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0 Comments | Apr 14, 2014

Letting Go

001Wendy Sutter stood alone at the hors d’oeuvre table, slowly, methodically, arranging small bits of raw carrot and celery on a clear plastic plate and contemplating the funeral she had just come from along with the thirty or so others at the house. Henry Abercrombie had died two days earlier from massive pulmonary failure, and had done so while working his regular late afternoon shift at the Home Depot in Peterborough, two towns over. Notwithstanding his advancing age and what was reputed to be a solid retirement income, he had worked there in the store’s plumbing department for more than four years. And despite his generally slow work pace and not-infrequent, occasionally charming, tendency to steer customer queries in eccentric directions, he had generally been thought to be in decent health, both physically and mentally, so that when he collapsed to the floor while directing a customer to the three-quarter-inch PVC fittings, it had struck everyone as something of a surprise. Henry had no immediate family in the area, and so Stella Jorgenson had agreed to hold the post-funereal festivities at her home on the far north end of Gilbert Street, something she seemed to do a bit more often than the death rate in her immediate family would normally call for, the consensus of opinion being that Stella, with no family of her own in the town either, simply enjoyed entertaining, regardless of the occasion.

Truth be told, Wendy had not known Henry all that well. But he had lived there on Gilbert Street for many years with the rest of them, and it seemed, therefore, appropriate to pay her respects, besides which the affair was expected to be lightly attended and Stella was known for over-providing the food at such events. Well beyond life’s halfway point herself, Wendy was spending an increasing proportion of her own life these days attending funerals, though mercifully there had been none in some time for any truly close friends or relatives. It was awful hard not to think about it though, and to think in particular on what her own would someday be like. Who would come? What would they say about her? What food would they serve? Might the reception, in fact, take place here, in this very house? In what seemed a possibly inappropriate moment of whimsy, Wendy wondered why there wasn’t a form or something you could complete in advance and place on file down at the courthouse, letting folks know exactly what you wanted—venue, food, music, the works. Seemed like the sort of thing that could save folks a lot of guesswork later on. For all she knew, there already was such a service. She’d never seriously looked into it. It had taken the death of her husband, now six years past, to even motivate her to do a will. She’d never seriously given much thought to anything beyond that, except, of course, during contemplative moments at a funeral for someone else, moments like the present one.

Two women Wendy did not know approached the table, speaking in quiet respectful tones. They nodded courteously in her direction but did not cease their conversation.

“Well, it’s not as though he was exactly a hoarder,” one woman said quietly to the other.

“But it sounded like his daughter was going to have a dickens of a time cleaning all the junk out of his house,” the other replied.

“Seems like it happens with all old people. I had to do it for an aunt a few years ago when she passed, and we were months going through everything. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

And so the conversation continued as Wendy stood nearby, chewing delicately on her vegetables and making little effort to avoid overhearing. She had just about gotten the women’s remarks out of her head by the end of the short drive back to her house, but the moment she opened her garage door, the words came back to her with stark clarity at the first sight of the copious clutter of tools, boxes, and other detritus that shown in the glare of her headlights.

Maybe the time has come to lighten up a bit, she thought as she pushed open the car door, striking an old cardboard box, causing it to slide reluctantly across the concrete floor. As she stood momentarily gazing about the garage, one hand still holding onto the open car door, three thoughts occurred to her, more or less simultaneously: trash, Goodwill, garage sale. This, of course, wouldn’t be the right order. You would sell what you could first. Then give away what people weren’t prepared to pay for. Finally, as a last resort, you’d toss into the trash whatever people don’t want even for free. As she encircled the garage with her eyes, she couldn’t help but wonder at the percentages of her life’s belongings that would fall into each of these categories. The more she looked around—a two-car space that had barely accommodated one for as long as she could remember—she felt an overwhelming sense that this was not going to be a job for one diminutive sixty-something woman. She was going to need to call in a favor or two. And without a moment’s hesitation, she knew exactly who would be on the other end of that call.

*          *          *

“Of course, Wendy. I’d be happy to help out. When do you want to hold the big event?” Terry Peterson lived with his young son Bernard on the opposite side of Gilbert Street, a couple of houses down. They had been there going on two years. Terry had bought the old Stinson place following his divorce from some Austin socialite. For the first year or so, Terry had lived alone. And then, from seemingly out of nowhere, the son had appeared, already three years old, and bearing no explanation, but engendering more than his share of neighborhood gossip. Wendy had not pried, but had simply adopted the two men, at least to the extent that visiting and cooking the occasional meal could be thought of as adoption. Terry was young enough to be Wendy’s son and the relationship had never been anything but pleasantries and swapped favors. Like helping to put on a garage sale.

“Wendy, you want to clear out that garage pronto, you just cook up a big batch of fried chicken and give away a free drumstick with every purchase,” he had offered as friendly advice. “Problem solved.” Maybe, joking aside, he was right about that. There wasn’t one of the thirty-three households on Gilbert Street who hadn’t sampled Wendy’s fried chicken at one time or another. Most had done so on multiple occasions, Terry and Bernard more than any of the others.

The following day, Terry stood in jeans and a Motley Crue concert tee shirt, hands on hips, in the center of Wendy’s garage, for the first time fully appreciating just what he had volunteered himself for. She had moved her car to the curb, the better to allow access to it all.

“Huh…” he offered, shifting his gaze to take in the enormity of the situation. There were stacks of cardboard boxes so tall that the bottom ones were being crushed by the weight above and, in several cases, in real danger of tumbling over, held up only by whatever they were standing next to. There were shelves on which sat tools and lawn maintenance equipment that might have been last used six or seven presidents ago. There were terra cotta pots containing plants so profoundly desiccated and shrunken that the ball of soil now occupied less than half the volume of the pot. On one wall hung a pegboard placed there by someone—presumably Wendy’s deceased husband—so attentive to detail and so proud of his collection that each spot had been painted with the shadow of the appropriate tool. That most of these tools were now missing from the board likely meant they were awaiting discovery in the boxes and shelves surrounding them. There was, Terry imagined, something deeply symbolic or perhaps allegorical about a wall comprised only of timeless shadows, but damned if he could figure out just what it symbolized. Scanning the periphery of the garage, Terry counted seven weed whackers, including one that appeared to have never been taken out of its original shipping carton. He sighed, a bit too loudly.

Wendy stood beside him, feeling slightly guilty. “So, the way I see it, there are two approaches to a thing like this,” he said. “Either we pick through everything one at a time and choose what you want to put up for sale and what you want to keep.” He paused as though the alternative were obvious.

“Or…” Wendy replied

“Or, you throw open the garage door on Saturday morning, put up a sign, and let folks have a go at the whole shebang.”

“Pretty clear which one is easier,” she said. “Place the wonder of discovery squarely on the buyer.”

“Not to mention that you won’t have to take things out and put them all back at the end of the day. Of course, option A would force you to do a bit of organizing, which…” he paused to consider his wording. “…wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.”

“Terry, there is no need to be delicate about a situation like this. Best thing that could happen to this garage would be a good roaring fire.”

“Oh, now don’t be so hard on yourself, Wendy,” he said. “We’re all packrats when you get down to it. Some folks it’s the garage. Others it’s the cellar. My dad, it was dresser drawers. He liked holding onto stuff as much as anybody, but he just couldn’t stand folks seeing it, so he crammed more junk in the drawers of our house than you can imagine. Needed a crowbar to get some of them open. Drove my mother crazy.”

“I had an aunt,” Wendy replied, “who kept the cleanest, neatest house you ever saw, but you couldn’t open any door on her car without fifteen things falling out into the driveway.” Terry laughed. “I’m thinking we go with the free-for-all approach and see what folks discover in here,” she continued. “Heck, it’ll be an adventure for them. Course, the trick’ll be coming up with a price on the spot if someone finds something they actually want.”

“That won’t be hard,” Terry said. “Most folks’ll walk up and offer you five or ten bucks for something, then you’ll know right away where your starting point is.”

“So,” Wendy said, “if it’s the rummage sale approach we’re agreeing to, I expect it’d be at least civil of us to organize the place a bit, so people can get around and in between everything.”

“Not to mention,” Terry added with a smile, “you don’t want a box falling over and killing one of your customers.”

“Maybe we should pass out helmets before we allow them to go inside,” she said. She smiled wanly and they set to pushing, heaving, lifting, and rearranging the boxes, tools, and shelves to the point where, after two hours or so, you could see and touch a large percentage of the items that were going on the block the following day. During the course of this work, Wendy picked out about half a dozen items that she aside as keepsakes.

“Parting with some of this stuff isn’t going to cause you any difficulty, is it?” Terry asked. Wendy gazed again around the slightly more organized garage, but did not answer the question. Terry was one of the more recent residents of Gilbert Street and he had never known Wendy’s husband or discussed with her anything about her marriage. He supposed, though, that there were plenty of items in the garage that possessed more than a degree of sentimental value. He sincerely hoped Wendy’s good faith effort to reduce the amount of clutter in her life did not cause her any undue emotional strain.

“We’ll need a sign,” he said, stepping from the garage into the driveway, squinting into the afternoon sun. Terry had poster-board and stick-on letters at his house and, with the day waning, he walked over to get the materials and meet his son, who would by now have been home from school for a couple of hours. Wendy set about preparing the fried chicken that was the boy’s favorite, and Terry’s as well, though he was rather less effusive about it than his son.

*          *          *

Saturday morning arrived clear and cool, perfect weather for meeting the neighbors and shedding the inconsequential detritus of a long life, or at least whatever small portion of it the neighbors could be cajoled into accepting. The sign stood in the lawn at the end of Wendy’s driveway, assembled by Terry’s son the previous evening following a supper of biscuits and fried chicken that the boy had declared ‘the best of all time.’ The sign read simply ‘Garage Sale’ and included, at the boy’s insistence, an arrow at the bottom pointing toward the garage door, without which addition he supposed customers could end up in the wrong garage. Terry arrived just after nine, bearing collapsible lawn chairs replete with cup holders on each arm, into which Wendy set plastic tumblers of iced tea made special for what she imagined, or at least suggested to Bernard, would be a special day. In any event, it was certainly as beautiful a day as they could have asked for. The first arrival was Red Argent, the semi-retired veteran from two houses down.

When it came time to sell one’s used possessions—whether it was labeled a ‘yard,’ ‘garage,’ or the slightly more gentile ‘estate’ sale—one never quite knew of the people who showed up who were truly shopping and who were merely nosey about the lives of their neighbors. This was all the more true when the visitors were from nearby. Despite their stone’s-throw proximity, Wendy had never interacted much with Red. His wife Erma had a neighborhood reputation as a bit of a busybody and she came around from time to time, but Wendy could not recall ever having been inside the Argent’s home, though Erma had been in hers at least a couple times in recent memory, typically when there was news to share or to be informed about. Red offered a smile and a perfunctory greeting to Wendy, followed by an extended hand and a fleeting but somewhat more ambiguous expression to Terry before stepping into the garage and beginning to rifle through the multitude of boxes.

Wendy recalled that there had been a bit of interaction between Red and Terry in recent months, though she did not know whether it had been amicable or otherwise. According to Erma, it had involved Terry’s son, his school music lessons, and the occasionally painful tones of a French Horn that emanated from the Peterson residence after dinner most nights. In any event, Red seemed to be making an honest go of searching through Wendy’s boxes. Indeed, he seemed to be going at it with the verve of someone either on the hunt for a particular item, or someone who frequents such sales and knows that the best things come to those willing to show up early and dig for them. The first car to pull up was a burgundy Mercury Marquis from which emerged the unmistakably lanky frame of Alvin Cressey, the minister from Silverlake Baptist Church, a few blocks away.

“Why, Pastor Cressey, what a surprise!” Wendy said, rising from her chair and greeting him in the driveway. “What brings you by our humble little soiree?” The two hugged warmly and walked back to where Terry was standing, his hand outstretched.

“I was just in the neighborhood doing a couple of visits, and I saw your sign. Can’t pass up a good opportunity for a bargain, right?” Cressey responded, shaking Terry’s hand. Cressey had a remarkable memory and knew by sight every resident of Gilbert Street, much as he did the residents of many other streets in the south Austin area. Not more than a quarter of the residents of this neighborhood were regular attendees at his church, but every one had been personally invited to attend at least once, and the minister never forgot a face. He made his way into the garage and spotted Red, elbows-deep in a cardboard box of dubious structural integrity.

“Red,” he said enthusiastically, as though Argent was a best friend instead of a man who’d steadfastly refused to attend Cressey’s or any other church until the day of his funeral, “find anything good in there?”

“Reverend,” he replied, standing and offering a hand. The two chatted for a moment and then headed for different sections of the garage, each man in search of his own particular treasure. Moments later, there came a cell phone ringtone from the back of the garage and shortly thereafter Cressey emerged, moving rapidly toward his car.

“Sorry, Wendy. Another appointment I nearly forgot,” he said, grasping her hand perfunctorily. “I’ll stop back by on the way home this afternoon. Promise.”

In the hour that followed, another half dozen or so neighbors came by, to the point where the garage had started to look positively crowded. The usual few curious folks—likely serial Saturday morning garage sale crawlers in their never ending search for a lost Renoir—stopped by to poke about amid the clutter and then depart with nothing more than a curt head nod. It was the nearby neighbors who seemed most interested in actual shopping, though it was unclear whether they were actually in search of something in particular or merely being supportive of a local who might actually be in need of the money. Red was the first to approach Wendy with a small awkward armload of items. As he laid them on a card table set up for the purpose, it was apparent he had focused his efforts on the section of the garage where Wendy’s former husband had kept his antiquated tools, none of which Wendy had had reason to touch or even recall owning for years.

There was a dusty wooden two-foot level, which an assiduous degree of cleaning and polishing would reveal to feature mahogany construction and original brass fittings. On a small plaque in the center was inscribed “Stanley Rule and Level Company,” and a date that suggested its original owner might have had parents who served in the Civil War. There were two wooden block planes, one with a straight angle blade, the other with a delicately curved ogee pattern for the craftsman diligent enough to carve his own crown molding, an art form long deceased and little remembered. Finally, Red had unearthed an oak angle measuring tool, beautifully simple in construction and uniquely suited to its single purpose.

“Didn’t see prices on anything,” Red observed laconically.

Wendy leaned forward in her chair, gazing over the four items for a moment, not responding to Red’s implied question. She lifted the level and turned it from side to side.

“Oh goodness,” she said, “Harold used to just love this old thing. Used to go on and on about inheriting it from his grandfather, how it was a hundred and some odd years old, but was still accurate as the day it was made. Cincinnati, I think he said. Or maybe it was Pittsburgh.”

She set the level down and turned her gaze to the angle measuring tool. “And this. Oh, Red, wherever did you find it? My husband got this at a yard sale up in New Hampshire that summer we stayed at my sister in law’s cabin. “And … I’ll be darned,” she said, holding the device up for Red and Terry to consider. “This angle it’s set on hasn’t been touched in all these years. It’s exactly the angle Harold set it to when he hung the drywall in my daughter’s bedroom.” How she could possibly know this was a complete mystery to Terry and Red, but she certainly seemed sure of herself. She ran her fingers, which might have been trembling slightly, over the dusty wood. Red shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he stood waiting before the table. He glanced back over his shoulder toward the garage where one of the neighborhood women was just emerging with a small box in her hands.

“And these! Oh, Terry. Just look,” she lifted the ogee and straight block planes and held them before his uncomprehending gaze. “These were my father’s. He actually made real molding from scratch. And then—gosh, must be thirty years ago—he gave them to Harold as a birthday present. You know, Harold and my father never did get on all that well. We were southern Baptists growing up, and dad was none too pleased when I told him I was marrying a Catholic. Took more than ten years for the two of them to have their first civil conversation, and it was these planes that did it. Turned out they both loved hand tools. Long as they stayed away from religion, they could talk about tools all day and half the night. Look here on the bottom,” she said, turning one of the planes over. “There’s dad’s initials—HJA, and Harold’s right next to them—HPT, caved into the wood by each of them. Oh dear…”

Her voice cracked ever so slightly, and that was pretty much all it took for Red to realize he was not going to be buying any antique tools from Wendy that day.

“Oh, Red,” she said quietly. “Gosh, I just don’t know.” She had not yet set the planes back onto the card table. Red glanced at Terry and then back toward Wendy.

“Tell you what,” he said to her. “You give it some thought and let me know when you decide. If you want them to have a good home, I ain’t but two doors down.” He shook Terry’s hand and took Wendy’s in both of his. “Thanks so much for letting me have a look.” Red nodded politely one last time, turned and made his way back down the sidewalk toward his house. Terry stole a glance at Wendy, who was still holding one of the block planes in her hands. He decided it was an excellent time to say nothing.

The woman who approached the table a couple of minutes after Red had walked away was unknown to either Wendy or Terry, which meant she was not a resident of Gilbert Street. There were thirty-three houses on the street, and every resident was, if not a close friend, at least a passing acquaintance. She was struggling a bit as she juggled an armload of African Violet pots down the driveway and onto the table.

“Oh goodness, dear,” Wendy said apologetically, “I guess I should have put out some pails or baskets or something.”

“It’s no problem at all,” the woman replied. “I’ve got some shopping bags in the car I can use. I just can’t believe you had these lovely pots. I see them so seldom.”

“And I can’t believe you actually found them,” Wendy replied. “I’ve been searching for these things for weeks. Wherever did you find them?”

The woman described a spot in the back corner, above an archaic roll-around tool box.

“They’re just precious,” the woman said, “how much would you like for them?”

“Oh goodness, dear. I am so sorry. Looks like I should have done a better job of marking items in there that aren’t for sale. I’m afraid I’ll need these after my trip to the nursery this weekend. I was so hoping they would turn up. They’re just about impossible to find any more, especially nice hand painted ones like these.”

“Yes …Yes they certainly are,” the woman replied. She stood awkwardly for a moment, as if uncertain what to do next. “Well, thank you then for letting me have a look,” she said, and turned to make her way down the driveway.

“I just can’t believe she found those pots,” Wendy said, turning to face Terry. She held up one of the violet pots and turned it. “They’re so beautiful. Who could sell a thing like this?”

In the ensuing hour Wendy declined to sell to a young couple from two streets over an oak bookshelf Harold had made for her before they were married, though she did kindly provide them with a surprisingly lucid description of her late husband’s construction technique in building it. She explained in apologetic tones why she just couldn’t let go of the art-deco Electrolux canister vacuum cleaner that she hadn’t laid eyes on in over fifteen years, something about a beloved aunt on her father’s side who had given it them as a wedding present but who was now in a home in Dayton meeting the same new people every day. About an hour and a half into the sale, a man approached Wendy about an iron rake, only to hear a poignant story about a now twenty-four year old granddaughter who had used it, rather than the traditional doorjamb, to measure her increasing height from ages four to seventeen. Sure enough, the marks with dates were still there along the rake handle. Needless to say, family heirlooms couldn’t possibly be parted with.

All told, by noon, there had been at least twenty visitors, an excellent turnout by traditional suburban garage sale standards. There were pots, pans, tools (power and hand), kitchen utensils, picture frames, books, appliances, furniture, and an antique pair of crutches whose use Wendy couldn’t quite recall, but which she thought might have dated back to the time her husband had fallen off a ladder trimming branches in the backyard. Every item had a story, or, in a couple of cases, a story about why she couldn’t quite recall the story. Terry, to his credit, remained the entire day, with Bernard running back and forth between houses, either out of boredom or because his father requested that he retrieve some item or other.

It was thus a curious scene that greeted Pastor Cressey upon his return around three that afternoon. Rather than being returned to the garage, the myriad of items that had been presented to Wendy for purchase throughout the day occupied a neat pile adjacent to the card table. She had stepped into the house for a moment prior to the minister’s arrival, and Terry greeted him as he came up the drive.

“Anything left for me to pick through?” Cressey asked smiling broadly.

“All here precisely as you left it this morning, Reverend,” Terry replied. Cressey gazed for a moment at the pile.

“Bit of a sentimentalist is our Wendy, eh?” Cressey said.

“Afraid so. We’ve had visitors galore, but zero revenue, I’m afraid.”

The front door swung open and Wendy reappeared, walking toward the men bearing fresh glasses of iced tea.

“Pastor Cressey, you’re back.”

“I’m a man of my word. At least I strive to be,” he said. “Terry informs me you’ve been blessed with a day of steady traffic.”

Wendy handed the men the glasses and turned to look for a moment at the pile of unsold items. She sighed.

“Afraid I’m not much of a salesperson, Pastor.”

“They’re just things, Wendy.”

“Oh, Pastor, they’re more than things. They’re mementoes of a life, several lives actually.”

“I completely understand,” Cressey said, placing a hand on Wendy’s shoulder. “Can I tell you a secret? At home in my attic, I have twelve cardboard boxes filled with comic books. Sylvia has tried to make me get rid of them for decades, but I just can’t seem to manage it. Some of them are probably worth a lot of money, but they’re from my childhood. And do you know I haven’t opened one of those boxes in over twenty years. It just makes me feel good knowing they’re up there. Guess they’ll end up as part of my bequest to my kids.”

“Who will promptly put them up on eBay,” Terry said.

“Yes, Cressey said after a moment’s reflection. “I expect you’re right.”

At that moment, Bernard appeared at the foot of the driveway, just back from his own house. He waited there momentarily, not wanting to interrupt the talking adults. Cressey turned and gestured toward the boy.

It’s Bernard, right?” he said gripping the boy’s shoulder.

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied.

“I think,” Cressey said, turning his gaze for another moment back to Wendy’s pile of unsold items, “I might have a modest solution to our mutual problems. Bernard, do you like comic books?”

“Bernard likes video games and the internet,” Terry offered. “As far as I know, he has never laid eyes on a comic book. Bit old school for his generation, I’m afraid. No offense, Reverend.”

“Well, that is just plain wrong, “Cressey said, feigning disapproval, “growing up without comic books. Tell you what we are going to do, Bernard.” He knelt before the boy and addressed him eye to eye. “I am going to sell to your father a few select items from my comic book collection, and he is going to give them to you so that you can learn about an exciting new form of entertainment.”

Bernard looked uncertainly up at his father. The boy was definitely up for anything new, even if it wasn’t all that new.

“Then,” Cressey continued, standing again, “I am going to take all that proceeds that your father gives me for the comic books and I am going to purchase from Mrs. Sutter here as many of the old items from her garage as she can bring herself to part with. That way we will all lighten our earthly load a little bit and everyone benefits.”

“And, if we’re really lucky, Bernard will end up with twelve boxes of old comic books,” Terry offered with a smile. “Lucky for me I have a big attic.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Cressey said, “though you wouldn’t get much argument from my wife.”

Which is how it came to pass that Bernard Peterson learned about the true origins of several of his favorite super heroes, Wendy Sutter created almost enough room in her garage to open her driver’s side door without hitting any boxes, and Pastor Alvin Cressey got a little bit more free space in his attic, all for less than ten dollars.

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