Rare Objects (18 page)

“So? I need a place where I can breathe.” She looked across, hurt. “You're not the only one who lives in a fishbowl. I thought you'd understand.”

“I do. It's just, well, it's so beautiful. Filled with so many lovely things.”

“Is it? Well, they're only things. Anyway, I like secrets. What people don't know can't be interfered with.” She stretched out, closed her eyes. “The secret life is the only real life. Everything else is just a disguise.”

A week later there was an article in the
Globe
announcing that socialite and budding philanthropist Diana Van der Laar was donating two extraordinarily rare Greek artifacts to the Art of the Ancient World wing of the Museum of Fine Arts. She was described as a “world-class beauty with a Continental upbringing” and a family with “extensive foreign interests” that meant her personal wealth was “beyond considerable.” There was also a photograph of her, looking very pale, quite exquisite, and exceptionally bored.

Mr. Kessler was beside himself with excitement, waving the paper at me when I came into work.

“Look! It's your lovely friend!” He flapped it around like a flag. “There's a public reception on Thursday! We must go. I only wish we'd been mentioned by name.” He looked at me eagerly. “Perhaps you could suggest she do that next time.”

“Actually, we never discuss that sort of thing.” I made it sound as if it were somehow beneath me. But in fact she'd never even mentioned the museum reception or her society-page feature. It was odd reading about her in the papers as if she was a stranger.

“Well, there's no harm in asking, is there?” He bustled past me. “Still, this is a real feather in our cap! It confirms our reputation as a respected international source. This reception could be a platform for even more high-profile sales!” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “You must be sure to wear something nice, Miss Fanning.”

I shot him a dark look. “Don't I always?”

“We might get our picture in the evening edition.” Then his face changed. “Oh dear! Cards!” He hurried into his office and began digging through his desk drawers. “We must order new business cards immediately! How could I have been so stupid as not to request them sooner?”

I trailed in behind him. “Don't worry. I'll do it now.”

“I'm not worried, but it must be taken care of!” He was rushing around in such a state that he became short of breath.

“Are you all right, Mr. Kessler?”

“Asthma.” He paused, gasping a little. “This fog doesn't help. I'll be fine.”

I pulled out his chair. “You'd better sit down.”

“No, I want to get to the printer. It is imperative that we have cards by Thursday.”

“You don't look well. You should rest awhile.”

He opened his bottom right-hand desk drawer and pulled out a little vial. “I have something here. Benzedrine. It's new.” He broke off the end. “The doctor says it works immediately. Clears everything. Now don't fuss.”

When he'd gone, I telephoned Diana at the apartment, but there was no answer. I even went so far as to ring her Cohasset home, only to be told that “Miss Van der Laar has a great many obligations this week and is presently indisposed. However, I will inform her that you called. Would you like to leave a name?”

“No, no, that's all right,” I mumbled, feeling as if now I was the one chasing her.

Hanging up the phone, I gnawed at my thumbnail.

The Diana I knew was a hard-drinking, rebellious prankster who had practically blackmailed me into being her friend. But to the outside world she was an elegant, accomplished society beauty with admirable philanthropic ambitions.

The real Diana existed somewhere between these two extremes, in the private world of secrets she was so protective of, but I wasn't sure where.

I thought of my own past, layered with different versions of myself. The tricky part wasn't the roles you played, but which ones you ended up believing yourself.

That evening I met Ma downtown after work, and we went to the sale basement of Filene's to buy a dress for the reception. Normally, we would have chosen a pattern from the Butterwick pattern book and Ma would have made it herself. But time was tight. Filene's was a department store, but not nearly in the same class
as Stearns. The basement was famous for its sales and plummeting prices. Here great crowds pillaged the sprawling underground rooms, roaming from bin to bin, rail to rail, trawling for bargains.

In the end, we couldn't find a suitable dress; Ma chose a very fine black wool crepe skirt instead, cut on the bias. It was a size too big and had been reduced even further because one of the seams was coming loose.

“It's the simplest thing in the world to repair,” she said, folding it over her arm. “And the fabric has a lovely drape.”

But for the first time in my life, I resented Filene's basement. Before, it had always been an exciting treat; who knew what you might find on the 75-percent-off table or hiding at the back of the store in the Last Chance section? But tonight everything looked common and shabby. I was tired of people pushing and shoving and digging around like animals. I wanted a new dress—something fashionable, delicate, and pretty. Not a funereal skirt, cheap and practical.

“It's too big. It makes me look like a giraffe in mourning,” I told her.

“It's too big
now
,” Ma corrected me. “But by the time I get through altering it, it will fit like a glove.” She paused to riffle through a bin of last season's blouses. “This is an excellent piece. You can wear it three seasons out of four, at work or in the evening, and it flatters you, which is the most important thing.”

I picked sullenly through a rack of women's dresses, all last season and the wrong size. I couldn't help thinking of what Diana would be wearing; of how Mr. Kessler referred to her as my “lovely friend,” while I was an Amazon. “Mr. Kessler said he wanted me to wear something nice,” I persisted. “They'll all be wearing day dresses and suits.”

“This is
nice
! Besides, men don't know what they want until you give it them.” She held up a red-and-white knit top with a small tear in the collar and then rejected it. “You'll look elegant. But I'll tell you what will look ridiculous”—she took my arm, pulling me toward the cash register—“is all five foot nine of you covered in some dreadful floral tablecloth. Only short women can even attempt florals, and in my opinion, even they should give them a wide berth. By the way, what do you think of turbans?”

I looked across at her. “I'm sorry? Did you say turbans?”

“That's right.”

“Are you going to be a fortune-teller in a fair?”

She ignored my sarcasm. “I'm thinking of knitting a few for the Widow's Society stall. I thought I'd do something different this year.”

Every year the Widow's Society of Boston hosted several charity events to raise money. This year they'd booked a stall outside of the North Church during the Declaration Day Parade. Obviously they'd decided to push themselves artistically.

“Yes, but
turbans
?” For a woman who'd just lectured on the dangers of floral fabrics, this was really quite an aesthetic leap.

“Well, we can't keep making socks and doilies every year. Apparently people want something new. And Frieda's started making aprons.” (Here was the crux of the matter.) “Out of nowhere, she just announced it at the planning committee meeting, as if we'd known all along. And now Rosemarie says she's learned how to make little coin purses out of leather. You know she works at the shoe factory? Well, she's allowed all the scraps she wants.”

Ma was nothing if not competitive. She wasn't going to allow Frieda or Rosemarie to get the better of her.

“I'm not going to be the only one making socks, I'll tell you that much! See, the idea is, you can pop it on when your hair is setting and you need to go to the shops, or when you're cleaning, or even as a hat in the evening. Movie stars wear them.”

I doubted this very much. “Where did you get that idea?”

“I saw an article in
McCall's
. Apparently Gloria Swanson
lives
in them.”

Ma had received aid from the Widow's Society when she first came to Boston to pay her first month's rent, and later on to tide her over just after I was born. Although she hated to receive any form of charity, she was proud now to be a contributor. Every year she made dozens of thick socks, woolly hats, delicate lace collars, handkerchiefs, and elaborate, painstaking doilies to raise money for other women in similar circumstances. She even served on the refreshments committee, baking dense, dry scones, which, I noticed, were inevitably the last to go on the sweets table.

“I mean, socks are socks! The Marine Society has socks coming out of their ears, and their stall is only across the street this year!” Ma was working herself up now. “I want to make something that will sell. Frieda's aprons are nothing special. The cotton's rough. But people seem to like the colors. And, of course she can make them so much faster, so it looks like she's been slaving away, night and day—”

“It's a grand idea.” I cut her off. “I'm sure they'll sell like hotcakes.”

“Do you think?” She suddenly seemed unsure of herself, a rare occurrence. “I know they're a risk, but sometimes you have to go out on a limb, don't you think?”

“Ma, isn't it time you graduated from the Widow's?”

She scowled at me. “What are you talking about? They would fall apart without me!”

“I mean, isn't it time you found another man?”

“Oh, honestly!” She wrinkled her nose like I was a bad smell. “I'm far too old for any of that nonsense!”

“No, you're not! That's what you always say. And it's not like men don't notice you. You know they do.”

She pretended to be deeply interested in a table covered with long underwear. “I have too much to do. I'm busy.”

We filed into the payment line behind a woman and her two small boys. The woman had a man's winter coat in one hand and her brawling boys by their coat collars with the other. I watched as she gave each of them a smack on the head. “I just don't want you to be lonely,” I said.

“I have you. And when you're gone, I'll get a little dog. One of those ones with curly hair.”

“A poodle?” I giggled.

“That's right. A poodle! I'd rather have a poodle over a man any day!” She opened her pocketbook, took out her purse.

“I can pay, Ma.”

“No, I want to,” she insisted. “You've done well to get this job. I'm proud of you. When you came back I was afraid you'd go back to Mickey and well, who knows what. But I'm glad to see you've grown up, Maeve, and are becoming quite the respectable young woman. Regardless of your hair,” she added.

Ma never gave compliments if she could give advice. Now the warmth of the smile softening her features unnerved me. Even in tender moments, she raised her chin upward, as if she were being pulled forward into some tremendous future like the masthead of a ship.

I was unused to praise, wary of it, especially from her. It often proved only the harbinger of some future disappointment gathering on the horizon.

“Thank you,” I mumbled, staring at the sales assistant's quick
hands folding the skirt, putting it into a bag. “Thank you very much.”

I couldn't bear to look upon the satisfaction in my mother's face any more than I could stand to stare too long at the sun.

The public reception at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, took place the next afternoon. Mr. Kessler closed the shop early, and we took a trolley to Forsyth Park, walking across Huntington Avenue to the imposing “new” building. The vast marble gallery in the Art of the Ancient World wing, with its high ceilings and polished wooden floors, was crowded with guests, journalists, and newspaper photographers, snapping pictures of well-known faces from Boston society.

I hadn't been to the museum since I was little. Ma had taken me once on a rare afternoon off. We'd strolled through the galleries crowded with visitors, unsure of what we were looking at or what it all meant. We got in the habit of pausing where others paused, eavesdropping on strangers' opinions, trying to see what others saw. But in the end we spent more time staring at the fashionable ladies than at the paintings or artifacts.

Now here I was again, still daunted by the opulence, history, and grandeur. This was the domain of better educated, more sophisticated people; those who, instead of going to see the latest Marx brothers comedy, chose to admire a Rembrandt or a Turner.

As we came up the stairs, I hesitated on the landing. In front of me congressmen were flirting with Broadway entertainers, sports celebrities and socialites charmed captains of industry, art critics argued with scholars, and venerable old dowagers lit the cigarettes of charming young playboys.

Mr. Kessler was never more comfortable than in an academic institution. Museums and galleries were his natural habitat. “What are you waiting for, Miss Fanning?” He shimmied sideways, working his way through the crowd. “Come along! We have business to conduct!”

I caught a glimpse of a long tea and coffee buffet through the crowds, laden with cakes and confections, set up in a smaller, adjoining mezzanine. In the center of the main gallery a stage area had been constructed next to a new display case, cloaked in heavy black cloth and guarded by two museum security men.

I searched for Diana. This was her moment, but she was nowhere to be seen. I spotted Mrs. Van der Laar standing next to the stage, however, holding an untouched cup of tea the way a bad actor clings to a prop. She was in a heated conversation with a woman whose sour expression advertised her irritation even from across the room. Both were scanning the faces in the crowd with nervous intensity. Exquisitely turned out, the other woman wore a very simple deep royal blue tea dress and an exceptional silver-fox-fur stole that perfectly offset her pale complexion and sterling hair. It was strange to see a woman whose face was so young with such a head of thick, snow-white hair; the effect was both surprising and chic. I must have been staring; at one point she turned and caught my eye. But her disdain was so obvious that I blushed and immediately looked away.