The Marriage of Sticks

by Jonathan Carroll

  She put a hand into her long black hair and drew it slowly away from her face. “I bumped into him a few years ago in Philadelphia. He was working for a company that had something to do with art—selling it, dealing it? I don’t really remember. Maybe it was an auction house, like Sotheby’s. Anyway, we ran into each other on the street. He loved what he was doing. He was so revved up. Remember how excited he could get about things?”

  I wanted to tell her how I’d seen that excitement, seen his whole being glow about something that had grabbed his attention.

  “We were both in a rush and only able to have a quick cup of coffee together. He sounded wonderful, Miranda. Said for the first time in his life he felt like he was on the right track. Things were where he wanted them. He had a girlfriend. He was absolutely up, you know?”

  “How did he look?” I wanted a picture, an image of him grown up I could hold on to.

  “Older of course, thinner than he was in school, but still those great eyes and smile.” She paused. “He looked like James.”

  I began to weep. Those words held everything I did and did not want to hear. Zoe put her arms around me. The three of us stood on the lawn, a few feet—and light-years away from all the happiness and goodwill inside the building.

  When my storm had mostly passed, I asked Diana to go on.

  “We exchanged numbers and promised to stay in touch. We called a couple of times but I didn’t go back to Philadelphia, and who ever comes to Kalamazoo?

  “One night three years ago, very late, I got a call. A woman asked for me two times. She was so upset that I had to convince her who I was. She said she knew I was a good friend of James’s and wanted me to know he’d been killed in a car accident.

  “He’d been in New York and gotten a call from his girlfriend in Philadelphia. She wanted to break up with him because she’d met someone else. Apparently she was that cold—wanted out and there was nothing more to talk about.

  “As soon as he got off the phone, James jumped in his car and drove straight down there. It was very icy and the roads were bad. He made it to Philadelphia but was driving too fast. When he tried to get off the turnpike, the car skidded and went off the road. She said he died instantly.”

  “Instantly?”

  “That’s what the woman said.”

  “Who was she?”

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t give a name, even when I asked. I bet it was the girlfriend.

  “He asked about you, Miranda. When we had coffee, he asked if I had heard anything about you.”

  My heart lurched. “Really?”

  “Yes. He was disappointed when I didn’t know.”

  We were silent while music from the reunion filled the air around us.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “No. I told you I asked the woman for her name but she wouldn’t say. She hung up right after that.”

  Zoe sighed and looked at the ground. It was such a final, nothing-left sigh.

  “Thank you, Diana. It makes it clearer.”

  We hugged. She stepped back, hands on my elbows, and looked at me a moment more. Then she turned and started for the building.

  “Diana?”

  “Yes?”

  “Really, he was happy?”

  She only nodded. Which was better than any words. It allowed me my own vocabulary for his happiness.

  “Thank you.”

  She reached into her handbag, took out a card, and handed it to me. “Call if you want to talk, or if you’re ever in Kalamazoo, Michigan.”

  Zoe and I stood in silence in the middle of the lawn. After time had passed I said, “I don’t want to go back in there. I’ll call a cab. Could you give me a key to your house?”

  “Let’s go someplace and drink a lot.”

  Instead we ended up driving around again. Past the same places we’d seen that afternoon, which now felt like a million years ago. I turned on the radio and, as if they knew our mood, all the stations seemed to be playing only songs we’d loved when we were young. Which was all right because we finished being young that night and it was right to be immersed in it one last time.

  I hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going, and realized where we were only when she slowed and turned into the parking lot of the Carvel ice cream stand.

  “Good idea!”

  “If we’re not going to get drunk, we’ll get fat.”

  We ordered the old usual—vanilla cones dipped in heated chocolate—and went back to her car. In our party dresses we sat on the hood and ate.

  “They’re still delicious.”

  “I haven’t had one in years. I used to bring the kids when they were young, but they wouldn’t be caught dead with me in public these days.”

  We watched people come and go. Back at the country club, our classmates were dancing and reliving happy times. But Kevin was back there too and so was James.

  “Zoe, what do we do now?”

  “Hope, honey. Same thing as I said before.”

  “Not much hope in Mudville tonight.”

  “Did I ever tell you about the time I found Andy’s gun?”

  That stopped me. “You’re kidding! Andy, your slimy ex-husband?”

  “Yup. It was the first year we were married. I was putting away clean underwear in his drawer. Sitting on top of his Fruit Of The Looms was a gun.”

  “Why’d he have it?”

  “The most interesting thing was, the moment I found it, the only thing that went through my mind wasn’t ‘He’s got a gun!’ What hit me was, ‘The world is an amazing place.’ You know how it is when you’re first with someone and love him: you think you know everything about him. Then you open a drawer one day and there’s something—an old love letter, a diary, a gun. It’s impossible to connect with the person you thought you knew.

  “It was kind of wonderful, Miranda. I knew no matter what happened, life was always going to be interesting.”

  “Because you found a gun?”

  “No! Because it was part of Andy too. I really didn’t know him and that excited me. There were all these new things to discover. In the end we divorced, but back then, life was still opening up. It excited me. It still excites me. You should let it do that. You should let that happen.”

  3. A Yogurt Trilogy

  “You’re a thief, Miranda.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Jaco.”

  Sniffing the air as if something stunk in the room, he went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Perhaps the most unscrupulous I have ever done business with.”

  I tapped my front tooth with a fingernail. “Jaco, we’ve had this conversation before. You always say the same thing: I’m a crook, a bitch… always the same spring rolls. But I find the books you want. You wanted a signed first edition of The Gallery; I got it for you. You wanted a letter from Eliot, I found it for you—”

  “True, but then you charge so much that I have no money left!”

  “You’d have to live another four hundred years before you ran out of money. Don’t buy it! You know Dagmar will if you don’t.” It was a rotten thing to say, but I was so disgusted with him at the moment I couldn’t resist.

  As usual, her detested name straightened his back and narrowed his greedy eyes.

  Dagmar Breece. Jaco Breece’s nemesis. All I had to do was wave her name in front of him and the mean old man started snorting like Ferdinand the Bull.

  Dagmar and Jaco Breece had two passions: cashmere and twentieth-century authors. That was great when they were married and ran a sweater company together for four decades. The business was successful, they had a couple of nice children who grew up and away, they shared a passion for collecting. Then when she was sixty years old, Dagmar fell in love with another man and promptly moved out on her husband. Good riddance.

  What galled Jaco more than losing her, however, was her saying he could keep the rare book and manuscript collection they’d spent years amassing. She would start another with the help of her rich new boyfriend.
r />   That’s how I came to know them. Several years before, when they were still together, Dagmar came into the store and bought an Edward Dahlberg manuscript I had listed in a catalog. After that, I found a number of things for them, both when they were married and after she left. I liked Dagmar but not Jaco. Not one bit.

  Standing there watching him fume, I wondered how he would have reacted if he’d known I was going to a dinner party at her apartment that night.

  “What else do you have that’s new?”

  “Some Rilke letters—”

  “Everyone has Rilke letters. He wrote too many.”

  “Jaco, you asked what’s new. I have some letters—Noooo, wait! I have something else that’ll interest you!”

  My store is small, so it was only three steps to the sideboard. I disliked the whole pompous leather-and-dark-oak look of most rare book dealers’ stores, so mine was furnished with 1950s Heywood Wakefield blond wood furniture and a very warm red-and-white Chinese rug. Together they made the room light, slightly odd, and, I hoped, welcoming. I loved books and everything about them. I wanted customers to know that when they walked in.

  The difference between my business and the business of other book and manuscript dealers was that I sold anything else I fancied too.

  Opening a drawer, I took out the long thin case made of crocodile skin. It looked like the kind Victorian gentlemen used for carrying cigars. What I had inside was much better than that. Opening it, I put it down on the counter in front of Jaco, knowing he would go into cardiac arrest when he realized what it was.

  “I don’t collect fountain pens, Miranda.”

  “It’s not a pen. It’s a Mabie Todd.”

  “Then maybe Todd would like it.”

  “Very funny. Look at the barrel.”

  He looked at me like I was trying to pull a fast one but in the end he picked up the largest fountain pen I’d ever seen.

  “So? It’s a pen.”

  “Jaco, turn it around. Look closely.”

  He turned till he saw the name engraved in gold lettering on the black barrel. When he spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper, as if his tongue had grown too big for his throat. “No! Is it?”

  I nodded. “I have authentication.”

  “How did you—”

  “At a Sotheby’s auction last week. I saw it in their catalog. I think it came from Lord Esher’s estate.”

  “Rolfe.” He read the name reverently. “I remember from the Symons biography, he was supposed to have always written with a huge fountain pen.”

  “That’s right.”

  Exasperated and smiling for the first time, he shook his head. “Miranda, how do you find these things? How did you find Frederick Rolfe’s fountain pen?”

  “Because I love what I’m doing. Hunting for things, having them in my hand for a while. I love selling them to people like you who care.”

  “But you never keep anything for yourself?”

  “Never. You have to decide whether you’re going to collect or sell. Collecting would exhaust me. I’d never be happy with what I owned. I would always want more. This way, I can enjoy things for a while and then sell them to the right people.”

  “Like Dagmar?”

  “Like Dagmar, and you. Do you want this?”

  “Of course I want it!”

  I waited a good half hour after he left before I made the call. Jaco had the disconcerting habit of returning in a rage to demand a better price for something he had just bought. In the beginning I’d been cowed by his fury, but not anymore.

  “Hello?” Her voice was soft and elegant, as sexy a woman’s voice as I knew.

  “Dagmar? It’s Miranda. Jaco was just here. He bought the pen.”

  “Of course he did, darling. It’s exactly what he would want. That’s why I bought it. It’s a fabulous piece.”

  “But why sell it to him? Didn’t you want it for your collection?”

  “Yes, but he would love it more. Baron Corvo is one of his few heroes.”

  “I don’t understand. You finally left him after all those years of unhappiness, but you’re still giving him things?”

  “Not giving, selling. Loving Jaco was like sitting on a cold stone: you give it all your heat but it gives none back. You end up with a chill in your behind. I couldn’t take it anymore. But leaving doesn’t erase most of my adult life. I still love him for a few things and always will. Not that I necessarily want to. Sometimes you can’t control who you love.”

  “But you’re happy you left?”

  “Blissfully. The only time I look back is to check to make sure I locked the door. Tell me how Jaco reacted when he saw the pen.” I could almost hear her smile through the telephone.

  “He nipped. He was in heaven.”

  “No doubt. Hadrian the Seventh is his favorite book. No wonder—the story of a miserable, undeserving person who’s chosen to be pope. Jaco identifies totally.”

  “I’ll bring you a check tonight.”

  “No hurry. Today I’m beyond madness anyway. The caterer called and said he won’t be able to make the yogurt trilogy for dessert, which essentially ruins the dinner. But we have to be strong.”

  “Yogurt trilogy?”

  “Don’t be cynical, Miranda. One taste and you’d be a believer. Plus our apartment smells like a wet washcloth, and I have to go have my hair done. Sometimes it would be nice being a man. For them, a haircut is nine dollars. For a woman it’s a religious experience. So I have to go, sweetie. If I live through today, I’ll be immortal. Be here at seven. I’ve invited three Scud missiles for dinner and told each you’re the catch of the century.”

  “That’s tough to live up to.”

  “But you are!”

  Few people came into my store to browse. For the most part, the clientele knew exactly what they wanted. I lived a good deal of the time on the road, tracking down their specific and often expensive desires. You could page me on my wristwatch or call me on the smallest portable telephone I could find. I was happy when I could spend even a few weeks at a time in the store straightening things up paying bills, reading catalogs and faxes. Yet I was also happy in airports, hotel rooms, restaurants that served regional dishes I had never heard of. There was no man in my life. I was free to come and go as I pleased.

  In college I had majored in sociology, but realized junior year how unsatisfying demographic charts and terms like gemeinschaft and gesellschaft were. For extra money I found a job at a used book store and was lucky enough to be there the day a man came in with two cardboard boxes of books to sell. Among them was a signed limited edition of Faulkner’s The Hamlet, which happened to be on the reading list of a course I was taking. Knowing it was valuable, I showed it to the owner of the store. He said I could keep it because I’d been honest and was a good worker. I took the book to class to show the professor. His eyes widened and he asked if I would sell it to him for a hundred dollars. There was something in his tone that made me suspicious. I looked up the telephone numbers of several rare book dealers and called to ask what the book was worth.

  Nothing is permanent, but books are one of the few things that come close. Hearing how valuable the Faulkner was, I realized I had been made privy to one of life’s small secrets, which was that there are objects that mean nothing to most people, but everything to some. What’s more, if you knew anything about the subject, you quickly discovered collecting books was one of the last real treasure hunts possible in this age. There are old books everywhere and most people don’t care about them. The few who do will go to remarkable lengths to possess them.

  As I continued, I realized I was good at the job—this in itself is a great reward. I loved my customers’ excitement and delight with what I found. I loved the serendipity of the hunt. My heart still pounded on seeing something unique or important in a junk store, second-hand shop, a Salvation Army bin in the bad section of some downtown. Slowly reaching out, I would take it in my hand, knowing one of the greatest pleasures of all was he
re. Opening the book, I would check the first pages to make sure it was what I thought. Yes, there was the proof if you knew what to look for—the letter A, or the even more obvious first edition. Other indications, emblems, marks… the secret alphabet and language of book collectors. On the inside front cover someone would have carelessly written in pencil, $1 or 50ў. I paid ten cents in Louisville for the most beautiful first edition of The Great Gatsby I’ve ever seen. Five dollars for The Enormous Room. I couldn’t understand why more people weren’t doing this. Even if you knew only a little about the subject, it was like looking for gold everywhere you went.

  After reading the journals of Edward Weston and Paul Strand, I became interested in photography. That opened up an altogether new world, not to mention business opportunity. On a trip to Los Angeles, I discovered a large box of photographs at a yard sale. Most were of strangers, but some subjects were famous movie stars of the 1930s and ‘40s. What struck me was how beautifully the pictures were lit and how naturally the people had been posed. On the back of each was a stamp with the photographer’s name, Hurrell, and address. I bought them and never forgot the look on the woman’s face as I handed her money: it said I was a sucker and she was the winner. But even then, without ever having heard of the great photographer George Hurrell, I knew she was wrong.

  “Miranda?”

  I came out of a daze to see one of my favorite people in the world standing at the door.

  “Clayton! I’m sorry, I was daydreaming.”

  “The sign of all great minds. Give your old boss a hug.”

  We embraced and, as usual, he had on another mysteriously beautiful cologne that made me swoon.

  “What are you wearing today?”

  “Something French. Called Diptyque, which I think is appropriate for a bookseller, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Absolutely. Where have you been, Clayton? I haven’t heard a word from you in months.” I took his hand and led him to a chair. He sat down and looked slowly around before speaking. He must have been sixty, but looked years younger. A full head of hair—and the wrinkles on his face came mostly from smiling. I had gone to work for him in New York after college. He had shown me everything he knew about the rare book business. Enthusiasm and generosity were at the heart of his personality. When I left to open my own store, he lent me ten thousand dollars to get started.