My Million-Dollar Donkey Read online

  I was hurt by the way people I once cared deeply about were now behaving. Worse, I’d spent so much of the last twenty years trying to please my staff and customers that it was almost impossible to let go of the feeling that I was responsible for everyone’s satisfaction and welfare still. In an attempt to make our former friends and students see things with more perspective, I had heart to hearts, blogged, and even drove back to Florida a few times to intervene when trouble stirred. But as every well-intentioned action was enthusiastically misinterpreted, I eventually had to admit defeat.

  I felt like a dog with her tail between her legs and no understanding of why she had been beaten. Everything I once loved and felt reverence for seemed superficial now. I grieved over lost relationships and soiled memories.

  Mark’s attitude was, if twenty years of teaching, caring, and sacrificing for students hadn’t earned us even the dignity of respect, the hell with them all. Overnight, my ballerina husband turned into a tree hugger, and I’m not talking about the kind saving the world one tree at a time. He caressed the trees as if they were wooden mistresses, basking in the feel and smell of virgin oak or poplar. Mark was hugging trees to determine their girth, staring at them as if he was imagining their trunks supporting a roof or stairway. My husband wanted to build a new life, and he decided the place to start was in building a home. The fact that he’d never built anything before didn’t seem a big obstacle. If a pioneer could forge a homestead without even the use of power tools, certainly a dancing boy with a million in cash at his disposal could figure things out.

  I suggested we hire a construction company to slap up a quick, affordable home on our big tract of land, thinking that would allow us the time and money to take that promised trip to Paris. I wanted us to immediately start making up for years of servitude to everyone and everything except each other. Mark, unfortunately, had other plans. He wanted to be in control of everything connected to our new home, from designing the floor plan to sanding down the individual logs that would become the foundation for the earthy decor. Building a dream house was a millionaire’s right, in his opinion, and since we’d never been in a financial position to create a home that reflected our tastes and ideals before, he was obsessed with his ability to do so now.

  “But we agreed we’d take a trip to celebrate our good fortune and focus on our love,” I whined.

  I was still reeling from the sting of our old acquaintances’ disrespect. What better medicine for hurt than to run away to some far-off place with my husband so I could curl into his arms for warmth, self-worth, and comfort? I wanted to travel not so much because we needed a vacation, but because I wanted to be exposed to new sights, sounds, textures, and experiences. I had a romantic notion that venturing hand in hand into the unknown with the love of my life would set us on a path where we approached each day as a banquet of experiences to be savored. I was starving for that kind of existence and believed our moving was a part of a new spiritual journey we were ready to take.

  “We will travel. Later. I’m going to build a home for far less than what the local construction company wants to charge us, which means after I’m done, we’ll have extra money for travel,” Mark said, too busy leafing through building magazines to look me in the eye with understanding, love, or any other fond emotion. His obsession with leaping into his solitary desires now that he had money to burn was more than a little disappointing to me, because I was attached to this ideal of the two of us celebrating together.

  I attempted to write my way out of my funk by composing a book about the emotional trauma a dancer faced when retiring, using it as my MFA thesis. I begged Mark to read the manuscript to give me feedback. Mostly, I think I wanted him to recognize my grief and show interest in my new art and recognize that I needed a friend – no, a lover, at this time of emotional turmoil.

  “I hate that you’re writing this,” he told me, putting the work aside after half-heartedly reading a few chapters. “Move on. I am.”

  Nothing I said or did could get Mark to focus in any direction other than towards his building aspirations. Eventually it became obvious that my new main squeeze (the donkey) and I would just have to create our own entertainment until my raw wounds started to scab over a bit.

  So I hunkered down with books to investigate just what kind of adventure a gal could have alone on a big chunk of undeveloped land. I subscribed to Mother Earth News, Hobby Farms, and Grit Magazine. I devoured country lifestyle memoirs and how-to books on homesteading. I even re-read Walden.

  Meanwhile, I blogged. I journaled, ruminated, and cried. I wrote and wrote, telling myself the avalanche of words was necessary as part of my MFA studies when, in reality, I wrote because that was my process to hold it all together. I wrote my way into viewing my new life as happy, fulfilling, and steeped in deeper connections. Life was good, on paper if nowhere else.

  Each day we drove from the decrepit vacation cabin where we were temporarily camped out to our beautiful fifty acres to visualize our future. Looking at 50 untamed acres of trees and woodland debris was daunting with spring heads and a creek swallowed by underbrush. Where should we begin? Everything takes time. And money. We thought we had a windfall to work with, but our stash quickly dwindled on items we didn’t anticipate, such as several tons of lime for the pasture and gravel for half a mile of driveway. When we cleared a site for the house, we hit a mountainside of solid rock that had to be dynamited away. So, too, did we chip away at our recently flooded bank balance.

  Mark hired some men to help him tear our cabin apart and prepare for remodeling. As we peeled back layers of the cabin, we found a multitude of shocking construction sins. The ceiling joists had been cut, thus the sagging roof. A second story had been added over the living room, but the floor creaked awfully so we removed the carpet and discovered the floor supports were attached to drywall rather than studs. It was a scientific marvel that the entire place hadn’t collapsed in on itself. There was dry rot and water damage everywhere, and to my children’s ultimate fascination, a huge dead snake was found shriveled up under the stairway like a dread omen.

  As warped paneling, old furniture, and broken stair rails turned to ash in the fire pit, the ghost of the former cabin disappeared into the air in a puff of smoke and our old identities seemed to be hitching a ride.

  One day, as Mark removed the bathroom toilet to lay new tile, the commode fell right through the rotting floor. One eyebrow raised, he watched the toilet bowl rolling down the mountainside.

  “I could have been sitting on that!” he said.

  Grumbling, he crawled underneath the house to inspect the damage and discovered a jack propping up the sagging foundation.

  “What do you think will happen if I remove this?” he said, clearing the bushes aside to get a better look.

  “I’ll collect a big life insurance check,” I said.

  I watched him write new extra jack to help hold up cabin on his shopping list. “I was taught never to crawl under a car that was held up by a jack because it might be unsteady. Now I’m supposed to eat, sleep, and make merry with nothing but a jack keeping my entire home from rolling down the mountain?”

  “People do it all the time around here,” he insisted.

  Apparently old timers in Georgia country towns had a do it yourself mentality. Unfortunately, they just didn’t always have do it yourself capabilities. Farmers are not big fans of shows like Extreme Makeover and Trading Spaces. But Mark was, and he believed his love for interior design and reading lots and lots of home building magazines was all the educational foundation he needed to be a big time builder.

  He began frantically running back and forth from the cabin to our land three times a day preparing for his next project before the old one was half finished. We hadn’t adjusted to “country time” yet (picture a clock running in a vat of molasses) so taking on two projects at once didn’t seem all that big a deal to either of us. The problem was
the workers on country time didn’t harbor our same sense of urgency. They showed up late, stayed a few hours, and then disappeared for days on end. When they returned, Mark would demand an explanation for why they left the job site.

  “It’s huntin’ season, don’t ya know? Can’t expect a man to work while the deer is runnin.’”

  “Got myself throwed in jail for fightin’ and Larry here had to pawn my tools to get me out. Couldn’t come to work with no tools, don’t ya know, so I had to take a job balin’ hay to make some cash to reclaim the tools. I’m here now. Wouldn’t let you down, buddy.”

  But of course, they did let him down. Over and over again. Now, we had two expensive building projects going, and neither stayed on budget, nor did they take shape within our expected time frame.

  “Could you at least call when you aren’t going to show up?” Mark asked, sensing that pressuring these boys to be more responsible would only give them an excuse to walk off the job altogether.

  “You want to sit around jabberin’ all day, or you want me to fix this porch?”

  “By all means, fix the porch.”

  Mark started talking to the boys in a southern drawl, leaning against the porch rail and casually joining in the talk about plantin’ peas or shootin’ possums in some desperate attempt to keep them on task. I, too, found myself using colorful country metaphors, revising my vocabulary so I fit in. We were treated to stories of mountain treks and wildlife encounters, each tale concluding with an insightful moral or memorable life lesson. Thanks to the easy conversation inspired by a country porch, we learned never to try to ride down the raging Ocoee River on a raft held up by bicycle tires, and never to try to outrun the sheriff at a roadblock, because dang if the town sheriff wasn’t a stock car racer on weekends. We became privy to intimate details of the boys’ lives, such as how old they were when they got a lickin’ for stealin’ some of their grandpa’s moonshine, how old they were when they got a lickin’ for aimin’ at squirrels but accidently shot their aunt’s cat instead, how old they were when they got a lickin’ for talkin’ back, for skipping school, for stealin’ apples from a neighbors tree, or for failin’ to milk the cow. In light of all the “got a lickin’” tales, it was a wonder these boys had any skin left on their hides at all.

  The remodeling eventually progressed enough that we could move from our temporary camping quarters in the unfurnished, unheated bunkhouse to the cabin’s upstairs bedrooms. We finally had a few luxuries, like a working toilet and a stove, yet I still worried that we were wasting the best years of our children’s lives, making them live like squatters. We were in a position to buy, outright, a nice home and devote our time to family togetherness, but Mark considered that kind of thing a waste of resources, all of which he wanted to allocate to his new passion for building.

  “We won’t live like this forever. I’m gonna build us a dream house soon,” Mark promised. “As soon as I find a builder I can trust.”

  “And then, we’ll take a trip?”

  “Of course,”

  Mark kissed the top of my head and since that was the most intimate contact we’d shared in months, I all but swooned.

  He sat on the bed and took off his work boots. They landed on the floor with a heavy, dull thump, a thick sound so unlike the dance shoes I used to watch him cast aside that I smiled.

  “Can’t we just pay a company to build us a house quickly, or hire the guys working here on the cabin to do it? Let’s celebrate our good fortune. Let’s take the kids on a trip overseas and broaden their understanding of the world.”

  “Are you kidding me? I can’t leave now. I have to pay for everything twice as it is. These country builders make so many mistakes that if I don’t watch these guys every minute they will ruin the entire project.”

  Since I didn’t know anything about building and Mark seemed so confident, I couldn’t argue. Just that week, the workers had installed the plumbing in the bunkhouse upside down. Oops. I was told I could now have a shower or a bath. Not both. Of course, they wouldn’t mind fixing the plumbing, but the carpenter had finished off the wall, so repairing their mistake meant paying for demolition and re-plumbing and building another wall, since they didn’t guarantee their work. And who had time for all that anyway after they dropped a hammer in the newly installed bathtub, causing not only an obvious mar of the surface, but a hairline crack that leaked water through the new ceiling to the floor below? With the best of intentions, they set about to repair the tub, but cut into the freshly installed air conditioning vents and severed several electrical wires in the process. We’d already paid to have the electricity rewired twice and several outlets still didn’t work, and now, when I turned the water on, it came gushing out from the fuse box.

  Continuing to pay for every job two and three times stung, knowing the general attitude was that “rich city folk” like us could afford whatever they charged. With every repair I felt the coveted trip I imagined as a launching pad for our new spiritual journey drift farther and farther away.

  I started to question the intentions of the men working for us, too. Obviously, no matter how friendly we became on one level, we were outsiders to be taken advantage of on another. Were these men really this incompetent, or milking the job for every cent they could get?

  “You told me you could do this remodel for thirty thousand dollars and we’ve already spent three times that. What happened?” I asked Mark one night as he was going over a bank statement on the computer. I tried looking over his shoulder to see where our finances stood, but he closed out the screen as if I was prying into his personal diary.

  “This cabin became a way bigger project than I expected once I got into it. Trust me, we’ll make our investment all back and more when we sell. Don’t you like what I’m doing with the place?”

  Who wouldn’t appreciate the rustic charm of wood siding, extra fireplaces, and laurel walkways? I blindly accepted his explanation that a builder commonly spent three times what was budgeted for a project of this scale. As the work unfolded, Mark’s artistic eye urged him to add even more special details like wooden beams and a glorious additional deck to display the long-range mountain views. His remodeling project now escalated to four times what we agreed to spend. I accepted the shocking number as a part of the learning curve for a man new to building. But I started to worry.

  “Do we really need to add so much detail in a cheap vacation cabin that you say is made so poorly that it isn’t worth keeping as a rental property?” I asked.

  “I hate when you do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Question me. Obviously you don’t trust my judgment.”

  “I just want to know where our money is going and what you plan to do next. You know me, I write a business plan for everything, and it seems to me our life would be more successful if we treated the financial end like a business and we followed the plan we made together.”

  Mark sighed. “You’ve held the reins of our life for years, and now it’s my turn. Relax. Be a mom. And trust me to do my thing. I’m better at this than you realize.”

  His dismissive air made me ashamed, as if my questions made me an unloving or unsupportive wife. I swallowed back a whole slew of concerns regarding impractical decisions and unnecessary risk on his part. One night Mark and I rented The Money Pit, a comedy about a couple who bought a dream home that ended up a daunting remodeling project which nearly destroyed their marriage. Sadly, the film felt like reality TV.

  Fearing our funds would run out long before we had a place to live, I finally convinced Mark to visit an established firm known for building affordable homes on any lot you owned. He seemed interested at first, looking at tile samples and house plans, taking pleasure in the shopping process. An agent joined us and we spent three hours planning the design of a new cookie cutter country home, carefully choosing pretty kitchen counters and cabinets, light fixtures and roof tiles. Mark
added tons of extras to the package, such as recessed lighting and extra footage in bedrooms. He upgraded materials and appliances, which of course ratcheted up the cost, but still the final product was right in line with what we agreed to spend on our new home. I was delighted until, at the final moment, Mark couldn’t bring himself to sign the contract.

  “I don’t want any house built by some generic company.”

  “What difference does it make what kind of house we live in? We decided to move to Blue Ridge so you could do wood turning and I could write, and we both agreed that the first priority was to spend more time with family.”

  “You’ll never get a house with decent closets if you don’t let me build,” Mark insisted.

  Threatened by the close call of what he perceived as my almost robbing him of the fun of building his dream house, Mark redoubled his efforts to find a builder after that. A few days later he found Ronnie, a builder by trade and God-fearing preacher on the side. Ronnie epitomized the salt-of-the-earth country stereotype. He described himself as “country as cornbread,” prefacing every conversation with, “Now, I’m not claiming to know everything, ‘cause I only have ‘bout a sixth grade education, but it seems to me ...” Then, he followed this disclaimer with some nugget of wisdom that always rang true and right.

  Ronnie’s corporation consisted of just himself and his two sons; not a big crew, but a diligent and trustworthy one. Three men building our home would take much longer than an established company, but Mark would serve as additional labor and project manager, so the house would eventually manifest. The men shook hands and the project began.

  Mark began devoting 60 hours a week to his building project. My days were filled with driving the kids to school, going to the laundromat to wash clothes, and running errands to keep our makeshift life afloat. We were busy, stressed, estranged from each other physically once again, and too distracted to enjoy the beautiful mountain view just outside our door. All I could think of was that we had set off on a grand life journey, but darned if we didn’t take ourselves along. If I had any hope of sustaining sanity during this life transition, I would have to find something more meaningful than laundry and country lifestyle magazines to focus on, and quickly.