In the past I flirted with the idea that my restlessness, my need to move, might be symptomatic of the rape, but to have acknowledged it fully would have opened a can of worms that I was unable to cope with back then. It would have been an admission that the experience had power over me. Instead, I kept an eye on the trauma in my rear-view mirror, always conscious of staying ahead of it, not letting it overtake me, though from time to time it did.
Here, now, focusing on it, considering it at my leisure, I see that relief from the rape memory, like the other memories consigned to The Basket of Painful Psychological Imprints, demands to be scratched from time to time. Whenever I wedge the flat end of a crowbar beneath the corner of a cupboard and pry it off the wall, or when I whale a sledgehammer into a wall or tear up tiles and carpeting, I am not only renovating—I am engaging in revenge therapy. The dust, the mayhem, all of it obscures and confuses the pain. We are taught to fear chaos, but for me it is a kind of fuel. I hunger for it, and nothing can sate my appetite except the upheaval of moving into a new house, a new shell, until I tire of that particular meal and seek something else to taste.
Maybe there is no house that can satisfy me; maybe the rape was so destructive to my sense of self that I have become like the walking wounded: unable to rest, unable to settle. I should come with a warning label: “Has been raped. Coping mechanism in this particular human specimen is an insatiable desire to move, renovate, and decorate homes.”
I wonder whether a similar psychosis drove my parents. They never would have articulated it as such, much less discussed it. Perhaps they did not equate moving with what haunted them unconsciously. For my mother, moving and decorating gave her power—however illusionary—over her immigrant status and all that her family had lost in Hungary. For my father, each move distanced him further from his father’s deceit and his family’s poverty. We are all running from something, whether the beast pursuing us has actual legs or stalks us in our peripheral vision.
I look over at The Husband. His face is still lifted to the sunshine, and it holds a relaxed smile that I have not seen for many weeks. No, I cannot confide any of this to him. If he knew the subtext of this move, it would trouble him deeply, and I cannot bear to burden him with that.
WE ARE A MONTH AWAY from collecting the keys to our new home, a month away from taking, by law and honour, ownership of a house neither of us loves. Like the housing cads that we are, we insist on playing the field right up to the day of the wedding in case something better wafts into view. We are not entirely convinced that the house we have engaged to buy is for us, or that we want to undertake a full-scale renovation. Privately, I am game, knowing full well that the responsibility—and the blame—for this folly will rest entirely on my shoulders.
The Husband is not at home in the habitat of disorder and plaster dust; of project budgets and room schematics; of men in saggy, cement-encrusted jeans weighted down with tool belts that expose bum cracks. But he is not exactly talking me out of it, either. He is prepared to let me have my fun, which also means he is prepared to sit back and watch me screw up the whole thing.
Our pressing need at the moment is to find a builder. And we also need to get out there and do some comparison shopping of fixtures and fittings. But he cannot be bothered, and he gets angry when I suggest it, which he tends to do when he is pried from his comfort. And yes, he could leave it to me to get on with things, but I do not drive in the UK (I am terrified of the narrow streets and right-handed driving) and am therefore unable to dash from place to place checking out products and services the way I used to do in Canada.
But forge ahead I must. I tell him this: that I am just going to do my thing without his input or buy-in.
He shrugs. “This is your house.” That angers me more.
“It is our house. If you are not interested in how your house is going to look, then fine. But we need to be decisive. And if you do not want to be decisive, that is fine, too. But for you not to respond to my suggestions or ideas, or if you are intent on delaying your opinion for whatever reason, well, I am not having any of it. We cannot afford that sort of shilly-shally.”
Deep down I understand the subtext of his lack of engagement: This is my house in the sense that this is my move. He is not pleased about being displaced, about being wrenched against his will from what was to him entirely amenable. Perhaps I would behave the same way if things were reversed. While he is signing off on his involvement in the house, he is not doing so purely out of stubbornness. Like me, he is disappointed that our money does not stretch to buying something better. You work all your life, you save, you are prudent and not given to extravagance, and at the end of it all your money can only buy average.
Not that he would blurt it out like that. He is a quiet, meditative man of small and simple needs. A good and decent man. His stability and common sense were what attracted me to him, and I came to value those traits even more because they are so lacking in my makeup. I fell in love with how uncomplicated and calm he was. But now, like a room that needs to be repurposed, I require more of him, and perhaps more is something he just cannot give. He was never uprooted the way I was; his parents moved house fewer than a handful of times, and one of those moves was only three doors down from the previous house. What I am putting The Husband through is not just new territory—it is a shakeup of life as he has known it. This is about as frightening as if he were asked to stride naked onto the stage of Wembley Arena and sing “Livin’ La Vida Loca.” Seagulls, steep steps to the garden, a dark house; he could cope with those. Being without a home, and venturing into the deep, dark, money-sucking hole called “renovation,” he cannot.
7
The Property Delusion
The Husband leaves our rented house to walk to the nearby retail park for his early-morning java fix at its two chain cafés: Costa and Caffè Nero. He says he prefers Costa because occasionally the manager gives him a free coffee.
“That’s because you look sad and bereft,” I tell him. “And you dress like a street person. He’s doing it out of pity, not kindness.”
“At least it isn’t costing us money.”
A jab at my renovation spending.
From behind white net curtains I observe the back of his lanky frame, clad in worn jeans and a khaki jacket that I keep threatening to throw out. Sunlight glances off his hair—mostly ginger when we first met twelve years ago, now silvery grey: I wonder whether the colour change is my fault. As he rounds the corner I think: He could do with a bit of renovating himself. I swat the words away immediately—they could have come directly from my mother’s mouth—but it’s too late, and with one of those lightning-quick, unedited moments of self-reflection, I realize that I have, in fact, been guilty of trying to renovate all three of my husbands, though to be fair it was only when it came to their clothes, which is like wanting to give them a fresh coat of paint. Is that so bad?
With The Husband out of sight, I plop on the sofa and switch on the TV. Time for some research.
I absolutely love property shows, and Britain’s television airwaves are blessed with many. The Husband gets uneasy when I watch home-buying or home-renovation shows, especially when I watch with tablet or laptop in hand, swiping through properties for sale in the same search areas where the prospective TV buyers are hunting. He just knows I am going to look at him with those shall-we-move-there eyes. It works both ways: when we watched an episode of Location, Location, Location where the potential homebuyers were sizing up homes in his old stomping ground of Walthamstow, an area of London that has experienced skyrocketing house prices, I could feel the heat of his regret.
Lately, I have taken a shine to Homes Under the Hammer, which features homes purchased at auction and follows their subsequent renovation. I enjoy comparing the before and after, and seeing how the owners reconfigure the layout and generally improve the property’s potential. There is nothing easier and cheaper than engaging in the fantasies of others. I also enjoy observing changes in the buyers t
hemselves. A renovation alters you, not always in a good way but definitely in a reflective way.
On occasion I tune into Property Brothers for the comfort of its presenters’ Canadian accents, but increasingly, their so-called radical transformations leave me cold. An aesthetic of soulless, dull conformity. The denim jeans of the house porn world. A stylist puts a kid’s drawing or a family photo into a white or black Ikea frame, and that is as close to “individual stamp” as you are likely to see.
Years ago, a decorating magazine asked to follow a kitchen renovation I was doing, but as soon as they realized they were dealing with someone with ideas of her own, they backed out. I had told them I would be using white or black appliances; they told me to use stainless-steel appliances, which were new to the market at the time. The home-decorating media are slaves to the glossy weaponry of their advertisers, though at the time I was naive to this fact. Do not get me wrong: I liked the shiny stainless-steel appliances, but they were expensive, and I also felt they would look out of place in the French-country design I envisioned for my kitchen. I stuck to my guns: white or black appliances. The magazine folks stuck to their guns: stainless steel. It was spiralizers at dawn. We parted company.
My fascination for houses predates the internet and the vast world of TV and print offerings. As a teenager, I was more likely to pick up Country Life than Glamour or Seventeen. I devoured Country Life, and spent happy hours fantasizing about buying such homes. And they were so cheap. In the 1970s in England, you could buy a ten-bedroom Tudor pile with a ballroom, tennis court, in a woodland setting for £10,000. “Only ten thousand pounds!” I said to my father, stabbing the magazine listing with my finger. “For a historic mansion! With a tennis court! Let’s buy it.” He was already being hounded about houses closer to home by my mother; he did not need me to add foreign hysteria into the mix. Gamely, he said, “You buy it.” With $200 in my savings account, how could I? But it did not stop me from dreaming. It made me even more determined to one day live in England—the land of cheap and fabulous housing.
In the past few years, property portals have become a rich source of escapism for house-mongers. Pinterest can be an addictive source of decorating inspiration, but more times than not it throws up images of shiny renovations, of artistically staged and immaculately furnished interiors cleansed of personality. Dream homes to some, but to me they are lobotomized dens of minimalism. Where is the spirit? The fun? Who are these sad sacks, these folks bereft of character or too insecure to show it? They have fretted over the perfect shade of white; they have scoured magazines, catalogues, and shops for just the right accessories, as if curating a museum exhibit. Or they have enlisted an interior designer who has reduced the whole business to a “look” or a “vibe” that is “on trend.” How I loathe that term “on trend.” Life has been sucked out of these interiors; the throw cushions have been Botox-ed; the wall hangings are all splashes of colour and no story. I am more impressed with a home that displays quirky things from your travels; or a knick-knack that one of your kids gave you for Mother’s Day; or shelves heaving with real books, not those arranged in colour-coded blocks. If all you can show me is a curated stack of glossy coffee table books sitting on a glass credenza, then I cannot see us having a long conversation. I have no truck with white walls, but I mourn the loss of individuality dictated by the home-decorating tribe, who on the one hand urge you to put your stamp on your interiors and on the other hand want your stamp to look like the one they are pushing at that moment.
The best ideas are those encountered randomly, serendipitously: a clever arrangement found in a friend’s home; in a shop window; in a historic home, a museum, the lobby of a hotel; something glimpsed through a gate, fence, or open door while travelling in a far-off country or just wandering around your neighbourhood; something in a book; or gleaned from nature. They percolate and brew, these ideas, their taste improving or going slightly off as you stir in new ingredients culled from new discoveries. This is why I am not a fan of mood boards: they are too dogmatic, too incapable of the yield-and-flex necessary for the kind of quirky style I favour.
And yes, TV—not solely property programs but regular fare—and movies can be good sources, too. The problem is that my eyes drift easily to the background, checking out the goods in a character’s home. It is not uncommon for me to whisper to The Husband, “Don’t you love the shape of that chair” or “Check out the vase on the third shelf” while one of the characters is being murdered.
When I watch a movie, I scrutinize the background: I have come away from a movie lukewarm about the story but in love with the decor. The layout and design of the kitchen, the tiles used in the bathroom, the placement of the furniture, the arrangement of photos and art. It is often the small details in a character’s home that tell me more about them than does the dialogue. That sage paint colour on the walls of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson’s dining room in Dennis the Menace? Loved the calming effect. The perfect-for-conversation kitchen in It’s Complicated? Wonderful. Or the one in Something’s Gotta Give, with the amazing soapstone countertop on the kitchen island? Want it. In fact, I will take the entire house. Ditto for Meg Ryan’s brownstone in You’ve Got Mail. Admittedly, most of these interiors are created on a Hollywood sound stage where perfection and illusion are the stock in trade, but they feed the idea factory in my head nonetheless. The day cannot be far off when we will watch a movie with special glasses that pop up product details about an item used in a particular scene.
When did we all become so home and product obsessed? When did these take centre stage in our lives?
Never before has both the concept and the ownership of home been so important. Home is everywhere: in advertising, in magazine copy, in TV programming, in the financial sector, in news reporting, in retailing. It is not so much about owning—though possession is a definite factor—as it is about manipulating aspiration, emotion, and security. The tincture of a memory becomes a permanent marker that makes you want to trigger that experience every day. Conversely, a certain trigger can banish or at least minimize negative memories. We do not simply live in homes—we fetishize the privilege into an experience.
Home was once the place to hang your hat and rest your head, until it was transformed into the ultimate acquisition. You did not just want a home—you wanted a lifestyle.
Around the late-1970s, my generation succumbed to the Dynasty effect. Dynasty was a TV soap opera about a wealthy Colorado family. That is all I know of Dynasty. It competed with another soap opera at the time, Dallas, about a wealthy Texas family. You were either a fan of Dynasty or a fan of Dallas. I was for Dallas. That said, I credit the uptick in the demand for upscale interiors to Dynasty because it had glitzier sets and espoused a more luxurious aesthetic. Suddenly, young homebuyers refused to consider any home that did not have a master ensuite bathroom. They wanted a Dynasty home on a Ford-assembly-line salary. The rest of us inched our way into home renovation via starter homes and starter marriages. We began in the basement, where we transformed concrete walls and floors with wood framing and drywall into TV rooms with VCRs, banks of speakers, and libraries for our vinyl records. We moved on to the backyard, adding decks and fencing. Next up, kitchens and bathrooms. I remember a former neighbour showing me her kitchen renovation, all cantilevered glass ceilings and granite worktops, and telling me it cost $50,000. That was 1982, and it seemed an obscene amount of money. A lot of us were dreamers; few of us could afford to turn the dreams into reality.
Where the serious armchair renovator hung out was in front of This Old House, a television series that began in 1979 and is still on the air. The show took old, dilapidated American homes and painstakingly renovated them. The series became the springboard for a more thoughtful approach to home ownership and home improvement. People loved the idea of buying an old home, a piece of history, and fixing it up. Norm Abram, the great master carpenter, presented home construction as a meditative art with his Zen-like calm and pithy mantra “Measure twice, cut onc
e.” He had a workshop with every tool known to the human race, but he was not boastful about it; he treated the tools as if they were as necessary as a knife and fork. A new generation was taught to revere the handmade, the hand crafted. Unflappable Norm was paired with Bob Vila, a tightly coiled motormouth who looked to be on the verge of throwing a punch. Each week, the tension was less about whether the foundations of the house being renovated would survive underpinning and more about whether Bob and Norm would come to blows. When Bob left the show and was replaced by the infinitely more chilled Steve Thomas, you could feel the collective shoulders of continental North America relax.
Perhaps by coincidence, or perhaps inspired by the popularity of This Old House, two men who had been fired from their jobs at a hardware store in Texas decided to open their own. A year later, Home Depot was born. By 1984, it had grown to nineteen stores, with sales approaching $300 million and a slot on Nasdaq. Five years later, it was the largest store in the United States. It offered workshops for the do-it-yourselfer, stocked tools (you, too, could have a workshop like Norm’s!), construction materials, fittings, and fixtures. It also sponsored the steadily growing number of home-related programs and media. You were not a boomer if your Saturday morning did not start at Home Depot.
Today, hundreds of home-related television shows flicker across North American and British screens. In addition—sometimes supplementing the TV shows—there is a plethora of decorating magazines, and countless how-to tutorials online or offered at your local hardware store. In Canada alone, more than eight hundred thousand jobs are connected to the home-renovation industry.
Open House Page 8