"Mother of Men," by Lauren Groff

"a tall and wiry Italian guy from New Jersey who talks a great deal and wears so much cologne that he seems to linger in the rooms even when he's gone, plus three quiet Venezuelans who often have to quickly redo the things that the Jersey guy has done while he's taking a break. In and out of the house the workmen go all day, their boots crunching on the Ram Board over my rugs."

"It has been five months already, but the addition is somehow still hypothetical, an open wound, an tarp- covered construction leaking air-conditioning, allowing a scattering of palmetto bugs as shiny as polished buttons to stream inside. Once, I woke up at midnight to a disturbance in the addition and squinted into the dark of the construction and saw the weird pointy pale head of a possum looking at me from a hole that remains open to the outdoors,"

Numerous men fill the house: a husband and four construction workers renovating a bedroom-bathroom addition. The crew includes a talkative, heavily colognened Italian and three quiet Venezuelans who often redo his work. The project drags on for five months, leaving a tarp-covered, dusty, air-conditioning-leaking space that admits palmetto bugs and even a possum through an open hole. Workmen tramp across Ram Board on the rugs and cover surfaces with fine white dust. The speaker's two sons have grown into large, man-sized figures who barely fit doorways, prompting nostalgic dreams of the boys as small, soft-smelling children.

Read at The New Yorker