“Is this the day our relationship ends?” That was my wife, Jess, on a sunny Saturday last month, the day we planned to wallpaper our powder room. Of course, she was joking. A year earlier, we had survived installing an Ikea walk-in closet, a project that, to me, seemed ludicrous as well as insurmountable, but with Jess in charge, one that proceeded smoothly and with only minor injuries to my back and ego. It’s the project Jess always mentions when suggesting we take on a home-improvement task ourselves, while I scroll through Google looking for contractors. For the powder room project, we compromised. We’d hire a plumber to remove the toilet and sink but hang the wallpaper ourselves. At 10 a.m. on that Saturday, with the plumbing fixtures well out of the way, we unpeeled the self-adhesive backing from the first panel.
An hour later Jess was in tears and I’d placed an Ativan under my tongue. It was the second panel of wallpaper that had chinked Jess’s armor. The first had been applied with minimal effort, not much more work than putting a stamp on an envelope. But trying to line up the second panel to seamlessly join the intricate tropical pattern (think banana leaves and vines) of the first was like trying to weave together two spider webs. If the top portion aligned properly, the bottom would be off, and vice versa. After a dozen tries, the panel was a sticky, wrinkled, tropically festive mess.
“This sucks!” Jess yelled from high atop a ladder. Actually, she put the mother of all adverbs between this and sucks. A word I’ve only heard her utter twice in all of our time together. It was then I knew we were in uncharted waters. If Jess lost it, it would come down to me to right the ship and move things forward. Not anyone’s idea of a solid plan. “Maybe we should stop for the day?” was the only thing I could think to say.
The next morning, Jess stepped into the powder room with the confidence of a boxer entering a ring. I knew my place, a cornerman positioned just outside the ropes. I would offer encouragement and some minor assistance, but it was Jess’s fight, and she was in the zone. For the next two hours, we didn’t speak.
I silently passed her panels of wallpaper, a straight edge to cut off the excess, and hauled away the tacky sheets of backing. Jess sliced off the last remnant of the final panel like Zorro dispatching a worthy opponent. I opened a bottle of Prosecco and we toasted Jess’s victory. “Let’s promise to never do that again,” I said. Jess smiled, then glanced across the kitchen toward the plain white walls of the laundry room. I refilled my glass, too afraid to ask what she was thinking.
