How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life (6 page)

One arm of the chair shows the singed hole made when I was thirteen and sneaking cigarettes. The lumpy down cushions still give out the faint whiff of the lavender sachets she kept in her sweater drawer. I tuck my legs underneath me. My knees buttress the edge. Once, I fit here so easily.

The envelope is of thick ecru stock.
Snodgrass, Drinkwater & Crabbe,
Ten Court Square, Boston, Massachusetts 02110, is engraved on the upper left. I tear it open.

SNODGRASS, DRINKWATER & CRABBE LLP
COUNSELORS-AT-LAW
TEN COURT SQUARE
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02110-2811
TELEPHONE 617-555-8805 FACSIMILE
617-555-8818

James P. Snodgrass, Esquire
617-555-8825

Dear Ms. Randolph:

I have seen evidence which conclusively shows (1) that you appeared on
Antiques Roadshow
(program number 2036) with a certain ceramic vessel (hereinafter referred to as the “Chamber Pot”) and (2) that you claimed to have inherited the Chamber Pot from your mother, Emily Granby Randolph, late of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I represent Mrs. Lavinia Potter-Templeton of Concord, Massachusetts, and Mr. Edward Bickford Potter, of New York City, children of Henrietta E. Potter, late of Cambridge and longtime companion of Emily Randolph. Henrietta E. Potter died in possession of the Chamber Pot.

Emily Granby Randolph and Henrietta E. Potter, having died simultaneously or under circumstances such that it cannot be determined which of them survived, the Chamber Pot passed to my clients under Article Second of Henrietta E. Potter’s Last Will and Testament, which was duly admitted to probate.

My clients strenuously demand that you return the Chamber Pot forthwith. If you do not do so promptly, my clients intend to avail themselves of all appropriate civil and criminal remedies. By the time you receive this letter, a restraining order will have been issued enjoining you not to sell, assign, or transfer the Chamber Pot or to remove it from this Commonwealth.

Failure to obey this order will put you in contempt of court and may subject you to further penalties.

I look forward to your timely response in this matter.

Very truly yours,
James P. Snodgrass
James P. Snodgrass
JS/chs

F
our

T
wo backpacked students hold the door of the Harvard Bookstore open for me. I haven’t been here for an age. The only B.A. I claim comes from my self-invented membership in Bookstores Anonymous. I avoid bookstores one day at a time. I don’t read the
Globe
book section. On Sunday mornings I drop the
New York Times Book Review
in the recycle bin the minute I pick it up from my welcome mat. This must surprise you, considering where and how I grew up. Considering I’ve been a reader all my life. Now I reserve my books by phone from the Cambridge Public Library. That way I can put myself on the waiting list. When my name hits the top, they call me. In minutes I’m standing at the circulation desk and handing over my library card. For the few seconds such a transaction takes, I can leave one or another of my Rent-A-Wrecks running in the Do Not Park zone of the parking lot. There are a zillion choices, even if I’m no longer test-ready on current best sellers, pink-covered chic lits, embossed and foiled thrillers, and Pulitzer-winning literary lights.

Once I was. Before that slim volume that catapulted me to Bookstores Anonymous and into emotional decline. Bear with me. I know I’m getting to the point where I’ll have to explain. For now, let’s just say the Irish have the Troubles. I have the trouble. Lowercase but not lower in intensity.

Still, misery is misery, what ever the typescript.

I’ve checked in advance. The Harvard Bookstore has one copy of the paperback edition of
Flush: A Biography
. Given what is now going on in my life, I need full ownership rather than the library’s temporary custody.

I’m not surprised to find my impatience punished. Just inside the front door, on the nearest wall, hangs the poster for the Book. I turn my back. It’s two years old already. The paperback came out last June. Nevertheless, loyal to its Cambridge writers, the Harvard Bookstore still keeps a few on the center table, their Autographed by the Author stickers curling slightly at the edge. More paperbacks are ranged along the Local Authors shelf. Who says avoidance can’t be the healthy choice? Who claims denial shouldn’t be a way of life?

I go to the information desk. “Abby! Have you been away?” Kate calls out. Just my luck. I’d hoped for a new clerk, one of the many with piercings in their nostrils and a notebook of poems they work on when there’s a lull.

“Just busy,” I excuse.

“For a whole year?”

“It hasn’t been that long.” But it has. Longer. Ever since
that
book on
that
poster over there hit the stores and blindsided me.

“You’ve left a void,” she says.

I can see how she’d think that. I used to drop in three or four times a week. After the movies. Before dinner. Killing an hour between appointments. Meeting a date. Trawling for a man. In fact, I met lover number two in the aisle between Psychology and Computer Sciences. I was a regular regular. More than once a customer would stop by the information desk to ask about a certain book.
A woman intern,
he might begin. I’d point to Fiction.
The Pursuit of Alice Thrift,
I’d supply before the clerk could turn on the computer to look it up.

“Anytime you want a job…” Sanj or Kate or Mary would joke.

“Don’t be surprised if I take you up on that,” I’d reply. “I spend so much time here I might as well get paid.” After all, the Harvard Bookstore was my Café de Flore, my Harry’s Bar, my Deux Magots, my City Lights. Until…

“Here’s the book.” Kate hands me
Flush
already in a bag, the sales slip already made out. “Unlike Woolf ’s others, there’s not a big demand for this.” She sorts my exact change into the cash register’s pinging, slotted drawer. “But, funny enough, we sold one just yesterday.”

I stop. I clutch the bag to my chest. I want to ask to whom. I think I can guess. “Is it…?” I begin. I slam my mouth shut. How can I? I, who was one of the first customers to sign the Harvard Bookstore’s petition against the Patriot Act.

“Don’t be such a stranger,” she says.

“Ciao.” I wave. When she’s once more pounding her computer keys, when the other browsers are hidden from view in Travel and in Mystery, I lean against the wall. I snake my arm behind my back. I spider my fingers up an inch. I grab an edge of paper. I rip the bottom half of the poster—
A Novel by Edward Bickford Potter
—clear off and straight across. I macerate it into spitball size. I lob it at the trash.

But before I get to Ned, I’ll tell you about Lavinia. Not that
she
’s easy. Only that she’s easier.

It’s a long story, however. You’ll need your own chintz-covered comfy chair and a mug of tea, though straight gin might be the preferred antidote. Instead, for the moment, why don’t I keep you up to date on the chamber pot.

The minute I got that letter, I called my part-time help.
At Auction out of Town,
I had her post on my booth and lock it up. Then I jumped back in bed and stayed there for almost a week. Though I didn’t starve—there are plenty of Inman Square restaurants with takeout menus and Lycra-clad bicycle messengers—I did shed enough tears on my pillow to clump the goose-feather filling and stain the (antique) Belgium linen hemstitched pillowcase.

On Monday, even though the Szechuan chicken wasn’t due to be delivered for another hour, I made the mistake of answering my buzzer. It wasn’t the most Herculean effort since I had already crawled out of bed for a two-minute bathroom break. What did I expect? A care package? A search party of concerned citizens? Social services? I guess I did because when a voice called up from three floors down, “Abigail Elizabeth Randolph?” I answered “Yes” with such a pathetic eagerness for human contact I must have sounded encouraging.

“Something for you,” the voice replied.

“Bring it right up,” I yelled.

He was huffing by the time he reached my door. A fat man in a cheap suit whose necktie bore the dregs of a breakfast of scrambled eggs and strawberry jam. But there was no basket with a bow tied to its handle, no tower of pears peeking out from its crackling cellophane, no artful mood-elevating bouquets, no meals-on-wheels for suffering shut-ins. “Abigail Elizabeth Randolph?” he repeated.

“Who wants to know?”

He held up a blank envelope. “I’m a constable.”

“And I’m the queen of Romania.”

He ignored this. He reached into his pocket. He fished out a badge. He stuck it in front of my face. A police shield as shiny as the ones in the cops-and-robber shows I used to watch as a kid.

I moved my eyes from the badge. I’m not the least impressed, I made my body language show.

He was not deterred. He kept holding out his envelope, motionless as the mime busking for quarters in Harvard Square on summer nights.

I stuck both my hands in the pockets of my bathrobe. I felt crumbs and a wadded Kleenex in one. The other had a hole so gaping my fist went right through it and down to my knee.

He stepped toward me. In the split second before I could slip away, he shoved the envelope up into my armpit, where it caught on a fold in my sleeve. He sighed. “According to regulations, the injunction has to have physical contact with the injunctee to count as delivered,” he stated in the robotic way officers of the law read a suspect his Miranda rights. “You are served.” Then he turned on his heel. “Have a nice day,” he added.

Do you suppose the soldiers who dropped the atomic bomb waited for that mushroom-shaped cloud to sprout, then said, “Have a nice day”?

As soon as I heard him shut the front door, I opened my own particular bomb.
Temporary Restraining Order—Commonwealth of Massachusetts—You are enjoined neither to sell, remove
…blah blah blah…
premises. In ten days hence, Miss Abigail Elizabeth Randolph and said chamber pot are to show up in court
.
On penalty of
…blah blah blah. I pictured all the business cards from appraisers and dealers now tucked away in my desk. Money in the bank, I comforted myself. My retirement fund. “When you’re ready to sell,” “If you decide to put this on the market,” one or the other advised with Uriah Heepish rubbing of palms and assurances of my best interest at heart.
Temporary Restraining Order!
I thought that was something confined to cases of domestic violence. Not that I couldn’t declare myself a battered woman, at least metaphorically.

I did the only thing possible. I wept some more. I went back to bed.

By Wednesday, when I climbed out of my grubby hibernator’s nest, I was mad. I stomped around my living room so hard that even the heavy-metal musicians by night/ computer programmers by day downstairs complained. In my kitchen I threw a plate on the floor—not one I ever really liked, not an antique. In the bathroom, I kicked the wastepaper basket. It hit the tub and chipped the already-chipped porcelain. I punched a hole in the wallboard. I slammed a closet door with such force the hinges broke. By now I suppose you’ve decided I’m heading through the four stages of grief. You could be right, but only partially. Acceptance will never come. I swear. I’ll take the oath on it.

As soon as I realized I was hurting only myself, and damaging my apartment in the process, I pulled off my pajamas, which were getting more than disgusting with the bad hygiene of angst, not to mention soy sauce and pizza grease. I took a bath in my chipped tub. I brushed my teeth. I combed my hair. I got dressed. I changed the sheets. I put gold hoops in my ears and called my lawyer.

She wasn’t my lawyer until I called her, of course. Our family lawyer—my parents’—is a semiretired octogenarian—though age hasn’t withered him enough to keep him from estate plans nor custom staled him sufficiently to avoid the dress-down Friday set. Now that my father’s in La Jolla, his lawyer’s firing those eighty-year-old synapses setting up trust funds for my half brothers. Did I mention that indecently soon after my mother left, my father married his graduate student Kiki, the very grad student who had once fled our dinner table in tears, ridiculed by the great professor for her part-time job making astrological charts? Within weeks, my father had moved West, not-so-young man, and sired three sons, each a year apart. You should read their Christmas letter.
Proud Dad goes to all their plays and games, he takes his turn at cooperative nursery school, he toilet-trained Atticus in one day, he signed up for father-and-son drum lessons with Julius, who has a spot of ADD,
Kiki reports.
He dotes on his family. He’s a changed man
.

One certainly unrecognizable to me, the terrifying pater familias who ignored me as long as I showed good manners and whose wrath knew no fury the minute I acted teenage-appropriate. But this is not my father’s story. What’s more, he’s pretty much out of the picture, emotionally and geographically.

Who’s in the picture right now is my lawyer, Mary Agnes Finch. She lived on my hall freshman year. She went to Yale Law on full scholarship. She made law review, she clerked, did legal aid, serves on the board of the ACLU, is active in the Big Sister/Little Sister Association of the Greater Boston area.

And she’s a shark.

I took a taxi to her office. Profligate, I confess. But then I had to lug the chamber pot. All seventy five thousand dollars’ worth. “Bring it with you,” she ordered. “I’ll hold it in escrow. We’ll keep it in my law firm’s vault.”

Frankly, I was relieved. My apartment’s not secure, what with its broken intercom and flimsy front-door chain. A DVD player disappeared from the first floor; a computer from the three-decker across the street. You wouldn’t expect the petty thieves and small drug dealers in my neighborhood to watch
Antiques Roadshow,
to recognize in a nondescript and downtrodden Cinderella of a pot a glass-slippered princess of an heirloom worth a princely sum. But you never know. Let’s face it, even yours truly, in the business, never had the slightest clue there was anything more to this pot than its intended use or as a receptacle for phony flowers.