A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [126]
She came out from behind the rolltop desk she used for a counter.
“That Royal Copenhagen, though. You know Ina Baffin down in Henry Grove?”
I shook my head.
“She was a hundred and four. She got those from her grandma when she was a girl, and her own granddaughter said they didn’t interest her. Ina loved those, I’m sure. This granddaughter said they were just too simpery. Simpery! Something as valuable as that.” She lifted another figurine, a boy playing a flute, and gazed at it, then set it down with care. I moved down the aisle, smiling politely, lifting things and looking at them. Dinah picked up a rag and began to dust with a thoughtful air. There were some Saturday Evening Post magazines in a bin. I leafed through one of them. Dinah lingered near the front of the store, then slowly made her way back to me. She dusted each piece of a ruby-colored glass decanter set that was sitting on a dark-colored sideboard, then said, “People say your dad’s moving to Des Moines, now.”
“Mmm.” I was noncommittal.
“You know, sometimes people have me over to look at some of the older things, just to see if there’s a market for them. The market changes all the time—” Her voice faded, then strengthened. “I wish now I had all that Depression glass I used to see at farm sales, but nobody wanted it in those days. Reminded them of the Depression!” She laughed. “I always feel like I should buy everything and just store it, because sooner or later, it’s going to come into vogue.”
“I never thought of that.”
“Well, you know—” She wandered away.
I picked up a stack of old crocheted antimacassars. Not in vogue. The most expensive one in the stack was six dollars, an elaborate pineapple design done in the finest thread. I held it up, imagining the work that had gone into it. Six dollars. It made me sad. Dinah came close again.
“The thing is, what I do when I come to someone’s house is give them an idea of what can be done with everything. And there’s always so much stuff. You have no idea how much people accumulate over the years. I don’t guess your father’s going to be farming again. You might not realize, but there is a market for old farm tools—” She let her eyes rest on my face. I let my eyes rest on hers. She said, “It can be a touchy subject. But when they move to an apartment—even old clothes, or shoes. You don’t have to let everything go to the church or the Salvation Army.”
I said, “I’ll talk to Rose. And Caroline, of course.” Her eyebrows lifted at this last. I handed her the piece of lace, and said, “I’d like this. This is pretty.”
She turned and went back to the rolltop desk. I opened my purse and found some money. I noticed that my hand was trembling.
At the café, Nelda served me a cup of coffee and an order of cinnamon toast without more than the most perfunctory politeness, as if she were angry with me but holding her tongue. Another sign, I thought.
At Roberta’s, the clothing and fabric store, I thought I might buy some underwear or a belt or some stockings. Roberta herself wasn’t there, so I spoke in a friendly way to her niece, Robin, who was in high school. Robin seemed to know, or at least, to think, nothing. The merchandise was set out on the same wide wooden display tables that Roberta’s mother, Doris, had used when I was a child and the store was called Doris’s. It was easy to ramble from table to table, turning over price tags and unfolding things just for a look.
Like a lot of village stores, Roberta’s had once been half of what it was now, and had expanded into the next building by breaking through an old wall. Roberta’s had two front doors, and on summer days, both of them were open, as well as the back door. There was no air-conditioning; Roberta relied on cross-ventilation for comfort. I was standing in women’s underwear, holding two blouses that I wanted to try on, when I saw Caroline enter the farthest door, followed by Daddy, followed by Roberta, followed by Loren Clark. Caroline was turned to help Daddy up