Buried Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  “Absolutely. But something caught your eye last night, right? Tell me what fascinated you, and I’ll see if your symptoms are short-term or if you’ve caught the chronic form of the illness.”

  Jane heard Tim’s excitement. They had come over to deliver the lists of high school volunteers who were going to help the residents on this block clean out their basements and purge their attics. They hadn’t planned on actually going in and sorting through any inventory themselves today.

  Jane watched Tim give Suzanne the once-over. If something caught this woman’s eye, this woman who was wearing a Calvin Klein lightweight cashmere T-shirt with her designer jeans, Tim was thinking, he and Jane might have to check it out. She had an eye for shoes, too—weren’t those Manolo heels? She was wearing distinctive earrings, knots of gold with what appeared, to Jane’s quasi-trained eye, to be real diamonds so maybe, Tim was figuring, maybe there was treasure to be found. Looking at the house from the outside, knowing the owner, Mrs. Schaefer’s approximate age, and adding that to the fact that she lived alone, had no daughters who would beg the odd side chair for their first apartment, or the extra set of china that no one ever used anyway … yes, Jane might have to agree with Tim, there might be something worthwhile in the house.

  Jane was always aware that as tragic as it was that some people had too little, it was sad in a different way when people living alone had too much. Not only did they mourn the family they had lost or perhaps never found, they mourned the lives of their objects, the family heirlooms that had been passed down to them. They had dusted the furniture and polished the silver; they had guarded the crystal and wrapped the plates. They had curated the keepsakes and archived the letters and the photographs. When it came time for them to go, where would all of these things find a home?

  No one wanted to think about a public sale of their goods, where strangers tracked mud through the house picking up a juice glass here and an old painting there. The strangers didn’t care if that glass had been little brother Henry’s favorite in 1932, the only glass he would drink milk from, they just cared that it had a small chip in the rim. The owner might remember the day Henry lost his tooth and got so excited that he tipped the glass, spilled his milk, and, if he hadn’t just lost a tooth, would have gotten a spanking from Mother.

  That’s where the chip came from and that’s what had made the glass worth saving all these years. To the picker or dealer shopping at the house sale, though, a chip was a chip, and it made the “as-is” item worthless. The little juice glass would sit on the table, unwanted, unsold, and it would be part of the stuff tossed into a box and hauled out to the alley when the sale was over. That’s what would happen to it eventually, but not before countless shoppers had picked up the glass with interest, rubbed their fingers around the rim, then put it down with expressions of disgust and disappointment—and no one, not even the most practical and unsentimental, wants to hear his or her possessions, infused with life and meaning, pronounced trash by a collector who might know his Heisey from his Hazel Atlas, but did not know brother Henry from a hole in the ground.

  Suzanne led Tim to a box she had carried down from the attic. Jane trailed behind, noting the botanical prints hanging on the wall in the bedroom whose door stood open. There was a pair of dresser lamps in there that also looked good. Dark green pottery arts-and-craft bases … yes, Jane wanted to detour off into that room … the extra bedroom. It was usually where you found the sewing box with the button tin and the Bakelite needle case … Jane stopped and took a breath. She wasn’t at a sale. She was in the home of an elderly person who had just moved to a smaller, more manageable place and that woman’s niece was showing them a few boxes that might be sold at a yard sale. That was all. Jane had to stop herself from being consumed by sale lust. Was this what hot flashes would feel like?

  Suzanne ushered them into the kitchen and told them she had carried down five boxes last night, thinking she could go through them quickly, and they would be closer to the garage for the sale.

  “I had no idea Aunt Liv had kept all the family photo albums. Look, she labeled everything … I mean I throw all the pictures into a drawer … no one would be able to tell … Here it is.”

  She held up a wedding photo. A hopeful bride, a nervous groom. Both of them wide-eyed as if they were asking, “What’s next?”

  “It’s my parents. Look at my beautiful mother,” she said, with wonder. “I’ve never even seen this photograph before.”

  Tim murmured something that sounded appreciative, but Jane knew he was disappointed. This kind of discovery was part of the Jane Wheel school of garage-sale memorabilia, not the Tim Lowry college of collectibles and valuables.

  “But what I thought you really might be interested in is this. Maybe you could tell me how this should be priced. I wouldn’t want to leave it up to the high school volunteers.”

  She opened up a second box and Tim’s eyes grew to the size of the bridegroom’s in the photo. Silver. If Tim had been wearing an eye patch, he couldn’t have looked more like a greedy pirate standing over a treasure chest. He lifted out a magnificent tray. Round and heavy with some scrollwork around the handles. Tim began nodding and muttering under his breath. There was a set of individual citrus bowls, sherbets, and fish forks. These were the odd pieces of a magnificent set, and what it told Tim and Jane was that there was more. The pitchers and the serving pieces and the gravy boat? Where were they?

  “About eight more boxes in the attic,” said Suzanne.

  Tim whipped out his BlackBerry. He made a date for later in the week, told her he would come back with a few students so they could do the lifting, and they would set up in the garage. Tim would appraise the silver and other valuables Suzanne did not want for herself or anyone else in the family, and he would try to find her a buyer.

  “I was wondering if you have a minute to look at …?”

  “Wow,” said Jane, looking up from an old piece of card stock, heavily decorated with gold around the edges. She had picked it up out of a small box on the floor that had plastic bags full of matchbooks and swizzle sticks.

  “This is a program from the Majestic Inn Night Club,” said Jane. “My dad talks about this place. In the thirties it was the Studio 54 of Kankakee.”

  “Update your references, honey,” said Tim. “Studio 54 hasn’t been the Studio 54 for twenty years.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Jane. “Look, they had an MC and a comedian and two dancers and a singer … this was quite a program. And it played Wednesday through Sunday. Must have been great, you know … live music, dancing, people dressing up and going out.”

  “Uh-oh, you’ve got the same look on your face that your dad had when Dempsey and Hoover were describing the bigband palace they want to put into Roper Stove,” said Tim.

  “The Hometown guys? My aunt went to one of their community meetings. She said Roper was going to be a giant bingo hall.”

  Jane had a feeling that Dempsey and Hoover might be pretty facile at turning any memory into a potential reality. Don and Nellie might long for a place like the Majestic Inn, so poof! Hometown USA would conjure it up from the ashes of the abandoned factory across from the EZ Way Inn. Jane wanted to explain to her father that in all of this created nostalgia—and that’s supposing Dempsey and Hoover were on the up-and-up—there would be no room for a real tumbledown bar like the EZ Way Inn. If they were really using Disneyland’s Main Street as an example of what they were attempting, they would have to scrub, scour, tear down, and rebuild half the town to make it seem as believably quaint and “authentic” as they wanted it to be. Created nostalgia worked because it was clean and hygienic and brightly lit. It was safe. But it wasn’t real.

  “How did she hear about the meeting? I thought those guys were just starting to go public?” asked Tim.

  “Oh, somebody came to the senior center and talked to her quilting group. Handed out flyers and answered questions, I guess. There’s the notice,” Suzanne said, pointing to the refrig
erator where a few business cards and papers were held fast by magnets advertising plumbing services and the warning signs of diabetes. The flyer announced an informational meeting about a better future for Kankakee, and there was a business card stapled in the corner. It wasn’t Dempsey or Hoover’s Hometown USA card. It was a K3 Realty business card. The agent’s name was Roger Groveland.

  Jane took the notice off the refrigerator and read it a second time.

  Jane replaced the Majestic Inn program in the box of memorabilia and told Suzanne Blum that she’d love to go through the entire collection of ephemera and mine it for collectibles. She would put together a package for her to take to her aunt, since there were pieces in there that might prompt some good stories. Suzanne liked the idea, and Tim rolled his eyes. Jane knew he would chide her later for taking on a type of appraisal and conservation that would take hours but never turn a profit.

  “Was there something else you wanted us to look at?” asked Jane.

  “I just need to know if clothes like these are worth putting out. I’m not sure they fall into the vintage category. My aunt has said I should throw them all away or donate them somewhere, but if you think they’re worth anything …”

  Jane followed her into the second bedroom. “Those lamps are good and so are the prints. Don’t let the kids price those,” Jane said, opening the closet door. She knew Tim was walking in behind her, and he agreed about the lamps but was lukewarm on the prints. That was odd, since she knew Tim liked botanicals; he had quite a collection in his floral shop, and … right. He was lukewarm on them because he wanted to buy them. He wouldn’t give Suzanne a completely unfair price, but he would err on the side of underinflation rather than overinflation.

  Jane quickly looked through the closets. She liked Olivia Schaefer’s taste. Her housedresses were cheery prints and well made. She had a collection of great aprons, clever fabrics from the forties and fifties, trimmed with rickrack and embroidery. And in the back of the closet, a muslin garment bag had a few tailored dressy suits and two exquisite cocktail dresses, one black with sequins, theother, an iridescent dark blue.

  “She might have worn one of these to the Majestic Inn,” said Jane. “What are these?” she asked, pulling out a fistful of hangers.

  There were five colored smocks with the name of Kankakee’s hospital stitched over the pocket.

  “Aunt Liv worked at the hospital for years; and after she retired, she volunteered three days a week. She worked in the gift shop and delivered flowers and mail. She called herself a professional volunteer. I think these different colors represented the different departments she worked in.”

  “Perfect,” said Jane, taking one of the smocks out of the closet. “These are absolutely perfect for …”

  “For what?” Suzanne asked.

  Jane smiled. “For working at the hospital.”

  “I hate to interrupt, but I have an appointment back at the shop,” said Tim. “My opinion on the clothes is to put everything out. Just throw up a rack and put it out there priced to sell, and it will go. What doesn’t can be donated, but you’d be surprised at what sells. Even those hospital smocks will sell for a quarter.”

  “And I’ll buy all the aprons,” Jane said. She was still fingering one of the hospital smocks. “Could I have this now?” Jane asked.

  “Sure,” Suzanne said. “You can have them all.”

  “You’re getting spooky in your old age,” said Tim, as they headed for the flower shop.

  Jane was looking through one of the phone books that Tim always kept in the backseat of his car. At home in Evanston, Jane used a map she made from the classifieds to shop garage sales efficiently. Tim, though, was an early bird caller. He had a regular phone directory and a reverse directory, the kind a Realtor used, which listed property by addresses and provided names and phone numbers. The night before a promising sale, Tim would call and ask about items that had interested him from the ad and would also offer his professional expertise if the seller needed help pricing. Most people hung up on him, furious that he would presume to dig up the phone number and try to weasel his way in early. But there were always a few who, exhausted from trying to set up a sale and loopy from trying to figure out what was really worth a dollar and what was really worth two dollars, would welcome his offer. All he charged for his services was a first look at the merchandise.

  “What are you looking up?” asked Tim. “And why did you want those hospital volunteer smocks?”

  “Can I borrow your car?” asked Jane.

  Tim pulled up in front of his shop and saw that Claire Oh was already there waiting for him.

  “Yeah, I guess. Claire and I can take the truck, but where are you going?”

  “I’m going to spend my lunch hour looking at a fine little piece of Kankakee real estate.”

  “No good will come of this,” said Tim, watching Jane roar off in his Mustang.

  “Tim,” said Claire, “I hope Jane doesn’t feel like I’m overstepping, you know, moving in on her territory?”

  “I’m more concerned right now with Jane moving in on your husband’s territory,” said Tim. “She’s starting to go all detectively on me. Did you see the way she drove off in my car?”

  “Where is she going?”

  Tim shook his head. “I don’t know, but she’s definitely not going off to look at real estate.”

  Tim entered the shop to grab another one of his fat notebooks, filled with the names of who was on board for the sale and who wanted to volunteer for other jobs. He had food vendors to contact and a call to make to another bus service for backup. He and Claire would visit some other holdouts, and together they would charm them into cooperating. And the ones they couldn’t convince? Jane would get them. He knew no one could resist her. He also knew that she didn’t know that, and he wanted to keep it that way. Her charm was in her own self-effacing innocence. Besides, keeping her in the dark about her own talent allowed him to be the boss.

  He knew what Jane was thinking about this latest plan. She figured he wanted first crack at whatever was left here in Kankakee, whatever he could find hidden away, the objects he hadn’t pried out of people’s basements and cupboards already.

  But Tim Lowry had a higher purpose this time. Well, he still wanted to pry loose a few pieces of crystal and silver from some of these old fogies who kept everything wrapped in newspapers from the forties and sealed in cartons in a crawl space, but that wasn’t the only goal, the main purpose. This time, Tim Lowry wanted to do something for the town. If some ridiculous ratings organization wanted to name Kankakee the worst of the worst, let them go ahead. He would take those lemons and sell lemonade. Another phone call to make. He was going to call the mayor and make sure those two gazebos were front and center on the courthouse lawn. Maybe he ought to get the Brown sisters over there to take pictures of people at the gazebos. Maybe Letterman would put that on the show. Hey, maybe if he could get word to his staff, they would send Biff to attend the sale and do a comedy piece on it.

  “Claire, I’ve got to send an e-mail and then …” Tim stopped. Someone was sitting in his desk chair. “Oh?”

  Bruce Oh looked up from Tim’s computer.

  “I hope you don’t mind?” said Oh. “I was waiting with Claire, and it occurred to me that I might investigate Hometown USA.”

  “That’s a great idea—anything come up? Those two been tarred and feathered and run out of some town on a rail?”

  Tim took out his BlackBerry, resisted the impulse to plant a kiss on this perfect little wonder, and wrote himself an e-mail about his ideas for Letterman. He crossed the shop to peer over the shoulder of a young protégé who was arranging Gerbera daisies in a vintage green bowl. He opened up the cooler and selected some baby irises and sweetheart roses and laid them down on the table next to the bowl. “Don’t be afraid of contrast, Sarah, experiment a little.”

  Oh had not found anything online about Hometown USA. He had found a few political groups that used a variation of tha
t name, but nothing about an amusement park or company that dealt in nostalgic recreations. He did find that ten years ago, a J. Milton Dempsey had been named in a complaint about selling phony oil and gas leases. The ages didn’t quite match up though. He’d also found a newspaper article from an Indiana paper dated two years ago about a company called MakeHappy, whose president was listed as Dempsey Josephson. It was under investigation for fraud. Apparently, Make-Happy was a large event/party-planning service. A woman named Judy Iacuzzi, who had hired MakeHappy to plan a conference for a Young Presidents’ Association, had arrived at the site of the conference to find that not one of the high-end services she had contracted for had been performed. The space had been booked but not paid for, although she had authorized them to use a line of credit from the association. By the time she had driven to their office, MakeHappy had vanished. The suite full of stunning office furniture and sample books, phones, secretaries, even the coffeemaker in the conference room—all gone. The superintendent of the building had said that all the furnishings had been rented for thirty days. The office had only been occupied two days that month—the two days Judy Iacuzzi had come to meetings there.

  MakeHappy had made themselves about fifty thousand dollars. And their entire operation, offices and furnishings, had been paid for with the line of credit from the Young Presidents’ Association, making Judy Iacuzzi not only unhappy but also unemployed.

  “I would like to hunt that man down like a dog and kill him,” she was quoted as saying. Apparently her lawyer was present during the interview and advised her not to say that, but she insisted that the reporter print it. “Please quote me. I will kill Dempsey ‘Joe’ Josephson with my bare hands.”

  “If this is our Mr. Dempsey, his references are less than what one would hope for,” said Oh.

  Claire smiled at her husband. She had been examining Tim’s exquisite collection of American arts-and-crafts pottery while listening to Oh recount the MakeHappy story. The best examples here were the ones with the simplest, cleanest lines, the strongest shapes, the purest colors. Honest understatement. That was what made these pieces valuable. It was also what made her husband unique.