John switched their rooms around now that it was just him and his wife in the beach house.
- He was going to put their bedroom into their mother-in-law’s old room.
Mary’s office was going to be in the old bedroom, and the office was going to be a spare room for family members. Mary would have a futon in the office, in case a family member arrived, but her office would be the spare room for 2 teenagers. Where her office was one of the warmest rooms in the house, Mary was now resituated to the coldest room in the beach house. There was a polar breeze blowing through the windows all winter time long, and her space heater could not keep up. John didn’t feel it was such a big deal, since Mary had a space heater, but he was wrong. She told him to turn the thermostat up, but he forgot he had detached that thermostat when he moved them into the other room. Mary came out of the office one afternoon, and her nails and lips were red from the cold. She checked the thermometer in the room, and it was only forty-eight. She told John to leave the door open, and he told her he had. John thought Mary had the space heater turned off, and she had to prove she didn’t. She was going to turn up the thermostat, but John set it at eighty. He asked why it was so cold in the room, and she told him to stand in her chair. While he sat there, Mary told John it wasn’t too bad, but then the wind blew. He shivered and said he would refasten the thermostat and replace the windows over the weekend.