The Antiques

by Kris D'Agostino

  Melinda nodded. “Mmm-hmm.”

  Rey blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  Charlie sat up straight and clasped her hands together. “I just think Abbott needs time to adjust. He’s a good kid. He has a big heart. He just . . . he has to warm up to things. His teachers, the other kids. Please. You have to see how sweet he is?”

  “We’re a rollover school, Mrs. Perrin. He’s been with the same teachers and the same kids.”

  “Westfall.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “She uses her maiden name.” Rey swatted at the air.

  “Oh yes.” Melinda put her hands out across her desk, palms up. “Look. I know this is hard. And believe me, if I—if we here at the Horizon School—if we thought there was another way, other options we hadn’t explored, we would explore those options. But the truth is we—myself, the teaching staff—feel we’ve exhausted every avenue at our disposal. And truthfully I think Abbott would find more benefits at a different school. The right school.”

  “And where might that be?” Rey asked.

  “There are a few special-needs schools here in the area. I’d be happy to recommend some and put you in touch with the right people.”

  “More money.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Rey, please. Don’t.”

  “So we just flushed a year and a half of ‘tuition’ down the toilet?”

  “I don’t think you should look at it in that—”

  “And I’m sure we won’t be getting a refund for next semester, which, conveniently, we were billed for in June!”

  “Well, if you checked the tuition refund option . . .”

  As Rey and Melinda argued, Charlie’s attention was drawn to something happening in the yard. The tone of the shrieking and the laughing had changed and was now tinged with an unmistakable air of urgency and adult voices. Through the glare of bright sun Charlie saw Abbott standing atop the slide and refusing to move, his arms folded over his chest like some pint-size wrestler. She watched with dawning horror as the line grew behind him and the top of the climber crowded with bodies. He was pushing. She saw one child pitch over the side and go down hard, and Abbott, her beautiful special little cowboy, was laughing.

  * * *

  Back home Armie stripped off the wet clothes and left them in a puddle on the floor. He stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror and scrutinized his body. He turned sideways. He sucked in his stomach, which he didn’t have much of to suck in, and let it out. His chest lacked any real structure of manliness, he concluded. Lacked muscle definition. What were they calling it, dad bod? He had that. He needed to take care of it, since he most certainly wasn’t a dad. He vowed to get in better shape. He’d do that for sure. After the storm he would get in better shape.

  Josef had gotten the cheekbones. Charlie was beautiful. He’d overheard more than one man refer to his sister as a “smoking hottie.” He, on the other hand, had inherited his father’s forehead—a little too wide, maybe—and the long nose and the thin hair that sometimes, when his bangs parted a certain way, made him look like he was balding up front.

  He lived in the “finished” part of the basement. This was the open space between the laundry room and the room where he kept his woodworking tools. His old bedroom, as well as Charlie’s old bedroom, had been repurposed into a storage room and a library, respectively. Armie’s bedroom now housed antique pieces that overflowed the shop’s basement space. Charlie’s bedroom became something of a parlor, complete with a felt table where Ana and her yentas played bridge and cackled over white wine. With Armie often joining them. His mother recast the color scheme in varying dark and somber hues. She placed a crystal orb on a wooden stand atop the low bookcase. “It brings a positive energy.” She filled the shelves with the overflow of scrapbooks and picture albums she’d amassed over thirty years.

  His parents had, to no one’s surprise, left Josef’s room untouched. His brother’s bed, posters of supermodels, and stacks and stacks of financial magazines, all of it was still there. The room possessed, in Armie’s opinion, qualities of a shrine. Armie’s room, located on the third floor, had until recently contained his vast record collection, which he’d liquidated on eBay for $867.17. He’d used the money to buy power tools and lumber.

  Armie showered and changed into a pair of salmon-colored cutoffs he’d had since college. They were torn up in the ass area and the edges were frayed to an extraordinary degree, but he continued to wear them. In terms of his woodworking, he felt they lent a certain amount of artistic credibility to his appearance.

  He was designing a table and chairs out of reclaimed wood he’d salvaged from a defunct bowling alley. The prototype was a four-top square he imagined would be perfect for a small apartment or café.

  His mother had named him after Armand Duval, the protagonist of one of her favorite novels, The Lady of the Camellias, by Alexandre Dumas. He blamed a large portion of his problems on this fact alone.

  Armie believed that his shortcomings broadcast from him like intense radio signals. He’d been a shy child and kept to himself throughout high school and college. He recalled the initial shocks—a) that he’d mustered the courage to ask Audrey to the prom in the first place, and b) that for whatever reason she’d said yes. His hands shook when he went up to her in the hallway. He waited for her friends to move away so that she was alone. He would never have been able to do it with an audience. Afterward he’d felt relieved he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life adding “Did not attend senior prom” to his list of failures, but he also dreaded having to talk to her or be around her, he was so nervous. But he managed to dance with her and they drew close during the slow songs and he surprised himself by leaning in and kissing her and was even more surprised when she kissed him back. “I’ll be right back,” she’d said, and went off to find her friends to finalize after-prom plans that involved a party bus and bottles of booze smuggled out of parents’ liquor cabinets. The next thing he knew, he spotted her by the punch bowl talking to Larry Walsh. He left through a side door and walked home. He avoided Audrey when he saw her in the halls for the rest of the year. By the time he made it up to Wesleyan, he struggled to look anyone in the eye, and the idea of talking to or befriending another girl, ever, seemed as remote a likelihood as traveling to the moon.

  He spent his first winter break back in Hudson. Josef at that point was out of Yale and working an investment fund job. He graced the Warren Street house with his fleeting presence. He arrived late Christmas Eve, bearing presents for everyone, all of them so expensive that the perception, in Armie’s mind, was that his brother was behaving in the most condescending manner. How was he, as an undergrad with zero income except what his parents shuttled into his bank account, supposed to compete with a first-edition twenty-eight-volume set of the collected works of Charles Dickens for George; a Balenciaga black leather city bag for Charlie; and for Ana a rare Danish vase purchased from a collection once owned by the Smithsonian? Armie gave his father a scarf. Because he overheard her complaining about how cold her ears got, for his mother he purchased earmuffs. Knowing how much his sister loved film, he presented Charlie with DVDs—all of them on sale—of four movies that took place in LA, because she had just announced that she planned, much to their parents’ chagrin, to stay on the West Coast after she graduated. To Josef he gave a book he saw reviewed in the Times, chronicling the history of the New York Stock Exchange, which it turned out Josef had already read and disliked. Josef gave him a TAG Heuer watch. He sold it and was not surprised to learn it cost $1,500. There was no way to outdo his older brother. Or even get near his level. It rankled Armie, and when Josef departed back to Manhattan on the morning of the 26th, bringing his total holiday time spent with the family to a whopping thirty-two hours, Armie was left feeling worthless. He spent the remaining weeks of break like a hermit in his attic bedroom. Sitting at the dormered window facing Warren Street, wrapped in a wool blanket (George did not turn on the heat unless
the outside temperature dropped below forty), he started a journal and wrote in it every day. When it was time to return to campus, he read back over the entries and, embarrassed by how candid he’d been, tore the notebook in half and threw it away.

  His senior year he decided to return to woodworking—to the miter saw, to the hammer, to the lathe—all the things that had interested him in high school. He took a part-time work-study job as an assistant in the woodshop. He made people sign in and out on a clipboard and enforced the wearing of eye protection at all times.

  When it seemed like the whole graduating class was out partying their brains into the ground and celebrating their pending release into the “real” world, Armie found himself spending more and more time in the shop, bent over the worktables. The smell of sawdust, the buzz of machinery—they calmed him down. The feel of whatever he was making in his hands. It felt right to be there, alone. It felt safe.

  * * *

  George didn’t want to go anywhere, so she left him and went to the kitchen and filled Shadow’s food bowl with Nature Creek All-Natural Organic Premium Science-Diet Dog Food. The dog watched her as the food pellets tinkled into the bowl. She rolled the top of the bag closed. This was the signal to commence. Shadow did not move.

  If he refused her help, she would just take care of herself. She called Wilhelmina to see if Mass was happening and then drinks. At the Rustic Grape Wine Bar someone had hung a sign that read If We Have Power We WILL Be Open. She prayed for power. She prayed St. Mary’s was open and the wine bar, too. If she didn’t squeeze in some away-from-George time to bolster her willpower, settle her mind, say a few prayers, and drink before this stupid storm got bad and she became locked inside the house with him for God knew how long, possibly without electricity, she was going to lose it for sure. She needed some prep time and, based on her calculations due to how tired she was from running the shop by herself for the past six months and the fact that he was already shrieking her name even though she had not been home ten minutes, it was going to take four glasses (read: a bottle) of chardonnay to maintain sanity.

  “Hi, dear. Please tell me you’re on for Mass.”

  “Oh, my word, Ana!” Minnie said. “Everything is canceled! And would you believe who just called from the station? James! What he’s been through with Jessica and the lawyers and just . . . I can’t even begin to tell you how relieved I am he’s home.”

  “Well, I’m glad he’s there.” So Minnie wasn’t going anywhere.

  She had been ignoring George’s shrieks, the awful cawing of them, but they were starting to overpower Minnie’s voice.

  “Carl wants to know if you were able to board up the windows with Armie?”

  Oh, shit, Ana thought, the windows. Where was Armie? George’s calls were getting louder.

  “I have to run, Minnie dear, George is calling! I’ll take care of the windows right now. Tell Carl thanks again for all his help today!”

  She hung up. She found George—where else—in the study, standing at the window and clutching the curtain. With the same look on his face, as though someone had just given him the worst news. “What?”

  “I’m calling and calling!”

  “I had to feed Shadow.”

  “The dog.”

  “Yes, the dog.”

  “With whom were you speaking?”

  “Minnie.”

  “Minnie,” he repeated.

  “Why does there always have to be some issue?”

  “I’m going to die in this house.”

  “For God’s sake,” Ana said. “Dr. Karnam told you not to get worked up.”

  He waved his hands as though he’d dipped them in scalding water. “I need something.”

  “Are you in pain?”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “Do you want a patch?”

  “That would be nice.”

  She went to the kitchen and took down the box, all the pills doled out in tiny plastic cases labeled AM or PM and mapped to a calendar marked and coded to track proper administration. She rooted through and found the morphine squares and took one back to him and slapped it into his hand.

  George snatched the patch away. The front door opened and closed.

  “Are you going to stay in here all day?” Ana asked.

  “I think I’ll paint.”

  “You said that already and you haven’t moved.”

  “I’m gearing up.”

  “How much money have you wasted on all the crap in that box?” She motioned with her chin to the plastic toolbox set on the corner stool in which George kept his art supplies.

  “It’s my money.”

  “It’s our money.”

  Armie stood behind them. He had the hood of his slicker up and he was wet.

  “Just tell me where you’d like me to go,” George said, “and I’ll go there. I’ll get out of your hair.”

  “Why can’t the two of you just ignore each other?” Armie said. “Isn’t that what most couples your age do?”

  By now it was raining out there in a significant way and the sound of it filled the gaps between their shouting.

  “We certainly wouldn’t want to interrupt your toy building.”

  “If you consider a chair a toy.”

  “They finished the Tower of Babel quicker.”

  “They never finished the Tower of Babel.”

  George embarked on a violent coughing fit from which it appeared he might never return and Armie slunk back to the basement and Ana began to weep.

  * * *

  In the waiting room he removed his boots, set them by the door, and sat in one of the red leather chairs, catching his breath and wiggling his toes inside his socks. He was battling an erection and couldn’t pinpoint what had turned him on. Maybe the sight of Dr. Hammerstein’s ass? It also might have been the lingering effects of hearing Ariel cry on the phone or the constant image he’d been cultivating since waking of Nora on all fours, licking her fingers.

  He called Nora. Her voice sounded so bedraggled and sultry that he wanted to reach through the phone.

  “You’re asleep?”

  “I’m in bed.”

  “So lazy.”

  “Fuck you. I’m in Zone A.”

  “You’re not in Zone A.”

  “I’m a block away.”

  “I need to see you.”

  “You’d never make it across the river. You’re too weak.”

  He lowered his voice. “I want my head between your legs.”

  “Mmm,” she moaned. “I like the sound of that. I’m here all alone.”

  “You better be.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Tell me you’re naked.”

  “I am.”

  He felt the familiar hotness, the deep-rooted gathering in his crotch. “I want to fuck you. Now.”

  “I gotta go!”

  “Don’t go. Talk to me.”

  “Get your ass over here and we’ll do more than talk.”

  “No. You come to the big city.”

  “Later!”

  She hung up. She was always hanging up on him. He called her back. It went straight to voice mail. Nora was twenty-four and her social life revolved around dance parties in derelict factories that didn’t start until after midnight and brunches of organic kale salad and Bloody Marys and weekend trips to the Hamptons and shopping sprees (which he paid for) and yoga classes and total-body workouts and ab-sculpting sessions with a personal trainer and tubs of 0% organic Greek yogurt and walks with her Boston terrier (Barksdale) through the park (where she never picked up after it when it shit), and let’s not forget the near-constant pursuit of different hats to wear. It was anyone’s guess how many fucking hats she owned.

  Josef, through no small amount of effort on his part, had been granted glorious access to the contents of her panties. Keeping himself there, while trying to wrap his mind around her social schedule or how she afforded her $3,500-a-month rental on the twenty-fourth floor of
a Wythe Avenue luxury tower, was a daunting task. He was sure the answer was that a trust fund paid the rent. She worked as an editorial assistant for some fashion periodical and referred to her absentee father as “Daddy,” which was also what she called Josef. Yup, his guess was she was way rich. Money fueled her lifestyle. The energetic naïveté of youth fueled her late-night escapades. Unless they made advance plans, he usually didn’t hear from her until after midnight. Not that he minded this. After all, he was thirty-eight and had officially entered his “sugar daddy” phase. He knew it was bound to happen sooner or later and he was fine with it. He paid for dresses, manicures, waxings, $700 boots, and not a small amount of Agent Provocateur lingerie. All of this sped along the depletion of his funds. It was worth it, though. Her body tasted like a bed of flowers. He shook his head, scattered the image of her, legs spread, gray storm clouds shrouding the sky outside the giant windows of her bedroom, rain pounding down, and her wet fingers beckoning him to advance. “I want you,” she moaned in his mind.

  Some thunder cracked and startled him. He needed to focus. He’d riled himself up thinking about Dr. Hammerstein and now he was getting riled up thinking about Nora and what he needed to do was figure out how to get Marc Crawford to close this fucking deal as quickly as possible. He called Ariel at the office. The line was busy so he tried her cell phone. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not any better.” She was sobbing. “The power’s out.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since like a half hour ago. I don’t even know what I’m doing here! Where are you? When are you coming?”

  “I’m at my shrink’s. There’s power here.”

  “Well, apparently you haven’t been listening to the radio. All of lower Manhattan is blacked out.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I’m sitting here in the dark. Alone.”

  “No one else came in?”

  “No, they did not. You didn’t even call and tell me what the fucking plan was.”

  “So then you haven’t heard from Marc?”

  “No, I haven’t heard from fucking Marc! I haven’t heard anything from anyone. The power is out!”