Riverside Park

by Laura Van Wormer

  But the most exciting thing that had happened was her mother had taken her to an auction house, Nest Egg Auctions, in Meriden, Connecticut. They called it a country-style auction, which appeared to Celia to be as different from a formal auction as a proper golfing outfit was to a tux. There was no catalog to follow, but each item—and there was tons of stuff—had been meticulously cataloged and put on preview so buyers could note their lot numbers. It was a family owned and operated enterprise, which cheered Celia up for some reason. Probably because all the family members seemed to be having so much fun with each other and with the bidders. There was the head auctioneer, Ryan Brechlin, his mother, Mary Ellen, Ryan’s brother, Christopher and sister, Jen, and her husband, Adam.

  Celia had not been prepared for how the atmosphere of Nest Egg would affect her. As soon as she came through the door of the vast auction hall she felt a buzz, the kind of buzz she felt around certain kinds of old things and places. It happened in museums and it was happening now. She looked in awe at the endless tables of boxed lots, at the pieces of furniture that circled the auction hall, and the paintings and prints and photographs hanging from, or leaning against, the walls. It was a stunning display.

  “Isn’t it marvelous?” Celia’s mother whispered.

  While her mother registered and got them a bidding number, Celia claimed two seats in the back and surveyed the room. There were only fifteen minutes before the auction started. Where should she begin? The buzz in her brain told her there was something very, very special in here. She just needed to find it.

  She headed for a couple of paintings in lovely old gold-leaf frames. She guessed they were from the same owner because their theme—landscapes or waterscapes in oil—all resembled southern France. There were prints, some in good shape and others not. There were some framed magazine ads from the 1930s. Nothing spoke to her, though. The furniture lots were interesting. There were plenty of practical modern pieces, but a couple of the older pieces were intriguing. Celia waved to her mother after she looked under a pair of empire end tables. They were mahogany, with a single drawer, dull brass handle and claw-feet. Her mother nearly swooned. “How much do you think they will go for?”

  “This far north? I have no idea.” They were ninety miles from New York, twenty from the Fairfield County line and thirty from the Gold Coast. Celia looked around the auction room. There were people who looked well-heeled but for the most part the bidding crowd looked to be the kind of people she ran into at tag sales, flea markets and bazaars, which led her to believe they were here to buy things to resell, whereas people like her mother were looking to buy for themselves.

  “Look at that,” her mother had marveled, pointing to a hand-painted glass globe that belonged to aVictorian lamp. (Celia intuitively knew it was original. How did she know? She didn’t, not for sure. Still, somehow she just knew it was.) “Your great-grandmother had something like this in her front hall. She lived in one of those painted ladies in Bronxville, a great Victorian mansion with all the gingerbread, porches and towers.” (Celia’s mother had told her about a hundred times.) “What is that, do you suppose?” She was pointing to a large brown metal box.

  “I think they probably used it to measure electricity in the old days.”

  Her mother looked at her. “Celia, how on earth do you know these things?”

  “I don’t. Not for sure.” She waved to one of the helpers on the floor. “Could you please tell us what this is?”

  “It measured electrical currents so they could regulate the flow,” the young man said.

  “My littlest angel,” her mother said after that, putting her arm around Celia, “I think you and I have some talking to do.”

  “About what?” She had been assessing a wood-and-string contraption she guessed was some kind of ancient cot. (It turned out to be an old officer’s field bed.)

  “I think we should come to these auctions and then you should sell things in New York.”

  “Old power meters?” Celia said absently, touching the stringing.

  Her mother pulled her hair. “No, brat girl. Buy something and take it into that man you told us about in the Bronx. Put it in his auction. I’ll stake you, Ceil. Two hundred fifty dollars. Buy something to sell in the city.”

  Celia looked around the auction room with new appreciation. What was in here that might sell well in New York? Definitely the end tables she had pointed out to her mother. Maybe the oil seascape, although she was certain it would go for far more than two hundred and fifty dollars. There was also a curved corner cabinet with panes of beveled glass that was very appealing.

  Her mother gave Celia a little shove. “There might be a business in here, you never know.”

  Celia was almost afraid to speak. This would be too good to be true, too easy. To take her joyful pastime and try to make a little money at it? Wouldn’t that wreck it? Jinx it? Take the fun out of it?

  “The glass globe,” she said to her mother. “If there’s one thing I would like to try in New York it would be that. I can take it in on the train.”

  “How much would it go for, do you think?” her mother whispered, turning to look at it again.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Celia said.

  “Oh, Celia, I can just feel it in my bones,” her mother said, squeezing her arm. “We’re onto something.”

  Celia smiled, uncertain. Still, she could try to sell a few things and see what it was like. No big deal.

  In the few minutes left before the auction began Celia moved quickly through the goods going up for sale. There were boxes of old tools; toys and dolls and people’s figurine collections, boxes of letters, postcard albums, photos from WWII, car manuals from the nineteen-sixties (those should fly, she thought, not as something she wanted but as the kind of thing people searched on eBay to find, a manual to the old car they were fixing up), odd lots of china for daily use, bone china teacups and saucers, candlesticks (brass, glass, silver plate), fireplace utensils, old cameras, a box of Playboys, a box of nineteen-thirties business records for a defunct department store. It went on and on, table after table. Celia felt almost shaky now, overwhelmed with the idea of exploring her mother’s suggestion but also wondering what it was in this room that was setting her off? There was some thing here on her radar but she had yet to see it with her eyes.

  Ryan Brechlin was up at the podium microphone warning the auction would be starting shortly. Something under one of the tables caught Celia’s eye and she made her way over, excusing herself in the crush of people, and squatted. In a cut-down Arizona Iced Tea box there was a pile of magazines, the size of the old Life, the top one of which was blue with a black-and-white photograph of a mounted equestrian lady holding a trophy. Saddle & Bridle it was called. Celia looked for a date. 1932. She took a sharp intake of breath through her nose and gently picked up the magazine to look under it. August, 1932. September, 1932. She straightened up, rising to her feet. This box was coming home with her.

  A glossy equestrian magazine of high society after the great crash of 1929? How big could that audience have been? The magazines were heavily illustrated in black and white, on acid-free paper and had obviously been tucked away in someone’s attic. She moved on. (And looked back at them over her shoulder, as if to signal to the magazines they were not to worry.)

  People were sitting down now and the aisles were clearing so Celia moved fast. Then something lying across the table to the side caught her eye.

  Shotguns. Four of them.

  She edged closer, aware that Ryan was above her on the dais ready to start. But she couldn’t help herself, she had to reach out to one of the guns and touch the fine wood of its gunstock. She knew nothing about guns but the wood was such a gorgeous nutty-brown and the signs of wear only seemed to enhance it. The barrels were sleek, smooth and cold to the touch. The shotgun was broken open and the precision cut of the shell chamber fittings was fine. The whole piece was exquisitely made and Celia’s mouth had gone dry, which told her this was
it. The shotgun was the star of the room.

  “Do you like guns?” Ryan asked her, smiling down from the podium.

  She shook her head. “But I know I love this one. It’s one of the most beautifully made things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  He smiled. “Then maybe you know more about guns than you thought.”

  Celia sat down next to her mother. “Mom, you’ve got to buy the shotgun that’s up there and put it in your auction for the historical society.”

  “A shotgun?” she said, astonished.

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Who cares, it’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Her mother frowned a little. “I don’t know, Celia.”

  The auction began with the sale of an oil painting for seven hundred dollars. The next item was a simple cherry chair from the nineteen-fifties that no one seemed to be the least bit interested in. “All right, who will start me with five dollars, five dollars for the nice cherry chair, five dollars, come on, people, five dollars, that’s less than what delivery would be from a furniture store—for five dollars you can break it up and use it for firewood, I don’t care—” Finally someone raised their hand. When the chair went for five dollars, the entire auction room cried, “Five dollars!” Celia and her mother looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  No, this was not like any auction Celia had ever been to before.

  It fascinated Celia what moved and what did not in this part of Connecticut. The mahogany end tables came up and her mother joined the bidding, which ended with her mother’s winning bid of eighty dollars. “I can scarcely believe it,” she gasped to Celia. “I feel as though I’m stealing.”

  It was amazing. The hoosier went for three hundred and twenty dollars but a modern dining room table and chairs for only two hundred(!). The electric meter went for five dollars (“Five dollars!” everybody, including the Cavanaughs, cried), but a box of postcards went for one hundred and ninety dollars! When the first of the shotguns came up Celia felt her stomach tighten. “Not that one,” she whispered, which went for one hundred and ten dollars. “No,” she whispered on the next three (one-fifty, eighty-five and two hundred and ten dollars in succession). When her shotgun came up Celia elbowed her mother. Ryan explained that it had been made in Connecticut around nineteen-ten. “Don’t bid until the very last second,” she told her mother.

  “Celia, I don’t really want it.”

  Celia took the bidding card from her.

  “I have competing left bids on this,” Ryan said, “and we also have two phone bidders.” Two of the assistants, with cell phones to their ears, had moved toward the front. “With our competing left bids we can start this at two thousand six hundred dollars.” A murmur rolled over the room as Celia handed the card back to her mother. “Do I see two thousand seven?” A bidding card went up and Ryan never even slowed until they hit the ten thousand mark. Finally, at “Eleven thousand two hundred fifty dollars…Sold!” the hammer came down.

  “How did you know?” Celia’s mother whispered.

  “You could tell, it was gorgeous.”

  “Celia, I saw it and I thought it was a piece of junk.”

  “We also have competing left bids on this,” Ryan announced when the glass globe for the Victorian lamp came up, “so we will open the bidding at eighty dollars. Do I see ninety?” He laughed as a number of bidding cards flew up. “I’ve got ninety dollars everywhere!” he exclaimed. People knew what this was, then, Celia thought. “One hundred in the back, one-ten, I’ve got one-ten. One-twenty? One-twenty. One-thirty? One-thirty. One-forty?” It was down to two men now and the second hesitated before nodding. “I’ve got one-forty, one hundred forty dollars for the circa eighteen-fifty Victorian hand-painted glass globe—” The other man nodded. Ryan pointed. “I’ve got one-fifty. One-sixty?” The second man shook his head, no. “You’ll never find this at Target, people, this is the real thing. Do I see one-sixty?” He lifted the hammer, scanning the room. “It’s going then for one hundred fifty—”

  Celia shot her mother’s card up. “Ah, one-sixty!” he said, pointing at Celia. “A new bidder, do I have one-seventy?” He was waiting for the first man, who nodded. “One-seventy, I have,” he said, eyes coming back to Celia. “One-eighty?” Celia nodded. “We’ve got an auction going, people, great,” Ryan said. “I don’t mind working for it. I’ve got one-eighty. Do I have one-ninety?” The man hesitated and then shook his head. “One-eighty, we’re at one-eighty,” Ryan said, scanning the room. “Do I see one-ninety?”

  Celia anxiously checked the room. The trick was going to be for her to match the globe with a lamp.

  “I’m selling at one hundred and eighty dollars,” Ryan said, hammer wavering in the air. And then it came down. “Sold! For one hundred eighty dollars to number—”

  Celia held up her number.

  “One-eighty-three.”

  “Oh, that’s so exciting!” Celia’s mother said.

  She felt the same way and a ripple of pleasure ran through her when the assistant brought it to her and she actually held the globe in her hands. Then her mother took the globe to the back to ask for something to pack it in.

  Celia was smiling. She was happy. Really happy. This was the coolest thing she had done in a very long time. When the box of equestrian magazines finally came up toward the end of the auction, a man who had bought the box of old Playboys made a halfhearted bid. Celia was shocked there weren’t more hands in the air, but unless one knew something of the horsey set, she supposed people might not understand how rarified the content of these magazines had to be, given that they were published at the height of the Great Depression. She got the box of Saddle & Bridle magazines for forty dollars.

  “So how are the horse magazines selling?” Rachel asked Celia now.

  “The auction for the first one I listed,” Celia said, “ends this morning. Around now,” she added, feeling a surge of adrenaline.

  “Cool, let’s go see,” Rachel said. “What was it at last night?” she asked while they all went trooping down to Celia’s room to look at her computer. They were all getting into it, the eBay thing. For everything that Celia had sold it seemed like Rachel had asked her to buy at least two things for her.

  “Nineteen dollars and fifty cents. Oh, my gosh,” she said a few minutes later after she logged on to her account.

  Rachel leaned closer to the screen. “Is that just for one magazine? Twenty-three dollars?”

  “Yeah,” Celia said, doing the math in her head. There had been seventeen magazines in the box, all in good shape. The one she had listed was the oldest. If each magazine brought at least fifteen dollars, that would be around two hundred fifty dollars. The buyer paid the postage and handling, but the listing fee, which Celia had heavily illustrated with photos of the content, plus a percentage to PayPal, her preferred method, meant that the expenses would be around a hundred dollars, which left one-twenty-five, less the forty-four that covered Nest Egg and the buyer’s commission, which would be eighty-one.

  Hmm. With time and effort taken into consideration it meant that although she had doubled her investment, she was paying herself eight dollars an hour to list these. That wasn’t so hot. On the other hand, she was lowballing the magazines, so she would just have to see as she went. To say she was learning a lot in the meantime was putting it mildly.

  Celia refreshed the page and Rachel screamed. “It went up to $25.50!”

  “There’s only seventeen minutes left,” the boyfriend said.

  How cool is this, how cool is this? Celia thought to herself.

  They remained glued to the computer screen for the next seventeen minutes, Celia constantly refreshing the page. Not a thing happened until the very last minute when the number of bids jumped from five to nine.

  “Look, look, look!” Rachel cried.

  Thirty-two dollars it said.

  Ten more seconds. But that was it. The time ran out, the magazin
e had sold for thirty-two dollars, plus two dollars for postage and one dollar for handling. Thirty-five dollars on the nose.

  Rachel was screaming and running around in circles, she was so excited. She came back to do a drumroll on Celia’s back, making them both laugh. “Your mom is like so right! You’re in business, baby!”

  An e-mail message appeared in Celia’s eBay mailbox. The fellow who won the magazine, whose handle was AlfieRal-phie, wanted to know if she had any more of them.

  “What will you do, Celia,” Rachel asked her, excited. “Sell them in one big deal or individually?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Celia laughed. It was hard to believe. This was just the coolest.

  38

  Rosanne Takes Samantha for a Walk

  “NO”, YOU DON’T KNOW, Rosanne!” Samantha Wyatt said, stamping her boot.

  The women were standing in the last vestiges of sunshine on the terrace of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ monument. Harriet had begged Rosanne to see if she could get Samantha outside for a little air, however chilly it was, and to make sure Samantha went to her four o’clock doctor’s appointment. In terms of a walk they had not gotten very far. After two and a half blocks Samantha started throwing a fit, kicking chunks of ice and waving her arms around. Apparently Mrs. W had finally gotten the father’s name out of Samantha and Mr. W had gone to upstate New York to pay him a visit.