Vintage (12 page)

“I just remember you because—well, you dated Jed Cline, right?” Sam asked. “He was in my class.”

Violet hated that, even now, that single fact still defined her in some people’s minds.

“I married him, too,” she said.

“When did you guys move here?”

“Oh, we’re not still married. I moved here on my own a few years ago to open this shop and finish a degree I’d started in fashion merchandising at the community college up there.”

“You did both of those things at the same time? I’m impressed.”

“I’d been planning for years to open a store, so I already had a lot of the details worked out. I’d also accumulated way more vintage stuff than I could justify owning if I
didn’t
open up a shop. I thought about doing it in Bent Creek, but there just aren’t enough people there to support a high-end boutique. Plus, I was too busy taking care of Jed. He needed me, and for a long time being needed seemed like the most important thing in the world.”

“Yeah, I’d heard that he had a drinking problem. But you just never know what’s true and what isn’t with small-town gossip.” Sam took off the beret.

“That’s for sure.” Violet didn’t even want to think about what gossip must have circulated in the wake of her divorce. Small towns had selective memories, and despite the fact that Jed could be cruel and controlling, especially when he drank, he had also stayed put. There were those people who stayed in Bent Creek and those who didn’t. Violet knew that the simple act of leaving had, in many people’s minds, made her suspect. Even her parents were wary of her decision. They knew Jed and Violet had their problems, but they didn’t see why she had to move away. They didn’t understand, as Grandma Lou had, that Violet couldn’t change her life if all of the people in it saw her a certain way.

“Roots are important, honey,” Grandma Lou had said when Violet told her she was contemplating leaving. “But sometimes a flower outgrows its pot.”

Sam grabbed a light blue pillbox hat and placed it on top of his head. He arranged the birdcage veil in front of his face and batted his eyelashes. “What do you think?” he asked.

Violet laughed. “If you’re looking for ridiculous, you’ve found it.”

Sam picked up the silver-plated hand mirror from the counter and inspected his reflection. “This will be perfect. My students will get a kick out of it.”

“They’re lucky they’ve got a teacher willing to make a fool out of himself for the sake of their education.”

“Hey, whatever works.” Sam took off the hat and ran a hand through his thick brown hair, speckled with gray. Violet wondered why she had never paid attention to him in high school, and then remembered that she had had tunnel vision at the time, focused only on Jed.

Sam looked around the store. “I’m not very into fashion or design or whatever, but it’s a pretty cool store you’ve got. Is it just you who works here?”

“I have an intern, but she’s at an appointment,” Violet said. “So I’ve told you how
I
ended up here. What brought you to Madison?”

“I went to college here. And, like a lot of people, I fell in love with the place and never left. When I bike to work, I see a guy with a two-foot-tall Mohawk pushing his dachshund in a stroller along the bike path. There’s a stilt-walkers’ group that meets up at a bar in my neighborhood every Monday night. Where else can I get that kind of entertainment?”

“The circus?”

Sam smiled. “Anyway, even though I love it here, it’s good running into someone from back home.”

Violet returned his smile, wondering why she hadn’t noticed in high school how cute he was.

“Listen, I’ve got to get back to work,” Sam said. “I’m on my lunch break.”

“Of course,” Violet said, disappointed. “Here, let me ring that up for you.” She took the hat from Sam and brought it over to the register.

He handed her a credit card. “I’d love to finish catching up sometime.”

“That sounds great.” Violet swiped the card and printed a receipt. She placed the blue hat in a shopping bag and gave it to him. Their hands brushed and she noticed goose bumps spring up on her arms, which were bare in her sleeveless dress.

“Thanks,” Sam said. “Nice tattoo.”

Violet blushed, hoping that he didn’t notice the goose bumps. Or maybe she hoped he did.

“If you give me your number I can plug it into my phone,” he said.

Violet opened a drawer and rummaged through a shoe box full of old black and white photographs. They were pictures she’d collected from thrift stores and garage sales, all of people she didn’t know. There were babies in lace bonnets and soldiers in uniform, women on horseback and kids at the fair. Violet didn’t know why she bought them, other than to save just a moment of these people’s stories.

She searched through the box until she found what she was looking for—a picture of a woman in a birdcage veil similar to the one on the hat Sam had bought. She flipped the yellowed photograph over and scribbled her phone number on the back side.

Sam laughed when he saw the picture. “I have to say I’ve never had anyone give me a phone number this way before.”

Violet grinned. “I like to do things my own way.”

“Hey, how come you didn’t let me try on
that
hat?” Sam pointed to the tangerine-colored wall behind the register counter. Beneath the hammered metal letters that spelled out “Hourglass Vintage” hung a green felt hat decorated with a peacock feather.

“Because that one is special,” Violet said.

A year earlier

After the funeral, while her relatives mingled over coffee and cookies in the kitchen, Violet snuck down the pile-carpeted hallway to Grandma Lou’s bedroom. She went into the walk-in closet and sat down on the floor, between the racks of clothes, and breathed in the scent of cigarettes and White Shoulders perfume. Her grandmother’s scent.

She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there when she heard her mother’s voice. “Violet, where are you?”

“I’m in here,” Violet called out.

Celeste Turner appeared at the doorway to the closet and put a hand on her hip. Violet thought that her mom, with her pleated black pants and shapeless sweater, seemed out of place in Grandma Lou’s closet full of sequins and silk. Celeste dressed for function. She didn’t share her mother’s affinity for fashion. It seemed to have skipped a generation and showed up in Violet instead.

“What are you doing in here?” Celeste asked.

Violet ran a hand over the surface of a lacquered black jewelry box. “Saying good-bye.”

Celeste’s eyes teared up. “I know. I miss her, too.”

It had been six weeks since Grandma Lou had been admitted to the hospital after a stroke that put her into a coma. Violet’s mother had had to make the difficult decision, based on her mother’s advance-directive papers, to take her off life support.

Violet stepped into a pair of her grandmother’s patent heels. “What are you going to do with all of her things?”

“I’m not sure.” Her mother sighed. “I suppose we’ll just give them to Goodwill, like we’re doing with everything else. If your aunts and uncles were planning to stick around for a few days to help, I’d say they could pick out whatever furniture or keepsakes they want. But they’re all headed back out of town tomorrow. And anyway, they all said they have enough junk already and don’t have room for more.”

“It’s not junk,” Violet said. She touched the hem of a black velvet cape lined with satin—an “opera cloak,” Grandma Lou had called it. Never mind the fact that Bent Creek didn’t even have a movie theater, let alone an opera house. It was a beautiful garment.

Her mother’s expression softened. “You’re right. I’m just overwhelmed about getting the house on the market.”

Violet wished there were something she could do to make her mom less stressed, less weary. She pressed her cheek to the fox-fur collar of one of her grandmother’s wool coats. “Can I have some of this stuff, if no one else is gonna take it?”

“Sure,” her mother said. “I suppose you could sell it in your store. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”

“I’m not going to
sell it,
Mom. Geez. I just want some things of hers, to remember her.”

Her mother shrugged. “Well, I’m just saying. It would all just get donated anyway, so no one would mind if you did decide to sell it.”

Violet shook her head, annoyed at the suggestion.

“Anyway, I came back here because everyone’s asking questions about you,” Celeste said. “And I don’t know the answers.”

Violet realized that was her own fault. Since she left Jed, she’d spent as little time in Bent Creek as possible, and her parents had yet to make the two-hundred-and-fifty-mile trip to Madison to visit her. Her mother didn’t like to drive on the interstate, and living in a county crisscrossed by deserted two-lane roads, she’d never really had to conquer her fear. Violet’s father, who operated a farm supply store, couldn’t visit Madison for the same reason Violet couldn’t often visit Bent Creek—he didn’t want to leave his shop in anyone else’s hands.

“Okay,” Violet told her mother. “Just give me a couple more minutes.”

After her mother left the room, Violet reached for a striped hatbox on the shelf. If she was going to go out there and answer a dozen questions about what had happened to her marriage and whether she was seeing “anyone special” in Madison, she would need help from her grandmother—a little piece of Grandma Lou’s strength and style.

She opened the hatbox and, inside, found a lime-green cloche decorated with grosgrain ribbon and an iridescent peacock feather. She took the hat out of the yellowing tissue paper and put it on.

She stepped over to her grandmother’s vanity, pushing aside trays of makeup and a crystal ashtray so she could lean closer to the mirror. The vibrant color of the hat lent a cheerful contrast to her black peplum jacket and pencil skirt. Violet could have sworn that, with the hat on, she looked a little bit like her grandmother did in pictures from when she was younger.

Violet turned off the closet light and left the room. With the hat on, she knew she was sure to get some raised eyebrows from her aunts and uncles, and probably even from her parents, but she didn’t care. Grandma Lou would have approved.

INVENTORY ITEM
: fur coat

APPROXIMATE DATE
: 1950

CONDITION
: fair

ITEM DESCRIPTION
: Blond, hip-length mink coat. Pink silk lining, some bare spots at the elbows.

SOURCE
: moving sale

Violet

THE NEXT EVENING, VIOLET
leaned toward the bathroom mirror, humming to a bluegrass album while she applied red lipstick. Tonight was the night she’d promised Karen they’d go out for a night on the town like they used to do.

Back when Karen lived in an apartment down the street, she would often stop in at the boutique on her way home from work. She usually had a line on whatever was going on that night, whether it was the opening of a new restaurant or an indie film festival. Some evenings they’d just share a half carafe of Cabernet at their favorite bistro in Machinery Row. Other nights they’d dance to live funk music until dawn, sweating alongside strangers in a crowded bar.

Men were often a part of those nights, either men they met or men they invited along. Karen, with her long, pale limbs and fiery hair, fetched admiration everywhere she went. Violet never resented her for it, though. In fact, she usually was grateful for the deflection of attention. In the early days after her divorce, Violet wanted nothing more than to enjoy her newfound freedom. If she met some interesting men along the way, great, but they were beside the point. After Karen got married and built a house with Tom out in the suburbs, she and Violet’s adventures became much less frequent, and they dropped off almost altogether when Karen soon got pregnant. Violet couldn’t blame her. They weren’t all that young anymore, and if she were in Karen’s shoes, she wouldn’t have wasted any time in starting a family, either.

Violet had some time before Karen arrived, even after she’d finished the always-difficult task of selecting something to wear from her full-to-bursting closet. For tonight, she’d selected an all-black pantsuit with a halter neckline from the 1970s. She’d added some beaded silver earrings made by a customer who sold jewelry, and she was set.

While she waited for Karen to show up, she pulled a box out from underneath her bed and lifted off the lid. Inside it, untouched for years, were all of her mementos from Bent Creek. She took out the dried, shriveled carnation corsage Jed had given her at the homecoming dance where she’d spilled schnapps on her dress, a teddy bear she’d taken everywhere with her as a child, and the gold band that had served as both her engagement and wedding ring. She set these all aside on the carpet. At the bottom of the box, she found her yearbooks. She took them out and curled up on the couch with Miles to page through them.

Inside the book for her sophomore year, Violet flipped to the index. She ran her finger down the list of names until she found Sam Lewis. Pages 39 and 94. Out of curiosity, Violet looked up her own name. It took three lines to list all the pages where pictures of her appeared.

She flipped first to page 39, where she found Sam’s junior class photo. He smiled through braces and a face full of acne. She remembered who he was now. He’d been one of the kids whom Jed and his buddies picked on.

She turned next to page 94, where she expected to see a photo of Sam with the band, or chess club, or some other extracurricular activity. Instead, Sam’s other photo in the yearbook was a candid photo taken in the lunchroom. The subject of the photo was a group of kids posed, arm in arm, around a crowded lunch table. Sam wasn’t one of those kids. He appeared in the background of the photo, at a noticeably emptier table, with a slice of pizza stuffed halfway in his mouth. She peered at the awkward, teenage Sam and thought,
Hang in there. You’re going to look a lot better in twenty years.

She heard a knock, followed by barking and the sound of Miles’s claws on the wood floor.