Backstage Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  “Mary’s had nothing but trouble since college, and when I heard about it and then she showed up for the auditions, I just couldn’t hold on to the teenage bitchiness part of the memories anymore.” Tim parked and began unloading his bags as Jane came around to help. “Lost both her parents in the same year. Cancer. And she took care of them both. Her husband took off when it became clear that her parents’ illness was going to take what was left of the family money. Remember how we thought she was rich?” asked Tim.

  Not waiting for any confirmation from Jane, he went on. “She always acted like she knew it all and had it all, but it turns out that her dad lost a lot of people’s money—lots of bad investments—and before he could actually be blamed or maybe even prosecuted, he got sick. The wife had been ill for years. There wasn’t a lot of sympathy for the family but Mary held her head up through it all. I just sort of felt sorry for her.”

  “What does she do?” asked Jane.

  “Sells real estate, but nothing’s happening on that front around here these days. Lives in a tiny apartment over Roy’s Hardware. Now she’s working as a substitute teacher,” said Tim.

  “She works as a sub? Okay, now I’m sympathetic,” said Jane.

  Jane told Tim she wanted a rundown on everyone in the play, but it could wait until later. One job at a time, and this morning, she wanted to pay attention to the Kendells and the Kendell mansion.

  “The sooner we get everything laid out the better,” said Tim. “Margie called and she wants to come down in a day or two to see what we’ve got done. I warned her that she wouldn’t like what she saw once we really got going.”

  Jane understood. When they prepared a house for a sale, it wasn’t pretty. Similar to turning a garment inside out so that all the seams and stitching and mistakes showed, a house being prepared for a complete “everything goes”–type sale was turned inside out. Closet doors were opened and if there were too many clothing items, Tim would set up freestanding clothing racks and they would hang the clothes so that crowds could paw through and go over every inch of Grandma’s sheared beaver coat with a fine-tooth comb. Drawers were emptied or at the least, opened, and everything from slips to sweaters was available for rifling. Linen closets were emptied out onto the beds and the family monograms were scattered throughout so that customers could hold them up, count out the napkins, search for holes in the tablecloths, and ask for a better price if they found a tiny stain or two.

  Every shelf and chest and drawer would be ransacked. Jane and Tim would cull the best books from the library shelves and lightly pencil in prices based on Internet booksellers’ listings. The range was often so wide—an early edition of a Steinbeck novel might range from $2.99 to $299—that Tim usually priced the book somewhere in the middle with a little room to come down on the second day of the sale. If he penciled in $125 and the book guys started yelling, Tim would calmly unfold a printout from the Internet site that listed the price range.

  “But those aren’t the right prices,” the book guys would yell. “No one gets those prices, they just ask those prices!”

  Tim would then draw out a second sheet with book auctions that had already closed and he would point out the “sold for” prices, also noting that the shipping and tax might even add another $10 to that price. Tim would then smile and ask what the book guy wanted to pay, if not a fair price, then how much?

  The book guys would sputter and mutter and usually walk away. For every seller who did his homework, there were so many others who would simply mark all hardcovers for a dollar or two and even give better deals if someone bought a box. The longtime book guys, those in it forever, the ones who had been picking through shelves for decades, selling books out of the trunks of their cars and still hoping one day to find that elusive Jack London or Steinbeck with the printing mistake on page 68, those guys would walk away and head out to the next sale, the library cart with the donated books or the garage sales with the boxes of books laid out on the driveway. The book guys knew it was a tough market and if they didn’t buy their stuff for next to nothing, they were going to be stuck with a heavy and not so portable inventory. Jane didn’t blame them for the way they felt, she just hated dealing with them. Unlike any other picker or dealer, a book guy got mad when he saw a decent price on a book. Even if he knew somewhere in the back of his head it was a fair price, he knew it wasn’t a good price for him. A book guy took it personally, especially the book guys who were female. Jane had seen more than one woman with a canvas bag full of modern firsts slam down what she considered an overpriced vintage cookbook on a counter and storm out the door.

  And the book guys, as hard as they were to deal with, were nothing compared to the owners, the sellers, the heirs. When Margie walked through the house after Jane and Tim effectively turned it inside out and began hanging string tags on the valuables, taping signs to the walls for group pricing of linens or men’s ties, Jane and Tim both knew she would go through the owner’s four stages of dealing with their own estate sale—denial, embarrassment, anger, and greed. In other words:

  “No one is going to want to buy that.”

  “I wouldn’t want anyone to see that.”

  “Why wouldn’t someone want that?”

  “We should have charged more!”

  * * *

  When Jane and Tim had entered the house, both had stepped over the threshold carefully, Tim finding the light switch immediately, no fumbling. Both looked first at the chandelier, then to the console table under the hall mirror where Mr. Bumbles thankfully remained.

  “Even when he’s not hanging around, he creeps me out,” said Tim. “Do you want to take him up and start in the toy room?”

  “No way. I’m almost a PI, but I don’t carry anything that protects me from ventriloquists’ dummies,” said Jane. “Or clowns,” she added.

  “Okay, how about we stay together, emptying the bedroom closets. I’ve already got a good start in the master—we’ll finish and move on to the other four on the second floor. If we can get those laid out today, it’ll be a good day’s work. The downstairs will be more fun and the attic and basement of course, but those bedrooms will be fast and we can finish them. I could use a little closure.”

  Jane agreed. Bedrooms were usually easy enough that they could talk, and she could explain blocking and go over his rehearsal plan for the evening. They were almost through with what was probably Margie’s room when she lived at home—a mishmash of a teenager’s clothes from thirty years ago and a closet filled with vintage thirties and forties winter coats, a few furs, probably saved from various family members. The dressers were filled with more clothes; however, Jane was more interested in a few high school yearbooks she uncovered and a jewelry box that held several charm bracelets.

  “Probably not Margie’s. These charms are from an earlier generation. So sweet,” said Jane, unscrewing what appeared to be a tiny ivory egg and finding an even tinier carved ivory chick inside. “I’ll buy this,” said Jane.

  “No shopping yet,” said Tim. “It’s too early.”

  They had been working side by side in Margie’s enormous bedroom, leafing through books, shaking out clothes for more than two hours when Tim’s phone buzzed. He read the incoming text to Jane. “From Bryan. Penny’s leg in a cast below knee. Okay after plenty of phys therapy. Sorry you’ll have to recast me, too. Will have my hands full.”

  “You want to play the cousin? Penny’s part?” asked Tim.

  “Nope. I’m perfectly content in my offstage role, Timmy boy. How about asking Margie if she wants to go onstage in her grandpa’s play? It appears she’s had experience.”

  Jane was leafing through a school yearbook and had found a bookmark placed on the drama page. Margaret “Margie” Kendell had played major roles in two of the year’s offerings. Because it was an all-girls school, Margie had the distinction of playing the male lead, Beany, in Leave It to Beany, the fall play, and the slightly off-kilter dancer in You Can’t Take It with You. The bookmark was a th
eatrical program for Leave It to Beany. The school had sprung for pricey color printing and the programs included the student actors’ bios.

  Margie Kendell (Beany) comes from a theatrical family. “My grandpa is a playwright and he writes a show for us each Christmas. My brother and I played everything from Santa’s elves to Tiny Tim by the time we were twelve!”

  “The Margie Kendell I met is not going to want to hang around town to appear in Grandpa’s play,” said Tim.

  “You never can tell,” said Jane. “I’d like you to ask her.”

  “Janie, you know what a hassle that would be—her poking around here every day and then every night…”

  Tim was sitting on the bed folding table linens and pinning blank hang tags on them with the tiniest of gold safety pins. Jane placed the yearbook on his lap.

  “Just ask her and see what she says,” said Jane.

  Tim looked down at the yearbook. On one page there were snapshots of various acts in the school variety show. On the opposite page there was one large photo of a pretty blond girl sitting on a stool smiling at her partner. Under the photo, the caption read: Margie Kendell and her friend regaled the audience with songs, stories, and jokes!

  Jane leaned over Tim’s shoulder.

  “If you don’t want to cast Margie, maybe you can find a part for her friend,” said Jane, pointing to the familiar-looking wooden doll who sat on Margie’s knee. “I wouldn’t mind knowing where Mr. Bumbles is every night.”

  8

  Nellie wasn’t one to spend a long time in front of the mirror. As she had told Jane many times, she didn’t believe in makeup, special facial scrubs, creams, moisturizers, cleansing grains, Retin-A, wrinkle removers, line fillers, mud packs, clay masques, facials, steams, or herbal peels.

  “Soap and hot water’s all you need,” said Nellie. “And lipstick.”

  Lipstick. Nellie barely ran a comb though her gray-streaked waves and never bothered with anything that came with a wand or a brush, but, daily, before leaving the house for the EZ Way Inn, she did apply a soft red lipstick. Whenever she saw Jane, bare-faced and ready to leave for work with Tim, a house sale or basement clean-out, dressed in her grungiest work clothes, Nellie would shake her head and growl at her to “at least put on a little lipstick for God’s sake.”

  Nellie’s advice took, for the most part. Nellie noted that Jane did carry a tube of color with her and often remembered to apply it. If Nellie saw Jane wearing a little Angel Red or Earthy, she nodded. Jane might not even see the slight head movement, but Nellie never failed to give her signal of approval. If her son earned a living and her daughter wore a little lipstick, she had done her job.

  Because of Nellie’s spartan approach to primping, Don wasn’t used to seeing his wife stare at herself in the mirror. He knew she was studying her face this morning, because at the EZ Way Inn, the tiny bathrooms marked “Men” and “Women” were carved out of the barroom using the smallest space possible, allowing them to be used solely for what was to be their only use. A small hand-washing sink, paper towel dispenser, and wastebasket were positioned just outside the restrooms, in full view of patrons and proprietors. A mirror was mounted over the sink. Pity the kitchen help who tried to avoid washing hands before returning to work. On the other hand, if Nellie had ever consented to hiring anyone to assist her in her kitchen, pity the employee. Period.

  Because Nellie stared at herself and Don stared at Nellie staring, Francis the bread man stared at Don, wondering why he was chewing the inside of his cheek and not offering him more coffee or any news of the day. Baseball season was in full swing and surely Don had an opinion on this year’s White Sox and surely he would be interested in Francis’s opinion of the Cubs.

  The back door, the one that led directly into the kitchen and the one that all the regulars used, swung open, the screen banging against the frame, and Boxcar Neilson powered through the kitchen into the barroom. The jury was out on why Boxcar was called Boxcar. There were those who surmised it had something to do with the railroad, and there were those who figured that it had something to do with shape and heft. Jane had asked both her parents about why he was called Boxcar and Don had raised one eyebrow and shrugged. “Just his name,” he said, winking and tossing a smile to Nellie.

  Those were the kinds of secrets they shared, thought Don. How people got their nicknames, who they slipped a buck or two to make it until their next payday, who brought them the bags of prelottery gambling tickets they occasionally tucked under the bar for the regulars to unfold and dream over. So why now was Nellie staring into the mirror, looking very much like someone keeping a secret to herself?

  “Don!” shouted Boxcar. “Wake up. I need a shot.”

  “Yes sir, Box,” said Don, pouring out a measure of Walker’s DeLuxe and setting it down with a flourish.

  “Too early for that,” said Nellie, giving herself a final nod in the mirror, then stopping at the coffee counter outside the kitchen and pouring out a cup of sludge. She set it down in front of Boxcar. “Have this with it for God’s sake.”

  “Not going to believe who I saw late last night at the Moonlight Inn,” said Box, downing the shot and nodding at the coffee.

  Don raised his chin in the silent version of “no, who?” but Nellie just folded her arms and waited. In her experience, no one who wanted to gossip ever needed encouragement.

  “Henry Gand! I thought he’d moved to California, but he said he’s been coming back summers for a few years. Thinking about staying year-round. Said he needed winter back, made him feel too old to be out there in the sunshine all the time. Retired, and he’s fixing up his parents’ cabin out by the state park. Was a nice place—we used to raise some hell out there, remember Nell?”

  Boxcar was one of the few old friends who got away with calling Nellie Nell, since he never paid any attention to her paralyzing stare whenever he said it.

  “Don, you know Henry, don’t you? He and Nellie went around together for a while, didn’t you, Nell?”

  Francis leaned forward. This was much more interesting than going over the sixth inning of last night’s game.

  Nellie grunted and went into the kitchen. The three men heard her drag down her biggest kettle, banging it loudly against the other pans on the open shelf.

  “Nellie’s going to make soup,” said Francis. “Oh boy.”

  Since the Roper Stove Factory had closed, Nellie made a pot of soup only when the spirit moved her, and something, they all noticed, was moving her now.

  “Henry said you and him was going to do another play,” said Boxcar, directing his comment into the doorless opening to the kitchen. No one could see Nellie but they could hear her, opening and closing the large two-door institutional-sized refrigerator that used to be full of supplies when the lunch business was in full swing. Now it held only what Nellie considered essential—milk, cream, eggs, cottage cheese, and lots of vegetables kept in fresh rotation that could be cut up on a moment’s notice.

  “Is that so, Nellie? You going to be in that play?”

  They heard the swinging metal doors on the bin that held potatoes on top and onions on the bottom squeak open and slam shut.

  “Yup,” said Francis. “That florist shop guy, Tim, the one Janie runs around with, he brought Nellie chocolates and she said she’d be in his play.”

  Bang. Nellie’s large cutting board crashed down from its hook onto the counter, and in a moment of quiet, Don knew from the faint scratchy paper-folding sound that Nellie was peeling onions, easing off their brown parchment coverings before she began to chop.

  “That’s something, ain’t it, Don?” asked Boxcar, holding up his shot glass for another pour. “Nellie’s going to be up onstage again. And with old Henry, too. It’ll be like old times when they used to put on those stage shows at the park building over there on—”

  A heavy rasping sound came from the kitchen. Don knew Nellie was drawing her knife blade back and forth, angled against the sharpening stone.

  “
I didn’t know Nellie acted before,” said Francis.

  “There’s a hell of a lot you don’t know, Francis,” shouted Nellie. They could hear her chopping the onions, and then there was a tearing sound that Don thought might be the separating of stalks of celery. Had vegetables ever sounded so violent?

  “Here’s something else you don’t know,” said Nellie. “This play I’m going to be in? It’s about a murder. And the best part,” she continued, still out of sight, all the while chop-chop-chopping on the wooden board, “is that just when you think you know who did the murder…”

  Nellie stepped into the doorway, wiping her left hand on her apron. “Just when you get comfortable in your little velvet seats, someone else comes along and commits another murder!” As Nellie said the word murder, she threw her head back and cackled, whipping out her right hand from behind her back, brandishing her vegetable-chopping butcher knife.

  “Jeez, Nellie,” said Francis, spilling half of the coffee out of the cup that he had lifted halfway to his mouth. “You scared me.”

  Boxcar nodded at Don. “She’s still got it, ain’t she, Don?

  “Yup,” said Don. “She’s got something all right.”

  9

  Jane, still paging through yearbooks and scrapbooks chronicling Margie Kendell’s early years, heard music. Was it a harp? Tim had told her there was a harp in the Kendell house, but this strumming was coming from the outside pocket of her tote bag. She found her phone and tapped on the screen. Finding the right spot, more by accident than design, the music abruptly stopped, and she raised the phone to her ear, letting a startled “oh” escape as she composed herself to answer the call.

  “Yes?” said the caller.

  “Oh?” repeated Jane.

  “You knew it was me, Mrs. Wheel? The telephone Mr. Lowry bought for you is easier to understand?”