Elly knew Mel had counted on sharing her room with a known quantity— Elly—and was not eager to launch into a shotgun friendship with a person she knew only by reputation, and not a good one at that.
Worse, what Mel knew about Susan was entirely thanks to Elly, though Greg Chalmers might have added a few details on his own. Still, Melanie warmed to Susan sufficiently that Elly was encouraged to believe that her “favor” would be well received by both of them.
Susan drove them home and became their first houseguest as a married couple. “I still can’t believe you got married only yesterday!” she exclaimed. “You just have to show me your wedding photos the minute you get them.”
“Check out the wicked little dress Melanie gave me,” Elly said, showing her both outfits.
“Oh, Elly,” Susan said, her eyes alighting on the cocktail dress, “you’d sure turn a lot of heads wearing that! It’s awfully close to breaking BYU standards, don’t you think? You might make Connor jealous.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Connor said. “But I think she’d turn a lot of heads without a dress.”
“I bet she would,” Susan said, and both women burst out laughing.
Connor moseyed into the kitchen and moved boxes around.
Elly invited Susan to dinner, but Susan said she wanted to drive back to Salt Lake and get her luggage and move in that night. Elly understood the sentiment. Relatives’ couches only got more uncomfortable the longer they were used. “I’ll let you know when we get the pictures from the wedding,” she promised. “We’ll have all of you over for dinner.”
“Oh, and you have to make sure Melanie brings Chalmers Ch r , so he can see the new me.”
They hugged and parted friends. A few months earlier, Elly had been happy to put Nevada, California, and the Pacific Ocean between Susan and herself. But now she knew her old companion was right: prayers had been answered, and in more ways than one.
Later that night, having taken the dress out to show Susan, Elly finally tried it on. “What do you think?” she asked, posing for Connor.
He sat on the bed, folded his arms, and studied her carefully. “Susan has a point.”
Elly glanced down at her hemline. “I do wonder what Melanie was thinking. Maybe that I was an inch or two shorter.”
“Again, I’m not complaining.”
“No? You wouldn’t be even a little bit jealous showing me off in public in a dress like this?”
“I don’t know about showing you off. I’ve never dated a woman who wore a dress like that. Or looked so good in it.”
She grinned and stole onto the bed. In the black dress, her dark hair falling over her shoulders, she looked like a sleek, lithe panther. She crept into his arms and nipped at his ear. He ran his hands up the backs of her thighs.
“Meow,” she said.
The dress got a bit rumpled after that.
When Connor first moved in, Wanda insisted that they have dinner together. He’d resisted, of course, as such arrangements were contrary to the mind-set of the single college student—apron strings and all that. He tested out the “I don’t want to be a burden on you” excuse, and then and only then had Wanda briefly let down her guard.
“Dining alone every day,” she retorted, “is about as depressing for a person my age as you can imagine.”
He hadn’t argued about it since. Sundays and two or three times a week they ate together. Connor came to appreciate both Wanda’s reasons and her cooking.
Over breakfast, Wanda mentioned to Elly, “That bed of yours is part of a set.”
“What kind of a set?”
“The frame is the base of a four-poster brass bed.”
Elly’s eyes lit up.
Connor groaned.
“Connor groans,” explained Wanda, “because he was the one who took it apart. Where did you put the headboard and footboard, Connor?”
He glowered at his aunt. “It’s in the garage.”
“Really? You still have it? Can we put it back together?”
“Elly,” he said, “it’s like a jigsaw puzzle, only in three dimensions.”
She jumped up from the table. “I want to see it. C’mon, let’s see it.”
Connor relented, grumbling about how it should have been carted off to Deseret Industries long ago. He finished his bagel and headed for the garage, Elly pushing him along. She stood in the empty parking space next to the Camry and turned around. “Where is it?”
Two paces to the right of the kitchen steps, a knotted rope hung from the ceiling. Connor tugged on it. A hinged ladder unfolded and slid to the floor. “That switch there,” he said, indicating the wall next to the door. Elly turned on the light.
The attic was lit by a bare bulb. The air was musty and cool. The attic floor was an obstacle course of gardening tools, a push-mower, knee-high stacks of plastic planting pots, a box of Ball canning jars, and a rack of growing lamps. Wanda had given up gardening after Walter died, and now only fussed with the flower beds in the front yard.
Connor said, “I got off my mission in time to help my parents move to Maine. You wouldn’t believe the amount of junk that went to the Salvation Army and the landfill.”
“As you know,” Elly said, “I cannot empathize.”
They came at last to a blue tarp by the far wall. Connor drew back the tarp. The brass posts threw off a muddy gleam in the mottled light. To one of the posts he’d taped a plastic bag stuffed with nuts and bolts. He’d used duct tape and the adhesive was baked onto the metal.
“It’s so pretty,” exclaimed Elly.
“It’s a mess,” said Connor.
“Then we’ll clean it.”
“Cleaning is not the issue. What makes antiques rare is that all the rest of them fell to pieces before they could become antiques. This one is well on its way to joining them.”
“If everybody thought that way, nobody would have any antiques to collect.”
“Somebody’s always going to win the lottery too. That doesn’t mean playing the lottery is a smart idea.”
Connor climbed down the ladder, growling under his breath. This is so stupid, he said to himself. A total waste of time. But he couldn’t remember why putting the bed together again was so stupid, only that there was a very good reason.
“I had a good reason for taking it apart. This bed is just not—” and he paused, but said the dreaded word anyway, “practical.”
“Practicality doesn’t have anything to do with it, Connor.”
“Practicality matters if you consider the hours you could be spending doing something else truly useful.”
Elly rolled her eyes. “Our lives aren’t exactly filled to the brim doing useful and necessary things.”
At that moment, Wanda opened the kitchen door. “Oh, Connor, there you are. Could you come help me with something?”
Connor slapped the dust off his jeans and followed his aunt into the kitchen, glad for an excuse to end the discussion. Wanda set a jar of green paint on the counter. “I was thinking of touching up the shutters. You know how old paint jars can get.”
The paint had glued the lid on quite solidly. He rapped it against the counter and gave it another try. The lid gave way with a scrunch of metal against glass, scattering flecks of enamel onto the Formica. He shook the cramp out of his hand. His palm was creased with the grooves stamped into the lid.
“You know—” Wanda said in an offhand manner, “you’re right about that bed.”
Connor nodded in agreement. It was good to hear a modicum of common sense injected into the matter.
“Your grandfather would have agreed with you one-hundred percent. Such trivial sentiments cannot stand up to rational examination. Interesting how these things run in the family.”
A tick of the second hand, and the expression froze on Connor’s face. Whatever response his brain was contemplating, the words never made it past his vocal cords. He stared at his aunt. She pretended he wasn’t there and stirred the paint.
When motion returned to his limbs, Connor retrieved the car keys and strode purposefully to the garage. Elly was perched halfway up the ladder steps, elbows on knees, chin in her hands. She clambered down the ladder when Connor hit the switch for the garage door opener. The door clanked open, spilling a bright band of morning sunlight across the concrete.
The noise died away. Elly said, “The bed’s not that important, Connor. I mean, we could get around to it anytime. She saw the car keys in his hand and said, “Where are you going?”
“I’ve got to move the car,” he said, gesturing at the Toyota.
“Move the car?” Elly echoed. “Why? Where?”
“I’m just going to move it.” He got into the car, took a deep breath, started the engine, and backed into the driveway. Then he lowered the garage door and stared at the ceiling.
“What are you looking for?” Elly asked.
“One of the plywood sheets isn’t nailed down. I can never remember which one.” He got a rake and jabbed between the floor joists until he found it. He replaced the rake and brought back a coil of rope and a pair of safety glasses. “It’ll be easier if we lower the headboard and footboard rather than trying to haul them down the stairs.” He fitted the glasses over her nose.
“You mean we’re going to put the bed together?”
He answered with a sheepish grin. “I guess the bed’s not such a bad idea after all.” He examined his sneakers, until she took his face in her hands and kissed him.
“How does this work?” she asked eagerly.
“I figure I’ll lower the pieces with the rope. You make sure they come down straight and don’t scrape on the floor.”
“Got it,” she said, with a toss of her long ponytail.
Back in the garage loft, Connor set aside the loose plywood sheet. Using the crossbeam as a pulley, he lowered the headboard until Elly could catch and guide it to the floor. After repeating the process with the footboard, Elly came up to the attic and they carried down the posts.
“It a mess,” she conceded. Their hands were already black from the dust and oxidation.
They attacked the glum metal with damp rags. Wanda came out to take a look. “I say, it’s looking quite handsome already.”
“How long has the bed been in the family?” Elly asked.
“Its provenance supposedly traces back to Aunt Zariah. My dad was the one who replaced the steel in the frame. You might want to try a brass cleaner. Don’t apply anything harsher. On Antiques Road Show they’re always talking about how important it is to maintain the original finish.”
They drove to Lowe’s and got some brass cleaner and the replacement pieces of hardware. The Brasso did a good job on the muddy patina. A little gasoline took care of the rotted duct tape. In other places they uncovered geological strata of gunk: poster paint, decades-old gum, furniture wax, and who-knows-what.
Wanda confirmed that in a previous incarnation the bed had bunked visiting grandchildren, who’d left behind this evidence of their sojourns. All told, as far as restorations of faux heirlooms went, the cost was mostly in elbow grease and a certain measure of stubborn pride.