As Long As It's Perfect

by Lisa Tognola

  “You’re not lighting a football stadium,” Luke said.

  “Fine,” I said. But I still insisted on an additional light for the girls’ bathroom when we moved on to that room.

  “The girls have overhead lights,” Wim said as we stood in the vanity area.

  “I know. I also want one small chandelier here”—I pointed above my head—“to add some sparkle.”

  “Sparkle?” Wim was looking at me as if I’d asked for a small unicorn. “If you’re done increasing the budget for the upstairs, can we move on to the downstairs?” he said.

  I didn’t let his annoyance or the five-hundred-dollar price tag on that sparkle discourage me. I was too lost in the joy and delusion of buying a glittering crystal chandelier to care.

  We continued to the basement, where I told Rick the guestroom also needed more lights.

  Wim turned to me, his brows furrowed. “We already have one overhead. That’s enough.”

  “No, it’s not. This room is meant for my parents, and they need more light,” I said, remembering how my dad used to turn on all my bedroom lights when I studied at my desk. “Don’t strain your eyes,” he’d say. I shot Wim a look that said, What’s your problem? and then looked to Luke and Rick for validation, but only Luke seemed to notice.

  “How about if we buy your guests miners hats?” Luke joked.

  We all laughed. But the break in tension didn’t last long.

  That night, Wim and I were getting ready for bed, still discussing the house. I turned to him and, though I knew it would upset him, exclaimed in frustration that our guestroom would be darker than a morgue.

  “An overhead light is all that room needs,” Wim said. He removed his watch and placed it on the dresser.

  “It’s not,” I said.

  Wim just stood there and stared at me. “Janie, we’re talking about a bedroom that’s going to be used twice a year.”

  “That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be well lit,” I snapped.

  “You’re being unreasonable,” he said.

  “No, you are,” I said. “All we’re talking about is extra—”

  “‘Extra’ costs money,” he interrupted. “Money we can’t afford to spend.”

  Before I could say anything else, he’d walked out of the room.

  Later, as I climbed into bed next to Wim, I felt a flicker of warmth as our little toes touched. There was a time when the slightest foot graze would have raised his antenna, but tonight, like most nights lately, instead of edging his body closer to mine, Wim turned away from me, and the only broadcast I received from him was the clicking against his teeth as he popped a plastic night guard into his mouth and fell sleep.

  CHAPTER 31: THE WORLD IS FALLING APART

  Raymond Ave, Rye – January 2008

  On a frosty winter morning, Wim came into the kitchen after retrieving the morning newspaper, his hair dusted with snow. Plunking himself down at the table, he studied the front page of the Wall Street Journal, his face absorbing the dreary gray of the newsprint as he read the top headline: “US Economy Unexpectedly Sheds 17,000 Jobs as United States Slips into Recession.” Somewhere between the time our roofwent up and our siding was delivered, the economy had collapsed and the real estate market had tanked.

  “This is exactly what I was afraid of,” he said.

  “What?” I asked, my mind on fabric swatches.

  Wim set down the newspaper and looked at me. “The world is falling apart.”

  I noticed for the first time how rail-thin he looked, his once form-fitting Polo shirt now hanging loosely over his shoulders. He leaned on the table and twisted his ring. “The banking industry is in crisis, Janie.” He looked at me as if to make sure I understood the gravity of the situation.

  Did I? Not really. I understood the pain on his face and the severity of the headlines. But how this would impact him, and more specifically, us—no, I did not understand that. However, I knew that I had to at least try to understand in between gushing over fabric samples and obsessing about rooflines.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know the timing couldn’t be worse.”

  I looked out the window into the Schreibers’ kitchen, where Bonnie was standing at the counter wearing an old blue housecoat that she’d probably worn since the Nixon administration. I wagered she was discussing with Maurice the same issue we were. The difference was, the Schreibers didn’t have to worry about money troubles, given the small house they lived in and their modest place in Florida. Neither had we, until now.

  At the height of the Wall Street boom, Wim had worked his way up to managing director and enjoyed the glory years when the market was at its peak. His lucrative career had enabled us to live well and to make some long-term investments. We had always been careful, however, to live well within our means—owning a modest home, driving inexpensive cars, and buying moderately priced clothing.

  But that had all changed the day we decided to throw caution to the wind and join the flocks of Rye residents “moving up” in the housing ranks—people who, like us, felt confident that the value of their house was rising, enabling them to spend more.

  My mind wandered back to my therapist’s couch, where I had sat over a year earlier on a green sea of tapestry, sharing the most intimate details of my life. Linda had dark hair and a reassuring smile and always amazed me with her ability to coax things out of me with a simple nod of her head. An hour of therapy once a week, on and off, for the past few years had been an indulgence I had allowed myself, in the hopes of becoming a less anxious and happier person.

  Periodically, Wim and I had met with Linda for couple’s therapy. Wim had gone willingly, though always at my suggestion. Like most marriages, ours had never been free of conflict, even before this house project.

  Linda was sitting in a leather chair, her legs crossed at the knees, her lips poised in a slight, encouraging smile. There was a graceful wood coffee table between us and, as always, a box of tissues within reach.

  As I looked around the office, I scrutinized Linda’s décor. A small Tiffany-style table lamp sat on the corner of the oak desk. The colors of the dragonfly-patterned stained glass were deep blue and green and matched the Tibetan rug. The drapes looked like harvest gold linen, a color that added richness and depth to the room. I made a note to myself about color palettes.

  “Wim and I have decided to build a house,” I told her. “And we’re wondering what you think.”

  “That’s an ambitious goal,” she said.

  “It is very ambitious.” I turned to look at Wim. “But we think we’re up to the task.”

  “Can I ask why you’re set on building a new home?” she said.

  Wim and I took turns providing her a long litany of reasons—reasons we’d already spent a great deal of time discussing together at home: our need for adequate space, our yearning to create a sense of permanency in the world, our longing for a kitchen island. We viewed Linda’s approval as a kind of insurance policy.

  At that point, I had yet to think about my parents’ approval. How their perception of me still defined me more than I wanted to admit. How I was caught between wanting to please them by living within my means yet also wanting to impress them by seeming “successful.” As Linda scrawled a few notes on her notepad, I wondered what she was writing.

  “If only one of you wants this, it can breed resentment down the line,” she said.

  “Wim was initially reluctant,” I admitted.

  “I’d like to be able to retire at some point,” he said.

  “Can you afford to build a larger house?” she asked us. “Have you thought about what things will be like for you, financially speaking, in five or ten years?”

  Wim was sliding his wedding ring on and off his finger, again and again. “It’s a stretch, but we can swing it.”

  Linda trusted that we were reasonable people with good judgment and common sense—people who didn’t make rash decisions. At least, that’s what I wanted to believe.

  �
��What’s the worst thing that can happen?” Linda wasn’t asking this rhetorically.

  “Wim loses his job,” I said. “And we have to sell our house. Cut back on vacations, music lessons, and summer camp.” Just verbalizing these possibilities should have made me anxious, but it didn’t. I was so secure in Wim’s ability to earn a living that I never believed he might actually lose his job.

  “How would that make you feel?” she asked.

  I didn’t want to imagine how it would make me feel. I wanted to imagine a big house with rooms to spread out in.

  “If Wim lost his job? And we had to move?” I picked at a cuticle. “It would be terrible, but we’d deal with it.” I knew I hadn’t answered her question. But I didn’t want to think about worst-case scenarios. I just wanted to get her consent, climb into bed under the covers, and snuggle up with Architectural Digest.

  “Building a house sounds very rewarding, as long as you’re not using it as a distraction from marital issues.” She recrossed her legs, rested her notepad on her purple skirt, and stared at us intently.

  “Things are going pretty well for us right now,” I said. We were approaching our sixteen-year anniversary. Our kids were six, nine, and twelve. We were set in our routines: which side of the bed we slept on, who paid the bills, and who took out the garbage. I sometimes felt a lack of emotional intimacy with Wim that left me feeling lonely and sad, but I didn’t mention that. Instead, I nodded and said, “I think we’re ready for an upgrade.”

  As Wim and I sat at the kitchen table in silence, I couldn’t stop thinking about that therapy session with Linda, wondering if she had been on to something—whether we really were using house construction as a distraction, though from what, I wasn’t certain. Maybe from complacency, much like the chili recipe from my dreams that wasn’t spicy enough. Or was I trying to fill a void deep in my soul?

  We’d sell the house. Cut back on vacations, music lessons, summer camp. It had sounded so simple when I’d said it. Almost make-believe. We hadn’t considered that the generous yearly bonus we were used to living on could become all but a memory in the blink of an eye.

  I thought about my obsession over moving and how I’d insisted on getting my way, even after Wim had warned me about the economy.

  And yet hadn’t millions of people across the country also ignored the warning signs? If everyone was doing it, wasn’t it okay?

  “People keep getting laid off at work,” Wim was saying, his words sounding off an alarm in my brain.

  What if he really did get laid off? What if we defaulted on our loan? Couldn’t pay our synagogue dues or the electric bill? I’d have to get a job—an almost laughable prospect with my limited work experience. What would I do? Work as a social worker? I’d earn less money in a week than a construction worker makes in a day. Substitute teacher? Our teenage babysitter had more earning potential than I did.

  What if the bank foreclosed on the new house? Where would we go? What would my parents think?

  There was no way I could tell them, not after we’d completely ignored their advice: Always live within your means. I couldn’t bear their disappointment in me for sabotaging my family’s finances and future—all because of my selfish dream. What if we had to ask my parents or in-laws for a loan? I’d sooner borrow money from a back-alley loan shark than admit to our parents that we’d overextended ourselves and needed their help.

  “You’ve survived the cuts this long,” I said.

  He closed his eyes and said quietly, “I know, but I don’t know what’s coming next.”

  I’d always considered Wim the anchor in our marriage: wise, rational, in control. Now, he was a wreck. Black newspaper ink had leeched onto his fingers, and he tried to rub it off onto his palms, but it seemed no matter how much he rubbed, the stain wouldn’t lift. How could I have done this? I thought. If I hadn’t pushed, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now. We’d have a manageable mortgage, more savings, less debt.

  Outside, one of the shutters on the Schreibers’ gray house hung crookedly from its hinges above Bonnie’s well-tended garden. I stared at the tilted shutter; it felt almost like a personal affront, a painful reminder of our once-simple lifestyle. Meanwhile, we now had two home mortgages, two home insurance policies, two lawns to mow.

  As for Wim, he’d suffered silently as he approved orders for shingles and flooring and paid invoices, watching money he’d worked for years to amass slip away, while I’d picked out fabrics and paint colors, pretending that the money spigot would never run dry.

  Now that I was finally understanding the perils of debt, I began to worry about the perils of a stressed marriage, wondering how long ours could endure this kind of strain. Recently, I’d lamented over a house-related issue, and Wim’s response had sounded dismissive and a little annoyed. When I confronted him, he’d said, “Then why don’t you tell me what to say, and you won’t be disappointed when I say it.”

  At times, the tension between us was so unbearable I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him.

  When Wim and I were newly married, he would leave me random love notes in unexpected places, like my car windshield or bathroom mirror. The notes always made me feel cherished. But over time, those notes had become fewer and further between. So recently, when I’d reached for my pocketbook early one morning, I’d been surprised to see a Post-it note from Wim stuck to the outside pouch. I quickly read the words—I love you honey. Wim—and smiled.

  But as my pre-coffee eyes slowly began to focus, it became clear that my brain had tricked me. The note actually read, I took your last twenty. Wim.

  It had never occurred to me that things could actually grow this bad.

  The world is falling apart. Wim’s despairing words bounced through my mind like a skipping pebble. Two decades earlier, I’d stood on a cliff in Sagres, Portugal, safely ensconced in Wim’s arms. “This is the end of the world,” he’d said, as we looked out onto the horizon, feeling hopeful and invincible. And now here I was, his spouse of almost sixteen years, with a shamefully vague understanding of the banking crisis and how it affected him or anyone else around him, regretting my inability to help in any way.

  “What do you think is going to happen?” I asked, by which I meant, Are you going to lose your job? On the kitchen table, my Black Book was opened to magazine cutouts of stylishly upholstered family rooms; next to it sat a grouping of fabric swatches, securely bound by a heavy metal ring, that I’d been fussing over, trying to decide which texture was best for pillows and which for sofas and drapery—a decision that moments ago had seemed so important.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I only know we can’t afford to own two houses while my job is at risk.”

  I fingered a coarse swatch of linen. “We can’t wait any longer,” he said.

  What did he mean, we couldn’t wait? Our plan was to live in this house until the new one was built. “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “I’m saying we have to sell this house.”

  Our new house wouldn’t be finished for six more months; where would we live? We had nowhere to go.

  “When?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.

  CHAPTER 32: NAKED AND EXPOSED

  Raymond Ave, Rye – January 2008

  Under a dreary January sky that threatened snow, I was waiting in line for cash at our local bank. I approached the ATM and used one hand to steady the other as I inserted my debit card into the slot. I punched in the four magic numbers, numbers that I could recite in my sleep. I held my breath and entered the command for my usual $200 withdrawal. I’d taken out cash countless times before without a second thought. But that was before a bulldozer had rolled in and crushed our newly purchased “fixer-upper,” before more than a wrecking ball had hit home.

  I waited for the familiar noise of bills being mechanically plucked and counted, followed by the sweet sound of the machine delivering cash. But I didn’t hear that comforting whir—or see the grocery money I’d hoped would carry our fam
ily through the week. Instead, I got a message in bold print: “Sorry, you have insufficient funds available.”

  I slunk past the people lined up behind me, empty-handed. All at once, I realized how much easier it had been to go about life as if nothing was wrong—to deny the truth and pretend everything was fine. But here was overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Had we actually hit rock bottom?

  I decided to give the drive-through a try. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as Michael, the teller, punched buttons on his keypad. I was sweating under my winter coat.

  Finally, he looked up, and I rolled down my window, letting in a blast of freezing air. “We’re sorry, Mrs. Magnolia,” Michael said, making me wonder if he was apologizing for the bad news he was about to deliver or for mangling my name after I’d been patronizing the bank for twelve years, “but you can’t draw cash off your overdraft protection.”

  “Oh.” My face flushed with embarrassment. “Okay.”

  How could this have happened? I wondered from behind the wheel of our Honda Odyssey—a vehicle we had selected for its practicality, an exercise that now seemed laughable after all the money we’d blown on building a house.

  If only we’d never left California, if only the housing market hadn’t crashed, if only I hadn’t decided that a new house could make my dreams come true.

  I longed to return to our pre-house-building life. Where our existence hadn’t revolved around an endless construction debacle. Where we hadn’t struggled to pay two mortgages. Where I hadn’t had to look under sofa cushions for spare change.

  “Are you okay, Mrs. Magnolia?” Michael looked at me through the tinted glass window, his head tilted to the side the way our dog Copper’s did when she was confused.

  I started digging for something funny to say, but my humor was as depleted as my bank account. The bills were piling up at home. I’d spent the morning sorting through construction invoices and placing them in piles that stretched clear across our credenza.