Jen Lancaster - If You Were Here

Drinks prepared, we make our way to my library/office, parting the thick sheets of dust-repelling plastic as we enter. This is the one clean, organized room in the whole house. Because of the majestic paneling, we didn’t need to cover up any horrible eighties peach paint or vertigo-inducing wallpaper.

A word about the wallpaper, if I may?

I realize I’ve previously ranted about how home buyers on HGTV always seem daunted by the littlest bits of wallpaper. In the scheme of things, wallpaper simply isn’t that big a deal. I mean, it’s paper. Anything made out of paper can’t be inherently so challenging, right? And yet now I’m forced to admit that wallpaper can be so aggressively awful as to cause actual distress.

Take my living room, for example. My walls are covered with yards and yards of paper you wouldn’t believe if you saw. Picture a whole bunch of monkeys sitting around on large swirls of paisley perpetrating hate crimes against a group of Asian men who are just hanging out, minding their own business by playing their lutes and dancing their jigs. In alternating scenes, lions climb bamboo trees, tigers run away from monkey-tossed spears, and jaguars poise, ready to launch an attack on the pesky monkeys who started everything. The whole scene is about five seconds away from imminent bloodshed.

The kitchen walls are plastered with paper featuring dogs dancing with clowns in what appears to be a Venetian circus. The dining room boasts large multicolored pheasants on a mustard yellow background sunning themselves in what must be a nuclear-waste-rife raspberry patch, as each of the berries is three times the size of the birds’ heads.

One of the powder rooms has walls covered in pink and fuchsia checks bordered with repeating scenes of Chinese men who are either working in a rice paddy or washing their socks. 95

Or how about the loft on the third floor? The room spans the length of the house, although the ceiling follows the roofline, so it begins to angle at shoulder height. What would make this room less oppressive? I know! Eight thousand square yards of pastel blue and white Boats of Many Sizes alternating up and down the walls in the maritime version of my nightmares. Or what about the bedroom made up primarily of Chinese men whipping yaks and feeding chickens?

Funnily enough, the horrible wallpaper was the only stuff Ann Marie did like about this house. She says this style is called “chinoiserie” and that it’s very happening with the senior set in Florida. Yeah, well, so is Super Poligrip, but I’m not about to smear denture cream on my walls, either.

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 Alex 96made 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.”