Antiques Flee Market Read online

  There was a muffled sniffle, then a loud, clown-car honk as she blew her nose, before she answered, “Yes, dear.”

  I turned the knob and pushed the door open. Although it was only three in the afternoon, Mother was already in her pink nightgown and under the covers, her head propped up with several pillows. She had a tissue in one hand and was dabbing at her eyes.

  I recalled my earlier, caustic remark and said, “I’m sorry I called you a troublemaker.”

  Mother sniffled, “That’s not why I’m crying, dear. I know I’m not a troublemaker.”

  That made her a majority of one.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. “Then what’s the matter?”

  She heaved a sigh. “I was thinking of Walter.”

  So that was it.

  “Sometimes a shock doesn’t hit us until later,” I said philosophically, “after a crisis has passed. So it’s okay to feel the way you do.”

  “That’s not it, dear,” Mother replied. “My goodness! Death is an absolute. No one escapes the Grim Reaper. And sadly, some of us, like poor Walter, are fated to depart this world under less than happy circumstances.”

  “Less than happy circumstances” was an interesting way to describe being murdered, if indeed Mr. Yeager had been murdered…which I didn’t believe was the case.

  Mother and I had been involved, or rather she had gotten us involved, in two murder mysteries already this year, and another would strain not just credulity but my sanity. (Mother’s sanity didn’t enter into it, since Mother and sanity rarely came up in the same sentence.)

  “No,” Mother was saying, “that’s not why I’m crying.” She paused dramatically, as if waiting for me to say my line.

  Trouble was, I was still poised patiently in the wings, only a bit player in Mother’s production.

  So Mother pressed on: “I was merely thinking of my senior high school prom and how I was Walter’s first that night.”

  I nodded. “His first prom date, you mean.”

  Mother shook her head. “No, dear…his first sexual conquest, although I admit to being rather more cooperative than most vanquished nations.”

  I blinked at her a half-dozen times. “You mean, Walter was your first?”

  Mother’s eyes widened, huge even without her glasses. “Certainly not! By then I was already quite sexually active. Don’t you think you’re rather stepping over the line, dear, with these prying questions about something so personal?”

  I probably had the expression of somebody slapped with a good-size wet fish. Mother had overloaded my meager mind with TMI (too much information) and somehow simultaneously had placed the blame on my shoulders.

  Mother was plowing on….

  “You see, many of the boys were going off to war after they graduated that summer—Walter was enlisting in the Army Air Force, who were helping the British RAF fight the Germans bombing England.” Mother paused, then said in a hushed voice, as if someone else might be listening, “The dear boy was a virgin, you see, and naturally, I wanted to give him a nice send-off.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t really need to—”

  “Brandy!” Mother’s eyebrows chased her hairline. “What do you mean, taking such a high-and-mighty attitude!”

  Me? I didn’t recall taking any attitude other than abject shock, but high-and-mighty wasn’t it; who was I to judge? I’d been sexually active at her age, too. I just prayed she and I would never discuss it.

  Mother was saying, “Many of the girls felt as I did…old taboos falling away like autumn leaves in wartime….”

  I almost commented to Mother that autumn leaves did not fall in the summer, but I restrained myself.

  Her expression had turned thoughtful. “Although, looking back with the wisdom of age, I do have my doubts about our behavior in those days. Oh, not my own! But I’m fairly sure a few of the young men may have taken advantage of their dates that night.”

  “Date rape? Back then?”

  “Boys will be boys.”

  I wanted to get off this subject ASAP, so I asked, “What happened to you and Mr. Yeager? Were you an item, after that? Were you engaged…?”

  “Heavens, no! It was a fling, a mercy—”

  “Mother, please!”

  “…mission. Anyway, out of sight, out of mind.” Mother shrugged pragmatically. “After Walter left for England that summer, I began dating your father…but then he went off to war, too.” She sighed and her expression grew distant.

  I didn’t let her off the hook. “Did you give Dad the same ‘nice’ send-off?”

  Mother’s nose hiked up and her eyes looked down. “I hardly see how that is any of your business. It’s completely irrelevant to this discussion!”

  It seemed to me that relations with the man who was my father (or at least who was supposed to be my father) were more my business than her mission of mercy with Walter Yeager. But Mother had her own rules regarding relevancy.

  She gazed out the bedroom window, where Jack Frost had skated across the bottom of the pane, making an intricate icy pattern on the glass. “You know, I’ve never told another living soul about Walter and me,” she murmured, serious and not at all arch. “Not even your father.”

  Mother closed her eyes, and I tucked the covers up around her, then tiptoed out.

  Just another typical warm-and-fuzzy conversation between Mother and me, involving ancient sexual shenanigans and assorted secrets.

  But I was worried about Mother…not her melancholy mood over Walter—that would pass. What really concerned me was her imagining that Walter had been murdered, and her desire to have it so. Despite the two incidents she and I had been involved in, murder was hardly the norm in a small town like Serenity.

  Anyway, I had my hands full just keeping Mother busy with healthy concerns, and off the murder-go-round.

  The next morning when I stuck my nose out the back door, it practically got frozen off—the weather had turned bitterly cold, the wind whipping drifts around so much that snow still seemed to be falling on what was otherwise a clear day. I put Shoosh down on the back stoop and told her it was okay to take care of business right there, which she understood, and proceeded to do-do in record time.

  Mother was already up, and must have been for quite some time, because she had baked her famous Christmas Kringle coffee cake; its delicious aroma hung in the kitchen making my mouth water—and Sooshi’s, too, the doggie doing a little begging dance at my feet. Since the Danish pastry didn’t have a note stuck to it, saying to keep my mitts off, I felt free to cut myself a piece (and a tiny one for Soosh), then poured out a cup of hot java, and joined Mother at the dining room table, where she was looking at various copies of plays that were spread out before her.

  Seasonal sidebar: We now interrupt this story to share with you Mother’s Kringle recipe (but be forewarned—they apparently had a lot of time on their hands back in Denmark).

  DANISH CHRISTMAS KRINGLE

  Batter:

  ¾ cup butter

  3 cups flour

  3 Tbl. sugar

  1 tsp. salt

  1 package active dry yeast

  ¾ cup milk

  1 egg, beaten

  Filling:

  2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts

  1½ cup brown sugar

  ¾ cup butter, softened

  Glaze:

  2 cups confectioner’s sugar

  2 Tbl. milk (more or less)

  1 tsp. vanilla extract

  In a large bowl, cut butter into the flour, sugar, and salt, to look like bread crumbs. Dissolve yeast in ¼ cup warm water. Add the yeast, milk, and egg to the batter and beat until smooth. Chill two hours.

  On a floured surface, roll dough to a twelve-inch square; fold and roll twice more. Roll to 24 x 12-inch rectangle. Cut lengthwise in two strips (for two kringles) and spread each with filling. Roll to close and shape into ovals. Moisten edges and seal. Place seam sides down on greased baking sheets. Cover and let rise till twice its size, about 25 minutes.


  Bake at 375 degrees for 25–30 minutes, or until golden brown. When cooled, drizzle glaze on top of the kringles.

  I once tried to make that myself, but when I got to the “fold and roll twice more,” I gave up and threw the dough outside for the animals. Then, to add insult to injury, not even the raccoons—who’ll eat anything (don’t ask)—would go near it.

  And now back to our regularly scheduled chapter….

  Mother, in a much better mood, asked chirpily, “Which production do you think I should direct in February?”

  The Playhouse was dark in January, as the local cast and crew took a much-needed break from the theater—and Mother.

  I fingered through the pile, and selected one. “Why not Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Easy?” I wasn’t familiar with that particular play, but I’d never read or seen a Christie that hadn’t been entertaining. And I figured if Mother got involved in a murder mystery in the theatrical world, she might not be so inclined to create one for herself out in the real one.

  Mother’s eyes danced. “Why not indeed! There’s even a small part for me.”

  All the better to keep Mother busy, directing and acting.

  Mother was saying, “I could play Lavinia Fullerton—even though she dies on page twenty. Of course I’d have to use heavy makeup to pass for such an elderly woman…but I do so love a death scene—”

  Then Mother gasped, and I jumped in my chair, splattering coffee on the table. But she wasn’t demonstrating a death scene, just making a discovery on the play’s list-of-characters page.

  “Why, there’s also a nice part for Chaz as the local village girl who aids the amateur sleuth,” Mother burbled. “She could give the play a nice ring of British authenticity.”

  I asked skeptically, “Are you sure Chaz is up to it? I mean, what experience has she had?”

  Mother pawed the air with a scoffing hand. “Why are you always so negative? The girl’s a natural! Besides, getting involved with the play will help take the poor dear girl’s mind off her grandfather’s murder.”

  I didn’t bother to argue the murder point. And of course a comedy might be better suited for distracting Chaz from her gran’dad’s death. But Mother’s enthusiasm for Agatha Christie was unstoppable at this point.

  Mother was on a roll. “Certainly some of the sets—like the train in the first act—will be challenging on our limited budget…. And wouldn’t it be grand if a real automobile could seem to run my character over right there on stage? That would sure put the audience on their feet!”

  Vivian Borne, hit by a car onstage? If word got out, the house would be packed every night. Give the people what they want, and they’ll turn out….

  I drained what was left of my cup, and left Mother to her musings, thankful her attention was now on the new play.

  After rinsing my dishes in the sink, I took my Prozac capsule from the plastic seven-day pill keeper I kept on the counter next to the coffeemaker. Mother had a pill caddy, too, and I checked to make sure she was current. She was, praise the Lord and pass the medication. Then I headed back upstairs to shower and get ready for my shopping date with Tina.

  Teen and I met in high school, when I was a sophomore and she was a junior. I’d come around a hallway corner one day after school and found a bunch of senior girls bullying her. Not liking the odds, I jumped in with my fists clenched and my mouth flapping, and the bullies fled like cockroaches when somebody flips on the light switch. Tina and I have been best friends ever since.

  Within an hour, my clothes were strewn all over the bedroom as if a tornado had hit. Everything I had put on was too tight, which meant that my fat bucket had overflowed.

  Fat bucket, you ask? Glad to expound on the subject….

  Ever wonder why you can sometimes eat more than usual and not gain weight? Then one morning you wake up and BAM! there’s an extra five pounds staring you in the face? That’s because everybody has a fat bucket, and you’re safe as long as it doesn’t fill up and spill over (I usually hover perilously close to the rim). The reverse is also true; that’s why it takes so long to lose weight, because that bucket of fat has to be depleted. So don’t give up! Hang in there dieting a few more weeks, and one day you’ll see results overnight. I hope this helps you.

  I selected some black DKNY jeans that fit only because they contained two percent Lycra, a Gap gray hoodie with silver trim that scratched but had been on sale so I put up with it, and a pair of Kenzie black leather boots with cute side buttons that Tina passed along to me because they’d hurt her bunions. (They hurt my bunions, too, but one must at times suffer for the sake of fashion.) Then I traipsed downstairs.

  Mother was gabbing on the phone, and by the gist of her end of the conversation, seemed to be already putting the play into motion. I blew her a kiss, then threw on my black wool peacoat, and headed out to my cold car.

  Tina and her husband, Kevin, lived in a white ranch-style home on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, a great view, especially in winter when the trees were bare. In another month, when the eagles swooped down from the frozen North to the not-so-frozen Midwest to hunt for fish in the churning river, Tina and Kevin would get out their binoculars and become avid eagle-watchers. (I like to watch, too—for maybe five minutes.)

  Usually, Tina picked me up for our shopping sprees, but since we were hitting the stores at Indian Mounds Mall, which was closer to her than me, I was the designated driver.

  I pulled into the mouth of their driveway, where Kevin’s sporty silver Mazda was parked next to Tina’s black Lexus, which meant that Kev—a pharmaceutical salesman—was home for the day. Kev, a sandy-haired hunk of thirty-three, was a great guy, and always nice to me, even when I got my BFF into a bit of trouble now and then.

  Tina and Kevin had been trying to have children for the last few years, and then a month ago Tina discovered she had uterine cancer (thankfully caught early), which derailed their plans for a family. She and I had talked about this only once, over wine, late into a night, when she’d revealed that she and Kev were exploring adoption or possibly trying to find a surrogate mother, although Teen was on the fence about either option, afraid her cancer might recur.

  So, naturally, I was anxious to see how my BFF was doing, even though our conversation today would be limited to conspicuous consuming.

  I was about to honk, when Tina came out, slamming the front door behind her. She looked great, as usual, the winter sun highlighting her natural, golden-blond hair, making a halo effect around her Nordic features. She was wearing the same black jeans as me (but a size smaller), her white Michael Kors leather jacket (she saw it first), and a girlie-pink Betsey Johnson wool scarf (I had one in blue).

  Tina hopped in the passenger side, said, “Let’s do this,” and I put the pedal to the metal.

  Indian Mounds was an outdoor mall just a short five minutes away, but across the treacherous bypass. A stoplight, however, had been recently installed at our juncture after a state senator’s wife got in a car crash while trying to cross the busy, four-lane highway on her way to a white sale. (Wife, minor bruising; Cadillac Escalade, totaled.) And I mean to say, that traffic light went in practically overnight.

  On the way, Tina and I negotiated having lunch first—no sense shopping on an empty stomach—and we arrived at Michael’s, an upscale Italian eatery, just before noon. Even though the place was hopping with business types and holiday shoppers, we managed to snag one of the last cherrywood booths. After we both ordered a small Caesar salad, minestrone soup, and a glass of white wine, Tina and I settled in for our preshopping gabfest, as only amateurs talk while they shop.

  I said, “First, tell me how you’re doing….”

  Tina’s smile looked a little forced. “Oh, fine…just fine. I’m seeing another specialist after Christmas. I want to know all of my options.” Her smile turned sad. “Of course the one option I really want—to have a baby of my own—I can’t have.”

  Somewhere in the restaurant an infant was cr
ying, underscoring Tina’s words.

  I reached across the table and clasped her hand. “I’m so sorry, honey. I wish there was something I could do….”

  What I had said was heartfelt, even if it did sound a little lame, at least to me.

  Tina forced another smile. “But we can still adopt. Outside the country if need be.”

  I nodded. “And it’ll be just like your own.”

  It? Just like your own? Lame, again. That kid was still crying, the little ham.

  My thoughts turned to Jake, and what it felt like to look at his face and see part of me, and Roger, and how in some way I’d taken my son’s existence for granted. And here was my best friend, unable to have a child, and wanting one so badly.

  Tina was saying, “Enough of me. Brandy, I want to know how you are doing.”

  The ball being tossed into my court I took to mean Teen didn’t care to talk any further about her cancer treatment, or adoption.

  I said only, “Just peachy keen—what could ever be sunnier than life with Vivian Borne?”

  She smiled, catching my drift—I didn’t want to talk about my problems, either.

  Sometimes, the best things friends can do for each other is keep the conversation light and cheerful, rather than throw a “pity party.”

  The wine arrived, and after a few sips, Tina and I got down to really important subjects.

  “What’s your opinion of regifting?” Tina asked.

  I set down my glass of wine. “I used to think it was tacky…but now, because of conservation and recycling, who’s to say you’re not doing something positive?”

  “Oooo. I like this. Regifting is green!”