They’re in the basement now, reduced to lumber. The apartment we just left was furnished with shelves that John made out of cheap pine. The tiny dresser sits atop my dresser, which is from IKEA. They’re in the basement, wrapped in newspaper. I still have the tiny corner cabinet with lattice doors, the tiny hutch with brass knobs, and the tiny dining room table with expertly turned legs. He filled our dining room with his furniture and then he made tiny replicas of that furniture with the machines he brought in the truck. He arrived in a truck so heavy that it made a dent in the driveway. There wasn’t any furniture in the house where I grew up until a German cabinetmaker moved in with us. I hang curtains to hide the emptiness, but it remains empty. I’m sorry, I said awkwardly, we live here. Last week a Mexican woman with four children rang our doorbell and asked if our front room was for rent. We’ve been eating on our back stoop for three months. We just bought a house but we don’t have furniture yet. I think there are limits, I say, to what mass production can produce. We almost bought something called a credenza, but then John opened the drawers and discovered that it wasn’t made to last. What does it say about capitalism, John asks, that we have money and want to spend it but we can’t find anything worth buying? We’re on our way home from furniture store, again.
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