The Crack
By Cara Stolen
@carastolen
The drywall to the right of our front door is cracked. A coat rack my husband, Levi, welded out of horseshoes hangs on that wall, and coats and hats and general accoutrement of our life live there hiding the wall and, subsequently, the crack. But I noticed it a while ago, and now I can’t unsee it.
Four years ago, we bought the house Levi grew up in. It was in rough shape—renters will do that to a house I guess—and we gutted most of the inside before we moved in. We replaced flooring, repainted, rearranged the kitchen, and remodeled the breakfast nook into my office. We tore out water-soaked insulation and repaired damaged drywall in places, too. Specifically, we fixed water damage on the wall to the right of the front door.
But we ran out of money before we got around to fixing the front porch.
If I remember right, the exact words the pre-sale inspection used to describe the porch were: “not salvageable.” It wasn’t up to code, had never been permitted, and, worst of all, was putting enough weight on the roof of the house to compromise the structural integrity of the roofline. Oh, and there was something about ice dams I didn’t understand.
What we did understand was this: the porch was causing the roof to leak. A lot. Specifically, into the wall to the right of the front door.
But since it was the dead of winter, and we wouldn’t use it for months, we decided the porch tear-off could wait until we had the money to do it right. Until we were ready. Instead of replacing the porch, Levi and I replaced the insulation and put up new drywall where the water was leaking.
We pretended to fix the problem, even though clearly we hadn’t.
***
Like the crack in the patched sheetrock to the right of our front door, I’m sure the rift between Levi and me formed slowly, imperceptibly, over time. And similar to the crack on our wall, once I felt the fissure in our marriage, I couldn’t unfeel it.
It wasn’t a new problem, this issue between us. In fact, it pre-dated our marriage, and began long before we said vows or made promises to love one another for better or worse.
But this time it was obvious to both of us that our patch jobs were no longer working.
***
The guest book from our wedding nine years ago sits on top of my dresser in our bedroom. It’s filled with our engagement photos and advice and well-wishes from our wedding guests. Notes advise us to “keep smiling and holding hands!” alongside the age-old adage to “never go to bed angry” (which, personally, I think is the world’s worst advice). But nowhere on those glossy pages did anyone warn us to “never be dishonest with one another in the name of keeping the peace.” Not one person scrawled out “unresolved conflict becomes bigger conflict.” Nobody thought to mention to us that stuffed emotions tend to fester, mold, bubble if the source isn’t addressed.
***
In many ways, Levi and I experience the world similarly. We are both hard working, intuitive, and introverted. Neither of us are good with feelings. Or letting people in.
I believe in my core I need to be perfect to deserve love, while he thinks someone must be honest and loyal to be worthy of his love. I stuff my anger, while he accelerates into his, and I avoid the fights he tends to seek out.
In short: we are great partners who aren’t great at dealing with conflict. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say I’m not great at dealing with conflict. My instinct is to evade, dodge, and, though it’s hard to admit, outright lie my way out of it.
It’s not that I ever wanted to lie to Levi. I just wanted him to stop looking at me like that when he asked why our truck payment was late, or why I hadn’t ordered a tool he asked me to, or why I shared something he told me in confidence. I wanted him to see me as, well, perfect, and was afraid showing my flaws would be the thing to make our marriage fall apart. So, instead of admitting I forgot a due date, or we didn’t have the money, or I opened my big fat mouth on accident, I would find myself telling him the Post Office lost our check, or I forgot all about the thing he asked me to order, or it must have been someone else who betrayed his trust.
Usually, he would let it go, and then he’d go back to looking at me the way he always had.
But he knew. And, like the water seeping into our wall, that knowledge festered and expanded until it could no longer be contained.
***
A few months before I noticed both the physical and metaphorical cracks in my life, our twenty-something babysitter got married. While packing up her stuff one afternoon, she asked if I had any advice. I looked around our living room—at Daniel Tiger paused on the TV and the Magnatiles on the floor—and wondered what to say.
“It’s hard work,” I told her. “You just …” Looking at the family photo hanging above the bench by the front door, I smiled, content with the life Levi and I had built.
Finally, feeling mature and wise, I said “You have to wake up every morning and choose each other, even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it.”
***
When I was newly pregnant with my second child, I became obsessed with Fixer Upper. I spent hours snuggled up with my oldest, Royce, on the couch watching “Up Up” as he called it. His favorite part of the show was “Demo Day,” when Chip Gaines would tear out all the cabinets, floors, and walls Joanna said should go. He would jump up and down on the couch swinging an imaginary sledge hammer, shouting “yeah!” with every crash.
But I liked to watch what came after the destruction. Despite having spent my childhood on countless construction sites, the way the crew transformed an existing structure into something different entirely mesmerized me. It took more than just paint, shiplap, and granite. It took vision, skill, and a sense of loyalty to the blueprint of the original home. I was struck over and over again by how different the same house could look an hour (in TV time) later.
***
It’s the dead of winter again. The last few days have been foggy and cold, and there’s a thin film of ice covering the warped boards of the porch we still haven’t replaced.
Levi is asking me if we’re ever going to get a home equity loan, and his tone tells me he’s primed for a fight. He wants to insulate the shop, replace the leaky windows, and rebuild the porch. He’s tired of waiting.
The muscles in my upper back tense and my jaw clenches.
I still have the urge to keep my feelings, my imperfections, to myself. My instinct to make an excuse—to lie—about how I’m already working on the loan or I haven’t heard back from the banker is still there.
But that habit was the proverbial porch in our marriage.
I wish I could tell you about our Fixer-Upper-esque reveal: a ta-da! moment after which everything was fixed between us. But there wasn’t one. Instead, we used harsh words and tears to tear down the existing structure of our marriage, and honesty to rebuild it.
We took my nonchalant advice: we woke up every day and chose each other. Even when it was hard. Even when we didn’t want to.
I lift my chin to meet his gaze. His intensity. His tone. “Yeah. We will. But I’m scared to have another monthly payment. And I won’t have time to work on it until next month.”
He opens the door to leave for work just as the sun we haven’t seen in days bursts through the fog. I step out on the porch with him, into the light, and kiss him.
“Okay.” He says, and kisses me back.
And we are. Okay.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.