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"View Slideshow\n\nShe is a fierce conservative from Illinois. He is a pugnacious liberal from the backwoods of Louisiana, with an accent as southern as molasses over grits. And on the Sunday morning talk shows they trade gibes, insults and putdowns. But when they leave Washington, D.C., for neutral ground\u2014a four- story town house overlooking the Potomac River in nearby Alexandria, Virginia\u2014Mary Matalin and James Carville lay down their arms, forget politics and become as affectionate as Ozzie and Harriet. In laid-back Alexandria they are known not as America's most famous warring couple but as the owners of a house with interiors so red and bright that, at night, it resembles a jolly, giant jack-o'-lantern. \"When I walk down the boardwalk,\" says Matalin, \"people stop me and say, Oh, your house is the one that glows.' \"\n\nThe couple's previous house, only a block or so away, was too small for a family that includes two young daughters, Matty and Emma, and two promiscuously friendly dachshunds. \"Nobody tells you that kids expand geometrically,\" says Matalin. \"They spread out like Silly Putty.\" So when Matalin saw a large double-width town house on the river, she told her husband that she had to have it. \"We lead hectic lives,\" she says, \"and looking at the water is so soothing.\"\n\nCarville of course agreed\u2014not even the Ragin' Cajun, as he is often called, can say no to Matalin\u2014and she next brought in two designers she had worked with before: R. Edward Bouchard and Marion E. Yeck, partners in a Virginia firm called The Mill Company. \"If I didn't have Ed and Bud in my life, I could live no longer,\" says Matalin. The interior of the couple's previous house was, like most of its neighbors in historic Alexandria, somewhat subdued. But in the new house Matalin wanted a very different look. \"This time,\" she said, \"let's go with color. I love color, lots of color. Let's just go with it!\"\n\nLeading the way was Matalin herself. \"I have a vision,\" she told the designers. \"Orange!\" And orange, mixed with a more prudent red, is now the dominant color. On the living room walls. On the dining room walls. On upholstery. Orange is just about everywhere, in fact, except for the master bedroom, which is a restful Prussian blue, and the girls' rooms on the third floor, which are, by their choice, a shocking pink. \"Ed and Bud never said no to me,\" recalls Matalin. \"They never said, She's wacky!' Not even under their breath.\"\n\nThe house, along with its terraces, can easily hold as many as 250 people, and various groups and causes\u2014People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, for example\u2014often ask if they can hold an event or a fund-raiser at \"Mary's Place.\" Matalin, the vice president of the Washington Humane Society, usually agrees. When they walk into the living room, the first thing visitors see is a bodhisattva, palms raised in a gesture of reassurance. \"James always gives it high fives,\" says Yeck. A long room, 45 feet, it is yet wide enough, at 18 feet, for easy circulation. \"The length of the room gave us the opportunity to create three distinct areas for conversation,\" says Yeck. \"In lots of arrangements guests sit like ducks in a row, and people have to get up out of their chairs to let other people out. You're never locked in here.\"\n\nIn such a long room, a muted ceiling might have looked like the top of a bowling alley. The designers' solution? A ceiling covered in a pattern of small reflective gold-leaf squares. Matalin liked the result so much that she asked them to find patterns for the ceilings in some of the other rooms as well. The family room has her favorite, a herringbone design made of hemp.\n\n\"Mary and James both have great senses of humor,\" says Bouchard, \"and there's a lot of humor and whimsy in this house.\" When the couple bought the house, the dining room was lit by a traditional crystal chandelier, an object not likely to raise so much as a smile. Yeck and Bouchard replaced it with a light fixture that looks something like a large, multicolored egg beater. Made mostly of acrylics, it has eight colors: red, green, purple, amber, blue, turquoise, rose and black. \" Surreal' is a good description,\" says Bouchard. \"We wanted something a bit cuckoo,\" adds Yeck.\n\nWhen a problem cropped up during the decoration of their previous house, Yeck called Matalin and begged her not to freak out. \"I don't freak,\" she coolly replied\u2014and she didn't, and she doesn't. As work on Mary's Place proceeded, she had only one real worry. \"I wanted James to love the house even though it's not exactly his thing,\" she says. \"I couldn't visualize what was going to happen,\" explains Carville, who watched the work with a kind of bemused curiosity. His only request was that he be provided with a dark room with a good TV so he could watch sports.\n\nIn May 2005 the family moved in, and Matalin had to worry no longer. A design that was not exactly Carville's thing is now exactly his thing. \"He's enchanted with the house,\" says his wife. \"I'm always proud to have people over,\" Carville himself says. \"After living here, it would be hard for me to live in a traditional house.\" And when he walks down the street at night, people stop him, too, to comment on what they call his really red house. \"Someday,\" he says, \"they're gonna call the fire department.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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