by Dee Detarsio
“Do you like it?” Sam asked me.
“Are you kidding? Even the primer looks better,” I said, swiping on a thick creamy layer.
“Just checking,” he said. “I was afraid you picked it because of the name.”
“Well, that did help make my decision easier,” I agreed. “Bingo!” We both said together and laughed. Bingo Beige was a beautiful soft pale creamy mist of color. Sometimes I agonize for days about simpler decisions than this, but this felt right and I went with it without looking back.
I heard Sam cough and looked over. He motioned to me to cover my mic. “How about some drama?” he said softly. When we were getting paint and talking about the show he suggested I whip up some tears for the producers about how my life has been changing.
“There is no way I can cry on cue,” I told him. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bad actress and a worse liar.”
He merely shrugged and said sometimes when you started pretending an emotion you could really get into it. “You never know what might come out,” he said, “and besides, remember, there’s nothing real in reality TV, so you might as well give them a taste of their own medicine.”
I climbed one more rung on the ladder, turning my back toward him. I started talking in a choked voice, like I was about to cry. “So much has happened in the past month,” I sniffed. I had no idea where I was going. So, I tried to start at the beginning.
“If you would have asked me on my wedding day what my future looked like, I had all the same dreams that every other bride has. Romance, bliss, mixed with smugness about having a life partner to get through the tough times. But, somewhere along the way, Brett and I both changed. I know I’m not blameless, but the romance and bliss somehow faded into nothing more than routine with a blasé kiss. And, I think we all know that feeling smug is just a system warning light for ‘she’s about to blow.’ I didn’t want to face it for the longest time. I didn’t want to wreck my kids’ home, or my nice safe rut.
“My kitchen was demolished and even though I know it’s going to be gorgeous,” I looked over my shoulder and smiled at the camera bravely as I pretended to wipe a tear away, “especially with the new paint, change is really hard.” I turned back and reached my arm out to paint some more.
“I’ve learned a lot of techniques for home improvement and I’m afraid once my kitchen is done, I’ll want to keep going. Maybe I can do something easy, like painting my family room. I guess change in one area makes you take a good look at your whole life. My kids are growing up right before my eyes and I’m trying to be the mom they need, not making them be the kids I want.”
Uh oh. My eyes were really starting to water and my throat got tight. I swallowed hard. “I’m in a huge fight with my mom, I guess because I’m not the daughter she wants. I’m even having a spat with my best friend,” I really started crying now. I heard Sam tell me to let it out. So I did. I came down from the ladder and sat on the bottom rung and let myself wail.
“I guess this show has stirred up a lot of emotions in me.” True. “My kitchen needed some TLC but my life did even more.” True. I boo hooed. I was crying, but I built it up, like when I sometimes had a sneeze coming and amped it up, just for the fun of it. Like Brett. I hated the way he sneezed. He would basically scream, ‘ACHOO’ and I would jut out my lower teeth, and begrudgingly spit out a ‘bless you’ that was more a blasphemy than any offer of well-wishing.
Sitting on that ladder, I sobbed some more. “While I was busy focusing on the physical hammering and nailing of this place,” I waved my hand, “I think it was like some sort of meditation that opened up a lot of things that I needed to see.” I started crying really hard now, for real. It was true. I bled for my kids, my lost marriage, my fear for my future, my kid’s future, my future without my kids. Stuff I never really wanted to look at very closely because it was all so scary. I folded my arms over my knees and lay my head on them and cried in my tub of paint. The oily fumes that smelled better than a Sharpie invaded my sinus cavity as I sniffed. Maybe it was the Sudafed talking. I meant crying.
Sam must have shut off his camera because he came over and kneeled beside me and patted my back. “Shh, it’s OK,” he said. He handed me some tissues.
“Thanks,” I wiped my face and really didn’t want to blow my dripping nose in front of him, but what could I do? I blew and blew and he graciously handed me another wad of tissues. “This is all your fault,” I told him. “Bastard,” I tried to laugh and get control of myself.
“Are you OK?”
I squeezed out a couple more tears but at least I wasn’t sobbing anymore. I nodded.
“I’m going back to the camera now. Look around, Lisby. Look what you did here tonight.”
I dabbed at my face and took a deep breath. “I have no control over my life and maybe that’s what freaks me out so much. Maybe that’s why I decided to repaint my kitchen tonight. And I hope anyone with eyes can see that it was a good call. And just maybe, I can have some of that confidence to make good, tasteful decisions when it comes to the big stuff.”
Sam clapped and then put his camera in the family room on a tripod. He got a brush and started trimming from the bottom.
“Sam. You don’t have to do that.”
“My pleasure. We’ll get it done a lot faster. I have enough video for now. I’ll get some of you rolling the paint on later. I also got great stuff of your kids, earlier. They’re good kids, you should be proud of them.”
“I am.” I was. Sam and I painted mostly in silence, focusing on gitting-r-done. We finally got the ivory over the primer and it looked elegant, erasing every last trace of the revolting red. We took a break and I broke out a bottle of chardonnay “to help the pearlizing process,” I told Sam, before I got clean brushes from the crew’s stash to start applying the luminescent top coat. It went on pretty fast and easy, leaving a subtle iridescent sheen that really made an impressive, shiny difference.
We finally finished about 2:30 am. I was so tired. “Sam, I don’t know how to thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“It will be worth it to see the look on Elgin’s face tomorrow.”
“I’m very excited for that.” I went to take the tape off and started pulling the blue strand closest to the family room. I had about three feet yanked off when I saw it. “Oh, no.” I wanted to cry again. The tape had pulled off what we just painted, revealing a raggedy tear of bright red paint below, just above the base board. I was so tired. We had worked so hard. Why isn’t it ever easy?
“Sam, look. Isn’t it dry enough?”
“Tape pulling is a fine art,” he said. “You just have to pull it fast enough and almost parallel to the direction you are going.” He knelt and gave the next section a quick jerk, almost even to the taped area. I had been lifting and pulling up and away. “Much better,” he said. “Let’s get it all off, but know we’ll have to do some touch ups. It will be fine.”
With the tape finally removed, and a few quick touch ups, my kitchen sparkled. I couldn’t wait to see it in the daytime with natural sunlight. Besides, I knew the construction crew would really fix any blobs, splotches and remaining red spots. It was good to know they had my back. But I was proud of myself.
Sam came up and put his hand on my shoulder. “Go get some sleep, I have a feeling tomorrow will be a big day.”
I covered his hand with mine. “Thank you so much.” I could have kissed him. And not with gratitude, if you know what I mean.
Chapter 24
Spiel or No Spiel
It seemed like only a few minutes had passed when I heard banging on my bedroom door. “Lisby Shaw, wake up right now!” I heard Elgin. “I don’t care if you’re decent or not,” he continued. “Sam, get that camera up here.”
I quickly felt under my covers and just managed to swipe on a sheen of lip gloss that I had stashed when I crawled into bed, just in case Elgin would come storming in my room once he got a load of the kitchen’s new color. If I could have, I wo
uld have gone to bed with full make-up, knowing something like this would probably happen. I sat up just as Elgin barged into my room, Sam right on his heels, and Dustin behind Sam wielding one of those boom mics, with the fuzzy duster-looking attachment. I adjusted my brown slinky, silky nightie that I never ever wore but couldn’t resist buying about three years ago. Who really can pull off wearing negligees? I mean I had my kids, my kids’ friends and people coming in and out of my house at all times. Thank God I was able to find it last night before I fell into bed. I tugged on the strap pulling up the lacy bodice. I was really sorry, in case this part ever made it on the show, that I was just perpetuating the myth that women really go to bed wearing get-ups like this. Trust me. We don’t.
“How dare you?” Elgin shrieked like some soap opera queen. “What were you thinking? Who died and made you a designer?”
“Elgin, I can explain.” I stood up, my back aching. Oof, I was so sore. But it was a good sore. “You have no one to blame but yourself,” I said. Trying to remember what I had rehearsed. I was actually nervous now, facing Elgin.
“Me? Me?” His voice quivered. He seemed ready to add Fa So La Ti and Do.
“Elgin. I’ve changed. I’m taking control of my destiny. You’ve seen me as just another boring single mom just bouncing from one stupid suburban situation to another. But, look how much this show has taught me. It’s been really hard having you guys film my whole life, reflecting all my stupid mistakes and problems. But, I felt so strongly about painting my kitchen in a way that would make me happy, I just had to do it. Please tell me you understand, Elgin.” I walked over to him and grabbed his arms like I was almost going to hug him.
“Don’t you see, Elgin? This isn’t about going behind your back, this is about you teaching me and challenging me to do my best.”
He flung my hands off. “Go brush your teeth.”
My hand went up to my mouth. “Let me get dressed and I’ll meet you downstairs.”
His hand flicked me off but he wasn’t leaving. “Christ,” he said. “How do you sleep in here? This is the room we should have made over. This is why you’re such an effing basket case. You getting this, Sam?” Elgin frowned. “Good God, there’s a hole in your pillow case. And when, exactly, did you get your comforter? I didn’t know they have vintage bed-in-a-bag shops. The flowers are as big as my ass,” he said. As I hovered in my bathroom doorway I heard him add, “although not quite as big as yours.”
“Elgin, come on. Leave. Let me take my shower and we can finish up downstairs.”
He was leaning over and looking under my bed. Oh, God.
“What have we here?” He pulled out a pile of clothes that I had kicked under there last night. Or last week. Who knows? “What a pig sty.”
I saw my bedroom how the camera must have. I cringed at my mismatched dresser, which was old enough to be old, not old enough to be antique, with a couple of knobs missing. Shoot, I can’t even remember what was in those drawers I could no longer open. My old rickety nightstand, dusty, with ring marks ruining the finish, holding up an old alarm clock that I had since college, with the numbers that flipped over. Elgin picked it up. “Har har. Ever heard of digital?”
I had stacks of photo albums jammed in one corner, books and magazines spilling out of a laundry basket in another corner, and a cruddy two-toned desk with my computer, unpaid bills and uh, two or three or four emptyish cups of old coffee.
“Get out, Elgin. This room is off limits.”
“Seriously, Lisby, what the hell? This place is as depressing as,” he waved his hand, searching for the right word. “As depressing as your closet.” He finally spat the word out. He hated my clothes. “How do you live like this and what color do you call this?” he asked, kicking at the faded, stained, once-upon-a-time blue carpet.
“Oh, Elgin,” I tried to lighten him up, “lighten up. Who’s bedroom can actually stand up to inspection, especially to an unexpected and unannounced film crew? What would we find in your bedroom?”
He cocked his eyebrow. “That’s for me to know, and you to never, ever find out.” He shook his head and tsked his tongue. “Lisby, seriously. I’m just saying. Didn’t that Feng Shui lady teach you anything? This room is hideous. No wonder you have issues.”
“Elgin. I’ll meet you in my kitchen in thirty minutes.” I came over and propelled him out, not before he saw the hole in the wall by the door, courtesy of my ex-husband.
“Was it this much of a hell hole when I was first up here six weeks ago?” He asked, smacking himself in the forehead.
“Out.” I slammed the door and ran to the mirror. And groaned. It takes a lot more than a slinky negligee and swipe of lip gloss to make me presentable in the morning. Maybe they wouldn’t use it. I knew by now, Elgin would reinterview me and try to get me to answer the same questions I had just answered, only better. I hopped in the shower and tried to hurry so I could go see my new kitchen.
I ran downstairs and saw that Polly Purebred sitting on my new granite counter top.
“Lisby,” she greeted me, with a smile.
“Hi.” I looked around. My kitchen looked gorgeous.
“I understand you’ve been a busy girl,” she said.
“I guess.”
“We like the new color. It will present a good twist.” She looked at Elgin and hopped down. “It stays. Besides, we don’t want to waste another day repainting. So, what’s left?”
“The flooring needs to be installed, that’s tomorrow, some touch ups, final cleaning and staging and grand reveal,” Elgin said.
“Ok,” she said. “Why don’t you knock out the teases today?”
She left and Elgin decided to start with a holiday tease. “The first promos will air over the holidays so we want you by your Christmas tree.”
The crew helped get my tree down from the garage shelving and brought it inside. I gathered all my ornaments and some boxes up in my room, some in the guest room downstairs and some in my laundry room.
“You are a mess,” Elgin said.
He was never going to forgive me for painting over his red kitchen. “Elgin, please. I’m sorry. But I think this could be a good thing. Can you just let it go?”
“Go assemble your tree. Gee, that’s not a phrase that trips off your tongue. Why don’t you have a real tree?”
I hated when people were mad at me. “Real trees dry out so fast and we’ve just always had a fake one. It’s our tradition. Usually the kids help put it all up.”
“They’re at school,” Elgin reminded me. “This is reality TV. We’re staging it.”
“I know, but we don’t have many rituals, I like to let them put all the ornaments up. They like remembering them; and it’s kind of fun.”
“Good for you,” he said. “We don’t have time for fun. Chop, chop.” He clapped his hands and went outside. The crew helped me put up the tree in about fifteen minutes. It felt weird not having my kids here, complaining about having to be here and put the tree up. Even though they complained and even though it was a fake tree, it was our routine. They did like pulling out all the ornaments and remembering when they got them, or made them. Oh well.
“Hey, Lisby, do you want to put the star on?” Jeff from the crew asked me.
“Yeah.” I missed my kids. It just didn’t feel right. I put it on and went outside to let Elgin know the tree was ready.
He came back in with Sam and stopped in his tracks before the tree. “What the hell is this?” he asked.
“What do you mean? Do you want the lights turned on?”
“I want all the lights turned off so maybe we won’t have to see this monstrosity.”
“What?”
“This is the butt ugliest Christmas tree I have ever seen. I looks like something you drug through your bedroom and plopped on a stand.” He went up and took off a tin can with a wire handle that Ryan had painted in the fourth grade. “Um. Ew.”
“Hey, my son made that.”
He pulled off a chewed up macaroni be
ll that Nicole made in pre-school and then snacked on. He pulled down reindeer candy canes, glued together colored felt soldiers, misshapen cookie dough stars, cut-out snowflakes with glitter, popsicle photo frames with my kids’ pictures in them, and a hodgepodge of memories gathered over the years.
“No.” Elgin said. “No and no and no.”
“Elgin. Come on. It’s not that bad. You can’t just toss of a lifetime of memories.”
“I can and I am. We’re off to Target. I still have some dinero in my budget to do you up a real tree. How does a red theme sound to you?”
“Fine,” I said, realizing I sounded like my daughter pretending she didn’t want to go along and do something when she really did. Who was I kidding? Never one to miss a good trip to Target, especially when the network was buying, I was almost giddy at the thought of new Christmas decorations. Chosen and designed by my very own resident Elgin the elf.
“You guys, put these decorations back in the boxes,” he tossed off over his shoulder as I followed him out the door.
With no cameras to hound us and the chance to shop, Elgin lightened up. We had a great time. Elgin really did know how to pull things together. He bought red and silver ornaments of all sizes. He bought ropes of red, pink, green and silver strands of small glass balls and beads. He bought giant red ornaments and strands of round red lights. “Something’s missing,” he said. “Let’s go to the craft store.” There he found exactly what he wanted, four nine-foot long red feather boas for the final dressing of the tree.
Elgin was in high form on the way back and sang, “Deck my balls with gobs of glory…”
I had no idea what he meant, but I had caught his excitement about my tree.
“We’re still in the running, Lisby,” he told me. Your prank in Home Depot was good; who knew you had a hissy fit in you? And your repainting the kitchen has the producers very happy. Not me, mind you,” he said, his mouth pursed up in a snit. “Don’t ever, ever try anything like that again.”
“Fine.” We pulled up to my house and I helped him lug the bags of stuff inside. He shooed me off and told me to go have coffee with the crew.
