Accidental Antique

He sat in his brown leather recliner sipping on a cold beer. She perched on the saggy sofa beside him counting stitches, ripping stitches, and cursing the day she picked up the crochet needle. Her friend had made it look so easy. Loop it here, stick it here, wrap it around there, do it again. Do what again? Where again? She either ended up with a straight line or a tangled mess. 

He glanced over at his bride of forty seven years and smirked, “Having fun with your new hobby hon?”

“Clearly I am. I don’t know why you even have to ask. Just drink your beer and shut up. Can’t you put on something else? We’ve listened to enough stories of tornadoes and blizzards, deadly fires and school shootings, and when will Trump and his name ever be out of the news? For God’s sake Ernie, put on something else!”

“I would, Mazie dear, but you’ve got the clicker. It’s right there next to your pile of, um, your sweater you are knitting.”

“For the last time, it’s crocheting dammit. And I do not have the click…oh, here it is. You take it. My hands are busy.”

Leslie appeared on their screen talking to a young woman. She was proudly holding up a lamp. 

“Take a gander at that, hon. Ya think he’s gotten that botox stuff everyone’s talking about these days?”

“Babe, I am trying to count, what is that? That can’t be a lamp.”

“Look at the bottom of the screen, it says it is a circa 1960 lamp. It has a lightbulb at the top.”

“But the rest of it is orange and yellow and fuzzy. It looks like a shag carpet swallowed a light bulb and then tried to spit it out again.” She set down her own mess of orange fuzz on her lap. Maybe she was making a lamp and not a sweater and that was why her count was off. 

“Shhh, he’s going to give us his estimate. This is gonna be good. Look at that lady’s face. She is so eager to hear about her treasure. She thinks she is holding a million bucks in her hands and it is probably worth five bucks at best.”

“Don’t shush me, you’re doing all the talking and now I don’t know if I was on row five or stitch five. Dammit. Now I have to start all over again.”

“Six to Eight? Did he just say six to eight thousand dollars?”

She dropped her yarn to her lap to give him a side eye. That cannot even be possible. They lived through the sixties. Did she ever even see a lamp that looked like the shag carpet lamp monstrosity on their screen? That would probably explain why it was so rare and valuable. 

“For a lamp? Maybe he was just talking about the light bulb. The price of everything has gone up lately. Eggs are over four dollars a dozen now.”

“Damn, guess we should have started collecting lamps.” 

“We collect enough around here. Dust, fur balls, bills, your toenail clippings, bad hobbies…”

Ernie pushed himself up from the recliner with an old man grunt and sigh. “I’m heading to the kitchen, you want anything?”

Mazie shook her head and tossed her tangled orange mess to the floor. Let the cat play with it, she thought. “I’ll follow you in.”

Ernie’s back end was sticking out of the fridge. A muffled, “Where are you hiding the mustard? Why isn’t it next to the ketchup like it always is?”

“You used up the last of it at lunch, there’s more in the cupboard, top shelf, left side. No, your other left,” she shook her head as her eyes landed on the cat statuette that proudly sat in the middle of her kitchen windowsill. It was about the size of her fist and was just as shiny today as the day she found it in Ernie’s suitcase.

She smiled to think about that day. It was the day after her birthday. His flight had been delayed, so he missed her birthday. He felt terrible about it and she was so disappointed. It wasn’t every day that she was going to turn thirty afterall. She hadn’t made any plans as they were going to have a quiet birthday dinner with just the two of them. She had the steaks prepped, the salad made, the table cloth laid, and the lipstick applied when the phone rang to give her the sad news. He would be a day delayed. 

It was the next day as she unpacked his suitcase that she found the cat. It was the most perfect gift she could have asked for. She couldn’t believe how thoughtful he was. He remembered how she had described the statue that her grandmother had on her windowsill. It was just exactly like the one he had found! 

He walked into the bedroom apologizing again for missing her birthday when she turned with the statue in her hands and tears on her cheeks to thank him. 

Ernie had not remembered that her grandmother had once had the same statue. He had seen it at the airport gift shop and knew his wife liked cats, so he picked it up as a placeholder gift until he could buy her a proper gift when he got home. He was not going to admit this. He was going to enjoy the birthday dinner, the cake, and the dessert that night too. All because of a statue bought in an airport. 

“Ernie, do you s’pose that cat is worth a few thousand dollars? We’ve never had it appraised,” Mazie was staring at the cat on the sill. “If the Antiques Roadshow ever came here, we could take that to be appraised.”

Ernie looked up from the ham and cheese sandwich, butter knife in one hand, the jar of mustard in the other. “What? The what? Appraised?”

“My cat statuette. It must be at least eighty years old. Maybe more if it sat on my grandmother’s windowsill too,” Mazie turned to Ernie. “What’s the matter? You look sick. Did the ham spoil?”

“Um, Mazie, about the cat, I have to tell you something.”

****

“So, it isn’t quite as old as I thought? And, you accidentally bought it? You didn’t even buy it on purpose? And, what’s more, you didn’t even ever have to admit this to me you silly, silly old man. You could have let me think you had been thoughtful and sweet and sentimental?” Mazie stared at her husband. 

“Yep, I s’pose that’s one way of looking at it,” Ernie said. He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and squeezed her hand. 

“I don’t need my cat appraised, or any present from you appraised,” Mazie said, “Afterall, at the end of the day, you are my favorite antique. And you are priceless. I just can’t take you on the antiques roadshow…”