“Well, it don’t matter whether you remember it or not. It was no place to raise a child. And soon asthe money from the company started rolling in, I swore that no son of mine would ever have to livewithout a decent roof over his head.” He produced a house key from his jeans pocket. “So whaddaya say,kids? You wanna take a look at her?”
The house had a garage large enough to hold both Ben’s Lexus and Lily’s new monstrosity of asedan. Architecturally, the dwelling resembled a brick shoe box. Everything about the house bespoke anormal, heterosexual respectability. Lily hated it.
Inside, the walls were white and the carpeting beige. Each room was square, pristine, and sterile.
The only thing Lily liked about it was that there were three bedrooms: one for Mimi, one for Ben, and onefor her. “So what kind of monthly payments are we gonna be making on this place?” she asked.
Big Ben looked puzzled. “Payments?”
“Yeah,” Lily said. “I mean, you made the down payment, right, but then Ben and I will pay —”
Big Ben hooted. “You and Ben won’t have to pay a dime! I bought this house outright — withcash money!”
Lily leaned against a white wall to steady herself. She couldn’t imagine having the kind of moneywhere you could just buy a house, any house, on the spot and pay for it all in cash. These people reallywere loaded.
“I know it don’t look like much right now, since there ain’t a stick of furniture in it,” Big Ben said.
“But picking out furniture’s a woman’s job.” He checked his watch — a Rolex, Lily noticed. “Lily, ifyou’d drive us on into town, you’ll have plenty of time to pick you out some stuff over at American HomeFurnishings before we meet ole Buzz for lunch at the Bucket.”
Lily, still leaning against the blank wall, smiled wanly. All her needs were supposedly being takencare of, and yet she had never felt so empty.
CHAPTER 7
Lily and Ben had just finished a grueling forty-minute shopping spree at American HomeFurnishings, during which Lily kept protesting that Big Ben was spending too much money on them, andBen the younger kept complaining that all the furniture in the store was too tacky to go in any house ofhis. “It’s bad enough,” he said, “that I have to live in a ranch-style house. Now I have to furnish it withcrap that’s just a cut above cardboard!”
“Oh, for godssake.” Lily sighed. Her furniture preference was for antiques and junk-store finds,but if somebody was gracious enough to buy her a houseful of furniture, she wasn’t going to be rudeenough to complain about the store’s limited selection. “Okay,” she announced, “we’ll take that sea-foam