Vintage (17 page)

Violet stood behind the counter, humming to herself as she arranged red roses in a crystal vase. She looked up and smiled when she saw Amithi. “Hi. Good to see you again.”

“Those are beautiful flowers,” Amithi said. “Did you get them from someone special?”

“Uh-huh.” Violet placed the vase to one side of the counter. “It’s all pretty new.”

Amithi envied the soft look in Violet’s eyes. She would have given anything to go back to the sense of hope she had when her relationship with Naveen was brand-new. With Violet’s help, she heaved the bags onto the counter.

“I apologize for the garbage bags,” she said. “But I had so many items this time, I did not have anything else to put them in. Normally I would have folded everything up a little more neatly.”

In fact, since she and Naveen had come back from Chicago—she by car and he by bus, at her insistence—Amithi hadn’t felt like doing anything the way she normally did. Last night she’d locked herself in the den, intending to watch television. Instead, she had ended up paging through family photo albums that, at first, made her cry, but then made her sick with anger. In every picture, no matter where it was taken—at Jayana’s first birthday party, at the beach, at the celebration dinner to commemorate Naveen making tenure—Amithi saw deceit behind her husband’s smile.

When Naveen had knocked on the door of the den to ask Amithi about dinner, she hadn’t responded. She wasn’t sure what he had done to feed himself and she didn’t care. Later she had found an empty cereal bowl next to the sink and felt a stab of pleasure when she thought of him eating cornflakes for dinner.

Violet pulled out a bundle of scarves from one of the bags. Amithi helped her spread the shimmering silk out on the countertop, admiring how the colors contrasted with one another: deep purple, ochre, and emerald green. Some were embroidered with paisley patterns in gold thread, others with vines or birds.

Violet touched the smooth fabric of a red scarf. “Are these from India?”

“The silk is. But I embroidered them myself, years ago.”

“By hand?” Violet ran her hands over the thread of an intricate leaf design.

“Of course. I know there are machines for that, but I don’t have one, and anyway, silk is so tricky. Beautiful things often are.”

“Why are you selling so many things all of a sudden? Are you cleaning out your closet?”

“Cleaning out my life.”

“Is everything all right?” Violet asked.

Amithi considered herself to be a private person. She’d made a habit of never burdening other people with her troubles.

“I’m fine,” she replied.

Violet raised her eyebrows. “Really? I don’t believe you.”

Amithi sighed. “Someone close to me betrayed me.”

Once the words were out of her lips, she felt the weight of her sadness lift, just for a moment.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Violet said. “Was it your husband?”

Amithi hesitated for a second before nodding. She was afraid that Violet would judge her for continuing to live in the same house as Naveen. Many women would have packed their things and left as soon as they found out about the affair. Amithi had thought about it. She knew that if she confided in Jayana about what was going on, her daughter would likely invite her to stay at her condo. Amithi had even gone as far as taking out her suitcase half a dozen times, only to put it back in the closet a few hours later without packing a single item.

She hated Naveen for what he’d done to her, to the life she thought they’d built together. But without that life, Amithi had no bearings. She felt like a broken kite tumbling around on a strong wind.

“Do you need to talk about it?” Violet asked.

Amithi already felt like she’d ripped open her chest for examination. Inside lived all of her deepest fears. Perhaps Naveen loved Paula in a way he’d never loved Amithi. After all, he’d chosen to date Paula on his own, whereas his parents had chosen Amithi. He’d met Paula during a time when the country was feverish with sexual and political rebellion. With that type of passion as a backdrop, his marriage to Amithi probably seemed dull, dutiful. Amithi couldn’t help but wonder if Naveen wished he’d married Paula instead.

Despite the doubts and questions battling inside her head, Amithi couldn’t say any more, not today. “Perhaps another time,” she said.

Violet peered into one of the shopping bags. “Are you sure you want to get rid of all these things now? Do you want to wait until you’re feeling more—”

“I don’t need them,” Amithi said. “I have so many scarves and saris—this is only a fraction of them. I still have dozens in my closet. My daughter doesn’t want them, either. I pointed out that the scarves would be pretty even just with the blue jeans she likes to wear all the time, but she says it is not her style.”

Violet held one of the scarves up to examine its size. “They’re big enough to wear as shawls, too. The colorful ones would be gorgeous with a little black dress.” She patted the side of one of the garbage bags. “It will probably take me some time to look through everything.”

“That’s all right. Take as long as you want,” Amithi said. Any excuse to get away from the house, away from the domestic existence that now seemed so meaningless, appealed to her at the moment. What was the point of keeping a tidy house and preparing homemade meals if there was no one around to appreciate it? Jayana was grown and no longer wanted Amithi’s attention. And Naveen didn’t deserve it.

“You’re very talented, you know that?” Violet said as she folded a scarf and set it aside. “I wish I could sew like that.”

“Oh, sewing is not so hard. Like many other endeavors, you just need to have patience.”

“I know some basics of sewing, like hemming and taking things in, but it takes me such a long time even to do the simplest things,” Violet said. “I’ve got a fashion show coming up in a few weeks to raise money for the store and I know there are going to be a lot of last-minute alterations to get everything to fit the way I want it to on the models. I’m dreading doing all that sewing. I’ll probably be up all night the evening before the show.”

“Perhaps I could help you,” Amithi said. A fashion show sounded like a good distraction from her disastrous marriage. It was also something Naveen would have thought was silly, which made her want to help out even more.

“I probably can’t afford your fees,” Violet said.

“I don’t charge any fees. Sewing is just a hobby for me. I enjoy it.”

“I’m not sure it’s going to be all that enjoyable. It will probably just be a lot of measuring and small adjustments. And here’s the trickiest part—all the alterations have to be temporary. We don’t want to do anything to change a garment’s original size. We just need it to look good on the runway.”

“I think I can do that. I’ve had to take my own clothes in and out plenty of times because I always seem to be losing and gaining weight. I never make any cuts or do anything permanent because who knows if I will get fat again?” Amithi let out a bitter laugh. Maybe she’d let herself get fat. If she hadn’t managed to hold Naveen’s attention when she was young and slender and smooth skinned, why even bother trying to hold his attention now?

“If you really don’t mind, I could use your help.” Violet examined a blue scarf with an embroidered feather design repeated along its border. “Are these peacock feathers?”

Amithi nodded. “It’s the national bird of India.”

“I love peacocks,” Violet said. She pointed to the wall, where a green hat hung, adorned with an iridescent peacock feather.

“Sometimes I think that India’s national bird should not be a bird at all, but an airplane, because so many Indian people I know have spent a lot of time on airplanes.” Amithi touched the blue scarf. “On second thought, maybe I will keep this one.”

June 20, 1979

Amithi felt weary looks being cast in her direction as she hushed the howling Jayana and begged her to go to sleep. On the first leg of the flight, from Chicago to the stopover in London, the baby had been very well behaved. Now, on this final leg from Heathrow Airport to Delhi, Jayana would not stop crying, sometimes screaming so forcefully that her voice cracked and took on a machine-gun sound. Even the ever-smiling flight attendant in her tailored jacket and white blouse was beginning to look annoyed. It was as if the American-born Jayana was resisting the journey back to her roots.

Amithi had been putting off this trip since the baby was born the previous July. The phone calls and letters from her parents and Naveen’s had become so incessant that she decided she could no longer put off the trip to India. The grandparents wanted to see their grandchild—they did not understand why Naveen and Amithi waited a decade to have children. They did not know that they had tried for years, that Amithi’s heart had broken month after month when her cycle started, an unwelcome visitor. They did not know how difficult the birth had been, and that both mother and child had been frail afterward, at first.

The grandparents had grown beyond impatient to outright irate that Jayana was almost a year old and they still had not met her. Unable to find a time when Naveen didn’t have classes to teach or conferences to attend, Amithi agreed to travel to India on her own with the baby.

Preparing for the trip with an eleven-month-old had been a challenge. She could have used her husband’s help, but she knew that he had important work to do while she was gone. He had to finalize a research paper and then present it at a conference in Florida where dozens of renowned scholars would be in attendance. Though she was disappointed he wouldn’t be traveling with her, Amithi couldn’t fault her husband for working hard. He was, after all, the sole provider for their little family.

For Amithi, the hardest part of the trip preparations had not been the packing or the scheduling. Rather, it had been the task of getting her infant daughter’s ears pierced. Amithi hadn’t wanted to do it, but she predicted there would be gifts of jewelry at the
pujas,
or prayer ceremonies, that her parents and in-laws would be hosting for the child in India. She did not want people to feel badly if they showed up with pierced earrings for the baby, as she knew some of them would. Earrings were a common gift at such events.

So, a week before her scheduled flight to Delhi, Amithi went ahead with the ear piercing, although she did not hold a
karna vedha,
the traditional ceremony for the occasion. She did not want to invite a large group of people to the house to watch her daughter cry in pain. She simply asked her neighbor Lalita to come over and take care of the task. Lalita Auntie, whose own children were all grown up, had sterilized the needle and poured Amithi a glass of Naveen’s scotch. Amithi had cried as the needle poked through her baby’s soft skin, even though Jayana didn’t utter a sound, so mesmerized was she by Lalita Auntie’s kind face and soft singing.

Although Amithi had not been back to India since her wedding, she knew this trip was not about her. It would be filled with trudging through monsoons to temples and homes of distant relations Amithi either had never met or did not remember. It was so that her parents and the Singhs could show off Jayana, show off Amithi and Naveen’s successes in America.

Amithi glanced down at her red-faced daughter. She leaned down and kissed Jayana’s head through her black, sweaty curls. Amithi wished Naveen were there to share responsibility for the dirty looks Amithi knew were being thrown her way by other passengers on the plane. The child howled louder until, finally, after a bout of gasping sobs, she fell asleep.

Amithi draped the sleeping baby over her lap, so that her hands were free, and grabbed her sewing from her purse. She was making a shawl to wrap Jayana in during the
mundan sanskar—
the ceremony for the baby’s first haircut. She was nearly finished. The final touch was to outline the feather designs in gold thread. She had chosen a peacock-feather pattern because the bird symbolized India, and she knew her relatives would be touched by the gesture. The peacock also symbolized life and love, and she could not imagine more perfect imagery for her daughter.

Amithi held up the shiny fabric and whispered to Jayana. “Look, sweetheart, look what your ma made for you.”

Jayana opened her eyes and scrunched up her face. She grabbed the shawl, threw it onto the ground near her mother’s feet, and wailed.

INVENTORY ITEM
: boots

APPROXIMATE DATE
: late 1970s

CONDITION
: fair

ITEM DESCRIPTION
: Frye boots. Calf-height, size seven. Caramel-colored leather with some scuffing at toe. Stacked heel.

SOURCE
: Katherine Morgan’s house

Violet

ON A SATURDAY EVENING
in mid-July, Violet rang the doorbell of a Craftsman-style bungalow a block away from Hourglass Vintage. While she waited, she admired the Asiatic lilies blooming in the flower beds in front of the house. Sam had dropped off a bouquet of similar flowers for Violet at the store that afternoon, along with a carton of fresh strawberries from the farmers’ market. The lilies had filled the whole store with the sticky-sweet smell of summer. Violet had told Sam in a teasing voice that if he didn’t stop dropping by with flowers, she was going to get accustomed to it. He’d told her to go ahead and get accustomed.

April opened the door in yoga pants and a baggy T-shirt. Dark shadows underscored her eyes.

“Thanks for coming,” April said. “Enter at your own risk.”

“Your flower beds are gorgeous,” Violet said as she stepped into the tiled foyer.

“That’s all my mom’s work,” April said. “She planted them ages ago.”

“This place is adorable.” Violet looked at the stained glass windows on either side of the door, the carved woodwork on the staircase. “And not that cluttered. You made it sound like there was stuff everywhere.”

“You should have seen it before today. I’ve been working all afternoon. It’s like an archaeology dig. How was the rest of the day at the store?”

“I called some theaters and bars about holding the fashion show. The Majestic Theatre offered me a really good price for a night in mid-August, so I think we should have it there.”