Shadows at the Fair (3 page)

The soda tasted cold and metallic and delicious. Some days Maggie felt diet soda was the one constant in her life.

She took another deep drink from the icy can, then walked to her van and started unloading table covers, piling them on a small dolly, along with all the tools of a print dealer doing an antiques show: drill, hammer, nails, wire, wire cutters, string, and large clips to hang pictures; pegs and clamps for the Peg-Boards she’d attach to the back of her tables; masking tape to secure table covers and for any last-minute repairs to mats or backboards; scissors and razor-blade knives; tape measures; levels; and a large box of adhesive bandages for occasions when her aim wasn’t perfect. At every show the equipment bag seemed heavier. Next show, for sure, she’d splurge and hire a porter.

Inside, between sips of soda, she covered her tables with navy material and tacked her
SHADOWS
—
PINE CREST
,
NEW JERSEY
sign on the back wall of the booth.

She’d named the business Shadows because that’s what old prints were—outlines of worlds to which the doors have closed; shadows of pasts that have vanished except for memories and remembrances. She often borrowed prints from her business to illustrate lectures on American civilization or women’s studies at the college.

Lydia and Abe Wyndham were arranging cases full of nineteenth-century cameos, garnet bracelets, and silver flatware on their tables across the aisle. Vintage jewelry was always popular at antique shows. The kind Grandma
should
have left you.

“Glad you’re back,” Lydia called out. “We missed you in January.”

“Glad to be back.” Maggie tried to look busy. Once Lydia started talking you could forget about working. The older woman crossed the aisle, her omnipresent cup of herbal tea in hand. “Sorry to hear about your husband, dear. All things come to an end, and we can’t second-guess the Lord, you know. When he closes a door, he opens a window, I always say.”

Yes, she did.

“And isn’t it just awful about that nice young John Smithson?” She took a step closer. “They say he was poisoned.”

“It is awful. But awful things do happen—I guess the antiques business isn’t exempt.”

“Vince has certainly increased security around here. I’m glad. I’ve always been nervous about leaving all of our jewelry and silver here overnight with just a watchman for protection. Vince says he’s going to make sure there are police here all the time. And he’s even sleeping in his van this year as an extra precaution.”

“He is?” Maybe Vince was anticipating a decrease in the number of customers at the show, and therefore a direct decrease in revenue to Vince. It wasn’t like Vince to deprive himself of a comfortable hotel room with an attractive assistant. Maybe the situation was more serious than Maggie had assumed.

Lydia was still chattering. “The man they gave your booth to, in January? Not at all pleasant. Just not our type of person at all.” She looked around and lowered her voice, although her husband, Abe, was the only one nearby. “He had lots of those art nouveau statues—you know the kind? I told Abe, ‘Don’t be throwing any stones, now,’ but Abe almost decided we wouldn’t do this show again. I had to talk him into it.” She gave a quick nod toward Abe, who was arranging jewelry cases on their back tables. “Sometimes he can be stubborn, you know.”

Maggie didn’t know. “I guess we’re all stubborn sometimes.” Abe didn’t look as though he had the energy to object to anything. Even his mustache seemed to be hanging at a dejected angle this year. “But I’m glad you’re here. It’s like coming home, to see everyone.” Art nouveau statues? Maggie guessed some of them were not clothed quite properly. Lydia and Abe wouldn’t have approved.

“Maggie, I’m really hoping you can help me. Have you got any of those prints from nineteenth-century herbals? The kind that show the plant and lists its uses? I’d love to give my niece back in Iowa prints of coffee and tea plants as a wedding gift. She’s getting married in August, and she drinks coffee, and her intended is a tea drinker.”

“I think I have some that might do.” Maggie remembered sticking coffee and tea prints into her portfolio of miscellaneous trees and bushes that are used medicinally.

Lydia put her hand on Maggie’s arm. “Don’t bother about looking through everything today. We’ll both be here all weekend. Just sometime before the show closes. I know we’re all busy as bees with setting up today.”

Maggie nodded. “No problem.” She had hardly started to set up. The opening tonight, and then two long days, would leave plenty of time to look through portfolios. She’d just have to make sure she didn’t forget or sell those prints to anyone else.

Harry Findley was arranging early children’s books on one of Joe Cousins’s back tables. “I notice Harry’s helping Joe set up his booth.”

Abe Wyndham suddenly appeared next to his wife, at least a foot taller than she was, and half as wide. “I don’t think we need to talk about that in public, do we?” He put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and steered her back to their booth. “Dear, where did you pack the silver-plate miniatures? I was sure they were in the same carton as the dressing-table bottles, but I can’t seem to find them.”

“They’re right where we always put them, in the green carton.” Lydia looked at Maggie and shrugged as she moved back into her booth, pointing.

“Maggie!”

She covered the distance between her booth and the outside door in a moment. “Gussie!” Maggie bent down and gave her a big hug. “Now the show can begin! You look great—new hairdo!”

“I was forty-seven last month. I decided to celebrate.” Gussie reached up and touched her hair, cut in a sophisticated ear-length wave. “Like it?”

“Love it! I’ve been thinking of trading in my mop, and you are an inspiration!” Gussie did look great, but Maggie had no intention of cutting her own hair. She’d worn it long since her student days, and it was a part of her that she didn’t plan to change. “New wheels?”

Gussie spun her electric scooter around. “Cool, right? The doctor says I’m supposed to stop stressing my muscles, so I gave in and she wrote a prescription for this beauty. Cost a few pennies even so, but when I go, I go in style. Want to drag?”

“No way, lady. You’d beat me; no contest. Have you checked in with Vince yet?”

“My assistant is taking my check over as we speak. Told you I was getting lazy!”

“Assistant? Who?” Gussie had always insisted on total independence. She hadn’t mentioned an assistant in any of their telephone calls during the winter. Maybe that new man in her life had come along. What was his name? Jim? Yes, almost certainly Jim.

“Do you remember my sister’s son, Ben?”

Maggie nodded; she had first met Gussie’s nephew when she’d visited the Cape eight years before. He had been twelve at the time and had just received a community service award from the mayor for having found a toddler who had wandered away from his mother on the beach. The award had received a lot of media attention in the area because Ben had Down’s syndrome.

“Well, I needed a little brawn, and Ben needed to get away from home and be a little more independent, so we’ve decided to be partners when I do shows. He helps me out at the shop when we’re at home. It’s company. Ben loves meeting people and traveling, and I love not having to look for porters, and not worrying about someone dumping cartons into my van without caring which one holds the iron banks and which the German bisque dolls.” Gussie grinned. “We’re giving it a season’s trial. So far it’s working even better than I thought it would.”

“And who’s watching your shop while you’re out gallivanting?”

“Aunt Augusta’s Attic is in good hands. My sister is keeping an eye on it. I can’t afford to close down for a couple of days when I do shows. You’re lucky to have a full-time job with a steady income!”

“And you’re lucky not to have to commute to a full-time job every day!”

They both smiled. It was an often revisited exchange.

“Having Ben help out is a terrific solution. But I thought maybe you’d brought Jim along so I could meet him!”

“Not this time. Rensselaer County is too far from his law practice for a long weekend this time of year. Too many real estate issues with the summer people. You’ll meet him when you do the Provincetown Show in July. You are coming up this year?”

The Provincetown Show was a good one; it was a lively community to visit, and usually a profitable show. And Cape Cod certainly beat the New Jersey suburbs as a great place to be in July. “Wouldn’t miss it. I sent in my contract six months ago. And then I’m heading Down East to do a couple of shows in Maine.”

“Well, Jim will be on the Cape this summer, I promise.”

Ben appeared at her shoulder.

“Ben, you remember Dr. Summer? She has the booth next to ours.”

“Glad to meet you again, Dr. Summer.” Ben grinned and pumped her hand.

“I’m Maggie, please, Ben. Welcome to the antiques business.”

“Did you have any trouble getting us registered?” Gussie asked.

“No problem, Aunt Gussie. Here’s the envelope the pretty lady asked me to give you.” Ben handed her a white envelope like the one Maggie had picked up earlier.

“Pretty lady, huh? Watch it, young man.” Gussie shook her head, turning to Maggie. “I guess Vince has another one this year.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure. When I checked in, Vince was by himself. Obviously a temporary situation.”

The sky darkened and they heard thunder in the distance.

“See you when we get this stuff unloaded,” Gussie said as she and Ben turned back toward their van while Maggie hurried toward hers. She lifted a large blue plastic carton from the van onto her dolly. Next year definitely a porter.

Maggie had decided to feature Currier & Ives prints on the side panels of her booth, and Winslow Homer wood engravings on the back wall. The rest of the prints were arranged in categories (botanicals, fruit, anatomy, ships, shells, butterflies, children, maps, sporting) along the tables, and on two easels near the aisles. It took a lot of climbing up and down to hang the framed prints evenly, to ensure that customers could easily read the sign and price on each print, and to arrange the matted prints so customers could browse through them easily. Maggie was up on her ladder for the fifteenth time when she heard Gussie’s voice from the next booth.

“Ben? I have plenty of coffee. You don’t have to get any more.” Maggie saw Ben heading back toward the Show Management area.

“Maggie, I think Ben is enamored. That’s three cups of coffee in the past hour.”

“Youth!” Maggie shook her head.

She rearranged the anatomy prints so that the skeletons were in front of the more clinical cutaways of eyes and ears and decided to separate the prints of dogs from those of other animals. People would patiently sort through a stack of dog prints trying to find one that “looks just like our Ebony.”

She put the Nast and McLaughlin Santas in back of a large collection of prints for children. Santas were popular all year among dealers and collectors, but May was not the time to feature them for general-interest customers. In the spring people were more interested in selecting botanical or fruit prints for recently redecorated kitchens or dining rooms.

She stood back and looked at the booth. Not bad. And definitely time for a break. Preferably a liquid one. And preferably not cola. She checked her watch. Almost four-thirty. An hour and a half to go before the show opened.

Susan and Harry Findley were still not in their booth. Maggie peeked in. Susan and Harry had diversified this year. In addition to the Art Deco glass and furnishings they usually featured, the Findleys had added some late-nineteenth-century American furniture, and some Japanese and Chinese carvings and prints of the same period. They also had a Chinese temple lion—chimera, she corrected herself—that looked very much like the one she’d seen on Vince’s desk earlier. The booth fit together nicely: late-nineteenth-century Americans had been fascinated with Asia after Commodore Perry’s trips to Japan and his negotiation of the first American-Japanese treaty in 1854. The art brought back from Asia during that period had a heavy influence on early-twentieth-century furnishings.

Across from the Findleys’ booth the new dealer from Buffalo was unpacking dollies loaded with Colonial kitchen and fireplace equipment. All six feet of him, including his full beard, was dripping.

It must still be raining.

“Got lost. Just arrived.” He waved as he noticed Maggie looking his way and raced back toward his van. There was always at least one dealer tucking a final carton under the table covers two minutes before the show opened. This year it looked as though that dealer would be Will Brewer.

The Wyndhams had put sheets over their cases and a
BOOTH CLOSED
sign on the chair blocking the entrance. With two of them to set up, they had probably already finished and gone to clean up. Maggie, too, had a change of clothing in her van for tonight. Travel and setups for a show this large took most of the day; there was seldom time to go to a motel and change.

“Hey, Gussie,” she called. Ben had returned with coffee at least one more time, she was sure. Peeking around the wall, she realized that, despite frequent trips for coffee, two people worked faster than one. Aunt Augusta’s Attic was totally set up. Hand-carved wooden and black-haired china and Door of Hope Mission dolls stood and sat in cases on the back wall out of reach of eager hands, miniatures were in a case to the left, and all manner of tin and iron cars, trucks, banks, and games were on the right table. Gussie had a couple of prints, she noted, and checked them out. Good—only some Kate Greenaways. Nothing that competed with her booth: she had those prints (at lower prices, because they weren’t framed) and more.