Sins and Needles (13 page)

Hugs came to stoop and peer into the cabinet. “Where—oh, I see it. Hmmmmm.” It was a small bronze statue, pitted and battered, of a bald man wrapped in ancient Greek costume, one shoulder bare. In his right hand was a scroll. The statue was fastened to a small wheel of dark wood. “I believe you're right.”

Jan came for a look. “Where's his snakes?” she asked.

“That's Asclepius, god of medicine, who carried a staff with snakes on it,” said Ronnie, who was going to be a doctor. “This is Hippocrates, a real human being who lived around five hundred B.C. He invented some surgical procedures and figured out how to reduce fractures.”

“That's right,” said Jan. “And he made up the Hippocratic oath.”

Hugs and Ronnie recited together, “‘I swear by Apollo the Physician and Health and Panacea, etcetera, that I will use regimens for the benefit of the ill in accordance with my ability and my judgement, but from what is to their harm or injustice I will keep them.'”

Stewart said, “I thought the oath said, ‘I swear by Apollo that first, I will do no harm.'”

“No, that's not in the real oath,” said Hugs.

“This would look nice in your waiting room, you know that?” Jan said.

“You think so?” He smiled up at her. “Are you hinting I should ask for that?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I claim the little statue of Hippocrates.”

“Good for you,” said Stewart.

“Anyone want something else from this room?” asked Susan.

“Craftsman cabinet matches the craftsman bed,” noted Jan. “I bet this set is worth a lot.”

“I don't care how much it's worth,” said Bernie with a dismissive gesture. “It's not pretty, and anyway it doesn't look old enough to be antique.”

“That's because Aunt Edyth took good care of her things,” said Katie.

Jan said, “The Craftsman style started in the late eighteen hundreds. The house was built—when, Mother, do you know?”

“Around 1910, I believe,” said Susan. “And this is the best furniture you could buy from that period. It was a reaction to the Victorian style, which thought that every surface should be ornamented.”

“I think they went way too far in the other direction,” said Lexie, looking around.

“Oh, I don't know,” said her mother. “That chair over there looks very comfortable.”

“Let me see.” Katie went over and sat down with a sigh. “Oh, it is
very
comfortable!”

Bernie said, “Well, look over there on the wall—a photograph I've seen before! You have this same picture in your house, Aunt Susan!”

The photograph was taken in the late nineteenth century. It depicted a young couple standing side by side. The man had an enormous dark mustache and a light gray or blue suit that looked too tight. He might have been smiling, but it was impossible to see his mouth under that mustache. In any case, one eyebrow was slightly lifted, giving him a dryly amused expression, and he had a frivolous straw hat resting on the inside of his cocked forearm, held in place with his fingers. His other hand lay on the shoulder of a beautiful young woman in a square-necked white dress with half an acre of lace trimming on the bodice. The skirt, gathered, ruched and ruffled, came just to her ankles, exposing pointy-toed white shoes. Her sleeves were full but ended in a ruffle of lace just below the elbow. Her hair was up and tendrils of it were in front of each ear. She looked proud and amused.

“Yes, that's your Great-grandfather George and Great-grandmother Harriet Hanraty, on their honeymoon in Atlantic City in 1908.”

“Were they happy, Aunt Susan?” asked Katie from the chair.

Susan looked at her, surprised. “I suppose so. Why do you ask?”

“I don't know.”

Jan said, “They look so young.”

“What a silly mustache!” exclaimed CeeCee.

“Well at least he could shave it off without leaving a scar, unlike young people today with their tattoos and piercings,” said Jan.

“Oh, old people always hate what the kids are doing,” retorted Bernie, touching herself around the navel with a secretive smile.

“Onward,” declared Susan, starting out the door.

“Oh, gosh,” sighed Katie and held out her arms for Jason and Ronnie to lift her to her feet.

There was one more bedroom on the second floor. It was spacious and airy, its walls painted a soft lavender. The bed was a different sort of Victorian antique; the head-and footboards were curlicues of brass connected at every crossing by flower-shaped pieces, the coverlet a white confection that looked hand crocheted. The floor, like the others made of wide planks stained some light color, was mostly covered by a white plush rug making a fat oval centered under the bed. The pillows on the bed were edged in purple crocheted lace. On one wall was a pair of “psychedelic” posters, carefully matted and framed. “Oh, wow!” exclaimed Jan when she saw them.

“What are they, paintings?” asked CeeCee going closer to peer at them.

“No, posters,” said Susan. “That one you're looking at is by Peter Max.”

“Who's Peter Max?” CeeCee asked, staring at the green, yellow, orange, and pink paper with its vaguely Pre-Raphaelite head of a woman and the big blue word
LOVE
painted in fat letters.

“An artist from the sixties and seventies,” said Susan. “He kind of set the mood for that era.”

Katie shook her head at the peculiar tastes of people back then.

Ronnie went to the other poster. “Is this another Peter Max?” he asked. It depicted a black man, except he was green and orange and yellow with flames exploding from his hair and hands.

“No, that's a Martin Sharp. He was a lot edgier than Peter Max.”

“They don't exactly go with the décor of this room,” noted Lexie. “Are these your posters, Aunt Susan? You're from that era.”

“No, when these were popular I was an old married woman with two children and not coming out here to stay any more,” said Susan.

“Mom, are these yours?” asked Ronnie.

“No, I never had a room out here,” said Jan, who remembered that era from an early-teen perspective. “Besides, I was in elementary school when Jimi Hendrix was huge.” She looked at the posters again. “These must have been bought by Aunt Edyth. I guess she was wilder than we knew.”

“Naw!” growled Jason. “Aunt Edyth was never wild!”

But Susan, remembering Aunt Edyth's motorcycling days, smiled. “I wouldn't be too sure about that,” she said.

Ronnie said, “Can I have this?” He was touching the narrow frame of the Martin Sharp poster.

Jan said, surprised, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I like it. I like it better than anything else we've seen in this whole house.”

Stewart said, “You have an eye, my boy. Those posters are worth about two grand apiece.”

They all turned to stare at him. “How do you know that?” asked Susan, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Because I looked it up,” he said smugly. “I was out here a few weeks ago, helping out around the place—you know that. I've told you all that—and I came in here and saw them, and I was kind of surprised, but I figured she had them for a reason, and I checked them out on the Internet.”

“Uncle Stewart, you never fail to amaze me,” said Jason. “I bet you've looked up a lot of things from this house on the Internet.”

“I resent that,” Stewart said with a frosty glare, but Jason merely met it with a look of his own. To everyone's surprise, Stewart backed down first. “Oh, what the hell. All right, I looked up a few things. If I was to choose the most valuable thing in the house, it would probably be that bed in the front bedroom. It's worth close to a hundred thousand dollars.”

There was a collective gasp, then Susan demanded, “So why didn't you—”

“Because if I did, and you found out its value, you'd be all over me for a gold digger, that's why! So I made up my mind that I'd pick something I liked.”

“Well, we're about done going through the house. What do you want? What's your choice?”

“I don't know. I want to think about it.” He looked at his watch. “Let's go eat.”

“But we haven't looked in the attic yet,” said Jan. “From what we've seen down here, there are probably some amazing things in the attic.”

“Have you ever been up there?” asked Katie.

“Well, no.”

“I bet it's hot, and dusty, and full of discards,” said Katie. “I agree with Dad. I think we should eat lunch, then tackle the attic.”

But Susan said, “I think we should at least take a quick look. Not more than ten minutes. If Katie is right, then we won't have to come back.”

Everyone sighed but followed as Stewart led the way to the back bedroom, where the let-down ladder to the attic was hidden in the ceiling of the closet.

“How did you know about this?” demanded Susan.

“Aunt Edyth sent me up there with a broken rocking chair a few months ago.”

“I suppose you took the opportunity to look around there, too?” suggested Susan heavily.

“Oh, yeah, naturally. But I didn't see anything interesting. Of course, I wasn't really looking.” He gave her a wide grin, and went first up the ladder.

Stewart fumbled around for a couple of minutes, muttering to himself, before he found the switch. Three 40-watt bulbs came on, casting a gloomy light down the center of the long, broad, but low-ceilinged attic. The air was still, dusty-smelling, and very hot.

In the middle of the room were three big chests made of rough boards gone gray with age, a female dress form distorted in the way a severe corset deformed a woman's torso in the late nineteenth century, suitcases, a free-standing oval mirror with a crack across the bottom, an oddment of mismatched chairs, and a rocking chair whose wicker seat had been worn through.

“See?” said Stewart. “Nothing of interest up here.”

But Susan didn't like being told “See?” and so she went determinedly to the nearest wooden box and lifted the lid. Inside were neatly folded cloth winter coats and out-of-fashion wool dresses and suits, all smelling strongly of camphor. Undaunted, Susan dropped the lid and went to the second box. Inside were hats, lots of hats, some with feathers. She picked up a particularly large purple one with ostrich plumes drooping off one side of its brim. She made an exclamation of pleasure and went to the mirror to try it on. She turned this way and that, by turns mugging and serious. The hat, while ridiculous, was also magnificent and gave her a certain air.

“Let me try it!” demanded CeeCee, dropping the golf club she'd found back in a corner.

“Get your own hat,” said Susan, though not without affection.

CeeCee hurried to the box. “Whoa, there's a whole lotta hats in here!” She came up with a bright yellow brimless one decorated with a red bow. She tried it with the bow in front, in back, and to the side, then tossed it aside for an ice blue cloche with a tarnished silver stripe running front to back. Susan traded the purple for the yellow, and Jan came to select a cone-shaped hat entirely covered with a pheasant's breast feathers. Bernie came to try on the purple hat, and soon everyone was laughing and handing hats around. Even the quiet Perry was persuaded to try on a big straw picture hat with a plaid ribbon band.

“Oh, Mama, look at this!” It was CeeCee, who had quickly become bored with hats and gone off to throw back the top of the third chest. It was full of dolls, teddy bears, and books.

“Oh, I remember some of these!” exclaimed Susan, coming to look. She was wearing a black felt hat ornamented with what looked like a cardinal's wing. “This old chest was in the nursery when I was a child. Look, here's Old Stiffy!” She held up a worn teddy bear with long arms and legs.

“May I see it?” asked Jan. She took it with her to stand under the nearest lightbulb. “Look, it has a button in its ear—it's a real Steiff!”

“What's a Steiff?” asked Lexie, coming to look at the bear.

“It's a German manufacturer, very famous. If this bear is as old as it looks, it's worth a lot of money.”

“It is?” That was Stewart, coming for a look. “How much?”

“I don't know. Possibly thousands of dollars.”

“It was an old bear when I was a child,” said Susan.

“Wow, all that money for a funny-looking old bear!” said Bernie.

“Ma-
ma
!” said a new, high-pitched voice. They turned to see CeeCee holding a baby doll in a drop-waist dress and golden long curls. The doll was bowing deeply over CeeCee's forearm, and when CeeCee made it bow again, it repeated the sound.

“Isn't this cute?” she said. “I love her dress.”

“And look at it,” said Jan, taking it from her. “It looks brand new.”