“You mean, why not before? With your first company?”
I nodded.
“Honestly? Because you hadn’t failed yet.”
I wrinkled my forehead, and she answered my unspoken question.
“You rarely learn from your successes. You learn from your mistakes.”
“No kidding.”
“So I was heartbroken when your company went under, but I waited to see what you’d do.” Her eyes crinkled with pride, and I felt like I was fifteen again. “You picked yourself up, dusted yourself off, and came back stronger than ever.”
“We didn’t have a choice.”
“Sure you did. Lots of people fail and never try again. They learn the wrong lesson, or don’t learn at all. But not you.”
“It was mostly Trip. He’s the driving force.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” she said. “You were right there with him, every step of the way. That’s what a good partnership is about.”
“True.”
“You and Trip have a very bright future. I plan to be a part of it for a long time.”
The youngest attorney approached us and waited respectfully. She had a moon-shaped face that made her look younger than she probably was.
“Are we ready?” Susan asked her.
“Yes, ma’am.”
We spent the next thirty minutes signing documents. The whole thing reminded me of selling a house. In a way, that’s exactly what it was. Then Susan’s half-pack of attorneys and our lone one conferred and nodded their approval.
“Well, that was easy,” Susan said.
Vonda opened a leather portfolio and withdrew a check. She handed it to Susan, who slid it across the conference table to Trip.
“Don’t spend it all in one place.”
Part 6: Oct 1996 – Jun 2002
Christy’s career hadn’t exactly been on hold in Boston, but she hadn’t had the space to create what she really wanted. That had changed when we’d returned to Atlanta in 1996, and especially after she’d taken over the garage.
She ordered supplies first, things that had been too bulky for our apartment, like modeling clay and mold rubber. Then she began looking for businesses and buying equipment she needed for larger projects.
The foundry she’d used before had new owners and weren’t interested in small jobs anymore. She found a new one in Union City, on the other side of Atlanta, an hour away.
“You couldn’t find one closer?” I asked.
“I found several. But I want to work with this one. They specialize in monuments and fine art. They do everything—lost wax, green sand, and centrifugal. They even do vacuum casting. And they can weld sections, so I can create bigger statues.” Translation: Who’s the expert here, you or me?
“Okay,” I said, suitably chastened, “sounds good.”
“Mmm, yes, dear.”
She bought a kiln next and had it delivered, although I couldn’t help but laugh when I came home and found out she’d been trying to find a way to plug it into a regular outlet. Fortunately, the NEMA standards people had put a stop to that little misadventure before it had started.
“What’s so funny?” Christy grumped.
“That won’t work.”
“I know that! The thing’s too big.”
“It’s a 6-50 plug,” I explained, “and that’s a 5-15 receptacle.”
Her glare turned flinty. “Can you think of anything else we can’t plug in ’cause it’s too big?”
I took the hint. “I’ll call an electrician,” I chuckled.
“But I wanna try it now,” she wheedled. “Can’t you do something? Please, please?”
“No, sorry. This needs a fifty-amp circuit. I want a licensed electrician to install it.”
“Maybe he needs to install something else,” she muttered.
“Ha! Don’t worry, Little Bit, I know what kind of plug you need. And we both know it fits. As a matter of fact, I’ll show you after the girls’re in bed.”
The electrician arrived on Monday. He installed a safety disconnect and the new circuit, plus a dedicated outlet for the ventilation system. Christy already had pieces loaded for a test-firing in the morning. I expected to find a happy wife when I returned from work, but I found chaos instead.
Emily and Susie were screaming and chasing each other around the breakfast furniture, which wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. It was in the living room instead. I scooped Susie into my arms and effectively stopped the fight. Then I pried Mr. Ribbit from her grasp and returned him to Emily.
“Much better. Now, where’s Mommy?”
I received a shrug from one child and a silly grin from the other, but Christy and Laurie appeared from the garage a moment later. They each dumped an armload of toys onto the play mats in the breakfast nook. Clearly, I’d missed a memo.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“What’s it look like?” Christy snapped.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Susie’s play area is moving in here. But… why?”
“The kiln.”
“What about it?”
“It gets hot. Like, twenty-four hundred degrees.”
“What! On the outside?” I actually looked around for the kitchen fire extinguisher.
“No, the inside,” Christy said quickly. “But the outside gets hot too. I almost burned myself. I don’t want Susie anywhere near it.”
I agreed completely, so I sent the girls into the living room with orders to play nice. Then Christy finished moving the toys, while I moved the television and VCR.
“What’re you gonna do with the extra space?” I wondered after we finished. I had visions of parking in the garage again. Silly me.
“Stone.”
“I’m sorry. Did you say…?”
“Stone,” she repeated. “You’ll see.”
She already had marble dust and resin to cast it, but she went looking for a place to buy natural stone. I came home a week later and had to park behind pallets in the driveway. She’d bought a ton of the stuff—a literal ton, two thousand pounds—and she wanted it moved into the garage.
The smaller blocks weighed seventy or eighty pounds, while the medium-sized ones were about two hundred. I couldn’t even move the largest block, which probably weighed five hundred pounds. I did the math and realized that a chunk of marble for a life-sized statue would weigh five or six tons.
“You can’t move those by hand,” I said.
“No, of course not.”
“Then… what’re you going to do?”
“Buy a forklift.”
“Uh… maybe let’s talk about this first?” I said. “Besides, the garage isn’t big enough for a forklift.”
“Okay, then a pallet jack. Or some kind of hoist.”
I blinked. “A what?”
“Paul, dear…”
“Got it. You’re the expert.”
She went to the local auto parts store and ordered a two-ton engine hoist. The guys behind the counter, bless their hearts, tried to sell her a dinky chain hoist instead. They couldn’t understand why an “itty-bitty lady” needed that much lifting power.
“What’d you do?” I asked when she told me.
“Told them I needed it to lift my itty-bitty gold card.”
“Ha!”
“It worked. They sold me the hoist. Stupid men,” she added in a huff.
She also started buying power tools. She had a full set of hand tools already, hammers, chisels, and rasps, but she needed things like an angle-grinder and a hammer drill. When she added diamond blades and carbide-tipped bits, they’d carve through even the hardest stone.
The power tools ran on house current, so I was a little confused when I heard a strange noise coming from the garage one weekend. I went to investigate and found Christy playing with an air nozzle and hose attached to a new eighty-gallon industrial air compressor. She’d learned her lesson with the kiln, and she’d paid for delivery and installation this time.
“What’s it for?” I half-shouted over the racket.