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For blankety-five years Dad and his heirlooms have transitioned from chic to shabby, and now a trickle of bargain hunters clutching Penny-Savers are picking through a houseful of incongruous clothing and furniture “priced to move” on little red stickers like drops of blood with penciled numbers, the fours shaped like sailboats, the sevens slashed through as the nuns taught him. It’s Dad’s first and only downsize, a milestone as heavy as the English oak sideboard, $95 OBO you haul it. He wouldn’t hire a service or let me organize the sale, so I worry. I woke this morning from a dream of Dad pirouetting down a catwalk with his walker, doffing his toupee and catching his heels in the cuffs of his old dress pants. His price on every item is ludicrous but appropriate to the year he bought it. Of all the tongue-cluckers, one couple seems motivated, or the wife does. She’s looking for faults in the bedroom furniture while her husband stands, neck broken, scanning the titles in the bookcase. She doesn’t know what to say to Dad, so she lets him spin his yarn. He’s describing the “bedroom suit” and how he and Mom shattered the boxspring with newlywed acrobatics here in the only house they ever owned. A sly grin follows, then a chuckle, then a sob, then silence. She says “I know, I know” and touches his arm, then produces cash from a very tight purse and starts peeling off bill after bill. I don’t think she’s counting. She calls to her husband to bring the truck, then wipes her cheek and sighs and starts removing the wardrobe drawers. I watch Dad’s face to see if he’s all right. He catches my eye and winks, and fans his face with a handful of hundreds.
Original Copyright © March 01, 2007
Revised Copyright © March 06, 2026
Once I bought the dog, there was no turning back. Even a get-well beanie-baby bloodhound from the hospital gift shop becomes an imperative for me: he must now be delivered to the woman who shared Mom’s hospital room, even though Mom’s back home healthy and I’m just here for paperwork. The dog cajoles me that his faultless sniffer can track a few tumor cells per billion, so I follow him to six and a right off the elevator, and sure enough, outside Gloria’s door, her husband is collapsed in a chair weeping, and my shabby gesture feels like flowers to her funeral. Dearly beloved, I’ll say, Gloria—if I have her name right—the oldest of seven siblings, never felt the need to bear children because, she told my Mom, she had raised her brothers and sisters. Wasn’t she special. Over several dreary afternoons, while Mom (Bed One) chatted with callers about their bouquets, Gloria (Bed Two) raged to me against her brain, brain surgeons, hospital indignities, and about her “kids,” who were too put out to visit her this lifetime, and about her job at the diner and the waitresses who wished her well and who had sent the punny card with the little dog who said: Heal! Back to today. The trail has led the dog and me to Gloria’s door. Her husband, weepy but chipper, tells me: Go on in. Take ten minutes for me. She’s alert and expectant. And when I see she sees it’s only me, I wish I were all six of them bursting in with trivial gossip and thoughtless positivity, but I and the little dog who knows better than anyone else what’s going on inside her head will have to do. She hugs us like a mother to my own sweet mother’s son.
Original Copyright © February 25, 2007
Revised Copyright © March 03, 2026
Very Short Novels 