How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life (29 page)

“Hip hip hooray! Justice prevails!” she shouts. “Sis boom bah,” she adds, a relic from her South Boston cheerleading days. “But don’t squander all your money until you get my bill…”

“I’m hardly a spendthrift, Mary Agnes.”

“Just kidding, Abby! I am so proud of you. You’ve got a spine. You’ve stood up for yourself! You’ve taken charge of your life!”

“Yeah, one small step for man…”

“Go, Abby, go!” She pauses. “Though I must confess I had my doubts you’d come around.”

“You give a pretty convincing argument.”

“I didn’t even enumerate all the harsh words Ned had for his sister. I was afraid of overloading the dice in case you’d balk.”

“Did he have any words for me?” I ask. Regretting the question as soon as it leaves my mouth.

Mary Agnes’s voice softens. “Abby, are you still in love with Ned?”

“Of course not,” I protest. “No way. Impossible.”

“Methinks you protest too much,” she suggests.

I remain silent.

“Remember in college when I broke up with Andrew Peabody?” she asks now.

I remember
he
dumped
her
for Nancy Murphy, but I am the last person to dispute the facts when it comes to matters of the heart. “Yes…?”

“You brought me tea and toast. You gave me very good advice.”

“I did? What did I say? I’m really curious.”

“You said ‘Let him go.’” I hear her turn on a faucet. I hear dishes clatter and clank. “Abby, when I called Ned’s apartment, a woman answered the phone. He’s living with someone.”

“I know that,” I declare. “I am fully cognizant of the significant other in his life,” I add, in my protesting-too-much, extra-emphatic, legal-speak, and Latinate mode.

“Let him go,” she advises.

“Believe me, Mary Agnes, I already have.”

F
ifteen

T
hose who say time heals are right. I’m the perfect example. Now two months after the deposition,
après le déluge,
as I like to call it, I’m doing okay. Better than you would have thought. Last week I had my Abigail Randolph Independence Day celebration at Objects of Desire. A cocktail party after closing time. I invited everybody, all the dealers, janitorial staff, movers, refinishers, even the accountant who makes sure proper Massachusetts taxes are charged to those without a registration number. I brought in wine and beer, passed around cheese and crackers, wasabi peas, stuffed grape leaves, and roasted almonds in my old bowls and platters. Thanks to the sale of the King’s Arrow, I’ve added some gorgeous serving pieces to my stock. I borrowed a tape deck and blasted Cole Porter. People danced in the narrow aisles to “Anything Goes,” winding in and out between the armoires and recamier chaises, pier tables, garden urns, jewelry cases, old toys, Coalport pottery. It’s amazing how former wallflowers can evolve into orchid centerpieces. “To you, Abby,” the Currier & Ives print swindler toasted from behind his raised glass. “To Abby,” seconded my guests. “What are we celebrating?” the lady who sells gently used linens asked.

“Abby’s fine eye,” declared Gus. “Two outstanding coups. That already brought her big bucks.” What he didn’t add was that he was responsible for both of those coups—the chamber pot and the King’s Arrow. Without his own fine eye and network of consultants, both treasures would still be gathering dust, neglected, unnoticed beneath a pile of old quilts or a bouquet of faux greenery. What I didn’t point out, eager for self-promotion and loath to steal Gus’s thunder, was that after the party and the antiques replenishing, I netted very little from those big bucks. Especially when you consider the scope of my own personal national deficit as a result of Mary Agnes’s bill and the big bite our government took out of the King’s Arrow sale.

By the end of the party, people were in high spirits, even those who suffered some minor breakage to their inventory due to the excessively vigorous bunny hop. I must say I created a lot of goodwill. People now come into my booth to consult me about their old tools, their bits of Italian porcelain. “Will you take a look at this?” a daguerreotype collector asks. “What price should I charge?” wonders a spatterware specialist. I’ve been asked to contribute a few paragraphs about chamber pots to a scholarly volume on water closets and early out house design. After work, I often join a group of fellow dealers for drinks. We’re planning field trips to auctions and flea markets and garage sales. At last I can boast of a community that has nothing to do with my ancestry, neighborhood, well-connected parents, or where I went to school. I’m receiving invitations to showers, to bar mitzvahs, to potlucks.
My colleagues,
I marvel.
My colleagues,
I gloat.

Colleagues who want to fix me up. There’s always the cousin, the client, the friend of a friend who’d be perfect for me. “No way,” I insist. “I’m lying low. Hibernating. I’m allergic to blind dates. Absolutely not. No!”

Saying no to Gus, however, is another story. I owe him too much. One case of vintage champagne, even Brut, can hardly begin to compensate.

“Just try it, Abby,” he pleads. We’re lounging in his booth sharing a pot of coffee and the crossword puzzle. He points at his mug. “A simple cup of joe. How hard is that?” He flips back the newspaper. “What’s your sign?”

“Sagittarius.”

He adjusts his reading glasses. He clears his throat. “Be open to new relationships. Make a coffee date with a new man.”

I lunge for the paper. “Let me see that,” I insist.

He pulls it away. He turns back to the crossword. “What’s a four-letter word for stubborn, unreasonable?”

For days Gus had been dangling in front of me the third cousin once removed who’s just arrived in Cambridge from the Midwest.

“I hate Midwesterners,” I say, free to unfurl my prejudices and run them up the flagpole now that I inhabit a zip code other than 02138, a zip code that tolerates a little political incorrectness from time to time.

“He’s originally from Montreal.”

“I don’t speak French.”

“Neither does he.”

“What Canadian doesn’t speak French?”

“He’s the spitting image of Brad Pitt,” he offers.

“I hate pretty men.”

He flings down the paper. He throws up his hands. “Can’t I just give him your number? As a favor to me? At least to get my sister off my back?”

Can I deny the friend who gave me colleagues, legitimacy, the tools to banish old ghosts and develop self-esteem? “All right. But, for the record, I categorically refuse to marry him.”

Gus works fast. No doubt out of fear that I’ll change my mind and his sister will stop sending him those smelly packages of Oka cheese and Québécois pork pies. No sooner am I inside my front door, even before I have put down my keys and my Styrofoam-boxed pad Thai, than the phone rings.

“This is Emile Lambert.” He pronounces it
lam-bear
. “Am I talking to Abby?”

I strain to hear his voice over a background of steady thumping and chanting. I picture tom-toms around the campfire in old westerns, Indian chiefs in beaded moccasins and feathered headdresses whooping out war cries. “Can you speak up?” I ask.

“That’s the problem,” he shouts. “I live across the street from the Center for Expressive Therapies. They’ve taken over the parking lot all hours of the day and night, banging bongos, running around, screaming out their mantras.”

“Call the police.”

“I did. They just shrug. Say the center’s good for the neighborhood. Provides the uniforms for the police softball team. Brings in commerce. As if those carrot juice drinkers, those sprout eaters would ever spend a buck at a proper bar.” The thumping gets louder. The voices are yelling now. The words sound like
This land is your land,
though I have my doubts. “Can’t you shut the windows?” I suggest.

“If only. I sweat something awful. After ten minutes, I stink like you’d never believe.”

What can I say? Thanks for sharing? I step back as if a sample whiff is about to be spritzed over the line.

“But I’ll shut them while I talk to you,” he concedes, his voice that of a martyr on the verge of one too many self-sacrifices. I hear footsteps; I hear the window slam. “There.” He sighs. He gets right to the point. “So, do you have a decent apartment? Quiet? With good light?”

I think of Clyde, how fast he left his room at the Y for my decent apartment with good light. Not to mention a wall to hang a bed warmer on. Not to mention the bed that abutted that wall. At least Clyde was a man who didn’t stink. In the physical sense, let me qualify. “My apartment’s okay,” I allow.

“I’ve leased a studio for the time being. Week to week. But I’m looking for a better place to live.” He chuckles. A stage laugh. “Do you have an extra room you want to rent?”

“My place is pretty small.”

“Not as small as mine.” He pauses. “We should get together.”

I take a diversionary tack. When in doubt, ask them about themselves. “What do you do?”

“I’m selling ties at Macy’s for the moment. Day job. In truth I’m a writer. I came here to work on my novel.”

Red flags flare. But I’ve been brought up to be polite. “What’s it about?”

“Thanks for asking. Between you and me and the bedpost, it’s dynamite. Encompassing, as it does, all the themes of love, sex, betrayal, along with a gothic element.” He hesitates. He hems. He haws. “Just want to make sure you’re not a writer, too. I wouldn’t want anyone to steal my idea. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

“Rest assured.”

He lowers his voice—maybe he’s afraid the expressive therapists will tap out his plot in code to the rest of their tribe—and hisses into the phone. “It’s about this empathic vampire born centuries ago who moves to Cambridge and then…” He stops. “Whew, I’m perspiring something terrible. Can we meet for coffee? My treat. And I’ll tell you all about it?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m off men.”

He laughs. I hear more footsteps; then the loud thumping and chanting resume.
My land. My land
. “I get it,” he shouts over the din. “I want you to know that though I’m a registered Republican, I keep an open mind. To me it’s a person’s private matter what they do with their sexuality.”

I take my pad Thai to the kitchen; I nuke it in the microwave. I eat it straight from the box. For only the most fleeting of seconds do I wonder if Emile Lambert—
lam-bear
—really
is
the spitting image of Brad Pitt.

After I’ve made coffee and watched the news, I check through my mail. How did I ever get on the list for every catalogue and mail-order house in the universe? I sort notices of auctions, a collector’s fortieth anniversary, an announcement of the opening of a pizza shop. I stop. I fish out a thick, cream-colored envelope. I hold it up. There’s my name, street, city, zip code calligraphied on the front. On the back flap, in tinier but equally elaborate letters, is Lavinia’s return address. I tear it open.
We’re getting married,
it announces, and gives a date four weeks hence, Sunday noon at the Faculty Club. Why would she hold her second wedding at the same place where she had her first? Why would she invite me, her former maid of honor, her ex-friend and current legal adversary? Who is now hard pressed to find any good words to say about her.

I remember my parents once returning from the funeral of the wife of a colleague, the colleague beloved, the wife despised. She was a mean, small-minded bigot who alienated everyone, even her own children. “What did the rabbi come up with for the eulogy?” I asked.

My father smiled. “That she was a regular and loyal reader of the daily newspaper and had supper on the table every night by six.”

Now I study the engraved couple-to-be: Lavinia Potter-Templeton and John Cuthbert Tompkins. Will she become Lavinia Potter-Templeton-Tompkins? I wonder. If you’re known professionally in the pages of the
Wall Street Journal, Crain’s,
and
Fortune
as Lavinia Potter-Templeton, you can’t just up and dump part of your name. I turn over the invitation. A Post-it is attached. Though hardly your ordinary yellow Staples off-the-counter brand. This Post-it is pearl gray scripted in maroon:
From the desk of Lavinia Potter-Templeton
trails down the left side.

Dear Abby,
she has inscribed in her all-too-familiar anal hand.
It would mean so much to me for you to attend. We have lost too many family members. Can’t we forgive and forget for old times’ sake? Our mothers would have wanted it
.

I stare at the
Dear Abby
. I need to write in to Dear Abby herself. What is my obligation to attend an ex-friend’s wedding? I want to ask. A person I was tempted to pay a needless thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars to for something that clearly belonged to me. And yet if time heals, time also tamps down the red-hot flame of rage.
Dear Puzzled in Cambridge, Do what your mother would want you to do,
I’m more than sure Dear Abby would advise.

Before I can change my mind, I check salmon on the preferred-main-course reply card and seal the envelope.

I click on the television. I flip through the channels: reality TV,
Extreme Make over
…I stop. I need an extreme make over. But not the sort documented by the bruised and bandaged woman in front of me on the screen.
Liposuction, cheek implants, nose job, eye job, chin implant, breast implants,
a voice-over reports. What about a heart implant? I want to ask, a
hard
-heart implant?

I wrap myself in my heart-appliquéd quilt. Even if time can put a distance between me and Ned, time can’t stuff that once-upon-a-time rabbit back in the hat without a twinge or two. He’ll be at the wedding. Holding the hand of the tenure-track Columbia Ph.D. professor who shares his apartment and—presumably—his bed. I change channels again. Another reality show. What are the signs here? Time for me to face reality? Abigail Elizabeth Randolph has a nice, full life now. Without the encumbrances of a man. Time to move on.