Page 13 of Stone Blind

“No, my seats let down,” she told him.

“Cranberry, you care. When you come back from shopping, those boys will learn how much their lives mean to not only you, but to me,” he said.

“Sir, permission to speak freely?”

“In private between you and me, always,” he replied.

“Your training program sucks,” she told him. “Do you even know how many windows are in this house? Fifteen. Fifteen windows and all of them need curtains!”

“That’s your concern?”

“And rods. I guess you’re also going to make me hang them at the windows as well?”

“You do need to know how to use tools,” he said, finding himself laughing.

It was the same moment Ricky came through the back door. He froze where he stood, seeing yet not believing. He was hearing the Bad Apple himself laugh. For that alone, Helen, whatever her name was, had his full support in whatever she needed.

HELEN LEFT THE HOUSEat 9:30. She knew the wholesale club opened at 10 a.m., but a home goods store was open now. The shopping spree from hell would start there. She collected items for the kitchen and bathrooms and some bed linens. She put a primary set in the basket, then thought better with boys being in the house. Instead, she selected darker towels and one washcloth and towel in each of the boys’ preferred colors so they would know whose towel belonged to whom. She grabbed two bath rugs and soap dispensers with matching lotion containers. A bar of goat’s milk soap with oatmeal would work well for Jeffrey’s dry skin. She reached the register having only spent $120.

“I can do this,” she said, loading the items into the back of the vehicle.

The next stop was named Property Pickers. Outside were chairs lined up on the sidewalk. Her purse, a slung crossbody bag, became a safety device with a concealed carry in the slotted pocket as she walked inside with an enormous smile on her face. This stop required finesse.

“Whew, I have found my mecca!” she said to the woman behind the counter.

A lady with hair that seemed uncertain how to behave in the daylight asked, “Morning, can I help you?”

“Sure hope you can,” Helen said. “Me and my brood lost everything in a fire, and I have a hand full of beans to make Jack and his brothers believe the beanstalk is real. Honey, we need everything down to curtains and curtain rods. Please help a sister out.”

As simple as that and five hundred dollars in cash, and Helen negotiated a dining room set with six chairs, an office desk, a sideboard, a set of dishes with cups to serve eight, and five full sized headboards for the beds. Two of the headboards needed a fine sanding and some paint, but she’d done it before and was no stranger to painting old furniture to give it new life. Somehow, and she wasn’t even sure how, she also wrangled out five dressers, with the additional two hundred in cash she herself had in pocket, along with two pink wingback chairs and a side table to go in between for the living room. Just as a bit of a cheek, Helen purchased a chest of drawers for an additional $100 for Apple’s room. She smiled at the implication, wondering if the man himself would wonder why he was the only one to receive two units in his room to hold clothing.

Happy with her purchases, she informed the lady that her husband and his friend would be by later to pick up the items. Feeling a sense of accomplishment, she made a note in herplanner of what she’d spent on the card and in cash. The two hundred she’d reserved anyway for the space she would occupy to make it feel at home for herself during the stay. The two pink chairs would be her downstairs reading space. It was a solid investment.

However, for the common room she wanted to take a different approach. Instead of getting a sectional for the same price, she purchased a chair for each of the family members. Each chair was a different color and style. In her mind, she easily envisioned who would select which chair, including Ricky. Her style choice set the budget back by $1,700, but it was worth it. For an extra $160, she added on a colorful rug.

“Whew, Chile,” she said, providing the delivery address for the home. “I still need a shit ton of curtains and rods.”

The next stop was Carousel Consignments, a place where it looked as if a hoarder and an antique collector had gotten together and made a store baby. Inside, she located nightstands and bed lamps for the bedrooms. The amiable lady even threw in the light bulbs.

“I need curtains and rods,” Helen said to the lady. “We have about fifteen windows and I’m not about to go broke covering the eyes of the house from the nosiest of neighbors. Plus, we have teens.”

She omitted the part about the teens being boys, but an hour later, she had a decent pair of living room drapes and curtains for all the rooms, including the kitchen. They smelled of being closed up or from once hanging in an old home, but a quick wash and bit of fabric refresher would give them new life. Feeling proud of herself, she made her way to the wholesale club.

“Rice, lots of fresh fruits, shrimp for dinner with chicken, and maybe a salad,” she said, loading up the basket with milk, eggs, bread, peanut butter, and items for the home. She purchased an 11-piece ceramic cookware set and an enamel cast iron cook setin the same color. In the bedding aisle, she located a 3-piece printed quilt set for all five beds at $25.00 each. A multi-colored rug caught her eye, and the size of 3x5, which was perfect to go by the side of the beds, at $30 each worked well. The beds also needed pillows, which she grabbed, praying, all of it would actually fit in the vehicle, but the extra hundred for a resting place for their heads at night was worth the hundred and twenty dollars. The total came to $775.

“Damn marvelous if I may say so myself,” she said, shoving those items into the already overloaded vehicle and heading for the house. If she needed the men to track her travel, she’d left a clear path through the town. “Oh, we are going to need a few blankets for the beds as well. I am not going to shiver my buns off in that house when the temp drops.”

Helen made a mental note to take care of those items when she took them on their individual shopping trips. She arrived the same time the chairs purchased at the furniture store did. Helen parked, exiting the vehicle to the ever-watchful eye of Apple and calling to him, “The car is full. Please have the boys come out to unload.”

He nodded, calling for the kids who barreled out of the door like roaches with the light coming on.

“Please put everything for right now in the living room,” she told them. To Apple, she added, “The other furniture will need to be picked up from the consignment shops. You will need Ricky’s truck as well to go get the items and the boys to help with the dressers when you get back from town.”

She guided the delivery people through the house as they brought in the chairs. The kids watched the furniture coming in noting the placement facing the wall. Jeffrey asked, “Is there a TV?”

“Mr. Milton will have to go get one because I had no more room in the vehicle,” she said, feeling proud.

To her surprise, the appliances were in place: a shiny new fridge, a stove, and a dishwasher. The grungy counter top was no more, and a nice solid butcher block workspace sat in the kitchen. She called to the boys, who had gotten extremely quiet. Helen walked through the house to locate the crew to find they each had claimed a chair for themselves. She smiled at the sight, realizing that the chairs she’d mentally picked for each kid, they also selected the same chair. For a moment, Apple had taken a seat in the chair she’d chosen for him as well as Ricky. Only one empty chair remained.

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