There is still the matter of the dummy.
I bought her on eBay for $29.99 plus shipping. She turned out to be only the front of a torso, just half a dummy – or one quarter, really – which came as a surprise. The seller hadn’t provided a 360 degree view in the photos, or mentioned her lack of hindquarters – or maybe he had, and in my excitement at finding such an affordable mannequin, I had failed to take note. She was smooth and shapely in the front and 100% hollow in the back, with a rough, scrape-y ridge surrounding the whole thing, and a hanger sticking out of her half-neck.
The dummy was intended to support a small diversion I had going on, a far from lucrative scheme which involved raking the local thrift stores for high end items at cut-rate prices, and then selling them online. I soon discovered that the dummy, whose name was Stella, was no better an entrepreneur than I was. A typical transaction would consist of me buying a designer sweater for $3.50, advertising it for the price of $15, and then selling it for 99 cents. Additionally, I would offer shipping for $9.99 and typically it would end up costing $12 or more. Add to that the forty dollars for Stella the Dummy and the whole enterprise came down to a painstaking embarrassment.
Over time, in effort to avoid the all to frequent gluts of high end size 0 clothing, I learned to limit my purchases to only things I liked well enough to wear myself, and which fit me properly – not the sort of thing I would need to lose that five pounds for, even if it had the original tags. There are approximately 47 such items in my cupboard at this moment, including a lovely Vera Wang bridesmaid’s gown in brown satin, things I stashed there when I exhausted my patience for gently used designer blouses. I just needed a break. I stripped the dummy and hung her up in the closet.
That summer for our vacation we planned a house swap, something that is, as a rule, surprisingly more agreeable than it sounds – when done properly, of course, with an agent and legal contracts and so forth. We were switching homes with an older couple from Cape Cod for two weeks, a benign-looking pair who wore their reading glasses on chains. Preparations for a swap begin weeks in advance; aside from paper work and travel arrangements, the house must be scoured from top to bottom. Everything must be put in order, down to the unnameable crumbly bits in the backs of kitchen drawers. Anything decrepit, clutter-y, or perceivably weird must be hidden away and space must be cleared in closets and dressers. Threadbare towels and holey sheets must be replaced, and a ‘welcome’ bottle of middle-shelf wine must be purchased.
We arrived in Cape Cod at a two story condominium that was decorated like the show home at an upscale rental complex. There were rugs and pottery everywhere, and on the glass topped coffee table was a carefully ordered display of The Atlantic’s and The New Yorker’s. A note on the counter of the small but tastefully adorned kitchen informed us that new counter tops had just been installed, granite ones that required special attention, and that we should have a care to always use one of the half dozen or so cutting boards provided. The tone of the note was admonishing, even though we had never met the people and they had no reason (although they were actually quite right to do so) to question our conscientiousness in looking after their house. After all, were we not trusting them with our own house?
Cape Cod was wonderful, and the house was certainly nice, but it reeked of discipline and order, and thus irritated me. Their desk was clear of everything but the computer and a lined notepad and a cup full of fully operational pens. Their printer hummed softly and ejected printed documents whenever the ‘print’ button was tapped, unlike ours, which was wholly unreliable and spit out papers sporadically. The garage was completely devoid of junk, without so much as a wrench or a roll of shop towels. And the custom bookcases were neatly stacked with intellectual publications and leather bound collections. Honestly? The affectation killed me. Where were the James Pattersons? The Jodi Picoults? The Good Housekeepings?
I spent the whole day before we left scouring the borrowed house, washing all the linens and not cutting on the granite counters tops. I knew there would be something I had missed, that they would arrive home and shake their heads, and would express to each other, over a bottle of top shelf wine, their disappointment that we hadn’t replaced their sugar-free ketchup or arranged the throw cushions properly.
We noticed nothing wrong when we first arrived home. Things seemed to be no more or less tidy than we’d left them. It wasn’t for a day or so that we noticed the counters. Scratches, abrasions, scattered all over our wooden countertops – smooth, polished wood, not the butcher’s kind. Shocked, I checked the cupboard to make sure I’d actually made the cutting boards available, and there they were, the three of them – two plastic and one wood –just as easily located as a plate or a spoon. And that after the insulting note they’d left for us!
The whole thing cast a pall over our trip. As a rule I am the vengeful type, but in this case we chose not to make a complaint over it, mainly on account of the broken plate. It was part of a set of vintage china dinnerware, and in a satisfying gift of fate, it had smashed when my husband dropped it on the prized granite countertop. We left a note of apology on that very counter, right on top of the cutting board.
In the end, of course, I regretted all that time spent washing their hand towels; and to be honest, I wished I left that pizza stain on the dining room chair.
It was well into September when I started up my failing business again. I dragged out an armful from my cupboard and picked out a Nicole Miller skirt that did actually fit me, but only if I wore it as a poncho. I did a passable job of smoothing out the wrinkles, and set up the tripod. Now, where was the dummy?
Well, Stella just didn’t seem to be around. Anywhere.
I thought back to when I had last seen her. I had packed up my business just before our trip, and then I hung her up in the… I checked all the closets. Then all the cupboards – even the ones that couldn’t possibly fit a dummy, even a slivered one. I checked under the beds. I called my sister just in case she might have had need of a one-sided dummy while we were away…? No luck.
I thought of that old couple with their magazine display and their wheel-thrown stoneware and the hand woven rug at the front door. I thought of their showy granite counter tops and their plentiful cutting boards and the note above their washing machine regarding hot water usage. I thought of the slashes strewn across our counter top, and wondered if they were thinking about their precious granite as they sawed away at their baguette on my naked wood, nary a cutting board to be seen.
It had to be them, even though it made no sense. The timing was right. Where else could that dummy have gone? In my mind’s eye I could see it all clearly. Stella was hanging by her neck in a Cape Cod closet wearing a pair of comfort waist khaki shorts and a brightly coloured polo.
That was three years ago, and Stella never has turned up. Now we are preparing for another house swap, this time with a German family. They’d have to buy another plane ticket to make off with a dummy if I had one for them to steal, which I do not. Our wooden counters have just been refinished, and I’m debating over leaving a note and a few extra cutting boards.
http://theficklecrab.com/2015/03/no-dummy/
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