At first, the green walls comforted me. The avocado-turned-olive shade felt soothing. Enveloping. A nod to all the grandmothers’ houses painted in that hue—lived-in memories wrapped in kisses and cookies and hugs.

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The press of time. The pressure of desire. My god, how it pressurizes change.

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“Beginner’s Luck,” I called my newlywed home. A saltbox in a sketchy neighborhood, once my fiancé’s college bachelor pad. He graduated in May, his roommate moved out in June, and we married in July. I had scant belongings to transfer from my mother’s house to his. A few clothes on wire hangers. A crocheted toilet paper cozy shaped like a Southern Belle. A set of yellow kitchen cannisters I won at a Tupperware party.

“Is this all you have?” Jim pawed through the single box I brought in from the car. His glance signaled pity. A flicker of anger at the circumstances that had allowed me so little of what he took for granted.

Wedding gifts pressed in, swelling my list of possessions. Dishes. Stemware. Cooking utensils. A crystal ice bucket with silver tongs. I hand-washed the stoneware dishes and stacked them in the pine cupboards next to the indigo water goblets. These items proved my status. My worth. My fitness for married life at nineteen.

#

So much green.

Bedrooms. Bathroom. Kitchen. The living room/dining room combined. Every room pressed in a queasy retro tint somewhere between guacamole and bile. Like the color, a dreary pall began to settle over me. Over us. Even the light filtering through the slanted venetian blinds seemed to sour.

We played house as though going through the motions made things real. Meals cooked. Dishes done. Ashtrays emptied. We slept side by side every night like planks, stiff with silence and dismay.

Our beginner’s luck turned cold as the avocado walls pressed down on us, room after room, day after day, year after year.