Howard frowned when he saw what she had prepared for him. The spare bedroom had been transformed into a small child’s room. The odor of drying latex paint assaulted his nostrils as she led him through the doorway. Anita had repainted the walls and changed the color from the oyster shell white she favored for the rest of the house into a pleasing shade of extremely light blue-white hue. The wooden parquet floor had been stripped of its wall-to-wall carpeting and had been cleaned and freshly waxed in the anticipation of a young child’s tenure. Across the room from him was a handsome pint-sized walnut armoire to hang his clothes in while a matching dresser stood at the opposite side of the room. It was plain to Howard that the furniture was intended for a very young child, the top of the armoire barely came up to the level of Anita’s chest. The door of the armoire was slightly ajar and he could see that the newly purchased pants that Anita had bought for him hung from its rod and their cuffs had folded over on the floor of the armoire because the interior height of the armoire was too short to fit their length. Clearly the armoire was meant for smaller clothes than he wore. All the furnishings matched as if Anita had gone out and purchased a suite of new furniture rather than buy each part piecemeal. Howard couldn’t get over Anita’s extravagance in having purchased such expensive furniture. Each piece was solidly made and had obviously had been intended for years of use. It was a fantastic waste of money to spend enormous amounts that he would only be using for a few months at most. Where was her vaunted skill in managing money? Did she intend to pay for this with the money she would get from the sale of her car?
Anita had decorated the walls with gaily colored balloon appliques that made the room appear as if it had been designed for a child of three to five years old. The bed was much smaller than a regular twin bed and was draped with a coverlet that had a Winnie the Poo motif. Anita led him to the foot of the bed and hoisted his naked body to sit on the coverlet so she could dress him. She turned and went to the dresser to get out a pair of training pants for him while he watched her from the edge of the bed. He noticed that the flat top of the dresser was strangely designed; there was a railing made of lathe-turned walnut spindles around the two sides and rear of the dresser top. A second shorter railing sectioned of a portion of the rear of the top surface to form a storage area at the back of the dresser. Howard couldn’t imagine what the cabinetmaker had intended for the storage area, but the sight of it gave him an foreboding feeling that all was not right. Howard had the strongest impression he had seen a dresser like that before, but he couldn’t remember exactly where he had seen it. When she returned to the bed, she put her hand on his chest to push him down to lay on his back. As he put his weight on the mattress, he noticed that there was a strange crinkling sound coming from under the sheets that was muffled by the coverlet. “What’s that sound, Anita?”, Howard asked in a high pitched voice.
“What sound?”, replied Anita as she lifted his legs and worked his feet through the holes of his training pants.
“The bed makes a funny sound when I move,” explained Howard.
“Oh that,” Anita chuckled, pulling the pants down to his knees, “That’s only the mattress cover. Don’t worry your little head about that, Darling!”
“Why is making that funny noise?”, Howard persisted, “I’ve never heard a mattress cover make a noise like that!”
“Yes you have, you just don’t remember,” Anita said with a grin as she lifted his legs again to slide the pants down his thighs and over his bottom.
“I’m sure I haven’t,” Howard said in consternation, “Why is it making that noise?”
“There’s a plastic waterproof cover under the sheets to keep you from wetting the mattress,” Anita explained as she pulled his pants up the front and worked the folds out of the waistband at his sides, “I’m sure you had one like it on your bed when you were a little boy.”