But it was the collectibles rather than the antiques for which the place was best known. The article could indicate that. Edwin was a collector of ‘50s paraphernalia. Art Deco furniture. Old radios; a whole tall shelf just of those in the darker, quieter, somewhat less orderly second story. Primitive futuristic TVs, the sad, unlit shells of arcade games, the colorless, translucent bones of neon signs. Items so odd and unique that people were willing to drive here from Boston sometimes for the chic junk of yesterday. Art Deco, old radios and jukeboxes were always hip, but also a few years ago there had been the resurgence of interest in the ‘60s, and Blue Flamingos had done well for that. College kids in abundance, no doubt feeling very hip when they punched up old Roy Orbison songs on the gorgeously gaudy replica Wurlitzer 1015 by the counter where you first came in, drawn to it moth-like, like kids in the ‘40s, mindlessly lured by the green, orange, yellow plastic colors, the water bubbles tumbling corpuscle-like through lurid veins. Lights, movement, noise; a carnival in a futuristic sarcophagus, now a sacred American icon…the predecessor of the TV, and MTV. Today’s mall mentality served Edwin well. The allure of things.
And Marie’s husband knew what they wanted because he loved these things as they did. He might not have been able to part with any of it, jealous collector that he was, if there wasn’t a constant stream of new things coming in to replace those that left. Flea markets, field auctions. He read obituaries, contacted relatives about the possessions of deceased parents and grandparents. College kids and Bostonians didn’t know where to go, and didn’t want the bother of that anyway. They would pay double, triple and more for their cherished junk, while throwing away the stuff they bought in the malls, the treasure of tomorrow’s scavengers.
“It’s like the ultimate attic!” one woman enthused to Edwin at the counter, paying thirty dollars for a Barbie doll he had acquired for five dollars, along with three others in a box of toys at a yard sale.
From across the room, dusting variegated displays that would make the Smithsonian’s attic collections boring by contrast, Marie watched as Edwin smiled at the woman and offered some obligatory banalities. Edwin wasn’t very good with small talk, just with the large talk of his drinking companions. Basically, Marie’s husband preferred things to the human beings who made them. But then, who didn’t?
* * *
As every day, after showering and cleansing herself, Marie set about polishing and cleaning the other, inanimate tenants of Blue Flamingo.
Marie had just finished dusting a baby alligator, which reared on its hind legs like some mummified miniature dinosaur, now extinct. The bright pink feathers of the duster had snared on its grin of fangs and Marie dislodged them delicately with an apologetic smile. Lightly, with the ball of her thumb, she wiped the dust off its unblinking black eyes.
Marie also cherished the many things collected in her husband’s shop. She often felt more pained than he to see them leave. But hers was not the love of a collector. Marie had never collected anything in her life. As a deaf child, living in a school for deaf children during the week and with her mother in a two room apartment on weekends, she hadn’t had the private space to accommodate the luxury of collection. Marie was fond of malls in the way she was fond of museums. She loved to drink it all in, then went home full. She was not materialistic. She loved the collectibles and old things because they were bits and pieces of lives. She could see and smell the life—the love, often—still in them, soaked deeply in their pores from the hands of their owners. Now discarded, orphaned by unsentimental survivors of those gone before. They were sad things. Lonely things. Of course, she should feel happy to see them all here together in her home. She felt as one with them. She felt empathy with these dustily alive things.
Edwin had disgustedly given in to her pleading, for a while, to let her keep a certain old doll or teddy bear or children’s book, and bring it up to their apartment on the third floor, which for its decor could very easily have been mistaken for part of the store. But now he told her she had enough things, and he had a business to run. He made her feel guilty for her sensitivity, made her wonder if she really had gone overboard with it. He mocked her, for instance, for no longer accompanying him to field auctions because she couldn’t bear to see the boxes of rain-soggy stuffed animals, once warm with children’s hugs, and the rest of the items left for junk in the field after the bidders had picked what they really wanted from the boxes they bought—a corpse-strewn, muddy battlefield.
What Marie didn’t tell her husband, however, was that she mostly didn’t accompany him because she sensed that he didn’t really desire her company. He no longer offered to buy her a hot dog under the snack pavilion. No longer talked to her on the way home.
You would think that he didn’t know how to communicate with a deaf woman. He had attended classes for signing when they had first met five years ago, knew how to sign perfectly well…but that would require him to show too much of an interest in her. His brusque signs now were more like impatient gestures of dismissal than sign language.
It was a rainy October day today, and in fact Edwin was at an auction, so perfectly scheduled for such weather. Marie wandered now throughout the second floor, dusting. The shop was tended presently by Mrs. Morris, who couldn’t sign a jot and thus moved her mouth with ludicrous exaggeration so Marie could read her lips.
Dangling from the high ceiling were antlers and pop guns, catcher’s mitts and musical instruments. Marie worked her way toward the back, dusting the rows of uglier, less artistic steel and glass jukeboxes from the ‘50s and ‘60s. She had once been afraid to come up here alone, before she had dared to let herself feel that this was her home. Now when she occasionally glanced over her shoulder, it was only because she felt Edwin would be standing there, arms crossed, some complaint ready. The sad deer head, the fluorescent, crumbling papier-mache ghoul from a carnival horror ride didn’t mean her any harm.
At the end window she gazed down at the rain-blurred street. A young couple were running toward the building, his coat spread over both their heads. They were laughing. Marie smiled. Marie herself was only twenty-five. Edwin was a decade older. She wondered if that were part of his change. Maybe he resented her youth. Maybe subconsciously the discard he saw on days like today ate at him, too…reminded him of his mortality, and the fact that he would never be remembered as a Barble doll or Wurlitzer 1015 is remembered.
As she did every day, now that she accepted the fact that her husband no longer loved her, Marie tried to fathom his change. The rain helped her abstract and liberate her thoughts, and to travel back in time.
He had never been a sunny man. She had made the error, as so many women do, of mistaking surliness for sexiness. And his artistic air had been even easier to interpret as romantic. For Edwin’s true desire had been to be a painter. He hadn’t painted in two years. When she first knew him he would still contribute to the town’s annual art show, and sold the occasional piece. But even before Marie had met him he had given up trying to get backing for his own show. Now he had retreated to his world of things, no longer attempting to create new things of his own. Maybe, Marie wondered, he even resented his collections for the preservation and interest he and his art would never know in future times. Or maybe vicariously he sought longevity through association. But it was all connected. Art was things too, and it was with mute things that Edwin best interacted. Because he didn’t seek true interaction. He just wanted to paint himself into an environment worthy of his complex identity. He had boasted to one drinking buddy that he was a cross between Salman Rushdie and Cat Stevens. He was misunderstood, and played that angry song by the Animals on the bogus Wurlitzer frequently. The booming vibration would rumble in Marie’s chest.