“Well, I hope they don’t get poked with an old rusty spring from the fucking couch and get tetanus and have to have a limb amputated,” I said, stalking from the room.
“At Least You’re Not Married to Him”
When we were renovating our house, my husband was a complete obsessive-compulsive. Every decision took weeks. Decisions about tile, molding, trim, carpet, fixtures, windows, doorknobs, etc., were each painful episodes in our relationship. Ultimately, I would fold. If I had an opinion that varied from his, he would beat me down with questions about my reasoning. And it didn’t end there; even after I explained my rationale for my choices, he would suggest alternatives. I couldn’t deal with most of it and would just give in. It’s easier to just maintain the peace, right? We had agreed that I was going to be the one to choose all the paint colors, but I wound up in the hospital with severe abdominal pain in the middle of the project. As I writhed in pain in the hospital, my husband and the contractor spread paint color samples all over the bed and I made my selections. Seven days later I was home, after two surgeries and missing a gallbladder—and my husband had changed almost every single thing I’d chosen.
VICKY
Not even including the flip house, Joe and I have undertaken hundreds of construction projects together. I’m not talking about putting together a swing set or building a doghouse or outfitting a pantry with new shelves (although we’ve done those things, too). I’m talking about full-scale, live-in-it, multimonth, add-a-room, move-a-wall, rent-a-jackhammer, washdishes-in-the-bathtub-for-weeks endeavors. Our single refrigerator lived in the garage for so long during one kitchen remodel that I’d automatically shuffle sleepily outside every morning to get the cream for my coffee even months after the project was finally finished. Despite having more than a decade of experience under our well-worn tool belts, our very last joint venture—the building of the aforementioned and long-awaited Zen retreat of a master bathroom in the house my husband insists we are going to live in until we die—wasn’t without its challenges.
Every night after the kids went to bed, we’d meet in the dirty, dusty space of our future sanctuary and debate the infinite design possibilities. Before long, we dubbed our nightly meeting the “FUF,” short for
Fuck-You Fest
—because invariably, no matter how hard we each tried to be flexible and understanding, that’s pretty much what it was.
“You ready for the FUF?” he’d ask, handing me a very full wineglass. It’s absolutely not a FUF without adult beverages.
“Bring it,” I’d reply with mock antagonism, accepting the goblet and clinking it against his beer glass.
“Where do you want your main light switch?” Joe asked one night at the onset of the evening’s FUF. Christ, he already sounded impatient, and we were just starting. I took a hearty swig of my wine.
“Right here,” I said, carpenter’s pencil poised to make a big fat X at the center point. I’d sneaked into the construction zone earlier and mentally arranged all of the hardware and outlets and accessories to determine the perfect placement. I knew that when Joe was working, he liked immediate answers, and I was ready. Plus when you grow up as a builder’s daughter, you know how these things work.
“You can’t have it there,” Joe said plainly. “There’s a pipe running behind that wall.”
“Oh, okay,” I stammered, unprepared for this kink in my carefully thought-out design.
I thought for a moment, surveying the space.
“I guess it could work here,” I said, moving my pencil toward the only other even remotely acceptable spot on the wall.
Damn it all to hell, that’s going to look like ass and it isn’t a functional place for a light switch at all
, I thought to myself. But I was trying to be flexible—something that’s not in my nature.
“Can’t have it there, either,” Joe replied, shaking his head. “Once I put the trim piece on, there won’t be room.”
I started to seethe.
“Well, why don’t you just tell me where I
can
have it,” I snapped.
“Pretty much right here,” he said, indicating a seemingly arbitrary, centered-on-nothing point on the geometric plane that was the wall, in precisely the spot where I had planned to hang the robe hooks.
“Perfect,” I said sarcastically.
“Where do you want your outlets?” he asked in all sincerity.
“Is that a trick question?” I demanded. “Because ideally I would like them centered over the backsplash.”
“Yeah well, that’s not to code,” he replied.
“Then put them wherever the hell you want and thanks for asking,” I muttered, throwing my pencil into a pile of sawdust and flouncing from the room. (I flounce from rooms a lot; it drives Joe crazy.)
“So we’re done here?” he bellowed after me. I ignored him.
Pretty soon the weeks of individual, nightly FUFs started to blend into one giant festival of angry obscenities. The finished, fuzzy result was an eleven-month “discussion” about where I wanted the faucet handles and how I wanted the tile laid out and how high I wanted the top of the pony wall next to the toilet to be, all of these “discussions” were moot because there weren’t actually any options. Nevertheless, Joe would ask and I would answer and he would proceed to tell me why what I wanted wasn’t going to be possible at all and I’d fly off in a murderous rage, because that’s what I do.
After a lengthy debate about which sort of light I
couldn’t
have over the bathtub, I found and bought a darling petite crystal chandelier. It was absolutely perfect, practically made for the space.
“You can’t have that over the tub,” Joe said when I showed it to him.
“Why not?” I demanded, crushed.
“Because if you grab it when you’re in the tub, you’ll get electrocuted and die,” he replied wryly.
“How could I grab it when I’m in the tub?” I asked. “I’ll be sitting down!”
“Not when you’re getting in and out,” he insisted.
“You never said I couldn’t have a chandelier there,” I reminded him with a pout.
“Well, I’m saying it now,” he answered.
Cue the exit music.
Eventually, every single detail had been hammered out and we could cross
master bathroom
off our endless remodel list. Remarkably enough, the finished product turned out quite beautifully, and I’ve gotten used to reaching behind a wall of damp towels and fluffy bathrobes to flip the light switches on and off. Most important, we’re still married. I guess that’s all that really matters. That and I got my lovely little crystal chandelier centered over the bathtub, and I’m still alive to tell about it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Are You In
or Are You Out?
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend.
Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
• GROUCHO MARX •
Joe and I are similar in that we both like carefully constructed systems and elaborately detailed plans. Go-with-the-flow, we are not. When I got pregnant the first time, I wondered how we would ever be able to agree on a name for our unborn future child. We had endless lists of possible monikers but nothing close to a consensus. He refused to consider Sebastian or Olive, and I put the kibosh on Jordan and Joe Jr. He scoffed when I added Hunter to the girl-name list, even after I agreed to consider Mokelumne for a boy (I’d just call him Mack). Finally I offered a suggestion, the best I could come up with besides drawing straws or paper-scissors-rock: If it was a girl, I got final say from a field of mutually acceptable choices, and if it was a boy, he’d get to make the ultimate call. It seemed fair enough and Joe agreed to it, but still I prayed for a girl. (I like to think that my two daughters are proof that God likes me and He listens.)
When we bought our first house together, I got a tiny taste of what the rest of my life was going to look like. Joe and I requested duplicate copies of every single piece of paper associated with the purchase and spent ridiculous amounts of money at Staples in order to painstakingly organize our individual forests of forms. It was an exhausting waste of time and resources, but we hadn’t figured out a single record-keeping method we could co-manage without killing each other yet.
“Do you have a copy of the physical inspection report?” our real estate agent would ask us, and Joe and I would frantically tear through our respective color-coded binders, desperate to be the one who could locate the document first. We laughed together at our shared compulsiveness, but it was obvious that once we were
in
the house, there would have to be a mutually agreed-upon division of authority.
“How about I get inside and you get outside?” I suggested.
“What do you mean?” Joe asked, sounding appropriately suspicious.
“Well, we are going to have to make a million decisions about paint colors and furniture placement and fixture choices and landscaping and stuff,” I explained. “I think we might avoid a lot of fights if each of us has a domain.” I was waiting for him to point out that there would be a lot more decisions to be made
inside
, where we’d also be spending the majority of our time, but surprisingly he agreed. It was official: I would never have to even pretend to consider hanging a framed basketball-legend poster on my living room wall, or argue over a stupid wagon-wheel Roy Rogers garage-sale coffee table. I could hardly believe my good fortune.
“Please don’t take down that tree in the back that I love,” I added sweetly, referring to an adorable gumdrop-shape bit of greenery that was one of the first things I’d noticed when we looked at the house.
“That’s not a tree, it’s an overgrown shrub,” he countered. “And it’s going.”
“Fine,” I spat. “I hope you like your new pink bedroom.”
Despite the rocky start to the inside/outside agenda, it has served us well over the years—with a few noteworthy exceptions.
One day after we’d been in our first home for a few months, I was strolling through an antiques store when I saw it: an architecturally stunning recycled garden station crafted entirely from vintage pieces. The top was a repurposed door into which a large hole had been lovingly cut to hold a weathered porcelain bowl. The back had decorative wrought iron corbels holding up a former drawer front enjoying a new life as a shelf. Best of all, the front of the reincarnated shelf was dotted with antique glass knobs—aged to the perfect shade of purple—where I could hang all of the garden tools I didn’t have because technically I can’t stand gardening, but I could always buy some tools, and besides, having this beautiful piece of furniture on the property might even inspire me to cultivate a green thumb after all. My lack of agricultural interest or inclination didn’t diminish the appeal of this wonderfully lovely bit of recycled history in any way. The thing oozed more charm than any season’s
Bachelor
ever has, and I wanted it desperately.
I have a husband now,
I reminded myself. I was still in that giddy newlywed phase where I nearly wrecked my car a hundred times a day because I was busy staring at the way the sunlight glinted off of the princess-cut diamond on my left hand instead of looking at the road.
I should call Joe and ask him if I can buy it.
It was more of a formality than an actual request for permission; it was a sign of marital solidarity, my blossoming maturity, and a commitment to our new little team of two. Plus I’d need him to come down with his truck to pick it up and haul it home.
“No way,” Joe said when I rang him from my cell phone and told him in painstaking detail about our new and utterly incomparable garden table.
“What?” I stammered. Maybe he hadn’t heard me right, or perhaps he was answering another question I had asked earlier that day. I made my own money and I could buy whatever I wanted! Surely he understood this.
“I said, no, you are not buying that garden table,” he repeated.
“But you haven’t even
seen
it yet!” I argued, my head filled with a running tickertape of
You are not the boss of me
. “It’s really amazing and it will look great on the back wall by the garage. I promise, you’ll love it. Here, I’ll take a picture with my phone and send it to you. Hang on.”
“I don’t need to see it,” he interrupted, “because I don’t want it and you’re not buying it.”
“You cannot tell me what I can and can’t buy!” I shouted.
Not the boss, not the boss, so totally not the boss!
Other shoppers were staring at me like I was a petulant seven-year-old, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation at all.
“Oh yes, I can,” he said calmly. “It’s
outside
.”
I was furious. How dare he lord his domain over me like that! It was obvious that he was just saying no to be spiteful. He was a power-hungry SOB and I had
married
him. The finality of that decision hit me like a wrecking ball to the gut. For the first of what would be many, many fleeting moments over the next several years, I wholeheartedly hated him. The next time I wanted something I certainly wasn’t going to ask, even if it meant I would have to carry the thing home on my back. I began crafting a detailed mental list of all the crap I was going to buy without requesting my husband’s precious authorization first.
I stomped around the house for a few days and eventually the spat blew over. We didn’t talk about the infamous garden table again for months, and then one day it just came up. I was still bitter—about losing out on it
and
that boss-of-me business—and I let him know it.
“Jenna, don’t you understand?” Joe began. “You have great taste and our house always looks amazing. Whenever people come over they assume you are responsible for the way everything looks, and they’re right. The outside is all I’ve got, and if you start putting your cutesy shit out there, too, I won’t get any credit for that, either.”
You really could have knocked me over with a sneeze. Blocking the garden station had had nothing whatsoever to do with power or money or just being an asshole for the sake of it; it was about pride, and I hadn’t even considered that for a second. Sure, Joe could have told me his reasoning months ago and saved me an ulcerative amount of resentment—but we were both new to the soul-baring, sharing-everything aspect of marriage, and at least he was trying. I was both touched and repentant, and although I can’t recall any specific details, I’m sure we had a nice go at it to celebrate our camaraderie.