Six months later I sold the house.
It was not a dramatic decision. It happened the way most real decisions do. I came home one evening in the fall and stood in the hallway and realized that the house was too big for me, and that I had been keeping it for reasons that no longer made sense, and that it was time.
Marisol came with me to the closing. My sister helped me pack. My mother flew in for the weekend and stood in the kitchen and made dinner and did not say anything about Adrian, which, for her, was a kind of revolution.
The last thing we moved out was the lamp.
I wrapped the glass shades in newspaper and unscrewed the rim, and Marisol held the wires while I lowered it down, and we put it in a box together in the middle of the empty living room floor.
"You're really taking it," sh
