“Steve, sit down,” I said, as quietly as an old man can with the whole room listening. “Mr. Pruitt, I am Arthur Brandt, I am eighty two years old, and as you see, I am not dead. I wish you a good morning.” The auctioneer set his gavel on the podium. In the second row, I held paddle number seven in my lap, and my hand shook only a little. The hope chest sat on the stage under the bright lights, golden walnut, with the brass hinges Helen polished every spring. My son Steve stood at the front with his mouth open. A woman near me, a stranger in a flowered dress, patted my arm and whispered, “Bless your heart.”
The room buzzed like a hive. Steve crossed the floor to me with his hands out, like a man approaching a skittish horse. “Dad, I can explain,” he said. “You were so confused when you moved. I thought, he will not need these things. I did not want to upset you.” I looked at him. “Steve, I am confused about many things. I am not confused about who I am. You told this man I was dead.” He swallowed. “It was a misunderstanding. I told him you were, that you were gone from the farm. He must have misheard.” I said, “Steve, Mr. Pruitt says you said passed in March.”
Steve was quiet. At the back of the room, I saw my granddaughter Lily slip in through the double doors, still in her scrubs from the hospital, her hair half undone. She saw me, and she began to cry with relief. She pushed through the crowd and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Grandpa,” she sobbed, “I am so sorry, I called as soon as I knew. I could not stop him.” I patted her back. “You did the right thing, honey. You did exactly the right thing.” Over her shoulder, I saw my son watch us, and a shadow of something like despair crossed his face.
A paddle raised in the second row stopped an estate auction of a man who was very much alive and brought his furniture home.
The auctioneer, a large, courteous man who had once sold cattle to my mother, cleared his throat. “Folks, I am going to ask for your patience. Mr. Brandt has the right to withdraw his property, and I am going to honor it. This sale is suspended.” Some of the crowd groaned. Some applauded. The woman in the flowered dress said loudly to her husband, “Well, I never.” People began collecting their things. Within a few minutes, we had the room almost to ourselves. Lily, Steve, and I sat down on a row of folding chairs, in the dusty light, in front of the stage where the hope chest of my wife still gleamed.
I asked Steve for the truth. I asked it gently, because I have learned that a sharp question seldom opens a door. For a long time he did not answer. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Then he said, “I lost the barn.” I blinked. “The barn?” He nodded. “The bank foreclosed in February. The barn where I stored the things of Mom. I had a loan on it, Dad, I could not keep up the payments. I thought, if I sold some of her furniture, I could pay the bank. I thought, you would never know.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Dad, I have no barn. I have nothing.”
I looked at my son, fifty five years old, with the gray coming in at his temples, the same temples as his mother, and I thought of a night in 1976, when he had a fever of 104 and Helen and I had taken turns holding a cool cloth to his forehead. I thought, we did this. We loved him, and we gave him whatever he asked for, and we forgot to ask him to give. It is the mistake of every parent who loves too well. I said, “Steve, I am going to buy the hope chest. I have already bid. Five hundred dollars. I believe the paddle is still raised.” He laughed through his tears. “Dad.”
The auctioneer, listening, grinned. “Sold to the gentleman in the second row,” he said, and banged his gavel, once, softly. Lily whooped. I paid the five hundred dollars out of my wallet. It was the most gladly spent money of my life. Then I told my son what I wanted. “The rest of her things, in the barn, are they all gone?” He said, “Some of it was already sold. The clock is at the dealers in Marion. The rocking chair is in storage. I will get them back, Dad, if it takes everything I have.” I said, “It might take everything you have.” He nodded. “Then it will.”
He got them back. It took a year. He took a second job on weekends, hauling at a furniture warehouse, and he drove all over Iowa on his days off tracking down the pieces. He found the Victorian rocking chair in an antique mall in Dubuque, with a tag that said eighty dollars. He found the grandfather clock in a dealers back room, with the pendulum wrapped in a blanket. He carried each one up my stairs himself, panting, and set them in my apartment, until the place looked like a museum of a sixty one year marriage. When the clock came, I wound it. It began to chime.
It struck noon. I stood in my living room, in the sunshine, and listened to the sound of our marriage coming back to life. Steve stood beside me, with tears on his face. Neither of us spoke. When the last chime faded, he said, “Dad, I will never touch anything of Mom again.” I said, “Son, that is not the point. I want you to touch it. I want you to know what it was.” I handed him the little brass key to the hope chest. “Open it,” I said. He did. Inside, folded in tissue, was the wedding veil of Helen. He held it with both hands.
That Christmas, I made an announcement at dinner. The hope chest would go to Lily, who had called me that night. The Victorian chair would go to her cousin. The clock, which had chimed every hour of my marriage, would go to Steve, but not until he earned it. “How long?” he asked. I said, “I am eighty two. I would say you have time.” He grinned. Lily lit the candles. The clock struck seven, loud and sweet, and my whole family looked up at the sound. Somewhere, I swear, Helen was laughing at the head of the table, where she had always sat.
