How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life

by Mameve Medwed

  “And it’s worth thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars to you to feel it in your bones?”

  I hold up my left hand. “Yes,” I testify. “It will banish all my guilt.”

  “Guilt for what? Taking what is yours? Lavinia gave it to you. She didn’t want it. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. In this case, ten-tenths. Don’t be a fool, Abby,” Mary Agnes says. She stops. Her tone is gentler, the kind of tone she must use with recalcitrant clients, the old, the muddled, the dumb, those suffering from Alzheimer’s, the people you’d talk down from the ledge of a roof. “Look, Abby, I realize I gave you short shrift during the deposition. I apologize—”

  I think of Clyde. I cut her off. “No matter.”

  “Yes, it does matter. I was distracted by another case, which is no excuse…”

  “I’m well aware my chamber pot is small potatoes.”

  “True enough. But let me remind you that Lavinia deserves nothing from you. All those red stickers she pasted over your mother’s belongings. If I brought an appraiser in to tally up the value of the load she carted away compared with yours, including the seventy-five thousand, I can guarantee you there would be an enormous disparity. I’m sure the antiques she took, she stole, are worth many hundreds of thousands. In fact, if you ever wanted to sue…”

  “Never. I’d never go through this again. Nothing is worth this agony.”

  “The truth is she stole from you.”

  “But she said her mother wanted her to have those things.”

  “She lied.”

  The words shock me; the short declarative sentence feels like the come-to-your-senses slap lovers in movies give women on the verge of hysteria. “But—but—” I stammer.

  “Look. You’ve got something worth forty thousand dollars. You own a chamber pot worth seventy-five. You have legal fees. Taxes on the sale of the King’s Arrow alone will add up to almost forty percent. Even with a friends-and-family reduction, my bill will be substantial. Lavinia doesn’t need the money. Ned doesn’t want it. What’s the issue here?” She pauses. “Except for your masochism.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  “You wait a minute. I’ve known you since freshman year, Abby. You’re too scrupulous.”

  Not too scrupulous to jump into bed with a man I had few feelings for, a situation my lawyer, for current purposes, really doesn’t need to know anything about. “I wouldn’t go so far as—”

  “I would. You’re a wimp. Remember when you passed up free tickets for that U-2 concert you were dying to attend because you’d made some tentative coffee study date with a nerd? Who in the end didn’t even show up? And remember that other time when you confessed to colluding in the trashing of the quad because you thought you might have dropped a candy wrapper on the just-seeded lawn? And it turned out that townies had practically bulldozed the grass?”

  “Enough. Enough. I was eighteen. Well, twenty at the most.”

  “You haven’t changed in—what?—thirteen years. As your lawyer, I advise strongly against this folly.”

  “As my lawyer, don’t you have to do what your client wants?”

  Mary Agnes huffs. I wonder if I’m the most challenging client she’s ever had. I wonder if she’ll start writing law articles about me. I wonder if my case will be assigned to first-year property law students in the lecture halls of Langdell.

  “I don’t believe my client knows what she wants. Take a few days to think this over and call me back.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  “Just consider it,” Mary Agnes orders. “Go over everything. It’s a no-brainer as far as I and anyone else on the planet is concerned.”

  “Two days,” I say, “and then you promise you’ll do what I want?”

  “Two days,” Mary Agnes warns.

  I sit back in my chair. I tuck my legs under my knees. Really, I think. Am I the last man (woman?) standing? Am I the single holdout in the jury room? Just like the Eureka! recognition of a treasure in a bunch of trash, a person can instinctively know the right thing to do in the middle of an imperfect and morally challenged universe. Wimp? Masochist? Is it so wrong to see both sides of the question? Unlike Lavinia, who was always so sure of her own point of view, who owned a monopoly on the truth. “I’m the boss of you,” Lavinia used to lord over me as a kid. “Do everything the way I want.”

  “Don’t act like such a bully,” I’d venture, cowering under her instructions of what to wear, what movie to see, what teacher to choose, what game to play, why I deserved to be it.

  “If you didn’t have me to tell you what to do, you wouldn’t be able to make up your mind,” she’d reply.

  Now I scroll through my career as Lavinia’s subnumerary. Our blood sisterhood, her best-friend betrayals, the unflattering dress she picked for me for her first wedding, her red stickers dotted like measles all over our mothers’ furniture. The way she threw my own clothes off my own chair. As if even those jeans and shirts weren’t mine. As if her singular (self-appointed) superiority granted her the prior claim.

  The phone rings. “And by the way. I forgot to tell you,” Mary Agnes begins with no preliminaries, “I heard from Ned. He faxed me an instrument of release and assignment—assignment to you—giving up his right to ownership. He apologized for his sister. Said she could be quite the bitch. Bitch,” she repeats. She pauses to let the word sink in. “Got to go. Just want you to stir that into the making-the-sensible-decision pot. The only decision. Two days.” And before I can answer, she hangs up.

  I look around my apartment. At the clothes still strewn on the chairs, dishes stacked in the sink, the clutter of antiques and junk, everything I ever owned waiting to be sorted into piles of to stay or to go. I remember when Lavinia and I cleaned out our mothers’ apartment. How reluctant I was to remove all trace of my mother, to strip the apartment to its bare walls, its bare floor. And how eagerly Lavinia went to work to dismantle it. Let’s face it, you are a bit scattered, Abby. If it were up to you, we’d never get this done, she’d sneered. But people exist in their objects; they inhabit the walls of their rooms. Old things bear traces of lives lived; possessions provoke cherished memories. That was Grandpa’s watch, a son might say. I remember when he wore it, the way it dangled just so from that chain. I picture my mother holding the chamber pot, admiring the drawing of Flush, treasuring the history contained in its discolored porcelain. I see her hands setting out pâté and cornichons on the very plates I now keep on my shelf. You haven’t changed in—what?—thirteen years, Mary Agnes said to me.

  I stand up. I straighten the legs of my jeans. It’s about time. I’ll start with the chamber pot that Lavinia didn’t want, the chamber pot that is lawfully mine. The more I tell myself this, the more I believe it. Maybe I’ll be a convert to the healing power of the mantra yet. It’s mine. It’s mine, I chant. After all, was withholding the Globe information a federal crime? Especially since I would have told the truth if Jim Snodgrass had asked. Especially compared to Lavinia. Lavinia had lied. She has always lied. How could I have been so dumb? How could I have thought to throw my King’s Arrow earnings away? How could I have been such a wimp? Such a masochist? I stop. No more. Former wimp. Ex-masochist. I don’t need any Lourdes water to declare I’ve been cured.

  I grab the vacuum. The broom. The mop and the pail. For two hours I clean. I fill four plastic garbage bags with ragged college clothes and threadbare sweaters. I plump pillows. Put away dishes. Sponge down counters. Change the sheets. Organize my files and my jewelry trays. I wash the windows with ammonia: I polish them till the glass shines like fine Waterford. I stick things in boxes to take to my booth, other cartons I designate for Goodwill. To go. To stay. I wish you could sort people that easily; I wish you could decide who’s to go, who’s to stay, that fast.

  When the apartment looks like new, the new me calls Mary Agnes at home. “I’ve decided you’re right.” I announce in my firmest, most decisive voice.

  “Hip hip hooray! Justice prevails!” she sho
uts. “Sis boom bah,” she adds, a relic from her South Boston cheerleading days. “But don’t squander all your money until you get my bill…”

  “I’m hardly a spendthrift, Mary Agnes.”

  “Just kidding, Abby! I am so proud of you. You’ve got a spine. You’ve stood up for yourself! You’ve taken charge of your life!”

  “Yeah, one small step for man…”

  “Go, Abby, go!” She pauses. “Though I must confess I had my doubts you’d come around.”

  “You give a pretty convincing argument.”

  “I didn’t even enumerate all the harsh words Ned had for his sister. I was afraid of overloading the dice in case you’d balk.”

  “Did he have any words for me?” I ask. Regretting the question as soon as it leaves my mouth.

  Mary Agnes’s voice softens. “Abby, are you still in love with Ned?”

  “Of course not,” I protest. “No way. Impossible.”

  “Methinks you protest too much,” she suggests.

  I remain silent.

  “Remember in college when I broke up with Andrew Peabody?” she asks now.

  I remember he dumped her for Nancy Murphy, but I am the last person to dispute the facts when it comes to matters of the heart. “Yes…?”

  “You brought me tea and toast. You gave me very good advice.”

  “I did? What did I say? I’m really curious.”

  “You said ‘Let him go.’” I hear her turn on a faucet. I hear dishes clatter and clank. “Abby, when I called Ned’s apartment, a woman answered the phone. He’s living with someone.”

  “I know that,” I declare. “I am fully cognizant of the significant other in his life,” I add, in my protesting-too-much, extra-emphatic, legal-speak, and Latinate mode.

  “Let him go,” she advises.

  “Believe me, Mary Agnes, I already have.”

  Fifteen

  Those who say time heals are right. I’m the perfect example. Now two months after the deposition, après le déluge, as I like to call it, I’m doing okay. Better than you would have thought. Last week I had my Abigail Randolph Independence Day celebration at Objects of Desire. A cocktail party after closing time. I invited everybody, all the dealers, janitorial staff, movers, refinishers, even the accountant who makes sure proper Massachusetts taxes are charged to those without a registration number. I brought in wine and beer, passed around cheese and crackers, wasabi peas, stuffed grape leaves, and roasted almonds in my old bowls and platters. Thanks to the sale of the King’s Arrow, I’ve added some gorgeous serving pieces to my stock. I borrowed a tape deck and blasted Cole Porter. People danced in the narrow aisles to “Anything Goes,” winding in and out between the armoires and recamier chaises, pier tables, garden urns, jewelry cases, old toys, Coalport pottery. It’s amazing how former wallflowers can evolve into orchid centerpieces. “To you, Abby,” the Currier & Ives print swindler toasted from behind his raised glass. “To Abby,” seconded my guests. “What are we celebrating?” the lady who sells gently used linens asked.

  “Abby’s fine eye,” declared Gus. “Two outstanding coups. That already brought her big bucks.” What he didn’t add was that he was responsible for both of those coups—the chamber pot and the King’s Arrow. Without his own fine eye and network of consultants, both treasures would still be gathering dust, neglected, unnoticed beneath a pile of old quilts or a bouquet of faux greenery. What I didn’t point out, eager for self-promotion and loath to steal Gus’s thunder, was that after the party and the antiques replenishing, I netted very little from those big bucks. Especially when you consider the scope of my own personal national deficit as a result of Mary Agnes’s bill and the big bite our government took out of the King’s Arrow sale.

  By the end of the party, people were in high spirits, even those who suffered some minor breakage to their inventory due to the excessively vigorous bunny hop. I must say I created a lot of goodwill. People now come into my booth to consult me about their old tools, their bits of Italian porcelain. “Will you take a look at this?” a daguerreotype collector asks. “What price should I charge?” wonders a spatterware specialist. I’ve been asked to contribute a few paragraphs about chamber pots to a scholarly volume on water closets and early out house design. After work, I often join a group of fellow dealers for drinks. We’re planning field trips to auctions and flea markets and garage sales. At last I can boast of a community that has nothing to do with my ancestry, neighborhood, well-connected parents, or where I went to school. I’m receiving invitations to showers, to bar mitzvahs, to potlucks. My colleagues, I marvel. My colleagues, I gloat.

  Colleagues who want to fix me up. There’s always the cousin, the client, the friend of a friend who’d be perfect for me. “No way,” I insist. “I’m lying low. Hibernating. I’m allergic to blind dates. Absolutely not. No!”

  Saying no to Gus, however, is another story. I owe him too much. One case of vintage champagne, even Brut, can hardly begin to compensate.

  “Just try it, Abby,” he pleads. We’re lounging in his booth sharing a pot of coffee and the crossword puzzle. He points at his mug. “A simple cup of joe. How hard is that?” He flips back the newspaper. “What’s your sign?”

  “Sagittarius.”

  He adjusts his reading glasses. He clears his throat. “Be open to new relationships. Make a coffee date with a new man.”

  I lunge for the paper. “Let me see that,” I insist.

  He pulls it away. He turns back to the crossword. “What’s a four-letter word for stubborn, unreasonable?”

  For days Gus had been dangling in front of me the third cousin once removed who’s just arrived in Cambridge from the Midwest.

  “I hate Midwesterners,” I say, free to unfurl my prejudices and run them up the flagpole now that I inhabit a zip code other than 02138, a zip code that tolerates a little political incorrectness from time to time.

  “He’s originally from Montreal.”

  “I don’t speak French.”

  “Neither does he.”

  “What Canadian doesn’t speak French?”

  “He’s the spitting image of Brad Pitt,” he offers.

  “I hate pretty men.”

  He flings down the paper. He throws up his hands. “Can’t I just give him your number? As a favor to me? At least to get my sister off my back?”

  Can I deny the friend who gave me colleagues, legitimacy, the tools to banish old ghosts and develop self-esteem? “All right. But, for the record, I categorically refuse to marry him.”

  Gus works fast. No doubt out of fear that I’ll change my mind and his sister will stop sending him those smelly packages of Oka cheese and Québécois pork pies. No sooner am I inside my front door, even before I have put down my keys and my Styrofoam-boxed pad Thai, than the phone rings.

  “This is Emile Lambert.” He pronounces it lam-bear. “Am I talking to Abby?”

  I strain to hear his voice over a background of steady thumping and chanting. I picture tom-toms around the campfire in old westerns, Indian chiefs in beaded moccasins and feathered headdresses whooping out war cries. “Can you speak up?” I ask.

  “That’s the problem,” he shouts. “I live across the street from the Center for Expressive Therapies. They’ve taken over the parking lot all hours of the day and night, banging bongos, running around, screaming out their mantras.”

  “Call the police.”

  “I did. They just shrug. Say the center’s good for the neighborhood. Provides the uniforms for the police softball team. Brings in commerce. As if those carrot juice drinkers, those sprout eaters would ever spend a buck at a proper bar.” The thumping gets louder. The voices are yelling now. The words sound like This land is your land, though I have my doubts. “Can’t you shut the windows?” I suggest.

  “If only. I sweat something awful. After ten minutes, I stink like you’d never believe.”

  What can I say? Thanks for sharing? I step back as if a sample whiff is about to be spritzed over the line.
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  “But I’ll shut them while I talk to you,” he concedes, his voice that of a martyr on the verge of one too many self-sacrifices. I hear footsteps; I hear the window slam. “There.” He sighs. He gets right to the point. “So, do you have a decent apartment? Quiet? With good light?”

  I think of Clyde, how fast he left his room at the Y for my decent apartment with good light. Not to mention a wall to hang a bed warmer on. Not to mention the bed that abutted that wall. At least Clyde was a man who didn’t stink. In the physical sense, let me qualify. “My apartment’s okay,” I allow.

  “I’ve leased a studio for the time being. Week to week. But I’m looking for a better place to live.” He chuckles. A stage laugh. “Do you have an extra room you want to rent?”

  “My place is pretty small.”

  “Not as small as mine.” He pauses. “We should get together.”

  I take a diversionary tack. When in doubt, ask them about themselves. “What do you do?”

  “I’m selling ties at Macy’s for the moment. Day job. In truth I’m a writer. I came here to work on my novel.”

  Red flags flare. But I’ve been brought up to be polite. “What’s it about?”

  “Thanks for asking. Between you and me and the bedpost, it’s dynamite. Encompassing, as it does, all the themes of love, sex, betrayal, along with a gothic element.” He hesitates. He hems. He haws. “Just want to make sure you’re not a writer, too. I wouldn’t want anyone to steal my idea. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  “Rest assured.”

  He lowers his voice—maybe he’s afraid the expressive therapists will tap out his plot in code to the rest of their tribe—and hisses into the phone. “It’s about this empathic vampire born centuries ago who moves to Cambridge and then…” He stops. “Whew, I’m perspiring something terrible. Can we meet for coffee? My treat. And I’ll tell you all about it?”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m off men.”

  He laughs. I hear more footsteps; then the loud thumping and chanting resume. My land. My land. “I get it,” he shouts over the din. “I want you to know that though I’m a registered Republican, I keep an open mind. To me it’s a person’s private matter what they do with their sexuality.”