Shadows at the Fair

by Lea Wait

  “Susan, how awful for you.” Maggie reached out and touched Susan’s arm. Many dealers were gay, of course, but to have your own husband decide that he preferred men to women…what an awful blow to your ego!

  “No, actually, it’s wonderful! I’m playing the field; I’m having fun! And Harry and I are still friends, so I really haven’t lost anything. I mean, he and I were always close, and all, but, you understand, sex was never a big thing with us, and now—life is a party! It’s like being a teenager all over again, with lots of people to choose from, only now I’m old enough to know how to play the games!”

  “Susan, I hope you do. Those games have lots of rules. And lots of liabilities.” Gussie looked worried. “Do be careful, dear.”

  “I am, I am. I’m a big girl, Gussie. I can take care of myself. And I don’t have anything to worry about. You see, everything is just wonderful! Everyone’s got what he wants. Harry and Joe have each other, I’ll have the money for my half of the business, and the world is full of possibilities! The old married-lady bit just wasn’t my scene. I mean, Harry and I did pretty well for the last eleven years, but I’ve been too fettered. Now I can be me! When Harry and I met, we were just kids, out to set New York on its heels. We had lots of friends, went to lots of parties, and made some money. But over the years Harry has gotten too serious. First he wanted us to open a shop and stop just selling at shows and out of our loft. And now this thing with Joe; wanting to settle down with one person, when we could have had each other and the world, too! Well, that’s not for me. I’m not ready to settle in and make chocolate chip cookies, you know?”

  No; Susan didn’t look like someone who owned an apron, much less a cookie sheet. Unless she used one to reheat vegetarian pizza.

  Vince’s voice on the public address system startled all of them. “Dealers, please return to your booths. The six o’clock reception is about to begin.”

  “Oh, you’ve got to let me go and get organized. I have to make sure my cash box and sales books are in order, just in case a customer comes near.” Susan laughed. “We’ll have lots of time to talk later!”

  She turned and danced the few steps to her booth and disappeared behind the wall separating her space from Maggie’s.

  “Do you believe?” Gussie arched her eyebrows and looked after Susan.

  The sound of a carton being opened in the booth across from Gussie’s distracted them in the preshow quiet.

  Joe Cousins was unpacking one last carton of leather-bound “decorator books” and arranging them on the shelves beneath his J. COUSINS, BOOKSELLER sign. As they looked, Joe stood up, and Harry reached over to straighten his tie.

  Lydia Wyndham was arranging some pink azaleas in a silver vase on one of her tables, while, standing at the other side of the Silver in Mind booth, Abe smiled and raised his can of soda toward them.

  “Good show, ladies.”

  Maggie and Gussie raised their glasses back toward him. “May they!”

  Chapter 7

  Godey’s Fashions for April 1867, hand-colored steel engraving, double foldout page from Godey’s Ladies Book, the first successful American ladies’ magazine; each issue featured several colored plates of the latest fashions. Godey’s was a decisive voice in determining Americans’ morals and taste. Engraving of five ladies in elaborate outside attire, including one in mourning riding habit, with horse. Also, child in red dress feeding swan. Price: $60.

  The opening reception was civilized and predictable. Well-dressed and well-coiffed couples strolled the aisles, sipped chardonnay or martinis, and made the usual comments as they walked by.

  “Dear, how cute! What do you think it is?” (An eighteenth-century wire flyswatter.)

  “You know, my grandmother had one just like that. We threw it out with all her junk when we moved her into assisted living, you know.” (A mid-nineteenth-century flow-blue china platter.)

  “Very nice…but the color wouldn’t fit in our living room.” (An Audubon egret print.)

  “You know, I should tell my decorator about these things.” (Victorian silver and crystal cosmetic bottles and jars.)

  “I always did like mahogany.” (A cherry sideboard.)

  Dealers smiled patiently at prospective customers, sipped cups of whatever, and wished for a customer who was serious enough to appreciate the beauty and the value of merchandise they had spent months gathering and hours displaying, and maybe, if they were really optimistic, for a customer who’d buy something.

  One redheaded woman in a chartreuse suit spent twenty minutes going through a portfolio of Maggie’s hand-colored steel engravings of garden plants from William Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, an annual published by the Royal Horticultural Society in London from 1887 until World War I. Maggie was lucky to have about seventy in stock. The best botanical artists worked for “The Magazine” or “Curtis,” as it was called. Printings were limited, and highly thought of. That translated to “hard to find” and “valuable.”

  The woman examined the prints carefully, sorting them for color and symmetry. Finally, after she’d chosen six flowers that she liked in various shades of blue and burgundy, her husband joined her.

  “What do you think, dear?” she asked. “Wouldn’t they look stunning on the side wall in the dining room? We could mat them in dusty rose to match our drapes, and frame them in gold.”

  Her husband took about two seconds to wave them aside. “Boring. Why don’t you just get one decent bright painting instead of bothering with all those dull flowers?”

  The carefully chosen set of six prints went back into the Curtis portfolio, and Maggie wrote off her hopes of a good sale. Small Curtis prints were now going for over $100 each, and even with a discount for buying six, a $600 sale would definitely have made the evening worthwhile.

  Lydia Wyndham, who had been watching the whole incident, came over and whispered, “Just like they say: one in the hand is worth two in the bush. I’d rather a single customer anytime than a married one with the husband or wife at the show. Eighty percent of the time they won’t agree, and that means the end of the sale. Never knew it to fail. Would you like a cup of lemon verbena tea? I have a thermos of hot water in my booth.”

  “No, thanks, Lydia; I have something to drink.” Maggie indicated the sherry next to her cash box. “But thanks for asking!” Maggie never drank tea, but she believed in keeping her options open. “Between you and Susan, I never lack possibilities for tea during this show.”

  “It’s fun; we usually bring a few new favorites to share. Last year Susan was really into hibiscus. That’s a little sweet for my taste. But if you want to try anything, and like it sweeter, I always keep a little raspberry honey set aside, just in case.”

  Maggie nodded. She couldn’t tell raspberry honey from maple syrup.

  Her next customer was a young man who picked out two late-nineteenth-century male fashion prints. Engravings of men in elegant black suits and dapper mustaches were much rarer than women’s fashion prints.

  “What credit cards do you take?”

  “Sorry; just checks and cash.” Maggie sighed as he put the prints back. Some dealers took credit cards, but she had never bothered to go through the necessary paperwork. She only did a dozen shows a year, and most customers were comfortable giving checks if they didn’t have enough cash with them. Occasionally a check bounced, but that was just one of the risks of doing business. Most antiques show customers, like most people in general, were honest. But she had lost several good sales in the past year…. Maybe it was time to check into whatever would be required to join the plastic world.

  Michael could have helped me with that, she thought automatically. The numbness she had lived with for months was now gone, and so was the raw pain, but the deep, everyday pain remained. The really awful part, Maggie thought, was that I don’t miss Michael as a person as much as I miss the life I had always assumed would be there for us, together. All the things we had planned to do “someday.” Have children. Spend more time together
. Cruise down the Rhine.

  Late at night, hugging her pillow and allowing the tears to come, she still missed their dreams, and their tomorrows, and tried not to think about the mystery woman who had received a Tiffany bracelet for Christmas, or to wonder whether she was mourning, too.

  On this opening night of the spring fair, Maggie felt a new edge as she sat and greeted customers. Michael’s insurance hadn’t equaled his income. Community college teaching was a solid profession, but was not particularly well paid. She might have an empty bed. But she didn’t intend to have an empty bank account as well.

  “That’s a very special Winslow Homer wood engraving,” she said, smiling at the woman in a black suit and red blouse who was peering at one of the walls in her booth. “One of his Gloucester series, his most popular. It was published in Harper’s Weekly in 1873.”

  “But it’s black and white!” The woman, who managed to look Maggie’s age only with substantial cosmetic help, was doubtful.

  “Winslow Homer was one of America’s greatest nineteenth-century painters. At the beginning of his career he worked for Harper’s Weekly, a nationally known American newspaper. In the nineteenth century newspapers weren’t in color. Homer would sketch on location, and an engraver would take his sketches and make the actual wood engraving used by the newspaper to print the sketches. Remember, this was before photography was common, and people’s only view of places they had never seen was through engravings.” Maggie paused. “Homer’s wood engravings have been featured in recent exhibitions at the National Gallery in Washington, and at the Metropolitan and Brooklyn Museums.”

  “Nice. But I’m really looking for something red, to match my sofa.”

  The woman walked away. Making a living selling prints was not easy.

  Between smiling at customers and sipping sherry (she was on her second refill) Maggie couldn’t help watching Susan, who was standing outside her booth, laughing and talking animatedly with everyone who came by. She had also spent quite a bit of time talking with Will Brewer, the new fellow with the Colonial kitchen wares, who had somehow gotten his booth together in time for the opening.

  And there were customers. Maggie sold one nine-by-twelve-inch 1890s Hickory Dickory Dock chromolithograph. “It will just be perfect in my new grandbaby’s room,” cooed a large, graying woman in a pink-flowered dress who twice dropped her checkbook in her efforts to pull out baby pictures. “Isn’t Nathaniel the cutest thing ever? Aren’t his eyes just like mine?”

  Maggie would happily have praised any baby photo as she wrote up the sale.

  “I’m going to put that picture in a really cute blue frame and send it right down to my daughter in Atlanta. I’m making up a package of very special things for Nathaniel. He’s my very first grandbaby, did I tell you?”

  Abe, across the aisle, was still reading his worn copy of The Bible in a Year, while Lydia had made at least one sale: a Victorian silver christening mug, to the same grandmother who had just bought a print from Maggie. Perhaps the woman had also stopped at Gussie’s booth. The toys from Aunt Augusta’s Attic would be ideal for a new grandma.

  Gussie stuck her head around the end of her booth. “Refill, please?”

  Maggie reached for the bottle she’d tucked behind the table draping. “We’d better save some room for dinner. Do you and Ben have any major plans?”

  “He’s still working out, as far as I know. He’s to meet me at the motel after the show closes. I’m really exhausted. Not sure I feel up to going out. But there’s a Pleasin’ Pizza down the street that delivers.”

  “Sounds gourmet enough for me. Mind if I join you? I do like anchovies, but between my aching muscles, this sherry, and hearing about Susan and Harry’s problems, a plain cheese pizza is about all I can handle tonight.”

  “You’ve got a deal if we can add mushrooms.”

  “Sealed. How’re sales?”

  “One good one: a miniature Victorian china tea set. That’s it so far.”

  “Well, if you can say ‘good sale,’ you’re ahead of me.”

  “Saturday’s when the buyers come; you know that, Maggie. Tonight’s museum night. Most people are just here to admire.”

  “And be admired. I know. But I always hope. And how’s the view from your booth?” Maggie nodded toward Joe and Harry, across the aisle from Gussie. Their booth had several browsers or first-edition seekers.

  “They’ve made a few good sales, from what I’ve seen.”

  “I didn’t mean sales…isn’t this whole situation strange?”

  “Maybe for you and me, but they all seem to be acting very civilized. Joe and Harry are just Joe and Harry. Harry doesn’t know much about books, but I’ve already heard him talk three customers into buying first editions. Joe’s smiled a lot, like always, and said very little. Harry’s hustling should help his sales. I can’t believe Susan isn’t upset, though. If Michael had even looked at another woman, wouldn’t you have wanted to shoot him?”

  Maggie blanched.

  “Oops…sorry! But…another man! I don’t think I could have dealt with that at all.”

  “Me, neither.” Maggie was glad to change the subject. “Actually, I dated someone once, several centuries ago, preAIDS and all, who was bisexual. Hal was handsome, charming, appeared devoted—and every time he smiled at a waiter in a restaurant, I got nervous.”

  “Maggie, you’re incredible. I couldn’t have coped at all.”

  She shrugged. “He read The New York Times and Maine Antique Digest; he liked art exhibits and the theater; he didn’t constantly keep comparing me to his previous girlfriends. None of that was too hard to take.”

  “Well, maybe you should have cloned him!”

  “Not a perfect situation, though. It turned out that I wasn’t paranoid for suspecting the waiters. He left me for Jason, who worked the dinner shift at the Wild Mushroom.”

  They grinned at each other, and Gussie shook her head.

  “I love it! Well, they say you’re only paranoid when no one is following you.”

  Maggie nodded. “Only thing was—it wasn’t me they were following!”

  She turned to respond to a portly gentleman with a white beard who was admiring a print on the back wall.

  “I remember a picture just like that hanging in my grandmother’s house on Block Island while I was growing up. That was the early fifties. Could it be the same? She said it was from a calendar she got from her insurance company.”

  “No, that’s an original Currier and Ives. Starting in 1936 the Travelers Insurance Company did reproduce Currier and Ives prints on calendars they sent their customers, so your grandmother might have had one of those, but this isn’t a reproduction.”

  “How can you tell? It looks just like the one my grandmother had. It was right above the shelf with her cookie jar, so I remember it well. As soon as I walked into your booth, I smelled gingersnaps.”

  “What a great reason to like a print! But this is an original American Homestead—Spring.” Maggie reached over to take the print down. “It was published in 1869 and is one of the most popular Currier and Ives scenes. In fact, it’s in the New Best Fifty. That’s a list dealers use to identify the most popular Curriers. It was reproduced often, but you can tell this is an original in three ways. First, it’s exactly 7.15 inches high by 12.8 inches wide.” Maggie pulled out her tape measure to demonstrate. “Second, it’s printed on medium-weight rag paper. Did you know rag paper was really made by tearing up cotton rags and then adding a bonding agent? All Currier and Ives prints up to 1870 were printed on rag paper; then they started to use rag paper with some wood pulp added. Most reproductions are printed on paper made entirely from wood pulp.”

  The man listened intently. “And what’s the third way to tell it’s not a reproduction?”

  Maggie reached over in back of her cash box and picked up a large square magnifying glass. She flicked on a light in the handle and gestured for him to look at a corner of the print. “See? The lines in the picture are m
ade up of tiny non-symmetrical dots. But the color is solid.”

  He focused on the trees next to the farmhouse and nodded.

  “In a reproduction you’d find very tiny connecting lines between the dots…and the color would look like tiny dots, too. That’s because, in an original, the color was added by hand. It’s watercolor. You can see three original Currier and Ives prints of the same subject and the colors won’t be identical. They were colored in an assembly line; each person in the line added one color.”

  “Well, I have to have it. If it isn’t exactly like the one I remember from my grandmother’s kitchen, that’s all right. I think she would have liked this one even better.” He pulled out his wallet.

  If it reminded him of his grandmother, that was fine. So fine, in fact, that she could take it to the bank. A darn nice sale. She had gotten a good buy when she’d bid on this particular print at an auction in Maine, and the profit she had just made would pay most of her booth rent. In fact, maybe she could afford to both pay booth rent and buy that pumpkin pine mirror.

  While she had been talking with the Hickory Dickory Dock customer, the Pine Away dealer had passed her a note quoting a dealers’ price of $250 on the mirror.

  The crowd was dwindling. Maggie looked at her watch; it was eight forty-five, and the show closed at nine. Almost over.

  “Gussie, I’m going to stop at a booth over in building three before I leave tonight. They quoted me a price on a mirror I covet, and I feel affluent. I’m going to let them know they’ve sold it.”

  “Fine. I’ll meet you back at the motel. I’ll be in the cabin with the ramp and two rooms.”

  “I’ll find you. Go ahead and order the pizza. In fact, it’s on me.”

  “That must have been some sale! You don’t know the bill you’re in for. Ben is twenty, and still growing!”

  “I’ll cope. Tomorrow I’ll eat tuna salad and watch the parade go by. Tonight, let’s celebrate being alive.”