they weren’t merely looking for a pair of candlesticks or a charger or another piece of Chinese lacquer; they were also training “the boy” in what was authentic or a repro, g. or n.g., period or—heaven forbid—mo-derne, a word whose second syllable was drawn out and pronounced with an exaggerated sneer.
I found these Saturdays to be alternately thrilling and unnerving. Heaven help me if I picked up something, even merely to investigate, and heard that piercing sotto voce n.g.—for “not good.” It was the equivalent of being told that I was n.g., or that I was an idiot. Of course I was an idiot. What could a kid know about Lewey Schmooey (as he, or it?, was described in a lighter spirit); how could he tell vermeil from ormolu, Palladio from Piranesi? It was as hard (almost as hard) as being read a paragraph of Dickens and another of Austen and being asked to say which was which. A boy who wanted to remain in this school (this family) made it a point to learn. The names and dates, the facts and figures, the periods, the styles (in prose, the voices; in movies, the look). The techniques: dovetailing over mitering, chamfering and pegging, feather-versus sponge-painting … before long it would be showing versus telling, the active versus the passive voice, plain transparent Tolstoyan prose versus Faulknerian flourishes versus Proustian discursions …
My aunt had several places she liked to noodle around—in Pasadena and out along Main Street in Venice and, when she was feeling particularly ambitious (or flush), in Montecito or down near San Juan Capistrano, where some of the more top drawer dealers did business. Today we were staying local, though—our destination was a cluster of shops way down on Sunset Boulevard near Western Avenue.
In the first shop we came to I picked up a lacquer tray that had two Chinese figures on it. This looked like it would fit into my grandmother’s apartment, and so it felt like a safe choice. No sooner had I reached for it than my aunt’s hand shot out. “No, not that, Mike. It’s repro. N.g.”
It was all in the tone, an icy dismissal that made an already small me feel like an even smaller me. And yet I kept trying, I kept yearning to be one of them, to know what they knew, to see what, and how, they saw; to win, and keep, their approval, their acceptance, their love.
Again and again my aunt’s head shook dismissively. Again and again I would try.
“That’s better. There you go.”
And again.
“Better still.”
But why? The why always came from my grandmother. Why is this good, why do we care? “Discernment is about judgment. It’s about knowledge. This is a good desk because it has good lines. Because no one has put garbage on it to make it look new, or fake. Because it makes you imagine.”
“Imagine what?”
We were standing in front of a tall piece of furniture. A secretary. I knew that much at least. It had a drop front, behind which there were many secret compartments. Some of them with tiny keyholes so that they could be locked.
“The man—no, the woman—who sat here, and wrote letters. Secret letters. Or in her diary. Imagine writing it two hundred years ago.” My grandmother opened one of the compartments. “And keeping it here.”
“And this ink stain,” said my aunt, joining in. “It’s from when she was disturbed at her work.”
“Disturbed?” I asked, confused.
“By her husband,” said my aunt. “Think of the painting by Vermeer. The woman writing a letter? It’s in your book. She looks up with a start, just like in the painting. She knocks over the bottle. The ink, just a few drops, sinks into the wood as a human fate is being decided, and quickly …”
My aunt and my grandmother exchanged one of those glances—I knew them well—that suggested they had sidestepped into their own private communication, the equivalent of a compartment in the desk I did not have access to.
“She doesn’t want him to know what she’s writing,” said my grandmother. “She has to choose between protecting her diary and protecting the table. She chooses the diary, of course. Because of her secret life. Do you understand?”
I nodded, because that was what was expected. But I had no idea what they were talking about. None at all.
Better had turned out to be a pencil box; even though it was Victorian (which like mo-derne usually received a crisp, definitive n.g.), it had two figures painted on its lid—in the Chinese manner, of course—and was useful what’s more. “You can keep the tools of your trade in it,” my aunt said jovially. “We can do away with that ordinary little pouch of yours. What do you think, Lovey? Would you allow me to make you a present of it?”
The suspensefully anticipated question. It came along at one point, sometimes at several points, on each antiquing excursion.
“Oh, yes, Auntie Hankie.”
“And what about these bookends?” she said, taking down from a shelf two bronze bookends in the shape of small Greek temples. “They would help organize your library at home.”
“They’re beautiful, Auntie Hankie.”
“We don’t mind if there’s a small scratch on one of them, do we?”
I shook my head. “It’s a sign of age,” I said.
“A sign of age!” said my grandmother, delighted. “The boy truly is a quick study.”
A very special treat after one of these Saturdays was being invited to spend the night on Ogden Drive. The invitation would emit from the wing chair, which was hard not to think of as my grandmother’s throne. (Sylvia’s chair, which stood across from it, was smaller, its seat closer to the ground.) If my mother had not been alerted ahead of time and had not prepared a suitable bag, there would be a flurry of discussion: What will the boy sleep in? (“His underpants?”—the very word, spoken by my grandmothers, caused my cheeks to leap into flame.) How will he wash his teeth? (With toothpaste spread on a cloth wrapped around an index finger.) What will he read? (The big Doré edition of the English Bible? Surely not yet the leather-bound Balzac that had belonged to Huffy’s mother, Rosa …) Who would return me to the canyon was never a concern, since everyone knew the answer to that: aunt would drive nephew back up the hill following Morning Time the next day.
The invitation came soon after we had returned from our antiquing excursion that afternoon, when Huffy realized that Sylvia was out for the evening, at one of her concerts downtown. “We’ll keep each other company tonight,” she said to me. Auntie Hankie made sure that there was enough food in the house for dinner and then headed home.
After she left, Huffy said, “How about if we just have two large bowls of ice cream and then get into bed and read?”
“Is there chocolate sauce?”
She laughed. “There can be.”
When we finished our “dinner,” Huffy said, “I have something for you. I bought it for you last week.”
She went into her room and then returned with a small package in a brown paper bag. Inside there was a blank book bound in orange leather. Its paper was ruled, and it closed with a tiny brass lock and key. On the
