Rose decided to rearrange the living room after all. She walked around and looked at the layout of the room and the furniture. She knew that she wanted to have the sitting area facing more toward the bay window. The bay window was four feet wide by three-foot-high and had smaller windows on both sides of it. They were set in sort of a concave-shaped wall with built-in bench seating. Her grandmother always had the sofa back hiding the bench seating area.
Rose moved the knickknacks and the coffee table out of the way, as well as the one wingback chair. She pulled the sofa away from the window and turned it around. She positioned it out into the center of the room facing the windows. She moved the coffee table back in front of the sofa. Then she moved the chair to the left and front side of the sofa and faced it toward the windows.
One of the end tables she moved to the right side of the sofa. She still had plenty of room to walk from the front door through the living room and into the kitchen. She moved the other end table in front of the smaller window on the right side, and put her 32” television on it. That way she could watch television and still see anyone come up the porch steps.
Her grandmother had a bunch of throw pillows on her bed, so Rose decided to put some on the bench seat in front of the windows. She ran up the stairs to grab them and noticed the 5’ x 7’ rug that was on the floor at the foot of her grandma’s bed. She studied the rug colors and looked at the pillows. Rose then rolled up the rug and grabbed four pillows. She struggled to carry all of it and tossed the rug down the stairs.
Rose walked back down the stairs with the four pillows and positioned them on the bench seat. She then went back to the stairs and picked up the rug. She laid the rug on the floor in front of the bench seat. She stepped back to the right of the sofa by the end table and observed the new layout.
“There, that’s better,” she said.
She put a couple of her grandma’s knickknacks that she liked the most, like the cat from Egypt back on the end table, but decided to pack the rest. She went upstairs to get an empty box and heard a noise come from her grandma’s room. Maybe something fell over, she thought. She walked in there and looked around, but everything seemed fine. Rose left the room and closed the door behind her.
From the sitting area, she grabbed an empty box and then headed back down the stairs. When she walked into the living room, the knickknacks that she was going to pack were back on the table.
“Wait a minute, I know that I didn’t put them back on there,” Rose thought for a moment.
She pick each one up, wrapped it in a paper, and put it in the box. One of them was a clay elephant with the initials RD on the bottom. Rose thinks she remembered her uncle Ralph made it when he was younger. When she finished packing the few items, she put the box by the stairs. She would take that up and put it in grandma’s room later.
Please join me for more of: Rose’s Ghost.