They, she and Valentine, were going to turn The Guest Room into The Nursery. As was befitting a guest room, those walls were white, the shag carpet was slate gray. A double bed, the gilded headboard against the far wall, was covered with a blue-on-blue brocade spread. Framed and hung over the bed was a seascape done in oil paint which Miriam got a deal on at the art gallery in the mall. On the night table, a vase was filled with blue silk flowers which you really had to touch to know they weren’t real. As Judy Weinstein had said, “It’s like a room in a four-star hotel, like a Hilton. So elegant,” but elegant wasn’t the tone you wanted for a baby’s room. This, decorating the baby’s room, was supposed to be a mother/daughter project, a project for them to do together, but Valentine was lacking opinions on how to do up The Nursery, as she was lacking opinions on damn near everything these days. Whatever Miriam suggested, whether it was pale yellow carpet for The Nursery or liver for dinner or what to watch on television, Valentine invariably said, “Whatever you want, Ma, is okay by me.”
