Painting the Pink Room

It’s become apparent that the sale of my book is inextricably linked to the sale of our old house, three blocks down the hill. We moved last summer and couldn’t sell it; we rented it, our tenants moved out and we kept it vacant, believing it would show a lot better empty. Somehow my lovingly assembled manuscript of 370 pages has become a metaphor for that lovingly cared-for house. Or vice versa.

Beginning on Labor Day, I gave a final push to the sale of that house.

That same weekend, the manuscript was electronically zapped to about 20 editors. Labors down the hill were fueled by nerves. I cleaned. I primed and painted my daughter’s first bedroom (it was pink), filled and patched small holes all over the house, found paint to match, touched up, primed and painted the entryway and front door (Caesar Salad to Nude Beach),  removed remnants of old fence, paid to have new fence put in, paid to have house painted, mowed, removed hundreds of fallen apples. I worked hard, okay? We signed a contract in late September, bought champagne and bubbly apple juice for the kiddies. The sale fell through. Though we had disclosed the presence of vermiculite in the attic, the buyers became afraid after the inspection. For non-Montana readers, vermiculite is a shiny crumbly substance used for years as insulation in  homes. It’s also used in gardening products. Over 90 percent of it was, for a time, mined out of Libby, MT, now the number one Superfund site in the country due to severe asbestos contamination, causing hundreds of slow painful deaths.

Parallel to this action was the action in New York. My agent and I had the very unpleasant conversation in which I learned that my manuscript had found no takers. This would be the equivalent, for those not in the writerly world, of going to school for a skill at which you had become expert, in your own humble opinion, and then applying for about twenty jobs and not getting a single offer. You had lots of interviews; people praised your skills to the highest, but in the end, they just could not find a place for you. Writers are repeatedly told, by the way, to learn to separate ourselves from our manuscripts. I know there are many in the job force right now being told, No, we have no place for you. Don’t take it personally.

Now the more recent past. Gnashing of teeth, tearing of clothes. Long walks through amber fields under brooding skies, forehead knitted, eyebrows knitted, fingers knitted behind the back, pacing like something out of Jane Eyre. Am I done? Has this all been a waste? Is this story stupid? Are these characters better left to fade from memory? What have I done with my life? What have I to show for it? Oh why won’t someone take pity on me and buy that beloved house?

Crash courses in asbestos abatement (the industry word for mitigation/removal) and plotting a novel were initiated.  Suddenly I was no longer in that pick-yer-teeth state of waiting, which if you’ve read this blog you know I’ve been in since June. I was now using all my nifty new papers and notebooks to construct elaborate graphs and diagrams. Even in waiting rooms of kids’ appointments, on the sidelines at soccer practice, I sat taking notes. I polled all my friends: What is “plot payoff”? I made phone calls to companies in Billings and Butte, and finally, to an environmental consultant named Sonia whose ability to enunciate, speak slowly, and use the best vocabulary, taught me more about asbestos, vermiculite, and insulating houses than I ever could have learned on the internet. Sonia was hired; samples were taken, rushes on results were paid for. FYI, it costs about $6,600 dollars for a crew of three men to enter a 200 square foot attic through a tiny hole and suck out/bag all the vermiculite and old batting (we had both) wearing special suits and protecting the rest of the house. It takes approximately three days to do the abatement, and then another to re-insulate using R38 fiberglass batting.

On one of these restless nights, mulling over the bizarre parallel between these two projects, it occurred to me that one might inform the other. Since I had, in the final hours leading up to our first offer, expended a huge last effort, perhaps my manuscript needed the same final push. Writing that now, I can see that this seems obvious. I mean, duh. But lying in the dark that night I came to understand that though I had worked so stinkin’ hard, I wasn’t done. I sat up and said aloud, “I gotta paint the pink room.”

Not long after, Sonia called. Results were in: No trace of asbestos. Three samples were tested and no trace was detected. Repeat: there was NO ASBESTOS in the house where we raised two children from infancy to these golden middle years.

We have a new offer, another inspection to pass.

And I am in the middle of a major rewrite. Shhh.