Recipe for Disaster (32 page)

“As if you could,” Jag says, standing up and stretching.

Jag and Liam repack all of the containers, and Emily helps take them in to load up the fridge. It should feed us lunch for the coming week. I pick up my sleeping drunk dog in her bed like a schnauzer taco, and take her inside and up to our room. She can sleep in the hall when she’s feeling better; tonight I want her with us. When I get back downstairs, Liam has left, and Jag and Emily have gone to the garage to get a couple of shovels and some lawn bags. We head out to the front lawn for the unenviable task of removing the offending deposits. It’s like trying to wrangle soup. We decide that since we’ll need to resod the lawn eventually anyway, it’s easier to just dig around the bombs and remove the divots of grass with the toxic waste on top. It takes the better part of an hour for the three of us to remove all the ick, and Jag takes the bag out to the Dumpster while I survey a lawn that now looks like a flock of grenade-bearing gophers have attacked it.

“She’ll be okay,” Emily says soothingly.

“Yes she will. The lawn on the other hand . . .”

She laughs. “Yeah, this is pretty bad. I’m really sorry.”

I hold my hand up. “This is not your fault, don’t even think about it. The dog will be fine, the lawn will eventually be fine.”

“I’ll figure something out about a place to stay, I know it must be a pain to have me here.”

“It’s fine, Emily. You’ve been a big help. I know I’m not good at it, but I want you to know that I appreciate it. You’re a hard worker, and you’re doing a good job, and really being helpful.”

She grabs me in a bear hug. I will never get used to all of this wild affection. “Thank you, Anneke, that means just everything to me. But aren’t I in the way, I mean, with you and Jag?”

“We’re doing just fine.” I don’t know why I’m not agreeing with her, I really should just take this opportunity to tell her that it is fine to stay a couple more days, but that she definitely should find a new place soonish, but the words aren’t coming. She smiles, nods, and follows me back inside. What can I do? And Jag is right, she is going to have to leave soon to head for school, it won’t be that much longer.

I decide to indulge in a long, hot bath on the first floor with a large tumbler of bourbon. With some of the stress of the day finally leaving my shoulders, I get into my comfiest pajamas and head upstairs to check on the dog. She’s still snoring, and luckily, hasn’t left us any surprises on the floor, so I’m tentatively hopeful she’s on the other side of it.

“Hey, you,” Jag says behind me. I turn around, and he’s standing there, two Chinese containers in his hands, chopsticks sticking out of the tops. “Rice or noodles?” he asks.

I smile. “Noodles, please.” He hands over the lo mein, and I take a bite. It is that perfect place between warm and cool, and delicious.

“Always hungry again an hour later.” He shrugs and digs into the fried rice.

“Yep.”

“I’m glad she’s going to be okay.”

“Thank you for all your help today.”

He winks. “I think I’m going to follow your lead and have a soak in that tub.”

“I highly recommend it. Just don’t leave rice in the drain.”

“As long as you don’t drop noodles in our bed.”

Heeding Jag’s warning, I finish the lo mein at the desk, flipping through the latest
Dwell
magazine. Just as I’m getting ready to go to bed, my laptop pings. I have an email.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
RE: visit

Anneke—

Alan has been invited to do a brief midterm special course at Northwestern from November 19–30. He has asked me to join him, so I will be in Chicago as well, and would like for us to see each other. He would also very much like to meet you, so I hope you will be able to find some time for that as well while we are there.

Anneliese

How ironic. I would have thought that Schatzi was the biggest shitstorm of today, but apparently my fortune was accurate, if not fortunate. I think for a moment and reach for Gemma’s journal. I let the heavy book fall open in my lap and close my eyes.

“My mother is coming, Gemma, what on earth do I do about that?” I let my finger fall onto the page, and then look down to see where it has landed.

“Sometimes, despite all your best efforts and deepest wishes and most fervent prayers, bad things just happen. And all you can do is try to survive your own suffering.”

And for the first time, Gemma brings me no comfort. None at all.

A
ll of our parents are coming at once. The actual fact of this begins to sink in, and both Jag and I fear that we may not survive. He’s encouraging me to see them while they are here, but not to invite them to Thanksgiving, which I thought would be the easiest way to do it, so that there would be plenty of buffers. He says that might not be a great idea because he thinks things are likely to be tense with me and my mother, and because he fears his parents will be uncomfortable enough, and he wants the day to just go smoothly. The concept of parents and children having no relationship at all just doesn’t compute for him, nor would it for his parents, and the idea of bringing Anneliese and Alan in on what will already be a pins-and-needles day really worries him.

In light of the impending parentals, we decided to go full steam ahead on the first floor, which is the formal entertaining space, and will have the most details and wow factor. We are hopeful that the place will be somewhat close to finished, since our new goal since Liam came on board is to have it listed quickly after the New Year, but we really want this floor on point, in case the rest of the house isn’t quite there yet.

We got the dining room finished, and it looks spectacular. Both hutches are installed and all of the doors and drawers are functioning beautifully. The restored coffering is stunning, and we installed small pin lights at some of the junctions to supplement the two antique chandeliers. It now has two cased archways, over six feet wide each, trimmed in wood we salvaged from other areas of the home. Since the space will accommodate a table of up to eighteen feet, having two ways to access the space ensures that none of the future guests will feel trapped. Liam and Jag both thought I was insane for wanting to paint the space in a high-gloss deep poppy orange, but when I pointed out that two whole walls are built-in hutches, and one wall has five large windows, the actual amount of orange in the room becomes more of an accent and not overwhelming.

I know it’s a risk, but I think many developers and builders make a mistake with spec spaces by keeping things too homogenous, assuming that future buyers will be scared by strong design choices. They paint the whole place white or off-white from basement to attic, they pick the most neutral colors and styles for fixtures and finishes, and as a result, their places show as very boring homes. They don’t know that by ignoring their own personal aesthetic and trying to keep things generic, they end up with houses that lack any aesthetic whatsoever. But when you ask people who aren’t buying new construction what drew them to their home, they say it was the special uniqueness that got them. It’s the art nouveau tulip tiles in the fireplace surround, or the deco fixtures in the bathroom. It’s the stained glass, or the built-in hutches or shelving units. I know one woman who convinced her husband to buy their shabby fixer-upper solely because of the original his and hers bathrooms and dressing rooms that flanked the master bedroom . . . His was all black marble, with black tub, toilet, and sink, and leather handles on all the drawers and doors in his dressing room. Hers was all pink and gray marble with pink tub and toilet and sink, and fully mirrored fixtures, like a 1930s Hollywood dream. The rest of the place they effectively gutted, but those bathrooms and closets didn’t change a bit. One of my favorite home improvement bloggers, Victoria E. Barnes, says that she fell in love with her house because of the exquisitely detailed 1890s door hinges.

MacMurphy never did spec builds; god forbid they would lay out their own money up front. But Chicago has some amazing developers who believe enough in the quality of their design choices to simply build beautiful homes and know that they will find the right people to buy them. My personal hero is Andy Bowyer, who started his company Middlefork Development with a simple commitment to elegant artistry and quality. Essentially, if you were going to build the Palmer house from scratch today? Andy is the guy to do it. He makes strong design choices, and his houses are spectacular. They have a very European old-world feel, with total twenty-first-century functionality, and the combination is magic. I firmly believe it’s because he brings his own personal taste and design sense to his projects, and doesn’t shy away from letting them take center stage. And as a result? None of his projects stay on the market for more than a month.

That is the kind of builder I want to be. I may not want to do as much with new construction, but I want to find places like this and honor their history and make them shine and help them realize their full potential and find their forever family. So when I had the vision for this dining room—the deep chestnut brown patina on the hutches and woodwork, the inside of the glass-door hutches upholstered in camel-toned leather, the ceiling between the coffering in pale linen paint, and then the pop of the orange in fabulous, polished high gloss bringing warmth and elegance to the room—I had to go for it. I can just picture the Rabins in this room, having one of their famous dinner parties, the buffets covered in Gemma’s delicacies, a long table set elegantly with white china and silver and sparking crystal. I think the room feels like a hug. If Cary Grant were hugging you. In his best tuxedo. On Valentine’s Day. After proposing.

Of course it was a huge pain in the ass. Nothing is worse than high-gloss paint. You have to sand the walls to make sure there isn’t the tiniest blemish. You have to do a zillion layers of the paint, sanding between each one to keep that smooth surface. And you have to be uber-careful to not let the tiniest particle of dust or piece of hair get embedded in the surface while it’s wet. The paint? Took Emily and me three full days to get right, while Jag and Liam worked on the third floor. I give the girl credit, she has great attention to detail and was amazing with the meticulous and mind-numbing work. Of course, she also never shut the fuck up, babbling incessantly about everything from television programs to music to vacations she took with her dad and Anneliese. I eventually figured out that if I brought in music, she didn’t feel the need to fill the silence, so I invested in a Bluetooth speaker that I could connect to my iPhone and created some fun playlists, heavy on the ’70s rock and ’80s pop.

The oasis on the third floor is still very much a work in progress. The bathroom fixtures need to go in, the walls all have to be repaired and replastered, the crown molding and baseboards stripped of layers of paint and stained to match the rest of the house. The laundry room and back bonus room and bathroom haven’t even been touched.

“So, girls’ night tonight?” Jag appears in the bathroom door.

“Yep. Have to prove to them I haven’t completely fallen off the face of the earth.”

“It’s good, you should go out more.” Jag has boundless energy. He can finish a long day of hard labor with me, and then head out for the evening to socialize. I try to participate at least once every other week or so, just to keep up appearances, and the evenings are always fairly enjoyable, despite always feeling shitty for deceiving them. But mostly? I hang at home with my best friends, bourbon and Netflix. I just don’t have the oomph at the end of a workday to get myself out and about. I’ve been sticking to lunches and brunches with Marie and Caroline; Hedy has spent the last three months commuting between Palm Beach and the Hamptons, where she has clients. But now that she’s home, she’s organized a dinner out for the four of us, even convincing Caroline to come downtown for a change. We’re going to Del Frisco’s, a huge, loud, scene-y steak house, the opposite of what we usually do, but Hedy decided we needed a little noise and sparkle, and promises that the people-watching will be spectacular, and the food is good. She’s even insisted on treating “to celebrate her new jobs,” which I have a sneaking suspicion is more because the three of them still don’t want me to feel badly about not wanting to go to such an expensive meal, and it isn’t quite close enough to my birthday to use that as an excuse.

“I’m just not the social butterfly you are, husband.”

He comes up behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders. “You are wonderful. Don’t change a bit.” He kisses the top of my head, and winks at me in the mirror. “Have a great time and give my love to the ladies.”

“I will. You going out?”

“I think so, probably just dinner, maybe a movie.”

“Well, say hi to the gang for me.”

His face looks a little puzzled for just a flash, and then returns to impassive. “Will do.”

I put on a little bit of lip gloss, and look in the mirror. It is kind of nice to be in real clothes, to be going out for a change. Maybe Jag is right; maybe I need to resurrect my social life a bit. Before I met Grant, I went out a lot. With the girls, with vendors or subs, occasionally with clients, or with the guys I was dating and their groups of friends. I wasn’t a party girl, but I had an active social life.

“Schatzi? Perhaps I need to rethink my homebody thing, what do you think?”

She tilts her head at me, as if thinking it over, and then gives what looks like a definitive nod, which cracks me up.

“Should we consult Gemma on this?”

Schatzi nods again, and follows me back to my bedroom. I grab the journal and open it at random, closing my eyes. “Gemma? Should I get out more?” I let my finger fall and look down to see what her advice will be.

“Whip the egg whites until they are foamy and white but not stiff.”

Guess even Gemma can have an off night.

S
o wait a minute, it made her DRUNK?” Marie asks, passing me the sweet-chili-glazed calamari.

“Yeah. And horrifically explosive out of both ends. I did not know it was possible for one twenty-pound dog to create forty pounds of vomit and liquid poop.” I hand Hedy the cheesesteak egg rolls.

“We. Are. EATING. Good lord, people, can we not have a single meal without body parts or effluvium?” Hedy waves off the egg rolls, and sticks a fork in Caroline’s crab cake.

“Help yourself, dear.” Caroline leans back to give Hedy easier access. “For once I agree, perhaps we can shift the subject.”

“My mother is coming to visit.”

Three heads turn to me, forks paused in midair.

“And E. F. Hutton says . . .” I say, not sure how else to respond to their shocked silence.

“Are you okay?” Marie asks.

“When?” Hedy says.

“Why?” Caroline pipes in.

“Oy . . . Okay, Alan has some course he is doing at Northwestern end of November, so she is coming with him. She asked to see me and Alan wants to meet me, so I guess we’ll figure all that out. It overlaps when Jag’s parents are here; he doesn’t want me to invite them to Thanksgiving.”

“Are you okay?” Marie asks again, noting that I ignored that part.

I think about this for a second, and take a sip of my wine. “No, not really.”

“Does she know you’re married?” Hedy asks.

“Nope. I haven’t even replied to her email yet to tell her that I will see them.”

“Do you want to see them?” Caroline asks. “You know you don’t have to.”

“How would that work?” The idea never occurred to me.

“Honey, you are a grown-ass woman. She has been a nonentity in your life for as long as you’ve had a life. If you don’t want to see her? If you don’t want her in your life? Opt out. Tell her you’re sorry, but the time they are here isn’t convenient for you, and you hope they have a fine trip.” Hedy takes another bite of Caroline’s crab cake, and Caroline picks up the plate and places it in front of Hedy.

“She’s right, you know, Anneke,” Caroline says. “If you don’t want to see her, don’t see her.”

“She’s my mother. How do you say no to family?”

Marie gets a dark look on her face. “There’s a difference between relatives and family. You can be related to someone; that is an accident of genetics. Relatives are pure biology. But family is action. Family is attitude. That woman . . .” Marie’s voice drips with venom. “Is NOT your family. WE are your family. That woman is just your relative.”

Hedy’s mouth drops, and Caroline’s eyes fly open so wide I think they might get stuck.

“Don’t hold back there, Marie,” Hedy says, finding her voice.

“I’m sorry, but . . .” Marie’s eyes fill with tears.