At night, if my mother wasn’t too tired, we took walks around the neighborhood, stopping in front of different houses to consider them as candidates for future purchase. We went for the biggest and most pretentious, sneering at ranches and duplexes—anything that smelled of economy. We chose half-timbered houses, houses with columns, houses with sculpted bushes in front. Then we went back to our room, where I read novels about heroic collies while my mother practiced typing and shorthand so she wouldn’t fall behind in her new job. Our room was in a converted attic. It had two camp beds and between them, under the window, a desk and chair. It smelled of mildew. The yellow wallpaper was new but badly hung and already curling at the edges. It was the kind of room that B-movie detectives wake up in, bound and gagged, after they’ve been slipped a Mickey. The boardinghouse was full of old men and men who probably only seemed old. Besides my mother only two women lived there.
