He came back the next week for more two-by-fours he didn’t need.
I said yes.
We moved to Tucson in 1984. Harold got a job teaching woodshop at Catalina High School. I got a job doing the books for a plumbing company.
We bought a little house on East Linden Street. Two bedrooms. A carport. A front porch with a ceiling fan that wobbled.
We paid fifty-eight thousand dollars for it.
We lived there for thirty-eight years.
I painted the kitchen yellow the first week.
Harold said it looked like the inside of a lemon. I said that was the point. He painted the cabinets white to match. He built a breakfast nook by the window out of oak he salvaged from an old church in Bisbee. He carved our initials into the underside of the table where nobody could see.
H.B. + M.B. 1984.
I planted roses along the front walk. Six bushes. Mister Lincoln. Double Delight. Peace. Harold teased me that roses don’t belong in the desert. I watered them every morning at six before the heat came.
