Nan looks up sharply. “Sell Windermere? Absolutely not. I don’t need much, so I was thinking perhaps I ought to sell some of the furniture, some of the things in the house that I really don’t need.”
Sarah looks dubious.
“Some of this stuff is wonderful, the antiques dealers would have a field day. And think of all those tourists and people spending twelve and a half million dollars on houses—don’t you think they need furniture? And this isn’t that reproduction stuff you find at the furniture stores, this is the real McCoy—people will pay a fortune for this.” Nan gets animated as she gestures around at an antique Welsh dresser, the oak kitchen table.
“Right,” Sarah says, trying to sound upbeat, and not wanting to point out that almost every piece of furniture in the house has coffee-cup rings, cigarette burns, is in a condition that no antique dealer would be the slightest bit interested in.
“And then there’s my mother-in-law’s jewelry collection. She collected paste earrings for years, and I have them all in boxes in the attic.”
“Okay.” Sarah recalls opening the boxes once upon a time and seeing what she thought was a load of junk. But she’s not a jewelry expert, and who knows what people will pay. “So you think this would be enough?”
“For the time being,” Nan says, enthusiastic now, excited at the prospect of a project. “And once it’s over we can figure out what to do next. Who knows, maybe I’ll get a job.”
“Folding T-shirts at Murray’s Toggery?” Sarah grins.
“You never know.” Nan winks. “Stranger things have happened. Why don’t we start pricing some of the furniture? Let’s see what we can actually get rid off.”
By the end of the afternoon, Sarah’s clipboard is filled with scribbles and notes, rough sketches of the furniture Nan has deemed suitable for selling.
“Are you sure you don’t need your bed?” Sarah asks, somewhat dubiously.
“I’ll keep the mattress,” Nan says firmly. “But the damn thing’s too high for me anyway and I’ve never liked how ornate it is. That was Everett’s choice, not mine.”
“And the chest of drawers?”
“No. I feel like it’s time to spring-clean. Clear out all the cobwebs, start afresh. I feel lighter already just thinking about it. So tell me, my dear, how much does all this come to?”
Sarah looks down at her clipboard, and clears her throat. “Well, if everything is worth what you think it’s worth, we should make around two hundred and fifty thousand from this sale.” She wants to laugh, the figure should be laughable, except it isn’t funny. It’s just completely and utterly mad.
Nan spent the afternoon pulling figures out of thin air. “This is beautiful,” she’d gesture at some ugly little stool. “People pay a fortune for these on eBay, so let’s price this at five thousand dollars.”
Five thousand dollars! She’d be lucky if anyone paid five, Sarah thought.
“Are you quite sure you want to get rid of all your things?” Sarah asks again.
“I’m quite sure I need the money. And it will be fun! You and I can advertise it this week, and just imagine, we’ll fill the house with billionaires snapping up our furniture. Honestly, Sarah, I know you’re worried, but this is good stuff, and they won’t find anything like this anywhere else.”
Sarah casts a glance over at the fraying tapestry chair in the corner that has one broken leg and is falling apart. Nan priced it at six thousand dollars. And then there are the clothes. Moth-eaten dresses from the sixties, and fur coats that have developed alopecia while reclining in a hot attic over the years—bald spots all over them, but Nan believes there is a thriving market for vintage clothes, and as she said to Sarah, modeling a particularly skimpy fox-fur jacket, “What woman doesn’t feel beautiful in a real fur?”
Well, she thinks, Nan’s certainly right about them not finding anything at this price anywhere else.
She takes a deep breath and follows Nan downstairs to draft the wording for the ad, wishing that Nan hadn’t cloistered herself away quite so much, for why else would she be pricing things so ridiculously? If she had any idea how the real world worked, she wouldn’t dream of asking what she’s asking, and good reproductions of most of this furniture can be found at every Pottery Barn in the country.