The Garage Sale
She had been preparing for the garage sale for days. Mary Beth started in the children's room, pulling out toy after toy that her children didn't play with anymore. She looked at the trucks her son had pulled the wheels off. She ran her fingers along the battery-less toys, the ones she had told her children no longer worked and they had believed her at the time and then forgotten about them. She started in the corners of closets, pulling out books, puzzles, and old clothes that her children would never wear again. She looked at the headless dolls that sat in the corner of the room, trying to decide whether to put them in the sale. Mary Beth put them in a box and labeled it "Doll parts: 25 cents" and thought perhaps someone might find some use for these decapitated bodies.
After she was done with the children's room, she went into her husband's closet and began to pull out threadbare shirts that her husband could no longer wear because he was a size (a number of sizes) too big. She did this when her husband was at work or asleep. She pulled out the bright mustard colored shorts that he husband would never part with. If he saw what she was doing, he would tell her that these were his favorite shirts. If he saw her going through his clothes, he would insist that he was going on a diet as soon as the summer started and there was no need to get rid of these clothes. She had watched the girth of his stomach expand for years, and listened to his claims of impending bouts of diets and exercise for just as long. She covertly placed these too-small and mustard-colored shorts into the garage.
She had to plan the garage sale secretly. Mary Beth was not good at secrets. Whenever she bought anything for Christmas, she eventually would tell her children, by way of widely inventive hints, before the holiday. "It is something you can ride," she would say, her son guessing that it was a bicycle. "It is something you can snuggle," she would say, her daughter guessing that is was a stuffed animal. She was the one in her family that knew everything that was going on, and she was diligent in her duty to pass this information on. Yet, she knew if she told anyone in her family about the garage sale, that they would all want to review what she was planning to sell. This review had occurred the year before when she had first been motivated to have the garage sale.
"Mama, you can't sale this vase," her oldest child, Georgia, had said. "I made this when I was in third grade for Mother's Day for you."
"And these Hardy Boy books, mother," her son, Bobby, had said. "These are my favorite books ever. If you sell them I will never speak to you again."
Of course, neither Bobby nor Georgia had seen the books or vase for years. They sat collecting dust in the attic before she gathered them for the garage sale, but when her children saw them with tags on them for the garage sale, they became their most prized possessions.
Mary Beth had seen garage sales in her neighborhood, even bought a few things from them, here and there. She had garage sales whenever they were planning to move, a time when nobody complained because less boxes to move was always the goal. Now she and her family had lived in their house for over five years, no move in sight, and stuff was beginning to accumulate.
She noticed the stained "I love Alaska" needlepoint pillows, the matching lime colored set of suitcases, the broken set of speakers, and the Donald Duck rug that sat folded in the corner of the kitchen. She moved around the house, while her children were at school and her husband was at work, collecting these items.
The past year, Mary Beth had finally stopped working as a secretary; her husband got a raise that would allow her to stay home. She would spend days vacuuming, dusting, cleaning around these things, picking each one up and asking herself, "Are we ever going to use this again?" She would set the tennis racket down that no one had touched, or the collection of yarn that she had gotten (and never used) for one of her children's school projects, and after picking up and putting back these items she finally resolved that it was time for a garage sale.
After three days of collecting and putting the menagerie of useless stuff into the garage and tagging everything with prices, she decided it was time for the garage sale. It was a bright spring weekday, early in the morning, when she opened the garage door, sat in the lawn chair, and waited for people to come by. The night before, when her family had been asleep, she had put signs all over the neighborhood. She had used the sparkly markers her children had played with so often when they were young, announcing on the signs, "Everything must go. Garage Sale all Day!" She had placed these signs on the corners of neighboring streets that her children and husband didn't travel along on their respective ways out of the neighborhood to school and the office.
Mary Beth sat in her lawn chair, resolved that she was not going to return anything into the house. Not the blue scalloped curtains that she had found in the attic that perhaps might look good in the dining room. Not the Dragon chess set she had gotten for her husband one year, and had never come out of the box, but perhaps she could give to her nephew. She had been to garage sales where she saw the people quietly take certain items and peel of the tags, or right when she was about to buy something she might be told that the thing wasn't for sale after all. She knew that if she started doing this, started to have second thoughts about anything she was selling, that there would be no way she could get rid of anything. They would end up going back into the house, back into the corners, closets, and attic, only to be dusted and vacuumed around day after day.
At eight in the morning, she had her first customer, an old man who spent a long time looking at her husband's shirts.
"Howdy, ma'am. I would like to buy all these shirts." The old man was short and thin, his body much smaller than her husband's, and she considered asking him what he might do with them, but she didn't ask, for fear he might change his mind and not buy them after all. She helped him put the shirts into his car.
A young couple came by and went through her children's toys, buying many of the books and puzzles she had seen her children play with when they were young. She listened to them talk about their own children enjoying the toys, and even though she felt a pang in her heart as she watched the couple wheel the first bike her son had ever ridden away, she busied herself by counting the dollars they had given her in exchange.
By lunchtime the garage was half full, so many of the seldom used items had been sold. She made some lemonade and put it out with a sign she had made a night before, hoping to entice others to come by. She gave the free lemonade away as more people came by. She happily sold the old dusty casserole dishes her mother-in-law had given her years ago and the seashells she had collected over the years. The afternoon soon came and she noticed that, after reducing some of the prices on the tags, almost everything she had put out was sold. And it wasn't even time for her children to come home.
Soon, however, people came by and started to ask to buy things in the garage that she hadn't put tags on. One man asked to buy her son's bike, the one he had gotten for Christmas the year before, and offered twenty dollars for it. She took the money, although she hadn't planned to sell the bike. The same thing occurred with her husband's tools, for which she took fifty bucks. Another woman wanted to buy the cat food that was in her garage, which she bought for five dollars. Soon, it appeared there would be nothing left in her garage, and as it was nearing the time when her children would be home, she decided it was time to end the garage sale. She went and took her signs down, and hoped no one would notice the sudden emptiness of the garage.
A few weeks went by. Mary Beth replenished the cat food with the hundred dollars she had made from the garage sale, her husband didn't use his tools to work on anything and her son didn't ride his bike. It seemed that no one noticed anything missing. Although she had less to dust and less to vacuum around, she began to wish she could have another garage sale.
Mary Beth went into closets that she hadn't been into for months, if not years. She went opened up boxes in the office that they had never unpacked. She discovered old lamps, old blankets and old coin collections. Whatever they hadn't used and she was sure no one would miss went into the garage for another sale. Mary Beth did this for a few days until another bright sunny morning. She put the signs back up. She made more lemonade. By the time it was mid-day, more people appeared and she wondered what she was going to do. She had nothing left to sale. Something perhaps the sight of the crisp bills in her pursegot into her, and when the next couple arrived, she couldn't say that the sale was over. She opened the front door and explained to the couple that the garage sale had turned into a house sale.
This couple seemed delighted, and walked through out the house. They asked how much a chair and the TV set cost. They asked about the dishes in her cupboards, and the comforter on her bed. More people arrived and entered her house. She took checks at this point, telling the people that they could come by the next day and pick up whatever they had paid for. This went on for a few hours until it was nearing the time when her children would come home from school. Finally, she had to tell the last person that the sale was over. She went and took the signs down, came home and made a snack from her children. She wondered what she would tell her husband about the dishes she had sold, and decided that they would go out to dinner that night.
The next day, people came by to pick up the things they had bought. It occurred to her, as she watched the TV, a chair, and other things leave the house, that her children and husband were going to wonder where these things went. She considered handing back the people's checks and explaining that these items weren't actually for sale, but she couldn't bring herself to do this.
That afternoon, when her children came home, they asked her where the TV had gone, wanting to watch it as they did their homework. Mary Beth told them that it had broken earlier that day, and that the repair man had said they would have to get a new one, since the old one would be too much to fix. She told the same story to her husband who didn't even seem to notice that one of the chairs from the living room was gone. She took out another comforter out of the closet when it came time for bed.
In the middle of the night, she woke up and looked around the house. The rooms looked emptier, cleaner and bigger. She picked up the clothes off the floor of Bobby's room and kissed her son on his cheek. He snored softly. She closed the open window in her daughter's room and pushed Georgia's hair out of her face. She turned over in her sleep. Mary Beth got into her bed, and pressed her body against her husband.