Vintage (11 page)

April wondered why the university-professor husband couldn’t take the kid to the doctor once in a while but didn’t say anything. Insulting customers by judging their spouses was probably not good for business. “So are you looking to sell these?”

“Uh-huh. I’d been saving them for my kids to play dress-up with someday. My three sons don’t seem to be interested, though. At this point, the stuff is just taking up precious space in my closet.”

“It will probably take me a while to look through everything. It’s my first time in the shop without my boss here. Do you want me to give you a call and you can come back when I’m done?”

“Oh, I’ll just stay and browse. My husband’s got the kids for once, and I want to stretch this time out as long as I can. If I go home, someone will need a ride somewhere, or need me to make a sandwich or wash a baseball jersey. I’d rather just stay here while I’m free.”

“I’ll need to check your ID,” April said. “We need to see ID for anyone who sells items to the store—I know that much.”

The woman dug around in her canvas tote bag and produced an overstuffed vinyl wallet. She removed her license and set it down with an exaggerated sigh. “I hate that picture. I wish I could have a hair and makeup crew now, like I did for all those shows.”

April looked from the picture to the woman and back again, and read the name: Lane Lawton. She copied down Lane’s name, driver’s license number, and birth date. The photograph, despite the too-bright lighting, showed a woman with a confident, commanding smile. In the smile, April could see a hint of the dramatic diva that didn’t come across in the role of frazzled mom that Lane seemed to be playing right now.

April handed back the driver’s license. “Thank you. If you just want to take a look around, I’ll call you over when I’m done going through everything.”

Lane walked to the back of the shop to study the purses and shoes. April put her hands on her growing stomach and tried to calm the anxiety fluttering around inside her. Or maybe it was the baby she felt. Either way, April wondered what motherhood would do to her, if it could make a New York actress leave the stage to make sandwiches and drive carpools.

Except that April didn’t drive. She was embarrassed that her fear had gotten in the way of her doing her job duties that morning. She knew she’d have to get back behind the wheel eventually, probably before the baby was born. But every time she sat inside her mother’s Toyota parked in the garage—the car her mom
didn’t
crash—her hands shook and she couldn’t breathe.

She looked down at Lane’s heap of costumes. It spanned many places and times. There was a denim dress with a cowgirl vibe and a blue ball gown with petticoats, reminiscent of the Civil War. April wondered again how Lane could have given up acting. What a gift, to be able to morph into someone else, even if only for a couple of hours under hot lights.

April realized that Violet hadn’t really told her much about pricing. She looked for Violet’s leather-bound inventory book to try to get an idea of how much she should pay Lane for her items. She spotted it on the counter, serving as a coaster for a red Moroccan tea glass half-filled with water. April set the glass aside and leafed through the inventory entries until she felt she had an idea of how to pay for the costumes.

“Lane?” she said.

The woman looked up. “Yes?”

“I’m done going through your things, so I’m ready if you are. Sorry it took me so long. I’ve only been working here a couple of weeks.”

“It’s okay. Trust me. This is most peaceful half hour I’ve had in a long time. I’ve gotta come in here more often.” Lane smiled. “Oh, and I found these.” She dangled a pair of red d’Orsay pumps from her hand.

“Those are great,” said April. “Violet—my boss—said they came from a professor at the law school who has a closet full of black suits and hundreds of pairs of wild shoes. You’re lucky you’re her shoe size. If you come back in a few weeks, we’ll probably have more. I guess the lady goes through her collection at the end of every school year and brings in the ones she doesn’t want anymore.”

“I’m not sure where I’ll wear them,” Lane said. “Preschool field trips to the farm aren’t exactly conducive to heels—but I’ll
make
an occasion for them if I have to.”

Lane agreed to take store credit instead of cash for her costumes. She used some of the credit to purchase the shoes and said she’d be back soon to spend the rest. “I have plenty more costumes at home,” she said. “So feel free to call me if there’s anything specific you need.”

Lane wrote down her contact information, then headed out the door swinging an orange paper shopping bag with
HOURGLASS VINTAGE
printed on the side.

April was proud of herself for successfully handling her first solo transaction and couldn’t wait for Violet to return so she could tell her all about it.

When Violet got back from her errand, though, she looked critically at the bundle of costumes on the counter. “What’s with all these?”

“Some lady who used to be an actress brought in a bunch of her old costumes. Look at this one.” April held up a shiny red leotard that looked like it could have been a circus outfit. She touched the sparkly band around the neckline.

Violet sorted through the pile of garments, furrowing her forehead. “Wait, are they
all
costumes? We don’t carry costumes.”

“Oh,” said April, feeling like an idiot. “Well . . . maybe you should, or at least have a supply you can haul out around Halloween. As a way to bring in people who wouldn’t otherwise shop at a secondhand store.”

Violet looked skeptical. “It’s an interesting idea, but I’m just not sure how my customers would feel about seeing something that they actually wore to an important event, like a wedding or a prom, on the costume rack.”

“I’m sorry. I guess I should have waited for you to come back before buying the stuff,” April said.

“In the future, you can always call me if you have a question and I’m not here.” She surveyed the costumes and sighed. “I guess I’ll hang on to these until Halloween, like you said, and see if we can sell them then.”

April felt like she’d had a shot at proving herself to Violet and blown it. She needed to redeem herself.

“You know,” she said, “when I was looking through the inventory book, it was really hard for me to find the information I needed. If you’re okay with it, maybe I could try to figure out a better way to organize everything. If we get all your records computerized like we talked about, they would be searchable. Seriously, I don’t mind doing that sort of thing.”

Violet threw up her hands. “Okay, okay, you little data wizard. Have at it.”

That night, April sat at her mom’s old secretary desk, paging through the ledger and file folders she’d hauled home with her from the boutique. The deeper she waded into Violet’s documentation, the more convinced she felt that she could come up with a better system of storing and sorting all the numbers and records.

She heard a dinging sound and, by reflex, opened up her e-mail on her laptop screen. A new message from Charlie sat in her inbox, with the subject
In Boston for orientation
. April felt a little kick somewhere deep inside her and looked down at her belly. “E-mail from your dad,” she said
.
Sadness clutched her chest, and she deleted the e-mail without reading it.

During the weeks following April and Charlie’s engagement, Judy Cabot had refused to speak with or see April. By default, this meant that Trip hadn’t uttered a word to April, either. Charlie had served as intermediary, pleading for his parents to accept his fiancée and the baby they would soon have.

Then, one Saturday, April had gotten a call from Judy, asking her to come over without Charlie. As soon as April arrived at the Cabots’ home, Judy had pressed an Emily Post wedding handbook into her hands and led April into the living room, where an overeager brunette in a sweater set stood with a white binder under her arm.

“April, meet Lila,” Judy had said. “She’s the best wedding planner in Madison.”

“Um, hi.” April had given Judy a questioning look.

Judy’s eyes had met April’s. “Not a thing about this . . .
situation
”—she glanced at April’s still-small but expanding waistline—“is how I would have chosen it. The wedding, at least, will be done my way.”

April still couldn’t decide what had been worse—the silent treatment she’d received at first, or being forced to sit for hours while Judy and Lila debated different variations of monogram fonts and boutonnieres. None of it mattered now that the wedding was off.

Even though she and Charlie were no longer together, April still hated the idea of his moving out east in August. She had at least hoped he’d be able to see their baby on a regular basis. But Charlie had only gotten into one medical school out of the fifteen to which he’d applied. He’d been wait-listed at his first choice, the University of Wisconsin, and from what the admissions office told him, his name was pretty far down the list.

She tried to focus on entering data into her computer from the receipts and sales records from the shop. Unlike April’s past, numbers usually made sense. Today, though, connecting all the pieces proved to be frustrating because her mind kept wandering to Charlie and everything that had happened.

She’d be lying if she wrote him back to say she didn’t want to see him. She did. She didn’t know if it was because she still loved him or if it was pregnancy hormones, but she craved his smile, his warm body curled around hers, the implicit understanding of each other they used to have.

Three months earlier

“Hey, wake up. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

April heard Charlie’s voice, as if from far away. She felt his arms encircling her, his lips kissing her forehead, her temples.

She opened her eyes, and he wiped her wet cheeks with the corner of his bedsheet. Outside his apartment window, the February wind stirred the bare trees, casting spindly shadows on the wall.

“You were crying in your sleep again,” he said.

Charlie held her tighter as the realization set in, as it always did, that her mom was still gone. April longed for the day when she would no longer wake in the middle of the night, wondering whether her mom’s accident had been a bad dream. For the day when she could smile without feeling like something under the surface of her skin might break.

April leaned into him, facing him, so that her arms, her stomach, her legs aligned and intertwined with his. At moments like this, the only thing more visceral, more palpable than her grief was her overwhelming desire for Charlie, and his for her. All around was darkness, all around was death. But here, under the folds of his comforter, under the weight of his body—and between them in her growing belly—was life.

INVENTORY ITEM
: hat

APPROXIMATE DATE
: 1949

CONDITION
: excellent

ITEM DESCRIPTION
: Bell-shaped hat made from lime-green felt and decorated with a black grosgrain ribbon and peacock feather.

SOURCE
: Lucille Rollins. Not for sale.

Violet

“
EXCUSE ME, DO YOU
have a men’s section?” asked a male voice.

Violet looked up from folding a red Pendleton sweater. A man in a flannel shirt stood just inside the front door of the shop. He looked a little bit familiar, but she couldn’t figure out why. She decided it must have been the brown eyes, broad shoulders, and solid build—he had that lifelong Midwesterner look about him.

“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I used to carry a few men’s clothes, but they didn’t sell well enough for me to justify keeping up with it, so I stopped. Is there anything specific you’re looking for? Maybe I can point you in the direction of a shop that might have it.”

“I need a hat,” he said. “It’s the last week of school. I promised my students that if no one out of my seven sections failed the final exam, I’d wear a ridiculous hat on the last day of classes. They kept up their end of the bargain, so I’ve got to keep mine.”

“What do you teach?” Violet asked.

“Biology and earth science,” he said. “Freshmen and sophomores.”

“Well, some of our hats could probably pass as unisex. Or, if you wanted to look really ridiculous, you could get one of our ladies’ hats. Come on, I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

Violet led him to a display in a corner of the shop, where vintage hats in felt, silk, straw, and velvet were arranged on a circular stand.

“Nice rack,” Sam said, then clapped a hand over his mouth. “I can’t believe I said that out loud. Sometimes I don’t have any filter.”

Violet laughed. “I’m guilty of that, too. And anyway, I’m willing to admit it’s a nice rack.”

It wasn’t often that Violet got men into the shop, let alone good-looking ones. He was handsome, but not in a showy way. He had a short beard that looked like it wasn’t so much a conscious choice but just the result of a few skipped days of shaving.

He tried on a gray wool fedora with a feather on the brim. “What do you think?”

“I think it looks great. I can get a mirror if you’d like to see for yourself,” she said.

“Thanks. Hey, I’m Sam Lewis.” The man extended his hand and smiled. Little lines crinkled around his eyes.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Violet Turner.” She shook his right hand and noticed the lack of a wedding ring on his left.

“I knew it,” Sam said.

“What?”

“You’re from Bent Creek, right? We went to high school together. You were a year behind me.”

“I thought I knew you from somewhere,” Violet said. She picked up a silver-plated hand mirror from a table and gave it to Sam.

He looked at his reflection and cocked the fedora to one side. “Hmmm. I think the kids will be disappointed if I wear something this normal looking.”

“It’s very nineteen fifties Wall Street,” Violet said.

Sam put the hat back on its stand and placed a red beret on top of his head. “It’s okay if you don’t remember me from school.”

“Maybe I would remember you if you’d worn that beret,” Violet joked.