ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 92: Creating a Home

I feel like the cobbler who goes shoeless. My quarters are a wreck — I can smell my bathroom the minute I open my entrance door — yet I clean the Charles Street bathroom. I clean its wall tile, its sink and tub, its toilet with the wooden seat Joshua installed, its vinyl floor.

Today, Joshua bought and installed roll-up shades, replacing the slatted blinds. They soften the light coming in. The house looks better than ever.

“If the people who will live here aren’t happy in this house, it won’t be because of the house,” I say to Joshua.

Before we lock up for the night, we roam the rooms. First, the kitchen.

“This kitchen looks amazing,” Joshua says. “This was the worst room in the house. I hated it. Now I love it, but do you think a black refrigerator would look better than this white one?”

We tape black trash bags to the white refrigerator, then stand back to study the effect.

“Black looks better,” he says. “I’ll get a black one. It’ll only cost me a thirty-five dollar delivery fee to exchange it. That’s fair enough.”

Joshua has accumulated hundreds of receipts. Today alone he’s been to Lowe’s twice — first to buy a hack saw so he could custom-cut the roll-up shades, then to return a forty-eight inch shade for a wider one, which he’ll also cut to fit.

He’s worked so hard on this house. So have I. We’ve brought this house back to life.

And it’s helped bring me back to life.