How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life (5 page)

“It’s nice to have a young’un to work on,” she continues. “With the older types the makeup kind of settles into the cracks and jowls.” She laughs. “Just like the dust in some of them antiques.”

“Which makes it all the more valuable.”

“In a
plate
.” Carol takes off my bib, brushes powder away from my shoulders.

“I’m not exactly dressed for success,” I say.

“You look great,” she insists. “Besides, it’s your antique that’s stage center in this show.”

“So tell me the story of this chamber pot,” the ceramics expert says. “How did it come to be in your possession?” I have left the Green Room for the production set. Lights blaze. Cameras roll around on dollies. People in
Roadshow
T-shirts and headsets run back and forth checking, testing, adjusting mikes. I am sitting across the table from the ceramics expert.
MORT GRINSPAN, STERNS AUCTION HOUSE
, his name tag states. He has kind eyes behind trifocals. He has graceful hands. His teeth are blindingly white. He wears a pinkie ring with a coat of arms. His own? Or one he picked up in an antique booth? The chamber pot lies between us. Under its concentrated beam of light, on its lazy Susan altar, you can see its nicks and cracks, its faded flowers, its discolored surfaces, the tired lines and sags of use and age. It seems like a humble object, indeed, to be stage center, to be the focus of so much fuss.

I’m feeling humble myself. Or rather, humbled by stage fright. I clutch at the edge of the table with such force my tendons and knuckles are high ridges of white. “Well,” I begin. I swallow hard. My throat closes up. I freeze. You’re not under oath, I remind myself. You don’t have to tell them everything. The divorce. Henrietta. The division of the spoils. Clyde. Your pathetic 1040 tax return and the refund you’re hoping for.

“Well?” he repeats. Mort’s used to us tough cases. His voice warms.

And melts mine. “Well,” I repeat. “It was my mother’s. When she died, I cleaned out her apartment and nobody else—none of the other heirs—wanted it.”

“Do you know how she came into its possession?”

“She and…she…traveled a lot. She liked flea markets and antiques shops. She liked to bring souvenirs home. She said they reminded her of—well—good trips, nice times.”

“Do you have any idea where your mother found this particular chamber pot?”

“I assumed Portugal.”

“Yes, I can see how you’d think that.” He turns the chamber pot over. He pushes it toward me. “Can you read this inscription?”

“I thought it said
Made in Portugal
. But a friend pointed out that it actually says—though it’s very faint, no doubt an English-as-a-second language mistake—
From the Portuguese
.”

“Yes indeed,” agrees the expert. “Indeed,” he repeats. “And that makes all the difference.”

“It does?” I sense my mouth hanging open, unhinged like a Howdy Doody jaw. Still, I wouldn’t mind looking as astonished as Howdy Doody’s owner if only to see $1,000–$1,200 flash beneath my big O lips.

“Well, let me tell you about this pot,” Mort confides. He’s taking his time. Not giving anything away. He leans back. His chair creaks. “But first let me ask you something else. Did your mother, in all her travels, spend time in Italy?”

The guy must be psychic. “Why, yes. It was her favorite country. She and Henri—her friend,
friends
—spent months at a time there. In Florence particularly.”

“Aha. Just as I thought.”

“Does the chamber pot come from Florence?” I ask. “By way of Portugal?” I add. I try to remember European history. A freshman-year survey course. Did the Italians colonize the Portuguese? Did the Portuguese colonize Italy? Did I get that far in the syllabus?

“We-ell-ell-ell…” He stretches the word, then follows with an excruciating pause. The camera moves closer. I’m boiling. I tug at my turtleneck. Sweat beads my upper lip. Rivulets pour down my forehead. If we don’t get this
Roadshow
on the road, I’ll disappear into a puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Which is starting to look pretty appealing. Why did I come here in the first place?

He leans toward me. “Tell me,” he asks. “Did you ever hear of Elizabeth Barrett Browning?”

I flinch. My chair legs skip back. What a question to ask an educated person from an academic family in Cambridge. Even one who gets her Portugal and her Italy mixed up. “Of course,” I say, indignant. “Nineteenth-century poet. Married Robert Browning. Against her father’s wishes. Invalid. Lived on Wimpole Street,” I recite. “Fled to Italy. Regained health. Had a child. Nicknamed Pen. Died in her husband’s arms.” How’s that? I want to ask, show-off that I am. “And of course wrote
Sonnets from the Portuguese,
” I continue. I freeze. I gasp.
Fled to Italy. Wrote
Sonnets from the Portuguese.

“Eureka!” exclaims Mort. He actually claps. “Attagirl,” he cheers.

I forget about the cameras. I forget that my makeup is sliding off my face. I forget the lugging and the climbing and the waiting-in-line. I forget my exhaustion. I forget my shame. I forget that I, a miz from way back, have been called a girl on national public television. My full attention is riveted on this man across from me. Despite the cast of thousands hustling about, we are the only two in this room. His eyes behind their trifocals hold mine. They are watery with—what? Emotion? Allergies? I lean forward so far into the table that the edge bruises my ribs. It’s all I can do not to grab his wrists and pin him into a wrestler’s hold. “Yes?” I demand.

“We-ell-ell-ell…” he multisyllables again.

“So?” I prompt.

“Your chamber pot belonged to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. There’s actually a photo of it glimpsed in her bedroom—half hidden by a coverlet but unmistakable nevertheless—at Casa Guidi, where the Brownings made their Florence home.”

“Wow!” I shout. “Yikes!” I yell.

“And there’s more.”

“More?” I am beside myself. Then puzzle over the meaning of
to be beside oneself
. How do you parse it? How do you define it in a literal sense? What a strange phrase. One I’ll have to look up in my dictionary of American slang. Unless it’s British. My mind spins out. What is the matter with me? I force my attention back to Mort. My eyes lock with his. I study the lines on his trifocals.

Mort Grinspan either has the patience of Job or a great sense of dramatic timing. He clears his throat. “This chamber pot is valuable for many reasons.” He holds up his hand. The coat of arms on his pinkie ring gleams. When I look closer, I am disappointed to see it’s not a coat of arms at all, no royal escutcheon, no clenched sheaves of wheat, no family name arched at the top. It’s a Boston College shield, embossed with
Class of 1956
. No matter. Who knows better than I that a love of antiques, an appreciation for English poetry, can hardly be kept locked inside Ivy League gates. “Though it is not valuable in and of itself. Nineteenth-century ironstone. Italian. A dime a dozen. A lira a dozen, that is, or should I say euro.” He chuckles. “Its value lies in the fact that”—he ticks his fingers—“one, it belonged to the Brownings—and we have the documentation, ergo a photo, to prove it. But that’s not all.”

I nod. It sounds enough to me. But then I’m not greedy. Or didn’t think I was.

“Two, the bottom of this chamber pot bears the handwriting of Elizabeth herself,
From the Portuguese
. So what can we conclude from this?”

“You’ve got me.” I shrug.

“That after a hard day of composing sonnets, she woke up in the middle of the night, had the idea for the title, and scratched it on the nearest item in hand.”

“Which would have been the chamber pot,” I fill in. I pause. “She didn’t have any paper available?” I can’t help myself.

“Irrelevant.” He waves his hand the way you dismiss the dumbest student in your class.

Nevertheless, I don’t go to the dunce’s stool in the corner without a fight. “But how do you know it’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s actual handwriting?”

He gives me an incredulous, are-you-challenging-an-expert? look. Then sighs. “We have our ways of documenting such things.” He waits for this to register.

It does. I nod.

“And what is even more exciting,” he goes on—and his voice sinks into the kind of churchy whisper you might use in the presence of the Dalai Lama or a just-beatified saint—“is Flush.”

“Flush?” I ask. Maybe I should quit the antiques business and hire myself out as a straight man at a comedy club.

“Flush was EBB’s beloved dog. A cocker spaniel.” He frowns at me. “You must have come across her enchanting poem, ‘To Flush, My Dog’?”

I shake my head. Guess that’s what we would have covered if I hadn’t dropped out of college last semester of my senior year.

He pulls a sheaf of paper from his breast pocket. Adjusts his glasses. He takes a sip of water from a beaker resting on a stool at his right. “‘But of thee it shall be said,/ This dog watched beside a bed,/ Day and night unweary,/ Watched within a curtained room,/ Where no sunbeam brake the gloom,/ Round the sick and dreary./ Roses, gathered for a vase,/ In that chamber died apace,/ Beam and breeze resigning;/ This dog only, waited on,/ Knowing that when light is gone,/ Love remains for shining.” His eyes tear up. From the same poem pocket, he digs out a handkerchief the size of a banquet napkin and blows into it.

What can I say? It’s more treacly than Omar Khayyam. I who in the interest of full disclosure must confess my favorite poets are E. E. Cummings, Dorothy Parker, and Ogden Nash, not to mention a decided fondness for Allen Ginsberg’s
Howl
. But I’ve got my eye on the prize. And on the TV cameras. “How beautiful,” I lie.

“And, by the way, none other than Virginia Woolf herself wrote the biography of Flush.”

Now he’s got me. I’ve devoured
To the Light house, Mrs. Dalloway, A Room of One’s Own
. I’ve read the diaries, the letters. I went through my Bloomsbury phase. I’ve visited Charleston Farm house, walked the graveyard in West Firle. I’ve skipped stones across the river Ouse. How could I not know this? “What’s it called? The book?” I ask.

“Flush: A Biography.”

I hang my head in shame.

Mort Grinspan tips the chamber pot in my direction. All the better for me to see the scribbled dog inside.

“Take a closer peek at the drawing of the spaniel. That iconic dog, in the poetess’s very hand. As you can see, at the bottom of his collar, she has written
Flush
.”

And what a better name to grace the inside of a chamber pot, I want to point out—but the awed silence surrounding us clamps my lips shut.

“Now that we’ve described and verified this item, Miss Randolph, do you have any idea what it might be worth?” Mort Grinspan asks.

“Not the slightest clue.”

“Care to hazard a guess?”

I think of Howdy Doody. I clench my jaw. I put my hands in my lap. I cross my fingers. Given the snugness of my boots, there’s no room to cross my toes. I try anyway. I take a deep breath. “Fifteen hundred?” I manage to get out.

Mort Grinspan laughs. “With this provenance? With this
From the Portuguese
? With this drawing of Flush? My dear young lady, you are wildly off the mark. I’d stake my reputation on seventy-five.”

“You’re kidding! Seventy-five hundred?” I yell.

“Hardly, Miss Randolph. Seventy-five thousand at the very least.”

T
hree

T
he buzzer wakes me. I glance at the bedside clock. It’s eleven in the morning. Even though it’s Saturday, I can’t help blushing with shame. Since I hired a Rindge and Latin High School sophomore to help out on the weekends, you couldn’t say I’ve been rushing to get to my booth. Which has, I’m proud to admit, recently been receiving a glut of visitors. I’ve sold the dragon armchair. I’ve sold the glass-fronted bookcase. I’ve unloaded a cachepot and two silver-tipped walking sticks. A newlywed has put the coal shuttle on twenty-four-hour hold. She needs to check with her groom. “See what a little advertising can do,” Gus crowed.

My
Antiques Roadshow
appearance aired two weeks ago. Though I’ve got it on videotape, one viewing is more than enough. There I am, raccoon-ringed eyes, Kabuki-mask skin, Kewpie-doll lips opened in an astonished, clichéd O while running underneath, like the subtitles of a foreign film, is this:
Chamber Pot Belonging to Elizabeth Barrett Browning—$75,000
. During my fifteen minutes of fame, I blink fast. I pull at my hair.
Wow! Wow!
I exclaim.
You’re kidding,
I add.
Gosh. Gosh
. Over and over like an old LP with a nick in its groove.

Now I throw on a bathrobe. I open the door a crack. The intercom has been broken ever since I moved in. “Who is it?” I call down three flights of stairs.

“Mailman. You’ve got a registered letter. You need to sign for it.”

I slip on my boots, which, though it’s March, lie just inside the door. I hurry down the stairs. Thank goodness no one’s coming or leaving to witness my slovenliness.

Except the mailman, of course. Who, given the nature of his job, has no doubt seen worse. People out of the shower. Lovers out of bed. Couples in the middle of a fight. Roommates kicking each other’s empty yogurt cartons into the corridor.

The mailman’s wearing a cap with blue postal-issue flaps. His eyes stay on my boots. No wonder. My hair’s a mess. I slathered my face with cream last night, and haven’t wiped it off. He thrusts a letter at me. He props a clipboard under my nose with a stubby pen attached. I sign. “Have a good day,” he says. His heart’s not in it, I can tell.

I don’t look at the envelope until I’m back inside my apartment. I flip the coffeepot on. I fall into my mother’s armchair, upholstered in a faded chintz of cabbage roses and peonies. When I was a little girl, we’d sit here together before dinner, me curled into her lap, as she read from
Winnie the Pooh, A Child’s Garden of Verses, Charlotte’s Web
.