This morning my mom went to work and had to do a lot of it because she is new and the old people get to pick days off first which my mom says is just fair because when they were new they worked the weekends. For Madam and me this was double A-OK because we had one big plan.
The thing about our new house is that we are short on furniture. My mom says it's no big deal because she likes the house to feel uncluttered which is good feng shui which is how they do houses in China but Madam thinks she is partly saying it to be a good sport and that she would really like a dining room table because, Madam says, “Who wouldn't?”
And I said, “I am one person who agrees with that.”
So we went to the tag sale of Madam's friend, Mrs. Greeley, who is 70 and has got a boyfriend who is really an old man friend because he is 72.They are going to get married and move to San Diego, California, to be closer to Mrs. Greeley's daughter and also to the sun because the boyfriend never wants to shovel another flake of snow in his whole life. Those are fine reasons if you miss your daughter and are against snow, I guess, but I felt like I needed to tell her so I did. “Mrs. Greeley,” I said, “moving is not as much fun as you think.”
A little bit later, in the back of Mrs. Greeley's house I found an old table with a little bit curvy legs and called out, “Hey, Madam, come look!”
And she did. “It's made of wood from a cherry tree,” Madam said. “And I think it's older than me.”
“That is one old table,” I said, and then I saw a scrape right on the top of it. I told Madam, “Let's find a better one.”
“No,” Madam said. “This one has good bones.”
I think she is wrong about furniture having bones but I don't know everything.
Then the boyfriend showed us four chairs that are also made of cherry tree and Madam wrote a check for all of it.
The man that was in charge of the money box and is also Mrs. Greeley's great-nephew that goes to college at Georgetown University helped us put the chairs inside the station wagon and tie the table to the top of the car with bungee cords and Mrs. Greeley said, “I am glad they are going to a good home.”
And I said, “A very good home.”
When we got to my grandparents' house, Pop helped get the table down and put it in the garage, which was really a stable for horses in the olden days. Then we all three put on Pop's old T-shirts and Madam put on jeans which she hardly ever wears, and we worked like crazy to make that table good again.
I helped Pop rub the scrape on the top with sandpaper until it was flat and then Madam gave me big yellow rubber gloves and a fuzzy scratchy blob of stuff that is called steel wool and we rubbed all the old varnish away and when it was smooth we painted the whole table with new shellac which stinks like you wouldn't believe. After that I was so tired I had to lie on the chaise for a while and listen to Pop talk about when he was a boy and had a best friend with the name of Amos whose own mother said he was nothing but trouble and that is one old-time story I like a lot.