I reflected on the fact that Tiffany lamps would never again be appealing; they had ruined themselves for all time, these aberrant lamps, like Belle Epoque paintings and tapered Coca-Cola bottles and ballet dancers by Degas and handblown Murano glass figurines and those Toulouse-Lautrec absinthe bottles. This foppery would never come back in, and I was glad that my mother had nothing quite so repulsive in her apartment, except of course for the Tiffany lamps, a pair my father had given her so that he wouldn’t have to hand over the Nolde Flower Garden painting he had promised for her fiftieth birthday.