How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life (4 page)

Love can be dangerous, I know that. Friends betray you. Family members die or disappoint you because you disappoint them. Misunderstandings turn poisonous. You have to be careful. I’ve had my moments. I’ve scaled ecstasy only to plummet to despair. And I don’t mean Clyde. Look at my mother—would she have died if she hadn’t given all for love? Would she have traipsed across continents to a country where the seismic activity means you’re never on solid ground? Without such love, she’d still be here, on good old Brattle Street terra firma, serving bouillon in translucent china cups, writing letters to the editor, composing exquisite thank-you notes.

My mother’s delicacy and grace in all things, like her competence, seems not to have come down in my DNA. I’m making a mess of unpacking this chamber pot. There was an article in yesterday’s
Globe
about an artist whose medium was Bubble Wrap. He videotaped himself popping six hundred square feet of it in sixteen hours, then hung the spent warp on the walls of a gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts. Such obsessions help bring order to a chaotic world, the art critic wrote. Wrestling with this wadded tangle, I know the critic got it wrong. But if I’m not good at unwrapping, I’m a master at unraveling. Give me a little plastic, and I can add chaos to an already chaotic world. I’m ripping; I’m pulling. Bubbles are sticking to the layers of bubbles underneath like dovetailed LEGO blocks.

“While these are quite charming,” the woman is explaining to the family now in front of me who have set out their pipes on a gray flannel cloth, “they are of limited value, too new, made, alas, for the tourist trade.”

“I like them anyway,” the father says. His voice is defensive, almost belligerent.

“But Daddy kept them in his safety deposit box!” his wife exclaims. She sounds close to tears. “At the Bank of Boston, which became the Fleet and is now the Bank of America,” she persists, as if the constancy of those pipes sitting in the vault through three changes of management should accrue enough interest to mark them as authentic antiques.

“I realize it’s hard,” the woman says, “but their actual value hardly mitigates their sentimental appeal.”

I’m thinking what a tough job she must have. Bursting hopes. Destroying dreams. Not to mention changing one’s views of one’s ancestors; their taste, their business acumen, the degrees of their generosity. Imagine counting on Grandpa’s pipes for your college fund.

“Come on, Ma,” urges one daughter. I don’t think the daughters look like college material anyway; all that makeup and hair point to cosmetology school. But who am I to talk? I who looked like college material from the day she was born, who was born into college material, whose family exuded doctorates the way pores exude sweat, never got even the lowliest B.A.

“Let’s hit Filene’s Basement,” the other daughter demands, “and forget about this shit.”

The way things are going with this little corner of the line—bad luck comes in threes, I figure—I’ll soon be heading to Filene’s Basement myself. Not that I could justify even one of their seven-day bargain markdowns given my career to date.
Look to the right of you; look to the left of you,
an old professor used to gloat in the days before grade inflation handed even the class dunce a
laude
of some sort,
these particular classmates—not to mention you—are bound to flunk out
.

One, the horse. Two, the pipes. Three, my turn to get an F for a pot not worth pissing in.

“What have we here?” the woman asks. She circles that chamber pot. Her mouth falls open. She drops her clipboard to the floor. Her magnifying glass sways wildly against her chest. Then catches on her
ERNESTINE EVERETT
name tag. Her breath comes fast in little whistles and sighs. She hoists the pot with the strength of a karate black belt. Then cradles it with the gentleness of a Madonna soothing her newborn son. She turns it. Tilts it. She sticks her head inside. She grabs her magnifying glass. She peers through it to study the faint outline of the dog.

Heads turn our way. In our immediate vicinity, conversation stops. I feel myself, like my offering, an object of sudden interest. A person of worth. I straighten my shoulders. I raise my chin. I tuck in my stomach. More people are staring now. I smile at them. I’m a benevolent monarch awarding her subjects the briefest acknowledgment. Let me ask you, how many people can attribute their rising self-image to the rising value of a chamber pot?

Things happen fast. Smiling people with
VOLUNTEER
pasted on their shoulders lead me behind partitions. I wait in lines with other smiling people in front of tables where more smiling people examine my chamber pot and—well—smile at me. I smile back. At ceramic experts. At Victoriana experts. At antiquarian book experts. Smiling even wider, I sign papers and release forms. Smiling appraisers, teeth bared in Cheshire cat grins, hand out their business cards. I put them in my pocketbook. I notice how shabby my pocketbook is. Its stitching’s undone, its leather corners nearly white with wear. The lining is ripped; there’s a stain the shape of South America from beer spilled at a Harvard Square bar that went out of business five years ago. Maybe I will go to Filene’s Basement when I get out of here. I nod at another beaming face. Oh God. Maybe I’ll skip the basement and buy something full price
upstairs
.

Though it takes a while, my chamber pot and I clear every obstacle in this particular Olympiad. We’re heading for the awards ceremony. I can practically hear the
Oh, say, can you see
as we are steered toward the Green Room. We are going to be taped for TV. My chamber pot will find out what it’s worth. It and I will, in a month’s time, be shown on every PBS station—and in continual reruns—across the land. It and I will be in your living rooms, your kitchens, your dens, on your bedside tables, in your gas station offices, and at your reception desks. My heart swells. Someone lugs a mirror fit for Versailles past me. I glance at it. My heart shrinks. My hair falls over one eye. I am wearing ragged jeans and a once-black ribbed turtleneck that has developed gray blotches from too many mixed-dark-and-whites cycles at the corner Laundromat. I’m going to be on TV!!

I stop smiling. I turn to the impeccably groomed, pressed, color-coordinated
Vogue
-modelish volunteer who is now pointing out the entrance to the Green Room, which I gather is neither green nor a room but a curtained-off area across the hall. “I’m not dressed for TV,” I plead.

“You look fine,” she says. And belies this statement when she adds: “We like our people to look real. Ordinary. Not like stars.”

She should talk, I decide. Sure, her suit is Chanel, her shoes the sort fashionistas would pawn their silver serving trays for just to slip their pedicured feet into those torture-rack toes. I need to tell her I don’t want to look ordinary. I want to look like a star. She should know certain things about me: that I was second runner-up for Queen of the May. That on more than one occasion my mother swore I’d grow into my looks. With better clothes, a decent haircut, some makeup…

“You’ll be made-up,” she says. Her lips are two perfect ellipses of cherry red. Her cheeks are two apples brushed with bronze. Iridescent shadow of a hue somewhere between blue and green glitters from her two lids. She points to the chamber pot, which I am now wheeling on a trolley, its railing padded like a baby’s crib to prevent bumps or falls. “Even so, you don’t want to outshine the real star.”

That’s life. A competition even with inanimate objects. But I don’t say anything. I don’t expect anything, mind you. Compared with how I started out my day, what has happened so far is nothing short of a miracle. I don’t expect to be one of those people who pay a quarter for a painting at a yard sale that turns out to be a long-lost Rembrandt. I understand that objects might be chosen for historical interest, quirkiness, best in show. Not a single one of the smiling minions will give me any numerical sense of my pot’s worth. “In due course,” confides the antiquarian bookseller, who sports a Harry Potter necktie and gold cuff links marked
Vol. I
and
Vol. II
. “No diagnosis until the results of all the experts are in,” cautions a woman my age who must have been premed. Frankly, I’m not counting on much. Unlike actors up for Oscars, I
really
mean it when I say I’m just happy to be nominated.

Though I’m not exactly happy with what the makeup “artist” is now doing to my face. I’m in the “Green Room,” by the way. Let me reassure you, it’s nothing that
Architectural Digest
would be rushing in to photograph. Black curtains. A bank of TVs. Donuts and coffee. Seltzer and apples. A hunk of cheddar in a wreath of broken saltines. People scattered in semicomfortable makeshift chairs stroking the objects on their laps like pets in need of quieting. At the far end, in a small photography studio, my chamber pot glows on a white-draped turntable against a silver backdrop. Lights shine on it. Assistants adjust it. A photographer takes photos of it from all angles. People gather round. They watch.
Hmmm,
they offer.
Ahhh,
they marvel. A man in a plaid suit turns to the Howdy Doody doll on his knee. He pats its head. “Never you mind,” he consoles.

I am shunted off to one side in a high wooden chair. Carol, filling in for Louise who’s “out sick, poor thing,” has painted a layer of gunk on my face and is now working with sponges and brushes, pencils and tubes that she plucks from an apron pocketed like a carpenter’s. I admire the tattooed fish on Carol’s left bicep.

“My sign,” she says. “Pisces,” she adds in case I need enlightenment. “What’s yours?”

“Sagittarius.”

“I would have guessed.” She dips a powder puff in a shallow round box. A cloud gusts above my head like the halo of dirt hovering over Pigpen in the
Peanuts
cartoon. “You’re loyal. Generous. An original thinker. Optimistic even when your hopes are dashed.”

“You can tell all that?”

She lays her hands on my temples. She rubs. “I can feel your energy.”

“Through all this makeup?”

“Nothing can get in the way of a person’s energy.”

I remember a graduate student of my father’s who’d fled the dinner table in tears. When she mentioned she earned an extra bit of income from making astrological charts, my father had banged the table so hard the silverware had scattered to the floor. “That’s for idiots,” he’d yelled. When I’d come to her defense, explaining in my most reasonable voice that a lot of people were interested in such things these days, people of my age, Harvard students even, he’d called me an idiot too. “How can you, daughter of mine, entertain such stupid ideas?”

“And what about love?” I ask now, still, years later, entertaining such stupid ideas.

“When you find a compatible partner, hidden, deep passions will surface. And, then, well, watch out.”

I want to ask watch out for what. But before I can, Carol says, “I have a business on the side doing charts. If you want, I can do yours. I’m good at the love stuff.”

“Maybe if I hit the jackpot with my chamber pot. I’m bad at the love stuff.”

She laughs. “Sagittarians have quite a sense of humor.” She rubs rouge onto my cheeks. I look like the Kewpie dolls sold behind my booth in the collectibles room. “Plus they also are modest and often religious with a strong sense of morality, though they tend to overemphasize the ethical codes they follow.”

“I’m afraid that doesn’t fit me.” I stop. “Though I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.” I need especially to make this point because I’m in the antiques business, a petri dish for fraud and scams. I catch her eye in the mirror, her head sits just above mine like the top figure on a totem pole. “I
am
ethical. But I’m an atheist.”

She raises a penciled brow. “They say there are no atheists in foxholes.”

“Let’s hope I’m never put in that situation. Even metaphorically,” I amend.

“Fingers crossed.” She nods. “Will you do me a favor?” she whispers. Her head swivels to take in the activity behind us. No one glances our way. She moves her lips closer to my ear. I smell garlic and vinegar. “Please don’t mention our astrology talk.”

“Mum’s the word,” I pledge. “Mind if I ask why?”

She points a rainbow-colored fingernail to the bank of TVs. The man with the Howdy Doody doll has left the Green Room; he now fills the screen. His mouth is stretched into an astonished O. His eyes roll in their sockets. The expert, who looks like Howdy Doody himself—a shock of red hair, freckles, a goofy grin—is pumping the owner’s hand. The caption underneath reads
Howdy Doody Doll in Box—$1,000–$1,200.

“Astrology may be big on
Oprah
. But this is PBS.”

I see my father’s pounding fist. “I understand completely,” I agree.

With sisterly affection, she cups my chin and studies my face. “Good bones,” she pronounces. “Good structure.”

Are good bones a part of my sign? I wonder. I’m pleased. You have to figure people in TV and antiques have a sense for the visual. Still, how can anyone appreciate my structure considering the layers of foundation she’s slapping on my face like a sculptor kneading thick rolls of clay onto the flimsiest of armatures. Beyond the crook of her ministering elbow, over the top of her ministering shoulder, above the tattooed fish, between her ministering fingers, I can see in the small mirror hooked to the curtain a face unrecognizable, a face belonging to a geisha maybe, or a Las Vegas drag queen.

“The camera bleaches out color. It kind of blunts your features. Which is why I need to play them up.”

My eyelashes are as spiked as the Statue of Liberty’s crown. My eyebrows could be Groucho’s. I’ll have to take her word for it. The word of an astrologer. Of a professional. Which leads me to hidden deep passions ready to surface with the right man. As if. Believe me, I know exactly what happens when those deep passions get mucked about by a right man turned horribly wrong. They get so buried not even a million-horse power backhoe could dig them up. What a relief to have survived young love.