Complaints I Cannot File
Or, the fine print of working somewhere beautiful
The hot tub was broken again for the third weekend in a row. On hands and knees, I shoved my arm into the filter’s guts, a murky sludge of brown tea, pulled fistfuls of decaying leaf and threw them over my shoulder. Shove, grab, toss. I was two shoves in when I closed on something rubbery and bloated. The scream I scrame summoned both my dogs to escape their enclosure— though they were three staircases and two buildings away at the time.
The kicker in all of this is I can’t even complain. The gorgeous stone alcove contains two mineral pools of substantial capacity (one of which is a 30-person jacuzzi), and I can use them whenever I please. Because I don’t just manage this labyrinthine, 18-acre estate; I get to live here too. My work is near constant, but so is the privilege.
The question unfortunately remains — is the number of dead animals I scoop from its waters equal or greater than my enjoyment of soaking in them? Add to that equation: the fact my late dog Scout loved the water. Subtract again the stress of trying to fix rodent-chewed wires at 11 pm so it can be ready for guest check-in the next morning. Mix it all together and you get the kind of job you can’t, in good conscience, complain about. At least, that’s how it feels.
Most rich folk with estates like these have employees like me to handle the unflattering bits. However most people like me don’t have employers generous enough to grant them equal access to their amenities in addition to running them. Because I live here, I am in charge of the following (in no particular order): the tours, the events, the laundry, the maintenance coordination, and the estate itself, which is fifty years old and constantly breaking and shifting somewhere under its many brick-laden paths, crumbling arches, and aggressive ivy. When a guest books their weekend wedding here, they have an expectation of order and beauty. Boiled down: I’m on the hunt for anything that could shatter that illusion; unfortunately in doing so I am repeatedly shattering it for myself. I am noting the dangers, the cracked glass, the loose shingles, the splitting tree branches. It’s my job to look for the broken bits, not the fairytale.
Critters are really the least of it (though break my heart the most). For a full rundown, please note: the hummingbirds who get trapped on the wrong side of the glass, the squirrels making beds in my vehicle, acres of spider web that spring back within hours, coyote mafias leaving poop right outside my door, rattlesnakes who sunbathe on the flagstone, the whole lot of them falling in our pools and being unable to climb out, and the MICE, the goddamned mice. I have spent more time than I care to mention cleaning up mouse droppings from various sheds and outbuildings, all the while worrying I might get hantavirus. (No symptoms yet.)
Where the manor will really knock you off balance though, is in the Wonderlandian way she steals from you. Time, items, sense of place. If you set something down you may spend hours searching and still never find it again. If you need to get from the wine cave to the top of the manor’s tower, you will have no choice but to wind your way through pathways that loop you back to where you started instead of where you were headed. Acres of rose bushes try to snag you and stop you. It’s an ever-shifting landscape, an estate built for the sure-footed, an estate that, over time, grew a mind and heart of her own. Bricks emerge from nowhere – roots pushing them up when you’re approaching and sand shifting them back once you’ve passed. Really, the whole place is a trip hazard dressed as a daydream. It is the childhood fantasy you always had in your periphery, a land of opportunity, a template for anyone with a big enough imagination and a penchant for climbing stairs. This place, she could be dressed in fine silks and flowing fabrics or left to her own accord. Either way, she demands intention and attention and rewards you tenfold.
Which brings me to my next complaint-that-can’t-be-logged-as-an-actual-complaint. I have dreams for this place. But building while also repairing is never a good strategy. The two work differently, are logged in different parts of your brain, and asking it to switch between the modes wears down the internal battery faster than any dedicated day of solid, single-minded work. Her very nature (with all her spaces, events, and projects) is to yank me by the hair, to stop me before I can ever build momentum in one direction. It is why I become the accidental, last-minute wedding planner or event coordinator when the ones our guests hire often fall short. I am the catch-all, the last line of defense. Sometimes I can tame her, but it is rare. This place, she will swallow you up and spit you back into the thorns. She will laugh at you for trying to eat from single-use flatware and whip them off your tables with a gust of wind so precise it shatters the plastic. You will think you know where you’re going, you will think you’ve got it handled by yourself, and then the sheer size of her, the mighty heart of her, will turn everything you thought before coming here upside down.
I’d like to think we have a very good working relationship now. We may never be the best of friends, but we respect each other. I rush in when careless guests try to move statues, climb into our fountains, and otherwise mistreat our ancient stone and antique furniture; she slows her winds by sunsets and bathes us in early morning fog. When a guest complains about something being overgrown, I first consult our gardener — the most under-appreciated and mystical of us all, Jaime — because if pruning at the wrong time jeopardizes the health of the plant, then that guest can kindly fuck off. No one is making you be here, and no one cares about your singular opinion on the ivy growing in through the windows.
You can understand the difficulty of holding a vision in Chaos and trying to enact any daydreams, but daydream I do. How we need café seating and a built-in coffee/pastry bar in our two-story gazebo. And to organize a property-sprawling, murder mystery game with a grand showdown in our hedge maze. And to host writing retreats that utilize our ballroom as a massive, Hogwarts-style classroom. And enjoy wine tastings and poetry readings in our hill-hewn stone cave. And, and, and…
And then another forest fire catches nearby and we watch with bated breath. Or a vendor goes rogue on our service road and hits a mainline pipe. Or my dog dies, I break down and run away to Utah, because I can’t fucking handle being here without her, where hundreds of people will walk by my front doors laughing and drinking and making a ruckus and asking me for things and trying to talk to me at all.
My employer once joked it was the best job and the worst job. But it’s not even that, it’s chaos and then it’s quiet, it’s weddings and then it’s memorials. It’s a place that vanishes the rest of the world, where big and tiny things happen, and you can’t control any one of them.
Then finally … a breather. I roam the gardens with coffee or tea or what-have-you, in hand. The morning is quiet, the fog is still slinking through. In the stillness, my mind leaves my body and floats to whatever craft I am working on. I watch our nearest but still distant neighbor roll by on her horse-drawn carriage. I remember how the beautiful and the wretched are not opposites here, they’re the same thing, experienced simultaneously.
I retreat to my deck, listening to Sylvia Plath read me her poems. I come across nine rows of church pews on Facebook Marketplace for free and get the go-ahead to bring them back to the manor and repurpose them into ceremony seating. I sleep outside sometimes, under 30-foot-tall billowing drapes and a chandelier braided in flowers. I ceaselessly find the joy. It is with my boyfriend Dylan, when I see him fixing bricks and painting breaker boxes in deep ivy green just for the creative hell of it. It is with endless free bouquets and the way Jaime calls sprinklers “sprinkles.” It is all our lanterns turned on at night, with the crickets going. It is when I check the secret floatie I have hidden next to the pool filter, to find two frogs clambering atop it, waiting to be carried to safety.