The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life (15 page)

We are currently in the process of getting estimates to replace all the windows in our house. It’s an old house, and this means there are exactly twenty-two windows that need to be replaced. This is not an inexpensive proposition. By which I mean that when we got our first estimate a few weeks ago, I had to hold my ears to keep my brain from leaking out.

It makes me wish we lived closer to the airport, because several years ago the federal government replaced all the windows in those older homes free of charge. Which seems to be a perfectly good use of our tax money, doesn’t it? Replacing windows for people who
chose to live by an airport that already existed when they moved in? It’s too bad Congress doesn’t feel as strongly about people who live close to train crossings. On cool winter nights we can hear the train whistles so loudly that I think I’m in a reenactment from
The Polar Express
and I start singing “Hot Chocolate.”

Anyway, last week a window salesman with impeccable timing showed up on our doorstep, told me his company was working in the area, and asked if we’d like a free estimate to replace the windows in our home. I told him that would be great, and we scheduled the appointment for the following Tuesday afternoon. He said it was important that my spouse be present for the meeting. Which, frankly, seemed a little 1950s to me, but whatever. I’m just a little old housewife who doesn’t know nothing about windows.

On Tuesday these two young salesguys showed up on our doorstep, complete with an iPad to give their sales presentation and show a demo window. We invited them in, and they explained that they actually work for a direct-marketing company that could sell anything but just happened to sell windows. I believe it was at this point that I began to get the feeling that this wasn’t going to end well for them.

My feeling was confirmed as they launched fully into Perry’s most-hated sales tactic
 
—bashing the competition without touting the merits of the product you’re actually trying to sell. He let them go on for about three minutes before he interrupted with a terse “Tell me why I would want to buy
your
windows.”

Danger, Will Robinson. Danger.

These two young guys shifted gears, but then, sadly, lost us again when they said, “Our windows give you the high quality you want but at a lower price because we know you’d rather spend your money on your pretty wife.”

Did we just time travel? What is happening? Check, please.

It takes a lot to awaken my feminist sensibilities, but this did the trick.

My patience was wearing thin, but Perry tends to have a longer fuse in these situations than I do. Except then they mentioned the competition negatively again: “If you have Sears come out to bid on your windows, they’ll take up at least four hours of your time.”

To which Perry replied, “No, they won’t. Because I’ll tell them they have forty-five minutes to measure and give me a price if they want this job.”

That’s when I realized these salesguys were lacking the ability to read social cues, because they started in on the inferiority of Pella windows until Perry cut them off with “Just give me the estimate. How much to replace our windows?”

Don Draper doodled on his iPad for a few minutes until he finally scribbled some numbers on a legal pad and scooted it across the kitchen island to where Perry and I were standing. Just the man of the house and his little woman. It took everything in me not to say, “I don’t understand. Math is hard.”

They explained that the first number, $13,954, would be our price if we accepted their bid right there on the spot. The second number was the price if we waited twenty-four hours. And the third number, $33,000, would be our price if we waited seven days or longer.

Have you ever seen someone’s head explode? Because that’s what I watched happen. Perry asked incredulously, “So you’re telling me that you’re going to charge me 19,000 more dollars if I want to wait a week before making a huge financial decision?”

“Well, sir, it’s because we don’t spend our money on marketing. We
 
—”

Perry interrupted, “What does that have to do with how much you’re going to charge me to put windows in my house? Windows cost what windows cost. And you want $19,000 more? For me to exercise due diligence and research my options?”

“Well, it’s just that . . .”

“NINETEEN THOUSAND MORE DOLLARS?”

The salesguys did their best to explain the logic behind this obviously flawed marketing technique, but Perry continued, “I own my own business. I have bids sitting on my desk that are a year old, but I would still honor the price I gave the client if they called me back tomorrow, because I stand behind my product. What you’re telling me is that your company knows that if I take the time to research these windows, I’m going to discover I don’t want them in my house. How else can you explain charging someone NINETEEN THOUSAND MORE DOLLARS if they wait seven days?”

They couldn’t explain it. I guess it wasn’t just me who thinks that math is hard.

I left Perry there to finish the appointment because I had to take Caroline to the dentist. As soon as we got in the car, she said, “Well, I have never heard Daddy talk in that voice before.”

“That’s because Daddy doesn’t like being taken to the cleaners. Daddy’s a good businessman. He doesn’t play around.”

“Mama? I don’t think those guys were very smart.”

“Me neither, Baby.”

It’s just a shame that they weren’t selling discounted Williams-Sonoma peppermint bark or cases of ammunition at incredibly low prices. Because then? Done deal.

Especially when you consider how much Perry likes to save money so he has more to spend on his pretty wife.

CHAPTER 17

S
OMEWHERE RIGHT BEFORE
Thanksgiving, they always start to air those commercials where a wife walks out to the driveway and there’s a Lexus or some equally pricey car with a big red bow wrapped around it.

Those commercials make me want to give someone a roundhouse kick to the face.

And then there are all the jewelry commercials where a husband surprises his wife with a heart-shaped pendant covered in little diamonds to “show her you’d marry her all over again.” As if financing an ugly piece of jewelry at the mall can convey that kind of sentiment.

It’s all a big marketing scam. It’s capitalism’s version of emotional blackmail to make women believe that all over America,
other women are walking out to sporty luxury cars wrapped in red bows while we just opened a pair of fuzzy socks from Old Navy and a pack of bubble gum our kids wrapped up for us to let us know we’re the BEST MOM EVER. With any luck the gum isn’t prechewed.

Of course, maybe it’s that Perry and I are notoriously bad gift givers, as in there have been times we’ve completely forgotten to buy each other a present to commemorate an occasion. (Don’t be jealous of our romance.)

Neither of us would write down “giving and receiving gifts” as our love language because we are both particular enough that we prefer to pick out our own things. Perry would prefer that I not waste our money in an attempt to buy him some piece of fishing equipment he’ll never actually use, and I prefer to not ever receive another Eddie Bauer sweater with deer on the front and pewter buttons.

Unless I time travel back to 1988. In which case, AWESOME.

So pretty early in our marriage, we each decided that we were going to opt out of the gift-giving portion of our relationship unless we genuinely had a great idea for what to get the other person. I mean, there are only so many times you can give your husband an envelope full of cash without it becoming overly sentimental and romantic.

One Christmas I actually surprised him with a lower blah-blah something-or-other for some type of gun, but I only knew to do that because I called his best friend, Monty, and asked him for help. He told me about the lower whatever thing, and the whole thing ended up with my driving an hour to the middle of nowhere and then an additional forty-five minutes past that until I ended up in some man’s basement looking at weapons. Which wasn’t
creepy or reminiscent of
Silence of the Lambs
at all. (“It rubs the lotion on its skin.”) I’ve never been more certain that I’d just wandered into a set of circumstances that would eventually be turned into an episode of
Law and Order
(ripped from the headlines!).

Just another day in Texas.

And that same Christmas, Perry surprised me with a pair of diamond earrings. We were like normal people that year. Or people you see in the commercials, except you never really see a commercial where a wife gets swept away by diamond earrings and the husband opens up a large box with part of a gun inside. Unless you watch the Outdoor Channel.

(Side note: If you do watch the Outdoor Channel, I would like to know your thoughts on the dating website FarmersOnly.com. Is there really a need to get that specific? Do you have to be a farmer to be on it or just have a desire to meet a farmer? This has kept me up at night.)

Anyway, most years we just stick to safe, inexpensive gifts. A pair of pajama pants from Old Navy, maybe some new bubble bath, a reindeer that poops chocolate jelly beans. We keep it classy.

But a few years ago, we had a little miscommunication about our gift-giving situation.

Perry’s friend Monty builds custom guns. In fact, you could say the foundation of their friendship is based on a love of weaponry. But isn’t that true of all close friendships? A few days before Christmas, Monty texted me to let me know he was sending Perry a custom-built 1911 9mm.

(I wish you knew how many times I had to clarify this name with Perry. Apparently calling it a 9mm pistol is WRONG. VERY WRONG. IT’S LIKE I DON’T KNOW GUNS AT ALL.)

(That could be because I don’t know guns at all.)

Monty wanted to make sure I was going to be able to pick up the package and get it home in a timely manner. So Monty and I texted back and forth several times. Then later that night, he texted me to let me know when it would arrive. Unfortunately, Perry, Caroline, and I were all watching a movie together on the couch, and Caroline picked up my phone and announced, “MOM! You have a text from Monty! Why would he be texting you?”

And I said, “GIVE ME MY PHONE! YOU DON’T NEED TO BE LOOKING AT MY TEXTS,” because I didn’t want Perry to know what was going on. And, to his credit, he played the whole thing off and acted like he hadn’t heard a word Caroline had said.

(Looking back, I’m an idiot for thinking he really didn’t hear. Our couch isn’t that big. For that matter, our house isn’t that big.)

But Perry did hear. And this caused him to go into a panic. Because we’d been very clear already that we weren’t going to get each other anything this year. In fact, Perry had bought a new tripod thing for the ranch a few weeks ago and announced “MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ME” as he loaded it into the back of his truck.

However, Perry knows that if I were to decide to surprise him with a really nice Christmas gift, I’d text Monty to figure out what to get. So when he heard Caroline announce I’d gotten a text from Monty, he went into a little bit of freak-out mode, thinking I was getting him some really nice present and he hadn’t bought anything for me except some socks. (SmartWool socks. They’re my favorite. Normally I just wear Perry’s old ones, but every now and then we get fancy and he buys me a few brand-new pairs for myself. Old Love.)

So, because he is a genius, he started looking through Fashion Fridays on my blog to see what I might want. I guess he hadn’t
noticed all the nights I sat and licked the computer screen while looking at a pair of Frye boots, specifically the Jackie Button boots in cognac. But he saw that I’d featured them on Fashion Friday and tried to order them from Piperlime only to discover they were back ordered.

And so he called Gulley. Who instructed him to check Nordstrom. He wasn’t even sure what Nordstrom was. (Proving once and for all that opposites attract.) But he looked it up online, found the boots, ordered them, and had them express shipped to get here in time for Christmas.

He even gift wrapped them.

And somewhere elves died of shock and horror when they saw how he managed to piece together five separate pieces of gift wrap in an attempt to cover the large boot box.

On Christmas morning I was absolutely thrilled and shocked to open my very own pair of new boots. And Perry was shocked and thrilled when he opened the work shirts and flannel pajama bottoms I gave him.

Or maybe just shocked.

But then I pulled out the gift from Monty, and it all began to come together. Monty and I weren’t texting because I was buying Perry a custom-built gun. We were texting because Monty was giving Perry a custom-built gun.

And yet I got a really great pair of boots out of the whole thing.

Of course, I offered to take back my boots since the whole thing was a big misunderstanding. But you need to know I was shuffling my feet across our rock front porch to ensure that the soles of the boots were scuffed enough that they couldn’t be returned. I’m no fool. He was going to have to pry those boots from my cold dead feet to get them back.

It was like a real live “Gift of the Magi” moment. Except totally warped because I didn’t cut my hair. And Perry doesn’t own a pocket watch and certainly wouldn’t know where to buy fancy hair combs. And Perry got a gun from his best friend. We would make O. Henry cry and probably give up writing altogether.

Perry called Monty to thank him for the gun and told him the whole story. And I got a text from Monty a few minutes later that read, “Glad to hear you got some boots! I’ll text you same time next year.”

Anyone who tries to tell you that technology doesn’t make life better? I have an awesome pair of boots that says they’re lying.