What The Dead Know

“There weren’t any riots in Woodlawn. The trouble was miles away.”

“No, but it aggravated him all the same. So Benny sold to some woman who sold children’s clothes, but they were too dear.”

“Dear?”

“Pricey. Who’s gonna spend twenty dollars on a sweater that a baby’s gonna wear all of a month? So she sold out to this restaurant, but it just didn’t take. The young couple just didn’t know which end was up, couldn’t get a western omelet on the table in under forty-five minutes. And then there was a bookstore, but what with Gordon’s up to Westview and Waldenbooks at Security, who’s gonna come to Woodlawn to buy a book? And then there was the tux rental-”

“The Darts,” Dave said, remembering the round-shouldered man with a measuring tape about his neck, the shy woman who peered out from a great curtain of long, prematurely gray hair. “I took over their lease.”

“Nice couple, sensible types, but people go to where they’ve always gone when they want formalwear. Tuxes is traditional. Like funeral homes. You go to the place where your dad went, and he went to the place that his dad went, and so on. You want to open a new place, you got to go to a new neighborhood, where people don’t have loyalties.”

“So four different businesses in less than seven years.”

“Yep. It’s one of those black holes. Every block has one, the one store that never works.” She brought her hand up to her mouth, the waxed grabbing paper still in her hand. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bethany. I’m sure you’ll make a go of it with your little, um…”

“Tchotchkes?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” In a German bakery that sold “Jewish” rye bread, without irony or apology, it was probably too much to expect Yiddish to be understood, much less the self-lacerating mockery in Dave’s use of the word. Tchotchkes indeed. The items in his store were beautiful, unique. Yet even the families he knew through the Fivefold Path, like-minded people when it came to spiritual matters, had been slow to embrace his material goods. If he had been in New York, or San Francisco, or even Chicago, the store would be a hit. But he was in Baltimore, which he’d never intended. Then again, it was here that he’d met Miriam, had his family. How could he wish that away?

The wind chime over the front door keened softly. A middle-aged woman, and Dave wrote her off instantly, assuming she must be in need of directions. Then he realized she was probably only a few years removed from him, no more than forty-five or so. Her clothes-a fussy pink knit suit and boxy handbag-had thrown him off.

“I thought you might have unusual items for Easter baskets,” she said, stumbling a little over the words, as if worried that this unusual store required an unusual etiquette. “Something that could be used as a keepsake?”

Fuck . Miriam had suggested that he stock more seasonal items and he had ignored her. He had done Christmas, of course. But Easter had seemed far-fetched. “I’m afraid not.”

“Nothing?” The woman’s distress seemed disproportionate. “It doesn’t have to be for Easter, just Easter- themed. An egg, a chick, a rabbit. Anything.”

“Rabbits,” he repeated. “You know, I think we have some wooden rabbits from Mexico. But they’re a little large for an Easter basket.”

He went to the shelves that held Latin American art and gently pulled down one of the rabbit carvings, passing it to the woman as if it were an infant that needed to be cradled. She held it in front of her with straight, stiff arms. The rabbit was simple and primitive, a sculpture created with a few swift, sure cuts of a knife, far too nice to be a consolation prize in some child’s Easter basket. It wasn’t a toy. It was art.

“Seventeen dollars?” the woman asked, looking at the handwritten price tag on its base. “And so plain.”

“Yes, but the simplicity…” Dave didn’t even bother to finish his own sentence. He had clearly lost the sale. But he thought of Miriam, her poignant faith in him, and made one last attempt. “You know, I might have some wooden darning eggs in the back room. I found them at a West Virginia craft fair, and they’re painted in bright primary colors-red, blue.”

“Really?” She seemed oddly excited by this prospect. “Would you get them for me?”

“Well…” The request was a delicate one, for it would mean leaving her alone in the shop. This was the consequence of not being able to afford a part-time helper. Sometimes Dave invited customers into the back room, made it seem like he was conferring special honor on them, rather than insult them by suggesting he was worried about theft. But he couldn’t imagine this woman pocketing anything, or trying to get into his cash register, an old- fashioned one that would ring clamorously if opened. “Wait here, I’ll see if I can find them.”

It took longer to find the eggs than it should have. In his head, Miriam’s voice nagged him-gently, but a nag was a nag-reminding him about the need for inventory and procedures and systems. But the point of the shop had been to escape such things, to set himself free from the rigors of numbers. He still remembered his disappointment when Miriam had failed to understand the significance of the store’s name.

“The Man with the Blue Guitar-won’t people think it’s a music store?”

“You don’t get it?”

“Well, I can see it’s kind of…zany, the way things are now. The Velvet Mushroom, that kind of thing. Still, it might confuse people.”

“It’s from Wallace Stevens. The poet who was also an insurance agent.”

“Oh, the ‘Emperor of Ice-Cream’ guy. Sure.”

“Stevens was like me-an artist trapped inside a businessman. He sold insurance, but he was a poet. I was a fiscal analyst, but that didn’t fulfill me. Can’t you see?”

“Wasn’t Stevens the vice president of an insurance agency? And didn’t he keep working, even as he wrote poems?”

“Well, yes, it’s not an exact parallel. But it’s the same emotionally.”

Miriam hadn’t said anything to that.

The eggs located, he carried them out to counter. The store was empty again. Immediately he checked the register, but his meager supply of cash was there, and a quick survey of the more precious items-well, semiprecious, by definition, jewelry made from opals and amethysts-indicated they had been left undisturbed in the glass case. It was only then that he noticed the envelope on top of the counter, addressed to Dave Bethany. Had the mailman come and gone while he was in the back? But this was unstamped, with no designation other than his name.

He opened it and found a note, the handwriting wavy with emotion, not unlike the voice of the woman in the pink suit.

Dear Mr. Bethany:

You should know that your wife is having an affair with her boss, Jeff Baumgarten. Why don’t you put a stop to this? There are children involved. Besides, Mr. Baumgarten is very happily married and will never leave his wife. This is why mothers do not belong in offices.

The letter was unsigned, but Dave had no doubt that it was written by Mrs. Baumgarten, which meant that her Easter mission had been an elaborate bit of fakery. Dave didn’t know much about Miriam’s boss, but he knew he was Jewish, prominently Jewish, probably just a few years ahead of Dave at Pikesville High School. Perhaps Mrs. Baumgarten had planned to drop this letter on the counter without being seen but had been undone by the empty shop. Or she had written it as a fallback, in case she couldn’t summon the nerve to confront him directly. How odd, that last line, as if she needed a larger social issue to buttress her position as the wronged party. In the split second it took Dave’s mind to find the word cuckold and apply it to himself, he felt a twinge of pity for this proper middle-class woman with her anonymous note. Not too long ago, the local news had been full of stories about the governor’s wife, who had to learn from her husband’s press secretary that she was being divorced. She had holed herself up in the governor’s mansion and refused to come out, sure that her husband would return to his senses. She had been a woman not unlike this one- Northwest Baltimore, Jewish, plump and well dressed, an integral part of her husband’s success. Affairs were a man’s perquisite, something