combing. He wore a blue T-shirt with the Superman insignia in the middle.
“Can I help you?” he asked. “Looking for anything special?”
“Nice place,” I said.
He gave a tiny shake of his head.
“Nice place, maybe. Bad location. I don’t have the money to advertise and I’m not downtown on Main Street or in some big mall where I’d get walk-in trade. And I’m not near a school where kids could drop in.”
“Why not move?” I asked.
A shrug this time.
“Can’t afford to,” he said. “Can’t stay. Can’t move. I’ve got a few good customers, but not enough and I don’t have the cash to buy much at the flea markets. Vicious circle.”
“Cycle,” I corrected. “Vicious cycle.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You interested in early television? I’ve got a Howdy Doody puppet in perfect shape, in the box, 1950. I’d let it go for two hundred.”
“I’m not a Howdy Doody guy,” I said. “You Michael Donophin?”
“Mickey,” he said warily. “Legal name is Mickey.”
I took the folded papers out of my pocket and handed them to him. He took them without a word and placed them on the counter next to a tiny figure of Emmett Kelly sitting on a white ball with a gold star.
“Used to have a lot of circus stuff,” he said, ignoring the papers I had served. “Still have some. Mostly got it from old circus performers who still live around here. My big day was just about a year ago when a lady, no more than this big…”
He put his hand out about three feet above the floor to show me how small she had been.
“This lady, real old,” he said, brightening just a bit at the memory, “bought all the circus stuff I had. Everything. Three thousand dollars even, no bargaining. Asked her if she’d been in the circus. Said she had but she didn’t want to talk about it. I put everything in boxes real careful and got it in her car. Never heard from her again.”
“Why the papers?”
“Foreclosure,” he said. “I’m fighting it. I’m gonna lose. The Donophins always lose. The Donophins always come back. Don’t know anyone who might want to buy me out fast and cheap do you?”
“No,” I said.
“That’s okay. I guess I shouldn’t fight it. I guess I should just pack everything up, put it in my father’s garage, and get a job at Winn-Dixie. That’s where my father works.”
There was a large round bowl of assorted buttons, mostly political, on the counter. I touched a red, white, and blue one with a young Teddy Kennedy’s photograph on it with the words “Kennedy for President” in black letters.
“You might try the Internet,” I said. “Get a Web site. Sell out of your father’s garage. There’s even something called eBay.”
“Maybe,” Mickey said with no great interest. “I like talking to people. It’s not just the selling. It’s the talking about, you know?”
“Yes.”
“Say, you like old music? I mean like really old? I’ve got old seventy-eights, some of them one-sided, good condition, even got an old Victrola I could let go cheap. Works fine. I’ve got Paul Whiteman, Eddie Condon, Bing Crosby, Tony Martin, Sophie Tucker. Couple of hundred maybe. Want to take a look?”
“I’m trying to get away from the past,” I said.
“And I’m trying to keep it alive,” he said, looking around his shop. “You know all this stuff is important to people. The way I see it there’re two different histories. There’s the one we learn in school, the Magna Carta, the Crusades, the Civil War, George Washington, you know?”
“I know,” I said.
“I was never good at that stuff. But there’s another history, more important,” Mickey said, excited now. “There’s the history of each of our own lives, filled with little stuff that stays with us, you know? Like watching Leave It to Beaver with your older brother. Remember when the Beaver got stuck in that giant coffee cup?”
I did remember, but I didn’t have to tell Mickey. He didn’t really need an answer.
“That’s our lives. That’s Nostalgia with a big ‘N,’” he said. “Comic books, movies, television, Mickey Mantle, Frankie Avalon, mom baking fish every Friday night, and my Uncle Walt always coming over for it wearing a tie.”
“Nostalgia,” I said.
“The history of each of our lives,” said Mickey.
“You’re a philosopher, Mickey,” I said
“Take a button. On the house,” he said, nodding at the bowl between us.
I went through the buttons and found one I wanted. Then I bought more items Mickey Donophin was happy to show me.
I left Mickey carrying a large, full paper bag and headed for Flo’s house. It was after four.
Adele answered the door, baby in her arms, smile on her face. Adele had lost all of her baby fat but not the memory of what she had been through. Adele was tough. Mother murdered by her father. Father who molested her and sold her to a pimp, also murdered, betrayed and made pregnant by a man she trusted. And there was Adele, pretty, blond, baby in her arms, smiling.
“Lew,” she said. “Come in.”
I followed her inside and closed the door.
“Just finished feeding Catherine,” she said, holding up the baby named for my wife. “Want to hold her?”
It was less a question than an order. I put down the bag I had brought in and she handed me the baby.
“Diet Dr Pepper all right?” Adele asked.
“Sure,” I said, moving into the living room with the baby in my arms.
Catherine looked up at my face, eyes wide, scanning, tiny wrinkled fingers fidgeting.
“Burp her,” Adele called from the kitchen.
I put the baby on my shoulder and patted her back. Flo had shown me how to do it. It took three pats before I heard the small burp and felt a minute twinge of triumph.
“Flo’s out,” Adele said. “Got her license back, thanks to you. She’s shopping.”
She put a coaster and a glass of Diet Dr Pepper with ice on the coffee table in front of me. Then she took the baby.
“School?” I asked.
“Easy,” she said, holding the baby to her chest and crossing her legs on the sofa.
I sometimes found it hard to remember that Adele was only sixteen.
“Got something,” I said, getting the bag I had brought in and placing it next to my bubbling glass of Dr Pepper.
I fished into the bag and came up with a rattle. It was purple and white plastic. I handed it to Adele, who looked at the picture on it and said, “Who’s Clarabelle?”
“A clown,” I said. “From an old television show for kids.”
“Weird looking, isn’t she?”
“Clarabelle was a man,” I said.
“That is weird.”
“Sorry.”
“Sometimes I like weird,” she said, placing the handle of the rattle in Catherine’s right hand. Small pink fingers clutched it tightly and accidentally shook it. The little pellets inside gently clacked. Catherine’s eyes turned toward the rattle.
“Something for you too,” I said, going back into the bag.
I handed her the foot-long cylinder. She turned it over in her hand and read the words on the side next to the picture of the rocket ship.
“Tom, Corbett, Space Cadet?” she asked.
“Another old television show. It’s a kaleidoscope.”
“I gotta say you come up with some weird stuff.”
