Call out the guards, Alice! she yelled with a toss of her wildly untidy but magnificent red hair, I have returned!
So I see, Tessa, my grandmother called from behind the screen door and from the playhouse I could hear the smile in her voice, Got your room all ready!
Aunt Tessa was what Nana called a free spirit, a bo-he-me-un. Somewhere in her late 40's, unmarried, fiercely independent, and depending on who you asked, either mad as a flea or endearingly eccentric, she lived, in of all places, California, where she owned and managed a small and as she said, tres exclusive art gallery and gift shop, modeled after (she admitted quite freely) Kim Novak's little shop in "Bell, Book and Candle". Each summer she traveled extensively in search of inventory - Vermont for wind chimes, Connecticut for antiques, Mexico for fabrics and finally to Nova Scotia for driftwood and agate jewelry. She was late arriving that summer, having spent several days looking at Amish furniture in Pennsylvania and then she confessed over champagne and water crackers with genuine Stilton cheese, I was just swept off my feet by the quartz in Arkansas, my dears, I simply couldn't tear myself away! My Aunt Tessa - loud, extravagant, generous, and completely untamed - equally at home in her Malibu loft entertaining movie stars or sitting bare legged on our whitewashed porch steps and watching a sunset.
For the two weeks she stayed with us, the house sang. Lights burned long into the night but she was up with the dawn - padding about barefoot, drinking coffee and smoking unfiltered cigarettes while she bartered with the locals then prowling the coast line with an apple basket, collecting shells and sea horses. She visited all the lacemakers and the woodcarvers - Uncle Len made a killing with his painted weathervanes that year - and when the Ladies Quilting Circle met, she was near to fainting with delight and bought all six in-progress quilts that very day. The only person she turned down, and she did it so gently and sweetly and charmingly that he never suspected her contempt, was the man from Westport who carved delicate scrimshaw pendants and keychains.
No, my dear, it's quite impossible, she said with a rueful smile, The work is quite beautiful but I couldn't bear knowing a living creature had been sacrificed for it. Do have a scone and tell me more about fishing off St. Georges Banks.
And he did.
By the end of the second week, Aunt Tessa had filled the trunk of her shiny convertible with the small items and arranged for everything else to be packed, crated, forwarded or shipped. She wound her red feather boa around her neck, slipped into her macramae sandals and shouldered her leather bag - heavy with homemade blackberry jam and scones, a half pound of scallops and an iced tea cake - and left us.
Until next year, Alice! she shouted through the cloud of dust and gravel, Look me up if you get to Malibu!
My Aunt Tessa - unorthodox, irrepressible, brazen, and completely hew own person. It took days to recover from her visit, weeks to get over missing her. She was like a wild carnival ride - you couldn't wait to get on, couldn't wait to get off, couldn't wait to go again.
Aunt Tessa was what Nana called a free spirit, a bo-he-me-un. Somewhere in her late 40's, unmarried, fiercely independent, and depending on who you asked, either mad as a flea or endearingly eccentric, she lived, in of all places, California, where she owned and managed a small and as she said, tres exclusive art gallery and gift shop, modeled after (she admitted quite freely) Kim Novak's little shop in "Bell, Book and Candle". Each summer she traveled extensively in search of inventory - Vermont for wind chimes, Connecticut for antiques, Mexico for fabrics and finally to Nova Scotia for driftwood and agate jewelry. She was late arriving that summer, having spent several days looking at Amish furniture in Pennsylvania and then she confessed over champagne and water crackers with genuine Stilton cheese, I was just swept off my feet by the quartz in Arkansas, my dears, I simply couldn't tear myself away! My Aunt Tessa - loud, extravagant, generous, and completely untamed - equally at home in her Malibu loft entertaining movie stars or sitting bare legged on our whitewashed porch steps and watching a sunset.
For the two weeks she stayed with us, the house sang. Lights burned long into the night but she was up with the dawn - padding about barefoot, drinking coffee and smoking unfiltered cigarettes while she bartered with the locals then prowling the coast line with an apple basket, collecting shells and sea horses. She visited all the lacemakers and the woodcarvers - Uncle Len made a killing with his painted weathervanes that year - and when the Ladies Quilting Circle met, she was near to fainting with delight and bought all six in-progress quilts that very day. The only person she turned down, and she did it so gently and sweetly and charmingly that he never suspected her contempt, was the man from Westport who carved delicate scrimshaw pendants and keychains.
No, my dear, it's quite impossible, she said with a rueful smile, The work is quite beautiful but I couldn't bear knowing a living creature had been sacrificed for it. Do have a scone and tell me more about fishing off St. Georges Banks.
And he did.
By the end of the second week, Aunt Tessa had filled the trunk of her shiny convertible with the small items and arranged for everything else to be packed, crated, forwarded or shipped. She wound her red feather boa around her neck, slipped into her macramae sandals and shouldered her leather bag - heavy with homemade blackberry jam and scones, a half pound of scallops and an iced tea cake - and left us.
Until next year, Alice! she shouted through the cloud of dust and gravel, Look me up if you get to Malibu!
My Aunt Tessa - unorthodox, irrepressible, brazen, and completely hew own person. It took days to recover from her visit, weeks to get over missing her. She was like a wild carnival ride - you couldn't wait to get on, couldn't wait to get off, couldn't wait to go again.
No comments:
Post a Comment