He Sat Me by the Warming Racks, So I Pulled the Funding novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Five Dollars
The estate sale company had put orange arrows on the lawn in Wauwatosa.
A line of strangers stood on the porch at a quarter to nine.
I parked down the block and walked up past a woman carrying a lamp shade on her head.
The living room was full of price stickers.
The sofa had a yellow dot, and the china cabinet had an orange one, and a man with a clipboard was haggling over a barometer.
I found Rosalind in the back garden, in a folding chair beside the dead roses.
She wore a gray cardigan, not the pearls.
It was the first time in twenty years I had seen her without her collar.
"You came," she said.
"You asked."
"I didn't think you would."
She did not stand, and she did not offer me a seat.
I stayed on my feet, and the cold ground came up through my shoes.
"Where is Curtis?" I said.
"At a friend's."
"He's not helping you move?"
"He said he couldn't bear to see the house go."
She looked at her hands.
"He telephoned at eleven last night to ask whether I could send him two hundred dollars."
I said nothing.
A woman came through the back door and told Rosalind that the china had sold, and she nodded without looking up.
When the woman had gone, Rosalind turned her face toward the roses.
"I'm moving to my sister's in Racine," she said. "It's a spare room over a garage. My son is on the telephone. I sold everything because he asked me to put it all up as security for a debt that was not mine."
"I know."
"I thought you would be glad."
"I'm not glad," I said, and found that it was true.
She reached beside her chair and lifted the green tin box onto her knees.
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