Our first stop was in Atlanta. I’d spotted a massive German chip-carved oak sideboard in the Ainsworth-Noah showroom at ADAC on my last trip over there. At twenty-eight thousand dollars, it was a major purchase. But I’d taken a digital photo of the sideboard and e-mailed it to Will Mahoney, who agreed that it was the perfect piece for the breakfast room. We picked up a pair of faux stag-horn sconces in the same showroom, to go in Will’s study, which I was decorating with a subdued hunting lodge feel, and a set of six beautifully framed and matted nineteenth-century watercolor studies of brook trout.
We made Macon before noon. Once we were on I-16, headed east toward the coast, I ran out of aimless chit-chat.
Austin began toying with the radio, trying to find a station we could both agree on. He hates country, I hate eighties disco, we both hate rap.
“So,” he said, after finally giving up and turning the radio off. “What’s new with the Murdock family? How was dinner the other night?”
He was trying to act all innocent, but I knew he’d heard the talk around town.
“Dinner was great,” I said. “Daddy has a new dish.”
“I heard,” he said eagerly. “Chinese, right? What did you think? Did you like her? Is she way younger; do you think she’s after his money?”
I kept my eyes on the road. “I was talking about his new recipe. He fixed shrimp Creole.”
“Oh.” He let it hang there, echoing in the half-empty truck.
“And I met his lady friend. She’s all right. Not all that young. I’d guess early fifties. She’s Asian American, but I didn’t ask if she was Chinese. Grew up in Baton Rouge.”
“Well? Is she a gold-digger? That’s what I heard. That she works at the bank, so she knows exactly what your dad is worth.”
The kudzu telegraph strikes again. It hadn’t occurred to me that Serena might be after my father’s money. In fact, I hadn’t questioned her motives for seeing my father at all. I’d only questioned his motives in seeing her.
“She works at a bank in Greenville,” I told Austin. “I don’t think it has anything to do with Daddy’s bank. He acts like he’s crazy about her. And I think the feeling is mutual.”
“Do you think they’ve done the deed?”
“Austin! Don’t be disgusting.”
“So they have. How does that make you feel? I mean, you’ve been the only woman in his life all these years. Daddy’s girl, all that. Is that an Oedipal complex or an Electra complex?”
“Neither,” I cried. “I’m fine with him seeing Serena. It’s great. Anyway, his sex life is none of my business.”
“I knew it!” Austin said, snickering. “Good old Wade. Good for him. Do you think she knows any of those, like, kinky geisha girl tricks? Sort of that whole Kama Sutra thing?”
“This is my father we’re talking about here. Now you stop it right now or I’m putting you out of this truck, you perv.”
“I’m just sayin’,” he said airily. “You don’t have to freak out on me. He may be your daddy, but he’s only human. The guy has needs, for God’s sake. I mean, how long has your mama been gone?”
“Since 1979,” I snapped. “And he has no business having needs. Last I heard, he was still officially married.”
“As far as we know,” Austin said gently. “We’ve only checked the Southern states. And sweetie, there’s always the possibility that Jeanine is dead. You know that, right?”
“You said there was no death certificate,” I said.
“That we can find. But don’t you think if she were alive, you’d have heard something after all these years? I mean, you said yourself, she ran off. She never got in contact with you. Don’t you think it’s probably over between your parents? For all you know, she went off and married Darvis Kane and had a passel of kids.”
“That is not possible,” I said flatly. “And I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. He leaned up against the passenger side door and promptly fell fast asleep. Austin didn’t open his eyes again until we pulled up to the curb beside the DeSoto Hilton in Savannah.
“Here already?” he asked, craning his neck around. “Why didn’t you wake me up? I could have driven for a while.”
“You were sawing logs,” I said. “Anyway, I was enjoying the quiet.”
He stuck his tongue out at me. I checked us into the hotel. When we got up to the room, I felt like crying. I’d asked for a double. They’d given us a single king-sized bed.
“Crap,” I said, sinking down onto the quilted coverlet. “Don’t unpack.”
I picked up the phone and called down to the front desk. They were apologetic, but resolute. The hotel was full; there were no other rooms available.
“Oh, who cares?” Austin said, taking his shaving kit out of his overnight bag. “We’ll just sleep in the same bed. It’s only for a few hours. And it’s not like I’m going to violate you or anything.”
I gave him a dark look. “You snore. And I’ve gotten used to sleeping alone.”
“Pity,” he said, ducking into the bathroom just before I threw my shoe at him.
When he came out of the bathroom, he was dressed to kill. Sharply pressed white canvas pants, a striped dress shirt, no socks, immaculate Docksiders. He smelled like expensive aftershave. He was tall and tan and young and lovely. The boy from Ipanema.
“You’re gorgeous,” I said glumly.
“You think?” he asked, twirling around so I could get the full effect. “They go for the preppie look down here.”
“You’ll be fighting the guys off with a baseball bat,” I said.
He sat down on the bed beside me and put his arm around my shoulder. “I could go to dinner with you if you want. The clubs don’t really start hopping until after ten, from what I hear. What do you say? I’ll buy.”
I kissed his forehead. “No thanks. I want to get over to the auction house before it starts, to take a good look at some of the pieces I saw online. I’ll just grab a sandwich at the snack bar there. Take yourself over to 1790. It’s the restaurant attached to an inn over on President Street. Sit at the bar for a little while, order a martini. You’ll have a dinner date in ten minutes flat. Possibly even a marriage proposal.”
“Well…” He hesitated.
“Go.”
Pierce’s Auctions and Antiques was headquartered in a dilapidated one-story concrete-block building in a seedy-looking industrial area on the west side of Savannah. I knew I’d found the right address when I saw all the pickups, U-Hauls, and trailers parked in the parking lot outside.
I gave a woman at the door my name, address, tax number, and other business information, and she gave me a numbered cardboard paddle. “We start in fifteen minutes,” she said, pausing to flick the ash from her cigarette onto the concrete floor.
“Ten percent buyer’s reserve. We don’t hold nothin’ for nobody. It’s all cash and carry here.”
I joined the crowds milling around at the front of the building. It was an interesting crowd. Good ol’ boys with baseball caps and greasy fingernails mingled with well-dressed middle-aged dealers and a sprinkling of kids, who chased one aother around the room, throwing potato chips at one another.
The piece I was most interested in had drawn the attention of at least five other buyers. It was an early nineteenth-century walnut chest-on-chest. The catalog said it had come from an estate in Charleston, but then auction catalogs are never exactly the gospel truth. It had original brasses, nice hand-cut dovetailing on the drawers. The bracket feet looked right. It would be a wonderful addition to the master bedroom, or even the guest bedroom if I found something nicer down the road.
After I’d satisfied myself that it was the real thing, I looked around at the rest of the night’s offering. Like the crowd, the merchandise was an eclectic mix. There were nine or ten really good pieces of furniture, some decent Oriental rugs, some nice original oil paintings, a good deal of silver and crystal, and several lots of blue and white export porcela
ins, which I marked down on my catalog. Mixed in with the good stuff were several hundred pairs of bootleg designer sunglasses and Gucci handbags, a pallet of power tools, and several huge cartons of knitting yarn.
A buzzer sounded, and the auctioneer took up his place in front of the microphone on the raised desk at the front of the room.
He was fast, I’ll give him that. Within an hour he’d disposed of the sunglasses and handbags, half the power tools, and several of the rugs.
The prices were amazingly good. Almost without thinking, I bid on and won three large, somewhat threadbare Oriental rugs, for two hundred dollars apiece. I’d seen similar rugs earlier in the day at the Markanian showroom at ADAC, and none of them had prices under three thousand dollars. I looked around for someone to high-five, but settled for a self-satisfied smirk to myself.
But I didn’t even have time to gloat over my bargain. The lots of blue and white came up for bid, and although the first couple lots went high—they were large Sheffield English platters—people lost interest rapidly. Within fifteen minutes I’d bought two box lots of platters, and plates, another of mismatched jugs, tureens, and urns, for a total of three hundred and fifty dollars.
I skipped to the front of the room to gather up the porcelain, then sat back down to examine my loot. The platters and plates were English, with good hallmarks on the back. There were some Wedgwood and some Staffordshire, and the best, which was a large Coal-port meat platter. Altogether there were five platters and three smaller plates. The jugs had wonderful dark colors, but chips on the lip and some crazing on the glaze. The Worcester tureen was my favorite piece. More the size of a footbath, it came with an underplate—but a lid that had been cracked and clumsily damaged.
The nicest pieces of blue and white I could use at Mulberry Hill. I didn’t know or care where the rest of the stuff would go; the prices were so good I might even save them for myself.
The auctioneer had saved the best pieces of furniture for last. I drooled as a pine Welsh dresser sold for three thousand dollars, and a gorgeous set of Georgian dining room chairs brought eight thousand dollars, but I resignedly kept my bid paddle in my lap.
Finally the moment I’d been waiting for arrived. I’d marked and starred item 328 on my auction catalog—the chest-on-chest—and I felt the familiar pounding in my chest as the auctioneer worked his way through the dross to the gold. Ten thousand, I told myself. If I could get the chest for ten thousand, the rest of the bedroom would fall into place around it.
As always, I remembered Aunt Gloria’s formula for a beautiful room. “Wooden floors covered with Oriental carpets, for richness and texture. One true antique that gives the room elegance and a sense of place. And a beautiful painting or piece of art, that speaks to you, every time you enter the room.”
The chest-on-chest would hold up one corner of Gloria’s design triangle.
“Now folks, here’s a humdinger,” the auctioneer said, hunched over the microphone, his eyes constantly scanning the room. “Nineteenth-century walnut chest-on-chest, straight out of the Catabogue Plantation over there in Charleston. You won’t see nothin’ like this outside a museum. Whaddya say now? Who’ll give me sixty?”
“Dollars?” hollered somebody in the back. “I’ll give ya sixty dollars.”
“Folks, there’s a penalty for pulling the auctioneer’s leg,” he said. “I’m talkin’ sixty thousand American greenbacks, and that’s a bargain for a piece like this. Who’ll give me sixty thousand?”
Everybody around me was craning their necks to see if anybody would bite. But they were obviously all pros who were steeped in auction wisdom—never be the opening bidder.
The auctioneer shook his head. “All right, cheapskates. Who’ll give me fifty-five? Gimme fifty-five and walk out of here with the buy of the night.”
No deal.
“Fifty?” he was incredulous. “Folks, I’d be giving it away at fifty thousand.”
The room was very quiet. The buyers who’d huddled around the piece earlier were all watching one another to see who would be the first to give in.
The auctioneer blew into the microphone. He made an elaborate show of cupping his hand to his ear, in case the opening bid was a whisper. Finally, with an exaggerated shrug and the wounded air of a man who’d seen his firstborn child passed over for kickball, he started his patter.
“Allrightthen, gimme forty-five? No? Forty? Gimme thirty-five. No? Thirty? You’re killing me folks. I’m dying up here. Say twenny-five. Twenny-five, twenny-five. No? Then twenty. Twenty, twenty, twenty? No? Somebody call the doctor! This place is a morgue. All right. Fifteen. Somebody gimme fifteen for this gorgeous piece right out of the plantation house. I’m not kiddin’ it could be in a New York showroom for sixty thousand dollars tomorrow. Those Yankees would snap it up like that.”
Silence.
The auctioneer took a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his brow with it. “Allrightthen. We’ll do it your way. Gimme an opening bid. I mean it. We got a lot of stuff to move tonight. Gimme something to work with here.”
“A thousand,” called a thirty-ish man dressed in khaki shorts with a ballcap pulled low over his forehead. He held up his paddle so the auctioneer could see he meant business.
The auctioneer shook his head and muttered something inaudible. “I got a thousand. I don’t want it, but I got a thousand.”
Now the bidding picked up in a hurry.
A plump woman with huge horn-rimmed glasses sitting at the end of my aisle waved her paddle. “Eleven.”
Someone at the very back of the room, who I couldn’t see, must have waded in too.
“Twelve,” the auctioneer called. And the room was suddenly alive with numbered paddles being thrust into the air.
“Now fifteen. Make it two. I got two. Make it twenty-five. I got twenty-five up front. Now three? I got three. Make it four. Five? That’s better.”
I looked down at the numbered paddle in my hand. Five thousand was less than half of what I’d planned to pay. The chest was the real thing. It was a bargain. But it was still five thousand dollars. And I had so many other pieces to buy for the house. I’d been spending money like a drunken sailor—twenty-eight thousand on that one piece in Atlanta alone, what was one more check? Certainly Will hadn’t given me any kind of a budget.
But I kept thinking of having to hand over the invoices for this trip to Nancy Rockmore, back at the Loving Cup offices. I could even hear her voice, “Twenty-eight thousand for a sideboard? Five thousand dollars for a goddamn chest of drawers? Is this stuff made of gold?”
My hand stayed in my lap.
The auctioneer kept up his patter. “Fifty-five. Now six. I got six thousand. Now seven. Now eight. Now nine.” Most of the bidders had dropped out after five thousand. There were only three left. Ballcap, the lady in the horn-rimmed glasses, and the bidder in the back who I couldn’t see.
“Ten,” the auctioneer said. He nodded to my right. “Eleven.” Now to the doorway, “Twelve.” The bidder in the back dropped out. It was a two-way race.
“Thirteen. Now fourteen.” The auctioneer looked askance at ballcap. “Fifteen?”
Ballcap shook his had sadly and let his paddle drop to his side.
“Fifteen?” the auctioneer called. “Fifteen? Fifteen? All done. Sold! to the luckiest lady in Savannah.” He paused. She held up her paddle so the clerk who sat beside him could register her number. “Fifteen thousand dollars to number 213.”
There was a quick round of quiet applause. The woman in the horn-rims marked her catalog and looked up again, waiting for the next item to come up to bid.
I stood up and got my pocketbook. It was no use my staying here any longer. I felt like a kid who’d finally had too much candy. Everything here was too rich. It made my stomach hurt.
47
At six A.M. I heard the click of the key card in the lock and looked up from tying my sneakers. Austin stood in the doorway with his own shoes in his hands, and on his face, an alluring
combination of glee and guilt.
“Nice night?” I asked.
“What are you doing?” he asked, letting the shoes drop to the floor. “We can’t leave yet. I know you said early, but not this early.”
“Relax,” I said. “Get some sleep. I’ve got some shopping to do, so we probably won’t get out of here until at least noon.”
He dropped down on the bed beside me, and buried his head in the pillows. “Thank Gawd. I should know better than to drink gin in this climate.”
“I take it you made some nice new friends?” I asked.
“Nice and naughty.” His voice was muffled under all those pillows. “I could never live down here. I would be dead in six months. Partied completely to death.”
I stood up and did some stretches. “Noon,” I warned. “You’ve got six hours to make a complete and total recovery before we blow town.”
I had the elevator all to myself. And the lobby of the DeSoto was nearly empty too. It was still near dark outside the hotel. As I walked through Chippewa Square, past a homeless man dozing on a bench near the statue of General Oglethorpe, I headed north down Drayton Street. I had no plan. Just to get a walk in before Savannah’s ungodly heat and humidity blanketed the town. And maybe a little window shopping.
As I walked, I thought about Mulberry Hill. I had made a good start on decorating it, but there was something missing.
The sketches looked great, I knew. But when I totaled up all the pieces I had bought or ordered, nothing seemed to come together. It dawned on me that I was designing by rote, buying things because of a pedigree or name recognition. Stephanie would know a Brunswig & Fils fabric. Stephanie could appreciate the glamour of an Empire mahogany sideboard or a gilt Regency mirror and a custom-colored Stark carpet. But as I arranged the rooms in my mind’s eye, it all seemed forced, and cold—stuffy and pompous and decidedly unimaginative.
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