Summer Place
Part Seventeen
I
scared someone? Someone scared me?
I tagged my grandmother… on the
always moving circle of antiquarian duck, duck, goose? Or has she tagged me? I’m eight years old on her back stair
landing… standing… befuddled before …THIS “show you”… old sewing stand. Or am I forty-eight years old and ‘just
bought it’; the THIS SAME ‘show you’ old sewing stand… ‘cheap’?
Do
I know this?
Do
I care?
Do
I?
The
crescendo of thunder claps in the …thunder storms… of the then forty years of
rolling through thunder storms of … ‘growing up under the antiquarian tutelage
of a grandmother …has “schooled me” in the very subtle trademark traditions of
this whole… Maine… romance’ (Part One) … came and went (the storm ‘passed’) as
a ‘without’ for me?
Yes;
a ‘without’. I picked up the stand
with one hand… after deploying two twenty dollar bills from MY OWN ‘rubber
banded roll of money’… and carried it outside to the shade side of the truck…
next to the dressing table. I set
it down. I walked over to the open
hatchback of the near car with its cardboard boxes purveyed. The two women had followed me out and
…moved to the open hatch with the boxes …too. I was …now… fitting a small piece to another small piece of
THIS current ‘house call’ (puzzle).
Stupid and simple it was (the joining of the two puzzle pieces) ‘this
stuff REALLY IS from my grandmother’s house’. That simple and …that stupid. The boxes enhanced the progression of this …stupidity.
“I
REALLY DIDN’T THINK THAT YOU WOULD WANT THIS BUT I BROUGHT THESE.” the heir in
charge sister said as I… slipped under the up raised hatch, into the hatch’s
shade, looked down at the boxes, reached down and pulled open the loose
cardboard flaps of one box to… show… old newspaper wrapped… ‘glass and
china’…iota… filling that box that said to me ‘the other boxes are filled like
this too’ AND SAID TO ME… using a standard antiques dealer buying skill of
…casually noting the DATE on the newspaper wrapping the… ‘whatever’… to get a
slight of hand clue as to a ‘how long’ the box contents had been ‘packed away’. I was rewarded with a third piece of
the puzzle of stupidity being found and fitted.
The
newspaper dated a… the summer of 1982; the year my grandmother died and season
when her estate was… distributed, ‘cleaned out’ (by me) and her ‘house’
‘sold’. That was a nice stupid
piece to a nice stupid puzzle that I snapped into the other stupid pieces and…
went forgetfully forward from this opportunity ‘no thinking back’. Most probably the newspaper’s date was
…the exact day BEFORE… the ‘this stuff’ was wrapped in that newspaper, packed
in the boxes, ‘put away’ and NEVER TOUCHED AGAIN.
This
attention getting phenomena; the denoting of the DATE on the…old newspaper
wrapping the old antiques in the old box …in the old house GUIDES one AWAY from
dynamic ‘big picture’ thinking and TOWARD the trail of more… stupidity
thinking. I ‘dated’ the paper and
I ‘my grandmother’s house’ that date and I… plunged my greedy hand into the box
and… pulled up, partially extracted, partially unwrapped, partially sort of
peeked at… slightly sort of… that ‘it’ and… skipped right on to the next clump
of old newspaper to repeat and do the same move on to… pull the box flaps, pull
the newspaper clumps ‘next box’ and …third box?
Not
quite for I heard the woman’s voice saying “HER CHINA CABINET” as I identified
a ‘glass and (or) china’ ‘from long ago’ IOTA as from “HER CHINA CABINET” …TOO
and so… this being a ‘such’ started the falling down of long ago stood up
dominos that …went through my mind
at high speed as “china cabinet; grandmother’s; shelves; four; glass and china;
boxes; four; shelves packed in boxes; by heir; each shelf packed in boxes;
newspaper from then dated; never touched again; grandmother’s; china cabinet;
her; good things? No. Yes. That I;
remember; do I; yes; I do; my hand; in the third box; shelf; down; in back;
yes; old newspaper clump; “THERE IT IS; that; the bowl; old bowl; yes; ‘show
you’; THAT bowl; now HERE; THIS BOWL; in hand; my hand; is; the; Compass
Parker’s BOWL. (Part Six and Part
Twelve-A)
It
was… with the old 1982 newspaper falling away as I, with it in left hand swung
it out and away from the box, boxes and hatchback shelter to become MY OWN in
cavalier back swing AWAY from ANY ‘all’ to do with the ‘this’ (the current
house call including ALL its complexities and nuances …spanning twenty years.
Yes; like those before me who came before me too to ‘show you’ I …without
special needs… TOO… did NOT let go of the old bowl and did NOT set it back or
down and DID NOT fail to EVER ALWAYS ‘kept’ my little slot of peripheral vision
protectively ON IT while I:
Pretended to sensitively poke the FOURTH BOX and clumped
newspaper wrapped of the “her bric-brac”:
“FROM
HER CHINA CABINET I HAVE THAT TOO”.
“This
is all from that.”
“Maybe
another box but I didn’t SEE one”.
“I
remember. It. Ah. Three forty-five.”
“TODAY?”
“Today?”
“Three
forty-five this afternoon?”
Pause.
“Three
HUNDRED forty-five DOLLARS. … For
the BOXES” I said actually accidentally waving the left hand held ‘Compass’
bowl’ between the three of us as I mentally “ZOMBIE LAND OR WHAT” my offer and
the trail that it went off on. I
got the bowl back behind me (sort of ) as the SHE says:
“OH”
followed by the sister making a word sound of some sort of “Oh”. Too.
Pause
of maybe two seconds that actually felt like TWO long eternal plunges into HELL
including high decibel internalized screaming.
“OK. FINE. DO YOU WANT THE CABINET?”
“Forty.”
“The
cabinet?”
“It’s
a junker”.
“It
is? … Oh… Oh: I’m never going to use it. OK”.
“I’ll
get the money” I said. I turned,
walked to the truck’s driver’s door.
I opened the door, set Compass Parker’s bowl upside down on the seat and
quickly ‘snaked’ the cash wallet out of the …soft canvas… briefcase on the
center of the seat.
I
paid.
Then
I continued, uneventfully, to view, rummage, find and purchase ‘more’ ‘there’
for about an hour AND agreed, while loading the truck to
“LOOK
AT SOME MORE WHEN YOU PICK UP THE CHINA CABINET.”
“Tomorrow
morning, right?”
“WONDERFUL”.
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