Rare Objects (20 page)

“Have you seen the display yet?” I asked. “Aren't you even a little curious to see your name on a brass plaque?”

“After all, it's a lovely name, Diana,” said a man behind us.

We both turned.

Very thin and gangly, with a narrow pale face and round soulful eyes, he smiled shyly, his chin sloping straight into his long neck at such an angle that he looked a bit like a turkey. He peered at Diana with a look of impish irreverence. “The girl who didn't show,” he crowned her. “Only you could throw a party and not come!”

Instantly her charm ignited.

“Hello, Charlie.” She held out her hand. “Did you miss me?”

“We all did! You're the only reason I came. Your first brass plaque—shouldn't we celebrate?”

“Maybe another time.” She lowered her voice to a naughty whisper. “Now you wouldn't spank me, would you, Charlie, if I didn't want to do what I was told?”

He flushed bright pink and swallowed hard. “I don't expect I'd ever presume to tell you what to do, Diana.” He pressed her fingers to his thin lips before walking away.

I stared at her in astonishment. “Who was that?”

“Mr. Charles Henry Peabody, the third. Of the Massachusetts Peabodys.”

My face must have given me away.

“Ever heard of the Peabody Museum of Natural History?” she prompted. “Or the Peabody Institute? Or perhaps the Peabody Academy of Science? And then of course, there's always the family banking business, the Peabody Hotel, and the city of Peabody, Massachusetts, if that doesn't ring a bell!”

“Oh!” I turned again to see where he'd gone. “You mean Ichabod Crane there owns half of Massachusetts?”

“Precisely.”

“Diana!” Someone else called from across the room. “I say, Diana!”

A rather squat man was pushing his way through the crowd toward us. He was wearing a double-breasted navy jacket with a private yachting club emblem on the breast pocket and a rather garish foulard of red-and-gold silk instead of a tie.

“Oh, dear!” She sighed. “Brace yourself.” Her face crinkled into an involuntary smile. “It's Nicky Howerd.”

“Diana!” Nicky arrived panting from the effort of negotiating the short stretch from the pastry table to us. Another triumph of inbreeding, he was short with a strange egg-shaped torso that made his trousers balloon out below his waist. He looked younger than his years, with ruddy round cheeks and colorless slicked-back hair. He beamed at Diana, jamming his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels, which struck me as a Humpty-Dumpty scenario in the making. “Well, fancy seeing you here!”

Diana smiled weakly. “Where else would I be, Nicky?”

“Oh, oh yes, of course!” He jerked a shoulder toward me. “And who's your pretty friend here? Aren't you going to introduce us?”

She caught my eye. “But Nicky”—she frowned innocently—“you already know May.”

His face went blank.

“She was on your boat last summer.” She smiled sweetly. “The lobster bake? We all had such a good time, didn't we?”

“I can't recall when I've laughed harder,” I chimed in.

Nicky's eyes grew round with panic. He forced a smile.

Diana gave him a friendly poke in the chest. “Don't tell me you can't remember!
Really
?
You honestly don't remember May Fanning?”

I poked him too. “From Albany?”

The last thing Nicky had was a poker face. “Why, yes!” He nodded. “Yes, I seem to recall . . .”

“To be honest,” I whispered, leaning in, “my hair was a different color then.”

“Oh!” Relief washed across his face. “Oh, yes!
Now
I remember! Of course!” He held out his hand. “It's good to see you again!”

I shook it. “Always a pleasure.”

He turned back to Diana. “I hear your brother's back in town. Visiting from the Dark Continent, is that right?”

“Yes. I'm afraid it's true.”

“We must put something in the diary.” He nodded to me too. “For all of us! What do you think, Diana? It's been months since we've gone out, and I'm pretty sure you still owe me a dance!”

She smiled, linked her arm through mine. “It's getting late, Nicky. And I'd better go and at least look at this damn display before I leave.”

“So I'll give you a ring, then, shall I?”

“Yes, you give me a ring, Nicky.”

“And you'll answer this time?”

“I think you've lost weight, haven't you?” She pushed me into the other room. “So good to see you. Don't have too many petits fours!”

Dear Miss Fanning,

I've been to many of the places on the map in my office; they're all extraordinary, filled with mystery and beauty but also plenty of ordinary people too, living life with all the cares and concerns that we have back home. Next to the Pyramids at Giza are tribes of people living
in shacks and tents, women baking bread and scolding children, men haggling over livestock. So it's very different and exactly the same. And I believe they all worry about being good, even though they pray to different gods in different languages, some of whom I hope listen.

I search this world for rare artifacts so that I, and others, might wonder at their age, craftsmanship, and most of all authenticity—the truth of the thing. I may be sentimental, but I believe there's value in what's real, even if it's been very much battered by time and fate, even if, when it's discovered, it's only a fragment of what it once was. No matter how common the object, be it a clay spoon or a jeweled ceremonial necklace, it has purpose and integrity. Can't the same be true of our lives, no matter how mundane?

Look after Kessler (did he tell you I was missing? Perhaps I'm simply not in the habit of asking for permission to go where I want to go) and try not to think too much or too hard. Philosophy is like smoke—it fills the air, blinds us yet vanishes quickly, leaving nothing behind. Action is key; in motion, we are all of us magnificent.

So there you have it. If the world were good, Miss Fanning, it wouldn't be interesting. But in my experience, when it's real, it's very interesting indeed.

Sincerely,

B. Winshaw

The letter arrived on a wet gray morning in late March. I read it standing in Mr. Winshaw's office. Then, closing the door, I reread it again, several times.

I'd sent the wrong letter.

But he'd responded.

He didn't write like a Lothario; he sounded intelligent, curiously romantic.

No matter how common the object
,
it has value and integrity.

For someone who discounted philosophy, he had quite a poetic point of view. And he'd taken me seriously; my foolish little rant about being good had found a thoughtful and attentive audience in a stranger who was thousands of miles away.

When Mr. Kessler asked what I was doing, I folded the letter quickly and hid it in my pocket. Just being able to take it out and read it anytime I wanted gave me an excited, euphoric feeling, quite out of proportion. And since Mr. Winshaw hadn't asked directly for me to convey anything to Mr. Kessler, I figured I had every right to keep it to myself.

In fact, I was already composing my response in my head.

Dear Mr. Winshaw,

Well, it's nice to know you're alive. And you'll be pleased to hear that we've received your latest shipment (are those your old vanity cases?). Now the Greek vase and plate are part of the permanent collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts so not a bad day's work, I suppose.

Mr. Kessler is fine by the way (thank you for asking). He practically levitated with pride at the public reception and had to be physically restrained from making a speech. Luckily he's easily distracted by macaroons. I don't know where you pick up these baubles, but you certainly do know how to make an old man very happy.

As for the business of being real and the inherent integrity of clay spoons, I would ask you this: If the mundane in Boston is as worthy as the fragments of ancient Babylon, why is it that you travel so far and so often? Why dig in the dirt of a foreign land to discover what you already have at home?

You cannot fool me, Mr. Winshaw. Either you are a criminal on the run from the police or Boston is not to be confused with the
cradle of civilization, no matter what the Daughters of the American Revolution would have us believe. No one ties themselves to the mast of a ship heading for Boston Harbor, because the mermaids do not sing here.

And yet I think we all go mad with longing for their wayward song.

Sincerely,

May Fanning

After the museum event was over, Diana and I began to spend more and more time together. Whether her social obligations had diminished or she was simply happy to ignore them was less clear. But she shifted into an almost frantic devil-may-care pursuit of excitement and pleasure. We took to meeting regularly in the apartment after work. She kept a store of proper liquor sequestered from her family's seemingly endless supply and very occasionally even remembered to stock something to eat, but best of all there was privacy. We'd drink, smoke, listen to the radio, and venture out on what Diana called “hazards.” These involved dares, designed by Diana to keep us from getting too bored.

After a long day, I was happy to stay put, but Diana needed constant stimulation. “I'm starting to go numb,” she'd say. “Let's liven things up a bit. I feel as if I'm disappearing into the sofa!” Pulling me up again moments after I'd kicked off my shoes, she'd drag me to the door. “Come on, let's get out of here!”

Her favorite dare was “I Can't Believe It's You,” a game that involved going to a crowded place like the train station or a hotel lobby where we would choose a complete stranger that the other would have to pretend to know. I was always terrible at it, hesitant
and awkward. More than once I ended up chasing people down the train platform. But Diana never failed to give a star performance, running up and throwing her arms around them, covering them with kisses and tears of joy. Baffled, delighted, occasionally even pretending to know her too, they invariably yielded to her unique combination of plausibility, charm, and conviction. She always won. Extra points were awarded if you managed to begin each round with the phrase, “I can't believe it's
you
!”

Other times she liked to sit at a drugstore counter and spin stories to anyone who would listen, a pastime she dubbed “The Big Good-bye.” She'd pretend that she and I were on our way to a nunnery and desperate to be kissed one last time, or that we were female aviators about to embark on a dangerous transatlantic flight, or sometimes fledgling actresses headed to Hollywood for a screen test. While I struggled to be convincing, she was both inventive and often touchingly believable. By the time we left, people were lining up to shake our hands and wish us luck, sometimes even asking for our autographs. She called it “practice.”

“Think of all the lies you have to tell in life,” she used to say.

Diana could fall into almost any character with such ease, I sometimes wondered if she'd forgotten it was all fiction. But then, when we were outside, she'd hang on to my arm and laugh until tears rolled down her face. “They're so gullible! My God, May! They'll be looking for our names in the papers for
weeks
!”

Being with her was like regressing into a very privileged, expensive childhood where the games were more dangerous but no less frivolous. I had the dizzying if slightly unnerving sense with Diana that anything was possible; we might be nuns or actresses, socialites or scoundrels; any folly might be carried by sheer
audacity. Her only rule was that we never invite anyone from her own set to the apartment. “Our little secret,” she'd say. “We don't want anyone getting wind of it and ruining things.”

“What does it matter?” I was a little irritated that we weren't going anywhere more glamorous when she obviously had cachet at any number of fashionable venues.

But Diana was adamant. “You don't understand. They can't be trusted.”

“With what?”

She didn't answer, but in her typical eccentric fashion ferreted out Dr. Joseph's silver pen from my handbag and put it over the transom of the front door. “There! That will protect us. The No Way Out Club is for members only!”

That didn't mean we were always alone.

Sometimes I'd arrive to find the flat filled with assorted strays she'd picked up that afternoon—deliverymen, waitresses, or taxi drivers—guzzling all the liquor, eating sandwiches, and dancing. “Come in! We're having a party!” she'd shout over the music. “Ernie here has just bought his own cab! Isn't that marvelous?”

Or there were evenings when I'd find her alone, lying on top of the bed, still in her coat, listless and mute.

“Are you all right?”

No response.

“Talk to me, Di.”

But she'd be far away, behind a veil of slow blinking silence.

“Come on now. Sit up.” I'd take off her shoes and coat, get her a drink. We'd sit side by side, under the covers, listening to the radio.

She'd lean her head on my shoulder. “You do love me, don't you?”

“Sure.”

“No matter what?”

“No matter what.”

“Even if I'm not the way you think I am?”

“Especially if you're not the way I think you are.”

Occasionally she wanted to talk about the past. “Why did you take the razors into the bathroom, May?”

These were my least favorite conversations.

“I guess I forgot I'd already shaved that morning.”

But she had a habit of digging until she got right underneath the skin. “Have you ever done anything you regret—something you can't fix no matter how hard you try?” She'd curl in closer. I could smell the warmth of her hair, the sweetness of her perfume. “Do you believe in providence? That God has already chosen our lives for us?”