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shortly after, ourselves … but not before Mother bought that painting for a mere five dollars (I think Mr. Olson would have given it away, just to get rid of us).
    Earlier, in anticipation of the return of the writing box, I had dragged up a Formica table with a white-and-red-checkered top from the basement, and put it in the music room. Now, back home, I placed the writing box on its time-honored perch.
    The music room also doubled as a library, one entire wall containing a built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcase, books thankfully intact, unplundered by Carson. The room was dominated by a very old ornate walnut upright piano, which had been there as long as I could remember.
    Before I was born, Peggy Sue took lessons in high school, trying to get cultured. Then I came along and pounded on those poor black-and-whites (no lessons) (no culture). Sometimes, a really bad smell would permeate the music room, and I’d open up the lid and find a mouse, strangled in the piano wires. Mice loved to hide in there, you see, and it meant an unfortunate end for the poor creatures when little Brandy decided to play “Chopsticks.”
    Tired after our garage sale trip, Mother trudged upstairs to her bedroom to take a nap. I had something else in mind, but first needed to attend to Sushi.
    The little bitch (I mean that in the nicest way) had been dogging my heels since I got home, wanting to be fed, which I hadn’t done previously, since we’d left the house so early. Sushi trailed me out to the kitchen (she knew her way by now; only once did I find her stuck in a corner, blindly blinking at a dead end) where I prepared her breakfast.
    Diabetic dogs should be fed twice a day, followed by a shot of insulin (same as people). Naturally, animals are not fond of needles (same as people), so I would give Sushi a dog treat after. She always had the same conflicted look inher eyes:
I don’t want that bee sting … but I
do
want that biscuit!
Greed got the better of her (same as people).
    I went upstairs myself, to change out of my sweats, and put on something a little cooler since it was warming up outside.
    Here I was, thirty, with my old bedroom back. Fortunately for me, my prized furniture—a five-piece bird’s-eye maple art deco set from the 1930s—Carson hadn’t taken. He must not have known about it, or he would have snatched up the awesome set. Or maybe Mother had drawn the line—even off her meds, she had known that this was mine; she’d bought it for me for my sixteenth birthday.
    My favorite piece was the dressing table with a huge semicircle mirror and round glass top. An addition since my long-ago departure was a deco-framed black-and-white glossy of Jean Harlow (Mother’s favorite old-time movie star) seated at the very same vanity, wearing a white silk, white-fox-trimmed robe, combing her platinum hair. How cool!
    In the back of the closet, I discovered (boxed up) some of my childhood toys. Among them was a Cabbage Patch doll that Peggy Sue had stood in line hours for, then got mad at me because I said it was ugly; and the complete set of Pee Wee Herman’s Playhouse action figures—except for Clocky; doggie ate Clocky (not Sushi … Bluto, a little bulldog, long deceased).
    After rifling through the hangers, I picked out a girly pink cotton tulle skirt by Trina Turk that I’d gotten on sale due to a grease spot (no, I didn’t put it there; yes, it came out). I paired this with a military-type tee, some bronze-leather Dr. Scholl’s slides, and a counterfeit Louis Vuitton hobo bag that a street vendor in Chicago should’ve been in jail for selling, for copyright infringement (with me in the next cell for aiding and abetting).
    And now … here are some of Brandy’s fashion tips: (1), purchase one, really nice, expensive piece, and buy everythingelse in the ensemble on the cheap—that one, outstanding item will make you
feel
like the whole outfit cost a million dollars; (2), wear tough with tender, sending mixed signals to