by Rachel Simon
When Hal emerges from the bathroom, I raise my arms high. “Specacklur,” I say.
“You really think so?” he says, almost crying.
“Yes,” I say. “I do.”
1:30 P.M.:
We return to the rented house—which we now call the old house—to retrieve the items Hal had the movers skip: lamps, mirrors, plants. The day is frigid, with Canadian wind. Ginny and the other neighbors we grew close to are not home. I walk around the empty house, look through the back windows at the trees in the yard. A cardinal I’ve been watching for two months jumps around the branches, along with two blue jays. They will leave my life now. I will miss them.
6:00 P.M.:
Darkness has slipped across the city. When we put on our new lights, the shadows on the walls are unfamiliar, the windows lit differently. I walk around in a daze, as do Peach and Zeebee, back from their overnight stay at the vet’s. They appear to recognize this house, even with the new layout, floors, windows, and turrets of unpacked boxes. They walk gingerly, not out of fear but curiosity. How could they be here again, when here looks so different from last summer?
I think I’m aware of all the changes that were made, but little by little, I start to see something more, something I hadn’t realized even after our exchange this morning. My first hint comes when I say, “The kitchen and bathroom sinks are splendidly big,” and Hal smiles and says, “I thought you’d like that.” The next piece of evidence presents itself as I admire the sleek metal toilet paper holder, which allows a roll to be replaced with remarkable ease; the asymmetrical closet doors, allowing for a bookcase along the adjacent wall without blocking use of the closet; the way the wrought-iron ivy sconce throws a bow of shadows onto the wall of Breathtaking. Then I start seeing it at every turn: a level of Hal’s creativity that I’d never suspected—even as I’d approved the plans, the choices at the stores, the paint samples. He selected everything not just with minute care, but so it all comes together magnificently.
Only when we sit down to our first real dinner do I find words. “You know, it’s beautiful.”
Hal makes his quiet but pleased smile. “I’m so glad you feel that way.”
“It’s like all the little pieces of us have come together—and are fully in harmony with each other.”
He’s blushing now.
I say, “If I were an architect, what would I see when I walked in here?”
“You’d immediately notice the interlocking planes.”
“The what?”
He gets up from the table, stands at the cased opening between the living room and the dining room-kitchen. “See how there’s a strip of chair rail that runs through the living room, and that we painted the same plum as the baseboards? And see how, even though the blues and purples of the living room don’t get duplicated in the dining room, that same strip of chair rail continues right into here, at the same height, in the same color?”
I get up and look. “Yes,” I say, amazed at what I hadn’t seen in my own house, in my own husband, and the way it renders the two rooms continuous, even as they retain their individual identities. “You did this, and I didn’t even know you were doing it.”
“In here, too,” he says, stepping into the dining room-kitchen and pointing near the tops of the walls. “I ran a line around this large room at the seven-foot mark to tie it all together.”
I see nothing.
“Not paint,” he says. “On the east wall, it’s the bottom of the soffits, on the south wall it’s the window frame, on the west wall it’s the long light fixtures, and on the north wall it’s a strip of molding.”
I am astonished. Here I am, in the middle of a grand design, but because I didn’t know how to look—no, really, because it didn’t occur to me to look—I had no idea that a greater scheme was at work. It just seemed like an attractive, bright, environmentally sensitive house. Now I realize that it’s infinitely more.
It’s as if I’m finally reading a novel he wrote over the past two years, and now that it’s done, I am dazzled by its hidden logic.
It’s as if I am finally looking up at a night full of stars, and making sense of the patterns of the constellations.
It’s as if I am falling more in love.
He’s smiling broadly now, no longer hiding his delight.
I turn off the lights and look out the back windows, into the sky. How many designs are we in the middle of right now? Hal puts his arms around me, and even though I still cannot answer that question, I feel wondrously warm. I take a breath, deep into my whole self, and embrace all that I do not know and all that I’ll never see.
8:00 P.M.:
After dinner, we discover that we need to adjust the newly reassembled dining room table. Hal climbs underneath and starts fiddling with the leg. “Would you mind getting my toolbox?” he asks. “It’s in the bedroom.”
I run upstairs. The toolbox isn’t easy to find because the bedroom is stuffed with boxes, most of which hold Hal’s clothes. But eventually I unearth it. Then I turn off the light and step out into the hall and shut the door behind me.
My hand is still on the crystal doorknob when I feel it lock.
I turn my wrist, but the knob does not turn with me. Our new knob set has apparently locked itself from the inside—and this time, it is Hal’s clothes that are sealed off from our reach.
I am completely unable to move. The last time I was locked outside a bedroom, it was our second morning in the rented house—and it made me wonder how this renovation would open the door to a new me.
Now, after all of this, who am I?
I remember that, only a few days ago, archeologists broke into a previously unknown tomb near King Tutankhamun’s crypt. When they discovered it—right beside priceless sites they’d scoured for eighty years—they were astounded to lay their eyes on all the treasures that had remained hidden and yet had been right where anyone could, if they knew to look, find them.
And standing here I realize, I did discover a whole other me. I am still the same person I was, but I am no longer as concerned about figuring out a single great purpose for my life. But that’s not because I got distracted by the renovation. It’s because my life, I now understand, finds its purpose day by day: as I sing songs with friends, talk with movers, care for my sisters, wave to my neighbors, share moments with strangers, struggle with my mother, comfort my husband, listen to builders, laugh with my father, remember those I’ll never know who shared my house, stand in the glow of lighthouses with kindred spirits who are renovating their own lives—and learn, sometimes belatedly, sometimes immediately, stories about them all. I know this is not as grandiose as running a country or finding a cure for cancer. But it’s still a purpose. It is a love of others, and of doing all I can to feel that we are not, in our deepest selves, alone. We are all under one huge roof. We need only to leave our own rooms to see.
But there is still much to be done. A foot pedal to move to one side. A house to be refinanced to cover costs. A door to be opened.
I turn the knob one more time. It won’t budge.
“Hal?” I call down the stairs.
OCCUPANCY
L·A·N·D·S·C·A·P·I·N·G
Home
It’s been two and a half years since we moved back to Teacher’s Lane, and people still ask, “How’s the house? Is it done?” I tell them that the house is lovely, and that yes, it’s done, as long as no one scrutinizes details like our motley-as-ever furniture or the still-unadorned walls. But sometimes I wish they’d ask another question altogether: “How did the renovation affect you?”
If they did, I would start my answer by telling them what Hal replied to that question just a few days ago, while we toured landmark architectural sites in celebration of our seventh anniversary. As we were driving toward some Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, Hal said, “The renovation was the fulfillment of a dream. I did the design for a comfortable house that fits our needs, and that feels really good. We’re much closer now, too. We co
nfronted things we needed to confront.” Then he talked about the fight over the green paint, and how it made him face his own rigidity. He brought up the explosion, and how it led him to see he’d underestimated me. Selecting paint colors and tile reinforced for him our spirit of cooperation. “It’s one thing to get another person’s life as a series of slits, like those old-fashioned Kinetoscope movies,” he said. “It’s another to watch your wife build a wall with you, and see how tough she really is.”
Then I’d go on, and talk about how I finally feel that I live in a place where I belong. It is a true home, our home, and because our needs and desires went into everything—from the location of the walls to the style of the light fixtures—it assumes whatever role we want it to. On evenings and weekends, for example, when Hal transforms from architect to musician, our house becomes an artist’s colony where he composes his unique electronic songs in his studio while I write away in my study, and even though I still don’t understand his compositions, I can now hear his happiness in every note, and that’s what matters to me. At other times, such as right when he returns from work, or late at night, it is our own secluded desert island. Then, we sprawl on the bed and listen to the news on the radio, or the rain out the window, or his bad puns and comedic skits; and there is no one in the world except us. We did not just renovate our house, I feel, when we are returning from a walk in the park or cooking in the kitchen or teasing each other in the hallway. We also made it into a place of tranquillity, where we can restore ourselves.
Those aren’t the only answers I would give, though. There is also the one that occurs to me today, after we fly home from our vacation—passing through the glorious light tunnel in the Detroit airport on the way, which we love as much as any building we just saw—and come back, once again, to Teacher’s Lane.
Houses, the renovation taught me, generate annual traditions that can be among the most pleasurable experiences in our lives. For many people, this means the gatherings of friends and relatives on Thanksgiving or Christmas. For us, it has come to mean Halloween, when children flock from all over the city to our neighborhood, and Hal puts on goofy hats that make the trick-or-treaters laugh, and I keep the candy bowl full, and we and almost all the neighbors spend hours on our porches, creating a boisterous block party with costumes. Tradition for us also means New Year’s Eve, when, opting for the warmth of our house over chilly treks to city-sponsored events, we sit on the staircase to the third floor and look over the rooftops and watch fireworks dancing like spangled ball gowns in the sky.
And then there’s spring, when we celebrate a tradition so small, so untethered to any holiday, so intimately linked to who we are and what our house has lived through, that someone watching us wouldn’t even know we were engaging in an annual ritual. I didn’t myself, even though it might be our most cherished tradition. I realized it only today.
It comes to me when, luggage in hand and our vacation fully over, we unlock the door and step back into the house. I’ve gotten used to the sight that greets us: one long view of the living room, followed by the dining room-kitchen, proceeding toward the back windows, beyond the infamous dry stone wall, and into the yard. But what I haven’t expected to see is something that appeared in the yard while we were away. “Look,” Hal says, catching it before I do.
We lower the suitcases. There is a pile of mail to go through, and phone messages to check. But this is more important.
We pass through the living room into the dining room-kitchen. We continue to the back door, and open the lock, and go outside.
“It’s back again,” Hal says.
The fringelike blossoms have opened on our baby tree. For three springs now, right around our anniversary, our little tree proves that it survived the explosion.
We climb up the stone steps into the yard, walk into the garden where Hal now raises vegetables, and stand beside the tree. It is not a mighty tree. It tilts far to one side, shaped by its history. But it is thriving, in spite of its past. We reach out to touch it as, I now remember, we do every year, amazed by its resilience. Then we cup our hands around the cottony white flowers, lift them to our faces, and inhale the sweet scent of the bloom.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Although this book is furnished with stories about family, friends, and many others, I used real names only for those individuals who gave me permission to do so, and altered minor details for some of the pseudonymous people to further ensure their anonymity. Therefore, I cannot thank every person in these pages by name, but to each I extend my deepest gratitude. Our respect and affection for one another enriched my life in the past, and our relationship, even if now only in memory, continues to bear fruit in my present.
But there are many people I can name. Among the individuals who enliven these pages and permitted me to identify them are Deb Cameron, Lisa Hyatt Cooper, Robin Fein, Ginny and Eliza Hyde, Susan and Jim Moseley, Joyce Muwwakkil, Bonnie Neubauer, Dr. Janice Nevin, Dr. Charlie Pohl, Craig Schollenberger, Harriet and Vic Stein, William Stillman, Marni J. Tharler, and Dan Wilkins. Lainey Papageorge was my kindred spirit in the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, and Jodi Lee Larson was my ally at the Marcus Hook Rear Range Lighthouse. Others who encouraged me but who do not appear here are Katie Andraski, Bethany Broadwell, Allison Carey, Mitchell A. Cohn, Vicki Forman, Dan Gottlieb, Mary Gaut, Marshall Hill, Hannah Jacobs, Cathy Kudlick, Mary McHugh, Denise Patton-Pace, Sherina Poorman, Joseph Shapiro, Dan Simpson, Dave Simpson, Pat Smedley, Bruce Snider, Nancy Thaler, John Timpane, Gwen Waltz, and Carol Zapata-Whelan, with additional inspiration provided by April Allridge, Katie Beals, Mark Bernstein, Mary Clayton, Rabbi Stephen Fuchs, Cynthia Romaker Fullmer, Marc Goldman, Jackie and Marc Kramer, Doug and Sharon Klepfer, Lisa Klopfer, Carla Markell, Linda Miller, Jane Mills, Marilyn Haywood Paige, Karen Sandler, and the staff of the New Castle County library system.
Once construction began, I was grateful to encounter many friends and strangers who were willing to offer their knowledge. Top on the list are the hardworking Dan Bachtle and his staff at Edge Construction, including Dave Undorf, master carpenter; Victor Belardo, assistant carpenter; and Scott Duffie, painter, as well as Ron Piechowski of Horizon Electrical. Other experts include Patrycja Doniewski of qb3 design in Philadelphia; Bob Ernst of FBN Construction in Boston; Thomas Hine; Tony Junker; Pete Maruca of Orion General Contractors in Haverford, Pennsylvania, and his master carpenter, Irv Morey; and Earl Rentz at Conectiv in Delaware.
On the occasions when spiritual and psychological supplies were needed, I was blessed with many kind and giving people. Dr. Theodore Hiebert guided me through my thoughts about adversaries and allies. Family therapist Rachel Cox provided reassurance that renovation is as much a matter of emotion as it is construction. Anne Dubuisson Anderson made sure that this project didn’t explode. During the time I spent in revisions, several gifted students also helped me keep my spirits up by giving me reasons to leave the desk, including (but hardly limited to) Melissa Bromwell, Elizabeth Catanese, Renee Chastain, Julie Church, Caitlin Dowdall, Ellen Goodlett, Steve Hagenbuch, Christian Hoyt, Tara Malone, Tammy Metz, Anna Lehr Mueser, Tasneem Paghdiwala, Faith Paulsen, Nick Pentzell, Rachel Sandler, Kate Small, Shubha Sunder, Will Turnbull, Ilana Vine, Sarah Westbrook, David Williamson, and James Zoshak. And I also owe much of my sanity to both sets of neighbors, including Kim Leary, Tom and Alice Davis, Catherine Drabkin and Pahl Hluchan, Trish and Glenn Kocher, and Carol and Sandy Woolworth, with a big kiss I must blow into the wind for the late and dearly missed Mary Young-Wilson.
The process of building by hand also requires, as Hal taught me, an enduring respect for patience. I have long held my agent, Anne Edelstein, in high regard for many reasons, including her wisdom, warmth, enthusiasm, and faith in me. Now I can add to that list her patience, as she gave me all the time I needed to construct this book while she remained steadfast in her support and generous with her friendship. Anne, this house would not be a home without you. Thanks also to Krista Ingebretson, Anne’s trusty assi
stant, whose lovely personality makes everything easier.
Nor would this house be a home without my editors at Dutton: Trena Keating, who served for years as my interior designer extraordinaire, and Erika Imranyi, whom I met after construction was underway. In the early stages of my apprenticeship with Trena, her reliability, composure, and respect for me ensured that a light always remained on in my spirit, even in the darkest moments; once we moved into on-site work together, I felt blessed by the way these same qualities helped bring out my best on the page. My guidance from Erika has been equally gratifying, and not only because she’s as knowledgeable about story and words as she is about married life with an architect. Erika’s mirth, optimism, patient ear, and clear eye sustained me through the whole process. In addition, I’m deeply grateful to Brian Tart for his enthusiastic support. A bouquet of blueprints to all of you.
Finally, there would be no house without Hal. So much began that day you said good morning back to me, and, although I know that nothing is permanent but impermanence, I so hope that our good mornings continue until time has lost all of its meaning.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Simon is the author of the bestselling memoir Riding the Bus with My Sister, which was adapted for a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. Her other books include the short story collection Little Nightmares, Little Dreams and the novel The Magic Touch. She and her husband live in Wilmington, Delaware, on a street informally known as Teacher’s Lane. For more information, please see www.rachelsimon.com.