She said it during lunch.
We were at the kitchen table, Patricia and Daniel and I, eating the chicken soup Patricia had made that morning without asking whether either of us wanted chicken soup. It was good soup. That is not the point, but it is true, and I have tried to stay accurate about which things were good and which things were problems, because the two categories overlapped in ways that took me months to sort out.
She had rearranged the cabinet above the stove.
This was the third time in six weeks that she’d reorganized something in our kitchen, and the third time I’d opened a door looking for something and found it somewhere new. I mentioned it at the table — not sharply, I thought, just conversationally: “Oh, you moved the spices again. I couldn’t find the cumin this morning.”
Patricia looked up. She had the expression she wore when she was about to say something she’d dressed as helpfulness.
“I put it with the other baking things,” she said. “Cumin goes with the warm spices. It’s more logical.”
“I’ve been keeping it with the savory spices for five years,” I said. “That was pretty logical too.”
“Well.” A pause. The kind of pause that contains an entire position. “You’ll get used to the new arrangement. It makes more sense for the kitchen.”
Daniel was looking at his soup.
“Patricia,” I said, “this is my kitchen.”
She set down her spoon. Not dramatically — she was never dramatic in the obvious way. Just a small setting down, a small adjustment of posture.