Chapter 23
Grace
It’s hard for me to explain, but turning the condo into a real home did more to help me handle Jamie’s loss than months of therapy could have.
Sorting through the trash and treasure of our life together and combining it with new treasures gave me a sense of moving forward while honoring the past. Seeing our old things in this new setting brought so many good memories to the surface, reminding me that, in spite of everything, Jamie and I had had a wonderful, even enviable life together.
It also helped me to fulfill one of his final wishes.
When Jamie decided to give up the idea of medical school and become a paramedic instead, he said he wanted to use the money we’d been saving for his someday tuition as a down payment. Though I had long dreamed of having a home of our own, I wasn’t so sure. It bothered me to think that Jamie might be giving up on his dream just so I could have a house.
“I’m not,” he’d assured me. “My dream was always working in the medical field and helping people. I’m getting to do that, only a lot faster. I don’t want to wait anymore, Grace. The other part of my dream is giving you a home and family and all the things you’ve wanted. I want you to have an amazing life, but the house is just a down payment on that. I love you more than anything, Grace, and I meant what I said. As soon as I finish school, it’s your turn.”
“Turn for what?” I’d laughed. “I already have you. What more could I possibly want?”
“More,” he’d said.
Until I opened that first can of paint, I’d forgotten about that conversation. The trauma of Jamie’s accident, followed by the months of constant tension that came from worrying about his care, had crowded so many good memories into the far corners of my mind—including the fact that, on the drive out from Minnesota, he’d talked about wanting to use that exact color on the walls of our new bedroom. Turquoise was Jamie’s favorite. He had three shirts in that color, one of which I had cut up to use as cornerstone patches in his quilt.
For the next week, I worked from first light until last.
Painting was cheap and made a big difference. I painted the living room walls a beautiful pearl gray, and the bedroom and bath the lovely light turquoise Jamie had talked about and that I had unwittingly chosen when I went to the paint store. It made a nice contrast against the white molding and cabinets. When the furniture arrived, things really started to take shape.
To start with, for the first time in two years, my mattress was off the floor! And when I made up the bed with a white eyelet bed skirt I’d found for sixty percent off on the discount table at Target and the turquoise and coral quilt my mother-in-law gave me for my thirtieth birthday, it looked pretty and so inviting. Maisie, however, wasn’t as thrilled with the changes as I was. After I finished making the bed, she stood next to it and gave me a look that said, “You’re joking, right? Where’s the escalator?” I went back to the thrift shop, bought a wooden step stool for three dollars, and spray-painted it white. The minute I set it down, Maisie hopped up on the bed, curled up into a ball on my pillow, and went to sleep. Problem solved.
The bathroom didn’t need much besides paint. However, I did splurge on a new set of coral-colored towels and completed the look with a little bouquet of silk daisies in a tiny galvanized tin bucket. The whole thing looked fresh and pretty and feminine—too feminine for Jamie’s taste, but I don’t think he would have minded.
The kitchen didn’t need much either. Giving the cabinets a good scrub cheered things up a lot, but I also changed the old wooden knobs for some new polished chrome pulls. The difference was amazing. Next, I removed the mismatched plates and plastic cups from the glass-front cabinet and replaced them with the raspberry dinnerware and a set of six blue glass goblets that I found, also on sale, which made it even better. There’s something incredibly satisfying about grubbing through a discount bin and finding a pretty something you absolutely adore.
Besides the goblets, I found a ceramic salad bowl that wasn’t precisely the same raspberry as the dishes but close, which I put on the counter and filled with fruit. I also nabbed a vintage-style mason jar caddy—like you’d use for canning—then filled the jars with some gravel and potting soil and planted them with parsley, rosemary, cilantro, and thyme. I’ve never had much space or talent for gardening, so I wasn’t sure how long the plants would survive, but that little spot of green on my kitchen windowsill looked very pretty and homey.
Nan, I thought, would be thrilled. She was always saying, “It takes living things to bring a room alive.” I was starting to see what she meant.
My final and largest project was the living room. My downstairs neighbor let me borrow her portable upholstery steamer. By the time I finished cleaning the velvet, removed the weird black balls from the bottom, and screwed on four new natural wood-colored wooden legs, the sofa looked brand new. That big splash of blue velvet against those pearl gray walls was elegant but so vibrant.
Two apple crates from Minnesota topped with a rectangle of thick glass made a cute coffee table, and I jazzed up the floor lamp by hot-gluing some gray, pink, and white chevron fabric over the old shade. They turned out great and cost me $13.67 to make. It had become something of a competition, trying to see how little I could spend while still getting the look I wanted.
Spray paint is the best friend of a girl on a budget. I used it to freshen up the ugly floating shelves before bolting them to the living room wall to hold books, knickknacks, and family photos. I mounted some smaller shelves on either side of the little bow window that overlooked the street.
That bow window added so much to the space. It was just big enough to hold the pine desk, which I also painted white. I put my sewing machine on the desk and some mason jars filled with thread, buttons, trim, pins, and other sewing notions on the floating shelves and—voilà! Instant sewing studio. It was compact for sure, but efficiently laid out, and I had always wanted a dedicated sewing room.
The final, and if I do say so myself, most ingenious addition to my living space was the idea I had for refurbishing the wicker side chair. Once again, I broke out the spray paint, but this time I used a very pretty green, a color like leaves of birch trees in the early days of spring. Once the paint was dry, I removed the seat, ripped off the old fabric, and recovered it with a yard of sturdy white twill. Then, with yarn from a needlepoint project I started but never finished, I stitched through the evenly placed holes in the wicker chair back to create a pretty pattern of blue flowers with bright pink centers growing on dark green vines. The total cost of the project was only twenty-one dollars, but when I put it next to the sapphire love seat it pulled the whole room together.
In terms of physical exertion, I’m not sure I ever worked as hard as I did during those five days when I was decorating the condo, but the results were worth every drop of sweat and way more than the $530 I put into the decorating. I felt proud of my accomplishment and knew that Jamie would have been proud of me too.
I placed the last picture on the bookshelf—a photo of Jamie and me on our canoeing and camping trip to Bear Head Lake State Park, a honeymoon delayed by a year and a half because of Jamie’s cancer—and stood back to admire the completely transformed and absolutely beautiful space.
“Thank you, honey,” I said, turning in a circle and smiling. “It’s just what I always wanted, a real home.”
Of course, no decorating project is ever truly finished. Throw pillows and drapery panels could come later, when I found a fabric I loved at a price I was willing to pay. And I would keep my eye out for a nice, inexpensive rug to define the living room area.
The biggest ticket item on my wish list was a table, something that could do dual duty for both dining and crafting—I didn’t have room for one of each. It would be nice, too, if there was some kind of storage included, a place to stow crafting tools. But even if I could find one to meet my needs, the table would have to wait. Considering all I’d accomplished, $530 wasn’t much, but until I had a steady source of income, I wouldn’t spend one more unnecessary dollar.
Monica was right—the clock was ticking. Two weeks had already passed since my unceremonious termination from Spector. In two more days, right after Monday night’s Big Reveal for Nan and Monica, I’d start my job search in earnest. In the meantime, there was one more project I wanted to tackle, something I’d been thinking about ever since the conversation in my head, when Jamie told me how happy Z would have been to get his old sweater or hand-me-down shirt.
I went to my bedroom closet, which now finally had space enough so my twirly skirts wouldn’t get wrinkled, pulled out the box of my old fabric, and started searching through the contents until I found just what I was looking for—rosy pink background printed with pastel, pop-eyed owls.
“Perfect!”
* * *
“You’re joking,” Sunny said, as if she really believed I was playing some sort of trick on her. She held the dress up to her shoulders, looking it over carefully. “It looks brand new.”
“It is.”
“Oh. Was it too small for you? I bet the store would let you return it.”
“Well, it is too small for me. I wear a twelve and I’m guessing you’re about a four. But I didn’t buy it, I made it. For you.”
“You . . . you made it for me,” she said. Then, as if she was sure she’d gotten it wrong, she said, “For me? Why?”
“Because I thought you’d look nice in pink. Because I thought you’d like something new. And because, for some reason, I thought you’d like owls.”
“I love owls!” Sunny exclaimed. She covered her mouth with a hand as her eyes began to fill, only to move it a moment later and say, “Look! Even the buttons are little owls!”
I grinned, excited that she was so excited. “I know! Aren’t those fun? I know it’s not very practical. You’ll probably want to wait until summer to wear it. Oh, hang on. I almost forgot.” I reached into the bottom of the shopping bag I’d brought to hold the outfit. “Here’s a sweater to layer over the dress when it gets chilly. It’s used and probably kind of big for you. But the color is perfect and I washed it so—”
Sunny lunged toward me and threw her arms around me so forcefully that I not only couldn’t finish my sentence, I dropped the bag and the sweater onto the sidewalk.
“Thank you, Grace! Thank you so much!”
She smelled like weed, and sweat, and dirt. I hugged her anyway.
“People walk past me every day and they look right through me like I don’t even exist. Or if they do look at me and I catch them, they shift their eyes away fast and pretend they weren’t, you know? You’re not like that. You look and talk to me the same way you’d talk to anybody in the neighborhood, like I belong here. But with most of them,” she said, shaking her head as she finally let go of me, “it’s like they’re embarrassed for me.”
Sunny’s eyes started to fill again and she put her fist to her mouth, pressing hard against her lips until she regained her composure.
“And I know I’m an embarrassment, I get that. And I know it’s probably my own fault. I mean, sure. I’ve got a sad story to tell. But so does everybody else, right? So why am I here?” she asked, spreading her hands and glancing over at the concrete planters, the cardboard floor, and dirty sleeping bag. “What’s wrong with me?
“Nobody wants to end up like this,” she said, then let out a short, bitter laugh. “Nobody grows up dreaming about living on the street and being an addict. I’d like to stop, but I just . . . I can’t. It’s too hard.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m not a human being, you know, a ghost you can see right through. I’m a person,” she said, pressing her fist to the middle of her chest, directly over her beating heart. “Maybe I’m a failure, and a disappointment, and an addict, but I’m still a person. I want what everybody else wants, you know? I just want—”
“To be seen,” I said, and nodded my head. “I get it, Sunny. I know.”