Diane Payne
Yard Sales
The neighbors have agreed to hold a community yard sale. Instead of hauling everything to one person’s yard, they all haul their goods out in front of their own homes. It’s the most popular subdivision on Halloween, people from other towns drive their kids to this neighborhood since they’re the most generous with the candy, unlike some people who use Halloween as a good night to pass out religious tracts. Early Saturday morning, the subdivision looks like Halloween night. The cars are lined up everywhere. The shirts and dresses flapping in the wind have an odd resemblance to Tibetan prayer flags. Bless this shirt, it’s done me well. Buy this dress filled with great memories. Take this skirt so I can quit remembering when it used to fit.
Cars fill up the streets. Many do a quick drive through first, searching for the homes with furniture or tools for sale. No one really wants to part with money too quickly. “I’ll be back,” they say, figuring the toaster will still be there if they check out a few other carports first. If not, it may not have been worth the buck and a half.
One neighbor notices her neighbor is selling her dead daughter’s toys and clothes. Last winter, while the mother was unloading her groceries, she walked into the kitchen and then heard the car tires squealing. Without looking, she knew what had happened.
The neighbor walks to another neighbor’s house and says, “Can you believe it? Sandy is selling her baby’s things. That doesn’t seem right. A price on these things?”
Already dreading getting involved with this community sale, Pam just shakes her head, wishing it was eleven and she could go inside her house.
“How much do you ask for your dead daughter’s dress?” the neighbor continues.
“I don’t know. It’s sad. All of this is sad. I just end up giving everything away because I don’t feel like haggling over the price. Here, take the damn cooler. It’s yours. You want these curtains? They’re yours.”
The neighbor isn’t getting the response she was hoping for and walks over to another neighbor across the street.
“Marge, did you see what Sandy’s selling? Her dead baby’s things.”
“How’s she holding up?”
“Obviously well enough to receive money for her dead baby’s toys.”
“What is she supposed to do with them? It may be a good thing that she finally hauled them out to get rid of them.”
“She’s not getting rid of them, Marge. She’s selling them.”
“Does it really matter if she packs them up for Goodwill or sells them?”
“It’s tacky selling them, Marge.” She shakes her head as if Marge would have had more sense.
“No more tacky than you walking across the street telling me this. I’ve got a customer,” Marge says, knowing this neighbor won’t be saying hello or waving at her when she drives down the road.
A little girl grabs the stuffed dog and tells her mother she really wants it. “But you have so many stuffed animals,” the mother argues.
“But not like this one. This one is special.”
The mother looks at the price tag and asks if she can have it for one buck, not two.
Sandy bursts into tears and runs inside the house.
The little girl weeps.
The mother leaves a five on the table and the girl burrows her head
into the dog while the mother drags her to the car.
2
A youngish couple is on their way for breakfast when the man pulls the car over abruptly.
“You’re stopping for a yard sale? That’s so unlike you,” his girlfriend says.
“Yeah, well Rachel, you don’t know everything about me,” he says rather coldly.
“Not yet, Larry, but give me time,” she says hoping to brighten his mood.
“You can wait here,” he says.
“No. I may find a good bargain,” she says.
“Whatever,” he groans.
The promise of an enjoyable day together seems less likely. Breakfast, then a drive to the lake, rent kayaks. Now this change of plans, the darkening glum.
“Oh shit,” Larry hears his ex-wife mutter before hurrying into the house.
“Damn it, Casey,” Larry yells. “My autographed Zappa album. My books. I can’t believe you’re trying to sell my coin collection.”
Rachel knew he had been married before but he never talked about the ex, the divorce, any of it. She figured he would one day, and she wasn’t in any hurry to hear another lover’s sob story about the woman he did love, the romance that went sour.
Larry starts hauling the albums to the car. “Grab these books,” he tells Rachel.
Casey watches him from the window.
“I’ve asked you to let me have my things!” he screams. The other yard sale shoppers leave, not wanting to be a part of this mess. Larry grabs his drill from a man’s hand. “That’s not for sale!” he hisses.
“Damn, I should’ve paid for it a minute ago. A buck. I knew it was too good to be true.”
“I can’t believe you’re selling this lamp! You’re heartless! Why didn’t you just give it to me?” he yells toward the window. “My grandmother gave us this!”
Larry sees his old clothes in the FREE box. His old wallets, everything left behind in the dresser.
“This is too much, Casey!” he yells, lifting the box. “That lady is sick. Don’t buy this stuff. It’s mine.”
A woman watches him carry the box to the car. “Here, you can have this shirt!”
He tosses it to the woman. “She bought it for me.”
It’s a man’s western shirt. She puts it on and is surprised she likes it. “Thanks,” she mumbles.
“Whatever,” he grumbles.
Rachel waits in the car, wondering if they’ll still go out for breakfast.
He walks up to the window. Casey doesn’t move. “Why wouldn’t you just give me this stuff when I asked? You changed the locks on the doors. What did I do to deserve this?” he says swirling his arms over all his belongings in her driveway.
Casey lifts the window, leans over and says, “You left.”
He sits down beneath the window, too tired to discuss what happened, too drained to move any more boxes, too saddened to understand what caused
this separation.
3
“Look at this cookie jar,” Janet says to Mike. “My grandmother had one just like this.”
“Maybe it was hers. It’s funny how things travel. You like it?”
“I love it! It’s so campy.”
Mike hands fifty cents to the teenaged daughter collecting money for her mother. She doesn’t try to hide her boredom.
Then he notices a coat rack. “Hey, Janet, what do you think of this? Only three bucks.”
“Take it!” she says without walking over. “I can’t believe these gold plated dishes,” she says piling them in her arms.
The woman selling her stuff asks if she’d like a box.
“I can’t believe you have such great things for sale,” Janet says.
“I’m glad someone else will appreciate it. A lot of this belonged to my parents.”
The past tense signals death or a nursing home. Janet doesn’t ask.
“Do you like this tablecloth?” the woman asks.
“It’s beautiful. Are you sure you don’t want it?”
“I have drawers filled with them. My mother loved to embroider.”
“She made this?” Janet is surprised she’d sell something her mother made.
“More than likely. Or one of my aunts. You know how some women get together and make quilts? My mom and her sisters got together to embroider.”
There’s something to be said about knowing the history of an object, yet, Janet wishes she didn’t know the history of these things. Without knowing much, there is already too much intimacy. Still, she buys the tablecloth.
Mike brings an old toaster and an eggbeater to the girl, then hands her another dollar. Janet has already paid for their purchases.
The woman wonders why they’ve paid separately. They remind her of herself when she was in her twenties, stopping at yard sales to furnish apartments with different lovers. The woman will be turning fifty next month. Another year and her daughter will leave for college. She heard on the news last night that doing crossword puzzles will help prevent dementia. She hates putting letters in little boxes, forcing definitions for words that seemed more useful when they meant other things, even if they were not the correct definitions. She despises trivial facts. Those facts always make her feel ignorant.
She wonders if she could sit down and the write the names of all her former lovers.
Could she define former? Lover? Last week her
daughter asked her if she never married because she has commitment issues.
Commitment issues! Define that. She remembers an old postcard where the
woman says, Oh no, I forgot to get married. The woman is smiling brightly.
She thinks about making her own postcard, a picture of herself,
smiling idiotically beneath those words. She’ll put it on the fridge.
“I can’t believe you sold Grandma’s tablecloth,” her daughter snarls now that the young couple has left.
“I told you you could have it,” she says.
“You’re so cold.”
And unmarried, and old, and on the verge of dementia.
Maybe dementia will be something like a gift.
4
Without much warning, the wind picks up and the sky darkens. People start packing up their yard sale items. Shrewd shoppers offer quarters for things that cost ten bucks, joking they won’t have to put it away if they sell it. Frustrated owners accept the tossed quarters and watch the shoppers gloat on their cell phones about their great deal. They don’t even wait until they get to their cars to call their lovers? Neighbors? Spouse? It’s hard to imagine who wants this expedient update of how someone bought an electric blanket for only a quarter.
“This storm is coming on fast,” says the older man, hauling the lawn mower into his car. “Looks like I won’t have to mow the lawn when I get home,” he says to the woman who sold him the mower.
Her hair is blowing over his face. He can’t tell if she’s smiling or glaring at him.
He’s another lucky one who paid quarters for an item that cost way more.
Another lady still looking at her stuff says, “They should call this the Before the Storm Bargain Sale. I’m going to see if that TV is still for sale down the street. Should be cheap now.”
“Good luck,” the woman mutters dragging her stuff into the house just before the first burst of thunder. She grabs her clothes seconds before the rain begins.
Even though it’s only ten twenty-five in the morning, the sky looks like it’s ten at night. The wind comes to an abrupt halt and an eerie silence surrounds the neighborhood. She stands in her carport, watching a funnel approach.
“Oh my god,” she yells, running into the house.
5
The sun shines brightly. The air is considerably cooler than only an
hour earlier. Shirts and dresses hang from trees. Wet cardboard boxes
emerge in yards like hydrangea bushes. Plastic toys are on top of cars.
A beautifully embroidered tablecloth covers a mailbox. A stuffed animal
dog appears to be an owl, hidden in the branches of a tree.
An autographed Frank Zappa album floats in a birdbath.
Birds use it as a raft while they bathe. A lawn mower
seems so strangely out of place on the candy store roof.
A weird black and white postcard of a 1950’s looking woman
is plastered on the priest’s office window. The card says:
Oh no, I forgot to get married. Outside, the air is uncannily crisp and fresh.
©2009 by Diane Payne
