Building a Home with My Husband

by Rachel Simon

  His comic impulse flees, and in its place I just see him, no longer amused, but moved.

  Though when we park on Teacher’s Lane, which is dominated by a purple Dumpster where Dan and his crew are disposing of our tattered house, I go tense. I’m crossing the border into a land of the rugged and muscular, where I’m so clumsy with the customs that I shouldn’t even speak.

  “Not to worry,” Hal says as he lifts the police tape for me. “We’ll just be going through a list of things to be done. Dan and I had a good working relationship before and now it’s even better.” He pauses as we mount the porch steps. “Of course, he might react when I ask him to check if there’s insulation behind the plaster walls that haven’t come down.”

  “Why would that be an issue?”

  “It’s extra work for him, and that means extra money. But I’m justified in asking him.”

  I suddenly remember that when we were signing the agreement with Dan, Hal mentioned that the relationship between the contractor and architect—and contractor and client—is set up to be adversarial. But before I can panic, we’re entering the house.

  Immediately I feel worse. Standing in the living room, looking directly at us, is a slim, fair-haired guy who, in his brown jacket and jeans, makes me think of a clean-cut Marlboro Man—and I have no idea who he is. But I don’t want to say anything inane, so I say nothing, and Hal, forgetting that we’ve walked separate paths through this renovation, doesn’t provide introductions. Only after he retrieves his notebook to start the meeting does the man say, “Hi?”

  “You don’t know each other?” Hal asks.

  “It’s been a while.” The man extends his hand. “I’m Dan.”

  “I just thought I’d come along,” I say, feeling klutzy and meek.

  His grip is firm but not bone-breaking, and his voice is courteous, not robust. He says, “I told Hal that I’m going to take care of you, and I will. My reputation is everything.”

  I want to reply that I’m not here because I’m doubting him, though I’m so afraid of putting my foot in my mouth that I retreat to silence. Fortunately, as our hands part, we hear voices in the dining room-kitchen. Hal follows the sound into that room and Dan and I follow him, and then we realize that they’re coming from high above. All three of us gaze up.

  The difference from our visit only a week ago surpasses my imagining.

  Gone is the ripped-in-half ceiling. Gone is the second story wooden floor, except for a tiny catwalk. Gone is the ceiling above it. We are peering directly up through the branches of the joists, past two workers on the catwalk, through my study, and into the cumulous insulation just beneath the roof. Due to the stripping-away that’s preceding repair, the back two-thirds of the house has become one gigantic room, its guts hanging out for all to see.

  I put my hand to my heart, taken aback at the extent of the injuries. It makes me think of people who’ve broken every bone in their bodies, or suffered complete emotional breakdowns. The difference, I suppose, is that if I were visiting someone whose body or personal life had ruptured, I’d be able to sit with her, give hugs, listen to her speak. Here all I can do is be present.

  And feel awkward. As some machine begins whirring, I look back into the kitchen and see Hal moving toward a worker who’s atop a ladder, screwing a bolt on a joist.

  Hal looks up at the man’s handiwork and smiles. “Hey, you’re scabbing on a sister.”

  “Yeah,” Dan says. “We’ve got a lot of sisters already.”

  With the machine so noisy and my discomfort so acute, I can’t have heard them right. “He’s what?” I yell.

  “A sister.” Hal points up. “They’re doubling up the joists to make them stronger. That’s called sistering. When a joist is damaged, you reinforce it by scabbing on a sister.”

  Oh, no, I think, as we move toward the stairs. I am way over my head.

  We walk up the stairs, the wall beside us still naked to its frame, the steps powdered with plaster. With no furnace or electricity, the house feels wintery and our breath shows. I pull my wool hat down but it doesn’t help, and only makes everything feel more alien when, at the top of the stairs, I step into my study—or, really, my mezzanine. For a moment I just stare down into the kitchen, distressed at being a stranger in this strange land. But I also start to feel sympathy—not toward the two gangly men on the catwalk before me, or Hal and Dan behind me, but the house itself. I know how you feel, I think. I feel absurd thinking it, and if the house were a hurting friend I would hardly say it. But there have been many times after love has dropped out of my life when I have felt like what I’m seeing: dismantled, forlorn, vulnerable. It’s striking, actually, how similar the feeling was. Whether the love had been for a romantic partner, parent, sibling, or, even on a few occasions, friend, I felt so raw, I couldn’t believe I would ever recover.

  I turn to look for Hal and Dan. They’ve moved on to the front bedroom, where they’ve begun the meeting. At least I guess it’s the meeting, though when I go in they’re just standing here, speaking as if this were any conversation.

  Hal says, “When might we expect the insulators?”

  Dan, similarly nonchalant, replies, “I want to do it before Christmas.”

  “Do you know when the replacement windows are due to arrive?”

  “January 13.”

  “I’ve got an update on the kitchen cabinets.”

  “Good news?”

  “Remember me mentioning Primeboard?” Dan nods, and I remember, too: it’s the product that was just as green as the one that was discontinued. “The job stoppage is giving me time to move forward on the research.” Now Hal acknowledges me. “We might get the cabinets in the house after all.”

  “That’d be great,” I say, as surprised at this possible perk from our explosion as I am to hear my own voice.

  Then, with the mood perhaps strategically lightened, Hal continues right into his contentious item, saying to Dan, “What about the walls that haven’t been removed?”

  “What?” Dan asks—maybe stalling, maybe not hearing, I can’t tell.

  “What about checking behind the remaining plaster walls for any missing insulation?” In an easygoing voice, he adds, “It blows my mind that there wasn’t any in the southern wall.”

  Equally easygoing, Dan says, “I don’t think they did that on purpose.”

  “I don’t either,” Hal agrees.

  “We’ll check behind the plaster walls next week,” Dan says pleasantly.

  Just like that, we’re over the hump. How deftly Hal introduced the one item that might have cast a pall on the meeting, and how well Dan received it. I can easily imagine less experienced clients—like me—having an edge to their voice when they made the request to check behind the plaster. Just as easily, I can imagine a contractor feeling provoked, particularly one who’s anxious about profits or tends toward unruly temperament. It must take years of practice to conduct a job meeting uneventfully—and a real commitment to not being adversarial.

  The meeting ends just as casually as it began, and we all head downstairs. I still feel out of place, but I’m also relieved. I made it through without tipping my hand about my unfamiliarity with construction, and at the same time I gained a regard for Hal and Dan’s rapport.

  I think that’s all I’ll get out of the meeting until we’re all walking outside and discover that Hal left his notes upstairs. I run back up the unprotected staircase, grab the papers, and then halfway back down I just stop and gaze out at all the wounds and amputations around me—and my second awakening occurs. I find my heart going out to this poor house. It’s more than the empathy I felt when I stood on the shredded balcony of my study. It’s a sense of responsibility mingled with affection, as if the house were an actual person who once took me in and cared for me, and who now needs me to minister to it. I feel foolish. I’m not sentimental about buildings, and have felt no twinge of loyalty toward this one. Yet apparently it is growing on me.

  I think that’s all th
at will happen. But a week later, after I give a talk in New Jersey and stop off on my way home to say hello to someone important, a third awakening occurs.

  It is a bright autumn afternoon when I turn off the highway and pull into a picturesque town. I haven’t been in this area for quite a while, but came to know it intimately during the years when Hal and I were apart. Actually, I think as I park, this is an interesting coincidence. Although when I came here I felt as bruised as our house, this is the place where I recovered.

  I get out of my car, inhale the December air beneath the tall trees, take in the holiday decorations adorning the streets, and remember that time. Shortly after my friend Lisa shared the insight from Swedenborg, when I still couldn’t envision any goodness arising from my breakup with Hal, I received a call from an acquaintance. A coordinator of events in a bookstore, Deb had once hosted a reading I’d given, and this call was one of our occasional hellos. Usually our exchanges were light, but this time I opened up and admitted that I was at an abysmal moment in my life. She said, “I think I can help you,” and asked if I wanted to interview for a position running events in a different bookstore—in the very town I’m in now. I’d never run events or worked in a bookstore. In the interest of concentrating on my writing, my only employment for years had been odd jobs like artist modeling and temporary secretarial work. But now I was broke and alone and regretful, and although friends like Lisa and Harriet and Sandy were looking after me, I felt as if the entire structure of my life had collapsed. I went to the interview, crying the whole way there. Incredibly, I got the job. Then one friend talked me through the purchase of my first car, another friend advised me on the kind of clothes I’d need as a person with a real job, and other friends helped me move from the attic to this area.

  But I hardly began mending right away. As I stroll past university dormitories and the town square and the evergreen tree, encircled with Christmas lights, in front of the historic inn, I remember beginning my new life. I was still so depressed about the ways I’d botched my relationship with Hal—buckled understandings of love, disregard for his talents, indecision clogged with dread—that managing anything more than day-to-day living seemed impossible. I did nurse the hope that eventually I might achieve something I’d come to see as good, but I felt way too ragged for such grand ambitions.

  Yet as time passed, I started to realize that every night when I hosted another event, I’d look into the audience and see faces, engrossed and inquisitive, and that when the event wrapped up, many of these customers would linger to chat. Some were at peaceful moments in their lives, but others were in hard times, coping with cancer or divorce, and it became clear that they’d come not just to see authors, but to be around other people, stimulate their thoughts, forget their struggles. As part of that, they wanted to talk about their lives, and I, disinclined to return to my lonely apartment, was happy to listen. So night after night, as we stood in the aisles of books, they shared their stories with me, and soon I understood that simply by giving them the events they desired and then listening to those who wished to speak, I was bringing good into their lives. Even better, I’d found a reason for being that I hadn’t known I was missing. A year later my work life expanded, when I added in a part-time position teaching writing at a college a few hours away. Although the skills and role were different, the result was similar: just by delivering the knowledge that others wanted, and being interested in their well-being—that is, becoming their ally as they passed through this time in their lives—I was able to offer something important.

  But until a winter afternoon not unlike this one, I didn’t see the connection between the two jobs, or to Swedenborg. I needed many discussions on my own, and although I engaged in them with my friends, the person who inspired some of my greatest understandings was a therapist. I found Robin by accident, when an author who was scheduled to appear in the store had to cancel for an illness. Since his book was about recovering from failed love, I worried about disappointing customers who were desperate for his insights. I looked around, found a local therapist who specialized in the same subject, and left a message on her machine: would she be willing to substitute for this author—and, um, would she be willing to speak to me, too? I couldn’t believe I’d added that, but when Robin came to the store and ran a discussion in her soft, caring voice and relayed an attitude of patience and understanding, I was glad that I had.

  As the years passed and I listened to my customers and guided my students, Robin listened to and guided me. Indeed, because she was my ally, I felt freer to be an ally for others. She was, for instance, the person who finally, but gently, persuaded me to see that what I called true love was false. She also addressed one of my most deeply held ancillary beliefs: that I would know I was feeling true love when I felt almost drugged by the perfection of the fit. Actually, she said, since the foundation of healthy long-term relationships is two people caring about each other, it makes less sense to look for intoxication than a partner who is genuinely kind.

  Robin helped in other ways, too. She was gleeful at every self-doubt I discarded, every old dream I polished, every regret I replaced with hope. She applauded my concern for my customers and students. She insisted that I mattered. And I began to repair. This is why, on that winter day, it was just after I left her office when I stood on this very sidewalk, looked up at the trees, and finally knew that good had occurred from my breakup with Hal. It hadn’t been in the form of adoring boyfriends or sumptuous paychecks or any of the possibilities that I had, I’d come to realize, initially desired. It was simply the act of giving to others. That night, and for many nights afterward, when I got into bed, I would lie there in a state of euphoria and think, I might have failed at love. But my life is filled with so much purpose.

  And now, as I enter Robin’s building, going to an appointment I made because I was in the area and wanted to say hello, my third awakening occurs. I began this renovation while searching for some new challenge in my life, some second-act reason for being. Hal and I even gave it a name: The Search for Life Purpose 2.0. Yet I forgot all about it. How is that possible? Only a few seasons ago I was ready to change the world. It seemed a minor impediment that I didn’t know how.

  But it’s obvious why The Search faded. The grief of packing came to pass, and then our movers broke the phone line, and I locked myself out of the bedroom, and demolition dredged up my childlessness, and on it went, one episode after another—and The Search got left in the dust.

  When Robin comes out of her office, arms already open for a hug, I understand that I haven’t, in fact, just come here to say hello. I’ve come here to talk about the renovation, and the many ways it keeps shaping my life.

  As the days of December begin adding up and our job continues peeling backward, we start getting asked about our plans for Christmas, which, this year, coincides with Hanukkah. Our families are not religious, so our annual debate over a nice meal with Hal’s parents in Virginia versus a nice meal with Beth and my father in Pennsylvania usually resolves with us seeing his side on December 25, mine a day earlier. But this year, the whole idea of holidays feels forced. Our lives are on hold. Our finances are spent. Also, Natalie has informed us that she’ll be closing on the rented house in February, so we’ll need to move out by late January—which seems improbable. The truth is that we’ve been in this upheaval for so long, and might be for so much longer, that we just want to stay put. We tell everyone that we’ll see them at other points in the month, and then we ignore the season.

  Still, we’re busy. Hal works out the details for our kitchen cabinets, and indulges in his music. As for me, I start acting on each of my awakenings.

  First, I look up information on our house. City records show me that the property has had at least nine owners, stretching back to when it was mere land in the nineteenth century. I try to imagine them, Mary Elizabeth Montague and Harry and Rebecca Orenstein and Simon Abramson, but the records are so ornately handwritten or poorly microfilmed that the
few details in them are unreadable. I page through books on similar houses, and see numerous features that I’ve taken for granted—high and detailed baseboards, detailed window surrounds, five-panel wooden doors, beveled glass on the front door, hardwood floors, transoms—and finally acknowledge that they are not just seen as desirable by aficionados of old homes, but also by me. Likewise, my readings on green residences reinforce the merits of our tiny footprint, as well as our energy-efficient alterations. I might never boast about this house, but as I understand that it is a place of history and worth, I come to respect it.

  The Search for Life Purpose 2.0 is, as anyone can imagine, a trickier proposition. When I finally worked my way around to it in Robin’s office, I didn’t get the kind of Aha I got when mentioning my feelings about the house and concluding that a few days of research would allow me to cultivate them. I couldn’t even speak coherently. I just went on breathlessly, bringing up one possibility after another—doctor, philanthropist, online entrepreneur, multimedia mogul—only to reject each as unattainable, at odds with my personality, or counter to our financial needs. “I thought you loved writing and teaching,” Robin said. I told her I did, but what if there was something more I could do, maybe alongside my writing and teaching, that would accomplish something not just good, but great? Wouldn’t it make sense to find that out? “Yes,” she said, “but there’s also a lot to be said for what you’re already doing. Maybe for now you can stay with that and see if anything else comes to you.” This seems rational, and is underscored when Hal says, “It’s not like picking out a dress. You can’t just browse in a mall and find your perfect life.” Even though that’s exactly what I want. So with reluctance, I tell myself to be patient. After all, it’s entirely possible that I’ll wake up one day and just know.

  Having decided this, I move on to pursuing my interest in Hal’s world. Since I exist in such a construction bubble—the magazines we receive, the books on our shelves, the job meetings we attend, the projects at his office, the conversations about the renovation—this is easy to do. As in our earliest years together, I begin reading and asking questions, only this time there are more opportunities. Hal can now teach me about green design. I can go to see projects done by his architect friends. I can even, if I get up the nerve, talk to Dan.