The Clear-Out by Deborah Ellis Page A

took the legs off?”
    “With a screwdriver.”
    Duncan open and closed his mouth like a fish. “You better not have used my tools! They’re not toys, you know!”
    “And I am not Bobby, so don’t talk to me as if I was seven years old.”
    Bobby, their son, now fully grown, had finally left their house when he was twenty-eight. He had been living in their basement. When he left, Duncan turned the basement into his work-out space.
    “Is that what this is?” Duncan asked. “The nest is empty, so you don’t know what to do with yourself?”
    “Oh, I know what to do with myself,” Tess replied. “Filling my days will not be a problem for me.”
    She walked by him and went down the basement stairs. Duncan heard her pick up another box and climb back up. She put the box with the others, then faced him.
    “It’s simple,” she said. “Bobby has, at long last, started his life. You have golf and all your sports things. My parents have passed away. I have retired from my job, and I get money from my pension. I have a decision to make. What do I want to do with the rest of my life? And this is it. I want to read. And I want a room to read in.”
    “A whole room? That’s just foolish. You don’t need a whole room to read in. Read in a chair. There’s the entire living room out there.”
    “And you keep the television on. In here, I can still hear it, but at least I won’t have to see it. It would be nice, as a favour to me, if you would move the TV into your sports room.”
    “Move the TV? This is my house. I like the TV where it is.” The sports room was Bobby’s childhood bedroom. Duncan now used it for his collection of sports things—baseball bobble-head dolls, hockey cards, golf trophies. A man had to have a place to display his things.
    Tess just shrugged. She reached behind a pile of books and brought out a box of ear plugs.
    “I thought you would say that,” she said.
    “What about the dining room?” Duncan asked. “What about family dinners? What about Christmas?”
    “Christmas is just one day. We can eat in the kitchen. All around the world, people manage to get their families together without a formal dining room.”
    “I don’t know what’s come over you,” Duncan said.
    “That’s all right,” said Tess. “You’re missing your show.”
    Duncan stood in the doorway and watched his wife. She smiled and hummed as she put the books on the shelves of the cabinet. Tess had wanted to put the books out years ago. But Duncan insisted that there wasn’t room, and books made a house look too cluttered. Now they were being put into the cabinet that used to hold their wedding gifts.
    Even worse, Tess had lined up tall bookshelves across the doorway that had opened to the living room. She had closed the space off. He was goingto ask where she had gotten the shelves. Then he remembered seeing them, boxed up, behind the furnace. He had thought they belonged to their son.
    Duncan didn’t know that Tess knew how to put up shelves.
    “It’s good to know that you could put our wedding gifts in the basement without even thinking about it,” he said. “It’s good to know how you really feel about our marriage.”
    “Those gifts are just things,” Tess said. She did not look up from her books.

CHAPTER TWO
    Tess got more books and more bookshelves.
    She bought a La-Z-Boy chair and put a little table and a good reading lamp beside it. She made the room her own.
    The cat, Mr. Snuffles, sat by her feet, purring as she read.
    Duncan fought back.
    He did not like looking at the wall made of bookshelves. He did not like having a wife who did not answer when he called.
    He tried to move the television into Tess’s library.
    Tess put her foot down.
    “I want one room in this house that is mine,” she said. “I’ve cleaned this house and earned money to help pay for it. I deserve a space in it thatis mine. If you want this space, then I will take over your sports room. If you won’t let me have that,