Backstage Stuff - Hardcover

1
 
Jane Wheel couldn’t sleep.
Odd expression, she thought … couldn’t sleep.
She could sleep. She knew how to sleep. She was physically able to sleep.
Wasn’t everyone?
It was just that this particular night, her eyes opened at three A.M. She closed them, trying to imagine a blank white canvas, a movie theater screen, anything that was empty and neutral and filled with promise. But as soon as she pictured a giant sheet of paper in front of her eyes, she began filling it with words and numbers. As quickly as she tried to erase the words that formed—separation … invoice … overdue … divorce—other words took their place—failure … emptiness … ending … loneliness.
“Forget it,” she said out loud, and switched on the lamp next to her bed. This particular lamp wasn’t designed to be placed on a nightstand. It was a modern Von Nessen desk lamp, white and graceful. It went with nothing else in her house. She bought it last month at a house sale, in the last hour, on the last day. It had been under piles of clothes in the basement, an odd outcast in a house full of dark Victorian furniture. At least that was all that was left when Jane wandered through the place at the end of the day. She lifted the lamp from its hiding place and held it up, knowing that it was not anything she needed or even wanted. She just knew it was beautiful. It was perfectly balanced, its white metal shade flaring decisively at just the right spot. The fifty-something couple—surely brother and sister, same nose and mouth, matching frowns—stationed with a cash box at the front door, tired out after two days of seeing their childhood home ravaged, savaged, and scavenged, shook their heads when they saw the lamp.
“Have you ever seen that before, Billy?”
He shook his head. “Maybe Mom bought it for you when you went to nursing school?”
“Nope. It wasn’t in Dad’s office, either. I’ve never seen it.”
“It was in the basement,” Jane had offered, trying to help them place it. She knew what that was like, trying to remember the story behind the object. “Under some clothes.”
Billy shrugged, barely looking at Jane or the lamp. “How’s two dollars?”
“Are you sure?” asked Jane, not wanting to take advantage of these sad people. “It might be a good one.”
The woman shrugged and the man repeated, “Two,” holding his fingers up like the peace sign.
Jane paid the money and when she carried the lamp out of the dark, sad house, she held it up and studied it. It was dirty but regal. A beautiful modern design that she knew must be the real thing. Quality modern design that her pal Tim would price in the hundreds.
But she didn’t give the lamp to Tim to sell. She brought it home, into her bedroom, and cleared off the table next to her side of the bed. With one motion, she cleared the magazines and business cards and junk mail and catalogs and threw them all into a bag for recycling. She cleaned her lamp, looked it up on the Internet, and set it on the table, giving it the position of honor in a house full of objects, all of which had briefly held that place. She allowed her lamp to be the last thing she saw each night and the first thing she saw every morning. If objects could talk, could feel, could express themselves, Jane knew that all of the Bakelite, and thirties and forties kitchenalia, all of the mission-style oak and McCoy vases would have turned on this modern interloper. Objects, however, don’t talk or express feelings or keep their owners from lonely sleepless nights. If one is lucky, they function in the way they are supposed to, and if one is even luckier, they look beautiful as they do it.
What was that sound? Jane heard a thrumming noise from somewhere in the house. Is that what had awakened her? A belt going out in the refrigerator motor?
Jane sat up a little straighter and picked up the notebook she had left lying next to her in the bed. On page one, she had begun to craft a budget, or what she called a budget. It was really just a list, random and arbitrary.
Nick’s clothes. Nick’s books. Nick’s binoculars. Nick’s backpack. Dog food. Heisey punch bowl. Did she count the punch bowl if she was going to send it to Muriel or her cousin, Miriam, to sell at their shop in Ohio? Of course not, that should be in a different list altogether. It didn’t belong with haircuts, car insurance, shampoo, gasoline, toothpaste.
This was ridiculous. How could Jane have reached this stage in her adult life without understanding basic household finances? She wasn’t an idiot. She had worked her way up the corporate ladder before the ladder had been moved, stranding her and the other members of her creative team. When Jane’s biggest client switched his account to a new agency, Jane had been asked, politely, to pack up her things and go. It had been a blow, and at the time, Jane felt terrible—marooned on the island of the unemployed. She had been rejected, abandoned by the company she had been with for sixteen years. Even now, several years later, recalling the day she walked through the corridor of Rooney and Rooney for the last time, she felt the same embarrassment, anger, denial,
“Aren’t those the stages of grief?” Jane asked Rita. Rita, a giant mass of a dog, was doing her best rug imitation next to Jane’s bed, but perked up one ear when Jane addressed her.
How marooned had she been? Lost? Adrift? Not hardly. Her husband, Charley, was a tenured professor and she herself had been given a handsome severance package. After a decent mourning period consisting of sleeping late and eating a lot of bacon dipped in brown sugar, she began hitting the sales, early and regularly. She hadn’t planned to find her second career as a picker. She didn’t earn much at first, but over the past few years, she had turned over a few excellent pieces of furniture, one good painting, several pieces of jewelry, the odd bits of flotsam and jetsam from weekly sales and rummaging. And the pottery? It turned out that Jane had an eye for art pottery and could spot a good piece from across a basketball court–sized church basement hall. If she made a beeline and grabbed the possible Weller vase without losing her way or getting distracted at the linens table to peek into a promising box of buttons and rickrack, sniffing out Bakelite and decorative needle packages, she could grab a really good piece of American pottery for a few dollars.
“What is that?” Jane asked out loud. The buzzing had started again. Was the dehumidifier shorting out? Was the house about to burst into flames?
Jane swung her leg over the bed, digging her toes into Rita’s back and allowing herself the moment of sheer pleasure that it gave her. Rita also allowed Jane her moment before creeping into the corner of the bedroom and turning to watch her mistress. Was she getting up for good or roaming the house? Wherever she landed, Rita would go and quietly keep watch.
Jane stood up, gathering her list-filled notebook, pens, and last Sunday’s crossword. There was no reason to remain wide-eyed in bed. Better to be sleepy-eyed roaming the house. A loose sheet fell from her notebook. It was one of her rummage sale lists from last week.
Restaurant creamers, Depression glass shakers, wooden frames—primitive, handmade crocheted pot holders, mechanical pencils, pocket shrines, sterling religious medals, Chase, Homer Laughlin, Russel Wright, Raymor, old office supplies, yardsticks, folding rulers, sewing …
Next to sewing Jane had sketched a pincushion...