Side Bar

I enter the tracking code for the umpteenth time and my package is definitely being delivered this afternoon. International Express Post. I paid extra because I fell in love with it online and would complete the room I was redecorating. If it looked that good on the screen in that dusty warehouse surrounded by other auction house junk, certainly it’ll pop on my Instagram and people will ask me where I got it and I’ll scoff, ‘you’ll never find one.’ Unique, quirky, functional, is how I like to style my home and this item is everything.

On the bus home, I wonder about the condition, will I have to refinish it? Is there gross stains or marks inside? Maybe it smells like mothballs or worse, piss...if the legs are swollen from dog, cat, or racoon piss, I’ll be irked. Please be urine free.

I’m home early 4:15! – delivery expected between 4-6pm. Come to me, to your new home.

I make some toast and tea and eye the front window, double taking any van, truck, or trailer that goes by, the sun starting to fade. I’m getting impatient, why does waiting for something you know is coming seem to take forever? My calico cat nudges my calf, I pick her up and get lost in her snuggles and purring. Good girl Ginny.

I finish my tea and head to my bedroom to change out of my work clothes and take a pee, Ginny follows me from room to room meowing now for food. As I wipe, the doorbell rings, timing is everything.

The package is exactly as I imagined, the size is perfect, because I compulsively measured before my final bid. Slightly banged up from travelling over 1500 kilometers but “FRAGILE” notes taken to heart. I grab the scissors out of my kitchen knife block and delicately cut the seams of the tape along each of the edges. I notice the postage stamp, ‘Winters, California USA.’ All the way from Winters, CA, USA to Summerland, BC, Canada…I too moved to Summerland fleeing winters, among other things. A fresh start for me and my new vintage one-of-a-kind teak dry bar in Summerland! I peel the boxboard away like a banana; piling it beside me, Ginny rubs herself on it. I can start to smell the wood, it smells a bit musty, like an 80 year old piece of furniture should, not rotten, the colouring is beautiful, more red than I envisioned. Stunning, minor flaws and nicks, but otherwise breathtaking. I’ll need to wait for my friend Chris to come over tonight to help move it. I open the cabinet of the dry bar, Ginny hops in, give a cat a box, any box.

I start pre-heating the oven for homemade pizza and grab the blender for margaritas, my payment to Chris for the help, he’ll be here soon. I’m so excited to show him the bar and talk about how this changes my design plans. Chris has a great eye for home décor and his colour suggestions are wild, I would never think of them, but they always come out stunning. He’s the best helper for this job and good thing too, he’s about the only friend I’ve met in Summerland. I’d love to have a party when the house is redone. Ding-Dong!

‘Hello love, how are you tonight?’ Chris says as I open the door smashing myself into him for a hug noticing the bottle of wine in his hand.

‘We’re having margaritas silly, why the wine?’ I ask.

‘It’s a gift for you to your new bar. From Napa Valley. Pinot noir, a rare find, might not stay in that bar for long. Speaking of which, this is BEAUTIFUL!’ Chris moves toward the bar, touching the grain, noticing the same flaws I did. He crouches down; Ginny shows him her new hiding spot. ‘Wow, I’ve never seen one like this before, look at the details.’ That makes me feel better for the priority post. ‘There’s all kinds of special features for everything; here’s where the wine glasses go, martini glasses, martini shaker, and down here is where this wine goes! Did you see this false back?’ Chris asks.

‘No way! Let me see!’ I move my head in as Chris pops the back off the inside of the cabinet, amazing! He grabs something, a treasure, a black notebook. Chris hands it to me; it’s soft, a bit dusty, surprisingly heavy. Inscribed on the front is ‘I.V. Xander’, is that a paper manufacturer? Sounds like a made up name. I open the book and it is full of drawings, page after page of beautiful pencil drawings of furniture, chairs, tables, desks, and this very dry bar! Wow, this is the designer’s notebook.

Chris and I move the unit across from my wood burning fireplace, on opposite sides of my giant sunken living room, it’s going to be the vintage hit of Instagram. We sit on the couch the rest of the evening talking about wall colours, textured wall hangs, macrame plant hangers, life, drinking and taking turns petting Ginny. The evening flies by.

The next morning Ginny wakes me up at 5am, the catting hour. I feed her, start the kettle and grab the black notebook from the bar. I flip through in awe of the talent people possess, I’ve never felt I could be creative with my hands. The closest I’ve felt to creative is redecorating this 1960s bungalow, but that does feel good. There must be 75 to 100 designs in this book, so much detail in each drawing. Near the back, I feel something tucked between pages, it’s a piece of paper, folded up, I unfold it, there’s a photo of a man with two young children, cute. I.V. Xander, I Google the name on my phone, not a paper manufacturer, nothing prominent coming up…I found something! An old website that hasn’t been updated in years, someone still pays for this URL? I.V. Xander, a carpenter, machinist, jeweler, and watchmaker. An artist. There’s a picture on the website, he’s the old man in the photo! I.V. Xander weird name, real guy. I click ‘contact us’ on this WWW relic, the wheel spins and takes me to a generic email, no phone number. I send the email saying that I had bought the piece at auction and found a personal notebook belonging to the artist, if he wants it back, how to reach me. I close the browser.

Over the next week I become obsessed with the notebook, all the beautiful designs in them, so intricate, multi-coloured, whimsical. I begin to daydream about I.V. Xander contacting me, thanking me for saving his notebook, and offering to make me any other piece in the book as appreciation.

A few more weeks go by and I hear nothing from I.V. The only new changes to the living room are the shag carpet I paid to be installed and my own half-assed attempt at redoing the baseboards. It is not going well and it is not looking great, definitely not influencer ready. The dry bar is nice, but it in itself does not a vibe make. Ding-Dong! Who is that?!

I open the door, Ginny peaks her head up from the couch, a young woman is standing at the doorway, ‘hello’, I say, ‘how can I help you?’

‘Hi there, my name is Ivy Roman, formerly Xander. I.V. Xander is my grandfather. Did you contact his website about a notebook? Are you…’

‘I did! I am! How is he? What does the I. and the V. stand for? Why did you come all this way, you could have called or emailed?’ – I am so excited, I have been fantastically making up stories about Xander in my mind for over a month and now I may get some answers! Wait? Granddaughter, where is he, why is she here?

‘My grandfather passed away in 2002. In your email, you said you found something of his in the bar? A notebook? Do you have it? Can I see it?’ Ivy is just about as excited as I was about the notebook.

I lift my head, as if I know this is the thing she’s come for, the beautiful pieces of art her grandfather created, I feel silly for fan girling and being insensitive to Ivy’s loss. I motion for her to follow me, ‘leave your shoes on, I’m renovating’, we step into the living room and I slip over to the bar. I open the cabinet and pull out the notebook. I feel the soft cover and read the inscription one last time. ‘Here you go,’ I hand it to Ivy.

‘Thank you’ she grabs the notebook and begins to leaf through it quickly, she checks the sleeves, turns it over and tries to shake anything loose. ‘Did you find anything else in the notebook?’ Ivy asks.

‘Oh yeah, I did. The first night I got it, my friend Chris and I found the false back, that’s where the notebook was. Let me show you!’ I pop the false back out and grab the paper with the photo tucked inside, I take the photo out and hand it to Ivy, ‘one of these kids is you?’ I ask.

‘It is, the one in the dress. The one in the sailor suit is my little brother, Morris.’ Ivy almost absently passes me back the photo and reaches for the piece of paper the photo was folded into. ‘This,’ she grabs the paper, ‘this is what I came for.’

‘An old blank folded piece of paper?’

Ivy reaches into her purse, pulls out a flash light and turns it on, it’s a black light. The page isn’t blank, ‘holy shit!’ I exclaim, ‘am I in some trouble here?’

Ivy burst out laughing, ‘no, no, not at all. This,’ she holds up the paper, ‘is what I’ve been searching for, I thought Morris was hiding it from me. These are my grandfather’s design patents. I knew it was here! In his will, he said “the patents are with the painkillers.” Everyone took that literally, forgetting that my grandmother always called this bar her medicine cabinet. Morris had the bar in his home for years, how he did not find the false back I do not know. I assumed he had the patents and hid it out of spite or wanting to fail. Last year he got sober and removed any traces of alcohol from his life, including the bar. I wish he would have asked me if I wanted the bar, but I understand his pain and process. A couple weeks ago, my grandfather’s lawyer contacted me regarding your message. He keeps the website running because the timepieces I.V. made have lifetime guarantees, so Morris actually repairs the watches. With the patents, he’ll be able to manufacturer more. This is invaluable to our family.’

‘Wow’ I say, ‘well I’m happy I could help, I’m sure I could have mailed the photo and paper.’

‘I needed to make sure’ Ivy said ‘I was prepared to rip this bar apart piece by piece….now I won’t have to. I don’t want to take any more of your time, if you’re ever in Sacramento, please do ring me, I’ll expect it. I’ll have grandfather’s lawyer send you my contact details along with a thank you. The bar still looks great, the room…needs some work.’

That was slightly rude, but she is right. Ivy leaves with her paper but the black notebook is left on the bar. I am secretly happy about that, I am attached to the notebook now, to I.V.’s work.

Two weeks later I get a piece of registered mail from Winters, CA, USA. It is from a lawyer’s office. I open the letter. Inside is Ivy’s home address and phone number, a cheque for $20,000 and a note from Ivy that reads – ‘a gift for your renovations from Ivan Victor.’

Ivan Victor Xander sounds like a fake name.