![]() ![]() I wondered if Izzy, or her mother, swept an arm across the bed at night, pushing everything to the floor. An Etch A Sketch Operation game board Legos paper doll books Colorforms box and stickies Richard Scarry books and a heap of molded plastic horses: No surface was uncovered. Cone opened the door and I followed her past Snoopy into a space that looked like it had been attacked by a cannon that shot out toys. ![]() Everything was slightly angled, as if placed there by a drunk on his knees. ![]() The bottom half of the single closed door was plastered with IMPEACHMENT: Now More Than Ever bumper stickers and a masking-taped poster of Snoopy dancing, nose in the air. ![]() On the second floor all but one of the dark wood doors were open. But I never expected to find a home like this in our neighborhood, Roland Park, which my mother claimed was the finest neighborhood in Baltimore. Did people really live like this? I suppose I knew that they did somewhere in the world. Cone used her bare foot (toenails painted a glittering red) to kick aside a stack of sweaters on the steps, I felt a jolt of wonder. I had just turned fourteen, it was 1975, and my ideas about homes, furniture, and cleanliness ran straight into me like an umbilical cord from my mother. I wanted to stop at every turn and examine the things that were stacked and heaped in places they didn’t belong: books teetering on a burner on the stove, a coffee cup on a shoebox in the entrance hall, a copper Buddha on the radiator, a pink blow-up pool raft in the center of the living room. ![]()
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