by Rachel Simon
Now, lying in bed without him as I did for those six long years, but feeling able to give and receive the love I’d craved all those years before, I understand why Hal’s architectural ideas are unleashing ideas inside me. Architecture is a blend—of form and function, solids and voids, scale and proportion, weight and mass—and love is a blend, too. Of two people’s pasts and presents, similarities and differences, flaws and strengths, respect and forgiveness. It, too, is a design, ever-evolving. Especially if you can admit you could be wrong.
It takes the whole summer, but finally Hal finishes the plans—and what a marvel they are. The grandest feature is my new study, a heavenly third-floor addition reached by a spiral staircase up from the back bedroom. Southern light will pour through its large windows, illuminating the high-ceilinged room all day long. I won’t need to leave all day, either—a private powder room and kitchenette will cover all my needs, and when weather permits, I can even meet Hal on a new roof deck that will lie between my new study and his studio.
He has left no floor untouched. Walls will go down between the two smaller bedrooms, as well as the kitchen and dining room. The back porch will vanish, the first floor will lengthen by five feet, the bathroom and kitchen will completely transform. A powder room will replace the ratty toilet and sink in the basement, which itself will be refloored, re-walled, and made dry with French drains. New wiring, pipes, and ducts will go up throughout the house.
He’s also included many eco-friendly features. Solar panels. A high level of insulation. Kitchen cabinets made of wheat board with formaldehyde-free adhesives. Paint with no volatile organic compounds. Environmentally friendly linoleum for the kitchen and bathroom floors. Maybe even a geothermal heating and cooling system.
I ask if we can put a wheelchair lift on the front or a ramp in the back. He says there isn’t enough space if we want to do it safely. I’m disappointed, but hope that he’ll figure something out, because, aside from this, the house might as well be a cathedral.
In early September, Hal takes an afternoon off from work so he can take the plans to the city building department for permit approval. Before he leaves, I ask to see the whole package. His face glows as he opens the envelope and sets the plans in my hands.
They’re magnificent, intricate—and forty-three pages. “Geez. It’s as thick as a book.”
“I guess so,” he says, smiling. “Now, let’s see if they approve it.”
I watch him walk down the street toward the municipal offices, a spring in his step. I feel that way, too, whenever I walk to the post office with a finished manuscript.
Thirteen years wasted over differences. Rome was probably built more quickly.
“I thought so,” Hal says when he gets a call a week later. “We need a zoning variance.”
The building code, he explains, requires that new construction be set back at least five feet from the side property line, and my new study will not. In October, Hal begins the first step for getting a variance: sending certified letters of our intent to every household whose property abuts ours. This is not as easy as it sounds because some neighbors are renters and don’t respond to requests for their landlords’ addresses. Other neighbors never bother to reply. A friendly guy across the street expresses surprise when we mention the proposed addition while we’re all out shoveling snow one day. “We sent you a letter about it,” we say. “You did?” He barks out a laugh. “I probably thought it was junk mail and threw it away.”
By New Year’s Eve—almost a year since the break-in—I’m pretty disgusted. After Hal labored nonstop for months on his design, we’ve been spending months just sitting around. I admit that I’m feeling less generous than usual. I’ve been traveling relentlessly for speaking engagements, then coming home to teach, then heading out the next day, and I need a break. I already notified the college where I teach that I’ll be taking the fall semester off. But can I also cut back on my talks? We can’t possibly make that decision before we find out about the variance.
As midnight nears, and we settle down on the third-floor staircase beside the window, Hal with hot chocolate, me with hot tea, I’m in a surly mood. It doesn’t matter that in a few minutes we’ll be able to see the New Year’s fireworks going off over the city’s center. All I can think about are the neighbors at our property line. These aren’t the ones who come to neighborhood parties. I don’t even know who they are. “Bums,” I say, looking out the window. “You’re all bums.”
“Man, you’re a ball of cheer.”
“Doesn’t this get your goat?”
“No.”
“How could it not?”
“Why should it?”
“Because you’re a human being.”
He laughs. “You know, it might have gotten to me more before I started studying Buddhism.”
“How did that help?”
He sips from his mug, and as we wait for midnight, he tells me about Buddhism. Apparently, there are four noble truths, with the first two saying that suffering exists, and is caused by attachment and aversion. We crave possessions, people, and pleasant experiences, and we push away the unpleasant. “Attachment and aversion,” he says, “are both based on the idea that you can somehow freeze or control reality. But since everything changes, we create problems for ourselves by being fixated on the notion that we must have this thing or experience exactly when and how we want it.”
The third noble truth, he goes on, says that you can end your suffering, and the fourth says that there is a path to ending it. “They say the way to end suffering is right thoughts, right words, right actions. You can study that for a lifetime, but what I mostly think about is not being attached to results. If you keep thinking you’ll be happy if things go just as you want, then you’ll suffer. But if you let go—if you stop being attached to results—you can free yourself from your self-imposed bondage. Then you can have compassion, generosity, loving-kindness, and suffering can cease.”
“Have you done that?”
He laughs again. “Yeah, right. I am nowhere near it. But I’m trying.”
“Do you think you’ll get there?”
“Buddhist teachers say, ‘Everything changes.’ People’s bodies show that the organic world changes. Our relationship has shown us that the inner self changes. The deterioration of buildings shows that the material world changes. If you just accept change, you know that attachment is problematic. But you also realize that you yourself will change. I just believe that I’ll get better at being unattached to results, because I believe that I can change.”
A light catches our eyes outside the window, and we turn. Framed by the office towers behind our house, a streak of white races up the sky and then bursts open like a nebula.
We watch the fireworks begin, and I think, I want to feel attached. Yes, it’s brought me suffering. But think of all the attachments I’ve had—my father and Theresa, my mother and Gordon, Beth and Laura and Max, rafts of friends, years of students. Maybe suffering is sometimes worth it. It brought me back to Hal, and so many others. Suffering, in a way, has been teaching me what love is.
But—and I imagine my younger self castigating me to remember what I just told her—only because I let myself change.
“To the new year,” Hal says, clinking our mugs together.
I want to say, “To change,” but the truth is, I don’t want change. Not anymore I don’t. I just look to the fireworks and put my arm around him, and quietly I clink my mug back.
“Dan Bachtle’s here for the walk-through,” Hal yells up the stairs.
I yell down from my study, “Who?”
“The contractor a lot of the neighbors use. The guy who runs Edge Construction.”
“I thought you already talked with him.”
“I talked with Artie, who did the houses down the street. And George, who someone at work recommended.”
“How many more are there?”
“I’ve got calls out. We’ll see.”
It is April, two
months after we got the variance, one year after we decided to renovate, and I listen from the top of the stairs as Hal answers the door. I should be down there with him. But since Hal will be managing the project and knows how to spot a scam artist in this field, I’ve let him run these auditions.
It might seem that I am making no contributions to this project. But in fact over the last few weeks I took charge of one of the few in-the-world realms in which Hal has no aptitude and I feel knowledgeable, and researched home equity loans. I found a good rate, and a week ago we signed the papers for an $88,000 loan, less than we’d hoped for, but as much as the appraisal of our house would allow. Added to the funds from the movie, we have a $130,000 budget.
“What if it’s not enough?” I’d said to Hal. “What if there are”—and I plucked out of the air a term I know from living with an architect—“change orders?”
“Then we’ll deal with it.”
“How?”
“By not being attached to the results.”
I laughed, thinking he was joking. He laughed back, but he was not.
Now I come downstairs and shake Dan’s hand. Tall, clean-shaven, and soft-spoken, with brown hair and preppy clothes, Dan does not inspire thoughts of incompetence or treachery. Still, the contractor stories I’ve heard have left a comet trail of wariness. I tell myself to trust that Hal will keep this job from catastrophe, yet what I feel is close to foreboding.
I watch Hal lead Dan into the dining room for their walk-through. I’m attached to our savings and low mortgage. Completely attached. No noble truth will ease that kind of suffering.
Eventually, contractors Artie and Dan say they’ll bid on the job. Hal sets a date. The night before, Dan asks for a week’s extension. Hal gives it, then calls Artie to let him know there’s more time. When Artie answers the phone, he tells Hal, “I can’t do your job at all.”
“That’s obnoxious,” I say to Hal. “Putting you through all that.”
“Oh, well.”
“Doesn’t it make you upset? George jumped ship after five calls, now Artie says no.”
“I’m not happy. But they have a lot of work. They can afford to blow people off.”
“So it’s down to one guy?”
“That’s right.”
“What if he’s no good?”
“Dan’s reputation is excellent. He’s done several houses we like. And I liked him.”
“So you’re not going to worry?”
“What good will worrying do?”
“You are way too relaxed for this. It’s a lot of money and time and our lives will be completely at this person’s mercy.”
“Why get upset?”
“I’m not upset. I’m envious. I don’t grasp how you could be so ladi-dah about this.”
“This is my prayer wheel,” he said in a guru voice, picking up a lint brush. “I have removed the lint of my attachment.”
“Please stop it. I am not in the mood for comedy.”
“Okay.” He sets down the brush. “The problems that happen in the construction world are not the machinations of evil people who wish others ill. They’re about the circumstances of each project and the particular stresses of our times. Anyway, what’s the worst that could happen? We don’t do the renovation and instead we stay in a house that would be a palace for ninety-nine percent of the world? Besides, why get upset now? There’s so much more to go through.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Getting worked up never solves problems. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it.”
“You know all your books on Buddhism?” I point to a shelf behind him and, with a straight face and joking tone, I say, “I’m going to dynamite them right now. And that stupid lint brush, too.”
Dan calls the night before his extension. He’ll drop the bid in our front door by noon.
Hal hangs up the phone with a smile. “He’s very professional, too,” he says.
“He’s also a fortune,” I say the next afternoon, envelope in one hand, phone in the other.
“What’s the bid?” Hal asks from his office at work.
Laughing, I reply, “$320,000.”
Hal groans.
“What do we do now?” I ask. “Do we bail out?”
“Are you kidding?”
“But that’s more than every penny we have! Even if we sell all our belongings!”
“We negotiate.”
This is news to me, but it’s all news to me. Not that I’m in a position to pay much attention—I’m running around, dealing with the media that’s crashing down on me because of the movie, which is airing in a week. I am so overwhelmed that I am not much good for anything, so Hal fills me in on how he and Dan work it out. He tells Dan, “We can’t even come close to that. I’ll redo the drawings.” Out goes my new study—the year-long zoning wait was for naught. Out go the roof deck, finished basement, solar panels, geothermal system. We’ll still have sustainable features, but far fewer. Getting a wheelchair inside just isn’t going to happen.
“We’re eliminating so much!” I yell.
“I know,” Hal says calmly.
“Aren’t you bummed about everything we’re cutting out?”
“No. I let go of the results.”
“Well, at least you could shout a little!”
“I don’t need to,” he says, smiling. “I’ve outsourced the yelling to you.”
He sends the revised documents to Dan. The figure comes way down, but not enough. So Hal eliminates awnings he designed for the southern windows. He calls for white paint except for one “accent” wall in each room. He keeps one major feature: a full-height wall of windows on the back of the kitchen. But he scales down other goals. When I get agitated, he just says, “My job is problem-solving, and that’s what this is. That’s all this is.”
In this way, the price drops to $171,000—way more than we’d hoped to pay for far less than we’d wanted. But we will get what Hal has come to feel, and I actually do agree, is essential: the demolition of several interior walls to create bigger, sunnier rooms on the first and second floors, the demolition of the rear kitchen wall, the extension of the kitchen by five feet (eliminating the back porch and requiring a hand-dug foundation), remodeled bathroom, remodeled kitchen, new wiring, new plumbing, new ductwork, new insulation, new windows, central air, new appliances, new cabinetry, new finishes, brick cleaning outside, brick painting.
Relieved, I ask whether we’ll be signing a contract. “The architect-contractor relationship—and the client-contractor relationship—is set up to be adversarial,” he tells me. It’s a good idea to do whatever you can do to mitigate that. People who are less familiar with the industry than I am should almost certainly negotiate a more formal contract, but I feel comfortable with a letter agreement from Dan.” The letter, which Hal adds is legally binding, has a payment schedule, a list of items to be purchased by us, and a statement that Dan carries all insurance—something that, though we can’t possibly know it now, will become radiantly important later.
“Are you okay with this?” Hal asks, his pen poised above the letter.
My face feels tight. Such a huge bill won’t mean debt, but it will mean digging deep into our savings, as well as my filling the next years with talks instead of cutting back. But Hal is confident that everything will work out. “Yeah,” I say, hiding my wince.
That night, although I go to bed early, I lie awake. This renovation journey has already dragged on way too long and we haven’t even started. Of course, we also haven’t suffered—yet. But even if we escape suffering all the way to the end, the experience will not culminate in the house of our dreams. So far it is, in fact, like so much of life: the incandescent promise that you’ll receive every glory that you want, followed by the hard shock of regular old reality.
I get out of bed. At the top of the stairway to the third floor I see Hal, not in front of the drafting table, but with a guitar in his hands, for probably the first time in months.
“It’s just so expensive,” I say, “and so far away from the fantasy. And I’m afraid.”
“I’m nervous, too.”
I know he is, yet his eyes have a serenity that I do not feel.
“Come on, Baboo,” he says. He sets down the guitar, stands up, and takes me in his arms. “Few things in life are gained without risk. It’s time to do this.”
His skin is comforting. But even as we are standing in this embrace, and I know we are going to be on this journey together, I now grasp that we will be traveling separately. He will be more involved. I will, if I choose, be free of whatever crises arise—and be the one who agonizes. I feel lucky that the client has a husbitect. Yet I also feel oddly alone.
We hold each other for a long time, our bodies moving with our breathing, our thoughts synchronized one moment, far apart the next. It is, I realize, our own awkward dance. And I suddenly understand a new lesson about love: that when your life doubles because you accept another, and you’re happy because he’s happy and he’s sad because you’re sad, and you enter the biggest decision that the two of you have ever made, this unbalanced dance might be the dance you’ll do most often. I wonder if it is even what love is.
MOBILIZATION
P·A·C·K·I·N·G
Friends
“You’re joking,” I say to Hal.
“Would I joke about this?”
“Move out of the house? Like completely?”
“When they demo these plaster walls, dust will go everywhere.”
“We can wear masks.”
“Every day they’ll start bright and early at seven in the morning.”
“I’ll get up at six.”
“What about the power tools? They’re loud and they’ll be going all the time.”
“I’m still traveling a lot—and I’ll just spend my writing days at the library.”
