Jen Lancaster - If You Were Here

“How are you holding up?” she asks by way of greeting.

“I’ve been better,” I admit.

“Are things coming together at all?”

What seems like a simple yes-or-no question really isn’t. “Somewhat? Sort of but not really? More items arrive every day, so that’s a bonus. Our new fridge came yesterday. I was so excited to be able to stock up on cold food that I even bought stuff without using coupons!”

Ann Marie snickers. “Living the dream, eh?”

“Ha. Hardly.”

“Are you satisfied with the progress you’ve made on the house? Would you classify your living conditions more as ‘tar-paper shack’ or have you upgraded to ‘post-Katrina New Orleans’ yet?”

I make a mental inventory of everything we’ve accomplished so far. Seems like every time we take a step forward, we take a step back. Like when we got the drywall up on the ceiling in the dining room finally? That felt like a victory. But then when Mac went up into the eaves to mount the chandelier, he slipped on a slat and his legs came crashing through the drywall and we had to start over.

“I’d say post-Katrina. We don’t need FEMA anymore, although you can see it from here. Actually, after I threw the book at Mac—”

Ann Marie sounds sympathetic, but she may just be breathless from taking in a lungful of smoke. “Big fight?”

“No, not a euphemism — I mean after I pitched the new Gossip Girl at him — Mac shifted into gear. He’s not wasting nearly as much time preparing to work. Now he’s actually performing tasks with mixed results. Take yesterday, for example, when we plugged in the new fridge. Every time I touched it, I felt a weird, low-level vibration run through me.”

“Like a shock?”

“Yeah, but not painful, per se. But real, and I definitely felt it. So after the initial few shocks, I made Mac touch the fridge and he said he didn’t feel anything. Then I said I did and he said I was crazy and we ended up having a stupid argument over it. But I knew something wasn’t right, because refrigerators are not supposed to send pulses of electricity through your body. Although I bet you could sell fridges with a built-in electrical shock to dieters all over the country. Talk about your negative reinforcement!” I hear scratching in the background. “Hey, are you writing that down?”

“Mia, I have no idea of what you speak.”

Right. Swear to God, if some kind of dieter’s shock fridge comes on the market in the next few years, I’ll know who’s profiting from it.

“Anyway, clearly something is wrong with the damn thing, so I go upstairs and start Googling different iterations of getting shocked while touching a household appliance. Turns out I was right! When Mac rewired the outlet, there was some sort of ground-fault reversal and I was, in fact, getting shocked.”

“Let me guess,”Ann Marie interjects. “Mac didn’t feel it because he was wearing rubber-soled shoes and you were barefoot?”

After all my run-ins with rusty nails, you’d think I’d have the common sense to wear shoes over my socks in this place. You’d think that, anyway.

“Bingo. What infuriates me isn’t that he wired the outlet wrong — relatively speaking, that’s small potatoes. What pisses me off is that he refused to believe me.”

“Frustrating, I agree.” When we talk, I get the feeling Ann Marie’s responses take the exact amount of time it takes her to exhale.

“Then, after that little debacle, he goes to rewire another junction box. Now that he’s savvy enough not to cause a ground fault, that’s a step forward, right?”

“I’d say so, yes.”

“And here’s where the step back comes in. He had to cut a hole in the drywall. Oh, by the way, when we hung drywall last time, Mac learned the hard way that you’re supposed to cut it with a utility knife and not a saber saw. You would not believe the flying debris a couple of quick swipes with a power saw can produce. Anyway, so he slices open a big hole and then he wanders off. When he comes back, he finishes his wiring project and then he patches the hole.”

“Was the fire department involved at any point in this little scenario?” Ann Marie asks.

“No.”

“Then you have to give him credit for his progress. The learning curve just got a little less steep.”

I laugh but it comes out more like a snort. “No, it’s more like, ‘Congratulations on becoming king of the dipshits.’ And you know what? I hate talking about him like this, but I’ve already expressed all these opinions to him and he doesn’t seem to be taking the hint.”

“Everyone can agree he’s a decent man, Mia, but no one ever said he can’t be dense about some matters.”

“Exactly. But the wiring is not my point; he’s got that down finally, and God bless him for it. He’s not making the same mistake over and over — he keeps making new ones, because he refuses to accept the fact that he’s not automatically good at stuff he’s never tried before. He won’t touch any of the repairs-for-dummies books, preferring to figure it out himself. I guess because he was instantly good at being in the army and later at his job, he’s convinced that he’s somehow inherently skilled in all things, like home repair and cooking. He can’t seem to grasp that having the right tools and a positive outlook is only part of the equation.”

I’ve been leaving HGTV on nonstop because I’m hoping he picks up some tips by osmosis. So far no luck.

“Anyway, I’m in the kitchen unloading all kinds of yogurt and cheese and lunch meat into the new fridge, and I hear Agent Jack Bauer meow. I check and don’t see him anywhere, so I just assume he’s in one of the empty cardboard appliance boxes. Later, I feed the kittens dinner and he’s nowhere to be seen, but I can hear him.”

“Is he fine? Don’t tell me any more of this story unless you can confirm he’s fine.” I forget sometimes that Ann Marie has a soft spot for cats. In related news, Ann Marie prosecuted a guy who now holds the state’s longest sentence ever given for animal cruelty.

“Agent Bauer is in fine shape, no worries. But I went all over the kitchen looking for him and it’s like he was a ghost, all sounds and no sight. Then I heard the tiniest little thud in the wall and I put the pieces together.”

“No.”

“ Yes . Mac sealed the cat in the goddamned wall.”

“What did you do?”

I can’t stop clenching my fists as I relate this story. “We had to cut a cat-shaped hole out of the wall just like you see on cartoons! Fortunately, Agent Bauer was completely undaunted and we’re learning that drywall’s pretty simple to fix once it’s hung. A little joint compound, a little sanding, dry overnight, and voilà! Good as new.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sure Mac meant no ill will.”

“Of course he didn’t! He felt awful, and he spent the whole night hugging Agent Bauer and giving him extra treats. But that level of carelessness just—” But before I can finish my sentence, the phone goes dead. I tap the switch hook a couple of times but nothing happens. Damn it.

We’ve had a few connectivity problems — of course we have — and I’ve become an expert on how to fix them. I get up from my desk and trek down to the network area in the panic room. What I have to do is recycle the router, which is a fancy way of saying unplug and then replug it.

Once I reach the networking area, this whole task shouldn’t take more than a minute. I get to the panic room and heave open the heavy metal door. I quietly fume that while this room helped sell Mac on this house, he hasn’t done much with it except to stow the most basic of disaster supplies and some of his second-tier tools. Should the unthinkable happen, we’re good for two days, tops.