the tender, quizzical lift of her penciled-in brow. She leans in closer to me, palms flattened against the counter as if I’ve just told her my condition is terminal.

II.

In 1970, at the Bret Harte School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a substitute teacher with flame-bright hair and an exhausted, gullible demeanor walked into her assigned fifth-grade classroom and dropped a violet, bullet-shaped purse on the desk. It took but two minutes for us to size her up. She took out a creased sheet from its blue satin lining, called out “Samuel Agresta,” and after a pause, Barry Lem raised his hand. Then “Allegra Asher,” who was answered instantly by Marguerite Keating and “Brian Boguslaw” by Wendell Waties. In no time at all, others joined in, as steely and determined as plain-clothes soldiers walking through the markets of a corrupt village.

I was Kevin Navins. I huddled over my desk, surprised by the ease with which my hand moved across the paper, my brain supplying me with ready answers to the multiplication tables. I hadn’t so much taken on the characteristics of the real Kevin, who cooled his agitated face against the windowpane, longing to be anywhere but in this world of paste jars, milk tickets, and old oranges souring the depths of desks, but rather of someone tranquil and collected, content to live in his skin. When I glanced up at the blond Ewart Greet, who was Paul Lisicky for the morning, I was surprised to see his gray-green eyes fixed to the assignment. He didn’t worry that he’d just recovered from another strep throat and missed the last two weeks of school. Nor did he fret about the lunchtime game in which he’d inevitably be struck in the face with a heavy white ball. His forehead pinked with vitality, good cheer.

But it didn’t stop there. Two hours later, after we’d come in from the snowy blacktop, and Mrs. Balotin had been summoned by the principal’s office to correct the inacuracies on her roll sheet, she called out our names again. Soon Kevin Navins was Carol Campiglia, Mona Chase was Damean Osisek, David Monshaw Marguerite Keating, until everyone had so many identities, no one knew who anyone was for sure. Mrs. Balotin massaged the freckled bridge of her nose between her forefinger and thumb. She glared and let out a raspy laugh. “You kids.” She wagged her head back and forth, ripped the roll sheet in half, and tossed it into the waste basket.

That day I walked home from the bus stop with a brisk step, the bottoms of my sneakers skating across black ice. Later, I’d come down with another sore throat, but at that moment, I could have been anything: the spaniel tearing through the hollies, the water sparkling in his deep blue bowl.

My father won’t sit still. He walks to the sliding glass door, stares out at the lagoon. He paces the bare tile floors of our summerhouse with a solemn, abstracted expression. His footsteps shake the rafters, shake us to the root. He stands in the kitchen, pulls out a sheet of paper, and writes a To Do list in his firm cursive:

The raft, however, rises to the top of the list. The orange foam beneath it has lost its buoyancy after two years in saltwater. “We should have bought the good stuff,” he says, shaking his head. “They saw us coming.” It doesn’t seem to faze him that it’s ninety-two degrees, the Friday before Fourth-of-July weekend. We trudge outside behind him. Two houses down the Sendrow girls lie facedown on their towels, the backs of their legs basted with Bain de Soleil. Next door Mr. Forte and his friend Fisher, just back from the Inlet, clean flounder, wrap soft filets in aluminum foil. Perspiration creeps through my hair. I touch my scalp just to make sure it’s not … beetles? My father kneels below us on the raft, fastening the rope to a pitted ring in the corner. Bobby and I stand on top of the bulkhead. Soon enough he jumps up beside us and the three of us pull and strain with all our might. The veins in my neck thicken. I’m not even sure my exertions affect anything: I’m thirteen years old, my arms thick as drinking straws. Although Bobby is stronger, he’s not doing much better. Still, just as the rope skins the flesh of my palms, just as I’m ready to let go, to say aloud that we’re a doomed, foolish family giving ourselves over to chores we can’t possibly complete—why can’t we ever
hire
somebody?—we manage to get the wooden behemoth up onto the grass, turning it over on its back. The three of us suck in our breaths. Its underside is encrusted with the physical symbols of shame: greasy mussels, prehistoric white barnacles, and rich green seaweed. The foam has faded to a bleached pink. Exposed to sunlight, it smells like an emptied can of fish chowder.

“Holy Mackerel,” says Mr. Forte, who walks over to get a look.

I lie on the grass, breathing, breathing, listening to my beating heart. My eyes follow the tiny plane towing an advertising banner overhead: FOR SUNBURN PAIN TRY SOLARCAINE. Its engine putters, then fades. My father and Bobby sit off to the side, their brows sweaty, their faces the russet of our brick patio. (What does
my
face look like? Surely, they’ve been responsible for most of the hefting.) Only after my heart has stilled, only after I’ve made a reasonable demonstration of my willingness to help, do I rise to my feet and brush off the loose grass blades sticking to the backs of my legs.

“I have to pee,” I declare.

Inside, I walk past my mother, close the bathroom door, and sit on the cool tile floor. How good it feels to be by myself, to be silent, to be still again. A tingling comes back into the tips of my fingers. I’m no longer part of the larger body of my father and my family, but I’m my own body again. There is a splinter buried in the heel of my hand, which I squeeze till I wince. Things are happening inside my head. One minute I work on a new song, which I’m planning to send to the producers of
The Partridge Family
, the next I think about the street names in Cambridge Park, a development under construction near our house in Cherry Hill. Everyone who knows me knows that I want to be a builder, a famous builder, like Bill Levitt, when I’m older. I want those who drive through my communities to be socked in the head with the sheer beauty of all they see.

I huddle in the coolish bathroom and murmur, moving my lips as if I’m reciting the rosary:
Pageant Lane, Pennypacker Drive, Poppy Turn, Pershing Lane.

Footsteps heavy on the living-room floor. I rumble the toilet-paper roll, throw the unused sheets in the trash, then flush.

“Where’s Paul?” my father asks gravely.

His tone says it all: I’m not serious or helpful, I have a deep, self-absorbed streak. There’s a heat in my stomach, a small contraction. My mother stirs a boiling pot on the other side of the wall and makes macaroni salad for lunch.

“He’s in the bathroom.”

I slip out into the back hall, where I grab a broom and pretend to sweep the floor around the water heater. (His usual expression every time he catches us at rest: “What are you doing, sitting around with your teeth in your mouth?” Or worse: “CLEAN UP THIS PLACE!”)

Beach sand flies up against the laundry tub, pinging.

“I need your help,” says my father. He’s taken off his shirt. He looks down at his nicked, bleeding hands.

“But I thought we were done.”