The Antiques

by Kris D'Agostino

  “You promised him. It was the one thing he asked.”

  “He asked too much!” Ana shrieked. She quieted and then, more softly, “He said he’d never leave me.”

  “I can’t deal with this right now,” Charlie said. “I have to find Abbott! We have to find my son. Father, no disrespect, but if you don’t put that urn down right now and help us, I will kick your ass.”

  An air of high confusion draped over the house. Guests who had come for a peaceful afternoon of light food and general somber reminiscing had instead witnessed much more than any of them had bargained for.

  Father Chuk looked back and forth between Ana and Charlie and then went to the memorial table and nestled the urn back among the flowers and the photos.

  The front door opened and Armie, Audrey, Abbott, and Dustin came in.

  “Missing anyone?” Armie asked, which came off as more annoying than humorous and no one laughed.

  Despite his loud protests, Charlie hugged Abbott so hard she feared she might have damaged him in some permanent way. He screamed for her to let go. Melody attempted to yell at Dustin, demanding at first to know (much like Rey was always asking Abbott): “What were you thinking?”

  * * *

  As soon as the kids were back, Josef grabbed Marc Crawford and pulled him into the study and there, with Conversation in the Sky as witness, accepted Crawford’s offer to buy, at USD $5M, all-inclusive. Contracts to be drawn up posthaste (Ariel’s job included), vetted by the appropriate attorney contingents, signed, and fully executed.

  “How much for the painting?” Crawford asked.

  “Seriously?” Josef said.

  Crawford waved his hand. “I’m not much of an art guy.”

  Josef found Nora out back on the porch, smoking a cigarette. “I sold the company.”

  She said, “So what?”

  “So run away with me. Fuck it. Let’s go. Right now.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever you want.”

  “Paris?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “First class?”

  “Is there any other?”

  “I don’t have any clothes.”

  “We’ll buy them there.”

  She considered his proposal, shook her head. “Nah.”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  He grabbed her wrist, yanked her to him, and squeezed her ass. Through the dress the suppleness of her flesh made his groin tingle. “Yes.”

  “You’re insane.”

  * * *

  Armie gave Audrey Tan a tour of the woodshop. She’d asked. He’d been reluctant. She’d insisted. What the hell, he thought. She might as well see the way he lived. See what he did with his time.

  “And these are a set of chairs I’m working on to go with the table upstairs.”

  “The one the flowers are on?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you made that, too?”

  “It’s a little tilted, I know.”

  “I didn’t notice.” Audrey touched one of the chairs.

  “They’ll look much better when they’re stained.”

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “Think so?”

  “It’s funny?”

  “I’m used to my father telling me this is all a waste of time.”

  “Someone would buy these. I would buy these.”

  “Ha! Now I know you’re bullshitting me.”

  She spotted the rocket. “What’s this?”

  “I don’t know why I ever said I’d build it for him.”

  “Who? Josef?”

  “Yes, fucking Josef.”

  He was close to her. Her head was inclined in a certain way, one that Armie had not seen (outside of movies) for quite some time. It was the tilt of an impending kiss. He was not positive it was happening. He might have been imagining the whole thing, and a lump formed in his throat at the prospect. He made a weird squeak of acquiescence. When their lips met he tasted something like raspberry or cherry lip balm, and when they stopped he was unable to lift his eyes from the floor to look at her.

  “I’ve wanted to do that since senior prom,” she told him.

  “So have I,” he said, but it was not much more than a croak.

  “Maybe we can do it again?”

  They did.

  “You’re a good person, Armie. You’ve always been nice to me.”

  “I’m a mess.”

  “Well, then I’ll just have to settle for how hot you are.”

  “I won’t make you happy.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “I don’t know. I just worry I wouldn’t.”

  “We don’t have to figure that all out right now, do we?”

  He shrugged. “I guess not.”

  “I’m going to get some food,” she said. “Do you want some?”

  “Sure.”

  * * *

  Charlie noticed that her husband was not in the living room or the kitchen or anywhere on the parlor floor. She grabbed Melody’s elbow. Dustin clung to his mother’s knees. Abbott was over by Shadow’s bed, looking down at the dog, who lay motionless, looking with sad eyes out at the pockets of people scattered about the house, in cliques, talking and eating once again with renewed vigor now that all the commotion had died down.

  “You have to get out of here,” Charlie said.

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause we called the police and if they come back and ask questions and see Dustin, we won’t fool them twice.”

  “Where the hell am I supposed to go?”

  “You need to go to Italy and finish the film.”

  “No. No no no. I don’t want to go to Italy. Fuck Thornglow. Seriously. Fuck it all.”

  “So you’re just going to throw your career down the toilet. For what? To spite Patrick fucking Kuggle? He’s a nobody. You’re Serena fucking Thornglow, for fuck’s sake. You need to start acting like a goddam vampire queen hero.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes, you do. People love you. Look at Florence. You’re a superstar and you’re going to get through this. You said you’re my friend, right? So trust me. Go to Italy. Take Dustin and just go. I’ll call Leilani and we’ll try to talk to Patrick and his people and get them off your back for the rest of the shoot.”

  “I thought you quit.”

  “Just listen to me for once!”

  “You’ll really talk to Patrick?”

  “It’s worth a shot. But right now you need to get out of here.”

  Josef came up beside them. “You’re plotting a daring escape without including me?”

  “This isn’t a joke,” Charlie said.

  “I’m heading to the airport right now if she wants a lift.”

  “Why are you going to the airport?” Charlie asked.

  “ ’Cause I’m done,” Josef said. “I’m sorry, sis, I hit the wall.”

  “You’re running away?”

  “Getting away. I’m suffocating. I love you, but it’s too much.”

  “I just . . .” Charlie said, exasperated. “I thought you’d be here. At least for a little while.”

  “I’ll be back. I promise. Don’t hate me.”

  “I could never hate you, Josef. I love you.”

  “Well then, stop crying.”

  Charlie turned to Melody. “He’s right. Go with him. It’s now or never.”

  “Who’s driving?” Josef asked.

  Audrey Tan stood at the sink with a plate of hummus in her hands. “I’ll drive,” she said. She bit a pita chunk in half.

  * * *

  Josef didn’t take any of his stuff. He corralled Nora, hugged both his children and told them he loved them, dealt (quite clumsily) with more of Florence’s tears (which caused a painful sensation in his chest that he was not used to feeling) and Isobel’s scorn, and endured Natalie’s assaults that he was behaving in “typical” Josef fashion by leaving abruptly in the middle of his own father’s memorial service. He was particularl
y proud of himself for not saying anything whatsoever to Andy the Poet, who had successfully stolen his wife from him. He found his mother standing at the memorial table looking lost. He hugged her for a long time but did not tell her he was leaving. He thought it was better if she found out after he was gone. She had a lot on her plate. He didn’t see Armie anywhere and decided it might be better not to say anything to his little brother, who was most likely still extremely pissed at him anyway.

  Melody secured Dustin in the car seat in the Forester. She and Charlie shared a tearful goodbye on the sidewalk.

  “Be safe,” Charlie said. “Call me if you need anything. Or just let me know everything’s okay. I’ll take care of the Kuggle situation. I promise.”

  Melody cried. Charlie cried. They hugged. Abbott went out to the car and gave Dustin a parting high five.

  * * *

  When Officer Russell Garrett returned to the Warren Street house, he was greeted by Charlie, who informed him that the whole thing had been a false alarm and presented a smiling Abbott, who wielded Ernest the Donkey Puppet. Officer Russell Garrett stayed quite a while longer than was required of him for such a visit. Reynaldo Perrin was nowhere to be found.

  * * *

  Ana leaned forward in order to hear better. What was Arthur McCreary telling her? The Magritte was a reproduction? Something about the patina? What was a patina again? She knew the word, had heard it countless times before from George. She knew the word, but it was so hard to concentrate. She had to sit down. It was chilly in the study and Shadow had lumbered in behind her to observe.

  “I mean, I’m not certain,” Arthur McCreary said. “I want to take the painting to Boston. There are tests that can be done there. But if I had to say one way or the other right now? I don’t think it’s real. It’s a fake. The brushstrokes,” he pointed out, “and this is just one example, see? They don’t correspond to the marks they should have made on the canvas. And look here, the clouds swirl one way”—he showed her—“but the brushstrokes on top of them swirl in totally different patterns.”

  Ana nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I see that.”

  Arthur tilted the painting to catch the light. “And the canvas itself,” he went on. “The lay of the fibers. They’re too modern, couldn’t have been made at the time they were supposed to have been made.”

  The kanga slipped off Ana’s shoulder and she pulled it back up. She held its soft gold-trimmed hem to her neck against the stubborn chill in the room. Where was Josef? Josef would be better at this. He would be able to talk with Arthur, find out what could be done. Surely something could be done. How could the painting not be real? If George were alive, he wouldn’t have believed it! The full weight of George’s absence smashed into her. He’d tasked her with selling it, to provide for their children, and she was failing him. It hurt so much to think she would let him down in this last precious thing. Shadow licked her open palm.

  * * *

  Melody kept her sunglasses, wig, and floppy hat on the entire time, except when they made her remove the sunglasses and hat at security. She got two first-class tickets on a nonstop Alitalia flight into Fiumicino Airport, arriving the following morning. For a brief moment, just after she scanned her passport at the self-serve check-in kiosk, she waited for sirens and cops to swoop in and arrest her. It did not happen then and it did not happen when she ran Dustin’s passport through the kiosk as well. Evidently no one was looking for a Russian expat named Valeriya Moroshkin and no one recognized her at the airport, or at least not that she noticed.

  * * *

  Josef got business-class tickets. Then, after Nora’s strongly worded protests, he upgraded to first class. Neither of them had any luggage to check. He planned to splurge on clothing upon arrival in Paris. He and Melody shared an earnest hug once they were all successfully on the other side of the security checkpoints and everyone’s shoes and belts had been put back on. Melody and Dustin were bound in one direction for their departure gate, Josef and Nora in the other.

  “You’re an asshole,” Melody told him, “but thank you. If I get out of here in one piece with Dustin, I think everything will be okay. And I’ll owe you big-time.”

  “I have a feeling you’ll pull it off,” Josef told her.

  “Good luck,” Melody said.

  “Same to you,” Josef said.

  She kissed him on the cheek.

  * * *

  At the gate, he and Nora found seats near the windows looking out on vast numbers of jetways and planes nuzzling up to them. They settled in; their flight wasn’t scheduled to leave for an hour. Josef looked at Nora, engrossed in a copy of Us Weekly. He tried to figure out what it was about her that had prompted him to initially want to take this impulsive, not-very-well-thought-out trip to Paris. Was it her? Was she who he wanted to be with? Or was it all a knee-jerk reaction to Natalie’s final and complete rejection of him? Was it something larger than that? The looming, unstoppable forces of mortality re: him and his father and the general passing/unforgiving cruelty of time? He wasn’t as young as he used to be. How many times did he expect to go around the wheel with some twentysomething he didn’t care about and come off in one piece? How empty was his life? Was it empty? Could he get any of it back?

  “I have to take a leak,” he said.

  “Whoopie,” Nora said.

  He walked the length of the terminal, wandering past three restrooms before turning and entering one. A long line of stalls ran along one wall and he went to the farthest, most secluded one and shut the door. He sat on the bowl and got teary-eyed. It wasn’t crying, per se, but it was close. He waited five solid minutes just in case Natalie decided to text. Some miracle communiqué telling him she’d come to her senses and would have him back after all. When no such text came, he dried his eyes, waited another two minutes to collect himself, exited the stall, exited the restroom, rejoined the general flow of shuffling airport traffic, and returned to the departure gate.

  Nora just seemed to know. She stood up. “You don’t have the balls to go through with it.”

  He peeled two hundred dollars out of his billfold. “This should get you back to the city.”

  “You are a weak man,” she told him.

  “I know.”

  She left and he waited there at the departure gate until they called the final boarding for the Paris flight and then the gate closed and the plane pulled away from the jetway and he watched its lights.

  The terminal was swamped with cars and he waited on line for a taxi. The roads were slick and gleaming. An attendant waved him into the next available car. He climbed in. The cab smelled of peanuts and something sweet. The cabbie was a tall, dark-skinned man with a wide smile whose head scraped the fabric on the roof.

  “Hey, my friend!” the cabbie said. “Where you going to?” He had a French accent.

  “Seventy-sixth and Lex,” Josef said.

  Behind the terminal he saw a plane descend and touch down on the tarmac. The airport was all lights and bustling traffic. Cars inched by, tightly packed, darting, stopping, vying for what little curb space was available to dispatch passengers with quick parting hugs and trunks popping open and bags being pulled out and hoisted onto shoulders or wheeled away. He watched families saying their goodbyes. Horns honked and headlights raked the pavement. The taxi pulled out into the traffic. The cabbie gave it gas and Josef flew back in his seat but then the guy slammed on the brakes, flinging Josef forward into the partition. He came face-to-face with the driver’s license, mounted behind plastic. The cabbie’s name was Moussa Sidibé.

  “Where are you from?” Josef asked.

  “I’m from Ivory Coast, man!” Moussa strained his long neck at the road, glancing in the rearview mirror quickly at Josef. They locked eyes.

  Moussa had a Bluetooth in his ear, and as they settled into the long, slow sigh of red taillights, he began to speak quietly in French to someone on the phone. The way he spoke, gently and pleasantly, Josef guessed it was his wife or a family member o
n the other end. Josef saw two photos taped on the dashboard. A smiling baby in a woman’s arms. The woman had white-white teeth and a broad smile and the baby was clearly Moussa the cabbie’s child. The second photo was a team shot of a soccer squad, all dark-skinned men in light blue jerseys and white shorts on a field in the sun. Josef guessed that Moussa was among the smiling faces, but it was too dark to make out details. He looked out the window and saw more planes in the sky. Takeoffs and landings. People going home, people coming home. Flashing lights pinging in a purple-dark sky.

  “Wait. Stop.”

  Moussa looked at him again in the mirror. “I can’t stop here.”

  Josef took a hundred from his pocket and put it through the slot. “Take me upstate.”

  * * *

  Shadow made his way through the house. It was quiet again, as it had been in the morning. The trays were gone from the dining room table but the smells of the food lingered—olives and tabbouleh and pita. Shadow paced the dining room, hoping for some forgotten scraps.

  Ana and Charlie moved about in silence. Charlie had a garbage bag and was scooping up discarded plates and cups. Shadow took a seat in the foyer and watched them work and then he climbed the stairs to the second floor. On the way, he passed Abbott, curled in a ball, asleep on the landing. The dog sniffed about the boy’s sweaty head, nuzzled against his back, walked in a circle, and then flopped down and joined him in sleep. Armie was out walking Audrey home, and when he returned he sat on the couch in the living room with a glass of whiskey, feeling, well, not so bad. Arthur McCreary remained in the living room, contemplating Conversation in the Sky, going over his evaluations. He was the sole remaining guest. When the cleaning was done, Charlie roused Abbott from his slumber and took him up for bath time. She hadn’t seen Rey all evening. He’d been hiding out in the library, refusing to speak to her or anyone. She left him there.

  * * *

  By the time Moussa Sidibé deposited Josef in front of the house on Warren Street, the streetlights were on, illuminating all the scattered storm debris. The sky was clear. The clouds were gone. Stars and a simple, graceful silence hung about the town, and although it had grown colder, Josef felt an easing in his shoulders at the prospect that soon he would be back in the house where he’d grown up and his mother would be there and so would his sister with her sweet face that always calmed him no matter what he was going through and so would his brother, whom, let’s be honest, he loved a hell of a lot. He loved them all and he knew that, despite how he went out of his way to piss off each one of them, they probably loved him back. That was the curse of family.