I start at the front foyer, cringing as I always do at the horrid vinyl faux-grass-cloth wallpaper. But the intricate plaster ceiling molding is mostly intact; it will need some repairs, but I should be able to save it. And the original penny tile floor was essentially perfect when I pulled up the industrial carpeting a previous owner had put down; I just needed to strip some old adhesive off and give it a seal. It gleams like new under the protective thick paper I’ve taped over it to keep it safe and clean. I’ve been putting off dealing with the wallpaper because I hope that the murals that adorned the walls of the entrance are still there and can be restored.
When I researched the history of the building, I found a lot of newspaper articles on the family who built it, and a couple of them included faded photos of some of the interiors. That was how I knew where to look for the fireplace in the living room.
I love a building that has good history in addition to good bones. The Rabin family emigrated from Russia to Chicago right after the Great Fire, losing the “owitz” from the end of their name, and establishing a profitable family firm of accountants and insurance agents that continues to thrive today. The youngest of their three sons, the only one born here, married the daughter of a wealthy department store family, and they built the house in the up-and-coming Palmer Square neighborhood just before the turn of the century. The mansion was host to grand parties and philanthropic events that pop up in the society pages from 1900 to 1940, when the widow Rabin sold the house to a cousin who used it as a boardinghouse through the late 1950s. The cousin’s son took over the building and decided its value was more as a rental property, doing a shoddy conversion to the three upper floors to create apartments, and creating a garden apartment in the half of the basement that used to house the maid’s quarters. He sold it in the early 1960s, and nothing is known about it until 1978 when it changed hands again. The new owner did a halfhearted upgrade to some of the systems, and covered everything that could be covered in durable carpet and linoleum. The building passed to his daughter when he died, and she sold it to the guy who lost it to the bank.
It kills me that these rooms that knew generations of family parties, wedding receptions, and holiday celebrations got chopped up into unnatural bedrooms and closets, their details hidden and made generic in the name of commerce. Lucky for me, I had access to the original plans for the house, which had been filed with the city, and was able to gut the walls that had been added over the years, without disrupting the load-bearing originals. I’ll give those turn-of-the-century builders their props. This place is like a fortress. Whatever went on with fixtures and finishes, the structure is as solid as the day she was born.
After the Great Fire, the wealthy didn’t take any chances with their mansions, so the structure here is steel, not wood, and will support this old girl for another one hundred years at least. The walls are sound; the roof is solid, if in need of new insulation and a fresh coat of tar. Inside, the place may be something of a disaster, but at least the layout is getting back to what it was, if not yet what it will be. I still have massive demo to do in the basement; since that is a gut job, I’ve been saving it for a time I can take a few weeks’ vacation to really handle it right.
In my mind’s eye, I can see the place coming together. The spacious formal double-parlor living room with its restored fireplace surrounded by a carved limestone mantel I rescued from Liam’s Fremont job. The long dining room, anchored by built-in buffets with glass-door china hutches. The butler’s pantry with its double pocket doors and floor-to-ceiling cabinetry. The new state-of-the-art kitchen, practically restaurant quality, which sits upstairs with its shiny appliances all still covered in their protective blue plastic, waiting for a passionate home cook to fire it into life.
The bonus rooms I’ve planned for the basement, waiting to tell me what they should be. A man-cave? Exercise room? Home office? Guest suite? Mother-in-law apartment? I’m not pushing myself to decide quite yet. I may leave them as what Joe always called a “vanilla box,” just framed-out walls and roughed-in plumbing and electrical, and put it on the market for the buyer to determine what they need and let me custom finish it to their specifications.
Despite the gaping holes in walls where the electrician ripped out the old knob-and-tube wiring that was sitting scarily live underneath the lath, and the ghastly 1970s bathrooms sprinkled about, there are things about this house you cannot help but appreciate. Twelve-foot ceilings with custom crown moldings a full fourteen inches wide, albeit covered in god-knows-how-many layers of paint. The windows, which shockingly are in terrific shape, need a little love and all need the casements stripped and resealed, but they aren’t drafty, and the storm windows appear to be one of the only places the previous owners didn’t cheap out on. The spacious attic with its built-in closets and cupboards and shelves, all of them lined in cedar for storing seasonal clothes and party linens.
I always finish my tour on the second floor, where a pair of tall, slim French doors open onto a small Juliet balcony. I’ve planned this room as an office, imagining it with a beautiful antique desk, maybe a chaise longue, picturing a creative type, a graphic artist or an illustrator or a writer, someone who would be inspired by the light, by the ability to open these doors and let in fresh air. Unless it’s raining or snowing, this is where I finish my coffee, looking out onto Palmer Square Park and clearing my head for the day.
My phone rings just as I’m finishing the grout on the bathroom floor, bemoaning the fact that it has taken me three weeks to get back here to finish. I figured out a long time ago to keep a pencil nearby when I’m doing grubby work like this, so that I don’t have to take off my gloves. Caller ID says it’s Hedy. I use the eraser end of the pencil to put her on speaker.
“We’re going to Caroline’s tonight,” she says without saying hello.
“We always go to Caroline’s.” Which we do, despite the fact that she lives in Evanston and the rest of us live in the city.
“I know, but she’s making dinner.”
“That’s how she gets us.” Caroline is a very good cook, and I live with a professional chef, so I know whereof I speak.
“And Carl pulled something from the cellar that is older than us.”
“Damn them.” Carl, Caroline’s better half, is a pretty serious wine guy, and when he pulls something from the cellar, you better sit up and take notice.
“I know. They’re insidious. I’ll fetch you at five thirty.”
When Hedy says she will fetch me, what she means is that her driver will come fetch me. Hedy shouldn’t drive. As one of the top interior designers in the city, she spends more than half her life in the car, and all of her life on the phone. After six expensive fender benders and four talking-on-her-phone tickets (that she couldn’t flirt her way out of, of the ten times she was actually pulled over), she finally gave up and hired Walter, an elegant man of indeterminate age, who squires her around in a massive Lincoln Navigator. And it certainly helps on nights like this, when you have a friend with really good wine way out in the burbs. Saves us a fortune in taxis, and no one has to miss out on the vino to be the designated driver.
I finish the grout, making one final pass over the tiles with a huge damp sponge. Barely a cup of leftover grout in the bottom of the bucket, much to my satisfaction. Some people are math savants, or piano savants; I’m a bucket savant. I can eyeball the perfect amount of adhesive, grout, Spackle, cement, paint, drywall mud, mortar, anything that either comes in a bucket or gets mixed in a bucket; I’m usually right on the money. Grant can measure a precise amount of salt or herbs in his palm, from an eighth of a teaspoon to a full quarter cup, and yes, I have tested him. I’m that way with building materials.
My stomach growls, and I wash my hands and grab my phone. The local Al’s Beef delivers, and I’m feeling like I’ve earned it. By the time my “Big Al, sweet peppers, dipped” with a large fries, extra ketchup, extra napkins arrives, I’ve clea
ned up the grouting supplies. Thank god for the exertion of work, otherwise, with my appetite, I’d be twice my size. I’m built like a German peasant, all muscular legs and broad shoulders, wide hips and big boobs. And while 180 is certainly not an insignificant weight for a girl who just barely hits five foot five, I’m solid, not squishy. My doctor tells me that she’d love me closer to 150 to 155 for my build, but I’m healthy as a horse, and my body does most of what I ask of it without too much trouble. I know that when I can’t do the labor anymore I will have to rethink my appetite, but for now, youngish and active, I pretty much eat what I want, and burn it off on the job.
Grant loves that I eat. He says it was the first thing he noticed about me. I try to take this as a compliment, ignoring that I might have preferred that he notice my sparkling hazel eyes, or my porcelain skin bespattered with fetching freckles, or my beautiful smile. But I’ll take it. I’m frankly glad he noticed me at all. My looks, perhaps one tiny notch above plain, and comfortably in the arena polite people call handsome or attractive or interesting but never beautiful, skipped two generations. I look exactly like my great-grandmother Anneliene.
Both my mom, Anneliese, and Grand-mère Annelyn were stunning beauties, with willow-lithe frames; blond, blue-eyed sirens with quiet voices, light tread, and delicate features. I was a squat little tank of a girl from the day I was born, with a voice like Cathy Moriarty after a bender, thick, wavy dark red hair with cowlicks that tended toward frizz, and a step like a baby elephant. I was enormously disappointing to both of them. My unnamed and unknown-to-me father was, according to Grand-mère, gone from my mother’s life and the city before they even knew I was on the way. There was always an implication that he had been in town for business temporarily, eventually finished the job, and likely gone back to a wife and kids, but that sense was never officially confirmed by either Grand-mère or my mother, and frankly, I couldn’t care less. My relationship with my mother is proof that blood doesn’t make someone family. Her difficult pregnancy and the first year of my life, which kept her tied to the house and off the dating market from the prime ages of twenty to twenty-two, were an offense I was never able to redeem. As soon as I was walking and taking solid food, she put all of her focus into finding a man to take her away from the tragic turn her life had taken.
For my entire childhood, Anneliese jumped from husband to boyfriend to husband, sometimes hers, sometimes other people’s, in parts distant from Chicago. Usually warmer climes and occasionally glamorously abroad, and when the husbands or lovers would leave her, or she them, when they would break her spell and go back to their lives or their wives, she would return home for a short time to Grand-mère’s care and my company. Long enough to sigh over the state of my hair and clothes, my choice of playmates or lack thereof, my powerful appetite, and the baby fat that never fully melted. Anywhere from six weeks to six months, never more, and she was off on her next romantic adventure, postcards and odd occasional gifts to follow.
I never thought Grand-mère was one for sentimentality, but when she died I found a box in her basement, all of the trinkets my mother had sent me over the years. The Russian nesting dolls and Turkish slippers, the embroidered dress from Greece and the pale pink beret from Paris. The tiny little cowboy boots from Brazil, and half a dozen dolls, each in some sort of traditional garb. The box is in my storage unit; I don’t really want the stuff, but somehow can’t bring myself to throw it away.
On one of her jaunts at home, when I was thirteen, she met Joe, who had been dispatched when Grand-mère’s usual handyman wasn’t available to fix the garage door. He was tall, blandly Midwestern handsome, unassuming. He was no match for my mother, who took to him, wooed him, won him, and within a month they were married. A part of me thinks that it was her way of trying to actually give me something that resembled a family life, her sacrifice for me. Or maybe she remembered Grand-mère’s unquenchable need for perfection from her when she was a teenager and wanted to protect me the smallest bit. I want to believe she did one thing for me besides the accident of my birth.
The three years they were together were almost normal. We lived in Joe’s tidy little house, my mother and I circled each other cautiously, like strangers do, but at least she wasn’t mean and dismissive like Grand-mère, just oddly distant. And she required a tremendous amount of rest. I think being beautiful must be exhausting. I spent most of my time hanging out with Joe in his garage workshop, watching him build furniture while she took long baths and longer naps, and indulged in a daily routine of personal care and improvement that took no fewer than four hours. She slept every day till nearly noon, in the bedroom she kept as cold as a tomb with heavy blackout curtains and a sleep mask for good measure. She would start her day with a long bath, and break her fast with hot water and lemon, a single piece of dry toast, maybe some yogurt. The afternoon was usually devoted to personal upkeep, which was the closest thing she ever had to a job. She gave herself manicures twice a week and pedicures once a week. Weekly facials and deep hair-conditioning treatments. An hour of stretching exercises and calisthenics every day without fail. I always thought it was strange that by the time she finished applying lotions and potions and perfect makeup, it was nearly time for her to meticulously begin reversing the process.
Joe was a contractor by trade, but a master cabinetmaker and furniture designer by nature, and his pieces were stunning, most of them in the Arts and Crafts or Prairie mode, simple functional designs in beautiful woods. He would let me meet him at job sites; I would work on homework in the trailer, and then follow him around and learn about his work. When it became clear that my mother couldn’t cook to save her life, or ours, and the constant restaurant meals were going to bankrupt him, he bought a copy of Joy of Cooking at a yard sale and, after a long day at work, would put together simple meals for us, or pick up takeout. This was mostly for the two of us; Anneliese, like Grand-mère, was entirely indifferent to food, and would pick at Joe’s meals, or skip them entirely in favor of a small salad dressed with lemon or cider vinegar and no oil or salt.
My mom disappeared one Sunday night shortly after my sixteenth birthday. We came home from a long day at his latest project, covered nearly head to toe with dust from my first experience with plaster and lath walls. We had a huge bag of Chinese food to celebrate my new skill, but when we opened the door, the house was dark and quiet and there was a short note on the kitchen counter for Joe that I wasn’t allowed to read.
Joe and I simply didn’t discuss it at all for three months. We just worked in the garage, and ate a lot of pizza. He brought home pieces of furniture he found in alleys or from job sites and taught me to strip off old paint and do beautiful lustrous stained finishes and limed waxes and the meticulous process known as French polishing. He taught me how to repair wobbly chair legs, to fix wonky drawers. We built a few pieces from scratch, including the Arts and Crafts–style library table I use as a desk to this day. It was strangely some of the best times of my childhood, just Joe and me, school something to get through so I could work with him, learn something new. No tiptoeing around the house or seeing the resignation in my mother’s face that I would never become what she wanted or needed. Had it not been for the sadness that lurked beneath the surface of Joe’s brave face, it would have been the happiest time of my life. I tried to keep his spirits up, to make silly jokes or ask lots of questions when we were working so that he could focus his energy on explaining things, on being a teacher instead of a left and bereft man.
But when the divorce papers arrived unceremoniously in the mail with a Nevada zip code, we had a heart-to-heart. Did I want to stay? I did. Did he want me to stay? He did. Was I allowed to stay? Nope. Mom’s custody request was clear; she reasserted her custodial rights, and I was to stay with Grand-mère till her return. Joe and I knew that there was no way to fight it, no money for lawyers, and even if there were, no law to back us up. Joe held my shoulders tightly and looked deep into my eyes, holding back his tears
, and told me that once I was eighteen I could do as I chose, and he would always be there for me.
So Grand-mère took me back. I was resigned. I followed her rules, and tried to keep my hair neat and my clothes unspoiled and my manners as ladylike as I could stand. I worked like a dog to finish high school a year early, and spent as much time with Joe as I could on the weekends. Grand-mère reluctantly offered to send me to college, but only if I lived at home with her, since she thought of college as a hotbed of drinking, drugs, and sex, none of which were appropriate for a young lady of breeding. But she acknowledged that with my looks and manners, marriage prospects were going to be minimal, so some sort of vocation was in order. In her opinion, that should have been some sort of secretarial work or anything in an office where I might meet a man to support me. Joe also offered to send me to college, but could only afford it if I didn’t mind living with him, and promised to fix up his basement for me with a separate entrance so that I would have some privacy and independence for the drinking and drugs and sex he didn’t want to know about, but figured were unavoidable in college.
You can imagine which option I took. The day I turned eighteen I packed my few belongings and moved back to Joe’s little house, where he had created a refuge for me in half of his basement. A small bedroom, a bathroom, and a sitting room with a corner desk. He even took an old Hoosier cabinet and retrofitted it with a small dorm-sized fridge, a microwave, a single-burner hot plate, and a coffeemaker. It was like a mini kitchen, and one of the coolest things I’d ever seen. It’s still in my storage unit, waiting for a useful life someday in a future guest suite.
Recipe for Disaster Page 5