Forms of Devotion
Page 16
8 Remington, all metal working parts and steel type, double case machine writes 78 characters including numbers, symbols, punctuation marks, and fractional figures. The typewriter, despite its advanced age, is in excellent working order except for the sticky letters m and p. Mostly Helen uses it for letters to lawyers and the like, business correspondence that she feels should be made to look as official as possible. Once she tried to type on it the story of her life but found she did not know where to begin.
9 The New Illustrated Universal Encyclopedia: The Book of A Million Facts, published in Great Britain, 1923, 1,280 pages, including 16 new maps. Helen is fond of skimming through this book for amusing entries. She enjoys “The Modern Household Cookery” which includes recipes for such delicacies as Bone Soup, Sheep’s Head Soup, Eggs for the Invalid, Substantial Salad, and Mutton Chops in Ambush. She takes special delight in “The New Household Physician” which, in addition to dispensing information on very serious ailmenrs, also offers remedies and advice regarding such afflictions as Ankles, Weak; Breath, Offensive; Feet, Sweating; Toenail, Ingrowing; and Cramp, Writer’s.
10 Normandie Reversible Back Camera with adjustable, spring-actuated ground glass always in position, never in the way. Compact, highly polished mahogany body, metalworks of fine-draw file finish. Of course this camera no longer functions. But Helen likes to imagine that if it did, the photographs it took would be like holograms which, if viewed at just the right angle in just the right light, would reveal the whole spectrum of emanations (ghosts of the past, the future, and the truth) which lurk behind even the most mundane surfaces of the present and visible world.
11 Angel of Furnace Ascending by L. C. Moffat, signed and dated 1891, oil on canvas, 8 × 12 inches, carved wooden frame. Helen knows nothing about this painter, not age, origin, or gender. She thinks though that L. C. Moffat must have been a woman. She intuits this from something in the brushstrokes, which are layered and thoughtful, and from the colors, which are rich and luminous. She does know that Furnace is a small village in the Strathclyde region of western Scotland. But she likes to think this is the angel of the furnace, who kindly keeps people warm in the winter. She fancies this notion of the angels of objects: the angels of chimneys, streetlights, and windows; the angels of teapots, cutlery, and kettles; the angels of asparagus, rhubarb, and eggs. These days she especially fancies the angel of doorknobs.
12 Hand-bound genuine leather, burgundy and black, bound-in black silk bookmark, best quality white woven paper, 300 pages, ruled. This is not exactly a diary, but rather a notebook Helen has kept sporadically over the last twenty years. The entries are a shorthand notation of her daily life and she often copies into it unusual facts she has come across in her reading. She likes to look back over these selected days of her life. She likes to know that on September 28, 1981, it rained all day, she had pork cutlets, broccoli, and baked potatoes for supper, made an appointment to have the chimney cleaned, and noted that the Pole of Inaccessibility is that point on Antarctica farthest in all directions from the seas which surround it.
13 Blue Plush Album with photo of six children under celluloid on front, tinted interior pages with floral decorations in gold, openings for 48 photographs. Helen bought this album complete nearly fifteen years ago. The people it contains are perfectly dead strangers. All she knows of them are their names noted neatly on the back or below: Gertrude and Walt, Janey and Little Luke, Charlotte and Tiny (dog). Sometimes more details are given: Lindsay at cabin, Blackstone; Edith on holiday, England; Maurice on his twenty-first birthday at the Chateau. Every picture is a mystery. Every eye, every elbow, every dish, every drawer, each and every innocent subject and object waits to spill out its secrets like pearls. Helen is still waiting to receive them.
14 Solid sterling silver, 5 inches long, souvenir of Venezuela, palm trees and oil well on handle, the word Caracas engraved in tear-drop bowl. This spoon is one of a collection of twenty-four which Helen bought, complete with oak display rack, just last summer. Her favorites among them, besides Venezuela, include Pisa with a braided handle featuring the famous Leaning Tower itself, El Salvador with palm trees and a man on a mule (no whisper of unrest), Wales with a castle on the handle and the coat of arms embossed on the bowl. Helen likes having souvenirs from places she has never seen and surely never will.
15 Fancy metal-covered flat top with rounded corners, hardwood reverse bent slats, metal bumpers. There is nothing of consequence in this trunk: two wool blankets, a linen tea towel printed with a 1964 calendar, a cushion covered with a picture of Niagara Falls, a collapsible walking stick with a dog’s head on top, and a black cashmere shawl which Helen has never worn. Usually she sits on this trunk while she puts on her panty hose each morning.
16 Large Oak and Reed Rocker, well-braced, plush tapestry seat. This was one of Helen’s first furniture purchases twenty years ago. She sits in it to read in the evening and is invariably comforted by the rhythmic creak of its rockers on the hardwood floor. Once she dreamed she was rocking a baby in this chair. The baby was sucking heartily on her left breast and she was humming a lullaby. In real life Helen does not like babies.
17 17 Fancy Quadruple Silver Plated Card Receiver, cast bronze bulldog on base. This is an unusual piece which Helen loves for two reasons. First, because it reminds her of how much better off she would have been to be born in an earlier time when callers came with cards and the world was an altogether more genteel place. Second, because she likes the silly look on the bulldogs ugly face. Despite what other people might think, Helen does have a sense of humor.
18 Ladies I4K Solid Gold Stem Wind Watch, two diamonds, three rubies, engraved. On the front is the name Beatrice and on the back, the inscription With love from Edward forever. When Helen wears this watch, she feels taller, thinner, kinder. She feels like a beautiful woman named Beatrice, much loved by a handsome man named Edward. When Helen wears this watch, she smiles more and is warm toward the women she meets on the streets in town. She laughs with them, admires a new outfit, gives advice on a problem of pests in the garden, lays a hand on an arm while asking after their husbands, their children, their health. These women go home happy to think that maybe Helen Wingham is becoming one of them after all.
19 Harrington & Richardson’s Improved Automatic Shell-Extracting Double-Action Self-Cocking Revolver. Nickel-plated with rubber stocks, ebony and pearl inlaid handle. Accurate and dependable, equal to a Smith & Wesson in shooting acumen and power. Weight, 20 ounces; 31/4 inch barrel, 6 shot, 32-caliber, center fire. Helen has never fired a gun in her life but she guesses she could if she had to.