How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life (34 page)

Reading List

Sonnets from the Portuguese
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

E.E. Cummings Anthology

Flush
—Virginia Woolf

Objects of Desire: The Lives of Antiques and Those Who Pursue Them
—Thatcher Freund

Hidden Treasures: Searching for Masterpieces
—Joan Barzily Freund

The Barretts of Wimpole Street
—Rudolf Bessier

Snatched From Oblivion: A Cambridge Memoir
—Marion Cannon Schlesinger

Vera: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov
—Stacy Schiff

Novels Set in Cambridge

Mail
—Mameve Medwed

Host Family
—Mameve Medwed

While I Was Gone
—Sue Miller

Love Story
—Erich Segal

The Namesake
—Jhumpa Lahiri

The Man of the House
—Stephen McCauley

The Dogfather
—Susan Conant

The Probable Future
—Alice Hoffmann

Academic Novels Mameve Medwed Loves

The Way Men Act
—Elinor Lipman

Joe College
—Tom Perrotta

Prep
—Curtis Sittenfeld

To download copies of this reading, please visit Mameve Medwed’s website at
www.mamevemedwed.com.

How
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Saved My Life
By Mameve Medwed

A Reading Group Guide
An Essay by the Author

My Ongoing, Quirky,
and Passionate Relationship
with Stuff

My paternal grandfather was in the antiques trade (which, because that generation consisted of immigrants, was no doubt a euphemism for junk dealer). One uncle inherited the business; the others became lawyers. As a child, I spent hours poking around in Uncle Sam’s musty, magical shop and always came home with some odd treasure—a porcelain dog, a toy soldier, old glass beads, a monocle, a top hat. My parents also collected antiques. Our house in Maine had no mod cons—no shower, dishwasher, or dryer—just one claw-and-ball footed bathtub in the one Dickensian bathroom. Doorknobs would fall away in your hand; there wasn’t one comfortable chair anywhere.

In the war between the practical and decorative, the victor was never in doubt. Our kitchen linoleum was layered with tattered oriental rugs, overlapping like shingles on a roof and so full of bumps and holes that any second you could catch your heel and fall headlong in the direction of the early-model Kelvinator; but not before you first toppled what shielded it: a black-lacquered screen stenciled with rice paddies and Chinese peasants scrubbing clothes on the banks of the Yangtze. Those seven-foot panels of Chinese peasants blocked any illumination from the ceiling fixture. A gooseneck lamp gracing the table was a lamp in name only: making coffee meant no light to cut an onion by. Besides, the bulbs were pink and low wattage, the better to bathe you in a glamorous glow.

The rest of the appliances formed a motley crew of spear-carriers arranged with no particular logic. If you opened the freezer door, you blocked the stove. The washing machine sashayed halfway across the floor on spin; the matchbook-leveled table served as sole countertop for the toaster, percolator, and iron, all in extension cord range of the one outlet. If you wanted to plug something in, everything else had to be disconnected. Needless to say, a guest with a blowdryer could cause a major meltdown.

You could tell what was important by the amount of space allotted to it. Kitchen functions took up less than a quarter of the kitchen. All the other walls boasted glass-fronted mahogany bookcases left over from my father’s law office; stuffed on their shelves were assorted dictionaries, old
Antiques
magazines, Bangor street registers going back to the nineteenth century, children’s books kept long after the children had grown, and a set of Martindale-Hubbell legal directories, de cades out of date.

On the kitchen table’s lazy Susan towered a collection of wind-up toys. You could set into immediate action somersaulting frogs, jumping hamburgers, chattering teeth, a sushi chef hacking a tuna, or a gorilla banging a drum. Though you might have to search long and hard for a snack, you always had a plaything close at hand. And the makings of a cocktail. Decanters slung with little silver necklaces labeled “Vodka” were filled from the motherlode of Don Popov, its half gallons hidden behind brand-name bottles of never-opened hostess gifts. Years after my sister and I had married and left home, a doll house mysteriously appeared next to the “bar.” Eccentrically overfurnished, this tiny mansion mirrored its surroundings in miniature.

In the other rooms, form triumphed over function just as dramatically. Closets were boarded up for exhibition purposes. Hardly a curlicue of ornate wallpaper showed among the picture frames. The bathroom contained a bureau whose drawer opened only a sliver before it hit the tub. And no convenience of shelves or medicine cabinet threatened to bisect the bucolic mural I painted the day of my engagement party. I used tubes of artist’s oils which, in that steamy, unvented room, took months to dry. In fact, a tree here, a flower there, departed like party favors on the backs of guests unfortunate enough to need to powder a nose. Throughout, the chairs were antique and fragile; the tables had rickety legs and delicate veneers. The horse hair mattresses, which built character we told one another, were original to beds requiring a footstool to climb into. The sofas, designated as loveseats or settees, were too short for anyone but a toddler to snatch a nap. “This is so impractical,” we’d complain. “This is so beautiful,” my mother would gloat.

I moved to Cambridge. I married. My husband and I bought a remodeled Victorian house with high ceilings and big windows and state-of-the-art wiring. I envisioned white walls, an expanse of maple floors, bare counters, and appliances sensibly arranged. Minimalism was in fashion. Magazines and the style sections of newspapers promoted a single vase on an empty table, one perfectly angled architectural chair. “Form follows function” was the law of that particular land, its ironclad rule. Chrome, steel, and leather gleamed with newness, trumpeting their collective virginity. “Less is more,” cited Mies Van de Rohe.

But as hard as I tried, to me more was more.
I STOP FOR YARD SALES
announced my bumper sticker. I insisted on a station wagon and a roof rack long before carpools made them necessary. I never met a blank surface I didn’t want to embellish. Miraculously, I could always find room for yet another object even though its insertion meant major rearranging, not to mention more nails pulled out and re-hammered into already pockmarked walls.

Now, years later, I survey my rooms and see that, indeed, unlike my childhood house in Maine, the appliances are sensibly arranged. The beds are comfortable; the sofa can accommodate two six-foot-one sons. But if you can escape your small-town roots, the gene for decor seems to be locked too deep in the double helix of its DNA. My kitchen counters support a collection of fake food (no calories, doesn’t rot, needs just a little dusting). There are coasters of baloney and liverwurst, Swiss and American cheeses, all of a rubber so realistic a guest once put a pimento-studded slice on his hotdog roll. A dozen ceramic pears are always on the verge of ripening. Beside them sit a china plate of sunny-side ups; the yolks at the stage of perfect permanent runniness; a stack of porcelain pancakes shine with maple syrup and a half melted slab of butter; wooden and papier mâché breads topple out of a wicker basket. A collection of Japanese window display food that one of my sons was assigned to bring back from a restaurant supply district in Tokyo has yielded exceptional specimens: a giant fried egg, fat Japanese toast, a whole salted fish, teriyaki glistening in sauce, and a tray of sushi, their pinks and yellows fading gently under a slant of sun. The high shelf that rings the kitchen, built for roasting pans and soup pots and lobster steamers, supports a folk collection of wooden animals. Plates and tiles line the walls; you have to unhook a still-life pastel of mangos and cantaloupes to get to the circuit breaker box. “We need a microwave,” my husband says. “And move my faux food!” I cry. We have no microwave.

Though the walls are white, you hardly notice since they’re covered with paintings and prints. A stack of wooden books form a coffee table. A metal box in the shape of more books holds an azalea that needs watering. Rugs of all sizes and countries of origin cover the floors; though they’re not yet layered, their fringes are starting to intertwine lasciviously. An old stone lion guards the bathtub; a plaster of paris ice cream cone the size of a small child leans against the bedroom door. And since I found the tools to secure frames at an angle, the walls of my attic study are filling up with cartoons, letters, and photographs.
How did this happen?
I wonder.
How did I re-create something nearly identical to where I grew up when I intended, hoped for, just the opposite?

But if you can’t fight Mother Nature, then you certainly can’t fight your own bred-in-the-bone nature. Like my character Abby in this novel (and my forebears), I’ve spent many hours trudging the muddy farmers’ acres at Brimfield and braving the black flies at the Union Antiques Fair. Flea markets, yard sales, auctions, and junk stores are my Paris and my Rome. Let me tell you about the bowls, candlesticks, quilts, and rocking horse I stumbled upon—where I found them, the fabulous deals I got. One of my favorite bargains is a seven-foot carved and painted wooden Red Sox ballplayer wearing an old-fashioned striped uniform. He guards our staircase landing and has to be moved every time we hoist something bigger than a bag of groceries up the stairs.

I collect old portraits—eighteenth-and nineteenth-century men, women, and children; dozens of strange faces stare out from all my walls. “Ancestors?” people ask. “Characters,” I reply. I give them stories. They turn up in my books. While everyone I know is simplifying, de-cluttering, getting rid of stuff (There seem to be magazines, websites, whole adulted courses on how to do this. Imagine!), I am adding still more.

To celebrate the finishing of this novel, a friend gave me a Victorian chamber pot. (After I wrote
Mail,
I amassed a collection of postal memorabilia—mailbox banks, giant stamps, an actual postman’s hat with flaps. I stocked up on bird houses for
The End of an Error
. Even though
Host Family
didn’t ignite a desire to collect lice, I do possess some wind-up centipedes and a pen decorated with ladybugs.) Another friend brought yet one more ironstone chamber pot to my reading in New York. I am the grateful recipient of multiple copies of
Sonnets From The Portuguese.
British house guests contributed a packet of Elizabeth Barrett Browning postcards from the National Portrait Gallery. I’ve framed one and Velcroed it to my computer top. With her flowing hair and lace-trimmed dress, EBB looks appropriately frail and poetess-like. Soon enough talismans for my new novel will appear: chicken pot pies, mother-in-law jokes. But that’s another story, another book. Right now I hope that two chamber pots, several sonnets, and one hundred postcards will provide the decorative background for this book. But then I look at those chamber pots and think: Planter? Mail receptacle? Postcard displayer? Loose change repository? In seconds, the old instincts click in. And I know I need more.

About the Author

MAMEVE MEDWED
is the author of three previous critically acclaimed novels and is a longtime teacher of fiction writing. Her short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in many publications, including
Redbook, Missouri Review, The Boston Globe, Playgirl
, and
Newsday
. Born in Maine, she currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband. Her fifth novel,
Men and Their Mothers
, will be published by William Morrow in Spring 2008.

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Additional
Praise
for Mameve Medwed and
How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life

Five Weeks on the
Boston Globe
Bestseller List A Booksense Top Twenty Pick

“If you ever went to Harvard, hung out in Harvard Square hoping to run into some cute single person, or just grew up in the shadow of an academic superstar, you’ll likely look fondly on Medwed’s Cambridge tale.”

—The Washington Post

“…A charming, wry romp (with a) more profound problem that lingers, compelling us to confront our own bonds with our diverse objects of desire.”

—The Boston Globe

“Medwed’s best yet is light and learned, and she handles self-esteem-challenged Abby’s crisis of confidence with humor and sensitivity.”

—Carol Haggis,
Booklist

“A buoyant dramady.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Her voice is spot-on—any woman who has felt like she doesn’t quite have it together will identify with Abby.”

—The Bangor Daily News

“A lovely chronicle of the quest for ownership—both of an object and of the self.”

—BookPage

“A ride of self-discovery which discerning readers of fiction will not want to miss.”

—The Aesthetic Bohemian

“Whether you have an old heirloom in the attic or a bad boyfriend “Whether you have an old heirloom in the attic or a bad boyfriend in your past, Medwed’s new comedy is sure to satisfy your hopes, your revenge fantasies, and, especially, your funny bone.”