It was the last day of the antiques show. In a few hours, the rented display cases, pegboards, and tables would be stacked onto dollies and wheeled away. The glitzy displays of antiques, fine art, and jewelry would become another memory as I waited in the empty auditorium.
What started as an experiment became my profession. My husband Zack was a middle school teacher. I had dreams of opening my own boutique. But first, we needed seed money. A flexible schedule with lots of travel, a chance to tour the country. Our plan was to eventually stop traveling and post our antiques on the internet. But shipping was dicey and selling in person was lucrative, once we got our spiel set.
Zack had a habit of scratching the corner of his mustache before he began to speak, which I think makes him look thoughtful. He’d pick up the item being considered and say, “Look at the way that crystal sparkles, all those stars cut into the surface. The hours of labor spent polishing and buff-ing.” Then he’d lower his head slightly and look sorrowful. “They just don’t make things like this anymore.”
Standing beside my husband, I’d speak in measured tones about the history of the object, adding details about the manufacturer and museums where they might find similar items. Then more likely than not, Zak would put his hand on their arm or shoulder, as if telling them something in confi-dence. He’d read in a book that if you make physical contact with a customer, you’re more likely to make a sale. As long as they appeared to be listening, we kept talking, never knowing if they had intentions of buying until they reached for their wallet.
Some of the shoppers made a game of feigning serious interest. They’d circle the booth, ask a se-ries of questions, pocket our business card, and effusively assure us they’d be back. We called those people “be backers,” because they were the people who never came back at all. Instead, they would waste our time, posing as connoisseurs with money to spend, as if our feelings and time had no value.
In college, I once dated a guy who did exactly that. He took me to an antiques show at a big fair-ground in California, and he asked every dealer if they had a small pewter flask. They’d search their inventory and if they had such a flask, they’d triumphantly pull it out, expecting to make a sale, because they thought he was some sort of collector, Then he’d hem and haw and say it wasn’t quite what he was looking for, but he’d think about it and might be back.
“I could probably find you one, a nice flask, when I go back east. There’s more antiques there,” I said and he looked at me and laughed.
“I don’t want a flask. It’s just more fun to have them think you’re going to buy something,” he said. “It gives them something to do.”
We broke up a few weeks later.
In the antiques business you see things you don’t want to see, like the customer taking photos of your descriptions and price tags when they don’t think you’re looking, the man who tries to lift your wallet out of your purse you left hanging on the chair, and the mother who watches her child rip the corner of an antique book you labeled “Do Not Handle Without Assistance” and is indig-nant when you ask “Are you going to pay for that?”
But like everything in life, we took the bad with the good. We met plenty of nice people who be-came repeat clients. People we wanted to entertain. Because purchasing an antique isn’t like buying something new. It’s an experience.
If someone buys something used, they want to know who was using it before them, so we gave our customers a story. No one wants to hear the boring truth that we bought the Limoges porcelain from another dealer at a flea market. Instead, we’d say, it came right from a lovely Victorian home, stashed inside one of those big mahogany china cupboards. The family were bankers, and they only used it on Sundays. That’s why it’s so perfect, scarcely a chip.
They listened, and they smiled and imagined everything we told them. They bought the kiln-fired art pottery, the porcelain teapots, and the iridescent colored glass goblets.
“Dealers,” a voice boomed over the loudspeaker, “We still have two hours left before the end of the show. Customers are shopping. Do not start packing. I repeat. Do not start packing.”
Typical show promoter nonsense, I thought to myself. If he did a better job bringing customers in, he wouldn’t have to be making these announcements because the dealers would be too busy sell-ing. But on a Sunday afternoon when they get bored, of course, they’d start packing.
I surveyed how much inventory was left to box up. If business didn’t pick up soon, I too would start stealthily packing, a little bit here and there. Zack had run across the street to buy us each a turkey sandwich. I debated whether to ask the dealer across the aisle to watch the booth while I changed into my jeans.
But the show wasn’t over yet, and I heard a deep voice, “Is this one of your lamps?”
I turned and saw a young man about my age wearing khaki slacks and a trenchcoat carrying a large cardboard box with a brass lamp peeking out of the top. His hair was damp, and he had a hand-some face. “Is it raining?” I asked.
“Yes, a little bit,” he said.
Load out on a rainy night meant wet vehicles and slippery roads. It might be two in the morning before we got home. I felt sorry for Zack. He’d have to use the side mirrors to see out the back, once the van was fully packed. Not an easy drive.
“So, what do we have here?” I looked down into the box and recognized the desk lamp with a tel-escopic arm. Our brass lamps were old, but their surfaces were free of blemishes. This lamp had several dents.
“What happened to the base? “I asked, “and where’s the shade?”
“That’s why I’m here,” he said. “I need a shade. It broke.” He retrieved a bag from the bottom of the box and pulled out an opaque shard of white glass.
I took the piece of broken glass from his hand and examined it, recognizing the brand and style. We’d only had a few. A shame this had fractured, I thought, and then I saw her in my mind. The woman who bought the lamp the previous year. Honey-colored hair. Smudged liner around her brown eyes. She’d asked me how far out the lamp could be extended. “My husband’s an archi-tect,” she’d said. “I think this might be perfect for his desk.”
“Oh yes,” I’d said, “This style was specifically designed for drafting. Made around 1920. Ameri-can.”
Probably embarrassed he broke the shade, I thought, so he’s come to buy another one. I pulled out a shade from a box under the table and screwed it to the lamp. “This would do the trick unless you want a different shade. A green cased shade would look nice.”
“No,” he shook his head. “I want the same shade as before. My wife bought this lamp for me. She came to the show, last year. She bought this lamp for my desk.”
“Yes,” I said, “I remember. It was a birthday present, right?”
“Yes. My birthday. On the way home, she was rear-ended.”
“So that’s how the lamp got dented?” I said. “Is she alright?”
He cleared his throat. “After the collision, she got out to inspect the damage. Another car hit her while she was standing in the road.”
“What?” How could he be standing here, telling me this, a year later?
He lifted the lamp out of the box and cradled it in his arms.
“She died on the way to the hospital,” he said.
I imagined his wife, disoriented and confused, getting out of her car, the rain pouring, water drip-ping down the sides of her face, trying to get her bearings, and then run down by a passing motor-ist. Taken in an instant, completely unexpected. The husband receiving the news. Perhaps two po-licemen knocking at his door to tell him.
How would I react, if something like that happened to me, if suddenly my husband was dead?
This young man, this customer in my booth; how was he able to go on? Could I pick up the pieces of my life, replace the broken lampshade, and keep forging ahead?
“Can I just give you a shade? It’s the least I can do. Take your pick.”
“If you have one close to the original?”
I felt around, anxious to make things right for him, as if I had the power. I had several shades that would fit, but none were exactly like the one his wife had selected. But he’d never seen the shape, had he? Only the color of the glass. I could say it was the same. A version of the truth. Tell a heal-ing story.
“Oh, here it is,” I said, “Here’s the one.” I unwrapped a shade from the bottom of the box and pulled it out for him to see. “It’s perfect. The sister to the other. Look at the way the edges flare, to capture the light and focus it down on the spot where you’re working. Your wife picked this very style. It’s the other one of the pair. We’re lucky to have another.”
Our eyes met. I’ll never forget the look on his face. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m so glad I made the trip. I’ve been staying with my parents, but I thought…”
“No need to say a word. I’ll just put this in a box.”
“How much do I owe you?”
“Oh no, this is a gift,” I said.
“I insist. I want to pay for it. You’re running a business.”
I still have the check he gave me folded inside the center drawer of my desk. Every so often I take it out of the drawer and stare at it, a reminder that life is short and it’s the stories that count.