The Family Markowitz by Allegra Goodman

Author:Allegra Goodman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

FANTASY ROSE

Rose is making herself at home. She pads around in bedroom slippers and enjoys the soft, dusty-rose carpet in her granddaughter Miriam’s old room. It’s her favorite color, and her favorite room in the house.

“We cleared out the top two drawers,” Sarah tells her mother-in-law.

“I don’t need much space,” Rose says, neatly stacking her nightgowns in a corner of the top drawer. “It’s such a big bureau.”

“It’s been through a lot.” Sarah looks at the dresser. It had been hers as a child and it’s still in good shape, except for the top, where the kids used to keep their fish tank and their fish supplies: purple gravel, glass wool and carbon for the filter, toothbrushes stained algae-green. The fish had been quite a production—especially since they never lasted. The little blue neons would die off in weeks and the angelfish would bite each other and swim around with notches in their fins. When Yehudit went off to college, there was just one fish left—a great, morose plecostomus that slunk around the bottom of the tank or hung for hours onto the glass with its suction mouth. Miriam’s brothers had named it Hoover. Sarah ended up feeding it. “We have to get the top refinished,” she says now, looking at the water-damaged wood.

“We should get the whole room redone,” Ed puts in from the doorway. “Look at these curtains.”

“Faded,” Sarah says. The pink curtains are almost white now.

“Faded! They’ve shrunk.” Ed tugs at one of them and laughs. “They’re getting smaller and smaller. They’re absurd. Where did we get these—Woolworth’s?”

“No—it was that place, Wigwam.”

“Right!” Ed snaps his fingers. “Wigwam. That was before they became Cost-Less.” He turns to his mother. “We’re going to redo this whole room.”

“Why?” Rose asks. “It doesn’t need anything but new curtains. I could sew you a pair of curtains.”

“No, no. No, thanks, Ma.” Rose hasn’t sewn since she was seventy-five, and when she did sew, her shortcuts were legendary. She made dresses with asymmetrical necklines and blouses with one sleeve longer than the other. She whipped up a pair of pants without a fly for one grandson, and for the girls she made doll clothes that didn’t come off. She just sewed the clothes onto the dolls.

“It’s my favorite room in the house,” Rose says. She sinks down on the bed.

“We call it the shrine.” Sarah gestures at the paraphernalia that her daughter Miriam has left behind. There are the stuffed animals lined up neatly on top of the bookcase. There is the mineral collection and the rusting music stand—a purple rabbit’s-foot key chain hangs from it. There are the dolls representing different countries. They are all actually from China. The souvenir collection from the family’s summer at Oxford—a series of English and Scottish guard dolls, some headless, some with heads toppling. They all have weak necks. “We were going to redo it when she went to college.”

“Then she went to medical school,” Ed says.

“And then she got engaged,” adds Sarah.

“It’s time.”

“It’s time,” Sarah agrees.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.