Vivian
Early February
Vivian sips the mint tea, leaning back into the claw-footed high-backed chair.
She and Peter are in the parlor room with the double windows, which on the inside isanythingbut soulless. Vivian’s having trouble trying to decide where to focus her attention: on Peter, sitting opposite her in the tan chesterfield love seat, or on the room around them.
It’s a much more dramatic space than parlors in other various private members’ clubs and country clubs she’s been to. And she’s been to a few. Shebelongsto a few: The ’Quin, here in Boston. The Country Club in the nearby suburb of Brookline. In New York, Soho House. At least, she belongs to them for the time being, until she has to cough up the money for the annual dues.
Suffice to say she approves of the decor. So many rooms that mix old and new get it wrong, but it’s almost criminal that this interior space cannot be photographed and splashed across the pages ofHouse Beautiful.Here the walls are delicately wrapped like a present in a textured cranberry paisley wallpaper andtopped with sexy dark gray coffered ceilings from which multiple Baccarat crystal chandeliers hang. Silky, golden drapes framing each window form luxurious puddles on the dark wooden floor. A pair of marble fireplaces bookends the far walls: One is coral-colored, mostly simple in its lines, and the other is glossy black, modern, and detailed. Soft jazz filters through the room, and she can’t tell if it’s coming from overhead speakers or the nearby vintage turntable.
In the middle of the room is a curved glass display case containing what looks like an antique scroll. The charter to the Knox, perhaps? The entire display case—wooden table stand and all—is enclosed in a box-shaped security glass, as if this scroll would better belong in a museum.
Fanning out from it are multiple gathering areas, each one seamlessly demarcated with its own Persian rug. Vivian and Peter are seated in the far right of the room—the most private area. On a tray before them, resting on a coffee table that Vivian sourced a few years earlier, is a vintage silver tea set that is Chinese in origin. The furniture around them is varied and lovely; long, velvet couches with fringe bottoms, claw-footed high-backed chairs, a bench with a vintage leopard-print upholstery, a more contemporary acrylic side table, tufted footstools, coffee tables with marble tops, crowded brass bar carts with casters. Some of it is also familiar; Vivian’s fingerprint is scattered throughout. She feels pleased; she doesn’t usually get to see her pieces in the wild, and never in such an exquisite setting.
“I’m sorry, what’s that?” she says, when she realizes Peter is waiting for her response.
“I said, I get it.”
“Get what?”
“I’m an architect, so I understand how you’re feeling. You have the look of a proud mom on your face.”
“Well, yes,” she says after a pause. “I’ve sourced several of these pieces. Furniture and decor.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“You’ve heard?”
“Michael’s spoken about you, or rather about your shop.”
“Oh,” she says. Then she frowns and adds, “I don’t know if proud ‘mom’is the right word. But I am proud.”
Peter nods thoughtfully. “I apologize. That may have been a poor choice of words.”
“No need to apologize. I’m not offended. It’s more that I’ve never really identified with that sentiment.”
“So how does one come to be an antiques dealer in arguably the most charming neighborhood in America? Is your family from the area?”
Is your family from the area?is much more of a loaded question than Peter realizes.
“I grew up in Chestnut Hill. I’m an only child, and my parents were collectors, so I was surrounded by antiques. I’ve always loved them.” She swallows at the thought of the antiques her mother either tossed out in the trash due to her dementia or sold off over the years at below value. All Vivian knows is that the estate sale appraiser she’d sent over informed her that the house no longer contains many of the antiques Vivian had listed—and her mother never consulted Vivian on the sales of any such items.
Batting down the unpleasant memory, Vivian adds, “Of course all antiques are antiquesnow, but at one time they were simply beautiful pieces of furniture, or belongings, important to someone for some reason. I find it fascinating how antiques have their own personal histories and stories.”
“Ah, I knew we had something in common.” There’s a teasing glint in his eye.
“What’s that?”
“Lonely-child syndrome. It begets much creativity.”
“Were you an only child, too, then? Or just lonely?”
“An orphan, in fact. But instead of finding storiesinobjects around me, Icreatedobjects to tell stories,” Peter says.
“Ah. I like that.”
“I grew up in the Adirondacks,” he continues, and the way he says it makes Vivian feel that the town he hails from is not the postcard image that mountainous area sometimes conjures. There’s a rawness about Peter, she realizes.
