EPHEMERA

For a long time now, I've earned my crust of bread buying and selling thing which can be classified as emphemera - Vnctorian valentines, a 1920s oil company road map of Florida, a 1910 booklet of views of Los Angeles, a house plan catalog of 1950s ranch houses, a book of alphabets meant to be a reference for sign painters at the turn of the 20^th century, a circa 1900 catalog of chisels, hammers and rules.  Anything made of paper, including historical and vernacular photographs. By this time, other dealers know my specialization so it wasn’t unusual to get a call from a jewelry dealer in Palm Springs who had just bought from an old woman who said she had paper. It’s a long drive from Los Angeles, but the need for new stock is always pressing, and  I want the jewelry dealer to call me again if she comes across anything for me. I say yes without hesitation.

     Actually, I don’t mind the long drive. Being in the car, footloose at 70 miles an hour in the gorgeousness of Southern California, on the hunt for the big score (say, a Civil War photo album, with every soldier identified by name, rank and company, even better if they are Confederate rather than Union; this is an impossible dream) – it’s just about the best part of what I do. And there are antique malls and shops along the way – in towns with names that mean the West to me - Loma Linda, Yucaipa, Beaumont (“City of Antiques") and Banning. I stop at a few and find some things – an unusually nice tintype, a children’s picture book, a 1948 Renie street guide of Los Angeles. Not a bad haul.

     In Palm Springs, I have no trouble finding the house. It’s a 1950s ranch, shaded by an overhanging pepper tree, the kind of house I'm sure the next owners will update, introduce retro lines to give it the Palm Springs modernism look and, even though it’s on the far side of town, sell for twice what they paid for it.  I ring the bell and wait a few moments.  The door is opened by a woman who startles me; she’s thin and bloodless, so pale, I think immediately of a vampire visiting her nightly to feed. Small and delicate, about seventy and spry, with a very creased face, she’s wearing black tights, a flowing pink shirt and a wild paisley turban piled up high on her head.  I can’t see her hair but I wouldn’t be surprised if it falls down her back. She turns and I follow her in.  She has impossibly thin legs – for some reason, I think she may have been a dancer.  

     I’ve assumed she’s Mrs. Johnson, the woman who says she has paper.  But in fact, Mrs. Johnson is in the living room, a large old woman in a recliner, oxygen hose to her nose. She’s sitting still but I can feel the energy coming from her, the anxiety and irritability of someone in constant pain. I don’t need to be told she’s very close to death.  

     She waves me to a chair and I sit.  There are no introductions. For a moment, no one speaks and all I hear is the sound of the air conditioning and the oxygen machine.  I notice brown streaks on the wall behind her.  They must be paint but they look like feces; slowly it comes to me that there must have been something hung on the walls – mirrored tiles, a mural? – and what I now see is the glue residue. The carpeting is wall to wall and it's exactly the color of Astroturf. Artificial flowers are stuffed into huge vases; porcelain angels are every where.

     I've had a long drive and ask to go the bathroom.  The thin one looks confused, then leads me to a tiny room off the kitchen. It’s crammed with so many cartons I can hardly turn around. But when I do, I see the toilet – there's an old and rusted potty chair placed over it, the seat about six inches higher than the actual toilet.  I’m uncertain what to do but it doesn’t matter; when I try to lift it, it can’t be removed.  It’s dirty, as is the toilet beneath it.  I’ve been in so many houses and shops where people have apologized for the bathroom, but I’ve never encountered anything quite like this. Still, I’ve been in the car a long time and I have no choice. I’m not sure my urine will go into the bowl, but it does. 

     Back in the living room, no one makes any move to show me any paper.  The thin one brings out her costume jewelry to see if I want to buy it.  She’s holding out a big straw basket filled with dime store necklaces and pins and when I say it isn’t my sort of thing, she shrugs and disappears down the hall to the bedrooms. Mrs. Johnson doesn’t speak until the thin one returns, hopping as she pulls on slacks, struggling to get them over the tights.  It’s 105 out and she’s says she’s going to the market; maybe her thinness, the pale bloodlessness, makes her constantly cold.  Mrs. Johnson writes out a check for her. I’m still trying to figure out their relationship – friends, caretaker and patient, roommates? Mrs. Johnson tells me she’s already sold the house and is moving to a nursing home in Missouri to be near her son. The thin one, who hasn't left yet, says she’s staying in Palm Springs, that she’ll miss Mrs. Johnson because they’ve been together for many years. Mrs. Johnson doesn’t hear her, or ignores her, and I can see the thin one wants some kind of acknowledgement she doesn’t get, probably never gets. She jumps up and says she’s going to the kitchen and Mrs. Johnson asks for some of her chocolate stuff. This turns out to be a small can of Ensure.The thin one can’t read the label (where are her glasses?) and holds it out but Mrs. Johnson can’t read it either. I’m halfway out of my chair to help but she finally focuses.Yes, it’s the chocolate. The thin one picks up the check and leaves with no goodbye.

     The oxygen pump and the air conditioner drone on.  Mrs. Johnson says something about the move and her son, but she’s interrupted when a third woman comes through the front door.  She’s about fifty, with blond permed hair, a cotton shirt, shorts and tennis shoes.  Again, no introductions so I have no idea what her relationship to Mrs. Johnson is.  But when she’s told I’m the woman who drove down from LA, she goes to a bedroom in the back and brings back a wide dresser drawer; she says its the paper I’m supposed to look at. She puts it on the dining table (surrounded by three cabinets with china dishes neatly stacked and a whole new raft of angels). There are a couple of old Life magazines, a few snapshots, an old dance journal in very bad condition, some greeting cards from the Sixties and a few other uninteresting, which is to say, unsaleable things.  I’m very disappointed – it’s nowhere near enough to justify a two-hour ride.  Nonetheless, I offer $30 for the little I’m willing to take. I won’t lose money but I’m not sure I’ll make anything at all.  When I say goodbye, Mrs. Johnson flutters a wave; she’s still anxious and irritated, and I don’t want to think about what she has on her mind.

     In the car, I drive down the main drag in town. It’s so hot I don’t want to get out of the car, even to look through the antique shops I see. Anyway, this is Palm Springs – they’ll all have mid-century furniture with no paper at all.  

     On my way out of town, I drive up toward the mountain where the pricey houses are. Under the relentless sun, the streets seem lonely but cramped and crowded at the same time.  There’s new wood and glass and stucco, new yuccas and aloes and grasses wherever I look. I know if I drive around long enough, I'll find something of architectural distinction - but not today. Right now, this minute, I want to go home.  

     Months later, I come across one of the photos I bought from Mrs. Johnson. It's a black and white snapshot typical of so many I come across – a group of people at the beach, smiling at the camera.  I’m sure at one time there were many other photos, a whole album of them – the children, the pets, the new car, the trip to the lake. I can feel the emotion behind all these family photos – the pride of the parent snapping the baby in the cradle, the delight of catching the dog curled up with the cat, the attention paid to countless anonymous people posed in a driveway or against a bush in the backyard. Those moments are ephemeral, captured in a photo which will also become ephemeral, destined to wind up in the hands of someone who has no idea who or where the people are, the hands of a stranger.  

     I wonder about Mrs. Johnson and the thin one, where they are, and if they’re both alive. And I think about myself, about where I’ll be when I’m Mrs. Johnson’s age and who will be with me. I shudder at the thought that I may be alone. But after a moment, my mind moves on and I remember the mountains behind the houses in Palm Springs and the hills I skirted on the way to the freeway, rock and dirt a dusty gold in the summer light. They're a glimpse of the opposite of ephemeral; they will be here long after I and everyone I know is gone. Unexpectedly, I'm comforted. I'm connected to the natural order, and in the instant of that connection everything in me surges, expands, and before I even put it into words, I know the possibility of this connection and expansion is always with me, no matter what happens or doesn't happen in my life. I carry with me the memory of what connection feels like, and that memory, ephemeral, ungraspable, feels as solid as the golden hills. It's solid ground for me to stand on. I take a breath and  as I go back to whatever it is I'm doing, I know everything will be all right.