THENEWYORKER,MARCH8, 2021 21
room and sifted through the manuals
and remotes and packets of flower food.
I found the burnt-down ends of can-
dles, campaign buttons, nickels, a
shocking quantity of pencils, more
decks of cards than two people could
shuffle through in a lifetime. I gath-
ered together the paper clips, made a
ball out of the rubber bands, and threw
the rest away.
I never considered getting rid of the
things that were beautiful—the brass
cage with a mechanical singing bird
that I’d given Karl for our anniversary,
the painting of the little black dog that
hangs in the front hall. Nor was I con-
cerned about the things we used—the
green sofa in the living room, the table
and chairs. If Karl and I were to dis-
appear tomorrow, someone would want
all of that. I wanted all of that. I was
no ascetic, though I say that with some
regret—I grew up with the Sisters of
Mercy and attended twelve years of
Catholic school. (Kent, who loved his
worldly goods, had studied at the Trap-
pist monastery at Gethsemani in his
early years.)
I was aiming for something much
smaller than a vow of poverty, and was
finding that small thing hard enough.
I turned out the lights on the first floor
and went upstairs.
The closer I got to the places where
I slept and worked, the more compli-
cated my choices became. The sand-
wich-size ziplock of my grandmother’s
costume jewelry nearly sank me, all
those missing beads and broken clasps.
I have no memory of her wearing any
of it, but she liked to sort it now and
then, and she let my sister and me play
with it. Somehow the tangle of cheap
necklaces and bracelets and vicious
clip-on earrings had managed to fol-
low her all the way to the dementia
ward. I scooped it out of the night-
stand in her room after she died, not
because I wanted it but because I didn’t
know how to leave it there.
In the end, I decided to let it go, be-
cause who in the world would under-
stand its meaning once I was gone? I
had my grandmother’s heart locket
with pictures of my mother and my
grandfather inside. I had the ring with
the two ovals of green glass that her
brother Roy gave her when she grad-
uated from eighth grade. I had her wed-
ding ring, thin as a thread, which I
wore on my left hand now.
I found little things that had be-
come important over time for no rea-
son other than that I’d kept them for
so long: a small wooden rocking horse
that a high-school friend had brought
me from Japan; two teeth that had
been extracted from my head before I
got braces, at thirteen; a smooth green
stone that looked like a scarab—I
couldn’t remember where it had come
from. I got rid of them all. I found
the two tall Madame Alexander dolls
of my youth wrapped up together in
a single bag on the highest shelf of
the closet in my office. They were
what was known as fashion dolls,
which meant that they were beauti-
fully dressed and not supposed to be
played with, but I had slept with the
black-haired one for years. She had
neither stockings nor shoes, and her
hair was dishevelled, her crinoline
wilted. I had buried my whole heart
into her. The other doll, a Nordic
blonde, was still perfect, down to the
ribbons on her straw hat, because I’dnever wanted a second doll. I had
loved only the black-haired one. I
loved her still. The blonde I just ad-
mired. I hadn’t thought about those
dolls from one decade to the next, and
still they were there, waiting. Maybe,
like the sock in the hamper, they’d
been singing all that time.
I could see that even after child-
hood’s long and sticky embrace, fol-
lowed by more than forty years in a
sack, both dolls were resplendent in
their beauty, lit from within. I wrote
to my friend Sandy, attaching pictures,
and asked if her grandchildren would
like to know the true friends of my
youth. She wrote back immediately to
say yes. Yes. Champagne flutes by dolls
by teeth, I felt the space opening up
around me. Unfortunately, the people
closest to me could also feel it open-
ing. Having heard that I was cleaning
out, my mother gave me a large box of
letters and stories I’d written in school.
She’d been quietly saving them, and,
even as I balked (I didn’t want to see
those stories again), my sister, also
cleaning out, dropped off a strikingly“ Your eggs—we can do ’em the easy way or the hard way.”