The Garage Sale
By Jenn Zipp
There is a rhyme and a reason to all this chaos.
That’s what I try to explain to people when they see the room. It sucks that it’s the first room that you get a glimpse of when you first step into our house. The stoop that I sit on to smoke cigarettes with friends is a great stoop. It’s cozy and inviting. There’s a potted plant there. The soil is blanketed with Marlboro butts, but it’s still a house plant and gives you that sense of domesticity. And then you walk in, catch a whiff of that faint smell of dirty laundry and see the room out of the corner of your eye.
Out of sheer embarrassment, you think that I would clean it. But my laziness conquers all obligations of attempting to be organized. Instead, I let the mold grow, I let the dust collect and I don’t care if there are hairballs on the floor… enough hairballs to create a new genus of critter-creature. Like small pets that only the Japanese would know about (because after all, they were the geniuses behind gigapets).
Tony said, “You know… I heard someone say once that the condition of your living quarters is a reflection of what’s going on up here.” He tapped my forehead. “What’s going on, kid?”
So when Tony suggested having the garage sale, I only saw it as being beneficial to my well being.
“It’ll be fun. We’ll clear out this space, put in the study we’ve always talked about having. Maybe one day… the nursery,” he said giving me a warm embrace as he breathed deeply into my hair.
That’s when I knew asking Tony to move in was a horrible idea.
Tony liked to fix things, which is a good trait to have when you’re a handy man. After heavy rains last winter, our landlady sent him to the house when the roof started urinating on me in the middle of the night. Tony came to the rescue.
“The drain pipe was clogged. None of the rain could make it off of the roof so it’s just been collecting up there,” he explained from the rooftop as he swept the rest of the water off the side of the building. “You should be okay now,” he said beaming down on me. I should be okay now.
Six months later, Tony’s tool belt is hanging by the front door, along with his copy of the master key and his sweaty blue baseball cap that he wears when he’s working. He complained about having to step over the wires that weren’t plugged into anything in particular, the collected crossword books that were half filled out, and the balls of yarn that were still attached to a half knitted project that was supposed to be a baby blanket for a kid who is now 9.
The morning of the garage sale came and I looked at the empty room filled with boxes of my belongings. Tony spent a good hour setting up the tables outside and setting up the sign and the cashbox. I rummaged through my things, heartbroken at the fact that someone would go home today with the seashells I gathered at the beach on the day before the earthquake… that they would be placed in someone’s bathroom, of all places, as décor alongside their Ethan Allen candles.
“Stop it. We don’t even have a cat. Why do you need that scratching post?” Tony asked walking through the hallway to get another box to set up outside.
I walked outside and saw my things strewn across the tables:
25 cents for buttons (from every concert I’ve attended)
$5 for a pile of Cosmos (that my mom gave me during that week I spent in the hospital)
3 bucks for a reindeer cardboard cut-out (my friends and I found it on the side of the road during a trip to Arizona)
4 bucks for a broken clock radio (the dial fell off when I accidentally kicked it during an amazing night of sex with a guy named Howard of all things)
Six tea cups, 2 bucks each (A gift from my best friend on my 23rd birthday)
A pair of wooden stick puppets, a dollar (my nephew made them for me for Mother’s Day)
The French Revolution for Dummies, 4 bucks (research never conducted)
Postcards, 5 for 25 cents (from when my Dad passed away)
A pair of prescription sunglasses (… granted not my prescription), 3 bucks
I hated him. I hated him so much. I picked up the box that once contained my keepsakes and mementos of a lifetime lived. I walked into the house with the box, and it fit:
One toothbrush
One JD Salinger novel
Two pairs of shoes
A closetful of clothes
One towel
Five Harrison Ford DVDs
One knife block containing an array of 7 different knives
A frying pan
Two coffee mugs
By the end of the day, we had made $135 and I had asked Tony to leave the house. He stood on my doorstep with one box that perfectly fit all of his belongings.
“I don’t understand,” he shook his head.
“I know you don’t. It’s because you don’t really have anything up there,” I tapped his forehead and closed the door.
The room is back to normal. Back to its cluttered, clogged normalcy.
There is, I swear to God, a rhyme and reason to the madness that I lay in. I may not know what I’m doing tomorrow, but I do know that the USB plug-in for my phone charger is located in that wad of t-shirts that I’ve labeled as “the clean pile”. I may not know what my tax return is going be, even though it’s been quoted to me a thousand times, but I do know that the travel size bottle of Jergens lotion that I once had to buy at an airport in Upstate New York is placed between the red jewelry box filled with safety pins and the band aids I have in the top drawer of my dresser. I should be okay now.