The Man in My Basement (6 page)

“I saw Clarance last night,” he said.

“What’s he have to say?”

“Nuthin’. He’s gonna add a rumpus room onto the house this summer. He asked if I could work on it, but I told him that I was already working for Wilson Ryder. I told him you were looking for a job, but he didn’t say anything.”

“You don’t have to do me any favors, Ricky,” I said. “I don’t need Clarance’s charity or yours.”

“You need somethin’,” Ricky declared.

He wanted me to take up the bait and fight or make a joke out of it or anything. But I just stuck out my lower lip and shrugged. I didn’t have the energy for that kind of talk right then. I focused my attention on Narciss. She was writing down notes on slips of yellow paper, which she attached to different pieces. She also made entries in a small spiral pad she had.

“Hey, Charles?” Ricky said.

“Hey what?”

“Could I use your phone?”

“Local or long distance?”

“I wanna call Bethany. She said that —”

“Okay,” I said, cutting him off. “Make your call.”

Ricky gave me a sullen look and then went into the kitchen to use the ancient Princess phone in there. I heard him say Bethany’s name and then I returned my attention to Narciss.

She seemed extremely competent. Now and then she’d take some reference book or another from her shoulder satchel to prove or disprove some point she was making to herself. She would write more notes and then move on to the next object. In the meanwhile Ricky was laughing and chattering on the phone in the other room.

I was having a fine time in the chilly window seat, watching the earth-toned woman judge my lineage. The moon shone on her, glaring over my shoulder.

“Are you hungry?” I asked Narciss after it was completely dark outside.

“I’d like something after I’m done here,” she said.

“We could go over to Dinelli’s in Southampton,” I offered and immediately I was sorry. I didn’t have a single paper dollar to my name. I probably didn’t have enough in change to cover a dinner at Dinelli’s, and my only credit card had been canceled more than a year before.

“That would be nice,” Narciss Gully said.

She turned back to her work, and I jumped up to go to the kitchen.

“Be right back,” I promised.

Ricky was cradling the phone with both hands against his face. His voice was low, and I knew that he must have been getting somewhere with Bethany Baptiste. Bethany was a heavyset young woman who liked food, dancing, and men. She could never get enough of any one of them, and we all loved her for it.

She’d been married once but that didn’t take. Bethany married Lawrence Crelde, but she was in love with Clarance, who was already married. Whenever Clarance called, Bethany came running, and one day when she got back, Lawrence was gone. Bethany wasn’t upset about losing her husband, but she was devastated when Clarance refused to leave his own wife for her.

Ever since then Bethany was alone. She’d go out with this man or that for a few days or weeks, but something always got in the way. Right now it looked like Ricky was going to be her date. At any other time I would have sat back and waited for him to finish with his line, but right then I had my own troubles.

“Ricky,” I said.

He waved at me to go away.

“Ricky,” I said a little louder.

Again he waved.

“Get off the phone, man. I have to talk to you.”

“It’s Charles Blakey,” he said into the mouthpiece. And then after listening to something, he said to me, “Bethany says hey.”

“Tell her that you have to talk to me for a minute.”

“Let me call you back in five?” he said. Whatever she said must have been promising because Ricky smiled and whispered something so soft that I couldn’t make it out.

“What you want, Charles? Damn. Here I am tryin’ to promote somethin’ an’ you all up in my face.”

“I got to have forty bucks, man. Got to have it.”

“Charles…”

“No, Ricky. No games. No fuckin’ around. I don’t have a single dollar bill, but Narciss wants to eat.”

“Who cares what that skinny bitch want?”

“Sh!” I was worried that she might hear us even though we were whispering. “I care.”

All of a sudden Ricky was sly. He let his eyes almost close and then he nodded. “I see,” he said.

“I’ll pay you back the minute this stuff is sold. Fifty dollars for forty.”

Ricky reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of twenty-dollar bills. He must have had six hundred dollars in his hand. He smiled and peeled off two bills. He handed them over and then grinned again.

“You got what you want now, brother?” he asked me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Well then can I get back on the phone and get what I need?”

Ricky was crooning to Bethany before I had left the room.

I found Narciss holding up a lopsided pink glass vase. She was scrutinizing every aspect of the vessel like a budget shopper studying a possible buy from an overcrowded reject table.

I sat there with knots in my stomach. It made me sick to have to ask Ricky for charity. And watching Narciss sift through my family’s history now somehow made me sad. The cold from the window worked its way into my gut. I wondered if I was getting sick.

“Oh my,” Narciss said.

“What?”

Instead of answering she came to me with a wooden box held delicately in both her hands. She sat down next to me, placing the old scarred box between us. Other than its obvious age, it was unremarkable. About a foot long and six inches in depth and width, it was plain and held together by smith-made iron hinges. There were three letters roughly carved on the lower right side of the lid—
JLD
.

“Look.” She lifted the lid.

Inside there were three hand-carved masks, rust to dark brown, ivory I was sure. Each one was about five inches from crown to chin and three inches from one cheekbone to the other. They were simple images with sloping foreheads and slitted eyes. One was smiling, one possibly feral, and one looked like he was whistling through an O-shaped mouth. They were laid out on an old crumpled newspaper. Two of the faces had been broken in places but were seamed back together with some kind of adhesive. There was a blue splotch on the delicate chin of the leftmost image. They were beautiful and commanding, fitting perfectly in the wood box that, I supposed, was built to hold them.

“It’s the history of your history,” Narciss whispered.

The words came to me as truth. I believed I was looking at the cargo, carried on some European ship, of an African who had sold himself into indentured servitude. Maybe they were his gods, carved by some uncle.

“Touch them,” Narciss said like an impatient lover showing a virgin the ropes.

Instead I closed the box and took a deep breath. When I put down the lid, the music stopped. Not real music but something that played in my mind. Something high-pitched but soft and repeating like a squeaky woodwind playing its rendition of cascading water.

My intestines grew colder and a spasm wanted to run down my spine but did not. I clutched Narciss’s forearm for support and took another deep breath.

“Tell me about the rest of this stuff,” I said.

She had to disengage from my grip to look at her spiral pad. She said a lot of stuff about quality and pedigree, condition of resins and uniqueness in the market. She talked about the market a lot, but I didn’t understand most of it. It was just good to hear her talking. So self-assured and serious. Every beat was a word and every word meant something. Maybe I didn’t understand, but I hoped to, I wanted to.

“So?” she asked. “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“Is there something wrong, Mr. Blakey?”

Just then Ricky broke out into loud laughter. I looked toward the kitchen and then back to Narciss.

“Why do you ask that?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a frown. “You seem distracted. When I came you were sitting in that window in the dark, and you seemed like you… you were in a daze. But I think I understand.”

“Well if you do I hope you let me in on it.”

She smiled at my helplessness and said, “I’m sure that all of this digging into your family history has made you very upset. Bringing it all out. Thinking about selling it off. It must feel like selling your soul, or even worse, selling your ancestors’ souls.”

Again what she said cut right into me. I was beginning to fear her words.

“It’s just stuff,” I said. “Something that’s been in the basement. I didn’t even know I had most of it. I would have thrown it away if it wasn’t for Ricky.”

“It might be better that way,” she said. “At least if you threw away the spirit of your heritage, you wouldn’t make it into merchandise.”

“Are you trying to talk me out of this?” I asked the slender brown woman.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Blakey. You know, I come to the antique business through school. I got my B.A. at Penn with a double major in anthropology and archaeology. Then I went to RISD for a graduate degree in textiles. Everything I know about antiques comes from the inside out. It’s more than a business with me; it’s a way to see our history. And I thought maybe you had the same feelings when you got so low.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” I said again in that low voice. “I’m sorry. This is all new to me. But you know I’ve got to sell this stuff. Even if it’s something important and I don’t know it. Maybe we could find some people like you to appreciate what they got. How much do you think it’s worth?”

“That depends,” she said. “If the paintings have artistic value, which I doubt, they could go pretty high. But I think I can authenticate the dates they were done and the artist, Blythe Blakey-Richards, and so I’m sure there are some museums and universities that would have at least an anthropological interest. The furniture is Arts and Crafts and earlier. The clothes have museum possibilities, and there are also some collectors. The toys and tools might be the most valuable items. I would try to sell them to dealers. The whole lot, with the exception of the masks, might bring in anywhere from forty to a hundred thousand. Probably closer to forty.”

“Damn.” That was Ricky. He was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. “Four gees just for knowing who should shake hands. That’s what I need to do for a livin’.”

He rubbed his hands together and grinned. “You’all can tell me the damage later. Right now I got to go see somebody. Have a nice dinner.”

Ricky shook my hand, maybe for the first time ever, and he kissed Narciss on the cheek. Then he danced out the front door, full of the expectations of Bethany’s charms.

When he was gone I asked, “So how do we do this?”

“I’ll come over with a camera and photograph everything. You’ll get a copy of each image. I’ll give you a receipt for the items and have them moved to a room above my shop in Bridgehampton. Then I begin to invite buyers. As I sell off items, I pass on the proceeds to you—minus expenses and twenty percent.”

“Twenty? I thought you got ten.”

“Richard wants me to retain his fee also. I said I would, but if you have a problem with that —”

“No, no, no. That’s okay. So how soon before I see some money?”

“Well let me see. I’m going on a buying trip starting tomorrow that will last for ten days. One day for the photographing and delivery. Then I have to e-mail, call, or write to the right clients. The museums may take months to get back to me —”

“Months?”

“— but many of the dealers are around here and so I’ll probably start getting something in a month to six weeks.”

I wondered how soon the bank would move in to try to foreclose on the bad debt. I was already more than a month late in my payments. I needed at least twelve hundred dollars to get the debtors off my back. For a moment I wondered if I could get an advance from Narciss. It was worth a try, but I couldn’t get the words out. I didn’t want her to see me begging.

“It’s a little late for dinner,” I said. “I’m tired from all of this work. Can we make it the day you come for photographs?”

The momentary shadow of sadness across her face made me glad that I hadn’t asked for the advance.

“Oh sure,” she said. “I understand. This kind of work is exhausting not only physically but also in your heart.” She reached out and curled her long finger around my forearm. It was meant to be supportive and it was successful.

“Mr. Blakey?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Keep the masks with you for a while. For at least a year.”

“Don’t you want to study them? To figure out how old they are and where they’re from?”

“It’s more important that you keep something that has your roots in it. You should sleep next to them and feel their presence. No amount of study will take the place of your family’s heart.”

She leaned forward. I could feel the breath from her nostrils on my arm. The way she looked at me held a question, a request. I knew it was her desire for me to keep the masks, but that wish called up another whole feeling in me.

She moved back and whispered, “You’re a sweet man.”

I wanted to kiss her but she moved too quickly, putting on her jacket and hefting her shoulder bag. When I approached she stuck out a hand at me. All I could do was shake and say good-bye.

T
he next few days went by quickly. I spent them scrubbing and cleaning the basement. I also straightened up the house as well as I could. The walls and floors of the basement needed paint, but all I had was forty dollars, so elbow grease was the only oil-based liquid I used.

My uncle Brent used to say that I was lazy and worthless. He said it whenever my mother was out.

“I’m surprised that a boy like you don’t starve ’cause he too lazy to lift the fork to his lips,” he said often. And then he’d laugh in a wheezing manner and I’d wish that he’d fall down the steps and die.

I hated everything about Brent. The fact that he talked in a southern Negro dialect made me hate his kind of blackness. I didn’t want to be associated with
street.
You had to prove yourself to me if you didn’t speak like an educated person, a white person. When Ricky came back from Brooklyn, I didn’t like him because I heard the whispering, muttering southern talk of Brent in his words. Even then, in that room, fourteen years after Brent had died, I was still angry at him.