The Spotless House We Left Behind

How we ended up in the basement

I should explain how a grown man with a trade ends up living under his in-laws’ kitchen. It wasn’t because we were broke. It was because we were trying very hard not to be.

I’m a diesel mechanic. I work at a truck shop on the north side of Sioux Falls, out by the interstate, mostly on Peterbilts and Kenworths that come in off the road with a check engine light and a driver who needs to be in Denver yesterday.

The pay is fair. The hours are long. In the summer I’m on at seven and lucky to be off by six. I come home smelling like diesel and brake cleaner and there’s no shower in the world that gets it all off.

Natalie teaches the four-year-olds at a preschool in Brandon. She loves it. She comes home with glue on her hands and glitter in her hair and stories about a boy named Henry who will only answer to Captain.

When we got married we were renting a one-bedroom apartment off 41st Street for $1,050 a month, plus electric, and every month we put away almost nothing. Houses around Sioux Falls had gone up so far that the little ranch houses we liked were selling for close to three hundred thousand.

We wanted ten percent down. We did the math at our kitchen table one night and figured we’d be forty before we got there.

That spring, Faye made the offer. The basement was finished, she said. There was a bedroom and a little sitting room and a three-quarter bath. They’d charge us $650 a month, which would cover what we used and then some, and we could save the difference.

“It’s what family does,” she said. “We’d love to have you.”

We said yes. I want to be honest about that. Nobody made us. We looked at $650 against $1,050 plus electric and we thought we’d been handed a gift. In a way, we had.

We moved in that June with two pickup loads and a mattress, and for the first few weeks it was fine. Faye cooked. Natalie helped. Gordon and I watched the Twins together on the couch and didn’t say much, which suited both of us.

Then Brittany started coming over.

The chart

Brittany is Natalie’s older sister by three years. She’s married to Wade Cole, who works road construction for an outfit out of Sioux Falls, and from April to November he’s gone before sunup and home after dark.

They have three kids. Owen was six when we moved in. Lily was three. Sam was barely walking.

Brittany had always leaned on her mom. Natalie told me that early on. Brittany was the one who got the colic, the ear tubes, the bad year in high school. Natalie was the one who got straight A’s and never needed a ride.

“Mom says I was the easy one,” Natalie told me once. She said it like it was a compliment. I didn’t think it sounded like one.

By that first fall, Brittany and the kids were at the Lindahls’ house for breakfast most mornings. Then for supper most nights. Then on Saturdays, so Brittany could “get some things done,” which usually meant the kids stayed with us.

That was when the chart went up on the fridge.

Faye had been a school secretary in Brandon for thirty years, and she ran her house the same way she’d run that front office. Everything had a box. Every box had a name. She was proud of it.

“This way nobody has to wonder,” she said, tapping it with her marker. “Everybody pulls their weight.”

Everybody but Brittany. When Natalie asked about it the first week, gently, Faye said Brittany had enough on her plate with three little ones and a husband who was never home. “You two have it easy,” she said. “You don’t have kids yet. You can help your sister out.”

So Natalie helped her sister out. For two years.