18 THENEWYORKER,MARCH8, 2021
green serving dish I’d bought fifteen
years before and never put on the table.
What I had didn’t surprise me half
as much as how I felt about it: the un-
expected shame that came from own-
ing seven mixing bowls, the guilt over
never having made good use of the
electric juicer my mother had given
me, and, strangest of all, my anthropo-
morphism of inanimate objects—how
would those plastic plates with pictures
of chickadees on them feel when they
realized they were on their way to the
basement? It was as if I’d run my fin-
gers across some unexpected lump in
my psyche. Jesus, what was that?
My willingness to idly spin out a
narrative for the actual chickadees that
pecked at the bricks outside my win-
dow was one thing, but where did this
quick stab of sympathy for tableware
come from? I shook it off, refilled the
laundry basket, and headed downstairs,
wondering if this was a human condi-
tion or some disorder specific to nov-
elists. My ability to animate the peo-
ple who exist solely in my imagination
is a time-honed skill, not unlike a ven-
triloquist’s ability to throw her voice
into a sock puppet, a ventriloquist who
eventually becomes so good at her job
that she can make her hand speak con-
vincingly without the sock, until finally
there’s just the empty sock singing “O
mio babbino caro” from the bottom of
the hamper. Of course, it may not be
a problem of humans or writers but
something specific to me, though I
doubt it. If this were my problem alone,
more people would be cleaning out
their kitchens.
To end Day One on a positive note,
I struggled to open a drawer with about
thirty-five dish towels crammed inside.
They were charming dish towels, many
unused, patterned with images of dogs,
birds, koala bears, the great state of
Tennessee. I decided that ten would be
plenty. I washed and folded them all,
then took the excess down to the base-
ment. I revelled in the ease with which
the drawer now opened and shut.
That was the warmup, the stretch.
T
he next night, after dinner, I hauled
out a ladder in order to confront
the upper kitchen cabinets. A dozen
etched crystal champagne flutes sat on
the very top shelf, so tall I could just
barely ease them out. A dozen? I had
collected them through my thirties,
one at a time. Some I’d bought for my-
self, others I’d received as gifts, a sin-
gle glass for my birthday, wrapped in
tissue paper, as if I were a bride for an
entire decade in which I married no
one. Had I imagined that, at some point,
twelve people would be in my house
wanting champagne?
Everything about the glasses disap-
pointed me: their number, their ridic-
ulous height, the idea of them sittingup there all these years, waiting for me
to throw a party. (See, there, I’m doing
it again: the glasses were waiting. I had
disappointed the glasses by failing to
throw a party at which their existence
would have been justified.) But it wasn’t
just the champagne flutes. One shelf
down, I found four Waterford brandy
snifters behind a fleet of wineglasses.
In high school, I had asked my parents
for brandy snifters, and I had received
them at the rate of one a year. I had
also scored six tiny liqueur glasses and
a set of white espresso cups that came
with saucers the thickness of Commu-
nion wafers. The espresso cups were
still in their original cardboard box, the
corner of which had, at some point,
been nibbled away. I had never made
a cup of espresso, because I don’t actu-
ally like espresso.
“Dad changed his look every year
for the kiddos,” Tavia had told me, “kid-
dos” being what Kent called his stu-
dents. “They loved it. They were al-
ways waiting to see who he was going
to be next.”
Who did I think I was going to be
next? F. Scott Fitzgerald? Jay Gatsby?
Would I drink champagne while stand-
ing in a fountain? Would I throw a
brandy snifter into the fireplace at the
end of an affair? I laid the glasses in
the laundry basket, the tall and the
small, separating them into layers with
a blanket. Downstairs, I set them upon the concrete floor near the hot-water
heater, where they made a battalion
both pointless and dazzling.
I had miscalculated the tools of
adulthood when I was young, or I had
miscalculated the kind of adult I would
be. I had taken my cues from Edith
Wharton novels and Merchant Ivory
films. I had taken my cues from my
best friend’s father.
I had missed the mark on who I
would become, but in doing so I had
created a record of who I was at the
time, a strange kid with strange ex-
pectations, because it wasn’t just the
glasses—I’d bought flatware as well.
When I was eight and my sister,
Heather, was eleven, we were in a car
accident, along with our stepfather.
We each received an insurance settle-
ment—five thousand dollars for me
and ten thousand for her, because her
injuries were easily twice as bad as
mine. The money, after the lawyer’s
cut, was placed in a low-interest trust,
which we could access at eighteen.
When Heather got her money, I pe-
titioned the court for mine as well. I
told the lawyer that the silver market
was going up, up, up, and if I had to
wait another three and a half years I’d
never be able to afford flatware.
The judge gave me the money,
maybe because he realized that any
fourteen-year-old who referenced the
silver market was a kid you wanted to
get off your docket. I bought place set-
tings for eight, along with serving
pieces, in Gorham’s Chantilly. I bought
salad forks, which I deemed essential,
but held off on cream-soup spoons,
which I did not. With the money I had
left, I bought five South African Kru-
gerrands—heavy gold coins I kept in
the refrigerator of the doll house that
was still in my bedroom—then sold
them two years later for a neat profit.“
K
eep everything you want,” I said
to Karl. “I don’t want you to feel
like you have to get rid of things just
because I’m doing this.”
“I’m doing this, too.” He was work-
ing through closets of his own.
I found a giant plastic bin of silver
trays and silver vases and silver chaf-
ing dishes in a hidden cupboard under
the kitchen bar. Serving utensils, bowls,
a tea service, a chocolate pot. I won’t