JESSIE
I’m going to guess we’re not really having a fight over the color beige.
“I hate beige,” my boyfriend, Kevin, whispers to me, so as not to be heard by our real estate agent. We are staring at the beige Formica counters in what will soon be our new kitchen. In what will, in just a few weeks, be our new home.
Okay, I will admit, the counters are a special kind of “Yikes!” No doubt from the back of a van “closeout special” from 1986. I’m surprised it doesn’t come with a Nagel poster at no extra charge. But that’s no reason not to buy a house.
“And I hate orange,” I whisper back, making sure I keep my voice calm and soothing, “with the fire of a thousand suns, which is ironic, since they would be orange. And all of the tiles in the guest bathroom are orange. But I don’t care. Because we can replace these counters and rip out those tiles. Haven’t you ever seen HGTV? Entire shows are made about ripping out tiles and counters.”
“You sound frustrated,” Kevin whispers back.
Gee, Kevin, ya’ think?! I scream in exasperation. But only in my head. From my mouth comes an exceedingly calm, “We’ve been looking at houses for six months. This is the best one we’ve found. The offer’s been accepted. We did it. Yay.”
Kevin sighs as he rubs his fingers over the stained counter. “At least with orange you have a color that presents itself: ‘I’m orange. Deal with it. Like me or hate me, it’s who I am.’ Beige, on the other hand, says”—he switches to a whine—“‘I can’t make a decision. I’m just going to sit in the corner with the lights out and be the most boring color on the planet.’”
“It’s just a counter.”
“It’s not just a counter. It’s a compromise. And I don’t want to compromise. It’s bad enough I’m an accountant. Do I also have to be an accountant who comes home to a beige kitchen every day?”
Kevin’s face is so contorted, he looks like he’s in physical pain. I sigh and try to decide how to deal with his latest freak-out. (A quick lesson to you singletons out there: Just because a man’s calm does not mean he’s not freaking out.)
How’d I get myself into this hideously uncomfortable moment in my life?
The way so many uncomfortable moments start for a woman in her thirties: with someone else’s wedding.
Six months ago, during a three-day weekend in Napa for a friend’s wedding that wasn’t the least bit fraught with, “Why isn’t it us?” (right—you show me a woman who has been with a guy for over two years who is not secretly upset at another woman’s wedding, and I’ll show you a unicorn), Kevin got a bit giddy one night on too much champagne and suggested we start looking at houses.
That night, he gave me lots of great reasons for us to pool our resources and buy: Interest rates were still low, we could find a nice fixer-upper three-bedroom in an up-and-coming neighborhood. Since we’re both accountants with stable jobs who are relatively frugal with money, why keep wasting thousands of dollars per month on two rents, when we could be investing in our futures with one mortgage payment? His hypothesis was completely logical—and not the least bit romantic.
What I heard was, “I’m ready to get married! Let’s test the waters with a house. And let’s make sure we have a second and third bedroom for our laughing babies.”
The rest of the weekend became wildly romantic, and the following weekend, we began looking at houses.
Ew. Shopping for houses is the exact antithesis of romantic. It’s one of those moments where your dream of where you want to be in your life crashes down like a tidal wave onto where you actually are. Kevin found problems with every single home. One house had no air-conditioning. One condominium had enclosed hallways (“I’m not spending the next twenty years of my life smelling Grandma Rosa’s old spaghetti sauce from 2005”). One town house only had one parking spot. Some places were too expensive; others required too much fixing up. I was beginning to think I would be in rental and dating limbo forever. And I would never say it out loud, but I was starting to resent him for wasting every weekend of my life not moving us forward.
Then, just yesterday, we finally found the perfect home. It had been owned by the same couple for fifty-five years. After their mother died, the kids wanted to sell quickly. The house hadn’t even gone on the market yet, but our Realtor knew their Realtor. The sellers were asking at least sixty thousand below market value, provided we make them an offer immediately. It had three bedrooms. Yes, one bedroom had two burn holes shaped like an iron that melted through the most hideous bronze carpet you’ve ever seen, another had a giant gold bathtub in the middle of the room (and cherubs peeing hot and cold running water), and the third smelled like a yeast infection. But the living room was huge, the walls had sconces, and it was up in the hills of Highland Park, with an amazing view of the city.
I was ecstatic. Kevin less so. But we made an offer on the spot for the asking price, and they accepted.
And now, less than twenty-four hours later, here was Kevin, standing in the middle of our soon to be beige kitchen, about to argue that we should keep looking.
“I just think we should keep looking,” he says predictably. “We haven’t put any money into escrow yet, and this is our last chance to back out.”
I inhale a deep breath and try to stay calm. “I can have new counters put in the week we move in. Pick whatever color you want. Hell, at this point, you can pick orange.”
“You mean the week you move in,” Kevin corrects me. “I’m in Frankfurt for work starting next month. Do you really want to be going through the hassle of buying a house, plodding through all the subsequent paperwork, then moving, all by yourself?”
YES! I want to scream. I’m desperate to move forward with my life. And if not now, when? But instead all I can squeeze out is a defeated, “Okay.”
I utter a lot of defeated “okays” lately.
Sometimes I say them aloud (like now), but mostly I say them to myself every day when responding to my inner monologue.
Innermost thought: You can’t take that pottery class. You don’t really have time for it, and you’d suck anyway.
“Okay.”
You don’t need to go to Italy this year. Venice will still be there next year, and by then you’ll have more money to enjoy it.
“Okay.”
Kevin’s the best you’re ever going to do. And if you don’t agree with him, he’ll leave you over this.
“Okay.”
* * *
Half an hour later, Kevin is driving me back to my office. I stare out the passenger’s window, in a daze, watching house after house on the hill whizz by.
“Are you mad at me?” Kevin asks gently.
Mad? That’s the wrong word. He breaks my heart every day, but I’m not mad at him. I’m not anything anymore. I used to get mad when he wouldn’t talk about marriage; now I’m just deadened to it.
Defeated.
It’s like, every day that we don’t buy a house and move in together, and every day that he doesn’t propose, or talk about kids, he wins the fight. And I lose the fight.
It’s not a yelling, crying, throwing things kind of fight, it’s much quieter. But make no mistake—this is a fight. One of the biggest fights a couple can have.
And after almost an entire year of losing the battle and feeling emotionally beat up every single day, I’m no longer angry. I just have no fight left in me. I want to limp off the battlefield and head back to my castle to lick my wounds.
After several moments of silence, I finally lie to him with a succinct, “No.”
Sensing he’s not on solid ground here, Kevin asks, “Do you understand why I think we just need a little more time?”
To which I say, “Sure.”
But really, of course not! And if he knew me even vaguely he would know that all that is racing through my head right now is, Time. How much time? A week? A year? Another three years?
Up until this point, I have never understood women who gave their boyfriends ultimatums: As far as I was concerned, if a guy didn’t want to be with me, I didn’t want to be with him. And why would I want to have a wedding with a guy who had been strong-armed into it?
And yet … Three years is a long time. At what point will he realize that I won’t wait around forever? And will he ever realize it on his own, with no prodding from me? Is an ultimatum really strong-arming someone? Or is it just a clarification of what everyone wants in life? “I want to be married. You either do or you don’t. And if you don’t, well … Peace. I’m moving on.”
Kevin takes my hand and kisses it lightly. “Can I take you to dinner? Anywhere you want.”
“Thanks, but I can’t,” I tell him apologetically. “I’m meeting Nat and Holly at Wine O’Clock tonight. The owner sold it, and tonight’s the last night it will ever be open.”
“Right. I forgot,” Kevin says softly. “I love you,” he reminds me.
“I love you too,” I answer back, almost by rote, as I watch a little white house on the hill pass by my window.
I wonder who lives in that house. Is it some couple who decided six months into their relationship that they wanted to be together forever? Is it some fifty-year-old bachelor who was never able to make a commitment, and he still rents, because he’ll never grow up? Is it a single woman who one day said to herself, “Fuck it! I don’t need to be married to own a house”?
I turn to Kevin. He looks sad. Which I feel bad about, even though it’s not my fault. “You can come with us tonight if you want,” I tell him, hoping to God he doesn’t take me up on my offer.
“No. It’s your girls’ night,” he answers. “I get it. Besides, I have some work I should finish up tonight. Make up for my long lunch hour and all that.”
“Okay.”
More silence in the car.
“When I get back from Frankfurt—”
“I know,” I say, cutting him off.
“It’s only four months…”
“I know that too.”
Kevin stops talking.
Just propose, I think to myself. Let me know that I’m the one. That it’s not me, it’s the house. That I’m enough. That I deserve to get my wedding and my two kids and my trip to Italy for our honeymoon. And, yes, my home. Our home.
I force a sad smile toward him. He forces an awkward smile back.
And don’t do it because I prodded. Do it because you want to marry me. Do it because you’re ready.
“There’s an open house I’d love to go to Sunday, over in Silverlake,” Kevin says. “I figured we could go to brunch afterward.”
The smiling is starting to hurt. “Sounds great,” I say, trying to drum up some enthusiasm.
And the holding pattern continues. Today, once again, he wins.