Antiques Roadkill Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Remember Aunt
Mabel,
darling!”
    Once upon a terrible time, Mabel (actually my great-aunt) had spied a butter churn at an estate sale, crossed the road without looking, and gotten hit by a tour bus of seniors on their way to Branson.
    Not being interested in making a trip to the next life, or Branson for that matter, I made sure the coast was clear and was inside that garage before the door was all the way up.
    I took everything in all at once—old Christmas decorations (a hard sell in June), glass flower vases (everyone already has too many), some old tools (valuable to some collectors), books (mostly bodice-bursting romances), LP records (no way to play
those
anymore), outdated women’s and men’s clothing (just donate them, already!)—as I frantically worked my way toward the back of the garage.
    Suddenly I was aware of others around me, coming out of the woodwork, like cockroaches swarming toward cake crumbs. But this little bug reached the object of her desire first, which I scooped up and held tightly to my chest, even as hands reached out.
    “Did you get it?” Mother was beside me, breathless. “Did you get it?”
    I nodded, thinking,
We’re not exactly playing it cool, are we?
Tipping your hand like that in pursuit of a precious item, whether at a garage sale or a pricey antique shop, was pretty dumb, I admit. But we’d waited a long time, and the resonance of this little object touched us both.
    I waited for the infestation to pass before showing her the portable writing desk. “Desk” brings to mind a piece of furniture, I realize—something substantial, with legs. But this was a simple, small walnut box (about twelve inches square) on which you could write letters while in bed: square glass inkwell, a place for a quill pen, and even ahole for a candle; inside the hinged, green velvet-covered lid was where paper and envelopes were kept.
    When I was small, Mother used it as a place to stash extra cash, and kept it high up in a kitchen cupboard, away from my grubby little hands. Later, the writing desk became a focal point in the music room, displayed on a round oak library table, holding an assortment of old-time sheet music … Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, and the like. I didn’t need to see the tears fogging up Mother’s large lenses to know this “desk” was ours.
    Or, anyway, used to be.
    The day before, we had come home to a message on the answer machine. A certain Marvin Petersen said he was having a garage sale in the morning, and that there was something we “might be interested in,” describing the aforementioned wooden box, but he wouldn’t hold it for us. I tried calling him back (several times), to see if we could come right out, but got no answer; even a drive-by proved futile—his house remained silent and dark.
    Now I looked for the sticker price on the writing desk, finding it on the underside.
    Mother read the disappointment in my face. “How much could it be?”
    “It could be,” I managed, “three hundred dollars … and is.”
    “What?”
she asked again, incredulously. Then, “Well, now, that’s just ridiculous. I’ll just have to see about that.”
    I watched Mother zero in on Mr. Petersen like a heat-seeking missile. The old boy had set up shop at a card table near the garage entrance, and her demonic demeanor suddenly softened into something angelic. When she wanted to, Mother could charm the pants off a snake. Assuming the snake was wearing pants, of course.
    Best that the diva of the family handle this; garage salefinagling hadn’t been covered in
Trump: The Art of the Deal,
required reading for my first college business class.
    Idly poking around a knickknack table, Mother waited for this first wave of garage sale shoppers to do their shopping, and buying, and leave. Yesterday’s paper had promised good weather, and a couple dozen garage and yard sales around town, so there was much scavenging to be done among the true believers.
    In the lull