Going Vintage (5 page)

“Done. Now. Let’s inventory. Mom’s antiques are going to bring in the bulk of the cash, but I want to hold on to those and make sure she really wants to sell. Dad’s old tool set is a collector’s year. I’ll have to check its condition, but I know a guy up in Fresno who specializes in vintage tools …”

So my dad. He’s technically a real-estate agent, but I think he’s only still in that gig so he can have something to put on his business cards. What he really does is buy and sell crap, but “crap dealer” doesn’t look great on a card, unless you add an
s
to
crap
and work at a casino in Reno.

Actually, that’s where we used to live, until three years ago, when Lady Luck turned on the economy. After working on too many foreclosures and short sells, Dad quit “the most
depressing job on earth,” and we moved to Southern California for a fresh start. Now we rent a tract home for practically free from my rich uncle Rodney, who owns more homes than most people own shoes.

In Orange, with the large metropolitan area and a healthy antiques industry, Dad can finally go for his dream. Garage sales, antiques malls, estate sales, abandoned storage units—he picks through all of it. As a result, he always has this musty smell about him, aged books and polished wood. Add in his shaggy hair, the sleeve of tattoos on his right arm, his wiry frame, and his collection of old neckties, and my dad is quite possibly the most lovable person I’ve ever known.

“Hey, Dad?” I interrupt. “As much as I love me some talk about old radiators, do you think I can have more than that dress?”

“You’re not giving me a hard time about the train set because you want it, are you?”

“Of course not. I’m … I’m really interested in the early sixties right now. I’d like more clothes from then … more accessories?”

Dad points at me. “Is this your new phase? Because early sixties vintage is expensive. Yes, it’s classic, and I’d rather my daughter dress in knee-length skirts than what most of your friends are wearing, but I can get a lot of money for those clothes.”

“It’s not like I’m asking you to take me to Rodeo Drive. I just want some old clothes.”

“Highly sought after
vintage
clothes.”

“And, maybe, I don’t know … pictures? Of Grandma?” I’d started to consider how I was going to research without the Internet. Our library would have plenty, but better to connect with more personalized information, more of Grandma’s small-town, big dreams. “And any, um, keepsake things she left from when she was my age? Like journals or year-books?”

“Oh, Mal.” Dad puts down his fork and reaches across the table. “This is hard on you, isn’t it? Don’t worry. Mom’s going to be happier at Sunshine Villa. It’s very state-of-the-art … tennis and golfing and a spa and lots of activities. That house has been haunting her ever since Dad died, and she’s just getting a fresh start, not giving up, okay?”

I blink at my dad. I haven’t been worried about Grandma Vivian—I haven’t even worried about Dad. Five-hundred-dollar train set or not, this isn’t easy for him. And here I am asking for all of my grandma’s memories, just so I can be a little more authentic. I’m not thinking straight, or maybe I’m thinking too straight and not considering anyone else. That’s what pain will do to a person.

Pain. Why did it feel so big? Is Jeremy hurting? I hope he is. I hope he’s writhing. I bet it would hurt less to know he felt even an ounce of this. I look down at my wedge, and notice the head of lettuce looks like Jeremy’s head, that the bits of bacon could easily be his eyes, the tomatoes his mouth, and—

“Honey, why are you attacking that salad?”

I set my fork down. “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m—”

“Fine. You mentioned that.” He folds his napkin in his lap for the fourth time. His lap is fully protected from crumbs or spills. As for me, I’m pretty sure half the blue cheese is on my sleeve. “Anything you want, you got it. I found a small bin of old pictures from when she was young. I’m sure she won’t mind if you bring it home—”

“Yeah?” I’d thought I’d have to wait, have to pillage through her boxes next time. Now there is a bin back at that house that might have a small answer, a clue how to find my vintage self. “We can bring it back later. I’m just … I want to connect with her maybe? You know?”

He smiles, kind gray eyes crinkling. “Makes sense to me.”

It would make sense. If that were the truth.

We get home late Saturday night, and it isn’t until I’ve had all of Sunday morning to methodically erase Jeremy from my bedroom that I feel prepared to look through Grandma’s stuff. Part of my detox involved bending all the bendiness right out of that smug little purple paper clip, but of course it pokes my hangnail, and now I have a mutilated thumbnail
and
a cheating boyfriend.

I suck on my thumb as I open the bin and lay Grandma’s life across my floor, from baby to adolescence. It’s so different now—I could fill this room with all the pictures Mom takes of Ginnie and me at every mundane moment of our life, even if most of those pictures never get printed off her computer. All I have of Grandma’s teen years fits in this box.

My favorite picture is of Grandma at sixteen in the seersucker dress, the sun behind her, face splattered with freckles and exploding in a grin. This picture hung in her hallway gallery, and as a child I wondered when Grandma stopped looking like that girl and became the wrinkled but elegant woman I’ve always known. I stick this picture on my desk with no intention of giving it back.

Beyond the framed pictures are childhood gifts from my dad and uncle, a shoe box of loose photos, and the mother lode. Her yearbook from junior year—1962–1963. I run my hand over the silver embossing. Grandma went to Tulare Union High School in a central California farm town that smells like manure but is that wholesome kind of place where you know the names of the butcher and the baker and the guy sitting on his porch across the street. I mean, I only visited Tulare once when I was six, but that’s how I remember it.

I close my eyes, imagining what I’ll find inside the year-book pages. Pictures of Grandma at dances and pep club meetings. Pep club is the list item most foreign to me. What do they do at meetings, practice peppiness? Do they compete with other schools, try to out-pep each other? Before I can solve these mysteries, someone tries to twist the handle of my door.

“What?” I yell.

“I have an offering.” Ginnie’s voice is muffled through the door.

“You alone?”

“No. Eduardo is with me. He’s the offering.”

I unlock the door and Ginnie holds out a bowl of milk toast. Milk toast is the most perfect breakup comfort food ever, and since it’s Sunday, my “diet” allows it. You line a bowl with pats of butter. Add about five slices of buttered toast. Add warm, almost-boiling buttered milk and two poached eggs. Oh, and then add more butter. My dad’s recipe, of course.

“This is better than Eduardo,” I say.

I sit down at my white desk Mom bought at a Pottery Barn outlet. Ginnie paces back and forth, watching Grandma’s childhood follow her forward and in reverse. “Were you playing the song ‘Survivor’ earlier?”

“I was deleting Jeremy.” I wipe some butter off my chin. “I needed motivation. But no more iPod, not when we start The List tomorrow.”

Ginnie sits on the rug, folding her legs underneath her. “
We
?”

“Beyoncé still had Destiny’s Child when she sang ‘Survivor.’”

Ginnie laughs. “Fine. Fine. I’ll do your stupid list. But I’m not giving up technology too. I can’t do my homework without music. And I order my moisturizer online. And—”

I tap my bowl with my spoon. “Okay! I’ll go one hundred percent 1962, and you can just be the vintage sidekick.”

“I play center forward. I’m never a sidekick.”

I groan.

“Sorry. Soccer humor.” She picks up a picture of Grandma in college at an antiwar protest. Grandma’s waist-length hair
is as wild and defiant as the scowl on her face. I don’t like this one as much as the seersucker picture, don’t like the obvious absence of a bra underneath Grandma’s T-shirt. Plus, who
yells
for peace? “What do you want me to do on the list? The dinner party one? Can we do organic?”

“This is 1962 we’re talking about. A can of green beans was considered organic,” I say.

“We’ll have to try out some recipes first,” Ginnie says. “Maybe I’ll make some family dinners.”

“Whatever you want.” My sister is helping me! I am not alone in my list mania, which is especially vital because there is one item I cannot do alone. “You can invite your steady over too.”

“That item is stupid. No one has ‘found a steady’ in forty years.”

“If it’s on the list, we have to do it. And I’ve already been there, done that, got that I WAS TOOLED BY JEREMY MCTOOLERSON T-shirt. And look what good came of it,” I say.

Okay,
some
good came of it. Maybe sometimes Jeremy thought of me instead of BubbleYum when certain songs came on. Like all the songs he put on my iPod. And the song we first danced to. And the music we sang in the car, when we were driving home with the windows down and it was just us. We couldn’t really hear the melody over the wind, just our own voices shrieking in out-of-tune ecstasy. I had to believe those moments were real, that they were mine.

But hey. I had The List, so I wasn’t giving Jeremy much thought anyway. Only thirty-eight minutes of every hour.

Forty-seven, tops.

Ginnie squints up at me, chewing her lip. “You really need to do this? I mean, I know I give you a hard time, but how are you feeling?”

“Like I don’t know who I am and I’ve lost all hope in humanity. You know. Same old.”

“Seriously, Mallory. I get it. This Jeremy stuff, how it all went down … it’s a big deal.”

It is a big deal. I know there are worse things happening in the world. I recognize how good I have it. After all, I’m sitting in my cozy home eating warm milk toast. But knowing something is different from feeling it, and right now, losing Jeremy, especially in the shocking, incomplete way I have, feels like it will never stop hurting, that this new pain is as much a part of me as my arms.

I’m still so numb I haven’t even cried.

“I’m going to have to see him at school tomorrow,” I whisper.

Ginnie crosses the room on her knees and hugs my lap. “See him, but you don’t have to talk to him.”

“He’s going to want an explanation,” I say.

“An explanation?
You
don’t owe
him
anything. If you don’t want to talk to him, don’t. If you want to yell at him, do. If you want to slash his tires—”

“Ginnie.”

“I was going to say don’t. Or do. Whatever helps.” She perches her chin on my legs and looks up at me from underneath thick lashes. “And since you obviously haven’t gone
completely vintage yet, I think you need a farewell marathon. So what’ll it be? British chick flick or vulgar comedies?”

I smile. “Vulgar, please.”

She shakes her head. “I hope you don’t think once we go vintage that I’m watching some stupid show like
Bewitched
.”

Chapter 5

The things a random passerby at Orange Park High thinks of a teenage girl who supposedly hacked into her boyfriend’s Friendspace account, proclaimed him a tool, and abandoned all technology, thus allowing an entire weekend of Internet rumors to breed:

1. *Insert any and all derogatory words used toward women, including creative combinations thereof.*

2. How long do I need to wait until I can hit on her ex?

3. How long do I need to wait until I can hit on her?

4. I would delete my account
.

5. I would move
.

6. Why is she wearing that remarkably chic seersucker dress with bobby socks to school? What does she think this is, 1962?

Or maybe it’s not so bad. If my classmates think anything when they see me, it’s a fleeting thought. I’m not that high up on the People to Care About scale at this school. And they all have their own lives and own worries and own insecurities. Granted, there might be major Mallory drama brewing on Friendspace, but I feel so fabulous in Grandma’s dress, I soldier on with my chin high. I also have the scavenged turquoise ring on a chain tucked under my dress, over my heart. I’ve decided to keep it, just for a while, so I can have something tangible to connect me to Grandma’s teenage spirit.