The linoleum was the first thing you saw when you walked into the kitchen. A pattern printed on a sheet of something that was not wood and not tile and not stone. The linoleum pretended to be all three. The linoleum was the great pretender of the apartment. It covered the floor the way a lie covers a truth. Underneath was pine. Nobody knew.

My grandmother's linoleum had a pattern of red and white squares. Checked. Like a tablecloth on the floor. She mopped it every morning and the mop left streaks and the streaks dried and the linoleum shined. The shine was the only jewelry in the apartment. She was proud of that floor. The linoleum cost eleven dollars and she kept it clean for thirty years. That is a return on investment the stock market cannot match.

The linoleum wore. The pattern faded where you walked. The path from the stove to the table was a ghost trail. You could read the family's habits in the floor. Where the chair scraped. Where the dog sat. Where the kid dropped the jar of tomato sauce that left a stain that outlasted the kid. The linoleum was a diary written in footsteps.

They tore up the linoleum in the nineties and found hardwood underneath and the hardwood was worth more than the apartment. The thing they covered up became the thing they paid extra for. The pine that was too cheap to show in 1940 was too expensive to buy in 2000. The linoleum protected the hardwood for sixty years and nobody thanked it. The linoleum did its job and then they threw it away. That is the biography of everything useful.

See also: Tenement, Washboard