Rare Objects (36 page)

The Fire Hall on Salem Street had its doors flung open, music and laughter drifting out. Easily half the neighborhood was there; went in too. Long tables; laden with food ran the length of the room, and a band was playing. Children chased one another between waltzing couples and men still in their uniforms gathered in boisterous groups, telling tales, smoking, and drinking homemade beer.

Then I saw Mickey through the crowd, standing with his arm around Hildy. He was laughing. For years, I'd assumed that he could only be happy with me.

I backed away toward the door before I was seen.

But Jack Carney blocked my way. “Hello, Matchstick!” He grabbed me round the waist and pulled me onto the dance floor. “Your mother may not have time to dance with me, but you do, don't you?”

I could smell the whiskey on him, sweet and stale at the same time. I pulled away, but he held on tight. “Oh, no, you don't! You're going to dance with me until I'm done saying what I've got to say, understand?”

“And what's that?” I tried again to free myself.

He pressed himself up against me, his bloodshot eyes narrowed into two watery blue slits. “That mother of yours is nothing but a stinking little whore, do you hear me?” His grip tightened, powerful hands digging into my wrists. “You can tell her from me that I know for a fact she doesn't belong in that fancy widow's society!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You can tell her I know there is no Michael Fanning! That she was turned out from her house. Her family didn't want her anymore. No one did! The only thing she could do was climb on a boat.”

“That's a lie!”

“Is it, Matchstick? You ever meet any of Fanning's people? Every hear of any of them?” He shook his head, a wide gap-toothed grin spreading across his face. “No, I don't reckon you did. 'Cause there aren't any!”

People were staring now; we were making a scene.

But I couldn't control myself. “That's a lie, you bastard!”

He only laughed. “No, you're the bastard, Matchstick! You forget, my family knew her from the old country, way before she was the Queen of the North End!”

I blinked at him, standing in all his swollen vengeful glory. My head was pounding, throbbing like a heartbeat, and the noise around me deadened into a muffled echo. Someone was calling my name, maybe Mickey, but I didn't want to see who it was. I just wanted to get out. So I ran, as a child runs from a gang of kids from another neighborhood, terrified and desperate.

Reaching the front door of my building, I stopped and stared up at the windows of our top-floor apartment. I was afraid. Afraid to go in, afraid of what I might say if I did.

There is no Michael Fanning! Your mother's nothing but a stinking little whore!

Suddenly my stomach lurched, and up came all the coffee and popcorn and dry scones, into the gutter. Afterward I sat down on the front steps, resting my head on my knees.

When I'd arrived in New York, I'd searched the drugstore phone book for Fanning relatives, hoping to find my father's cousin Ned. I'd found seven households with the name Edward Fanning, but when I rang, no one knew who I was talking about. They'd never met a Michael Fanning, never known anyone who'd attended Trinity College. But I never told my mother.

It's not real
,
you know.

Andrew's words echoed in my mind.

It could be them or it could be me. But it's not real.

Across the street, Contadino's had closed early but their awning was decorated with yards of red, white, and blue streamers, twisted into braids that caught each gust of early-evening wind. It billowed like a sail, bound for brave new shores. Underneath, in the front window, a sign was sandwiched between sacks of unshelled almonds and walnuts. It was decorated with two flags, one Italian, one American, and below was written:

MEN LOVE THEIR COUNTRY, NOT BECAUSE IT IS GREAT, BUT BECAUSE IT IS THEIR OWN.

—Seneca

The party continued all over the neighborhood and would go on long into the night. Music poured out of windows and doors;
laughter and gay voices rose and fell in waves. Children patrolled the streets unattended, collecting discarded flags in little self-important tribes, faces dirty with ice cream and chocolate.

An old Model T Ford packed with workers from the shipyards rumbled to a stop in front of me. The driver leaned out of the window. “We're headed to a party, Goldielocks. Wanna join us?”

Someone in the back seat held up a bottle. “Come on, sister! It's going to be a hell of a night!”

“Yeah, and my lap's getting cold!” another one called.

“Hey, don't break my heart, dollface.” The driver grinned, flashing a dimple. “I think I'm already in love!”

They were good-looking guys, not too rough. I ached to lose myself in the company of strangers.

“How much have you got left in that bottle?” I asked.

The guy in the back seat shook it. “Plenty!”

But plenty wasn't enough. It wouldn't silence the noise in my head or numb the ache in my heart.

I shook my head, and they drove away.

When I did finally go upstairs, Ma was asleep on the sofa, snoring softly. Her dark hair was flattened on one side, her shoes had fallen off, and there was a hole in her stocking where her big toe stuck out. The table had been laid for dinner: cold ham and potatoes.

I watched her rising and falling breath, her hand curled into a child's fist under her chin.

Michael Fanning stared at me from the mantelpiece.

I guess I'd always known, somewhere inside, that he was too good to be true.

After all, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Sleeves rolled up and wearing an old apron, I heaved another pile of old scientific journals out of Mr. Winshaw's office and stacked them in an empty box. Since his return from Philadelphia a week ago, it had become obvious that not even he could function among this level of chaos, so the task of cleaning his office out was delegated to me. Mr. Kessler tactfully referred to the process as “archiving” so as not to alarm Mr. Winshaw, who hated to throw anything away. But when the garbagemen came on Thursday, I would give them an extra dollar, and the “archives” would mysteriously go missing.

Luckily, the whole pretense was lost on Mr. Winshaw. Kicked out of his office for the day, he'd taken Selena to lunch and was now indulging in his favorite pastime—educating her against her will.

“Now this one is truly remarkable!” He took Selena's arm and guided her toward the row of dark wooden African figures displayed near the window. “If you wanted to make a unique investment in an area of art that's going to increase dramatically in value over the next twenty years, this would be the direction to move in, I guarantee you.”

“But they're so ugly!” She clasped her alligator handbag in front of her like a shield, laughing. “In fact, they're extremely vulgar! I wonder that you display them in public!”

“How can you say that? Why, look at this one—it's a Madonna and Child. Probably mid-nineteenth century, wood, stone, beads—there's some glass in there too, can you see? The glass mimics the element of water, which is very important to the tribes of the Congo. They believe that water is the median that separates the living world from the afterlife.”

Selena rolled her eyes. “You cannot possibly compare
that
to a Madonna and Child! It's so crudely done!”

He took a deep breath. “Actually, my dear, we refer to it as ‘primitive art,' but in fact there's very little that's primitive about it,” he explained patiently. “These pieces are just as difficult to make as any Italian marble.”

“Oh, now you're joking!” She turned to me. “He doesn't make it easy for you to earn commission, now does he?”

I wiped the dust and sweat from my brow. “What commission?”

He ignored both of us. “What you're really seeing here is an entirely different set of aesthetic ideals from our classical Western ones. You have to broaden your mind! Here”—he drew her in for a closer look—“see how perfectly compact and symmetrical the figure is? She's holding her child on her knees, staring into the distance between the two worlds of the living and the dead.” He looked at her eagerly. “Only a woman who's had a child really understands that threshold, am I right? You see, this idol was probably placed on an ancestral shrine to honor not just one mother but all the mother figures of the family.”

“Well, I think they're hideous.” She sighed. “Now, stop trying to convert me to your heathen ways and tell me what time you're picking me up for dinner.”

I caught Mr. Kessler's eye and smiled. Nothing was better than watching Mr. Winshaw fail to batter someone into submission.

Hauling another box into the back, I put it on top of the others. But it toppled, spilling onto the floor.

“Damn it!”

As I piled the magazines and journals back up, I came upon a photograph that must have been jammed between the stacks. It was faded, dog-eared. It featured a much younger, teenage version of Mr. Winshaw standing between two other young men
who were practically identical—most certainly twins. They were all wearing smart British military uniforms and laughing, arms round one another's shoulders, blurry around the edges where they'd been unable to stand still. Their broad smiles, sandy blond curls, and regular features echoed one another, variations on a familial theme. I turned it over. A place and date, “Oxford, 1914,” were written along the bottom.

That was the beginning of the Great War.

Sunlight flooded the photo, shone around their heads like soft halos, as if they were blessed, chosen for some great destiny. Certainly they looked as if they believed that to be true. I recognized the familiar carefree arrogance of youth, a complete inability to conceive of any impending consequences that might possibly apply to them.

Here was a fragile moment; doomed, disappearing even as it occurred, like a wisp of smoke that appears and fades in the same instance.

I put the photograph back on Mr. Winshaw's desk. When I went back into the front of the shop, Selena had gone.

Deprived of his office and his audience, Mr. Winshaw turned his attention to me. “So, Fanning”—he trailed after me as I searched for a duster under the shop counter—“do you think those pieces are vulgar?”

“Of course.”

“And you don't think they'll sell?”

“Never.”

Apparently this was both a revelation and an irritation. He scowled at me, shoving his hands into his pockets, “Well, why not?”

“Because no one understands them, and they're disturbing. But then you knew that already. That's why you like them—because they intimidate others.”

He thought about this. “I want to challenge people.”

“Then you're in the wrong place.” I found the duster, headed back into his office. “Bostonians don't want to be challenged. They're proud of their loyalty to the past.”

“They shouldn't be.”

“And if they weren't, you'd be out of business. Who would you sell those Chippendale chairs to? You should send the primitive art to New York, where people are more easily cowed by the threat of being parochial.”

“You know”—he leaned against the doorjamb—“you're too smart to be milling about here all day.”

I shot him a dark look. “Does it look like I'm milling about?”

“Yes, but what are you doing, Fanning?” He held up his hands. “I mean, what are you
really
doing here?”

“Is this a philosophical question, or are you trying to get rid of me?” Climbing on top of his chair, I wiped down the light fitting. A cloud of several years' worth of dust filled the room.

“Stop meddling!” Mr. Kessler called from his office. “You're going to talk us out of a perfectly good salesgirl!”

“Yes, but what if she's not a salesgirl? What about your ambitions and interests? What are your aspirations?”

“My aspirations are to pay the rent. As for interests, I honestly wouldn't know.” I climbed down, took a step back.

The room looked worse than when I started.

“What are you drawn to?”

“I don't know.” I wasn't sure which was worse: when he didn't pay attention to me, or when he did. “I suppose I have to think about it. It's too hot for these questions. My brain is made of cement today.”

“Then you need to feed it!” he insisted. “When was the last time you saw a play or went to a concert?”

“A
play
?” I laughed. “I've never been to a play, Mr. Winshaw!”

“Why not?”

“People like me, we go to the movies.”

“That's ridiculous, Fanning! And elitist. I've never heard you say anything stupid before, and that
is
stupid!”

“You've heard me say a lot of stupid things, and let me know it too,” I told him. “Besides, cinema is the Shakespeare of the masses.”