I had already learned that Candler was of little use during the packing of my blue apartment. The best I could solicit was his use of a black magic marker to label boxes “fragile.” Between china, art, lamps, vases and the like, there were close to 200 such boxes. After about 15 boxes he began labeling them “Freking Fragile,” only replace the two letters between the F and the K with your imagination.
“How many freking glasses does a person need?” he complained.
“Different glasses for different occasions, you can’t use red wine glasses for white wine,” I explained.
“Why do you have so many tea cups?” he shouted from the dining room.
“I collect them,” I called from the bedroom.
“Freking, fraking, fragile,” he said; his handwriting, which already looked like a three-year-old’s, become less and less legible with every box.
“Can’t you get rid of some of this stuff,” he shouted through the walls.
“Just write,” I called back while packing linens from the bathroom closet.
I didn’t have to be psychic to know that Candler’s lackluster assistance was a sure-fire indicator that he would be of little help on the other side.
Having been contracted by the showhome company with the “rules” of showing living, I knew that unpacking and meticulously decorating a showhome must occur within days of taking occupancy. During the process, boxes are not allowed to sit in rooms to be unpacked. A staging area is required to be set up in the garage or unfinished storage area and each box moved and unpacked individually until the house is complete. Once the box is empty, each box had to be broken down, flattened and eventually the whole lot of them carried into a separate off-site storage area. The whole exercise was an exhausting task for one person in a 6,500 square foot house.
Marketing Versailles included a photo shoot of the decorated home just one week after our move. An open house followed quickly on the heels of the photographer to preview the new improved version of the once-empty shell to selling agents. The extraordinarily quick timing of these events was designed to impress and sooth the worried home owner, whom the agent and showhome company had convinced to let total strangers live in their very expensive piece of real estate “free.”
Our listing agent had promised to do her best warding off potential buyers during the first week, after which we were expected to have all beds made and the home in perfect order by 9:00 a.m. every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Having committed to this course, as opposed to spending my life savings supporting us, I was determined to see it through flawlessly.
Growing up in alcoholism creates perfectionism. It is a perk that can cause an individual to come unraveled if not carefully monitored. My mother, shattered by the stress of my father’s addiction and constant dying stunts, was also strapped with three rebellious female teenage daughters who all emerged into full-blown puberty during free the love, free drugs, free sex, free Vietnam era, is an outstanding example of how this exceptional quality can go awry.
As my father’s addiction took on epic proportions and her children’s rebellion cut a wide swath of destruction through my mother’s universe, she compensated by trying to create perfection in her visual world. To this day I’m confident it was an unconscious cry for help.
Her obsessive-compulsive behavior, which began innocently enough with baking endless sheets of cookies, scores of biscuits, lavish braided breads and five pineapple upside-down cakes at a time, quickly gave way to more controlling pursuits. The first spin up the dial was vacuuming the house four times a day. Direction of the vacuum tracks was paramount; each trail had to run in a parallel direction with no overlap. Once the floor was vacuumed, we weren’t allowed to walk in that room. This was problematic. Whenever we were vacuumed into a corner, she would point us to the nearest window. Foot prints on the plush pile carpet were an absolute no-no. I took to entering and exiting the house through the large picture window in my bedroom that opened onto the front porch. On rainy days I was required to “dry off” on the porch, much like a dog, before entering the kitchen. Dripping water on my mother’s freshly mopped floor resulted in banishment to the dark unfinished basement.
Then one day out of the blue, precision carpet cleaning ceased to be enough. My mother’s need to keep the physical environment of our home immaculate took on a whole new dimension. We were forbidden to sit on the furniture; body oil. I know, what’s the point in having furniture? My sisters and I became floor sitters. My father was allowed to continue sitting in his big brown leather king’s throne in the den; but we, the three little hooligans, whose pores might accidently excrete tainted substances onto the yards of Brunschwig & Fils fabric, were forbidden the overstuffed accroutrements of domestic life.
In our bedrooms, we were denied the right to have any visible personal possessions in sight. The chairs in our rooms were whisked away and returned reupholstered in silk fabrics with skirts around their legs. These chairs, though we were not allowed to sit in them, became the assigned hiding places for our schoolbooks. Sitting on the bed was absolutely out! Sitting on the bedspread was punishable by death. There was a training camp for folding and removal of bedspreads in order to sit or lie on actual mattress surfaces. It’s a wonder she didn’t cover everything in plastic. Of course, as our home was filled with Southern Living and Architectural Digest me was going for.
Growing up in my mother’s boot camp had prepared me for showhome living. Who knew all that misery would come in handy. As Jacqueline St. Claire’s daughter, I knew how to do “house perfect.”