What Happens in Suburbia… (Red Dress Ink Novels) by Wendy Markham

Author:Wendy Markham [Markham, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graydon House Books
Published: 2021-06-13T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Well, it’s official.

Jack and I have just closed on the house. We are now home owners.

For such a landmark occasion, the closing itself is pretty understated. Not that I expect to step off the train in Glenhaven Park and be met by the mayor, streamers and a marching band to escort us down the main drag to the lawyer’s office.

But when you think about the milestones in your life—first communions, weddings, childbirth—they are usually surrounded by ritualistic fanfare.

Buying a house is as low-key as a trip to the dentist, from the clipboard sign-in and bad magazines in the waiting room to the parting gift—not a new toothbrush, but a refrigerator magnet calendar.

Of course, the dentist involves considerably more gore (if you have the misfortune to inherit the bad Spadolini teeth, as I did), considerably less paperwork and a mere ten-dollar co-pay. As opposed to a mountain of contracts and about fifty thousand times the co-pay. And let me tell you, all that ch-ching, ch-ching is far more nerve-shattering than the dreaded high-pitched hum of the drill firing up.

The highlight of the closing is meeting Hank and Marge, who turn out to be exactly as charming and folksy as I imagined. They show up holding hands and wearing hats and suits, à la 1948 and tell us how happy they are to be selling their house to a nice young couple like us.

We promise them we’ll take good care of it, and we are all hugging and a little misty-eyed by the time the whole thing is over.

“What now?” I ask Jack, back out on the street less than an hour later, depleted checkbook and keys in pocket. “Should we go check out the house again? Or go out and celebrate?”

“We don’t have time for that—or money, for that matter,” proclaims the Budget Master. “We have about twenty-four hours to get out of our apartment, and we’re nowhere near ready.”

This is true.

It seems a little anticlimactic to take the train straight back to our apartment in the city to finish packing, but that’s what we do.

Good thing, because it takes forever.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, I spoke to my sister, who said she had talked my mother into going to the doctor this coming week for a checkup.

Mary Beth sounded worried. Which shouldn’t have bothered me, because Mary Beth frequently sounds worried. But I’m worried, too: the invincible Connie Spadolini has been feeling uncharacteristically fatigued, and Mary Beth said she doesn’t look good, either.

I’m going to try to get up there in the next week or two to see for myself.

What if something is seriously wrong with my mother?

Riddled with uncertainty, I pushed the thought from my head and concentrated on packing.

By the wee hours, we have run out of boxes. I am bleary-eyed and haphazardly throwing stuff into big black Hefty bags, hoping I’m hitting the ones that are meant to be moved, as opposed to the ones that are meant to be tossed.

For all I know,

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