How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life

by Mameve Medwed

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure that as an expert you didn’t recognize its value?”

  Is this a do-you-still-beat-your-wife question? I wonder. Do I say I recognized its value and show I’m a good antiques dealer, if manipulative. Or do I say it looked like the piece of junk it looked like and show I’ve floundered in this profession as I’ve floundered in every other. “No, it was only when someone who has the booth next to me told me it might be special that I wondered if maybe it did have some worth.”

  “And then did you notify Mrs. Lavinia Potter-Templeton of this possibility, of this object she so generously let you have as a result of her feeling a bit guilty no doubt for carrying out her mother’s wishes by accepting the majority of the apartment’s furnishings? Did you reveal the possibility of value to Lavinia, who would at least be part owner of this, if not the full?”

  My head is rattling. Mr. Snodgrass’s sentences seem to twist and turn until I sound like a conniving, selfish, greedy monster, not the victim I actually am.

  “Objection as to form,” Mary Agnes says. She puts her hand on my arm. “The question is argumentative. Compound. Confusing.”

  It’s about time. I take a deep breath. I smooth my hair, which is no doubt standing up as if I’ve been electrified. Right now I feel electrified. Electrocuted. At least they don’t have the death penalty in Massachusetts. Small consolation.

  No consolation. I try to visualize the treats I’ll give myself when I’m out of here. Will I ever make it out of here? I reach for my coffee; my hand trembles so much some of the coffee spills. Get a grip, I tell myself.

  And while I’m trying to get a grip, there’s a knock at the door. Ned pushes through. “Sorry,” he says. “Fog.”

  I come undone. All hope of a grip loosens. I stare at Ned. My body starts reacting in all the old imprinted ways, knees weak, heart in throat, a slow melting in my groin, as if sensations long buried in a time capsule still haven’t caught up with current events. I clutch my pencil. I remember what it was like to slide my hand into Ned’s, to tighten my fingers around his. Just one look opens the floodgates to the rush of all those feelings. Even after all this time. Even though everything’s changed. Even though I no longer care for him. How can just one look…

  I take another look. He looks terrible. Slumped with exhaustion. I note the bruises beneath the eyes. Flyaway hair. A scruffy jaw as if he’s shaved in patches; the pale skin—EBB ashen—of an invalid; his tie’s askew; the shirt collar frayed; he’s carrying a stuffed, battered briefcase, one that I recognize, one that belonged to his father. A paperback sticks out of his pocket. I squint at it. Memoirs of a Geisha. I’m shocked. Impossible to imagine anyone, particularly a novelist, so out of the literary zeitgeist that he’s just starting to read this book.

  Lavinia gets up. She flings her arms around him. “At last,” she grumbles. Over her pin-striped, padded, dress-for-success shoulder, he nods at me. “Abby,” he says, a whisper on a slowly exhaled breath.

  “I think it’s a good time to pause for a coffee break. A bathroom break,” Jim Snodgrass suggests. He stands up. He pushes back his chair.

  Mary Agnes checks her watch. “Five minutes, then?”

  I’m first out the door. All I want is to escape. I don’t know what to say to Ned. I don’t know what’s appropriate to say to Mary Agnes. I hope never to say anything to Ned ever again. I haven’t seen him since my mother’s funeral. At least in the flesh, for certainly his author’s photo has smiled at me from plenty of bookstores’ dusty back shelves.

  The ladies’ room offers five stalls and generous supplies of Kleenex and paper towels. Though I expect to run into bright young women on the partner track applying lipstick to their cross-examining mouths, I have the place to myself. I run the cold water. I blot my dripping brow. I try not to look at my tortured, celadon-colored face in the mirror. I need to deal with my standing-on-end hair. Someone has kindly left behind a comb—clean—next to a bouquet of bobby pins. I make a halfhearted attempt at taming my mop. It’s a lot like antiques. Trying to fix the unfixable is as hard as gluing broken porcelain so the cracks don’t show.

  I inspect my watch. Only an hour and a half has gone by. You’d think I’ve been here for a century. Which proves Bergson’s theory of time, which I studied in philosophy class. I need a shower. I need a change of clothes. I need to get out of here.

  When the door swings open behind me, I expect it’s Mary Agnes with a critique of my performance so far and a few tips on how to proceed before I end up in a puddle on the conference room’s industrial-strength gray carpeting. But it isn’t. It’s Lavinia. Who steps silently into a stall and flushes the toilet so I don’t hear her pee. Mary Agnes must be checking up on her bigger, more important case.

  I tiptoe to the door. I try to slip away before Lavinia’s high-heeled boots step out from under the stall, joined to the intimidating rest of her. No such luck. “Abby,” she calls.

  I pull my hand back from the doorplate. “I don’t think we should talk,” I say, “given our position as adversaries.”

  “Who are you to talk?” she demands.

  I don’t point out her under-the-circumstances odd phraseology.

  “We are only adversaries as the end result of your stubbornness.”

  Though I’m tempted to retort, Correction: the end result of your selfishness, I’m a model of self-restraint. I merely shrug.

  She washes her hands with the thoroughness of a surgeon about to take up her scalpel in the OR. About to take up her knife. “This is quite a morning you put us through.”

  Mute, I lean against the tampon dispenser. When in doubt, keep quiet, coaches my internalized Mary Agnes Finch, attorney-at-law.

  “Not to mention poor Ned,” she goes on.

  She’s hit the open-sesame button. My lips fly apart. “He looks horrible!” I exclaim.

  “No wonder. Considering what’s going on in his life, he hardly needed to bust his ass to come to Boston. He has a deadline for his next book. Part of a two-book contract. Just moved into a new apartment. Upper West Side. With his new girlfriend.”

  I don’t ask.

  Which doesn’t keep her from answering. “Beautiful. Charming. Has a Ph.D. in English literature. Tenure track at Columbia. Very serious.” She pauses. “I’m convinced it’s his first really serious relationship.”

  My face is a mask. I should have gone to acting school.

  “It’s a wrench for him to leave her.”

  A wrench? Try a corn sheller to strip off nerve endings. Try a King’s Arrow straight to the heart. My stomach is taking roller-coaster dives. My head pounds. Old responses, I remind myself. Old habits. Out-of-date reactions. I hate him; he charmed me; he betrayed me; what does a beautiful Ph.D. girlfriend mean to me? “It’s just one day,” I justify.

  “A day is forever when you’re in love. Even you must remember that, Abby.” She runs a comb—her own, which she fishes out of her sleek, designer-initialed bag—through her sleek hair. She pulls up a flacon of perfume. She sprays her wrists. It’s My Sin, I register. “Look at all this unnecessary waste of time and effort you’re putting us through.” She sprays behind her ears. “Add to this the public humiliation in the offing. Soon our private story will be on everyone’s front doorstep, thanks to your very close reporter friend.”

  I cement my mouth shut. My teeth are grinding together so tightly I must be wearing down the enamel. I push open the door. I try to slam it behind me. But it swings, then hits me in the butt. Hard.

  We resume our places like an orchestra after intermission. There’s a little tuning up. New legal pads; stenographer’s tape replaced; hot coffee poured. The hum of polite conversation. Mary Agnes seems distracted. She’s got a new, higher pile of folders next to her. Corporation Distribution, I can read between the crook of her elbow and her impatient, tapping fingertips. Quick study of all things legal, I know for a fact that Corporation Distribution has nothing to do with my case. I sip the glass of water Jim Snod
grass has just poured for me. I won’t meet Ned’s eyes.

  Which seem to be glued to the grain of the mahogany conference table. A lock of hair falls over his forehead. I wonder if the charming, beautiful Ph.D. Columbia tenure-track professor appreciates its silkiness.

  “Shall we resume?” Jim Snodgrass asks now. A rhetorical question, since he resumes without waiting for our go-ahead. “So, why did you decide to take this chamber pot onto Antiques Roadshow?”

  “To find out its value,” I answer.

  “Which, don’t you agree, you could have discovered in myriad different ways. For example, by bringing it to an expert, a curator, a museum?”

  “I didn’t know an expert.”

  “Really? Don’t people in the antiques business have at their fingertips a host of experts to consult?”

  “The man with the booth next to me, my colleague, suggested I take it on TV. He knew some people who worked on the show. He could arrange to get me a ticket.”

  “And perhaps the prospect of publicity was an incentive?”

  “Excuse me?” I cup my ear like a cartoon character.

  “Did or did not your business improve after your appearance on Antiques Roadshow?”

  “Yes.”

  “And as a savvy businessperson yourself, didn’t you see the advantages of being on a program with such a national reputation and in seemingly continual reruns?”

  “I had no expectation the chamber pot would have any value.”

  “Even though you’re in the business? Even though your colleague suggested you bring it on the program? Even though, of all your mother and her companion’s possessions, you chose to take what you called”—he checks a piece of paper—“let me quote, ‘a kind of discolored, rather uninteresting object.’ You must have sensed your colleague had a reason.”

  Mary Agnes holds up a hand. “Objection. Which question should she answer? Stop badgering her. Ask one question at a time.”

  “Did you sense your colleague had a reason to promote an appearance on Antiques Roadshow?”

  “Actually, no.” What is he making me out to be, a thief, a person who knew she had a treasure, stole it from Lavinia, went on TV to promote herself? I am appalled. I am also a little flattered that he would think so much of my business acumen.

  Though Mary Agnes doesn’t seem to be quite so impressed. “Jim,” she cautions.

  “Let’s take another tack,” says Jim Snodgrass in the tone of a man who is nothing if not reasonable. He runs his hand through his hair. He tugs at his ear. “Could you tell us about your relationship with the coplaintiff, Edward Bickford Potter?”

  I straighten up. “What does that have—?”

  “Just answer the question, please.”

  I look at Mary Agnes. She nods. “There’s no relationship,” I say. My eyes are glued to the same mahogany grain that Ned’s eyes are glued to at the opposite end. Maybe the table will start rattling. Maybe ghosts from childhood past will appear. Maybe a disembodied voice will put the right words in my mouth. What are the right words?

  “Was there a relationship in the past?”

  “What do you mean by a relationship?” I ask. “Define the terms,” I add, the Clarence Darrow that necessity has made me invent myself as.

  “I won’t beat around the bush. Sexual,” pronounces the lawyer for the other side.

  “Jim,” grumbles the lawyer for my side.

  Ned and I expel a gasp, a mutual gasp not half so satisfying as the alternative, the sexual alternative.

  “Answer the question,” Jim instructs.

  “Answer the question, Abby,” Mary Agnes echoes.

  “Sexual?” I repeat. “I guess,” I allow.

  “I take that as a yes?”

  “Yes,” I begrudge.

  “Was this a rather long-lasting relationship?”

  “A few years.”

  “Was there talk of marriage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “We broke up.”

  “What were the circumstances of that breakup?”

  “The usual. We fell out of love.”

  “What is Mr. Bickford’s profession?”

  “He’s a novelist.”

  “And did he write a novel called The Cambridge Ladies Who Live in Furnished Souls?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was that novel about?”

  “I’m sure you know what that novel was about.”

  “Was it the story of your childhood, your love affair, both of your mothers’ relationships?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did that lead to your breakup?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I felt betrayed,” I reply, trying to choke my anger down.

  “Why?”

  “Because he wrote about me. Because he revealed secrets.”

  “Secrets that I gather were part of pillow talk?”

  I feel my eyes start to brim with tears. I will them away.

  “Which might account for your wanting the chamber pot from his mother?”

  “My mother.”

  “I’ll let this pass for a minute. I’m curious about one thing. Why would an antiques dealer want something that”—he looks down at the same piece of paper he had consulted only minutes ago—“she describes as, let me quote again, ‘a kind of discolored, rather uninteresting object’ unless she knew it was valuable? And, let me add, unless it was a way to get revenge against a lover who betrayed her?”

  “Objection,” Mary Agnes says. She puts a hand on my arm. “Would you like another break?”

  “No.” I’m furious now. “I want to get this over with,” I practically spit. I sneak a glance at Ned. His sad eyes over-flow with such sympathy I must be the most pathetic human being he’s ever sat across a table from.

  “Let me rephrase. Why did you want this particular pot that you saw as uninteresting?”

  “Because it was my mother’s. Because Lavinia took almost all the stuff. Because it was part of my mother’s life. Because I loved my mother.”

  “Do you love Ned?”

  I stop. I wait. “Did,” I correct.

  “Speak up, please.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Once.” I sob. I drop my head on my folded arms. My eyes and nose run onto the polished wood. I smell varnish. Beeswax. Linseed oil. Mary Agnes hands me water. She pats my back.

  “Break,” Jim Snodgrass whispers.

  I lift up my head. My nose is streaming. Mascara no doubt tracks my cheeks. I’m sure my skin is blotched, my hair wilder than ever. I must look mad, out of control. “No,” I nearly yell, mad, out of control. “Lavinia can have this. Nothing, no object, is worth this torture.”

  “Abby…!” Mary Agnes starts.

  Ned bolts upright. He bangs his fist like a judge’s gavel. “Everybody stop. I relinquish my claim. Why I ever let Lavinia…” He scowls at his sister, an expression I recognize from their childhood arguments, those in which Lavinia, as usual, was clearly in the wrong. “Abby should have the damn pot. I want her to have it. She deserves it. It’s only right. She has nothing else. She’s all alone.” His voice rises into the higher reaches of indignity. “What monster would take this away from someone in her situation? There’s no reason to put any human being through this.”

  Jim Snodgrass jumps up from his seat. “Quiet, Ned,” he commands, no longer kindly and avuncular. “Sit down. You’ll get your chance to speak when you’re deposed.”

  Ned ignores him. All eyes are now on me. Even the stenographer’s. Her polka-dotted glasses steam up with tears. She sniffles, then blows her nose on a pansy-bordered handkerchief. I want to disappear. I want to be swallowed up by an earthquake in India. A tornado in Nebraska. I want to be hit by a bus, return under my rock, vanish back into the lantern some cruel magician rubbed to land me here. I want my mother. I even want my father. Has there ever been a greater object of pity? A more woebegone litigant?

  “Look,” Ned says. “I kn
ow Abby. She would never want this because of revenge. She would never want this for commercial reasons. She’s not manipulative; she’s not mean; she’s naïve, maybe. But she’s suffered quite enough.”

  “Ned,” Jim Snodgrass warns. “Mr. Potter, let’s take a break. Let’s talk outside.” Jim Snodgrass crosses over to Ned. He puts a hand on his elbow.

  Ned shakes it off. “Let her have it. It’s all she’s got.” He grabs Lavinia’s shoulder. “She only wants it because it’s her mother’s. It’s just a stroke of luck that it turned out to have value.”

  “My mother’s,” Lavinia begins. “Ours.”

  “Vinny, can it,” her brother orders. “You yourself dismissed the frigging pot. Are we agreed?”

  Lavinia shakes her head. “Far be it for me to torture an old friend. Even though my mother specifically wished me to have it. Even though I have right on my side.”

  “Lavinia…” Ned glares.

  Lavinia smiles her faux sweet, treacherous, Megan-Parmenter-is-my-best-friend smile. “But I have to honor my brother’s wishes. I want to do the right thing.” She turns to me. “Abby, I hope you’ll do the right thing, too. I hope you’ll let the reporter at the Globe know how this got resolved.” She raises a questioning eyebrow.

  Even in my moment of utter shame and despair, I manage a duplicitous nod.

  “As far as the chamber pot is concerned, then, I will give up my ownership in favor of Abby.” She turns to Jim Snodgrass. “Now can we leave? I have work. My brother has a plane to catch.”

  “If you’re sure. This is an extraordinarily generous gesture on your part. It is my duty to point out that you are forfeiting half if not the whole of seventy-five thousand dollars.”

  “Not to mention your legal fees for this particular miscarriage of justice…” Lavinia begins.

  “We’re sure,” says Ned. “Both of us,” he emphasizes, then, palm splayed against her back, he pushes Lavinia out the double doors.

  Mary Agnes smiles. She caps her pens, puts the pencils back in their pencil cups. “Well, we got the result we want,” she says in her all-in-a-day’s-work, on-to-the-next-day’s-work jaunty tone. “Good job, Abby.”

  Jim Snodgrass sorts his papers into his briefcase. He goes over to talk to the stenographer.