The Antiques

by Kris D'Agostino

  Josef walked through the dining room. Abbott and Dustin were under the table, engrossed with their ponies and trucks and trains. In the kitchen, Charlie stood at the stove, scrambling an enormous quantity of eggs in a large pan, and Ana sat at the table with a cup of steaming tea in her hands. Shadow lay sprawled on his side against the dishwasher, his tail flapping occasionally, his lazy eyes fixed on Ana. When Josef came in he sat up, walked over, and tried to lick Josef’s pants.

  “That smells good.”

  “It’s almost ready,” Charlie said.

  “How did you sleep?” Ana asked.

  “Terribly. The Danes did not take comfort into account.”

  “That’s why they make such beautiful furniture,” Ana said.

  Rey came in and poured himself coffee from the pot. He sat at the table. “Milk?”

  “How’s the painting?” Josef asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Ana said.

  Josef took the milk out of the fridge and put it on the table in front of Rey. “There you go, pal.”

  * * *

  Armie heard footsteps overhead as the rest of the house woke. He hadn’t gotten much sleep. He’d spent the early hours sanding down the table, applying a coat of stain, and waiting for it to dry. He hadn’t touched the rocket since the previous afternoon, when he smoothed out the balsawood fins and glued them in place. He’d spray-painted the fins red and the body blue. Fuck Josef. Armie was pissed at himself for even considering, no less endeavoring, to build the stupid thing. And he was equally miffed for getting in the car and driving to Albany to acquire—steal—it. And why had he let himself get swept up in that moment? Why had he forgotten his anger and convinced himself, even for a second, that he liked his brother? Why was he clenching his fists so tightly right now that his nails dug into his palms? These were all valid questions. He took some deep breaths and stood the table upright. He put his level across the top and checked the angles. It was decently straight. It was good. He showered and put on the one suit he owned—black, a little short in the legs—a white button-down, and a black tie.

  * * *

  Charlie found the mystery panties in the bathroom garbage while she gave Abbott his bath. They were in the Ziploc bag. Her impression now was that Rey was just flaunting the whole thing. And the worst part was how he refused to own up.

  She sat on the tub’s edge and squirted shampoo into Abbott’s outstretched, cupped hands. She had tried to apply the shampoo herself and he freaked out. He wanted to do it. My Little Pony dolls bobbed in the soapy water.

  She’d packed a simple black dress but was now giving serious consideration to just leaving her running attire on. Who would dare say anything to her?

  The bottle of Enabletal was on the sink next to her toothbrush. It was half full. She pulled the panties out of the garbage. Abbott finished sudsing up his head and now made two of the ponies battle via extreme head bashing. “Die!” he said in a tiny pony voice. “Die. Die.” Charlie’s tears spilled over. She put a hand to her mouth. Abbott stopped mid-bash and held the ponies up, his head cocked to one side, soapsuds dripping down his cheeks. He wrinkled his nose. “Sad?”

  “Sorry, buddy.”

  She took the bottle and flushed all the little pink pills down the toilet before she could change her mind. She closed the lid and sat, crying. Abbott, her little cowboy, her beautiful, slightly broken creation she loved more than the world, raised an eyebrow.

  “What you flush?” he asked.

  * * *

  The catering service arrived. Charlie had had an impossible time locating a place that was open and had power and/or enough supplies/workforce to both cook and deliver the required amount of food. For a while it seemed as though they would not find anything, until Minnie Horwitz offered to call a friend of hers, who called another friend, and now young men in blue shirts streamed into the dining room carrying trays of Mediterranean dishes. They set up Sternos and wire racks and they unwrapped stacks of heavy-stock paper plates. They put out a basket of cutlery sets, each wrapped in a white paper napkin and tied with green string.

  * * *

  Ana stood in the foyer. She’d applied a minimal amount of eyeliner and some subtle (but impactful) lipstick. She clenched her gold-and-white kanga. The air from the street was mild and pleasant, and she closed her eyes and breathed. She had to remember to breathe. She wore a necklace of large wood beads. On one wrist were her favorite gold bangles. She felt sleep-deprived, but some of her litheness was returning. Shadow was at her side, rubbing against the bare portion of her calves, panting.

  While Melody directed traffic, telling the caterers where to put things, Ana went to the living room. She took the Magritte from the mantel and carried it to the study, where she laid it gingerly on the great old desk that George had loved so much. She tried, by the morning light coming through the red-curtained window, to see how extensive the damage was. She’d cleaned it until they’d made her stop and taken her to bed. Looking at it now, she feared she’d made it worse. If it was ruined, she’d be devastated. It was George’s last gift—his most precious antique.

  Josef was behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder. “That kid has got issues,” he said.

  * * *

  Armie struggled to guide his table through the narrow basement door. Josef watched him wrestle with it. The back legs were stuck on the inside of the jamb.

  “Thanks for the help,” Armie said.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming. Keep your panties on.” Josef lifted the front end of the table and backed up while his brother guided the uncooperative legs free and around, and in this way they cleared the door.

  “What do you think?” Armie asked.

  Ana snapped to attention. “What’s that?”

  “Mom, are you okay?”

  “It’s beautiful, dear,” Ana said.

  At the front door, Natalie and the girls were entering amid the troop of caterers.

  “You brought him?” Josef said, dropping his end of the table as he saw Andy the Poet behind his ex-wife, which caused Armie to yell, “You dropped it!”

  Natalie took off her coat. “He drove us.”

  “He owns a car?” Josef asked.

  “I do,” Andy said.

  Armie managed to keep the table aloft after Josef let go and spun it in a wide circle and awkwardly flipped it around onto its legs. Then he carried it to the corner of the foyer, where he planned to set up the memorial.

  “Hi, Armie,” Natalie said. “You look good.”

  “I don’t,” Armie said, “but it’s good to see you.”

  “Hi, Uncle Armie,” Isobel said.

  “Wow. You girls look beautiful!”

  Josef took Natalie’s coat and the girls’ coats and, reluctantly, Andy’s coat as well, until he had a giant mound of coats across his arms. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Take them up to my room, dear,” Ana said.

  “You look silly, Dad,” Florence said. Both she and her sister wore gray shifts and black tights. Natalie was giving him an almost instant hard-on in the tight formal dress she wore, which was calling perfect attention to her cleavage.

  “Thank you,” Josef said. “What do you think, Isobel? How do I look?”

  “About the same as always,” she told him.

  Josef went up with the coats.

  Florence gave her grandmother a full cheek-kiss hello. When Josef returned, she skipped over to hug him. “Is it true, Daddy?” she whispered. “Is she here?”

  “Is who here?”

  “Serena Thornglow.”

  Josef looked at Natalie. “You told them?”

  “They were going to see her anyway. It’s better I told her in advance; otherwise she’d probably faint.”

  “I could give two shits,” Isobel said.

  “Language,” Florence said.

  “Oh, you’re too cool all of a sudden?” Natalie said. “I think you’re as excited as your sister is.”

  “Whatev
er,” Isobel said.

  “Hello, Josef,” Andy said. “My sincere condolences.”

  He put out his hand and Josef barely shook it before following Natalie into the living room. Florence tagged along behind him. “Is she down here? Is she out back? Can I meet her? Will she sign my book?”

  “She didn’t write the books, stupid,” Isobel said.

  “Be nice,” Natalie said.

  Ana drifted to the couch and sat quietly with her hands in her lap. Shadow paced the coffee table, whining, weaving between everyone’s legs.

  “I’m just going to go ahead and set the table up over here?” Armie said.

  No one answered him.

  “Need anything?” Josef asked.

  “It’s too early for a drink,” Natalie said, “but I’d love some coffee if there’s any.”

  The caterers had set up a giant coffee urn in the dining room and Josef poured her a cup. “Here you go.”

  “Where are the flowers?” Armie called out.

  “On the kitchen table,” Charlie said. She was coming down the front stairs with Abbott.

  Florence ran back to the foyer, thinking it was Melody, but turned away, disappointed.

  “You don’t say hello to your aunt Charlie?”

  “I’m sorry!” Florence said. She gave Charlie a big hug. Natalie and Charlie said hello and embraced as well. Rey stood between the foyer and the kitchen but wasn’t saying hello to anyone; he was more just lurking, but no one seemed to look his way.

  The doorbell rang. Mourners were arriving.

  * * *

  Armie set the table. He draped a white cloth upon it and placed vases of flowers: a tall white orchid in full bloom, curling out of a moss base, with white tulips and roses. He arranged colorful wildflowers in a sort of blanket across the table. Nested amid them he stood three framed photos that Ana and Charlie had curated from the photo albums. The first was of George and Ana on their wedding day, George wearing a white suit and Ana a simple white dress. The second was of George in knee-high waders, casting into Big Wood River on a fishing trip he’d taken before getting sick. Finally, a black-and-white portrait of George, sepia-toned now with age, dating back to his senior year of high school. At the front of the table Armie opened a small notebook for guests to inscribe whatever goodbyes they wished to leave. He placed a pen in the spine and set the notebook beside the urn.

  * * *

  In the living room Josef was eager to get Natalie alone and talk to her but quickly saw that this wasn’t going to be possible.

  “I can’t believe you brought him—”

  “Don’t start—”

  “To my father’s memorial.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Can you be serious for just one second? Listen to me. Florence wrote a letter for your father and she wants to know if she can read it.”

  “What kind of letter?”

  “A goodbye letter, you dunce. She wants to say something for him.”

  “Sure, of course she can. Listen, can we talk?”

  “Later.”

  Josef looked over at Andy, whose attention was fully focused on Melody as she descended the stairs with Dustin.

  “Eeeek!” Florence squealed.

  “Is she okay?” Josef asked.

  “It’s her!” Florence whisper-shrieked. “Even with the wig I can tell.”

  “Okay,” Natalie said, “I’m sure she doesn’t want to be bothered, so let’s keep our distance, all right?”

  “Oh, Mom, don’t be a turd. I need her autograph.”

  “Did you just call me a turd?”

  “Ugh!”

  * * *

  And so the Warren Street house filled with people. As the guests streamed in, they stopped at Armie’s table. They wrote in the book. They gazed upon the photos. They put their arms around Ana. They told her how sorry they were. They told her how much they were going to miss him. They put their arms around his children. They said, “He’s not suffering anymore.” They said, “He’s at peace.” They said, “I love you.”

  Dr. Ashworth gave Shadow a quick exam in the kitchen and inquired about side effects from the medication.

  Ana was on her feet and greeting, with somber cheek-pecks, a contingent of cousins who had driven down from Montreal. These were the hardly-ever-seen Hays family, her mother’s sister’s children (Hays was her maiden name).

  Ana’s own mother, Mary, arrived, escorted by yet more cousins. Ana openly wept in the older woman’s arms, as she had in her youth.

  Rey lurked, angry, around the food in the dining room, glaring at Charlie when he could, filling his plate with tabbouleh and grape leaves and not eating any of it.

  Josef skittered about, avoiding as many relatives as possible but unable to avoid all of them and inevitably becoming trapped in conversation and being forced to limply hug and kiss those who cornered him. He knew his father would have hated this stupid bullshit memorial or whatever it was. The food! The last thing his father would have picked for what was, by extension, his last meal would have been hummus! Or eggplant. Or pita, for fuck’s sake! They should be eating steak! Josef did his best not to tell his sister or his mother that they’d gone majorly astray with the food.

  He endured a near-constant assault of glib and demoralizing small talk. Most of the attendees he knew and disliked. They were work acquaintances of his parents—fellow dealers, shop owners, collectors. Some he’d known since childhood. He avoided those he could avoid. Others he was forced to engage with. Those he did not already know he quickly came to dislike after brief and painful “conversations.” He was (unfortunately) related to a great number of these people. They lived in places like Pawtucket, Rhode Island; Flagstaff, Arizona; and West Palm Beach. Most were of retirement age and beyond. Most had the yellowed, cirrhotic hands and folded skin of the aged. If they were younger, Josef envisioned them laid low by debilitating future illnesses or early-onset diabetes or dementia. And what was up with all the khaki pants? Why did they all keep telling him not to hesitate to call on them if there was anything—anything at all—he needed? At one point he found himself boxed in by the fireplace, listening to a small man with a tawny, rubbery complexion who introduced himself as Robert drone on endlessly about a new product he was hawking—a vitamin supplement made from kelp that would “change your health in ways you can’t even imagine! Man, it’s like a miracle pill, and you’re in luck because I happen to have my sample case right in the car.” Another nebbish claimed to be a cousin of so-and-so and leaned in with a hand to his mouth and inquired, “Who’s the hottie with the weird hat?” to which Josef responded, “Melody Montrose, the movie star. Wanna meet her?” to which the dweeb responded, gleefully slapping Josef’s arm, “Yeah, right, pal! You wish!”

  Josef had always largely discredited Ana’s relatives as bat-shit crazy and now he had concrete evidence proving so. And all these bat-shit-crazy people were preventing him from getting Natalie alone. Plus, Andy the Poet seemed unable or unwilling to leave her side. Every time Josef tried to pull her away, he failed.

  Then of course Nora waltzed through the front door, wearing a wildly inappropriate black cocktail dress. He cut her off at the memorial table, where she had started to write something in the stupid little book Armie had set among the flowers that he’d just dumped all over the place. “What are you doing here?” Josef said.

  “You begged me to come.”

  “That was yesterday.”

  Her hand darted to his crotch.

  “Haha! Stop. Are you nuts? This is a funeral.”

  “Then why aren’t we at church?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Like you wouldn’t fuck me in the bathroom right now.”

  “My kids are here.”

  “So mature all of a sudden.” She grabbed his crotch again.

  “Not here.”

  “Take me to a hotel.”

  “Look around! My father is dead. I have to talk
to all these people.”

  “You know you want it.”

  “That is beside the point.”

  “You owe me a hundred dollars for the taxi.”

  He fished in his pockets and shoved a wad of bills into her palm. “Stay away from my ex-wife, okay?” He pushed more cash into her hand. “I’m treading a delicate line here.”

  “Whatever,” Nora said. “I’ll stay away from your precious little Russian princess.”

  “How do you know she’s Russian?”

  “I know everything about you.” She leaned in, close to his ear, so close in fact that her tongue flicked his skin, giving him gooseflesh. “I know you’re a depraved, sex-starved, sociopathic egomaniac.”

  “That’s all about to change.”

  * * *

  In the kitchen, Ana’s mother filled Shadow’s water bowl and fussed about, trying to find some helpful task to keep busy. Ana and Dr. Ashworth stood side by side, discussing Shadow’s health, as the dog paced.

  “He’s looking much better,” Ana said. “I’ve taken it as a sign that things are going to be okay. Do you think that’s wise? For me to think of it that way?”

  The veterinarian put a hand on her shoulder. “I think that’s a wonderful way to look at it.”

  * * *

  Florence lurked in the dining room, chewing a slice of pita and spying on Melody Montrose, whose mouth—the one part of her face not obscured behind the oversize sunglasses and floppy hat—was a constant frown. Melody, too, was lurking, in a corner of the living room with a glass of whiskey already in hand. Isobel crept up behind Florence and yelled abruptly in her sister’s ear, startling her.

  “You scared me!” Florence said.

  “It’s kinda gross how obsessed you are,” Isobel said.

  “It is not!”

  “The two of you better not,” Natalie warned. “Not today.”

  * * *

  Charlie’s cell phone rang. It was Leilani. She went deep into the dining room to take the call.

  “If she’s there,” Leilani launched right in, “I won’t be upset, but you have to tell me. The police are involved now. They were here in my office. They used the word kidnapped. Like they said it numerous times.”

  “She’s not here. I swear.”

  “Okay. Sure. Well, there’s a picture on the Internet, like all over it, of a girl who looks an awful lot like her, sitting in a bar in some bumfuck New York town last night. It’s blurry and this girl in the picture has blond hair but the resemblance is uncanny and I happen to know for science fact that Melody Montrose has but one disguise and unfortunately for both of you I’ve seen her wear it many times.” Charlie paused, silent. “You should have told me, Charlie. I’d have done something.”