This Month's Story

“Why, Paul, this looks really nice.”

I worry when Stella says things like that. We were in the antique mall over in Pass Christian. It was one of those interesting places you like to wander through on a Sunday afternoon and we were doing that. I can normally look at whatever she sees and say agreeably, “Oh yes, that is nice,” and move on.

But now something had definitely caught Stella’s eye and I began to worry.

I went over to see what she was admiring. What she was looking at was obviously not an antique, but a newly-made ornate mahogany secretary. It did seem rather nice. It was Indonesian and, while ornate, the carving was not overdone.

What was really eye-catching was the two carved drawers in the very top part of the desk. Their place as well as their carving gave just the right touch to make the piece complete.

Stella seemed sold and so I discretely looked for the price tag before I made any remarks that would commit me. To my surprise, the price was reasonable.

I smiled.

That was a mistake and in a few moments the mall vendor was writing a receipt for Stella. “Paul will come by next week with the truck and pick it up.”

At the word “truck” I inwardly cringed.

Stella never refers to my 1990 silver Ford Ranger as anything but “the truck.” It had to do with a disagreeable incident that occurred when we bought the pickup years ago. The salesman had left her name off the title. I managed to keep a smile on my face and nodded when the women informed me I would have to come by Tuesday as they were closed on Monday.

The desk wasn’t very large, but I asked a friend to help me when I went the following Tuesday. We tied it securely with bungee cord to the eyelets in the side panels of the pickup and I drove carefully home, where Frank and I eased the desk into it’s assigned place in the master bedroom.

As I stepped back to look at it, however, something seemed wrong. It seemed not to have the presence it had had when Stella and I had first seen it. While it didn’t exactly seem bland, it lacked something.

It was the two top carved drawers! They were missing!

The two slots for the drawers had the same varnish finish as the rest so that if you didn’t know that there were to hold drawers, you would have thought they were merely slots to hold letters.

“Frank, we lost the drawers on the road! We’ve got to go back and look for them before someone runs over them!”

Amid Frank’s protests of “Are you sure there were drawers there? I don’t remember any drawers,”; “It looked alright to me.”; “Don’t worry about it. She probably won’t even know they’re gone.”; and my own, “She’ll kill me, Frank”; “What am I going to tell her?”; “Keep looking Frank,” we slowly drove back along Beach Boulevard looking for the missing drawers.

We had no luck and, as we drove over the long span of the Bay of St Louis bridge, it appeared even more hopeless.

First, it was difficult to see over on the opposing lane of bridge traffic and, second, since the traffic was fairly constant, any thought of finding anything left of the drawers but a mass of splinters seemed wishful dreaming.

I keep driving and looking. As we entered the construction area of Henderson Point and started up the new Pass Christian high rise, things became even more complicated. Just as the driver behind us was starting to lean on his horn irritated at my slow speed, I caught a brief glimpse of dark brown near the concrete shoulder of the opposite lane of the overpass.

Accompanied by Frank’s protests, I made a u-turn through the construction area on the other side of the high rise and returned to where I had seen the objects.

We parked with caution lights flashing and held up traffic, while I got out and examined the pieces of wood strewn on the shoulder.

It was the drawers

I was lucky. The drawers were so light they had not been badly damaged. However, the shock of hitting the concrete at twenty-five miles an hour had caused them to fly apart. But for this and some rather hard gauges and scrapes on their front panels, they were in surprisingly good shape.

I picked the pieces up and got back in the pickup.

Now we headed back home accompanied by Frank’s “You can glue it back”; “Get a little brown paint and she’ll never notice the difference” and my own, “She’ll kill me.”; “What’ll I tell her?; How can I get them fixed?”

On the other side of the Bay bridge, I stopped at a small bookstore and ran inside.

“Susan, you have to help me. Who can I go see to get this fixed?” and I thrust the pieces of the drawers at the startled proprietor. She looked at it for a moment and gave me the name of a friend of hers in the Bay. “I’m sure she can get it fixed, Paul, if anyone can.”

When I drove into the Bay and showed it to the women, she said yes that it was repairable. The gauged areas will be replaced “so you won’t even know it was damaged.” “Yes, Yes,” I said anxiously. Then she said, “We’ll have it done in about three to four weeks.”

I drove slowly back to the house and looked at the desk. Unbelievable as it sounds, without the two top drawers it was just a desk. A very nice desk, but still just a desk. “I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” Frank said as he stood beside me. “She probably won’t even notice it.”

That evening when Stella came home and went into the bedroom to change clothes, I heard the yell even in the kitchen.

Frank, I realized, had been wrong.

***

It was two weeks before the women called me and told me the drawers were repaired.

When I picked them up, they looked good. I felt good. When I got home and slipped them into their slots in the top of the desk, they looked perfect. The women had been right. You could not tell the drawers had been damaged.

In its place in the room, the desk again had the charm it had had when Stella had seen it at the antique mall.

I sighed with relief.

When Stella came home that evening and went into the bedroom to change, I stood there waiting for her reaction. She looked at it and turned and smiled at me.

“Why, Paul, this looks really nice.”