Vintage Page 14

  Amithi had been putting off this trip since the baby was born the previous July. The phone calls and letters from her parents and Naveen’s had become so incessant that she decided she could no longer put off the trip to India. The grandparents wanted to see their grandchild—they did not understand why Naveen and Amithi waited a decade to have children. They did not know that they had tried for years, that Amithi’s heart had broken month after month when her cycle started, an unwelcome visitor. They did not know how difficult the birth had been, and that both mother and child had been frail afterward, at first.

  The grandparents had grown beyond impatient to outright irate that Jayana was almost a year old and they still had not met her. Unable to find a time when Naveen didn’t have classes to teach or conferences to attend, Amithi agreed to travel to India on her own with the baby.

  Preparing for the trip with an eleven-month-old had been a challenge. She could have used her husband’s help, but she knew that he had important work to do while she was gone. He had to finalize a research paper and then present it at a conference in Florida where dozens of renowned scholars would be in attendance. Though she was disappointed he wouldn’t be traveling with her, Amithi couldn’t fault her husband for working hard. He was, after all, the sole provider for their little family.

  For Amithi, the hardest part of the trip preparations had not been the packing or the scheduling. Rather, it had been the task of getting her infant daughter’s ears pierced. Amithi hadn’t wanted to do it, but she predicted there would be gifts of jewelry at the pujas, or prayer ceremonies, that her parents and in-laws would be hosting for the child in India. She did not want people to feel badly if they showed up with pierced earrings for the baby, as she knew some of them would. Earrings were a common gift at such events.

  So, a week before her scheduled flight to Delhi, Amithi went ahead with the ear piercing, although she did not hold a karna vedha, the traditional ceremony for the occasion. She did not want to invite a large group of people to the house to watch her daughter cry in pain. She simply asked her neighbor Lalita to come over and take care of the task. Lalita Auntie, whose own children were all grown up, had sterilized the needle and poured Amithi a glass of Naveen’s scotch. Amithi had cried as the needle poked through her baby’s soft skin, even though Jayana didn’t utter a sound, so mesmerized was she by Lalita Auntie’s kind face and soft singing.

  Although Amithi had not been back to India since her wedding, she knew this trip was not about her. It would be filled with trudging through monsoons to temples and homes of distant relations Amithi either had never met or did not remember. It was so that her parents and the Singhs could show off Jayana, show off Amithi and Naveen’s successes in America.

  Amithi glanced down at her red-faced daughter. She leaned down and kissed Jayana’s head through her black, sweaty curls. Amithi wished Naveen were there to share responsibility for the dirty looks Amithi knew were being thrown her way by other passengers on the plane. The child howled louder until, finally, after a bout of gasping sobs, she fell asleep.

  Amithi draped the sleeping baby over her lap, so that her hands were free, and grabbed her sewing from her purse. She was making a shawl to wrap Jayana in during the mundan sanskar—the ceremony for the baby’s first haircut. She was nearly finished. The final touch was to outline the feather designs in gold thread. She had chosen a peacock-feather pattern because the bird symbolized India, and she knew her relatives would be touched by the gesture. The peacock also symbolized life and love, and she could not imagine more perfect imagery for her daughter.

  Amithi held up the shiny fabric and whispered to Jayana. “Look, sweetheart, look what your ma made for you.”

  Jayana opened her eyes and scrunched up her face. She grabbed the shawl, threw it onto the ground near her mother’s feet, and wailed.

  Chapter 13

  INVENTORY ITEM: boots

  APPROXIMATE DATE: late 1970s

  CONDITION: fair

  ITEM DESCRIPTION: Frye boots. Calf-height, size seven. Caramel-colored leather with some scuffing at toe. Stacked heel.

  SOURCE: Katherine Morgan’s house

  Violet

  ON A SATURDAY EVENING in mid-July, Violet rang the doorbell of a Craftsman-style bungalow a block away from Hourglass Vintage. While she waited, she admired the Asiatic lilies blooming in the flower beds in front of the house. Sam had dropped off a bouquet of similar flowers for Violet at the store that afternoon, along with a carton of fresh strawberries from the farmers’ market. The lilies had filled the whole store with the sticky-sweet smell of summer. Violet had told Sam in a teasing voice that if he didn’t stop dropping by with flowers, she was going to get accustomed to it. He’d told her to go ahead and get accustomed.

  April opened the door in yoga pants and a baggy T-shirt. Dark shadows underscored her eyes.

  “Thanks for coming,” April said. “Enter at your own risk.”

  “Your flower beds are gorgeous,” Violet said as she stepped into the tiled foyer.

  “That’s all my mom’s work,” April said. “She planted them ages ago.”

  “This place is adorable.” Violet looked at the stained glass windows on either side of the door, the carved woodwork on the staircase. “And not that cluttered. You made it sound like there was stuff everywhere.”

  “You should have seen it before today. I’ve been working all afternoon. It’s like an archaeology dig. How was the rest of the day at the store?”

  “I called some theaters and bars about holding the fashion show. The Majestic Theatre offered me a really good price for a night in mid-August, so I think we should have it there.”

  “August sounds good to me. I just hope this baby doesn’t come early.” April patted her belly.

  As April’s midsection grew, so did Violet’s sense of longing. She knew it was ridiculous to be jealous. April hadn’t had an easy life, and wouldn’t any time soon. Still, there was a luminosity about her lately, a quiet confidence. Violet had seen it in Karen’s face when she was pregnant with Edith, and she feared she’d never know the feeling herself.

  She looked out the window. “Places almost never go on the market in this neighborhood,” Violet said. “Why are you selling it?”

  “My mom left a lot of debt. Once we close, I’ll use the money to pay it off. Plus, I don’t need this much space and it’s a lot of work and cost to take care of a whole house. Can you imagine living in this place when you were my age?” April asked.

  Violet couldn’t, but only because the place she’d lived in had had squirrels running around in the walls. “Honey, when I was your age I was married and renting a place behind a gas station.”

  “So I guess you didn’t live the life of an average eighteen-year-old, either.”

  “Sadly, in my hometown, it was pretty average.” Violet put her hands on her hips, eager to get started. She’d come to help April move forward, not to dwell on her own past. “So what do you need help with around here?”

  “I’ve just been trying to clear things out, little by little,” April said.

  Violet glanced around at the framed artwork on the terra-cotta-colored walls, the mix of antique and modern furniture. They were signs of someone who’d acquired things over decades. Kind of like me, she thought.

  “There’s a lot of clothing I need to go through in my mom’s room,” April said.

  “Are you sure you want to do this today?” Violet asked. “I’m okay with coming back another time if it’s too much for you right now. I know you’ve been under a lot of stress lately, with your ex and everything.”

  April shook her head. “I need to figure out what’s worth keeping and what I should just get rid of.”

  “I happen to be an expert at that particular task.”

  “Well, then, come on upstairs.” April motioned for Violet to follow her.

  In the corner of Katherine Morgan’s slope-ceilinged bedroom, Violet spotted a two-foot-tall lamp in the shape of a goose. “I can�
��t believe you have one of those,” she said.

  “What, that horrible lamp?” April asked. “I have no idea where my mom got it, but she loved that thing.”

  “It’s Gladys the Goose.” Violet kneeled on the floor to get a better look at the lamp. “It’s so cute. I’ve never seen one in person before. These lamps have kind of a cult following, at least in my weird little vintage world. The company that designed it doesn’t make them anymore.”

  April shot her a bewildered look. “You can have it.”

  “I’d love to,” Violet said. “But I’m sure it meant something to your mom, so I wouldn’t feel right about it. People don’t buy something this unusual unless they’re drawn to it.”

  “Yeah, well I still think it’s ugly.”

  Violet put her hands on either side of the goose’s head, as if to cover its ears. “Shhhh, she might hear you.”

  “I’m glad you came over because, as you can see, I have no idea what’s valuable and what’s not,” April said.

  Violet turned toward the bed, which was piled high with boxes full of clothes. “These are the things you wanted me to look through?”

  “Yeah. I’ve had a hard time going through them because I can picture my mom wearing a lot of these things and then I get sad.”

  Violet began sorting through the bags of clothing, which contained mostly Lands’ End sweaters, nondescript polo shirts, and khakis. She held up a long denim jumper.

  “Kinda frumpy, huh?” April said. “I think she used to wear that with a turtleneck under it.”

  “Apparently your mom wasn’t as creative about her clothes as she was with interior decorating.”

  “I guess not. Although I’m not even sure she was ever that into decorating, either. She just bought things she liked, even if no one else liked them and they didn’t go with what was in the rest of the house. She was pretty impulsive.”

  From one of the bags, Violet selected two ruffled party dresses from the eighties, one in electric-blue taffeta and the other in ruched velvet. From another bag, she pulled a pair of tan stacked-heel boots. She peeked inside the shaft and set them down on the table. “Frye boots. Now these would sell.”

  “I’m pretty sure my mom had them even before I was born.” April touched the scuffed leather of one of the boots. “I can remember holding her hand as a really little kid and looking over at her legs. She was almost always wearing these.”

  Violet pushed the boots toward her. “Do you want them?”

  “My feet are too big.”

  “Maybe you should keep them anyway.”

  “What am I going to do with a pair of boots that don’t fit?” April asked.

  Violet glanced down at April’s belly. “Give them to your daughter.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so sure I’m having a girl. Anyway, I don’t want to hang on to the boots that long. The store should take them if you think they’ll sell. I’d rather have someone else wear them than have them sitting in a closet for years.”

  “I’d pay you for them, of course,” Violet said. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, as long as they’re not too beat-up for the store. I always assumed that with shoes, the less used looking, the better.”

  “Sometimes,” Violet said. “But with sturdy-type boots, like Fryes or cowboy boots, it’s nice if they look a bit worn.”

  As Violet sifted through the last bag of clothing, she noticed a slip of yellow paper sticking out of the pocket of a pair of jeans. She took it out and handed it to April.

  “I bet it’s a to-do list,” April said as she unfolded the paper. “My mom was notorious for starting a list, doing one or two of the items on it, and then forgetting about it. I used to find little notes like this everywhere.” She looked down. “Yep. Here it says, ‘Get car washed. Put out recycling. Check on—’ ” April stopped and her face turned pale.

  “Check on what?” Violet asked.

  “I’ll be right back.” April rushed out of the bedroom, still holding the yellow paper.

  Violet heard thumping and rustling from somewhere down the hall, then silence. She waited a few moments, folding and refolding the items she’d taken out of the garbage bags. Then she got worried.

  She stuck her head out into the hallway. “April?”

  No answer. Violet walked down the hall, looking into each room. She passed two bedrooms crammed with a mix of antiques—everything from midcentury nightstands to a mission-style bed and a cuckoo clock. In a small office at the end of the hall, she found April sitting on the wood floor, surrounded by papers.

  “Is everything okay?” Violet asked.

  April looked up. Her face was red and wet with tears.

  Violet sat down next to her. “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t believe it.” April shook her head. “Maybe Charlie was right.”

  “Right about what?”

  April held up a document marked with green highlighter.

  Violet squinted to try to read the tiny writing. “What’s that?”

  April wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “It’s my mom’s life insurance policy. I knew she had one—I’m supposed to be getting a check in the mail any day now—but I’ve never actually looked at it.”

  Violet was confused. “Well, if you’re getting some insurance money, that’s good news, right?”

  From the floor, April picked up the list that Violet had found. “Look at this, though. The third item.”

  Violet took the list. “I don’t get it. It says, ‘Check on life insurance policy.’”

  “Right. And when I pulled out the policy—” April’s voice broke as she pointed to the paper. “Look. The clause on suicide is highlighted.”

  Violet was confused. “You said you were getting a check, though. I always assumed that if a person committed suicide, the insurance money wouldn’t be paid out.”

  April shook her head. “That’s what I thought, too. But it doesn’t work that way. What it says here is that the proceeds are paid out as long as the person didn’t commit suicide within two years of when the policy was issued. This policy was issued five years ago. So the fact that the insurance company is cutting me a check doesn’t rule out the possibility that she might have—” April covered her face with her hands.

  Violet considered her next words carefully. “Is that really a concern? That your mom killed herself? You never mentioned that before.”

  “She was bipolar. She kept it under control most of the time, but every now and then she’d stop taking her medication and get all out of whack. There were times she was so depressed she wouldn’t even eat. And then there’s the fact that she quit her secretarial job and put all of that money into starting up her organizational consulting business or whatever it was, which she never focused on long enough to make any money from.” April hugged her arms to her belly and rocked back and forth on her heels. “Charlie thinks she did it. We got into a big fight over it, and that’s sort of what led us to splitting up. Although of course it’s more complicated than that. We both said a lot of awful things. But I was adamant that my mom would never go that far. Now that I’ve seen this, I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” Violet said. “But still, all you found is a to-do list and a highlighted copy of her insurance policy. The two might not even be related.”

  “Why would someone highlight the suicide clause unless they were thinking about it?”

  “Sure.” Violet put a hand on April’s shoulder. “It’s a possibility. But it’s also a possibility that she highlighted that section long ago, and that the list she made had nothing to do with it.”

  “That’s the optimistic way of looking at it.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t mean it might not be true.”

  April gathered up the papers and shoved them into a desk drawer.

  Violet wished she had never found the list. She’d always felt that, when it came to the past, some things were better left buried.

  Chapter 14

  INVENTO
RY ITEM: pantyhose

  APPROXIMATE DATE: 1945–1950

  CONDITION: excellent

  ITEM DESCRIPTION: Nylon, fully-fashioned stockings in sheer black with back seam.

  SOURCE: online vintage retailer

  April

  APRIL TRIED TO FOCUS on the dark-haired drag queen strutting across the stage of the Majestic Theatre downtown, a block from the capitol. The queen twirled and posed in a red, one-piece pantsuit while a Diana Ross dance remix blared from the speakers. Despite the exuberant music and the excited chatter of the auditioning models, April’s mood couldn’t have been darker.

  “I think she’s a yes,” Violet said.

  “Definitely,” Lane added, scribbling on one of the score sheets she’d made up and brought with her to auditions.

  “I’m so glad you agreed to help us,” Violet said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t remember who we were.”

  “Of course I remember,” Lane said. “I get a ton of compliments whenever I wear those red shoes I bought at your shop. I’ve started planning entire outfits around them. Even my husband noticed them, and he doesn’t notice anything.” She smiled. “He said they make me look like one of those ‘old-time pinup girls.’”

  Violet turned to April. “So what do you think about this model?”

  “Oh, um, fine,” April replied, circling a number at random on her own score sheet. For once, numbers seemed meaningless. She tried to pay attention to what was going on onstage, but she couldn’t stop thinking about her mom. The bright lights and chattering models in the theater only underscored her confusion and grief.

  Ever since she’d seen the insurance documents and the note Violet found the other day, April had been combing through her memory, looking for some sign that would tell her, one way or the other, whether her mom’s death had been intentional. When she thought of the happy times they’d spent together, like biking around the arboretum or baking carrot cake from their secret family recipe, she’d feel certain that her mom never would have left her. But then she’d recall the worst times—the days when her mom hid in bed with the lights out and the blinds closed, or the weeks when she’d stay up several nights in a row, concocting her next flawed plan for making quick money. April could often predict those bouts before they happened. Before a period of depression, she’d notice a heaviness in her mom’s expression, a flatness in her voice that would tip her off. Before a manic phase, there would be a frightening, anxious energy in her eyes.