Day Nine

Thirty-One, A Novel

Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six
Day Seven
Day Eight


Day Nine, Tuesday

In the two months Morgan had lived in this house, she had avoided the second bedroom. The stacks of stuff seemed to glare at her every time she opened the door.  Intimidated no more.  She wanted October to be different. That meant confronting the mess.

She walked in to the room with a pad of paper and a pen.  She wasn’t going to do anything today, just plan. Write up a plan, break the impossible task down into manageable pieces, and plan how to tackle the project. And when to complete it.

She would start with the three boxes of books. Empty each box, make two piles. Ask, thrift store or on the shelves? She assumed most of them would go to the thrift store since she couldn’t remember what books were in there.

The other stuff in the room, she wrote down as an inventory list, without thinking about what they were: two lamps, two broken chairs (her little kitchen table had once had six chairs), a dresser missing two drawers, a pile of old blankets she had used for furniture padding when she moved in, an old spaghetti mop, a broken CD player and speakers,  a plastic storage box of vases and candles, the bed, piled with winter bedding and extra pillows, an old table, and a big cushy chair that didn’t fit in the living room, piled with old magazines.

Once it was all on paper, it didn’t look so intimidating. Good. Project done for today.  She stood at the door, looking at the room. Imagining.  A guest room, but even more, an office. The bed, off to one side. The table as a desk, with the comfy chair across from it, add a bookshelf, find a small file cabinet, a table lamp. It could be a pleasant place, a happy, productive place rather than a closed door hiding the mess.

The closed door. That signified something, didn’t it? Like a door to her past that she did not want to open. A part of her life she did not want to acknowledge. Yes, she needed to deal with this room. To open the door. To find the key to the place in her heart that was closed, shut, tight, locked away.