![]() ![]() ![]() Her aunt shipped them from Minnesota, some fluted, some with straight sides, rippled, beaded, etched, each unique. She remembers peeling away the yellowed newsprint from spoon-holders just like this one and lining them up on a workbench in her mother's backroom where the sun streamed through their soft pinks, ambers, reds, greens, golds, creating a shimmering watercolor painting across the concrete floor. This container is supposed to hold spoons. It appears to be a ruby-red depression-glass vase with a clump of dusty roses jammed into it, but the flowers don't belong. She catches the wink of something familiar on a shelf. ![]() She's killing time, a little too early for lunch with her friends. She threads her way through makeshift bookcases, past a table of Native American rugs, stops at a jewelry case when she spies a marcasite ring similar to the one her mother used to have, but she doesn't try it on. Nora turns away from the collection of quilts and trudges up the stairs to the second floor where afternoon light angles in to warm the golden tone of polished wood. She wipes her damp eyes with its hem, then pauses to test the air for the smells of lemon oil and paper mold, the musty corners of ancient sideboards and roll-top desks, a hint of the petroleum distillates that used to permeate her mother's own little shop. ![]() Inside the antique mall, Nora snatches up a hand-sewn quilt in a pattern of ruby hourglass blocks and breathes in its dust. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |