Casey didn’t know how else to view the row upon row of porcelain dwarfs and trolls and bandy-legged gremlins that filled the towering mahogany hutch that consumed one wall of the living room. Susie would call his mother’s collection tchochkes. He called them creepy. But they made his mother happy. She proudly insisted that they were leprechauns, as if being a hunched, bowlegged fellow with a pituitary disorder and a pathetic fashion sense wasn’t really a problem as long as the little guy was Irish. The hutch dominated one end of the living room and the TV the other. In between stretched a beige and brown desert—brown rug, beige sofa and chairs, brown tables, brown lamps with beige lampshades, beige window shades flanked by brown drapes. Above the brown sideboard hung two sepia-toned prints of unidentifiable landscapes in brown wood frames. If it weren’t for the broadcast on the TV screen and the gaudy attire of the dwarf statuettes, the room would have no color in it at all. What would Susie think of the place?
