Object No. 27 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Ed Skoog, has ended. Original price: $3.00. Final price: $26.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

Back then, I taught introductory drawing at East Memphis Community College to save enough money for an engagement ring. Iris and I set our wedding for July. But two weeks before our wedding, Gomez and Olive reappeared, saying they’d eloped to Eureka Springs, and were back from honeymooning and ready to party. Olive bartended at Tilsson’s Bar, and Iris and others spent the day gussying up the bar with spangle and fabric. Tilsson announced all drinks were on the house. Gomez’s mother came down and danced all night to the jukebox before driving half-drunk back north to Moline.

Gomez and I stepped outside for a smoke. The old woman next door had just died; her children piled up what they didn’t want on the sidewalk. I stooped down to pick up two identical chartreuse glass cups. I thought the texture and tint of the cups, though mass-produced—probably a New Brunswick manufactory, late-60s—was the sort of thing you don’t see much anymore. “The dove of love,” I said, pointing at the bird on the glass.

“It’s leaning forward,” he said. “Like it’s about to fly off.”

“Here,” I said, offering him one. “My wedding present to you. I’ll keep the other one. We’ll toast each other at our anniversaries with these glasses.”

“I look forward to that,” he said.

“But Gomez,” I said. “I’m still puzzled how it all came together. I mean, you and Olive fell in love so deeply, so suddenly.”

“One afternoon,” he said, “we were in my apartment, skipping work to make love. I looked up from Olive and saw, through the window, a housepainter leering down from his ladder. I leapt to my feet, shouting, and the housepainter took a step back, lost his footing, and fell. Air-conditioner, fence, bricks. I threw on my robe and ran outside. Poor guy, bleeding, moaning. I wanted to beat him up anyway, but Olive was calling 911. The guy can hardly talk, but he says, and I swear: lucky. And I realized he was right. I am lucky. I’d always thought I wasn’t. I thought I was some other kind of person, doomed to sadness and desperation, but I saw myself through his eyes, and I knew that I loved Olive, what love was. Ambulance took the guy away. I went inside and proposed, in the shower.”

A few weeks after our wedding, they had us over for dinner. There was a tablecloth. We all acted like proper adults, with measured enthusiasm and topical discussions. Gomez and I toasted our mutual good luck with the green cups, the chartreuse birds regarding us quietly from their chartreuse branches.

Anyway, it’s ten years later and this is one of the cups. Which one is none of your business.

Object No. 13 of 50 — Significant Objects v2

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Jeff Turrentine, has ended. Original price: $0.25. Final price: $50.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]

TASTING NOTES

All wines were stored at 55 degrees and decanted for one hour before being poured into the same glass (pictured) — which, as regular readers know, is the only glass I ever use.

Marques de Riscal 2004 Rioja Reserva ($29)
Explosive cherry notes, which gently yield to black pepper, vanilla and tobacco. Assertive but not overbearing tannins. When I was ten months old, my mother made my father breakfast one morning, kissed him on his way out the door, then grabbed me and her packed suitcase and loaded us both into an airport-bound taxi. By the time he returned home that evening, we were halfway across the country, in Oregon. I didn’t see him again for sixteen years. This wine will cellar beautifully, but can be enjoyed now: think red meat, roast chicken, or even pizza.

Guenoc 2005 Lake Country Petite Syrah ($17)
Super jammy, heavy on plum and blackberry. Less astringent than other young Petite Syrahs. So the story went, my dad was a real bastard: verbally abusive, wholly uninterested in fatherhood and all it entailed, an incorrigible and unapologetic skirt-chaser. My mother withstood it for as long as she could, until one day when he became enraged over the electric bill or somesuch and she feared, for the first time, that he might actually hurt her, or maybe even me. No reason to get too fancy with pairings here: a perfect companion for burgers or red-sauce pasta dishes.

Bertani 2002 “Catullo” Veneto ($20)
Wow. Stunningly bright fruit (especially cherry and blackcurrant), moderate acidity. They were officially divorced a year later. Whenever I would ask my mom about my dad, or wish aloud that I could meet him, she would say that every time she tried to arrange for a visit he balked at the last minute, citing some work-related or personal conflict that couldn’t be avoided. I spent my childhood believing that my dad just wasn’t interested in meeting me, much less being a part of my life. I served this with some re-heated Chinese food the other night and drank the whole goddamn bottle by myself, it tasted so good.

Provenance Rutherford 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon ($30)
When I was sixteen I went rummaging through our garage, looking for my old baseball mitt, and I found a cache of letters, dozens of them, all from my dad, and all of them pretty much boiling down to the same plea: Come back, Barbara. Please. I know I love you more than he does. I forgive you. Please come back and bring my only son with you. I confronted my mother, and she tearfully admitted that she’d been lying to me my whole life. This wine is just okay. Personally, I wouldn’t pay thirty dollars for it — but then again, I don’t ever pay for wine. It’s delivered to my door practically every other day. My dad wasn’t a bastard at all. My mother had left him because she had convinced herself that she was still in love with an old boyfriend back in Oregon. Her marriage had simply been a huge mistake, she said. When I finally met my father a year later, he told me that he didn’t contact me, didn’t ever let me know the truth, because — his words — he didn’t want to destroy my relationship with my mother. It was better that I grow up hating him, since I would never have another mother, but it was possible that I might one day have a new stepfather. You know what? I take back what I said about this wine. As I drink it, right now, in my favorite glass, it tastes fantastic. It gets the job done, and in the end, that’s what counts.

Object No. 59 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Jen Collins, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $20.50.]

For my 9th birthday, I begged my mother to take me to the iron-on decal store at the Meadow Glen Mall. I had seen some older boy wearing a sweatshirt with a glittery rip-off of the Superman “S” shield saying SUPERBRAT, and I had to have one. By the time I convinced my mother, they had run out of the decal. So I settled for a glitter Garfield on a royal blue pullover hoodie. I was crazy about Garfield — he loved lasagna and hated Mondays, just like me. I had all his books and my friends would come over and read them. This was awesome to a 9-year-old in 1983. I wore the pullover to the arcade, to sleepovers, and to my first track meet.

I wasn’t a Superbrat anyway. I did have a whoopee cushion, though, and a ketchup squirt bottle with a long string in it — both gifts from my father, a wiseass. Naturally, I always picked the 7Up Uncola glass from the kitchen shelf, except for when he picked it first. A few times, when we were watching TV, he stole it from me when I wasn’t looking.

For my 13th birthday — a few days before it — my father left us. A Monday morning. He was packing his briefcase for work while Ma was packing our lunches for school. He came into the TV room, kissed my little sister on the forehead and told her, “Do good today, OK? ABCs?” Then he side-hugged me and said, “See ya latah, Ambah.”

When I got home after track practice that night, my mother told me my father wasn’t coming back. “He left you a present,” she said.

“An abandonment present? Is that customary? No thanks.”

“What can I tell you? He’s an asshole, he’s always been an asshole. At least he remembered this year.” She put a package on the kitchen table, wrapped in newspaper.

It was shaped like an Uncola glass.