The rack of cocktail dresses with their strappy sequins and newly-matted ostrich feather trim.

The books, a sodden pile of vintage classics with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn face down on top, fabric hardback cover hanging onto the spine by a patch of aging glue.

The neat row of kid gloves with their buttery-soft calfskin and pearl buttons that sat on the display case, reduced to a solitary right-handed glove form, fingers extended elegantly and wrist peeking out from a keyhole cutout.

The display case, mostly shattered glass that glinted in the dim, competing with the pile of rhinestone brooches, the inlaid tortoiseshell hair combs, the palm-sized circlet scarf clip adorned with a silver fly, all iridescent faceted eyes and hinged wings.

The vintage Rootstein mannequins, with their hard cap wigs and beautiful faces, the Twiggy, the Yasmin, the Violetta Sanchez and the others lying face down, face up, no two alike, yet all alike in the ways their fiberglass bodies somehow did not break.

The roof, the only thing I could comprehend.  When news clips show aerial footage of weather disasters, the roofs are often missing. I would not watch footage of reporters entering homes or small businesses with their curious and hungry cameras,  so I was prepared only for the vastness of destruction, not for the moment I plucked a doll’s fabric body from beneath debris (roofing material, I think?), paper price tag still dangling from her ankle, and found her bone-white porcelain head cracked, leaving one painted blue eye and half a rosebud mouth.

The shop, something I do not have a way to explain by naming items piece by piece that were, and now are not. The items, the things, the intangibles are/were either small enough to fit into an alligator handbag or vast enough to fill my head, to fill my workdays, to fill myself, to fill my future. I have/I had put all my eggs into one basket with a wooden picnic lid and a cracked leather loop around the red Bakelite button, thatched rushes now softened with rainwater.

Those were the things I lost in the windstorm.

Things I did not lose in the windstorm:

Fancy, the black and tan mutt who never leaves my side, named because out of nowhere she’d hopped in my camper on a rare overnight backcountry trip before I owned the shop, muddy paws and a half-healed gash on her thigh, skinny as a rail, and with a deep love and longing in her eyes. She once had people, someone who loved and trained her and is now long gone. I am still discovering the myriad commands she responds to: the usual come and sit that turn a dog into a good girl, and better ones like sit pretty, all the way, and back it up that turn a good girl into a puppersnapper. She will not leave me because she has seen the worst of it and knows things are better with me. I will not leave her because I (thought I’d) seen the worst of it and know things are better with her.

The camper, which I could call home with one hand while asking you what home means with the other. If home is where you hang your hat, home was my shop. If home is where the heart is, home is anywhere I go with Fancy. I’m long past needing things like a living room, an idea that came upon me after the divorce. I walked out of my life at that crossroads, straight into a gently-used camper six states away in Virginia. The farther you go, the less likely you are to return. Then came Fancy, then the shop and its contents in a bankruptcy sale. Then came the reinvention of self, which is mine regardless of the weather’s cruelty toward tangible things.

Things I did after the windstorm:

I looked at the sky through the missing roof, the blue of beautiful days and tragedy. I’d used the store, now disarray at my feet, to tell me how to define myself after the divorce. A tall section of fallen-in tin ceiling tiles leaned against the wall, one of the few things aside from myself that stood upright.  The hammered tin squares became a blessing that shielded me from a corner’s worth of damage.  I couldn’t let it be. I needed to see behind it, to know the entirety of how my world had fallen. Elegant, ruined things crunched beneath my feet, each sound a tiny punctuation mark ticking away at my elegant, ruined life. I stepped around blown-down displays and pushed away the tiles.

A mannequin stood upright,  black Cleopatra wig and aged mink stole dry and unravaged. She gazed over the mahogany end table at her side toward the cracked shop window, arm outstretched toward the Art Deco rotary phone covering an ancient water stain. These, too, were dry.

Fancy lay napping in the camper. I could not bring her inside this place of new loneliness. I was not dating anyone. An insurance adjustor would arrive by the end of the week but they were not here today. My sister hadn’t spoken to me in almost three years, and I was watching my nieces grow up through their occasional Facebook posts.

A delivery truck drove past, momentarily changing the light. This spark of sonder and the mannequins on the floor and standing next to me were the only people I’d seen in two days. I needed– something, standing there, that I could not name.

I lifted the phone’s receiver and dialed the house my grandparents lived in when I was a child. My finger looped the numbers around the dial and released to let it complete the circle.

Two… five… six… three… seven… one… three…

I pressed the silent receiver to my ear, listening for it to connect and begin ringing on the other end.

 

Things I lost in the windstorm:

The rack of cocktail dresses with their strappy sequins and newly-matted ostrich feather trim.

The books, a sodden pile of vintage classics with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn face down on top, fabric hardback cover hanging onto the spine by a patch of aging glue.

The neat row of kid gloves with their buttery-soft calfskin and pearl buttons that sat on the display case, reduced to a solitary right-handed glove form, fingers extended elegantly and wrist peeking out from a keyhole cutout.

The display case, mostly shattered glass that glinted in the dim, competing with the pile of rhinestone brooches, the inlaid tortoiseshell hair combs, the palm-sized circlet scarf clip adorned with a silver fly, all iridescent faceted eyes and hinged wings.

The vintage Rootstein mannequins, with their hard cap wigs and beautiful faces, the Twiggy, the Yasmin, the Violetta Sanchez and the others lying face down, face up, no two alike, yet all alike in the ways their fiberglass bodies somehow did not break.

The roof, the only thing I could comprehend.  When news clips show aerial footage of weather disasters, the roofs are often missing. I would not watch footage of reporters entering homes or small businesses with their curious and hungry cameras,  so I was prepared only for the vastness of destruction, not for the moment I plucked a doll’s fabric body from beneath debris (roofing material, I think?), paper price tag still dangling from her ankle, and found her bone-white porcelain head cracked, leaving one painted blue eye and half a rosebud mouth.

The shop, something I do not have a way to explain by naming items piece by piece that were, and now are not. The items, the things, the intangibles are/were either small enough to fit into an alligator handbag or vast enough to fill my head, to fill my workdays, to fill myself, to fill my future. I have/I had put all my eggs into one basket with a wooden picnic lid and a cracked leather loop around the red Bakelite button, thatched rushes now softened with rainwater.

Those were the things I lost in the windstorm.

Things I did not lose in the windstorm:

Fancy, the black and tan mutt who never leaves my side, named because out of nowhere she’d hopped in my camper on a rare overnight backcountry trip before I owned the shop, muddy paws and a half-healed gash on her thigh, skinny as a rail, and with a deep love and longing in her eyes. She once had people, someone who loved and trained her and is now long gone. I am still discovering the myriad commands she responds to: the usual come and sit that turn a dog into a good girl, and better ones like sit pretty, all the way, and back it up that turn a good girl into a puppersnapper. She will not leave me because she has seen the worst of it and knows things are better with me. I will not leave her because I (thought I’d) seen the worst of it and know things are better with her.

The camper, which I could call home with one hand while asking you what home means with the other. If home is where you hang your hat, home was my shop. If home is where the heart is, home is anywhere I go with Fancy. I’m long past needing things like a living room, an idea that came upon me after the divorce. I walked out of my life at that crossroads, straight into a gently-used camper six states away in Virginia. The farther you go, the less likely you are to return. Then came Fancy, then the shop and its contents in a bankruptcy sale. Then came the reinvention of self, which is mine regardless of the weather’s cruelty toward tangible things.

Things I did after the windstorm:

I looked at the sky through the missing roof, the blue of beautiful days and tragedy. I’d used the store, now disarray at my feet, to tell me how to define myself after the divorce. A tall section of fallen-in tin ceiling tiles leaned against the wall, one of the few things aside from myself that stood upright.  The hammered tin squares became a blessing that shielded me from a corner’s worth of damage.  I couldn’t let it be. I needed to see behind it, to know the entirety of how my world had fallen. Elegant, ruined things crunched beneath my feet, each sound a tiny punctuation mark ticking away at my elegant, ruined life. I stepped around blown-down displays and pushed away the tiles.

A mannequin stood upright,  black Cleopatra wig and aged mink stole dry and unravaged. She gazed over the mahogany end table at her side toward the cracked shop window, arm outstretched toward the Art Deco rotary phone covering an ancient water stain. These, too, were dry.

Fancy lay napping in the camper. I could not bring her inside this place of new loneliness. I was not dating anyone. An insurance adjustor would arrive by the end of the week but they were not here today. My sister hadn’t spoken to me in almost three years, and I was watching my nieces grow up through their occasional Facebook posts.

A delivery truck drove past, momentarily changing the light. This spark of sonder and the mannequins on the floor and standing next to me were the only people I’d seen in two days. I needed– something, standing there, that I could not name.

I lifted the phone’s receiver and dialed the house my grandparents lived in when I was a child. My finger looped the numbers around the dial and released to let it complete the circle.

Two… five… six… three… seven… one… three…

I pressed the silent receiver to my ear, listening for it to connect and begin ringing on the other end.