Nothing. Not a drip or a drop. Bone dry.
And then it rained three inches within two hours. From the sound of the water on the roof, I knew I needed to keep an eye on things. At first, I only stood near the window. Then I moved to the porch, watching and listening to it all. The sound was glorious – a steady rush of water over aluminum. Everything was working. The gutters and downspouts pushed and diverted the water away. For good measure, I grabbed an umbrella and put on my deck boots to double check the catch basins outside. Another success. The water was flowing into the bottom of the driveway toward the creek. The mulch, the gravel, the grade of the yard – all of my preventative measures – took the summer deluge in stride. It didn’t matter that the water table was high, or that we’d already had a ton of rain. I was prepared, and so was my ship.
Levon caught me on one of my many trips down to the basement. “Dad, what are you doing?”
“I want to make sure the water isn’t getting in.”
“What will you do if that happens?”
“Clean it up.”
It was the only answer. In the middle of a storm, you can’t stop a leak. Still, I started my routine. Like a sea captain, worried about the weak hull, I hustled below deck, underneath the comfort and the footsteps of the passengers and into the garage side of our basement. With my Dewalt flashlight in hand, I searched for evidence, running my palm over the wall like a mystical dowser, knowing that the enemy was on the other side, waiting to get in. It is a routine that I find myself following four or five times a year.
I turn into a different person, a lookout. Our home is a schooner I must keep afloat.
It seems like I’ve been chasing water for decades. Whether it’s the Land Rover’s clogged sunroof drains that dump rain into the passenger-side footwell or a busted dishwasher drain that leaves a puddle of grime in the base of the machine, my senses are acute. I’ve learned my lesson. No matter how much Flex Seal, caulk, or hydraulic cement I use, water is a sneaky beast. It will find a way.
Then I saw it.
Despite my Sunday afternoons patching weak wall cracks with expanding urethane and injectable foam, a bead of water was falling out of a cinder block. As I watched it emerge from the painted wall, it looked like a magic trick. Within seconds, the dribble increased, moving from a slow crawl to a hurried march. Soon, there were others. Here a drip. There a drip. Everywhere a drip-drip. A battalion of water drops, ready to fight, had made their way in. I yelled up to my crew of three.
“The water is coming in!”
As our battle commenced into a slow tide, creeping up the beach, I tugged at a metal bookshelf full of old shoes, getting it out of the way. We were taking on water.
And then the storm outside heaved its last sigh.
The next day Levon said, “It’s not too bad, Dad.” He was right. With my well-worn squeegee and several fans, the bit of damp cleaned up quickly. For good measure, I went up on the roof and hosed out our gutters. Then I went to the hardware store and purchased more hydraulic cement. Even though I had done it before, I re-mudded the wall. With each swipe of concrete, I felt like I was glassing a boat, patching up the holes where the storm had come in, hoping my work would hold for the next tempest. At one point, Levon came down. I handed him a quarter. “Want to stick this into the concrete?”
“Sure.”
He found a dime and added that as well. His two coins stuck out inside the gray waterproofing, marking the spots where the water had first come in. I wrote his name on the wall along with his brother’s. When I painted the wall with white stain blocker, I worked around the two coins, but the names stood out, even after a third coat. It took a few days for the fumes to die out, but the wall was repaired. Another rain had come and the ship didn’t sink.
A week later, I was brushing my teeth, and Atticus was outside tossing a lacrosse ball against the brick wall of the garage when I heard a distinct noise. With my toothbrush still in my mouth, I ran into the garage, following the commotion. It was the normal scene: a knocked-over bike, a wet towel on the floor, a stray ice-cream wrapper. I checked the four glass panels in each garage door and even my patched-up wall. Everything was intact.
When I turned around, Atticus was standing there, holding a $100 bill in one hand, the lacrosse ball in the other. I pulled the toothbrush out of my mouth.
“What’s up? The garage windows look fine.”
“It’s Levon’s. I broke his window.”
Atticus opened the garage, and we looked up to the 2nd story. It was a heck of a throw. Circles of splintering shards looked like mountains of sharp stalactites around the bow’s porthole. We put on gloves and picked through the wreckage. After the first smashed window earlier this year, we had made a deal: You break it, you buy it.
When Atticus handed me the bill, I felt a bit bad. After all, I did the same thing as a kid – except it was three windows, not two – and I didn’t have to pitch in on repairs.
With an open gash in the house, Levon yelled down to both of us. “What if it rains?”
I looked at Atticus and handed back his money. “Listen, man, we can talk about it later. We’re all in this boat together.”
