The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,57
for her interpretations. However, Beebee did amass a large collection of sweetgrass baskets. Pris and I found boxes and boxes of them hidden under decades’ worth of Sears catalogs and Southern Living magazines. Sweetgrass baskets of that age and quality can be valuable, and Beebee had a good eye. The baskets were our most valuable find so far. Heath used his connections at the Historic Charleston Foundation and found a buyer who bought almost all of them. That will help cover the cost overruns to repair the roof.
I’ve been clear-eyed about what stays and goes, almost brutally so. A couple of days ago, I came close to selling Calpurnia’s vintage Olivetti manual typewriter with the wonky y’s that look like slashes, the one she used for every piece of correspondence, including all those letters she wrote to me and ended with “Sending you some sugar.”
Yes. That typewriter.
Heath talked me out of it.
“Think of this house as a museum,” he said, “and you as the curator. If a stranger walked through the door, what would you want them to know about your family before they left? Keep only the objects that tell your story and tell it well.”
It always seemed strange to me that Beebee put so much faith in Sallie Mae’s interpretations when she was wrong as often as she was right. But I’m starting to think it had nothing to do with dreams. At that time, in this part of the world, it wasn’t possible for a white woman and a black woman to simply be friends. There had to be some sort of transaction involved, something to explain why two women from two different worlds would choose to spend so much time together, talking and listening and being heard. It wasn’t about the dreams; it was about loneliness.
If this house is a museum, then I think a whole gallery could be devoted to isolation and what it does to people.
Chapter Nineteen
Concern about the ravages of isolation led me to accept the invitation to Beau Pickney’s surprise eightieth birthday party. That and guilt.
I’ve never liked parties, but Felicia was so excited about Beau’s party, she would have been heartbroken if I’d begged off. And Charleston wasn’t New York. I couldn’t just invent some excuse about a work deadline or a sick relative and then disappear behind the door to my apartment to spend the night eating pistachio ice cream in my underwear while binge-watching back-to-back episodes of The Blacklist, indulging my recent, inexplicable, and probably unhealthy attraction to James Spader without people finding out. Harleston Village was a lot like a college dorm; everybody knew everybody else’s business and got up into it on a regular basis.
Pris volunteered to be my stylist for the evening. She brought in a silk shirtwaist dress she’d rescued from one of the thirty gazillion garbage bags she’d found stuffed in the first-floor powder room. A lot of the things she’d rescued had already been shipped off to eBay bidders, but this one had failed to sell. I thought I knew why.
“You can’t be serious,” I said after looking in the mirror. The dress screamed 1983—white daisies with blue centers on a pink background, shoulder pads that made me look like I was playing defense for the Carolina Panthers, and a floppy pussy bow at the neck. “I look like an aging version of Princess Diana before she got money, and taste, and a crown.”
“Hang on,” Pris said. “I’m not done yet.” She took some scissors out of Beebee’s old sewing basket, an heirloom that I had decided was worth saving. “Untie it,” she said, gesturing with the scissors. “And unbutton the top.” She walked across the room, scissor blades pointing toward me, which, as everybody knows, is something you should never do. I clutched the bow tighter around my neck.
“Why?”
“So I can cut out the shoulder pads.” She rolled her eyes. “Celia, you have got to quit watching The Blacklist. It’s making you jumpy. And suspicious.”
“The world is a dark and dangerous place,” I muttered as I undid the buttons. “Full of dark and dangerous characters.”
“None of whom live around here. I’d give a pair of vintage Doc Martens to run into a good bad boy this summer. A Post Malone type.” She sighed. “But maybe with a few less tats.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Same reason you’re crushed on James Spader, I guess. There’s something irresistible about a guy who’s all wrong for you.”
“Stick to the celebrity bad boys,” I advised. “The real ones