Читать книгу Known By Heart - Ellen Prentiss Campbell - Страница 12

Surprise Boxes

The dean approved my petition to withdraw; I stripped my room in the freshman dorm. The Greyhound bus carried me home to Bedford through a freak April snowstorm.

I slept like a hibernating beast the first week and would have liked to sleep straight through the spring, hiding in my room, but my mother pushed me out of bed. Heavy and slow, as though walking underwater, I dressed and brushed my limp hair to please her. I felt erased, the past months flushed away without a trace.

“Enough moping. Go make yourself useful to Mr. Westervelt,” my mother said.

It was easier not to refuse, so I walked to the church Mr. Westervelt had converted to his home and antique shop. He had retired and moved to town the year I was ten. I’m a retired minister living in a retired church, he liked to say. My mother said he had retired early and wasn’t old, but he seemed old to me. His shop was my after-school refuge until high school. I abandoned him for drama club, year book and a summer job at the Frosty Bear selling soft serve ice cream to blond boys on the football team.

Now I walked through his church door again. The bell on the doorknob announced me just as always. He was reading at the cash register and put down his book. He looked more like Lincoln than ever, thin face and deep-set eyes, until he smiled.

“Margaret, my pearl,” he said, as he used to. My name, he had explained, meant pearl in Greek, which he studied in seminary. “Your mother said you were home. Care to answer an old man’s prayers and help out?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Let’s have a cup of tea before I press you into service.”

We walked through the shop, dim and dusty as I remembered, and through the door behind the pulpit into his apartment, carved out of what had been the choir dressing room. I sat at his kitchen table and glanced around while he made tea. The bulky old phonograph was on its shelf in the pantry. I knew the piles of records on the floor were the popular songs from his youth. Glenn Miller. Frank Sinatra. “Dancing is my secret vice, Margaret. I’m thankful to be a minister, not a priest,” he used to say. He had taught me to dance, on those afternoons, the year I was thirteen. Just before I went home for the evening, we would have our lesson. He was graceful, and had made me feel graceful as well, though I was growing tall too fast. He would lead me around the kitchen table and keep count as the music spilled and spun. My favorite song was Fascination. He had always played it last.

“Your tea, mademoiselle.” He filled my china cup from the fat pot I remembered, snug in its knitted cozy, like a baby in a bunting.

He heaped sugar in his cup and stirred. It was like the old days when I used to sit at this table and sip milky tea—cambric tea, he called it—and eat graham crackers. He stroked his cat and we would talk. About customers, if he’d had any, and what they bought. About his missionary days in India. About my homework; we practiced the county seats of Pennsylvania, the presidents in order.

And now here we were again, drinking tea.

“You have perfect timing. I’ve just been to a big auction and could use help sorting.”

My favorite task had always been sorting purchases from estate sales and auctions. Opening the cartons, unwrapping objects from layers of old newspaper had seemed like Christmas.

“Let me give you a tour, refresh your memory as to where things go.”

The sanctuary was crammed with table linens, sheet music, books, buttons, old post cards, and costume jewelry. His inventory was always more junk than antiques, except for the glass-fronted cabinet of bone china. We paused there.

“I still have my weakness for fine china,” he said. “Can’t ever let a pretty piece go unclaimed, no matter if it’s chipped or cracked. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Once I had been in the shop when a customer exclaimed, “Oh! This is my grandmother’s pattern,” as though her grandmother were restored with the pink-flowered saucer. It did seem possible, in the clutter of his shop, to find something precious that had been lost.

We squeezed down narrow aisles between laden card tables.

“Here are the salt and pepper shakers,” he said. “I keep an eye out at the sales for the ones shaped like fruit, the ones you liked.”

When I was his after-school helper, I had started a salt and pepper collection, purchasing one or two a week. He would have given them to me, but I preferred to pay, twenty-five cents a set.

He flipped on the light in the stairwell and I followed him upstairs. He paused on every step and leaned hard on the banister.

“The choir loft is still for clothes and hats. I put the everyday dishes, board games, jigsaw puzzles, and picture frames up here, too. When I can climb the stairs. My hip’s a bit gimpy.”

I spotted the old dressmaker’s dummy he had rescued from a dumpster at the women’s clothing store in town. We had named her Esmerelda. I used to dress her up in outfits culled from the cast-off clothes. Now she leaned in the corner of the choir loft, draped in an old wool coat with a fur collar.

“Esmerelda!”

“Yes, wish I was aging as gracefully as she. A classic beauty.”

He made his painstaking way downstairs and sank into his chair by the cash register.

“Don’t think I’m up for a trip to the basement today. Check it out. Then we can go to the garage and start work.”

The basement was as I remembered: a dank catacomb of little rooms, packed with tools and pots and pans, coffee percolators, bottles, canning jars. I climbed back upstairs.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready,” I replied.

“Well, no rest for the weary,” he said, and hoisted himself out of the chair.

We walked through the shop and kitchen, out the back door into the garage. The big folding table he kept for sorting was covered with boxes.

“I’ve fallen behind. Glad you’re here.”

It was like old times. I fished in the cartons, handed each item over, and watched him deliberate before writing a price on a sticky circular label.

“This treasure is ready for the floor. Find it a spot. Remember, like goes with like,” he said.

I did remember. It was a scavenger hunt in reverse, finding each piece its place. As I fell into the familiar quiet rhythm of working together, I recalled how I used to tell him about what I was reading. He sometimes had recited poetry. Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell, was the line that came back to me now, his voice in my mind’s ear. I almost wanted to tell him what I had learned in college, about love. And ask him if he thought I would go to hell, for what I had done. But it was enough to work together until evening fell. Mr. Westervelt did not suggest dancing. I wondered, as I crossed the yards between his house and ours, if he could still dance, with his gimpy hip.

There was no letter waiting for me on the mail table. I had left a note, with my address, in his study carrel beside mine in the library, where we had first met, studying side by side. Once he had left a rose for me, on my books. I had the dry petals in my jewelry box. He had been avoiding the library, before I went away, before I conveniently disappeared. He would not write.

“I’m back here,” called my mother from the kitchen. I walked down the hall.

“So, how was your day?” she asked, scanning my face with a quick glance.

“Okay.”

“Did he tell you the doctor wants him to have hip replacement?”

“He didn’t mention it.”

I went back the next day.

“Margaret, my pearl,” he greeted me, as though I were the person he most wanted to see in the world. “There’s a good sale advertised in The Gazette. Let’s go.” He hung the Closed sign in the window and locked the door. Early spring was quiet, no need to worry about missing customers.

“Be my chauffeur, please.”

Driving his dilapidated station wagon, my attention on the twists and turns of the road, the cotton fog in my mind cleared. The quiet road unrolled. Tree branches were misted with the first green leaves. We rode past red barns emblazoned with Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco, Treat Yourself to the Best and big metal mailboxes planted hopefully by the end of long drives leading to weather-beaten farm houses.

We came to the sign: Sale Today. I followed the arrow and parked in the mud beside a rambling house.

“Ah, the thrill of the chase,” he said. “You go in first. Case the joint, I’ll let your young bones do the leg work. Come back and tell me what to bid on, and who is going to outbid us.”

There was little there but musty rooms and dust. Scarred furniture. Battered suitcases and stained chenille bedspreads. An empty playpen. And potholders like giant mittens. Potholders like the ones that had been slipped over the metal stirrups on the clinic table, to cushion my cold feet during the procedure.

“Not much,” I told him, returning to the car.

“Well, no matter how slim the pickings, I’ll find something.” Mr. Westervelt bought something at every auction, out of sympathy for the family. That day he bid on sealed cardboard boxes labeled Kitchen, Dining Room, and Bedroom.

Back at the store, we worked as a team, sorting the flotsam and jetsam from the cartons. He perched on a step stool while I spread the contents out on the table in the garage for his inspection. It was mostly junk. But he said, “For every sock there’s a foot.” He priced the saleable merchandise, writing neatly with a fine tip felt pen. I found each piece its spot, like with like, in choir loft, sanctuary, or basement. The dregs, like an electric curler set missing some rollers, went to the picnic table under the garage eaves. Help Yourself said his hand lettered sign. These offerings always vanished, the way giant zucchini disappear overnight from give-away produce stands.

Finally, only little things remained on the sorting table, too good to give away, too insignificant to sell. Old fashioned white gloves. A pair of dice. Souvenir pens and pencils. Macramé plant hangers. Packages of complimentary greeting cards from charities. Hotel soaps, shampoos and body lotions. Plastic toys from fast food meals. He used these leftovers like crackerjack prizes to fill empty shoeboxes, labeled in his neat block printing: Boy’s Surprise Box; Girl’s Surprise Box; Lady’s Surprise Box; Gentleman’s Surprise Box. Each cost a dollar, and his sign beside them read, “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

His surprise boxes were special favorites in summer when the campgrounds by the lake filled with families out from Pittsburgh. He let sunburnt children heft each box before choosing. “No shaking, and no peeking, until you’re out of the store. No refunds, and no returns—unless you find I’ve put in a hundred-dollar bill by mistake,” he warned the small customers. The children would hand over crumpled dollar bills and race outside to crouch at the foot of the stairs and open the cardboard treasure chests.

Now, he selected items for next summer’s boxes with tender concentration and tied the lids shut with twine. A diaper pin with a pastel plastic clasp shaped like a duck caught my eye; I slipped it in my pocket.

The next week, scouting at another auction, I found a bride’s dress: size eight, tags still on from Kaufmann’s in Pittsburgh. The veil was there too, wilted on the hanger. And a pair of satin pumps, soles pristine. I went out to the car where he was waiting.

“A bride’s dress, never worn.”

“The wedding must have been called off. Like mine,” he said, surprising me.

“What happened?”

“We’d have to ask the bride, and she’s not here.”

I mean what happened to you, I wanted to say.

He limped over to the folding chairs set up in front of the auctioneer. I sat beside him.

“It’s a lovely dress,” he said, when it came on the block, and bid on it, surprising me again. There was no competition. Antique dealers were not interested in a bride’s dress only a few seasons out of fashion.

“The two of you planning to tie the knot?” the auctioneer teased.

I blushed. Mr. Westervelt shook his head and smiled.

At the store, I unloaded the ivory satin dress, tulle veil, and pumps along with the more usual cargo of dishes, ice skates, and old National Geographic magazines. In a carton of books there was a battered copy of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care. I started to read. Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do. Soon you’re going to have a baby. I dropped the book back in the box.

He priced the dress, veil, and shoes last, as a package: twenty dollars. Putting down his pen he said, “Think I’ll take a lie-down. Go on home, thanks for your help.”

“I’ll stay and finish putting the stuff out.”

“If you want, thanks.”

He walked through the door behind the pulpit into his apartment.

I busied myself, finding places for the new items, like with like. My eye fell on the bride’s dress, gleaming in the jumble. It was unlike anything else in the store. I supposed it should go to the choir loft, where the old clothes were. I stroked the folds and picked it up. The gown filled my arms, heavy and smooth. I started upstairs then sat on the steps, cradling the dress, the lustrous satin pooled on my lap. The shop was quiet, mid-week quiet. No one would come in. I went upstairs and laid the dress down gently on the floor. In the dim loft, the gown shone like moonlight on water, tempting me with the promise of smooth satin on my skin. Kicking off my sneakers, I stripped out of my jeans and T-shirt. I stepped into the dress and pulled it up. It was stiffer than I had expected; I could not fasten the tiny buttons down the back. Holding up the full skirt, I walked downstairs to see my reflection in the full-length mirror beside the pulpit. The white satin dress transformed me the way snow hides and heals the everyday world.

The door behind the pulpit opened and Mr. Westervelt stepped into the shop.

“Oh, Margaret. Aren’t you lovely.” He held out his hand to me. “May I have this dance?”

I followed him into the kitchen. He put Fascination on the phonograph and took me in his arms, his hand warm on my bare back where the dress gaped open. We waltzed around the kitchen until the song ended.

“You will be a beautiful bride one day,” he said. I drank in his words like a blessing and a promise, as though he could forgive me for the sin he did not even know and foretell a happy ending.

I changed in his bathroom, reluctant to take off the dress and put on my ordinary clothes. I carried the heavy armload of satin back to the shop. Mr. Westervelt was standing by the cash register.

“Bring down Esmerelda. Let’s have a bridal display,” he said.

I dragged the mannequin from the choir loft. He brought a washcloth, towel, and bar of soap from the apartment and washed her blind, scratched face.

“You dress her, for decency’s sake,” he said, smiling.

She was built like a giant Barbie, pointy bust, wasp waist, and arched feet, perpetually on tiptoe. Stretching her out on the floor, I wrestled the gown on, then tipped her upright. The veil covered her baldness, softening her pocked face. I propped her up by the pulpit under the stained-glass window.

The bell on the church door jingled. A girl came in. I recognized her; she sold pies at the bakeshop by the turnpike exit near town. She looked about my age. Her red hair was scraped back from her high forehead in a tight ponytail, pulling tissue-paper thin skin taut.

“Hello there. Thanks for stopping in,” he said.

She glanced at the mannequin and turned away.

“Do you have any plain dishes? I’m looking for Corelle ware.”

“Take a peek upstairs. Might be some,” he said.

The stairs squeaked as she went upstairs. Then it was quiet again, except for muffled clinks from the choir loft. She came down with a couple of place settings of white dishes and took them to the cash register.

“You don’t have any pots and pans, do you?”

“In the basement. Put the light on, you’re the first today.”

She returned with an old drip coffee pot, a double boiler missing the lid, and a cast iron skillet.

“Looks like you’re setting up house-keeping,” he said.

“I’m getting married.”

“Congratulations.” Mr. Westervelt stroked the cat in his lap.

“That’s a pretty dress over there,” she said.

“Would you like to try it on?”

“I’m not having a church wedding.”

“Try it on, why not?”

She shook her head, gazing at the dress.

“Margaret, slip the dress off Esmerelda and show this young lady where my bathroom is. She can change there.”

I struggled the dress off the mannequin. My fingers were clumsy and slow; my head buzzed. Cradling the dress in my arms, I led the girl into his apartment. She followed so close behind me she stepped on the heel of my sneaker. I turned on the light in the bathroom, surrendered the dress, and left her alone. I went back to the shop. Soon, I heard the whisper of heavy fabric. The girl stood beside the pulpit. Late afternoon sunlight streamed in the stained-glass window, a halo of dust motes danced around her. The dress and the girl glowed. My eyes stung.

“It has your name on it. Slip out of it and we’ll see what I’ve got in the way of a box,” he said.

“I couldn’t.”

“You’ll be doing me a favor, get it off my hands. Not much call for bridal gowns in a store like this. Take it as my wedding present.”

I swallowed. The back of my throat burned.

“Thank you,” the girl said.

She swirled around, graceful as a Fall Foliage Festival Princess, and vanished into the apartment.

Mr. Westervelt opened a Lady’s Surprise Box.

“Margaret, look in the jewel case and pick out some nice earrings for our bride.”