“You didn’t think you were going to miss her this much, did you?” said Clive.
“No.” I closed my eyes. “How much do I miss her?”
“A lot,” he said. “What’s your plan?”
“I think I’ll buy a car.”
“In New York?”
“Not in New York.”
“Where then?”
“Vermont,” I said. I’d been at camp there as a child, swum in its frigid lakes, breathed in the air. Vermont signified escape for me. And possibly regression. And—although I avoided this truth at the time—was baldly romantic, which was likely to soothe my damaged spirits. Clive waited for an explanation, but I didn’t have one good enough to share. I just lit a new cigarette off his and blew rings at the ceiling.
14
p
Uncle William came to meet me at the airport. On the phone from London, I’d tried to convince him that taking a cab was fine. But he’d insisted and it was good to have him there, hands clasped in front and feet a shoulder’s width apart. I knew I looked awful and felt somewhat safe as a result. I told Uncle William that I intended to buy a house in Vermont, some place with a barn—a vision had articulated itself on the plane trip—to run as an antiques business.
He said, “I’m glad you’re thinking of your future.”
This terrified me, of course, because I’d expected an argument. A panic set in as we left the terminal and got in the car. Now my beautiful farmhouse and converted barn seemed bleak and lonely. I imagined myself blundering from one structure to the other, mad and disheveled, with a relentless Brontëan wind as my only companion. Why would I want to grow old there?
“Of course, it’s just for a few years,” I said.
We were quiet for some time, and when the driver coughed it seemed very loud.
I said, “You would have liked Olivia. She had a good sense of humor.”
Uncle William said, “I wish I had met her.”
And we rode silently into the city.
Uncle William went with me to buy the car. I, of course, wanted something sporty, but he didn’t think that was appropriate. Wasn’t I going to Vermont? At this point it was December, already brutally cold and windy, dry, but I could imagine snow. The racing green Jaguar I had been dreaming of would do me little good in Vermont. We looked at a couple of things. I realized, with some surprise, that I really didn’t care what I drove. I kept having a sense of déjà vu and finally attributed it to the time Uncle William and I had gone shopping as I headed off to prep school. He’d been keen on buying the right shirts and shoes, and of course knew exactly what they were, and I hadn’t cared then either. At the Oldsmobile dealership, it was he who argued with the salesman. I overheard him say, “I really don’t want him driving anything that makes him look like he’s in the Mafia.”
Which, actually, sounded rather appealing.
“So the car is not for you?” asked the salesman.
“No,” said Uncle William. “It’s for him.”
The salesman glanced at me surreptitiously.
“What do you think, Rupert?” asked Uncle William.
I looked at him and shrugged.
Finally, we decided on a navy blue tanker that looked like it would do well in the snow. I liked the radio, and Uncle William liked the velvety seats. I thought I should pay for it because it was my car, but Uncle William wanted to treat me. We argued back and forth. The salesman stood very still, waiting for us to be done. Finally, Uncle William insisted that he would get the car because I needed to save my money to buy myself the house.
Uncle William had driven as a young man. He had a photograph of himself in a convertible. He said the car was yellow, but the picture was black-and-white. He had not driven since. I now had a British driver’s license and had never driven a car on the right side of the road. I think it was Uncle William’s faith and ignorance—that unmatchable pairing—that fueled my ability to get out of the dealership, which was far west on 48th Street. I took a deep breath and pulled into traffic. In a way, I was glad for all the cars because I had a desire to drive on the left side of the road, and all the traffic made that fairly impossible. And then I just wanted to stop as soon as I could, but Uncle William thought we should see what the car could do. Uncle William didn’t seem to understand just how challenging this was. I was a very poor driver. He was enjoying himself, drumming on the dashboard. When he thought I should slow down he tapped the air with his fingers, his hand relaxed and open—a conductor’s gesture for calming the woodwinds. When he thought I should increase my speed, he pushed his fist forward. We drove for an hour, got lost on Long Island, asked many people for directions, and reached home after dark.
Christmas came and went. I managed to avoid the parties because of my recent loss. Nathan called, and we went for lunch. We talked a lot about Olivia, and it felt good and bad at the same time. Then we talked about Amanda. She had sold another piece of Jack’s sculpture. Nathan wanted me to pull strings to find out how much it had fetched, because it was rumored to be a lot.
“Who’s she sleeping with?” I asked.
“You’re not really interested, are you?”
“Interested in Amanda, no. Interested in who she’s sleeping with, very.”
“Why?”
“He has good taste in jewelry.”
Nathan didn’t want to tell me because he’d heard it from Amanda, who had asked him to be quiet about it.
“That’s complete bullshit,” I said. “You knew before she confided in you, didn’t you?”
“I’d heard something,” said Nathan.
“Then it’s not a matter of confidence. It’s preexisting knowledge.”
“This is not a legal matter,” said Nathan. He was refolding his napkin and smiling at me with his eyes.
“Your not passing on the information is complete hypocrisy.”
“Yes,” said Nathan. “And what’s wrong with that?” He’d let someone else tell me. “Rupert, do you know what the opposite of hypocrisy is?”
“Honesty?” I ventured.
“No,” said Nathan. “It’s anarchy.”
I found my farmhouse three miles outside of Brattleboro. The house was a great brick building on a bald hill. There was one tree beside the house, an oak, which when the weather warmed up would be black with crows. In the fall the oak would drop acorns on the roof. I wanted to put a swing there, but who would swing there? It was just me, after all.
The barn had needed some shoring up but was nice and dry. I ordered a number of pallets and replaced some of the planking in the loft. The farmer next door had used it for a while and one cow, a sweet brown thing with eyes like a dog, would show up every now and then, forgetting it was no longer home. We would eye each other shyly, suspiciously; after all, who really belonged?
News circulated that I was interested in buying old things, and people began to bring them in. I ventured farther north to some junk stores, found a good furniture restorer, went to estate sales, and began to build inventory. I had a vague notion of hooking up with someone in New York, someone who could place the quality pieces. The obvious choice for this was Hester, but I didn’t want to work with her. I also didn’t want to work with one of her competitors, because she’d hear about it. I felt constantly presented with creative ways to complete her destruction, but I didn’t follow through. Instead, I did nothing. I found an exceptional Hepplewhite dresser with all the original brass and locks and sent it to Uncle William as a present.
One morning I came in from the barn to find the phone ringing. It was Nathan.
“I’m passing through Brattleboro on my way to a friend’s cabin. If you have time, I’d love to stop by and see how you’re doing.”
“I have time,” I said.
I was inordinately thrilled by Nathan’s impending visit. I went into town to see if I could find some cheese that wasn’t cheddar and a good bottle of wine. I found both. I got some logs from the woodshed and made a nice pile by the fireplace in the
kitchen.
I hurried across the windblown hill, what I referred to in my head as the “the steppes,” to the barn. The smell in there was of dust and oldness. I had gained quite a collection of crystal and silver, shaving mirrors, and family Bibles. There were all sorts of prints and a few nice French hutches and English sideboards. I had tried to maintain some order, but this was not easy. The figurines were crowding the china cabinets. I loathed figurines—all those cloying shepherds and small-footed ladies—but I had a hard time saying no to people. Frankly, if you showed up at my house with something to sell, I was probably going to buy it.
I rooted around through a couple of bins, through the cluttered shelves. I was looking for candlesticks. I had a number of them. For some reason, candlesticks survived, and I thought a mess of them, crystal and silver, in the front windows might be festive. I found a good pair of sterling sabbath candlesticks, which I’d purchased from a woman a month earlier. I’d been careful to hang on to these because I was nursing a hope that she might want them back.
One cold Saturday morning I had answered the door to find the woman standing there, pulling her coat around her. She had her two children in tow, a boy and a girl. There was an elegance about her that didn’t match her clothes or her vehicle, a battered pickup with Jersey plates.
“Can I help you?” I asked. I’d just made coffee but hadn’t yet had a chance to drink any.
“Someone at the gas station said you bought antiques.”
“Yes, I do.” I invited them in and gave her a cup of coffee and the children some doughnuts, which were stale, but they wolfed them down. Although I wasn’t usually that friendly, living on my bald hill in my empty house had made anything at the door possibly entertaining. “Tell me what you have.”
The woman eyed me nervously. “Do you know about Bonaparte?”
“Napoleon?” I ventured.
“No. His brother.”
“Joseph, the king of Spain?”
“That’s the one.” She smiled nervously. “I have a couple of things that have come to me, and I’d like to sell them.”
“We’ll take a look, when you’re done with your coffee. I’m in no hurry.” Her children had sat down on the floor next to the kitchen fireplace, a large old-fashioned one big enough for me to stand in. They were drawing in the soot on the brick. The little girl had loopy yellow hair and fat cheeks. The boy, older, looked much like his mother. He had a precocious weariness about him, and I had a feeling that somewhere in New Jersey his father was waking up and wondering where they’d gone. “Have you had a long drive today?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the woman.
“Do you have relatives in the area?”
“Yes,” she said. She drank down her coffee and set the cup almost silently on the table. “Thank you for the coffee. Do you want to see the pieces?”
I said I did. She called to the children, but they looked warm and happy so I told her to let them stay. Out of earshot, I told the boy that there was milk and cheese and some cold chicken in the refrigerator; if he and his sister were hungry they could help themselves.
It was a freezing cold day, in the teens, with a wind. The woman had a tarp over the things in the back of the truck, which had been packed in a hurry. There were dolls flung in there, along with clothing. On the top was a garment bag printed with an old Saks logo, probably from the forties. The zipper had come open a little, and I could make out black fur, probably a mink, inside. Somewhere someone had come down in the world, married down, I thought. Married for love, maybe her mother.
She caught me looking and said, “Do the contents of my truck interest you?”
And I said, “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
She had a dresser that took up half the truck, and it was this she wanted to unload. I helped her into the truck bed. She had the dresser protected by a sheet and she revealed it with a certain amount of ceremony.
“This dresser belonged to Joseph Bonaparte,” she said.
I knew all about Joseph Bonaparte.
In 1816, Napoleon’s brother Joseph, once king of Naples, once king of Spain, finding himself without a kingdom and banned from living in France, made the unusual choice of relocating to New Jersey. He created an estate called Point Breeze just over the river from Pennsylvania and began calling himself the Count de Survilliers. The house he built was enormous and he filled it with stuff, including works by Titian, Velázquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, and da Vinci. I’d read somewhere that he had a mirror hanging over his bed and that the walls in his bedchamber were covered with paintings of nude ladies and famous conquest scenes along the lines of The Rape of Europa. The paintings were all auctioned off in 1847, along with the other stuff—the tables and chairs, bookcases, dressers, and candlesticks, the fine china and sterling flatware.
The Count de Survilliers had owned many things, but if one third of the Joseph Bonaparte antiques were actually genuine, there would have been enough objects to clutter fifty Point Breezes. And that’s only counting the pieces people had tried to sell me.
And here is the woman standing in her truck, and she’s shaking because the wind is blowing hard. Some miracle of strength is holding her together and she has just unveiled the dresser. The sheet is whipping in the wind and tears are streaking out the sides of her eyes, and it might just be the cold but it probably isn’t.
“Are you sure you want to sell it?” I asked.
She inhaled and thought for a moment and then said, “Well, sir, are you in the habit of doing only what you want?”
Even from where I was standing, feet solidly on the ground, I knew the dresser was American. True, there had been quite a few fine cabinetmakers in Philadelphia, possibly influenced by the trendsetting count’s presence in the area, who made wonderful furniture. I thought of Charles Honoré Lannuier and Michael Bouvier. But I knew this woman was under the impression that the dresser was European, part of the Bonaparte hoard, and this certainly would have helped its value. I hopped up on the back of the truck. It was a nice dresser, but it didn’t set my heart pounding. I opened the drawer and, just as I had suspected, the secondary wood was white pine. This was no European piece and frankly even New Jersey seemed too far south for its provenience. I dated the piece somewhere in the 1880s. Our friend Joseph Bonaparte had left for Europe, never to return, in 1839.
I bought the dresser and the candlesticks, which were worth more than I paid—German 1880s, sterling—but I had lost a lot of money on the first transaction and needed something to remind myself that I was a businessman. I was transfixed by the little boy. He was pinched and thin, and the way he wrapped his sister up in her scarf and carefully put on her mittens, feeling for her thumb, the way he shook my hand and thanked me for the food, affected me. As they were walking off to the car, I had a fleeting desire to try my charm on the mother, just to have the children stay. But she was a destroyed woman and I let her go, back to her parents or wherever it was she was seeking refuge. The little boy gave me a quick wave as they pulled off, I suppose to assure me that everything was going to be all right. I hoped it would be, but as they drove off, I felt a terrible renewed loneliness.
Nathan showed up around four in the afternoon. He was three hours late and the snow was beginning to collect in drifts. I had already called the police to see if they’d run into him in the course of investigating the day’s accidents, but no one matched his description and I wasn’t sure what he was driving. The car belonged to his friend, and delivering it was apparently the occasion for Nathan’s visit. Finally, I saw lights at the foot of the hill. I ran out with a flashlight, and sure enough there was Nathan.
“Rupert, hello,” he said. He was just out of the car and was adjusting the cuffs of his gloves. He looked at me with concern. “Is it all right if I leave it here?”
There was an uninterrupted sea of nothing upon which the blue car sat. “A little to the left would have been better,” I said, and Nathan knew I was joking.
For dinner, I was warmin
g up some beef stew that had been left for me, and there were potatoes roasting in the fireplace. Nathan held his glass of wine. He was drinking very slowly, although he had assured me that the wine was good. I wondered if it was too sweet. The best wine I’d seen for sale had been this white, a Gewürztraminer, and a French claret that I was saving for dinner. I caught Nathan eyeing me in a concerned way. He seemed rather disturbed by my transformation.
“What are you wearing?” he said.
“It’s a sweater,” I said.
“Looks more like a colossal tea cosy. Did someone make that for you?”
“Yes,” I said. The sweater was somewhat remarkable, all coarse cables and knots. It weighed about seven pounds.
“The Bavarian milkmaid?” Nathan inquired.
“You’ve been talking to Clive,” I said. “Her father owns the dairy next door. And where did this Bavarian bullshit come into play? Are we in Bavaria?”
Nathan waved me off. “Don’t be so defensive,” he said.
“She passes the time,” I said. “She stops me from thinking.”
“Then it’s not serious?”
“Of course not,” I said, and added, “I might starve to death without her. That’s kind of serious.” And Nathan smiled, although with limited sympathy.
Later, he said, “We all miss Olivia, Rupert. We don’t all live in Vermont.”
Nathan’s room was across the hall from mine and had its own fireplace. I’d stacked up enough wood to last through the night. With the wind fairly shrieking around the house and the crackle of wood, it was all quite romantic and appealed to Nathan’s finely honed aesthetic sense. I gave him an extra pair of wool socks, just in case his feet got cold. The Bavarian milkmaid had tidied the room up that afternoon and put a wreath of bittersweet over the head of the bed. She had also rescued and laundered some lace doilies that apparently I had purchased along with a rolltop desk, and these were strategically placed on wood surfaces around the room. I didn’t know how to decorate in Vermont. I thought all the lace would look cloying, but it more underscored the severity of country life, and I rather liked it. As I drifted off I was happy that Nathan was there, across the hall, where he should be.
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