Both guest beds. The curtains in every room downstairs, custom, because the windows are tall. Four lamps. The dinnerware, the everyday set and the good set. The patio furniture out back, which is where this story actually turns, and which cost two thousand three hundred dollars.
And the blender. Two hundred and nineteen dollars for a blender, after Rebecca said, in my hearing, to no one in particular:
“A beautiful house can’t have old appliances in it.”
For About Fourteen Months They Called Me a Blessing
That’s the word. Rebecca used it with her friends. Margaret is such a blessing.
And in fairness to her — and I do want to be fair — for the first year it was genuinely nice.
I cooked four nights a week and liked doing it. I did the school run. I was there when Emily lost her first tooth in the front seat of my car. Jack used to come into my room on Saturday mornings and get in my bed and watch cartoons on the little television in there, and that’s a thing I’m going to have until I die.
