The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life

I loved
The Cantaloupe in the Living Womb
.

SIRI

Melanie Shankle has definitely done something jolly with this book.

SIR ANTHONY STRALLAN,
Downton Abbey

I feel that I have been misrepresented as the villain of this book. You’ll be hearing from my attorneys.

THE ANTELOPE

I haven’t worn that rust-colored velour jogging suit in at least ten years.

CHARLES MARINO,
father of Melanie Shankle

Why did you send me this book, and how did you get my address?

JEN HATMAKER,
author of
7

I don’t read many books, but when I do . . . I read Melanie Shankle.

THE MOST INTERESTING MAN IN THE WORLD

This book is the big one, Elizabeth.

FRED SANFORD,
owner of
Sanford and Son

Clear eyes, full hearts; with this book you can’t lose.

COACH TAYLOR,
former coach of the Dillon Panthers

This book is good, but I still don’t understand the problem with having an antelope hanging in your living room.

PERRY SHANKLE,
husband of Melanie Shankle

Melanie wrote a book?

EVERYONE WHO WENT TO HIGH SCHOOL WITH MELANIE SHANKLE

I wish I had Melanie’s imagination and storytelling abilities!

C. S. LEWIS

Melanie Shankle’s delightful book exceeded my great expectations.

CHARLES DICKENS

I only wish Melanie had been around to write some of the New Testament.

THE APOSTLE PAUL

This book is the funniest book you will ever read. It will absolutely change your life for the better. Why are you waiting? Buy it right now.

GULLEY,
best friend of Melanie Shankle

Quit bugging me about helping you come up with fake funny endorsements.

SOPHIE HUDSON,
author of
A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet

Visit Tyndale online at
www.tyndale.com
.

Visit the author’s blog at
thebigmamablog.com
.

TYNDALE
and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life

Copyright © 2014 by Melanie Shankle. All rights reserved.

Interior pattern copyright © AnastasiaSonne/Shutterstock. All rights reserved.

Cover and interior illustration of engagement ring © kristina-s/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.

Cover and interior illustration of wedding rings © mstay/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.

Illustration of antelope by Ruth Berg, copyright © Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Designed by Ron Kaufmann

Edited by Stephanie Rische

Published in association with William K. Jensen Literary Agency, 119 Bampton Court, Eugene, Oregon 97404.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible,
New International Version
,
®
NIV.
®
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
www.zondervan.com
.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the
Holy Bible
, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shankle, Melanie.

  The antelope in the living room : the real story of two people sharing one life / Melanie Shankle.

    pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-4143-8554-9 (sc)

1.  Marriage. 2.  Love. 3.  Families.  I. Title.

  HQ503.S43 2014

  306.81
 
—dc23 2013030341

ISBN 978-1-4143-9058-1 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-4143-8555-6 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-4143-9059-8 (Apple)

TO PERRY.

As Eula Goodnight says to Rooster Cogburn,

“Livin’ with you has been an adventure any woman

would relish for the rest o’ time. . . .

I have to say you’re a credit to the whole

male sex, and I’m proud to have ya for my friend.”

Thanks for the best adventure a girl could have.

I’m so glad God gave me you. I love you

more than I can say.

Contents

The Importance of Being Antelope: A Prologue

W
HEN
I
WAS WRITING MY FIRST BOOK,
Sparkly Green Earrings
, I realized there were so many more stories about our family that I wanted to tell. However, most of those seemed to involve my relationship with my husband, Perry. So I began to think up an outline for a second book with an eloquent title along the lines of
Dadgum, Y’all, Marriage Can Be Hard
.

(I also considered
Big Louis Vuitton Purse with Matching Wallet
based on the number of pairs of sparkly green earrings I received after my first book was published.)

Ultimately, according to vast market research in the form of two people I asked, neither of those seemed to be the catchiest title, so
The Antelope in the Living Room
was born. I’ve done my best to tell real stories of two people sharing one life, including the things we sometimes try to ignore. The veritable antelopes in the living room of life.

A few months after I turned in the final manuscript for this book, my publisher began to send me various cover options. I’d sent them a drawing I really liked to give them an idea of what I had in mind, and when I saw the first few cover options, I was
really excited to see they had incorporated exactly what I had envisioned.

Until I showed them to Perry.

He looked them over and said, “Well, it looks good, but that’s not an antelope.”

“What do you mean it’s not an antelope? Look at those antlers!”

He sighed deeply. “Yes, that’s the problem. Antelopes don’t have antlers. They have horns.”

“Oh. Okay. But I like the antlers! I think they make it look so pretty!”

“Pretty enough to make your entire book a fraud?”

Seriously. This is my life. Who’s going to read this book? Jim Fowler?

I replied, “No, of course I don’t want the entire book to be discredited by a fraudulent depiction of an antelope for the two readers who will know the difference. I certainly don’t want anyone to feel bamboozled.”

(I didn’t really say bamboozled, but I wish I had. It’s a great word.)

He suggested, “Why don’t you just send them a picture of the actual nilgai antelope hanging in our living room and let them use that?”

“For the same reason I’m sad it’s hanging in our living room. It’s ugly. I need my book cover to be pretty.”

That’s how we ended up spending the next several hours on Google looking at pictures of various antelopes. Ultimately I decided I could forsake my beloved deer image for a kudu, because in my opinion they have the prettiest horns of all the antelopes.

I e-mailed Tyndale and said, “Um. Apparently I requested a deer for the cover of my book instead of an antelope. According
to Perry, this bit of carelessness will create a scandal the likes of which the publishing industry has never seen. Can we please exchange these duplicitous antlers for a kudu? You will find a picture attached.”

(Moments like these I feel certain that their job is so much easier when they’re helping Tony Dungy with a book. I bet he has never once brought up the difference between a deer and an antelope and required their cover artists to deal with this type of wildlife minutiae.)

But the whole thing is a beautiful illustration of our marriage. Perry pays attention to detail. He likes things to be correct. He will measure something down to one-eighth of one-eighth of an inch. Meanwhile, my life philosophy is basically “Eh, close enough” as I nail holes in the wall, all devil-may-care. He believes in rolling the tube of toothpaste from the bottom up to get every last drop of Colgate, like he’s some kind of fluoride addict, while I like to squeeze right from the middle of the tube.

And while I believe it is civilized to leave the toilet seat down as a courtesy to other family members, Perry seems to take some sort of sadistic pleasure in leaving it up, thereby creating a potential middle-of-the-night obstacle course that causes me to go scrambling in search of a towel.

Antelope? Deer? Tomato? To-mah-to?

Yet God led us to each other, with all our differing opinions and systems for hanging clothes in our closet and our feelings about salting the tortilla chips and his love of the outdoors and my love of air-conditioning and sheets with a high thread count. We made a promise before God, our families, and our dearest friends to work through all these differences, right before eating pork
tenderloin medallions on small rolls and some sort of thing called
Brie en croute
, otherwise known as fancy cheese with crackers.

And somehow we make a good team in spite of it all. Maybe we’re actually a great team because of all our differences. We each balance out the other’s extremes even though we don’t always agree.

Particularly on what constitutes a pretty book cover.