In the early years of my third marriage, my husband and I lived like gypsies in other people’s houses. Enormous mansions in lavish neighborhoods that couldn’t be sold due to reckless flaws by architects and builders – a deafening train twenty yards away, steep driveways that tumbled into main thoroughfares, too many windows or too many doors, leaving them impossible to decorate. These empty manor homes with soaring ceilings, expansive marble floors, and hardwoods straight out of a king’s forest created cavernous hostile environments for wealthy buyers seeking a home for their underdisciplined, overindulged children and vast art collections.
Enter Violet St. Clair. We pulled our gypsy wagons into the estate-sized driveways and unloaded silks, tapestries, Renoirs, Persian rugs and custom-made furnishings carved in the finest capitals of Europe. My gift of turning double-digit square footage mausoleums into warm inviting homes provided us with a life which at least on the surface, looked like the rich and famous (of which we were neither). My gypsy magic masked the flaws, or at least provided enough smoke and mirrors that they faded into the background. I filled the houses with the smell of fresh-baked cookies and rosemary encrusted-lamb. We offered up cheesecake, tea and champagne. We seduced the wealthy with our gift of hospitality and, voila, the said property slipped from our fingers into the hands of its rightful owners. In the first five years of our marriage, we moved fourteen times.
It was an exhausting way to satisfy our appetite for opulent living on what amounted to be a coal miner’s salary. In fairness to my husband, it was my proclivity for luxury (nearly twenty years his senior and more cultivated in my taste) and his lack of financial wherewithal to satisfy my abiding need for beauty that drove us to this madness. But soon his appetite grew far beyond my own. His addiction to our newfound friendships with the prestigious country club set put him on a course of no return. Tennis with the elite was his drink of the day. As his addiction grew, our lifestyle became a dirty little secret which he guarded with his life. We were seen as equals at the club, and nothing else would satisfy.
The homes, available by appointment only, were allowed to be previewed from 9:00 to 9:00, 365 days a year. We were constantly on our game — clean bathrooms, polished floors, spotless mirrors, exquisite florals, hedges trimmed to perfection, and never ever an unmade bed. Our lives were filled with the details. Or at least mine was. My childhood, spearheaded by a mother obsessed with visual perfection, had baptized me for this life; but my present reality was not a contrived plan. I had no intention of marrying. None at all. After two failed marriages before the age of 25 and one child out of my youthful carelessness, I was single for life.
My gifted son had finally flown the nest; and as a celebration of my new-found independence, I relinquished the responsibility of yard maintenance and purchased a townhome. Unknowingly, with the stroke of a pen I surrendered my life to the ravages of toxic black mold. After a lengthy stay in the critical care unit at Piedmont Hospital, five doctors, three attorneys, eighteen moves, four years, nine lawsuits, one private detective and the loss of my entire history (if only I’d lost the right things) I emerged solvent, thin and determined to reclaim my life. Reclaiming my health was another matter all together.
For most of the lawsuit years, my insurance company had condemned me to trailer-trash living with furniture so hideous I threatened to kill myself if I had to live on it one more day. My mother took one look in the door of my insurance-subsidized apartment and refused to enter for fear her furniture wouldn’t be speaking to her when she got home. My visual muse was malnourished like a child in Sub-Saharan Africa. I was on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown when the legal system delivered up some semblance of justice.
I landed in a brand new high-rise smack in the middle of Buckhead, the Beverly Hills of Atlanta. I chose my apartment for the uninterrupted expanse of glass providing exquisite views of the Atlanta skyline. I nourished my starved inner child with Brazilian hardwood floors, luscious shades of custom blue paint, lavish furnishings and collectable art. My powder room was painted five times until I found just the perfect shade of chocolate to offset my collection of antique mirrors. Oz glittering in the distance became my nightly meditation to calm my spirit after years of fighting for my rights.
I was settled in for life, a sunflower smiling into the midday sky, happily living alone for the first time since I was born and without a crisis in sight. Life Lesson #9089, out of sight does not mean out of reach.