The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life (16 page)

CHAPTER 18

A
WHILE BACK,
Perry and I were sitting in bed watching
24
. (This should clue you in to the fact that it was several years ago, since Jack Bauer has been gone from our lives for quite some time. I mourn him. Not like I mourn Sydney Bristow or Coach and Tami Taylor, but close.) A commercial came on, and I had a moment to reflect on how incredible Jack continued to look in spite of his exposure to biological weapons. He really was holding up beautifully other than the occasional tremor that conveniently managed to arise right when he was about to do something really important like disarm a bomb or save the president from being stabbed with a kiwi knife.

(Does anyone else remember that
24
was usually brilliant but every now and then had a horrendous story line, like his daughter being trapped in a cabin in the mountains with a mountain lion outside?)

Anyway, while I was thinking about Jack’s phenomenal resilience, Perry turned to me and asked, “Have you read anything about radiant barrier paint?”

“Hi. Are you speaking English? What does that even mean? What would make you think that I’ve ever heard of such a thing?”

(Or that if I ever stumbled across an article about something called “radiant barrier paint,” I’d take the time to read it unless I saw the words
Jennifer Garner
or
Rachel Zoe
or
Connie Britton to reprise role as Tami Taylor
?)

“It means radiant barrier paint. It’s paint that makes a surface heat resistant. They use it on the space shuttle, and I’m thinking about buying some.”

“Well, of course you are. I’ve always said that if it’s good enough for the space shuttle, then it’s good enough for us.”

“I’m serious. I’m going to buy some and paint the entire attic with it to help keep the house cool. It’ll cut down on our utility bill.”

“That’ll be nice, since there’s a good chance you’ll die if you go up in the attic for more than three minutes this time of year. I’ll appreciate the economic savings.”

Then
24
came back on, and that was the end of the discussion. Or so I thought.

However, I walked into the house the next day and overheard Perry on the phone with someone discussing radiant barrier paint. He was talking to a man named Jacob from Jacob’s Ladder Construction (such a clever way to subtly let people know you are a Christian businessman without having to put a large ichthus on your Yellow Page ad) about getting an estimate to have our attic painted with radiant barrier paint. Let’s just say that the estimate was more than I was willing to spend, but considering I was willing to spend approximately between zero and ten dollars to have
my attic outfitted like the space shuttle, that’s not really saying much.

Perry announced a few days later that he was going to do it himself. And since it was only 107 degrees in the shade, he decided it was a good time to go up in the attic and figure out a plan of attack. I wanted no part of any of it other than to sit on the couch and make jokes referencing
Coal Miner’s Daughter
because he was wearing a headlamp, and that’s just asking someone to quote Loretta Lynn.

So while he sweated up in the attic, I sat in the air-conditioning and called out helpful things such as, “There ain’t nothin’ in Kentucky for me except a chest full of coal dust and being an old man before I’m forty” and “Doolittle’s done throwed me out” and because I was on a roll and couldn’t stop myself “Who’s that sow you got wallowin’ in your Jeep?”

I just do what I can to be supportive.

I’m not sure what happened at that point
 
—maybe the excessive heat in the attic caused him to realize he was crazy to even consider trying to paint it himself. That’s why NASA has all those astronauts. What do you think they do when they’re not leaping around on the moon? But whether it was the heat or he just got distracted by something else, he dropped the idea, and I was so grateful.

Several years passed with no mention of radiant barrier paint, and I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up. In my opinion, it would be more fun to rent a shovel and hire myself out to dig a big hole than to spend money on our attic. Or maybe we could take a vacation and go out for a spin on a paddleboat, because what’s more
relaxing than to pedal yourself around a large lake? Other than using a handy invention called a boat motor? But then I began to discuss changing up the living room and kitchen. Specifically, I wanted to get rid of the autumn-gold color we’d had on the wall for ten years and go with a soft gray, since that’s what everyone on Pinterest is doing and I’m a follower.

Perry was on board with my plan and then mentioned maybe it would be a good time to get insulation in our walls since we were going to paint and fix some existing cracks in the Sheetrock anyway. I vaguely accepted this because I was just happy he was agreeable to my plan to paint, plus I was secretly waiting for the moment to mention I also wanted built-in shelving installed in the living room. And maybe a new chandelier.

Then Gulley’s grandmother got sick and I drove to Bryan to help with Gulley’s kids while she and her mom tried to find an assisted-living facility for Nena. And it was while I was out of town and at the VERY LOUD community pool with the kids one afternoon that Perry called to report he’d had “a guy” out to the house to bid on insulating the walls and the attic.

I swear he’s like a dog with a bone.

So I listened as he excitedly explained what a HUGE difference this was going to make in our home and that all it involved was drilling “a couple of holes” in the walls so they could pump in the foam insulation.

I could tell this was one of those things he wasn’t going to let go of, so I agreed to the wall insulation but suggested that we wait on the attic since that was going to be a little more expensive and I’d rather put that money in a pile and burn it instead of spending it on our attic because, you know, what’s more fun to spend money on than insulating your attic?

Everything else in the world.

But here’s the thing about marriage. Sometimes there are breakdowns in communication. And sometimes you speak such different languages that you forget to ask important, clarifying questions. Questions like “How many holes are we talking about?”

Because while I naively envisioned that each wall would receive one small hole in a discreet location, what actually took place was a Sheetrock apocalypse.

The workmen came into our house with saws and drills and hoses while wearing masks. It was like the end of
E.T.
when the scientists realize E.T. is living in Elliott’s house and come barging in wearing space suits. I wanted to ride off on my bike and fly across the moon to escape while wearing a red hoodie. And I don’t really even like to wear red.

In my husband’s defense, the insulation salesguy hadn’t been completely up front with Perry either. And so we were completely unprepared for the mess and the dust and the hysteria and the tears. Of course, I was solely responsible for the hysteria and the tears. The workmen didn’t even cry one time as they decimated what used to be the walls of our home.

After Perry saw me breathing into a brown paper bag, he suggested that maybe I should get out of the house for the rest of the day. And I agreed because I was curled up in a corner singing, “Turn on your heartlight.”

The next two days were a blur of insulation and dust and walking back into the house to find my living room curtains tied in a knot to keep them off the floor. Curtains. Tied in a knot. Do you know what happens to curtains that have been tied in a knot? It’s not pretty. The whole situation was bleak. BLEAK. There was so much Sheetrock dust in my house that I believed there was no
way it would ever be clean again, and we would all become permanently asthmatic and emerge from our home covered in dust like a scene out of some postapocalyptic movie where the people walk around like zombies as they survey their new reality.

Finally they finished pumping insulation, filled the silver-dollar-size holes all over each wall with some type of white foam that I think they use in hell, and left. My walls looked as if they’d contracted some type of the pox.

I’d spent that entire day at the pool with Caroline because, seriously, workmen act uneasy when a woman is crying on her dusty couch while they do their job. But about four o’clock that afternoon, Perry called me and asked where we kept the mop and the Swiffer broom.

And by the time I walked through the door an hour later, the house was completely put back together. The floors were swept and mopped. The curtains were untied. The furniture had been dusted.

As silly as this sounds, it was one of those moments in a marriage when I loved him more than ever. Not just because he cleaned the house, but because I realized he knows me well enough to know that I needed the house to be clean. That he knows me well enough to know that I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night until the house was put back together.

And there’s something about being known like that. It makes you feel loved. Because knowing to clean up all that dust is just the tip of the iceberg of things Perry has learned about me over the years. He loves me more because of some of them and in spite of the rest. I know you will find this shocking, but I am no picnic to live with some of the time.

(I always laugh when someone who just knows me from the blog says I must be so fun. Yes. I am a laugh a minute when I
decide the baseboards look dirty and feel that my life will end if they aren’t cleaned immediately. It’s times like these when I’m sure Perry looks at me while I scrub furiously and thinks,
Man, marrying her was a great decision
.)

The holes remained in our walls for the next six months. For six months our house looked like it had been overrun by aggressive termites with anger issues. This was due to a combination of some painters who flaked out on us and having a hard time finding a Sheetrock repairman who wanted to deal with our mess. I could hardly blame them. In fact, I apologized profusely to every single one of them who walked through our door.

And frankly, the holes nearly sent me over the edge. I was okay for a while, but it finally got to the point where any sort of tip of the emotional scale would end with my crying and saying, “AND WE HAVE HOLES IN OUR WALLS.”

But finally, a few weeks before Christmas, we got everything patched and painted and repaired. We even got the built-ins installed, and the whole house was finally starting to look like a real place where grown-ups lived again. A place where people enjoy the finer things in life, like indoor plumbing and using utensils to eat a meal.

So you can imagine how I felt when, several nights later while eating dinner, Perry announced, “I think the next thing we need to do to the house is get the attic insulated.”

Why on earth? Why will this man, the man I love and adore, not rest until our home is completely impervious to outdoor temperatures? If I wanted to live in a refrigerator, then I could opt to move to Alaska and become an Eskimo.

(I’m not completely sure that example makes sense. But let’s go with it.)

And I tentatively, lovingly said, “You know, I just hate the thought of getting into all that and making a big mess now that the house is in such great shape.”

He responded, “It won’t make a mess.”

Yes. That’s what I heard about the wall-insulating process. That was a lie.

Perry went on to say, “It’s just a matter of taking everything down from the attic so they can pump out the old insulation and put in the new stuff.”

“I know. You’ve mentioned that before. Do you remember how much stuff we have stored in our attic? Do you recall that we have a saddle up there we’ve been keeping for a horse we’ve never owned or had ambitions to own?”

“Quit exaggerating. What’s taking up the most space up there is all your Christmas decorations. You have about forty-two different manger scenes.”

I replied, “Yes, because I love Jesus. Let’s not offend our Lord in an attempt to make me feel bad.”

And so we’ve been at an impasse. I’m not sure why we need our attic insulated when we still don’t have a farmhouse sink in the kitchen or plantation shutters on all our windows. That just doesn’t even make good design sense. Because you know what no one ever comes to your house and remarks?