YOU KNOW YOU’RE WELCOME IN A FRIEND’S HOME WHEN YOU CAN LOAD HER DISHWASHER
STORY BY Marion Winik ILLUSTRATION BY Paige Vickers
When my friend Kim got divorced a couple of years ago, I was not completely heartbroken to see the last of her husband. But when I realized she would be moving out of her house, I was crushed. Kim’s house, though it might be
dismissed by some as a McMansion, had been more home to me than my own in the last years of my crumbling marriage. (I beat her to divorce court by several years.) My daughter, Jane, and Kim’s daughter Camryn had been best friends since preschool, and Jane and I were often over there from homework time through dinner. Not only did Kim’s house lack the terrible tension that was a constant feature of my home-sweet-home in those years, but hers was just plain luscious. It was decorated in deep earth tones, plums and golds; her furniture was comfier, her carpets plusher, her heating and air conditioning more effective. She had a swimming pool. She had Corian counters and overstuffed ottomans. She had rotating seasonal decorations.
I made fun of those bunnies and scarecrows and russet-leafed mantel boughs but there was something about them that was appealing. Me, I had a pine tree and a pumpkin and that was that.
My own house was hardly a hovel – in fact it was a red brick Georgian with a bell tower, perched on a hill. It had period wide-plank floors and a quarter-mile long driveway. Unfortunately, my interior decorating skills had not advanced much since my Bohemian college days. I still had mismatched furniture, lots of quirky stuff put up with thumbtacks on the walls, an Indian bedspread covering the brick-red file cabinet my sister gave me for Christmas in the 1980s. The house had character, I suppose, but it was way too big and I could never seem to get it organized or keep it clean for more than a day. Another problem was that in addition to my daughter I was raising boys, messy boys, boys with hordes of other boys always coming over. For this reason, we had a trampoline, a pingpong table and a pool table, and I bought a gallon of milk every other day. Our first set of living room furniture from Ikea was demolished from use and abuse in less than a year.
I always said I was going to repaint my bedroom from the color it was when we purchased the place – a cloying salmon pink – but somehow, I never found the time.
At Kim’s house, nothing was salmon pink, though in all other ways girls established the atmosphere. Unlike mine, her husband seemed to go to work for weeks at a time. She’d make the margaritas and I’d make the guacamole and we’d all play Scrabble or watch “American Idol.” It was my refuge.
The fact that I am responsible for everything from the condition of the storm gutters to the aging condiments in the refrigerator to the fact that the dog has taken to peeing in the upstairs hall makes it tough to just kick back and appreciate the ambience.
This was years ago now. These days I live about a half-hour from Kim in a cozy row home I like much more than I ever did that big, messy place in the “ru-burbs.” Even so, as proud as I am of my little place, I am never completely relaxed when I am in it. The fact that I am responsible for everything from the condition of the storm gutters to the aging condiments in the refrigerator to the fact that the dog has taken to peeing in the upstairs hall makes it tough to just kick back and appreciate the ambience. I work here, I sleep here, I raise children here. I am the chief operations officer and the head custodian. All the bills in the mailbox are for me, and all the telemarketers know my name. Though they can’t pronounce it.
At other people’s houses, I can concentrate. In fact, today I’m going to grade papers at someone else’s kitchen table, a good friend’s house, where I’ll be something more than a guest. A regular. A friend of the establishment. She knows how I take my coffee; I know where she keeps her Band-Aids. It’s like home without the laundry. I certainly don’t require V.I.P. treatment: I even like cleaning my friends’ houses. Their messes seem less messy than mine. They have better scrub brushes and nonstick frying pans. I don’t know how I have made it through a half-century of life without a nonstick frying pan, or why I don’t just go buy one now, but making do with what I have is a habit I’ve had a hard time breaking.
Perhaps you can judge the closeness of a friendship by the number of times you’ve cleaned the person’s kitchen. Whether it’s the dilatory dish drying after a dinner party, the tipsy midnight collection of glasses and plates, or the kind of no-nonsense takeover you pull when there’s an illness or a death, the housework you do for others is exceptionally satisfying. Symbolic. Appreciated. And best of all, occasional. It comes down to this: if you know someone really well, you know how they load their dishwasher.
I have a friend in the neighborhood where I live now who has an amazing house. Both she and her husband are artists; colorful mosaics and whimsical sculptures abound, inside and out. But what also abounds are her three very rowdy and high-maintenance little boys, and this is why Pam is sometimes found in the early mornings hiding at my house, drinking coffee on the balcony off my bedroom. (Did I mention I have a balcony off my bedroom? Lucky me.) I’ll wake to an email from her with the urgent subject line “Let me know when you are up.” She brings her weaving or crocheting and often some little healthy baked treat from her prodigious cooking. She even sometimes comes over when I’m not there, to nap on the couch. My house is her oasis as Kim’s once was mine.
Ah, Kim. After that beautiful house where I found so much solace was sold, Kim found a smaller rental in her neighborhood. The weekend of the move a number of her friends showed up to help. I was there of course, ferrying boxes and loads of clothes well into the night. My reasons for helping were partly selfish – I wanted to put in my two cents, to be a part of the transition. By helping figure out which cabinet was most convenient for the spices and then organizing them inside it, by matching each piece of artwork to the room it would go in, by being the first to fall asleep in the den watching a very bad movie on Pay-Per-View, I would make sure I was never a stranger in this house. Please, don’t make me go home. *
