Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [68]
She held out a hand, put her arm around my waist and pointed back to the view. Behind me, I could see all of Charleston—where, protected by those who loved her, nothing grew taller than her steeples. On the water side I could see well beyond Fort Sumter, and northeast, I could make out what was left of Sullivan’s Island. She stomped her foot, demonstrating sturdiness. The ironwork rattled, sending reverberations throughout the hollow house. “Really,” she said, “it’s not that bad.”
The house was one strong wind from collapsing. I shook my head. “Impossible.”
She tapped me in the chest. “You function, me form.” Which when translated meant: You do all the chipping, scraping, hammering, hauling, sawing and nailing and I’ll decorate.
Function and form—a good description of us. And truth be told, if she had asked, I’d have built an ark in the desert. Which is about what we wound up doing. Not to mention, the view was pretty good.
Oddly enough, I hate to paint. I don’t mean that I dislike it, I mean I despise anything that resembles a Tom Sawyer whitewash. Go figure. So when we first started renovating her hurricane fixer-upper, I told Abbie, “Honey, I’ll pay anyone to paint whatever you want in whatever color you want. I’ll hire da Vinci himself, but I’m not painting this house. At all. Ever. Deal?”
She nodded, ’cause she knew I had my work cut out for me and ’cause she thought she liked to paint. “No worries. I’ll paint. I like painting.” I knew better. After a few nights working in the house, hearing her mutter beneath her breath, and realizing I was going to have to hire someone to come fix her mess, she came to me. It was about midnight. I was leaning over a belt sander working on the floors. A dust cloud hovered around the room. I clicked it off, pushed my mask up on top of my head and waited for the ceiling fan to push out the cloud. She was covered in white primer. Head, hair, hands, arms, pants, feet. She looked like someone had rolled her in her own paint tray. She leaned against the wall, picked at some dried paint on one hand, raised an eyebrow and said, “You help me paint this house and I’ll give you some loving.” She dropped her wet brush. “Right here.”
“I love to paint. I’ll paint the whole house. Right now.”
So we painted. The house, each other, neither of us was very good but we learned and more importantly, we laughed. A lot. Laughter filled our house from day one.
To become a member in ASID, designers must work under another designer for two years, then sit for and pass the NCIDQ exam. She put in her two years, passed the exam and, Christmas of 1995, hung up her shingle, opening her own studio. Doing so, she established a second name for herself. Her father was both proud and put off. And, in truth, she and her studio put me and my art on the map. Without it, I’d be very skinny, teaching art at a local high school.
Over the next decade, thanks in large part to the before-and-after pictures, Abbie’s fixer-upper would be featured in Southern Living, Architectural Digest and a handful of regional and low-country magazines. Most of her girlfriends were jealous. When the articles appeared, her detractors gossiped beneath their breath, Her daddy used his influence. ’Course, those were the same detractors who cried Nuts! when we bought it, and trust me, her daddy wanted nothing to do with it. He, too, said she was nuts. But they didn’t and do not know Abbie. She saw, and has always seen, what no one else could.
Meanwhile, during our first two married years, Senator and Mrs. Coleman didn’t speak to me. But thanks to time and Abbie, they eventually warmed up. That doesn’t mean they were kind or forgiving, but at least they weren’t foaming at the mouth. Two things happened to soften them. First, Abbie’s public persona of both successful model and designer surpassed that of her father. He could not deny that she was far more famous, and in some respects powerful, than he. Television personalities in and around South Carolina began introducing him as