“You left me? You’re done, Nicole. I’m done.”
“I just needed some time to think; I didn’t say I didn’t love you,” I told him. “Before I even met you, I said that I wanted more children. I wanted to share that with whomever I met. But you haven’t even given me a chance to tell you what I think.” I proceeded to explain my thoughts to him and said that we could make it work. I thought he would be overjoyed, but for a man who cried at the drop of a hat, he had no tears. Just a look of disdain.
I told myself, You go through rough patches. That’s how real-life relationships work. You get through them and the relationship is stronger for it. In the weeks that followed, I plowed ahead. Every week I would move another piece of furniture, another chair or side table, into Minnehaha. I brought in dishes and lamps and everything we’d need to be a real family under one roof. That was still the plan. One big happy family. But when I tried to pin Mark down and set a move-in date, I was in for a surprise.
I said, “We should really start looking at schools.”
“We can’t do that right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“My daughter doesn’t want to move and leave her friends; it’s breaking her heart.”
“Okay, well, what’s the plan? What are we doing?”
“I have to think about it and let you know.” If I pushed, it turned into an argument. Moving into Minnehaha had been his idea. I simply wanted to be together. He had told me that everyone was excited about Minnehaha. It was going to be a good move for his little girl, because a lot of her friends lived nearby and it would mean a fresh start for everyone. His daughter meant the world to me, and I was shocked by what he was saying now—as if I would want to see her sad or hurting. And truly, if this wasn’t going to work, then I just wanted to figure out what would, but he wouldn’t have it. In Mark’s life, he was always the boss.
He and I still went to Minnehaha almost every day. We’d grab some takeout Chinese, sit at the island in the kitchen, and relax. Even after a couple of glasses of wine, Mark didn’t want to talk about anything that would commit him to action. I had moved most of what I could into Minnehaha. I was ready. But we were in limbo when he scheduled a trip for us to Palm Springs, to spend Easter with his parents. I thought it might be a nice getaway, out of chilly Minneapolis to someplace where we could soak up some of that nice desert sun. It seemed like a low-key family vacation would give us a good opportunity to discuss moving forward. It turned out to be anything but low key.
Mark didn’t want to stay with his parents. We stayed at a golf resort. I had figured out that I shouldn’t ask questions, so I just went with it. With his family, I never knew what was the right thing to do. When we started dating, I had met his parents. His mom had helped him orchestrate an over-the-top birthday celebration for me. I thought they were lovely people, so I followed their lead and included them in the dinners and events that I had. It was only later that someone revealed to me that prior to dating me, Mark had not made his parents very welcome in his life. With the trip to Palm Springs, I didn’t know what to think.
On Saturday morning, his mom took his daughter shopping; the boys went golfing. I asked if I should join the girls and was surprised when Mark suggested I take the day for myself. He assured me it was okay, saying, “Baby, enjoy the sun, relax.” I started by going to the gym and realized I hadn’t packed any socks. Never one to give up, I ended up wearing youth hockey socks. (For whatever reason, the resort had a pair of those for sale.) I sent Mark a picture and he texted back, “That’s my girl; I love you. Can’t wait to see you.”
Later that day, refreshed from a day on my own, I called up an artist I had met online, the incredible Elizabeth Lyons. We had bonded over e-mail in recent months and I wanted to meet her in person. I asked her to come to the hotel and have a drink. She had just arrived and we were sitting down enjoying a glass of wine when Mark came back from golfing. My mood was great; I had just been telling Elizabeth about the fairy tale that my life was becoming. As Mark headed toward me, my stomach turned; I could see that something was wrong. I introduced Elizabeth, and he said hi and that he was going up to the room to change. I confided in Elizabeth that I felt my life was too good to be true. I had never had the luxury of spending a day by myself at a resort, then having a glass of wine with a girlfriend, and it felt very glamorous. Did I finally have the life my married girlfriends had bragged about? If this was it, I was in!
The hockey sock picture I sent Mark (left). Me and Elizabeth having some girl time (right).
I have a picture of me and Elizabeth from that day. I look confident and happy. I had no idea that when I went upstairs, my life was going to implode. Mark was agitated. I asked him what was wrong, which apparently was not the right thing to say at that moment. From there it went from bad to ugly to me spending the entire night begging for forgiveness. For what? For choosing to spend a day by myself. Really.
He had set me up. Mark didn’t want me to have a relaxing day; he wanted me waiting for him. And poor Elizabeth was the last straw. How dare I be so comfortable as to invite a friend over on our vacation? The night went on and on; I felt ashamed. I was exhausted. The kids had gone to the movies with his parents and I was stuck with him. I had had enough. I asked the fateful question: “When are you going to tell your parents that we’re moving in together?”
“We’re not. Actually, Nicole, we’re done.”
“What?”
“It’s over. I’m not doing this anymore.”
It kept going like this late into the night. Everything I thought was true was a lie. He knew what I was looking for from the matchmaker, and he had offered it all, knowing deep down that if he had told the truth, I would have never met with him. At the end, he seemed to snap back to reality and said, “I love you; I’m sorry.”
We woke up in the morning, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting in a church pew next to him, the kids, and his parents. Like nothing had happened. That was the start of what was easily the most awkward holiday dinner I’ve ever attended. It was followed by an equally awkward flight home. I thought, If this is over, I’ll deal with it as I do everything else. But just ending it wouldn’t be good enough for Mark.
I would ask him, “What are we doing?” and he would blow me off. And if I pressed more, he’d get angry. I was done playing his games and walking on eggshells. I started to do what I could to get my ducks in a row. It brought me peace to check on the house every day and reassure myself that it was still there and he hadn’t magically made it disappear.
Minnehaha became my sanctuary. It seemed like things had gone so wrong so quickly that it was astounding. In a short time, I had gone from planning my dream life in my dream house with my dream man to dealing with a life in shambles.
I arrived one spring day to do my usual check on the house and enjoy an hour or two of solitude before I had to pick up Ethan, only to find that my key didn’t work. My key to the house that I had bought and restored long before Mark had ever set foot on my front porch didn’t work.
Things got ugly. Like Lifetime movie ugly. I didn’t know what to do. To make matters worse, a number of my friends told me that Mark was spreading rumors that I was mentally unstable. I was at a complete loss, and being the type of person who always has to fix everything, I decided that if there was something wrong with me, I would get to the bottom of it. I called another mom from Ethan’s school who was a doctor. Not just any doctor, a neuropsychologist.
I told her, “Mark says I have borderline personality disorder. Be honest with me. Do I? Am I that screwed up?”
And this woman saved my life.
“Oh my god, Nicole,” she said. “No. No. No. I am going to refer you to someone. You go see this doctor.”
I had done therapy in my teens and in my twenties, every few years to get a tune-up. Wise people know that a mental health counselor is to your brain what a personal tra
iner is to your body. Unfortunately, mental health is so misunderstood that some people think you have to be crazy to need to speak to a therapist. Think about it: The majority of the people I know who use trainers are my fittest of friends; they’re triathletes and competitive runners. It’s the same with my friends who get counseling to get in their best mental shape. There is always room for improvement. This is how I view therapy.
I was reassured by the doctor that I didn’t have borderline personality disorder. Anxiety? Yeah. Issues with self-confidence? Yeah. Bad taste in boyfriends? Definitely. But most of all, I was broken and sad, which is a natural reaction to such a traumatic breakup. I was empowered to start to rebuild.
The very next day, I went to work making good on a chance meeting I’d had while I was rebuilding the Harriet house. I had been out in front of the house, cleaning up the walkway to the front door, when a guy pulled up to the curb and got out of his car. Brian Finstad looked like the poster boy for Northern Minnesota. A stocky young man with a friendly round face and a beard, he wore glasses that made him look scholarly and a flannel shirt that made him look a model in an L.L. Bean catalog.
“You’re Nicole Curtis!”
“Yes, I am.”
“There’s a house down the street you need to save.”
My first day at the Dollar house.
It turned out that he was a local preservationist and had once owned a house in the Central neighborhood, where this house was. He couldn’t have been nicer, and we talked about the house for a few minutes. After I was certain he wasn’t an ax murderer, I got into his car and drove with him down Third Avenue, to the sad little structure that would become known to Rehab Addict viewers as the Dollar house. It was a dingy, boarded-up place, with a mud-brown-and-beige color scheme that just made it seem dingier. Someone had painted the address on a board over the front door. But otherwise, there wasn’t any indication that the house had been touched in a decade.
It was ironic. As soon as we drove up, I realized I had tried to buy the house two years before. The parties couldn’t agree on a price that satisfied everyone, so I had walked away. And here it was, a couple of years later, and they literally couldn’t give the house away. The city had condemned it and recommended it for demolition.
Brian and I slowly walked around the boarded-up, corner-lot 1911 bungalow. The yard was overgrown and scraggly. There were large sections of stucco missing from the sides of the house. Still, I could tell that it had lots of potential even before we unscrewed the board covering the front door. The good news was that it was still standing and there was actually a lot of great woodwork left inside. But there was one big problem—the foundation. I kicked a basement wall with my boot and it went through about six inches. That’s never a good sign. But it wasn’t the end-all, as I had dealt with foundation issues before. The question was, was it repairable? And could I get a structural engineer to tell me how it could be fixed?
“Look, Brian, I’m swamped,” I told him. “I think the house is totally worth saving, but I just don’t have the time and patience to deal with the red tape. But if you can get the paperwork through the city, I’ll rehab it.”
I give Brian credit. He rallied some of the neighbors and other community activists to petition the city and cut through the bureaucracy at Minneapolis’ Community Planning and Economic Development (CPED) department. The city agreed to rescind the property demolition order so the house could be sold to me and the work could begin. However, I was under no illusions. CPED had the project on a short leash. One slipup and they would swoop in and demolish the house.
At that point, Minneapolis was fighting blight, and the easy solution was to tear down dilapidated houses. The theory was, better a vacant lot than a boarded-up wreck. I didn’t understand that way of thinking, but that was the majority vote. What most people didn’t understand is that a lot like the one the Dollar house sat on was no longer a legal-size lot, according to the standards of city planners. Therefore, if the house were torn down, nothing, and I mean nothing, could ever be built there again.
The nonprofit that owned the house simply wanted it off their books. Understandably; so would I. Now I offered them a solution. Brian worked with them and we finally got the title transferred to me. In real estate, even a free house needs a value. The minimum? One dollar. Thus 3049 Third Avenue became the Dollar house. Because most of my ready cash was still tied up in Minnehaha, the low purchase price offered a rare opportunity I could take advantage of. And the project would be all mine, so it was also a way to silence my critics, those doubters who kept telling me I couldn’t rehab a house by myself. I saw the Dollar house as a way to back up everything I had said I could do all along.
The Dollar house exterior, before (left), during (center), and after (right) renovations.
With my plans for a future as a stay-at-home mom pretty much destroyed, I decided I needed to get back in the game and keep my career alive. I called John Kitchener and told him that not only was I in for another season of Rehab Addict, but that I’d also found a house ready to go for the next season. He scheduled a film crew. I went to work putting the word out that we were going to save this house. We scheduled a pre-renovation open house, something I was doing for the first time. Oddly enough, Mark insisted on attending! He said, “I’m here to support you.” What?! I didn’t know what to think. I just went with it. My friend Lauren took what would be the final picture of Mark and me together on the stairs that day.
I had great support from the neighbors of the Dollar house.
People lined up for hours to see the “before” of this project. Everyone asked, “Why would you show the house before it’s done?” Here’s why: I wanted every single person I could cram in to see what terrible shape this house was in. I wanted the smell of abandonment to sneak up their noses and the hazards of vacant houses to be within reach of each person’s own fingertips. It was a simple marketing idea. If they could see how bad the house was when they walked through it the first time, when we were finished, they would see with their own eyes that any house—no matter how dilapidated—can be saved. The Dollar house would be my proof.
After the open house, Mark looked at me and said, “You know, I’m selling the house.” I looked at him in shock. The next few weeks would be even more confusing with no more mentions of selling the house. Until someone tweeted me about it. Apparently, without further discussion, he had made arrangements to put the house up for sale. I arrived at Minnehaha to find an off-duty Minneapolis cop standing guard on the porch.
The tweet.
“You’re going to have to leave, ma’am.”
“Leave? This is my house.” I tried calling Mark, but he wouldn’t pick up. I looked inside and saw his mom packing boxes.
I shouted through the window, “What’s going on? Someone needs to come out here and tell me what’s going on.”
She came out onto the porch, flustered and looking guilty. “You need to leave, Nicole. I was told to box everything up and take it to a storage unit, or we can take it to wherever you want. But you can’t be here.” I stood there dumbfounded. The movers, his mother, and his assistant were going through my house, and my things, and throwing them all into boxes. Months later, when I finally found the courage to unpack those boxes, I came across one that was labeled “Dirty Dishes from Dishwasher.” That was an all-new low for me.
The roses.
My Gramps had always made me promise that I would be a smart businesswoman. There is not a chance in hell that I would ever give up my stake in Minnehaha. Even for love. I e-mailed Mark a purchase agreement for Minnehaha. He agreed to sell it to me for what he had bought it for. I was over the moon. A few days later, on our one-year anniversary, June 11, Mark sent me a message saying I should go to the Minnehaha house; he had left something for me there. On the steps were a dozen roses. I’m sure had I swooned and been sucked in, the keys to that house would be on my key chain r
ight now. But I’m my grandmother’s granddaughter, and I didn’t need some man turning my head. I took the flowers and broke them into little pieces and threw them on the porch. The next day, I got a call from Mark’s attorney; the price to buy my own house had gone up fifteen thousand dollars. I said okay. Then the price went up fifteen thousand dollars more. I still said okay, but I was sick to my stomach. Unfortunately, things went further south from there. Right before we were about to close, I got a call from Bridgewater Bank, saying that they had heard from an unknown source that I wasn’t a good investment for their bank and they had canceled my mortgage. I immediately sent Mark an extension to the purchase agreement, a common practice in real estate, and he refused it.
I had to make a decision: let the house go or sue Mark for it. This would change the way I do business for the rest of my life. I felt ashamed that I had let “love” blind my business mind. I retained an attorney and filed suit shortly thereafter. It would take years for the litigation to wind through the courts. All that money wasted. And my house sat there. After all these years, when I reflect on putting up a fight for that house, do I regret it? Absolutely not.
The lawsuit would ultimately drain my savings and rob me of years of peace. The house would be in legal limbo for years as the case dragged on—all the way to the Minnesota Court of Appeals. At the end of the day, Mark got the house, and I learned a lesson. Some people will say and do anything to make a wrongdoing seem right.
It was June of 2012, and I focused on moving forward. I pulled up my bootstraps and got to work on the Dollar house.
Better Than New Page 8
