by Ann Beattie
The sky was starting to darken. What would it be like to have her own car, to already have been through college? What would it be like to live in Seattle, where you could go on hikes and not always be sitting around some living room, being miserable?
Bettina told Raleigh he was about to miss his turn, and he said, “Sorry about that. Right.”
When they got to South Berwick, Bettina showed him the map. He said the auction was right where he thought it was. The road had potholes that made Jocelyn a little sick to her stomach, but she was feeling better, which was good, because it would have been really bad to feel worse. An auction. She wished it was a movie. She was the only person who hadn’t seen the 3-D movie. Or it would be great if she’d been able to go to a play. Imagine seeing real actors, instead of having to sit for hours watching that kid Emmet Thornton, who lisped, playing Puck? That guy who’d OD’d—the actor in New York. It would have been great to see him in something before he died, though he wasn’t cute. He looked like one of those big-headed dolls people put on their dashboards to wobble their heads. He’d been a father. He had kids who lived with the mother.
They passed Dunkin’ Donuts and followed the road to where it turned at the bend. She’d never been to an auction. In spite of what her aunt had said, her purse was in her lap. She heard her unzip it and take out her glasses to look at the map a second time, then put them away.
“Here we go,” Raleigh said, turning onto a lawn where a teenager with a white flag waved him forward. They bounced through deep ruts, Raleigh holding the wheel tightly in both hands. “Ridiculous,” he muttered. “What do we get for our tax dollars?” Another car in front of them bumped into a parking place, and Raleigh turned in beside it. “Close up the hole!” the boy said, pointing his flag at the other car.
“There’s about three inches between us,” Raleigh said, rolling down the window. “If I parked closer, we wouldn’t be able to get out.” He put his window up again. “Idiot,” he said, under his breath. The boy had walked away and was waving his flag at the next car.
“Are we going to get the parlor set for Jocelyn? And keep it as her dowry?” Bettina asked Raleigh, but he was walking too far ahead of her to hear. Jocelyn slapped a mosquito that was either trying to or had succeeded in biting her ear. “Shit!” she said. “Language,” her aunt said. A young man and his blond girlfriend walked through the space between Jocelyn and Bettina, hurrying across the field toward the auction barn. They joined hands once they’d passed by, and the girl flipped her long blond hair over her shoulder. “Alex!” someone shouted. “Hey, Alex, you’ve got to come see our puppies!”
Alex hollered, “Hey—you don’t care that my mom’s moved to London? You think I care about your puppies? I’m one of those puppies now!”
“What?” the girl said. “Where did she go?”
“She rode off on a coach like Cinderella, only it was C & J. Next auction, we can clean out her room and make money! My dad would totally appreciate help in emptying the house!”
Jocelyn killed two more mosquitoes before they got to the barn, and Bettina gripped the thick handle of her big purse. Jocelyn had rummaged in the purse, but only when her aunt told her to; she wasn’t a creep like some kids who were always stealing money. She’d opened it to get Bettina a Kleenex when she was driving, to see if her lipstick was in there, to fish around for quarters for parking. The purse was nothing but a bag of disappointments. It was stupid to carry things like that. Only old people did it. To the side of the building was a concession stand, and Jocelyn thought, meanly, that if Bettina hadn’t made it clear to her that she shouldn’t spend money on things like overpriced Coke, she’d like one. Her mouth felt tingly; if she tried to throw up now, she’d probably be able to. A big man whose leg had been amputated above the knee rolled himself along, a bright yellow fingerless glove on one hand. The American flag dangled from a pole attached to the back. He wore one slip-on shoe and a black sock. You could see his stomach where his shirt was missing buttons. A little girl was tugging her mother’s hand. “Stop it!” her mother said, pulling her along. “You behave.”
“Hear that? That’s the warning women have gotten through the ages, isn’t it?”
Jocelyn didn’t answer. Inside, the space was divided into two sections with a low wood fence blocking off the area where the auction items were on display. You could tell from a distance that nothing was very special. The building smelled of hay and mildew. Metal chairs were set up in rows. Right now, it looked easy to get a seat near the front. A man came in with a cane, and another man tried to strike up a conversation. The first man kept poking the cane tip toward the closed-off area. Finally he walked away and left the other guy talking to himself, cigarette cupped in his hand. The amputee rolled himself in front of all the chairs and put on his brake. A ceiling fan blew the flag, but otherwise little air circulated in the barn. Why couldn’t they be at a movie? A vampire movie? The mother and child she’d seen earlier moved around the fence and looked but didn’t enter, as if standing behind a rope, waiting for a bouncer to wave them in. One night she’d gone with her friend back home, Rachel, to a disco, but they’d never made it in, and finally they’d gone to a diner and split a foot-long hot dog. Rachel had a bottle of scotch in the car, but of course they couldn’t bring that in. Wouldn’t it be great not to be carded and to be able to afford to eat and drink in a restaurant?
Inside, amid the clutter of tables and chairs and equipment and bolts of upholstery fabric, a lot of people were taking notes or laughing and talking to one another. At a card table near the back, a woman had you fill out a form attached to a clipboard. For a second, Jocelyn remembered her aunt’s flip-out at the eye doctor’s. At least there had been a medical reason for it. Her mother was just plain crazy. The woman handed out white cards with big numbers written on them with black Magic Marker when you returned the form. The girl Jocelyn had seen earlier—Alex?—was fanning her face with her card while her boyfriend rummaged through tool boxes. He was black-haired, with a tattoo of a rifle piercing a skull on his bulging bicep and sagging pants. He wore unlaced red high-tops. “You gonna bid on the King?” the woman sitting behind the card table asked the guy wearing a cowboy hat, who was standing in front of Alex and her boyfriend. “They all came out of the same house, which I heard belonged to the ex-husband of Lisa Marie Presley!” she said. “Her mother, Priscilla, got to be married to the King, and she ran off with the yoga instructor!”
“Well now, you slept with the King, yourself, in Las Vegas, didn’t you? Wasn’t that what you was telling me the other night, about all that hot sex?”
“Go on!” the woman said, laughing, handing him number 38. “One thing’s for sure, and you’re the living proof of it: we won’t see the likes of him again.”
“There it is! Look!” Bettina said. “Such beautiful green velvet. And notice the delicate carving on the wood. I believe it’s a real Eastlake parlor set. We should get it for you, Jocelyn.”
“I don’t want that shit,” Jocelyn said.
“Language,” her aunt said halfheartedly, walking off to get a number.
“I’ll bet you’re sorry we came,” Jocelyn said to Raleigh. “But hey: it’s a distraction, right? We can try to forget the Nick scumbag exists. And it’s what Bettina wanted to do.”
“That’s true,” he said. “It pleases Bettina. She grew up in Michigan, you know, with her grandfather and grandmother. Her grandmother taught her to love old furniture.”
Raleigh stuck out as not belonging in this crowd. She hoped she did, too. Bettina fit right in. She waved her number at Jocelyn and began to inspect the things close to where she’d gotten her bidding card. Jocelyn hung back, making sure to keep a distance between herself and her uncle. “Loving you, loving you!” the cowboy sang, gesturing toward a dozen or so Elvis lamps, hand over his heart as if he were saying the Pledge of Allegiance. The lamps had no shades. All of them—and there were a lot—were arranged on a long table. A few lampshades lay on the ground be
hind it. A small bird sat on top of one; it took off quickly toward the top of the barn when people approached. “Light switches work? Can we get some of those Dairy Queen swirled ice cream lookin’, energy-savin’ lightbulbs to come out of the King’s head like snakes do you think?” Cowboy asked.
“I’m going to sit down,” she said to Raleigh. He’d been watching the man who was infatuated with his own voice. He nodded. She took a chair five rows back from the podium, trying to ignore the man in the wheelchair, but the flag kept drawing her attention. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the beach, Cassiopeia, the stars, how really black the sky could be. Her one little thing with T. G., after which Zelda arrived and acted really pissed off about something. Who knew what. That they were sitting in the sand holding hands, just the two of them? Big deal. When she opened her eyes, the guy with the tattoos was pulling out a chair on the opposite side of the aisle, though the girl he’d been with never did join him. Jocelyn stared, more or less because she didn’t know where else to look. The image of the rifle that curved because of the way his muscle bulged was sort of riveting. BLT kept rising up on her toes, trying to wave her over. Jocelyn just wanted the auction to be over. In school, she wanted class to be over. On the beach, she wanted to be back in her room. In her room, she wanted to be in her house—her mother’s house. What was that going to be like, sharing space—sharing her mother—with the drug addict?
She slid back farther in the chair, her butt already numb from the metal. As she shifted her weight, she looked over her shoulder and saw her. Ms. Nementhal was several rows back, talking to a pretty woman. She saw her in profile, but Ms. Nementhal didn’t realize she’d been seen. She was busily conversing. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and, with the same hand, slid her arm around the woman’s shoulder. The woman looked at her with a little wry smile, her mouth lipsticked red. It was one of those mouths that seemed to have been delicately placed on someone’s face, like a flower tucked into a lapel. Jocelyn felt a jolt. A real jolt, like what it must feel like to be hit by lightning. That was an exaggeration. It was a tingle, and a simultaneous numbness—so that her butt wasn’t the only thing without feeling. She got it. She absolutely got it. But what were they doing at this stupid auction in the middle of nowhere? How could it be? What could she do to make sure Ms. Nementhal didn’t see her, since she was supposed to be writing her stupid fucking essay? Well, but wasn’t Ms. Nementhal supposed to be preparing for the next day’s class?
People seated around her immediately turned toward the fenced-off area as the lights suddenly dimmed and the Elvis lamps started flashing. Somehow, the bulbs were turning on and off in unison, the retarded cowboy singing another song and flipping a light switch, or using a remote, or whatever he held that made them flash. He was gyrating and singing “Jailhouse Rock.” It was a pretty good imitation. It really was. Her uncle stood there, clapping his hands above his head.
She patted the seat next to her when Bettina appeared at her side. It wasn’t likely, but maybe, maybe she could get out without Ms. Nementhal seeing her. Was she going to say anything about that to her aunt? No, she wasn’t. In a few minutes Raleigh came and sat next to them, stepping over their legs to get to the third seat. Bettina was chattering away, obsessed with her parlor set. “Is it like something you’ve seen before?” Jocelyn said, just to be polite and to have something to say. “What do you think I’ve been saying to you the last five minutes? Do you listen at all? It’s Victorian. It’s almost the exact duplicate of the one my grandparents had when I was much younger than you, if it had rose-colored velvet instead of green!”
The auctioneer took the stand, two younger men with their arms dangling at their sides, wearing overalls, flanking him. He greeted the man in the wheelchair by name, though Jocelyn couldn’t hear what he said. The yellow-gloved hand went into the air to make a gesture somewhere between hello and dismissal. After saying something to the auctioneer, the man started coughing. One of the auctioneer’s assistants looked at him nervously. The coughing went on for quite some time. Then the auctioneer introduced himself: “The auctioneer who needs no introduction! The warm-up act for Mr. Elvis Presley!” He started to speak into the microphone, a maddening, jammed-up sequence of words that crashed like bumper cars, after which everything sorted itself into some kind of sense again, and after the fact you could understand most of what he’d said. He held the microphone like a Popsicle that had started to melt. The words tumbled over each other, the sounds dipping and rising. He joked that people were there for “the head of Elvis,” but that he was going to offer sacrifices galore before they got to “the main body of the auction.” He stood behind a rickety podium. The men at his sides stared straight ahead over the crowd, shoulders back, feet a certain distance apart, hands clasped behind them like soldiers at ease. One of the things Jocelyn remembered about her father was that he’d shown her the positions soldiers took: attention, at ease. She’d liked to stand beside him and copy whatever he was doing. Now, she thought that was an unfortunate thing about men: they were always posturing when they were young, and if they went into the Army, they taught them not only postures but attitude. Like guys needed more attitude.
The assistants only cracked up once, when the auctioneer tried to pronounce a lot of words she finally realized must be Italian. They punched him in his arms and one went down on his knees and raised his arms to the barn roof, in some exaggerated, silent prayer. You could read his mind and understand basically what he was praying for. A lot of people laughed. “And who’s gonna bid, who starts the bid, who’ll give me fif-ty dollars?” he said, holding up an old doll whose hair was a mess, wearing only a top, no bottom. “And who says forty, over there: thirty-five? How can you be so pretty and be so mean? Do I hear thirty, what about twenty? She’s got to go to a good home, who’ll give me a quarter? Over there. And fifty cents? Thank you kindly. Seventy-five. Who’ll go a dollar? Try to buy yourself a hot dog now for only one dollar! If you’ve been to Fenway Park, you’ll know they cost five times that, am I right? Next year, mustard’s sure to be extra! We’re talking small potatoes here, folks, but don’t break my heart and make me think I’m sellin’ potato chips! I see a dollar. There and there, thank you, ma’am, and now we’re at one dollar twenty-five cents. Look at this lovely dolly. Looks to me like she might need a good home. Brush her hair and she’s good to go. One fifty. And one seventy-five. Going once, twice, one dollar and seventy-five cents? Number sixteen.”
Half an hour passed while he sold one piece of junk after another: Crock-Pots, vacuum cleaners, a mirror frame with broken glass held in place with duct tape, a pair of stilts, a board game said to have all the pieces. Things kept going for fifty cents or a dollar. The auctioneer held up what he said were “cast-iron elephant bookends. They say an elephant never forgets, ain’t that right, boys? Well, if it’s only half an elephant I guess it’s already forgotten half its body, but give me your finest bid. Who’s in at thirty dollars? Is that a bid? Twenty-five for these fine elephant fellows, or maybe it’s Mr. and Mrs. and eventually that might get you a third elephant. What will you bid? One dollar? And two! Two fifty! And three! Now we’re rollin’. Four dollars. Don’t quit on me now. Four it is, thank you kindly. And five. The lady with the pink sweater. Five dollars I’ve got, now six. Six? Going for five dollars? Number forty-nine!”
The lights dimmed and the Elvis busts flashed again, though this time some lit up while others stayed off, and for at least the third time, the guy in the cowboy hat did his Elvis impersonation, singing with the microphone almost in his mouth, wiggling his hips and unzipping his fly for a grand finale. You couldn’t see anything. Not even his underwear. Bettina was startled. She reached for Raleigh’s hand, and he took hers, but he was grinning and didn’t look at her. He didn’t want to miss anything.
The Elvis lamps, held up one by one beside the auctioneer as he took bids, did better than anything that preceded them. A man in a tweed jacket one row up rarely lowered his number. Eventually both
other bidders dropped away. He didn’t bid on a few of the lamps, but the rest of the time he held his card steady, every now and then jabbing it upward. Once he almost left his seat like a streamer following the ascent of a kite. On the beach, T. G. had flown a kite and she’d liked that he was really into it, he wasn’t trying to be cool. What happened, sometimes, that guys just stopped trying to impress you—or was even that a way of trying to impress? The man with the raised card won almost every lamp, and the auctioneer joked that “there’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!” “Las Vegas, Nevada!” some woman yelled, putting two fingers in her mouth and giving an earsplitting whistle. A child started to cry, and there was some shuffling of feet and concerned glances as its mother carried it outside. “So that does it for the King, the final curtain,” the auctioneer said. “Iddn that right, boys? Happens to the best of us. Who were those boys in their glitter suits that their lion turned on one of ’em and he never worked again? That great, great act under the big top. We all remember that. Can’t think you’ve made friends with a lion! And now we move on to the piece of resistance, as the Frenchies say. Some mighty fine courtin’ might go on if you get yourself this furniture set, comfy cozy as a La-Z-Boy, and my boys are here to prove it. Sit yourself in that chair you’re bringing up here, Donald, and tell us how comfy it feels. They don’t make ’em like that anymore. Wheels on the legs, in case conversation gets borin’ and you need to make a quick getaway! And who’ll start us off at five hun-dred dollars?”
Bettina was riveted. Jocelyn was biting her bottom lip. Good god, was her aunt going to bid on it? No one was bidding. The set was already down to two hundred dollars. Jocelyn looked at Raleigh, who was looking at Bettina. He was clutching her hand so she didn’t raise it. It was at one eighty. Bettina’s card flew into the air. “Thank you kindly, and who gives one-ninety? One ninety? One ninety-five! Thank you, sir. At one ninety-five. Going once . . . thank you sir, two hundred. And two ten, yes, ma’am, lovely furniture—you got yourself a sweetheart, you plunk down on any of these pieces and it’ll be a memorable evening . . . two twenty’s the bid I’m looking for. Hold that chair up, Donald. I’m at two ten. Who’ll make it two twenty? Real velvet upholstery. Going once, twice.” The gavel came down.
