Nov
4
She painted her room resonant white. Hope White, it was called, like the heroine of a nurse novel. She began collecting white furniture, small things, for juveniles, only they were for her. She sat in them and at them and felt the edge of a childhood she’d never quite had or couldn’t quite remember float back to her, cleansing and restoring. She bathed in Lysol, capfuls under the running tap. She moved her other furniture—the large red, black, and brown pieces—out onto the sidewalk and watched the city haul them away on Mondays, until her room was spare and milky as a bone.
Lorrie Moore, “Two Boys”
