I hadn’t been to this south end of town since before the kids were born, so forty years ago. There was a dusty antique shop on Spring Street where I once found a smaller version of the mixing bowl my grandmother used to mix her cake batters and cookie doughs, stoneware with pink and blue stripes. I had the original and bought the smaller one when my older child, a daughter, was a fetus in my womb. I thought I’d collect a set to pass along, so my child would cherish it the way I’d cherished the one my grandmother left to me. But over the years, I’d neglected to follow through with that plan. When my son threw the smaller one against a wall and it shattered, I was thankful it wasn’t the one I’d grown up with.
Both children were grown and settled in their own homes now, my daughter far away. My son had left us in anger, but I wouldn’t think about that now. The other day, as I put my grandmother’s bowl on its shelf, I thought it would be nice to have a full set of the bowls for myself. I imagined using them to create confections like my grandmother had.
I wanted to see if the antique shop was still there. Maybe I’d find a complete set of the bowls to match the original, and I’d think of my grandmother every time I used them: How seriously she took her baking; how she wanted people to love her chocolate cakes, brownies, puddings, and by extension love her. I’d leave the set to a grandchild for whom I’d bake chocolate cake one day,
I drove through the tunnel toward the city but turned right in the direction of an old part of town near the river, familiar now only because of the street names – Becks Run Road, Arlington Avenue, Cresswell Street. Where brick row houses painted red or white used to stand were modern condominiums, restaurants, bars, and performance venues. Street lights made to look like old fashioned lanterns lined the sidewalks, where several restaurants offered outdoor seating, cordoned off by black partitions. I turned left at a corner I recognized only by the street name, found a parking space near to the location of the antique shop and walked across the smoothly paved sidewalk. A jewelry shop, diamond rings catching the sunlight displayed in the window, and a Talbots clothing store set the attitude for a street that had reinvented itself.
The antique shop was gone, and a Starbucks stood in its place, but who knows how many shops there’d been in between. I gazed at the building, looking for some form or feature that would remind me of the antique shop and its display window filled with old sewing machines, vintage baby buggies, cracked statuary, and a floor lamp bent over a shabby wing back chair. Next door to the antique shop had been a small café with a pane glass window in the front, where there was always a table for lingering over a cup of coffee. It looked like Starbucks had taken over both buildings.
The storefront was entirely a plate glass window with the door to its right. A row of customers sat at a counter in front of the window; they faced outward, but most ignored the street view and focused on cell phones. One woman, however, seemed to stare at me, and I felt self-conscious. Did she not realize that I could see her?
I looked at her, thinking I’d break her gaze, but then realized that I knew who she was. She was my dearest friend from the days before I’d married and started our family. We’d lost touch decades ago. She hadn’t married, hadn’t had children, last I’d heard. Instead, she’d become a well-known artist who produced abstract drawings and paintings that celebrated space, movement, and the elegance of the simple. “Think about a line,” she once said. “How many ways we can see it. Consider the unlimited forms it can take.” She exhibited all over the world, I’d read.
We used to spend hours at the café here. With our coffee gone cold, we’d talk about the future, how deeply she loved art and how she longed to live only as an artist. She would sketch as she talked, ideas for projects spilled out of her and I watched with fascination and envy. “I am an artist; I must be an artist, live the life of an artist.”
And my future? I was searching. “You are an artist, but I do not know what I am,” I’d confess to her, wishing she’d give me an answer.
“You will find your passion,” she’d tell me. “You are a special person. I know. You’ll see. Something will manifest for you, but you must keep your eyes open, watch for it!” Watch for what? Unlike my friend, I had no dream.
In this neighborhood, artists paid low rent for top-floor lofts in dilapidated brick buildings where, in exchange for allowing landlords to neglect the properties, they could live and work in expansive spaces where studios bled into living areas that were furnished with tatty sofas and cork coffee tables. Young men and women in paint-stained overalls would congregate on fire escapes to smoke cigarettes and joints. They lived in bare feet and creative clutter, and I envied the freedom and passion of their lives, while I squeezed my wide feet into heels and dressed in thrift shop suits for work in a partitioned square of office space; I was grateful to be free of those constraints when my husband and I decided the best way to raise our children was for me to stay at home and manage that enterprise.
Afraid I had lingered too long in front of Starbucks, I went in. The cool air from the air conditioning was chilling and I felt dizzy for a moment, rattled by the sight of my old friend. I told myself I should speak to her, but I froze. Instead, I got on the line.
I felt her eyes on me again as I read the available beverages on the menu above the counter where baristas and cashiers worked rapidly to fill orders and collect payments. A name would be called and a customer who’d stood off to the side of the line would approach and take their drink, inspecting it to ascertain that it was precisely what they’d ordered.
I turned toward her, trying to appear as though I were looking for a seat or watching out the window. She wore her blonde hair atop her head in a messy bun. I remembered that. I used to wear my hair that way, too. I’d dress in clean beige overalls and climb the stairs to her studio, the one she shared with two other artists. She was turned toward me, away from the window and seemed to take in the room. The way an artist might, I thought. She wore large dark-rimmed glasses, more for image than vision, I always thought. I’d worn glasses like those until my optometrist told me the large round lenses were not optimal for correcting my vision.
Her lipstick was ruby red, my favorite shade. Had my friend worn lipstick when we were young? I couldn’t remember. Her eyebrows were drawn dark, her eyelashes black and long. She must have thought I looked familiar but couldn’t place me because I’ve aged over the decades since we’d last seen each other.
I turned back toward the front of the line and wondered why I was uneasy. Was I afraid to face my old friend? Was I still searching, while she had made a substantial contribution to the art world? Was I ashamed that I hadn’t turned out as she’d expected, special? I had raised a family, but was that an affirmation of who and what I was, what I must do? “I am a mother. I must be a mother. I must live the life of a mother.” True, I told myself, I don’t have work hanging on the walls of some of the world’s most prestigious art galleries. My life’s work is not celebrated with awards, accolades, gallery openings and rave reviews, but I do have a distant daughter and an angry son. And my grandmother’s bowl. I laughed a little to myself.
I wondered, then, why I had really come here. Surely, I couldn’t have believed that the antique store would still be here after 40 years. I would gather my courage, walk up to her and remind her who I was. I am your old friend. I am a person you once knew and inspired. I am a person who was so envious of you that I put on overalls and ruby red lipstick. I am a person who never found the freedom of certainty. I felt a quickening of my heartbeat in anticipation of being with her after all these years. Would she be happy to see me? Would she be disinterested in a former friend who’d had no time for her once married? Who’d moved to the suburbs and raised children? Or, and this was the worst, was I so insignificant a part of her past that she would not remember me?
It was finally my turn with the barista, so I quickly ordered coffee with oat milk. Had my friend taken milk in her coffee? I couldn’t recall.
When I heard my name shouted, I picked up my coffee and angled my way through the customers moving this way and that, until I came to the front counter where my friend sat. There was a stool next to her, and I eased into it and set my coffee on the counter. I took a deep breath and turned toward her. As I did, she gathered her small shoulder bag and a newspaper from the counter, preparing to leave. She picked up her used cup to toss in the trash and shot me a quick smile. In that instant, I saw that she was not my friend, and a swell of gratitude rose through my body that I had not embarrassed myself. This woman was the age of my friend when I knew her, except she was wearing a beige pant suit and matching pumps, dressed for business not for art.
I flashed a smile back at her, watched her leave the store and walk past the window.
The coffee was hot and creamy. I wondered about my friend and if we’d have anything to talk about now that she was an artist.
I thought about taking a walk before driving back home. From the look of the area, there would probably be an upscale antique shop somewhere. But as I imagined myself exploring the neighborhood that was now so unfamiliar to me, I wanted to go home. Rather than search for another antique shop, I’d look online for the mixing bowl set.
Photo by Iva Rajović on Unsplash
