Page 10 of The Shop on Royal Street
“You keep saying that, which makes me think you’re not telling me everything. And for someone who likes to talk as much as you do, I’m wondering why you’ve suddenly decided to go light on the details.”
“I’m not going light on the details. I’m just busy thinking. About... how we should hurry in case Beau finishes up early in Chalmette and decides to stop by the antiques shop. He does their website, so he’s there a lot to photograph stuff. But not his podcast—he does his podcast,Bumps in the Night and Other Improbabilities, from the Ryans’ house on Prytania, in a little room at the top of the house. I bet it’s really cool, and you should ask him for a tour someday, because—”
“Jolene, stop. Please. What aren’t you telling me? That Mimi is some hateful ogre?”
“Of course not.” She didn’t meet my eyes, but I was distracted by the storefront where we’d stopped. Two heavy glass doors behind iron filigree crescents and vertical bars sat tucked in between two protruding bay windows with large beveled panes. The entire front of the building sat beneath a long balcony with cast-iron handrails and S-shaped wall brackets to support it.
A large black sign in the shape of a Renaissance shield hung on a horizontal pole above the door. I stepped back to read it. In gold paint in a bold old-style serif font were the wordsTHE PAST IS NEVER PAST. Beneath those words, in smaller letters, was the wordANTIQUES. A gold fleur-di-lis punctuated the sign at the bottom, as if to remind passersby that they were in New Orleans.
A Regency-era dining table set for twelve, completely with Old Imari china and Baccarat crystal glasses, filled the window on the left.A Venetian glass chandelier hovered over the table, its bulbs and colored crystals emitting a festive glow. But it was the other window that drew my attention. I moved to stand in front of it, an old memory pausing in my brain, of a moment with my mother, Bonnie, when she’d taken me to a carnival and let me ride the carousel. I could almost feel her hands on my waist.
“Aren’t you coming?” Jolene was already reaching for the door handle.
“Coming—I was just admiring the horse. It’s a 1910 Muller carousel horse. Even though it’s been years, I somehow remember Beau telling me that his family’s antiques shop had one in the window. I’m guessing there’s not a huge market for them.”
“Or Mimi Ryan hasn’t found a buyer worthy of it.”
“What?”
Jolene wrapped both hands around the thick brass door handle. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. Mimi Ryan is the grandmother we’d all want to have. She’s just a bit... peculiar.”
Before I could question her, she pulled the door open, icy cold air blasting us in the face. “The air conditioner must be broken again,” Jolene explained. “They can’t get the temperature to go above fifty-five degrees in the summer.”
I shivered, wishing I’d brought a sweater, which was ridiculous considering it was over ninety degrees outside. “What do you mean by ‘peculiar’?”
“May I help you?” a soft voice interrupted.
An older woman with a serene smile that matched her voice stood with her hands folded in front of her. My own two grandmothers didn’t comply with what people thought grandmothers should look like, but this woman certainly did. With gray hair piled up in a bun, a sweet round face with a sunburst of wrinkles at the corner of both her eyes, a stout frame, a herringbone suit, thick black stockings, and sensible shoes, she appeared to be straight from central casting. She even wore glasses on a chain around her neck, along with a strand of pearls. In her earlobes sparkled small earrings in what appeared to be the shapeof an hourglass, with small gems as the sand. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find on her hands flour from the biscuits I imagined she’d just put in the oven.
“Hello, Mimi.” Jolene stepped from behind me, and the older woman’s face brightened.
Mimi opened up her arms—no flour that I could see—and Jolene stepped into them to be embraced as if she and Mimi were old friends. “I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you—must be the hat hiding your red hair.” The older woman released Jolene, then looked at me, as if waiting to be introduced. I held out my hand, then paused. I looked into her face closely for the first time, and wondered if I’d just discovered what Jolene had been referring to as peculiar.Mimi’s left eye was a brilliant blue, but her right eye was a clear green, reminding me of a cat’s-eye marble I’d once found on a playground when I was a little girl.
“Mimi,” Jolene said, “I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine, Nola Trenholm. She’s...”
“I know who she is.” The woman smiled, her odd eyes tilting at the corners as she reached for both of my hands. Hers were soft and warm—no doubt from all that butter and flour—and she studied my face for a long moment before speaking again. “I’ve been expecting you. Although, to your credit, I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
At my questioning look, she said, “Call it a grandmother’s intuition or whatever you like, but when Beau mentioned that you wanted to buy the Creole cottage on Dauphine and he had second thoughts, I figured that if you had any brains, you’d come see me.”
She dropped my hands, and I was glad, because mine had begun to sweat despite the freezerlike temperature in the building. “Actually, it was Jolene’s idea. I just happened to agree.” I cleared my throat, ready to give her my rehearsed speech. “I’m here to solicit your help. I have a master’s in historic preservation. I can climb roofs and replace tiles, scrape off two hundred years of paint from a wall, and repoint old bricks in my sleep. I love history and old houses. I want to buy that house and restore it so I can live in it. I’ve even saved up the money to purchase it. But to be ornery, Beau said no.”
“Wait a minute.” Jolene’s eyes widened. “Did y’all date when you both lived in Charleston?”
“No.” I softened my tone when I noticed Mimi’s eyes narrowing. “I mean, he’s smart, I guess, and my friends all thought he was handsome.” Mimi’s eyes didn’t change. I cleared my throat. “Because he is handsome, of course. But we just have opposite personalities. He’s... bossy. Like he thinks he should always be in charge of every situation and every person and knows what’s best for me, even though he has no clue.”
“And you’re not like that, too?”
“No. Not at all.” I shook my head to amplify my argument.
“Which is why you’re here arguing against his decision.”
I might have stuttered in my attempt to reply, but I was saved from speaking when the door opened behind us and an older couple walked in. The man’s face was chiseled with time, his eyes carrying a burden of sorrows that matched the woman’s. He carried a bulky object beneath a tartan blanket, heavy enough that he had to readjust it in his arms.
“Please excuse me for a moment,” Mimi said, then walked toward the couple.
I gave Jolene a look I hoped said that she had a lot of explaining to do, and her response was a shrug and a slight shake of her head that I hoped wasn’t the entire apology I would get out of her.
While we waited, I looked around the shop, feeling a little homesick as I recognized the similarities to my grandparents’ shop in Charleston. I’d worked at Trenholm Antiques in high school and off and on during my years at grad school. Despite my efforts to stage furniture in settings that would help customers imagine a settee or chair or highboy in their own homes, the resulting effect was more like a maze of mahogany and cherrywood interspersed with flamboyant gilt, intricate marquetry, and priceless Scalamandré silk. For a lover of antiques, the shop was an adult candy store, full of rare porcelain urns, crystal vases, bronze statues, and other objets d’art that had managed to survive wars and other human upheavals, strong despite their inherent fragility, outlasting their creators by decades.
