Provenance

Your prized antique: a secretary from 18^th century Spain. The thing had so many little, intricate drawers, impossibly curved, as if to prove the maker’s artistry. The chairs that faced it in the living room, themselves a French marvel, bowed like servants before their master, as you would bow, Mother, before your briefcake husband. (It’s easier to appease a Sicilian than to contest him, you would say-—our house lacked a judge.) You knew your furniture and loved to talk about the piece’s provenance: a castle south of Cordoba...a monk with many children…

When you got divorced and had to have the piece appraised—assets like nuts or skulls must be split—you discovered it was fake, its innards strictly 20th-century. “How could I have been fooled?” you asked again and again. “Secretary”—from the Middle English for a person (and later an object) entrusted with secrets or private and confidential matters.” “It’s just like your father,” you said one morning, “a forgery of the human.” “No, Mom,” I replied. “He’s never concealed his depravity.”

Men, I think all of these years later, should come with keys and handcuffs. Fathers should be Lilliputian. That way, a child or a small, slim woman might stand a fighting chance.

Ralph James Savarese | Crab Rangoon
Contents | Mudlark No. 82 (2025)