Bobsy's Treasure

Larry, so help me God, if you come near me right now, I am going to scream so loud, it’ll shatter every window in this godless convention center.

I am so mad.

I am so mad I could eat salami, and you know how I feel about salami.

I could take one of those big rolls of salami and tear into it like a magpie. That’s how mad I am. I don’t even know what a magpie is. I’ve lost all my knowledge in this moment of my rage and fury. I am nothing but anger at this point, Larry. Nothing but irritation.

Imagine me taking Bobsy’s treasure here and thinking these people would appreciate it. These people with their glasses and their suit jackets and their expertise. Like I couldn’t go online and do one of those University of Vermont courses that tells you everything you need to know to become one of these smart alecs clickety-clacking their pens ten times a minute while they tell you that your beloved mother was a damned liar.

That’s right. They called your poor, deceased mother-in-law, Mrs. Bobsy Francis Grindleson a liar right there in the middle of that convention hall with the ugly carpet and the onlookers and everything.

If you were any kind of husband, you’d go in there and defend the honor of your dead mother-in-law, Larry. Mama might not have always liked you, but she was your kin, nonetheless. I would have socked that wiseacre myself but you know I do not condone violence. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t have done it though. I would have forgiven you.

To think Jessica talked me into taking this painting here.

“Mother, you’ve been saying my whole life that the painting above Bobsy’s fireplace is worth a fortune. Don’t you want to find out if you’re right.”

I told her, I didn’t need somebody in a fancy pair of pants from the Gap to tell me that my mother’s painting was worth money. My father bought that painting for my mother on their honeymoon in Tulsa in 1960 from a real live indigenous artist who only made three paintings their whole life and two were destroyed in a fire, which makes that painting one-of-a-kind. Daddy would tell us all about it on our yearly pilgrimage to Graceland.

“Kids,” he’d say, “That painter was all the way at the back of the Tulsa flea market. Nobody else even knew he was there. One painting he had and one painting only. I know art when I see it and I knew this was art. That poor man had probably never seen a can of Campbell’s soup in his life, but it was painted as though he’d been eating it all his life. I spent all the money your mother and I got gifted to us at our reception on that painting, but it was worth every penny, because I bet that painting hanging up in our house is going to be worth millions someday.”

When Daddy died, Mama nearly lost her house, but even then she wouldn’t sell that painting, because she wanted to leave us kids something when she was gone. Then, when she died, I didn’t want to sell it, because it reminded me of her. Now here’s my know-it-all college-educated daughter telling me that I should get it appraised. Like I’m just some dummy who doesn’t know I’m sitting on millions of dollars if money mattered to me at all--which it doesn’t!

I take that painting out of the shed where I’m keeping it tucked away for safety’s sake, and I schlep it all the way downtown with me to this convention center just to show Jessica that you don’t learn everything in college. Some things you just know in your gut like how her grandfather knew in his gut that painting was a masterpiece.

Soon as I walk in here, everybody’s all excited. Moving me to the front of this line and then the front of that line. My god, Larry, I wish you could have gotten down here sooner so you could have seen all the hubbub around me. You would have thought I strolled in here with the Mona Lisa under my arm.

Next thing I know, I’m standing under all these lights, and there are cameras pointed at me, and I’m signing forms that say they can put me on tv. Me! On television! I felt like Pat Sajak. That’s how glamorous it all was.

I’m standing there next to this spiffy-looking man in his seventies, and he starts talking about the painting. Asking me questions. The cameras are on me. I’m trying not to let my bra sweat become my back sweat, but I just know I’m failing. I tell the story about my Mama and Daddy and Tulsa and the artist with the one painting who had two others that were destroyed in some kind of fire. The whole time I hear commotion from the guys operating the cameras and some of the other people filming us, and I think--

They’re all so nervous, because I have delivered unto them something that is as rare and precious as the Sistine Chapel.

Oooh, I wanted Jessica there with me so bad to show her that her Mama’s just as smart as she is, but she’s getting some award at school for inventing some kind of new heart valve that’ll save a couple hundred people’s lives every year or something like that. I wasn’t really paying attention when she was talking about it, because I don’t believe in letting people go into your body and do all kinds of voodoo to it.

Jessica was getting her little award and you were at work and I was standing there all by myself getting ready to tell this man with his glasses and his suit and his little pen that I appreciate his offer to pay me a billion dollars for Bobsy’s treasure, but I just can’t bear to sell it unless he wants to offer me two billion, at which point I’d have to ask Mama in heaven for forgiveness and take the money, because I want to buy myself a little island in the Bahamas.

Then, I hear this jackal say to me--

“...a very poor knockoff of an Andy Warhol.”

Well, I felt my whole body freeze up like a penguin at a Dairy Queen.

Andy Who? Was that the name of the indigenous artist from Tulsa?

Oh no, Larry, ohhhhh nooooooo.

This man goes on to explain to me that the painting that was hanging above Mama and Daddy’s fireplace all these years was a painting of a can of soup that somebody named Andy Warhol had done and that what I had brought in that day was simply a bad reproduction.

Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol.

Who in the heck is Andy Warhol?

For nearly fifteen minutes I felt like a famous person, and now you’re telling me some guy named Andy Warhol is taking all that away?

I tried telling the man in between clickety-clacks that he must be mistaken. My Daddy spent a lot of money on that painting and it must be the real thing, because why would some nice indigenous person lie to a couple on their honeymoon at a flea market in Tulsa? Why, Tulsa is probably the most honest place on earth. I just didn’t believe it.

By then, they were already shooing me off camera, man-handling me and my painting, and I had to run over here to this food court to sit and collect myself until you showed up.

I don’t care what anybody says, Larry, I still love that painting. Not because of how pretty it is, although it is a very nice looking can of Campbell’s soup--reproduced or not.

I love it, because it reminds me of Bobsy, and Papa, and all the things that mean more than family--which is nothing and nobody. Pens can click and clack all they want, but when you know the real value of what rests in your heart, you don’t need anybody giving you an appraisal of it no matter how many cameras they aim at you.

Let’s go home, Larry. I’m tired as all get-out.

Plus, the roadshow is here for another day and I have that vase of your mother’s sitting in the basement that I want Mr. Suit and Glasses to take a look at.

Just to see what he says, Larry.

It can’t hurt, right?