70 THENEWYORKER, AUGUST 26, 2019
donating a love seat and an end table.
“Thank God,” she said, “the new sofa
will be here any minute,” as though she
were irritated with them for being late,
which they were not. The love seat was
discolored and shredded; its odor im
plicated a cat. The rules forbade pet dan
der but everyone ignored them.
Bev and Emily grunted their way up
the truck’s narrow ramp, taking frequent
breaks, and shoved the love seat against
the truck’s wall. On the way back to the
county twolane, they passed the van
delivering the new furniture; the driver
honked at them, annoyed at having to pull
over on the access road to let them by.
Next up, a kingsize mattress in an
affluent suburb. A note on the spread
sheet read “Do not knock. Take from ga
rage. Door code is 3912.” Low hanging
maple boughs scraped the truck as Bev
backed down the driveway; a man in
a necktie—on Saturday!—scowled at
them through a bay window. The mat
tress was rolled up, held fast by bungee
cords and stained by the oil that satu
rated the garage floor. As they flopped
it into the truck, the man came out to
claim, indignantly, his bungees.
A friendly old guy working on a mo
torcycle across from the public library
helped them hoist his coffee table into
the doubleparked truck as peeved mo
torists honked and roared past. A trio
of graduate students surrendered a sag
ging bookcase from their creekside rent
al with obvious relief. Just half a block
away, Bev knew, her ex and the assis
tant shared a charming renovated car
riage house behind a towering Victo
rian owned by some university dean or
other. She hated herself for occasion
ally strolling by, as though inadvertently.
The cottage was shaded by a huge and
ancient sycamore tree; a chrome orb,
perched upon a wrought iron stand, stood
in a neatly maintained rockand moss
garden. Was the orb the assistant’s? Did
she subscribe to New Age principles
and styles? From where they were drag
ging the grad students’ bookcase, Bev
could see the assistant’s sporty red coupe,
parked obediently at the curb.
B
ev was relieved to move on to the
next donor, a jolly downtown lady
with a queen mattress, box spring, and
frame; a tiredlooking teenage boy, sur
rounded by books and papers, glanced
up from the sofa as they inched the bed
down the hall. Seeing the boy, Bev ex
perienced a jolt of sorrow. She wanted
to bring him a cup of tea or a slice of
buttered toast, even if the toast went un
eaten and the tea grew cold.
“Maybe you know my daughter,” Bev
said to Emily on the way to their last
pickup. “Celeste.”
The girl narrowed her eyes, whether
in confusion or vexation, Bev wasn’t sure.
The two couldn’t be more than a year
or two apart in age.
“Celeste Dreyer?” Bev prompted.
“Ohh,” came the reply. “I know of her.”
Bev had been flirting with the notion
that this girl reminded her of Celeste—
or, rather, of Rose, which was the name,
announced via text message, that her
daughter had for some reason chosen to
be addressed by from now on. There was
something in the guardedness of the
eyes, the determined set of the shoulders.
But Bev’s daughter was more prone to
assert herself with her body than this girl
was—a fleshier body than Bev had ever
had, inherited from her bearish father,
and quite like the assistant’s, Bev hadn’t
failed to notice—and more reactive to
the world around her. Celeste was a
twitchy girl, easily upset, but also sharp
witted when she wasn’t angry, and quick
to laugh. No, it would come to her, who
it was that Emily reminded her of—but
now it was time to get out of the truck
and accept the final bed frame.
This one would be trickier, though.
The donor was a housebound woman,
confined to a kind of mechanical cart;
she was curled in on herself like a leaf
in winter and her hands clutched the air.
Accompanying her was a hired aide who
was also caring for her own child, a round
headed sixmonthold boy. The apart
ment, a onebedroom in a subsidized
complex out by the college, was cluttered
with baby things—an enormous stroller,
a playpen and a crib, a huge package of
diapers. Empty babyfood jars and for
mula bottles filled the sink. The aide’s
English was poor, and she used it to argue
with the donor about which items she
wanted to donate.
“No, no, you say the spring box.”
“No, Greta, I mean the frame, the
metal frame.”
“Is no frame, only box.”
“No, there’s no box, just a metal frame,
underneath the mattress.”
It soon became clear that the donor
hadn’t actually been in the bedroom for
some time; the cart prevented it. A hos
pital bed had been set up in the living
room, among the child’s things. The
donor was giving away her old bed, the
bed of her healthier days.
“It’s only the frame you want to do
nate?” Bev asked.
“I’m keeping the mattress—my son
wants the mattress,” the woman said, her
speech effortful but clear. Bev wondered
what the son thought of this arrange
ment—the aide and her child taking over
the apartment, his mother an afterthought.
She wondered what the donor thought
of her son’s tolerating this.
The debate continued, pointlessly, for
another minute, until Emily, who had
stood in stunned silence since they en
tered, pulled her phone from her pocket.
“Why don’t I take a photo?” she said. “You
can look at it and tell us what you want
to give to us.” They waited in silence as
Emily disappeared into the hall; they saw
the flash and heard the synthetic shutter
sound of the phone camera. The picture
revealed that both women were right:
the son’s future mattress rested on a box
spring crookedly overhanging a low metal
frame, its casters sinking into pile carpet.
“So you want us to take both things?” Bev
asked. “The box spring and the frame?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“And leave the mattress behind for
your son.”
“That’s right.”
She and Emily got to work in the
bedroom, leaning the mattress up against
the window and hauling the box spring
to an upright position. They were try
ing to figure out the proper handholds
when Bev happened to glance down at
the floor. “Wait,” she said. “Where’s the
frame?”
“What?”
“The metal bed frame. Did you move
it somewhere?”
The carpet was empty of all but a
few dead insects, some dust bunnies, and
four depressions, the size and shape of
cigarette lighters, that the frame’s cast
ers had left.
Emily squinted at the floor, then at
the bottom of the box spring, as though
perhaps the bed frame had stuck to it.
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“Is this the same room?”
“It’s the only one.”
