If You Were Here: A Novel

by Jen Lancaster

  Anyway, I love coming into the library because I can avoid the “noise” of the many, many wallpapered rooms. I spent an entire day lemon-oiling the wood walls and ceiling and now they’re as glossy and shiny as the steering wheel in Mac’s car. Beautiful!

  After I accomplished that project, I felt divinely inspired, and I tore through my latest chapter. This room is kind of my sanctuary, as no matter what Mac’s ripping down in the house, I can come in here and work in peace. And that’s a real relief, considering how behind I am on this manuscript.

  We bring our cocktails to the sitting area over in the corner. As Duckie and Daisy love Kara more than almost anyone, they immediately dog-pile on her. Due to their size, breeds, and thorough distaste for being groomed, she’s one of their few fans. Kara welcomes their sloppy kisses and has to peek around wagging tails and nuzzling snouts to continue her story. “I wouldn’t have even gone to their house, but I had to borrow a car while mine’s in the shop. I swear, if that thing gets any older or more decrepit—”

  “Then I’d date it!” Tracey insists as Kara and I both blink in amazement. “What, I can’t acknowledge I like old men, too?”

  “It’s decidedly less funny if you own it,” I admit.

  “She’s right,” Kara agrees. “Sorry, Trace. Anyway, I need to get a new car, because asking them for help only serves to highlight how I can’t possibly function without a husband.” Before Tracey and I can jump in to protest, she continues, “No, no, I’m aware I function just fine on my own. Great, actually. I couldn’t be happier most of the time. But convincing Dr. and Dr. Patel I’m capable is an entirely different story.”

  “Would they have given you this much shit if you’d gone to med school instead of J school?” Tracey and Kara met as grad students in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern in the early nineties.

  Kara mulls over my question before answering. “Probably.”

  Before we can pursue this line of conversation, we hear a loud banging upstairs, followed by what sounds like two bears wrestling, capped off with an enormous thump.

  “Do I want to ask?” Tracey points to where my fantastic fleamarket-find crystal chandelier sways dangerously above us.

  “Mac has proclaimed today New Toilet Day! Which will be nice, because I’m tired of coming downstairs every time I have to take a leak. Do you realize that out of seven bathrooms, we’re presently down to three?” I grouse. And then I feel a weird stab of guilt at bitching about being down to three bathrooms when I grew up in a house with five people and one full bath.

  “Everything will be totally worth it when you’re done.” Funny, but the second Kara stops dwelling on her parents, she returns to her usual upbeat self. “That reminds me; I’ve got some recipes for Mac. He mentioned on Facebook that he wanted to learn to make palak paneer and lamb curry.” She pulls a couple of cards out of her bag and I dive on them like I’m protecting the room from a live grenade.

  “Jesus, God, no!” I exclaim. “No, no, no! Before that man even thinks about making Indian food, we need all seven toilets operational. All of them. Trust me on this. I’ll just hang on to these,” I say, stuffing the cards into my well-worn copy of Shopaholic Takes Manhattan . “He’ll never look in here.”

  We hear more crunching and cracking above us. “Everything okay up there? Do you need me to call the plumber yet?” I worry that plumbing isn’t a place to economize in our renovation process, but Mac swears he has the situation under control.

  “Negative!” he calls back.

  Okay, then.

  “You hear any more from Vienna?” Kara asks. “Last I saw on Perez Hilton’s site, she was swearing revenge.”

  I brush off the notion of impending doom. “Revenge for what? For dropping a thousand f-bombs at me on camera? For throwing a shoe at my mover? What did I do except pay my rent on time and put up with a lot of foolishness?”

  I don’t mention that all the contrarian teenagers who hate Vienna and her impact on pop culture now look at me as kind of a folk hero. They’ve been snapping up my entire backlist, so how is that not win-win?

  Kara leans forward in her seat. “Mia, she’s not rational. Never has been. You don’t understand—I grew up around here, and that girl has a long reputation of being vicious. In high school, my younger sister Alex96 made the mistake of saying hi to Vienna’s boyfriend, and the next day she was kicked off poms because of some risqué Myspace photos. The pictures were obviously Photoshopped, but my parents were so mortified by the whiff of scandal that they refused to fight for my sister’s spot on the squad.”

  “You sure that was Vienna’s doing?” I ask.

  “Yep. The work was quality, meaning Vienna paid someone to do it, but the body was Angelina Jolie’s in Tomb Raider, meaning absolutely no thought went into it. Also? Vienna bragged about it.”

  I shrug. “Yeah, that sucks for Alex, but you’re not convincing me. What’s Vienna going to do, withhold my security deposit? Too late! I already got a check! Although I suspect someone who works for her sent it, as the ‘i’ in her signature was missing its trademark heart.”

  “You need to check the gossip sites more often, Kara,” Tracey admonishes. “Vienna took off for the ashram in Eat, Pray, Love a week ago. She was quoted as saying she ‘wants to be more spiritual and shit.’ Deep thinker, that one. I read that she and fifteen of her closest friends flew there on her dad’s custom-built Global Express XRS.”

  “Because nothing gets you down the path to enlightenment faster than a forty-million-dollar private jet.” Kara giggles.

  Somewhere above us we hear an enormous crash, followed by a TMZ-worthy string of profanity, followed by . . . silence. “No, really!” I shout at the ceiling. “I can call a plumber anytime you’d like.”

  Mac’s response is muffled but audible. “Still fine. Not to worry.”

  Ten minutes later, we’re onto the topic of Tracey’s recent breakup. She says they had “irreconcilable differences,” which we’ve interpreted as “an expired Viagra prescription.”We’re teasing Tracey about cruising senior centers for dates when we hear the first groan.

  “Was that Daisy?” Tracey asks. Fair question. Were farting an Olympic sport, Daisy would easily medal.

  “Ha,” I snicker. “If Daisy tooted, there’d be no confusion about it. You’d know.” Because pit bulls have shorter, wider snouts, they take in more air when they eat. And because Daisy’s plump as a pork roast, she eats an awful lot. You see where I’m going with this? Mac always says the Department of Defense could weaponize what comes out of her.

  We resume our conversation, and thirty seconds later, we hear another groan, this time longer in duration and a bit more urgent. “What is that?” Kara asks.

  “Eh, it’s an old house. Old houses make noise,” I reply. The main part of our home was built in 1891. I love living somewhere with a real history about it.

  “So, anyway, Tracey, I’m writing about May–December affairs, and my readers want to know”—groan—“if there’s snow on the roof”—GROOOOAN—“does that mean there’s frost on the—” But before Kara can complete her thought, the groaning noise grows exponentially louder and is immediately followed by the sound of a thousand wood fibers snapping.

  After that, and almost as if in slow motion, we witness my prized polished paneling begin to bow before completely giving way.

  The chandelier is the first casualty. It comes down slowly, serenely, almost lyrically, with each individual crystal creating its own bit of music before swinging toward the bay window and smashing into a veritable Kristallnacht in the side yard.

  Fortunately, we’re all sitting opposite from the fulcrum of broken paneling, and other than the window, there are no additional victims.

  According to the entry about gravity on Wikipedia: Under an assumption of constant gravity, Newton’s law of universal gravitation simplifies to F = mg, where m is the mass of the body and g is a constant vector with an average magnitude of 9.81 m/s2. The acceleration due to gr
avity is equal to this g. An initially stationary object which is allowed to fall freely under gravity drops a distance which is proportional to the square of the elapsed time, which is really just a fancy way of saying that pastel pink toilets fall from a hole in the ceiling pretty fucking hard.

  “You guys?” I shriek. “Kara, Tracey, talk to me.” There’s so much dust I can barely see either of them. They both answer affirmatively, and a massive feeling of relief rushes through me.

  Fortunately, the dogs are also fine, because they both raced out of the room after the first few groans. Funny, but animals can always sense impending danger.

  Or in this case, impending stupidity.

  In unison, we look up at the massive hole in the ceiling about the same time Mac peers down. “You okay down there? Oh, hey, Tracey, Kara, didn’t know you were here.”We’re all speechless, gawping back at him in stunned silence. “I think I dropped the toilet,” Mac adds helpfully.

  “No shit,” I reply.97 I survey the wreckage in my office. Aside from the gaping hole in the ceiling and the bashed window, the toilet has taken out my desk, my computer, my monitor, my chair, and has smashed into enough pieces to make Humpty Dumpty, all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men look like a bunch of rank amateurs.

  “I guess I needed a plumber after all. Possibly a carpenter, too,” Mac admits sheepishly, causing a whole bunch of blood vessels in my brain to spontaneously burst.

  “Hey, Mia?” Kara prods me gently. “Looks like the bourbon survived.”

  And then we drink.

  And then we barf in the three remaining toilets.

  “It could have happened to anyone,” Mac reasons.

  “Is that right?” I snap. “Because I watch even more HGTV fix-up shows than you, and some of those homeowners are beyond dumb, like they don’t understand the concept of not touching live wires or wet paint. Yet I’ve never once seen a single toilet fall through their ceilings, let alone two.”

  After Toiletgate, the girls and I spent the whole night cleaning up the library . . . and swilling bourbon.98 Shards of potty flew into every corner of the room—under couches, behind books on the shelves, in the fireplace, etc. After we’d finally retrieved all the pieces that could pierce tender paw pads and bare feet, we hauled my trashed desk and computer equipment into the hallway, thus completely blocking the entrance to the dining room.

  What makes me angriest is that I hadn’t run a backup since I added all that material to the new book, so those pages are gone. Since I’m so freaking furious, I can’t really concentrate enough to recall what I wrote, either.

  Fortunately, I still had the board-up company’s information, so getting the window covered was easy. Untangling the chandelier from the sticker bushes was less so, and my arms appear to have gone three rounds with a Mixmaster. Naturally, both processes inspired new neighborhood petitions. Oh, what’s that you say, Lululemon, Citizen Cane, and Elbow Patches? You’re bothered by the boarded window? Join the fucking club.

  We cordoned off the bathroom with the open floor and booked a handyman, although he can’t be here until late next week, as apparently everyone in the Cambs is doing renovations.

  Mac and I reached an uneasy truce, because I desperately hate being mad at anyone, particularly the person who’s most important to me in the whole world. Mac was unbelievably contrite and helped me piece together a rudimentary work space until my new furniture arrives. So instead of tapping away on my desktop with the thirty-inch UltraSharp monitor while reclining in a posture-fit, multiadjustable Aeron chair, I’ve been parked in an ass-flattening metal folding chair, squinting at an old laptop that’s sitting on top of a door supported by moving boxes on either side. The only way I’ve consoled myself is that the whole setup feels vaguely Amish.

  All of that being said, one would think Mac might hang up his tool belt, but no. Then while I was out today, Mac decided to try to replace another toilet. He said he wanted to surprise me.

  When I came home to find a second toilet shattered on the floor of the opposite end of the library—this time powder blue—trust me, I was surprised.

  The weather’s warming up and the house is stuffy and full of the stench of failure, so I’m going around opening windows. This will give me something to do with my hands, considering they seem to want to wrap themselves around Mac’s neck at the moment.

  Mac is right on my heels. “I said I’m sorry. I really thought I had it right this time, but toilets are a lot heavier than you’d think, especially the older ones.”

  I can’t even look at him, because I’m afraid I’ll lose my temper. “Uh-huh.”

  He continues. “I mean, I did all kinds of research on the Internet, and I referenced a couple of plumbing manuals, and other than dropping it, I did everything right. I blame the floors. I suspect they can’t handle a live load.”

  “Mmm,” I intone through closed lips.

  “Listen, you can’t be mad at me. I was just trying to help, and theoretically, everything should have worked.”

  We’re in the living room now and I’m trying to get the big window open, although it appears to be a bit stuck. “Here’s the thing, Mac. Your problem is that you’re too theoretical.”

  “How so?”

  I throw my weight into opening the window and it only budges a few inches. Argh. “Meaning you’ve spent your whole career designing computer networks but—Jesus, what’s up with this window?—but I bet you’d be hard-pressed to actually build one yourself. Same thing with the plumbing. You absolutely understand the theory behind putting in a new toilet—Argh. Come on!” I step back, inspect my progress, and then throw my shoulder into getting it lifted.

  I continue. “You have a profound understanding of the macro level of everything—networks, plumbing, weaponry, et cetera. But on the micro level, you’re lacking. I suspect you don’t even know what it is you don’t know. There was probably a small installation facet you missed—Damn. It. Open. Please.—and that one tiny microdetail is probably the difference between my happily reading Us magazine on the john and having the commodes rain down in my office.”

  I begin to slam my whole side into the window while hoisting it up. “Want some help?” he offers.

  “I’ve got it, thank you. You’re like those guys who—stuck hard, argh—are so convinced they know where they’re going—oof—that they refuse to ask for directions and—” I give the window one more tremendous shove and I’m suddenly enveloped by a warm spring breeze.

  The window is open.

  And by “open,” I mean “lying in the sticker bushes outside.”

  I’ve somehow managed to knock the entire window out of its frame and onto the ground.

  “Oh, my God, Mac! Help me! Shit! What did I do? Mac, can you help me get this damn thing back in?”

  Mac moseys over to inspect the damage. “Well . . . theoretically, I understand why the window fell out, but in practice, I may simply not know what I’m doing. You see, on a macro level I have an idea of where you went wrong, but on a micro level . . .”

  When we try to reinstall the window, it basically shatters into a million little pieces.

  You know what? I can’t take this.

  I’m calling Babcia.

  Chapter Ten

  MUCH ADO ABOUT DRAWER PULLS

  “You’ve got six weeks.”

  “I need more like three months.”

  “You’ve got six weeks.”

  I’m on the phone with my literary agent, Natalie, and we’re discussing my deadline for Rumspringa-ding-ding. I’m critically behind schedule because I sold the book before I actually wrote it.99 The manuscript is due in two weeks, but Nat was able to push that due date back till the end of June. Normally it takes me six to eight months to complete a novel, and at this point in the process, I should be finished writing. This is when I’m usually scrubbing the manuscript for errors and word choice.

  Unfortunately, I’ve been somewhat distracted for the past few months, and most of what I�
�ve written is . . . craptacular. According to my niece Claire, I’m way off on my content. She tells me teenage girls don’t spend much of their free time discussing drawer pulls, and by “much,” she means “any.” But my God, have you been to a custom cabinetry showroom lately? Not only does every choice come in a minimum of nine different metal finishes, like polished nickel, polished chrome, satin nickel, satin chrome, oil-rubbed bronze, antique bronze, pewter, wrought iron, and stainless steel, but they’re also available in tons of other material, like art glass and granite and porcelain.

  And shapes? Can we talk about shapes for a minute? There are bail pulls and cup pulls and bar pulls and finger pulls and pendant pulls! How about knobs? Don’t even get me started on knobs! What’s your poison? A square knob? A T-knob? Maybe a nice oval knob?

  And all of that’s before you even come close to making a decision on the cabinet itself. Do you want them stained? Glazed? Painted? Would you like an arched cabinet? A raised-panel cabinet? Beveled? Unbeveled? Oak? Maple? Rubberwood? Laminate? Stock? Semicustom? Custom? Framed? Unframed? Argh!

  I told Claire that high school is easy; interior design is hard. I argued that kids should start plotting out their dream kitchens now, so they know what they want by the time they turn thirty-five, ergo Miriam and Rebecca’s fourteen-page countertop-finish manifesto. 100 Claire told me that my book was giving her “boredom cancer,” and that’s when I knew I had to scrap everything and start fresh.

  I put my head down on my desk/door and exhale heavily. “Okay, I’ll do what I can.”

  Natalie’s frustration is obvious. “Mia, what is going on? Blowing a deadline isn’t like you. I don’t have to tell you that if you don’t get this book in soon, you’re going to cut the whole prepublicity push short. Long-lead magazines won’t receive review copies. You’re essentially hobbling yourself if you don’t get on this. . . .”

  I inadvertently wince when Nat says “hobbling.” All authors do. I mean, we’ve all read/seen Stephen King’s Misery, and we all remember when Annie Wilkes hobbled Paul Sheldon to keep him prisoner. Freaking terrifying. Every time I log on to my Facebook fan page and see someone calling herself my “number one fan,” I feel around my desk to make sure my gun’s still there.101