Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

“You know,” he added; “I’d like to meet your husband, if he’s around. When does he get home?”

“About five-thirty,” Katherine answered. “I don’t think he’s here yet.” She fumbled along the smooth leather side of the car looking for the door handle, though her impulse was to stand up on the seat and jump out. But Dr. Einsam got there first and held the door open for her.

“Ten after five.” He consulted his watch. “Maybe I’ll wait for him. I haven’t got anything else to do. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“No; that’s all right,” Katherine replied. What else could she say?

“Good.” Dr. Einsam followed her into the house, which had never looked smaller, pinker, or more impossibly Los Angeles. At least it was neat. She put her bag on the shelf, turned on some lights, hung her coat in the closet, washed her hands, and then she had to go back and face Dr. Einsam, who was sitting on one of her new wicker chairs stroking his pointed beard and appearing to read the American Historical Review.

“Would you like a cup of coffee while you wait, or something?”

“No, thanks. You sit down over here.” Katherine had been about to sit down, but now she did not do so. It was intolerable, being ordered about not only at work, but now in her own house. She stood, and Dr. Einsam looked at her, through his horn-rimmed spectacles.

“You don’t like me, do you?” he suddenly asked.

Katherine looked back at him, at the end of her patience. “No.” She heard herself speaking. “I don’t like you, if you must know.” How could she have said that?—not that it wasn’t true. Well, at least now he would go.

Instead, Iz sat back. His face broke into a smile, as if Katherine had given him a big present. “Good,” he said. “And why not?”

Katherine was flabbergasted. She could think of a dozen reasons, but she paused. “Come on,” he urged.

“Well,” she said unwillingly. “You’re inconsiderate.”

“How am I inconsiderate?” Iz was still smiling, almost laughing at her; Katherine grew more enraged.

“You ask rude questions, like why does someone dislike you. Why shouldn’t someone dislike you, if they want to? Who do you think you are, anyhow?”

Iz nodded his head once, and kept it lowered. Katherine felt that she had won round one, though with some loss of poise. “All right,” he said. He looked up, not as subdued as she had expected, but somewhat so. “Now will you sit down? How about that chair there?” This time he pointed to a modern one in the shape of a large brown wicker fish. “You didn’t get that back in Boston, I’ll bet.”

“No, I bought it here, at the Akron,” Katherine said. Obviously he wasn’t going to go until Paul came home, so she sat down on the edge of the fish. “All this furniture is new. Of course it’s just cheap stuff; I won’t take it when we go back East.” Iz nodded, but made no comment. She went on, pleased to have put the conversation back on a conventional basis so soon. “Paul’s company moved our own furniture out to Los Angeles for us, but it just didn’t look right here. This house is really much too small for it.”

“So you sold all your old furniture?” Iz asked.

“Oh no. It’s in the garage. I wouldn’t sell it; it belonged to my parents. Some of the pieces have been in the family for generations. They’re really too good to use.”

Iz seemed to ponder this, stroking his beard. “Your parents also don’t use this furniture,” he remarked. “Or maybe they have more at home?”

“No. My parents aren’t living now,” Katherine answered.

“Ah.” Iz held his chin; he did not offer the usual condolences. “Too good to use,” he said. “What kind of furniture is that? It is like clothes that are too pretty to wear, food so delicious you can’t eat it. Some sort of art object.”

“Well, some of the pieces really are art objects,” Katherine explained. “There’s a Hitchcock chair that’s like one in the Worcester Art Museum. And the Empire clock—that’s really very valuable.”

“I’d like to see this unusual furniture,” Iz said. “Could I see it?”

“If you want to,” Katherine said, rather surprised; she would never have suspected Dr. Einsam of an interest in antiques.

They went out through the kitchen door. The sun was behind the trees now, and golden motes swam in almost horizontal layers across the little back yard. The heliconia, still blooming now in February (but did it ever stop?) was intensely red and yellow against the wall. Katherine opened the garage doors.

Gradually, over the past few months, the garage had filled up with ghosts: white-sheeted objects stood awkwardly about on the stained cement like a collection of ill-trained modern dancers. Katherine raised the shroud first from an early Victorian love-seat, tightly upholstered in velvet and encrusted with mahogany roses. The marble-topped pedestal table with bird’s claws, the tall chests, the chairs, the lamps, and the Empire clock supported by two gilded deities—all were displayed, explained, and recovered one by one. Iz, now apparently harmless, stood and listened to what she said.

“Interesting,” he remarked. “Very interesting. And is it comfortable?” He sat down on the sheet which again covered her father’s wing chair. “Uhh,” he groaned, and got up again. “I see what you mean now: too good to use. Yah, I think this furniture is much better off here in the museum.”

In spite of herself, Katherine laughed too.

“I’ll tell you something else,” Iz added, leaning over the back of the chair now. “Maybe you don’t know it, but I think you’re happy to have the excuse to get it all out of the house.”

“Of course not,” Katherine told him, but not with irritation. “You don’t understand.”

“Oh yes,” Iz said. “I understand exactly. I know this type of fetishism. We have more in common than you think. When my parents left Germany—they had the foresight to get out early, in 1933—they took all their most dear possessions with them. To Brussels, to London, and then to Montreal, and then to New York, all those trunks and crates, and barrels of Meissen china, too good to eat off of, all went with us. And the heavy drapes, most of the furniture, the Biedermeier, you know what that is? Very beautiful, very valuable, very uncomfortable.”

“And where is it now?” Katherine asked.

“In their apartment in New York. A very small apartment, much smaller than the one we had in Berlin, but all the things are there. In the apartment now are so many things there is almost no space for my parents. Each time I get married, my mother says, Take, Izzy, take some of the furniture. Of course there is ambivalence: Yah, I think, why not? But I always manage to refuse. Sell it, I tell them, sell it so you have some room to breathe, so at least you can see New York City out of your windows.”

“You could take a piece or two,” Katherine suggested. Iz shook his head.

“No, I couldn’t. Not in my apartment.”

“Of course, if you have modern things already,” Katherine said, “I see what you mean. Because I did have some old pieces inside for a while, along with the new furniture, and it looked all wrong.” She twitched the dust-sheet straight over the bow legs of a table, then, followed by Iz, she left the garage.

“I can’t imagine where Paul can be,” she said. “He’s usually home by this time.” That wasn’t true, she thought; lately he was delayed more often than not. She shut and locked the garage doors and they walked down the driveway to the street. The sun was just setting; the smog-blurred sky had begun to turn from smoky blue to pale red; lights were on in the houses next door, but across the street everything was dark.