Image by Paul McGowan
I used to lay awake at night, vaguely panic-stricken, a sense of unease licking at my edges. There was something wrong. Something just out of my grasp. Something.not.right. Then it would occur to me. The couch should be under the south facing window. The dining room walls a deeper shade of red.
I would escape from the bedroom at first light and head out to the Home Depot, the Home Goods, the Michaels, gathering my materials. The paint rollers and corner cutting brushes, curtain rods with finials, fake Tiffany lamps. Perhaps a throw rug patterned like a quilt, or hand-thrown bowl to hold apples on the dining room table.
In the span of the day, I’d paint the walls crimson. Shift the couch from corner to corner. Rehang the pictures. Consider the wall, then throw some out. Muted scenes of trees replacing posters from our youth and family photographs.
I wanted everything to be just so. The right colors. The right flow. The right house. As if the stage were set, the play could go on. But every day, the script changed. The crimson walls struck the wrong note, more bloodied than Valentine. Danger lurked in the woods on the walls--not some vision of Walden’s peace. The lamp with the dragonfly shade wouldn’t do; the light still stung, too brightly illuminating the eye rolls, sideways glances, and hidden tears.
It wasn’t the house that needed rearranging.
How comforting it was in those days to think of the possibilities presented by a credit card and a new coffee table? How reassuring to wake up each day and think, yes, now I will get it right? Things will be okay? Always the question mark though--each day bringing some new reason to try again, to set things to rights, as the things in question could be our stand ins. As if the places where we sat in the living room could do the work of figuring out why they were not next to each other on our behalf. As if the throw rug could stem the feeling of cold that comes from your stomach when your spouse stays out all night. Or that the fake pictures of happy places could replace the images playing in your mind of last night’s fight.
It does not work that way.
Candlesticks that match the paint perfectly do not inoculate you from heartbreak.
A new sideboard won’t change the way he feels.
It wasn’t the house that needed rearranging.
It wasn’t the house that needed rearranging.
It wasn’t the house that needed rearranging.