When Robin comes out of her office, arms already open for a hug, I understand that I haven’t, in fact, just come here to say hello. I’ve come here to talk about the renovation, and the many ways it keeps shaping my life.
As the days of December begin adding up and our job continues peeling backward, we start getting asked about our plans for Christmas, which, this year, coincides with Hanukkah. Our families are not religious, so our annual debate over a nice meal with Hal’s parents in Virginia versus a nice meal with Beth and my father in Pennsylvania usually resolves with us seeing his side on December 25, mine a day earlier. But this year, the whole idea of holidays feels forced. Our lives are on hold. Our finances are spent. Also, Natalie has informed us that she’ll be closing on the rented house in February, so we’ll need to move out by late January—which seems improbable. The truth is that we’ve been in this upheaval for so long, and might be for so much longer, that we just want to stay put. We tell everyone that we’ll see them at other points in the month, and then we ignore the season.
Still, we’re busy. Hal works out the details for our kitchen cabinets, and indulges in his music. As for me, I start acting on each of my awakenings.
First, I look up information on our house. City records show me that the property has had at least nine owners, stretching back to when it was mere land in the nineteenth century. I try to imagine them, Mary Elizabeth Montague and Harry and Rebecca Orenstein and Simon Abramson, but the records are so ornately handwritten or poorly microfilmed that the few details in them are unreadable. I page through books on similar houses, and see numerous features that I’ve taken for granted—high and detailed baseboards, detailed window surrounds, five-panel wooden doors, beveled glass on the front door, hardwood floors, transoms—and finally acknowledge that they are not just seen as desirable by aficionados of old homes, but also by me. Likewise, my readings on green residences reinforce the merits of our tiny footprint, as well as our energy-efficient alterations. I might never boast about this house, but as I understand that it is a place of history and worth, I come to respect it.
The Search for Life Purpose 2.0 is, as anyone can imagine, a trickier proposition. When I finally worked my way around to it in Robin’s office, I didn’t get the kind of
Aha
I got when mentioning my feelings about the house and concluding that a few days of research would allow me to cultivate them. I couldn’t even speak coherently. I just went on breathlessly, bringing up one possibility after another—doctor, philanthropist, online entrepreneur, multimedia mogul—only to reject each as unattainable, at odds with my personality, or counter to our financial needs. “I thought you loved writing and teaching,” Robin said. I told her I did, but what if there was something more I could do, maybe alongside my writing and teaching, that would accomplish something not just good, but great? Wouldn’t it make sense to find that out? “Yes,” she said, “but there’s also a lot to be said for what you’re already doing. Maybe for now you can stay with that and see if anything else comes to you.” This seems rational, and is underscored when Hal says, “It’s not like picking out a dress. You can’t just browse in a mall and find your perfect life.” Even though that’s exactly what I want. So with reluctance, I tell myself to be patient. After all, it’s entirely possible that I’ll wake up one day and
just know
.
Having decided this, I move on to pursuing my interest in Hal’s world. Since I exist in such a construction bubble—the magazines we receive, the books on our shelves, the job meetings we attend, the projects at his office, the conversations about the renovation—this is easy to do. As in our earliest years together, I begin reading and asking questions, only this time there are more opportunities. Hal can now teach me about green design. I can go to see projects done by his architect friends. I can even, if I get up the nerve, talk to Dan.
Looking at me over his guitar, Hal says, “What do you mean, get up the nerve?”
“It took me months to pay attention to him. He might be insulted. Besides, everything I read about contractors focuses on their unscrupulousness. He might have something to hide.”
“I have every reason to think he’s aboveboard, and I don’t think he minded at all that you didn’t know his name.”
Well, now that I think about it, as I’ve been at the house more, I
have
seen that the only resemblance Dan has to the Marlboro Man is that he’s a person of few words. He also isn’t testy, unresponsive, dismissive of Hal’s ideas, sloppy with paperwork, given to surprise bills, erratic about showing up, or anything else I’d associate with unprofessional behavior. He’s on time every day and tidies up at night. He laughs at Hal’s jokes and doesn’t raise his voice. He wears clean-cut clothes. His workers aren’t the wolf-whistling, bar-bouncer types I might have expected, either. They’re respectful and hard-working. Several are even middle-aged. I suppose it’s my own cluelessness about Dan’s life that, more than anything else, stands in the way of my talking to him.
“If only he’d just let me tag along,” I say, “and see what his life is like.”
“Why not just ask if you can do that?” Hal says. “What do you have to lose?”
So it happens that a little while later, I spend a day at Dan’s side.
When I arrive at his office at nine a.m., I think that we might begin with a cup of caffeine. But Dan’s been going since four forty-five, when he woke to train for his next triathlon, then eat with his wife and kids, then hurry here, where he’s been faxing invoices, writing letters, proof-reading estimates. It’s like any hectic office, except his phone never stops ringing, and if his receptionist can’t answer, Dan has to. All six of his other employees are skilled workmen out at jobs.
Then we’re out to a church he owns. In addition to residential contracting, he explains, he also does small-scale development. This can be a lifesaver when the economy drops; for instance, he receives rent from the day care center that leases this church. Well, not the whole church. He reserves the basement as storage for his company’s supplies. But the basement ceiling is low, and Dan hits his head every day. Also, the church roof leaks. That’s why we’re here, to meet with the roofer. When the roofer arrives—late, but so are we—we climb onto the roof, where they trade ideas about how to make the repairs work. The meeting almost gets tense. But Dan doesn’t flinch and the roofer caves in, sealing their agreement with a shake.
“You have a lot of rough people in this industry,” Dan says, driving to the next appointment, cell phone ringing away. “There are a lot of anger management issues.”
At the next site, the addition for a historic house, Dan checks the foundation just completed by a site contractor. Then a truck with steel beams shows up, though the sub who should be handling them isn’t here. Dan mentions that he recently worked with a framing sub who disappeared to work on another job, which set Dan back two weeks. Then he switches to a different frustration. This house belongs to a friend who insisted on using his own kitchen subcontractor, despite Dan saying that such divided work would be a headache. Another friend once got him to price out a deck, then hired a contractor whose use of illegal immigrants allowed for a much lower rate. And finding good employees is problematic as well. Too few people have a strong work ethic, and the best workers are aging out—the average age is forty-eight.
Over the day, as we go from site to site, he maintains his pleasant demeanor, but also expresses no love for his career. When he was growing up with his single-parent father, Dan dreamt of being in finance. But during college, a job in the financial field didn’t click, whereas a job painting houses was fun. Soon thereafter his father died, and Dan, having only himself to rely on, opened a painting company, then eventually expanded into general contracting. The work was hard, and he hoped to return to his first dream. He even went to night school to get an MBA. But just as the diploma reached his hands, the market collapsed, his wife had their first child, and Dan elected to stay with what he knew. Construction, however, remains far from what he wanted for his life.
How much does his company bring in? Eight hundred fifty thousand dollars last year. What does he pay himself? “Less than I pay my employees. Forty thousand a year. My wife works, and I know how to invest. Otherwise, I couldn’t do it.”
I’m amazed that he’s never hinted at any dissatisfaction. I didn’t even know until today that a worker on our house quit suddenly, then was discovered to have stolen some of Dan’s supplies and ended up in jail. Nor did I know that the insurance company didn’t cover everything from our explosion—and that Dan made up the fifteen-thousand-dollar difference.
Late in the day, I ask, “Why do you think people get upset with contractors?”
“Ninety percent of the time, homeowners think they know what needs to be done, but there’s always something they don’t know. They also don’t really understand how the business works. And they almost never ask for proof that I’m insured.”
“But don’t you think people get upset because there are shady contractors?”
“Sure. But there are crooked types in every industry. Look at Enron. Look at chemical companies dumping toxins into streams. But in this business, the public is more aware of it. It’s their homes—and their money. A lot of money.”
His cell phone rings. At lunch we counted forty-seven calls that had come in since morning. Hours have passed, and he’s answered none.
“Hope you don’t mind if I take this,” Dan says, signaling the end of our day.
“Man,” I say to Hal that night, “your industry is really depressing.”
“It can be.”
“Not to mention that whole adversarial thing. It’s all around Dan. He can’t escape it.”
“Sure he can, at least sometimes.”
“Like when?”
“As I keep saying, he and I have worked very well together. That’s probably true of some other architects and clients he works with. He has a bunch of good employees and reliable subs, too. I know his two mechanics blew it”—he laughs as I throw a napkin at him for his pun—“but I think he tries to surround himself with people who are really on the same team.”
“But it seems the industry is set up for problems.”
“In some ways that’s true.”
“What can be done about it?”
“It would be nice if we could wave a magic wand and change the whole system. But I think even a genius billionaire who devoted his entire life to reforming the industry would fail. I don’t think about changing the whole system. It would make me crazy.”
“Then how do you deal with it?”
“I think about it on a small scale. In very simple terms, that’s what Dan and I have been doing: agreeing that we have a common purpose, and working together to reach it.”
“So if you can’t change the world, you can still do something in your small corner of it?”
“That’s right.”
“And relationships are the key.”
“Pretty much. When you have a relationship that works, it might not make the rest of the nonsense go away. But it certainly makes it easier to face.”
Of course, the importance of relationships has been one of my major preoccupations as we’ve moved through the renovation. As befitting thoughts inspired by a house, my focus has been on personal rather than professional ones, but even so, it’s been clear over and over that strong, mutually helpful relationships can be hard to come by, or fail to last. This unfortunate truth makes each relationship that does cohere, and endure, all the more precious, even if it is with a professional like Dan or Robin. But what I hadn’t thought about until our house readies itself for repair is that most of us have a tendency to rank relationships without even knowing we’re doing so, placing intimates like family and friends above those who build our houses or counsel us for an hour, or teach our classes or work in our bookstores—even though sometimes our family and friends are not really working with us, walking side by side toward some common purpose. This isn’t to say that professionals necessarily do. Goodness knows, we’ve all had disappointing cashiers or physicians. In this month of not-building, however, I start to think that there is a kind of relationship that transcends all others, whether they are personal or professional. It is a kind of relationship rarely discussed except in terms of warfare, yet it can be found anywhere, and it can get us through anything. Allies.
This is what Hal and I end up talking about on Christmas, an unusually warm day, which we spend going out for a long walk. As we’re strolling about the city, looking at buildings, we talk about Dan and Robin—and Deb, who helped me get the job in the store; and the friends who helped me buy a car, select a wardrobe, move my life; and Laura, who is at my side as we face Rosalie’s decline; and Hal himself, now that we are there for each other. Hal has his own memorable allies, too, and as the day goes on, both of us remember more and more.
I hadn’t thought we’d feel festive when this day arrived. But it turns out that we have a lot of fun, reminding each other about people who ministered to us, and to whom we did the same. It might not be as celebratory a time as we’d have had with our families. Nor is it as grandiose as figuring out the big question about the meaning of my life. It is, though, a fine way to spend a quiet holiday with my husband, and it does help me figure out one piece of that question: however I try to make a difference, I want to be an ally—and it doesn’t have to be, as I’d been thinking, of the whole world. All the allies Hal and I ever had have made a difference just by helping us. There is no need to think in terms of millions. Even one person will do.
Eventually I explore more of the construction industry. During and after our renovation, in our house and at other sites, I ask carpenters and plumbers and electricians and painters about their lives, and when they get to the point in the conversation where they express frustration with the industry, it is relationships they talk about, too—and the forces that can undermine them.