Sylvia scrolled down her call log, and the name of the person who phoned her office in March asking what Clydes cabinet would sell for, using the appraisal number, was Courtney. My own daughter-in-law.
She did not think the cabinet was junk at all, she knew it was worth a fortune a month after Clyde died, and she called it junk to my face so I would let her sell it out from under me for a pizza.
Sylvia had already told the whole fellowship hall the truth. Folks, this is not junk, this is a written appraisal from 2009, and its one of mine. She held up the sheet. Walnut cabinet, built by hand in Washington County in 1858, makers mark burned in the back of the bottom drawer, family letters and a Bible record tracing it to Clydes great-great-grandfather, appraised value in 2009, thirty-four thousand dollars, owners listed, Clyde and Hazel. Its worth more today, Sylvia said. She gave it to me, Courtney said. Maam, you just told this whole line it was your mother-in-laws junk.
Then Sylvia checked her phone, said someone had called in March with the appraisal number asking its value, and read the name.
I am Hazel, seventy-nine. I was a school crossing guard on Potomac Avenue in Hagerstown for thirty-one years, orange vest and stop sign, rain or shine. My husband Clyde was a quiet man who smelled like sawdust and Old Spice, and that walnut cabinet sat in our dining room for forty-eight years, and he oiled it every Thanksgiving whether it needed it or not. He passed in February, and Dennis said I shouldnt live alone, so I sold my house and moved into their basement with my church dresses, my photo albums, and Clydes cabinet.
Courtney hated it, it takes up the whole wall, it smells like an old man, when are you getting rid of that thing. In June she put a five-dollar sticker on it at a yard sale and set Clydes tools in a box marked free, its junk, Hazel, nobody wants a dead mans furniture. Dennis said its her house too, just let it go. Nobody bought it, and that night I pulled the bottom drawer and found the folded appraisal Clyde taped behind it, and I put it in my Bible.
A written appraisal and a makers mark do not lie, and a cabinet worth thirty-four thousand dollars is not a five-dollar yard-sale item no matter how many times someone calls it junk. It belonged to Clyde and me, and it is mine now.
And the call log told the rest. A month after Clyde died, Courtney had phoned the appraiser with the number off that very sheet, found out what the cabinet was worth, and then spent months calling it junk and trying to make me give it away, so she could flip it to a man at her work and pocket the difference. It was never carelessness. It was a plan.
Dennis had come in the back door and heard every word, the junk, the free box, the plan. Whatever he does about his marriage is his, but he knows now that his wife looked a widow in the eye and called her dead husbands heirloom trash while knowing exactly what it was worth.
Courtney faced her own family and her own recorded call, not my anger. There is no talking your way out of a phone log and an appraisal in the same afternoon.
Nobody wants a dead mans furniture, Courtney told me. She wanted it badly enough to call an appraiser about it in March. Clydes cabinet is back in my room in the basement, oiled, with his tools beside it, and every Thanksgiving I will oil it myself, whether it needs it or not.