On Sunday, the last day of the estate sale, Denice tells me to scram because I’m killing sales. I remind her I need to approve all purchases and she says for God’s sake, Dustin, I know you’ve been through a lot but it’s time to stop acting like a housewife and start acting like a normal man your age, the kind who goes on to college and lets his mother live her life in peace. I stare her down but not too hard because she could literally scratch my eyes out with her purple nails.
A mother-daughter duo walks in, fresh from church, and Denice tells them everything’s half-price. Their eyes dart toward the big draw, Mom’s 2.5-carat diamond engagement ring. It’s locked in a little glass box and sits in the middle of Denice’s command center, a fancy leather topped card table. Due to the ring having “zero” sentimental value (even though she wore it for almost ten years while she and Dad were still married) Mom gave Denice permission to go even more than half-price if needed.
The ladies head toward the kitchen and when I follow them Denice raises her ridiculous penciled-on eyebrows at me. I tell her I need a snack and she goes Jesus H. Christ because she told me to remove all the food in the house. I slide into the pantry and pretend I’m looking for something but really, I’m making sure all the cans are facing the same way while spying on the ladies. The daughter pulls Mom’s rolling pin out of a drawer, holding the handle with two fingers.
“Hon, that’s nasty,” the mother says. “Put it back.”
“They’re just little leftover bits of biscuit,” I say, stepping out of the pantry.
“Who are you?” the daughter says, startled.
“This is my house. Mom used that to make homemade biscuits for me and my brother. Back in the day.” I take the pin from her, fleck the bits off with my thumbnail, and slip it back into its drawer.
“Why are you even here?” the daughter says. “Family members aren’t supposed to be at estate sales.”
“That’s what I keep telling him but he won’t listen,” Denice pipes up from the living room. “Believe me, he won’t listen to anyone.” The women stare at me, frowning.
“I’m the only one left,” I whisper so Denice can’t hear. Their frowns soften.
“The only one in your whole family?” the daughter says and I nod.
“Dayum, that’s sad, dude. You’re, like, young.”
“Yeah, nineteen,” I say, keeping my voice low. Denice appears at the kitchen door. The whispering raised her antennae.
“Dustin, please come back to the living room and stop hovering over these ladies,” she says. I feel like shoving the old bag out of the kitchen but then again, the nails.
“You said you wouldn’t leave the ring unattended, Denice,” I say, crossing my arms. “Anyone could walk in and take it.” The front screen door screeches open and Denice’s thighs, encased in dark brown pantyhose, zig zag as she races away.
“Mom, what do you think?” the daughter says, picking up a Christmas tree-shaped cookie cutter.
“Think about what, sweetie?” the mother says, her eyes on me. I give her my good grin, the one where I keep my lips closed so you can’t see how crooked my teeth are due to the fact I never wore my retainer after Jake died. The daughter hands her the cutter.
“I don’t know, look how rusty it is around the edges,” the mother says. “I’ve got an extra one like this you can have.” She puts the cutter in my hand, wrapping my fingers around it. I wonder if she arranged the flowers at church that morning because she smells like those lilies at funerals. She tightens her hand around mine and the metal bites the soft spot in my palm but I don’t tell her because I’m so glad she doesn’t want to buy it.
“Son, you want to keep this, don’t you? I bet your mom used it to make her holiday cookies.”
“Yeah, but she and my brother were super close and after he died Christmas was just another day to her,” I say. “She stopped making cookies, stopped buying presents, everything. Now she’s living in Florida with one of her friends until she sells this place, our childhood home.” The mother pulls me closer and the cutter is really pressing into me. I shift a little so it doesn’t slice right into my hand and give me tetanus.
“I thought, well, maybe I misunderstood. I thought your mom was dead, too. Do you have a dad?”
“Dad’s dead.” This isn’t exactly true. He’s dead to Mom, for sure, because he left her for a lady he met at the gym when Jake and I were twelve. Mom battled him tooth and nail for full custody and went back to school to be a nurse. He and the lady got married and moved to Hilton Head where they live the good life. Ever since Jake died Dad’s been in touch more, calling every week to check in. I tell him the important stuff I’m doing to fix up the house like replacing the toilet seats that used to slide every time you sat down. But all he wants to talk about is my lunatic therapist, Dr. French. I don’t tell him I stopped going to Dr. French because of the way he got all personal with me, asking inappropriate stuff like how many times a day I wash my hands.
“Gosh, that’s terrible,” the mother says. “So your dad’s dead and your brother, too? How’d your brother die?”
“He fell off a houseboat the night we all graduated from high school and no one noticed until the next morning.” The daughter whips around to look at me.
“Wait. Are you Jake Wright’s twin? You don’t look like him at all, no offense. I was a freshman when that happened. Didn’t he have a football scholarship to Clemson?” I nod and for the millionth time picture him falling off that boat and going down, down, down into the dark water. The police said his feet got tangled in seaweed, and when I pointed out it was a lake and not an ocean they looked at me strange and said it didn’t matter, both have it. He was drunk and they said it was probably peaceful, something I never believed. I’m sure the water sobered him up and he fought to the end, just like he did any time people called me a freakazoid.
The daughter shakes her head and says, man, that’s sad, then roots around in a bottom cabinet and finds the crockpot. Some friend of Mom’s left it on the front porch, full of warm chili, the night of Jake’s funeral. I ate all of it because Mom couldn’t force down even a spoonful of food. For months afterwards she turned down shifts at the hospital and lived on the sofa under her checkered afghan watching the Weather Channel. All the fight she had in her after Dad left us disappeared, just poof, so I put off community college and took charge of the house. The first thing I did was return all the empty Tupperware and Pyrex casserole dishes to neighbors who brought us food. I couldn’t remember who brought the crockpot, so I hid it way back in the cabinet.
“You need a crockpot? You can have it for ten dollars,” Denice says, appearing in the doorway as some people walk down the hall toward the bedrooms.
“God, Denice, the ring!” I say, my temples pounding.
“Dustin, estate sales don’t run themselves you know.”
“Let’s all be nice here,” the mother says to Denice, touching my forearm. I’m glad to have her little warm hand on me again. “After all, this young man has lost his entire family.”
“Lost his entire family? Is that what he told you?” Denice says with a smirk. “He’s been through a lot, I’ll give him that, but the truth is his mother would still be here if he’d just try harder to get his you-know-what together.”
Denice turns to go down the hall and the mother squeezes my arm, her fingers a little shaky. I want to tell her that during the Weather Channel phase I took care of everything while Mom lusted after Jim Cantore, especially during hurricane season when he was at his peak manliness. After the hurricanes died down she got a little of her old fight back, dressing and going out again. But then she tried to take over the cooking and cleaning, telling me I was obsessive, especially when it came to the cleaning. I ignored her, gently explaining she was still in shock over Jake and she threw a huge fit, saying she couldn’t take it anymore. A week later she declared she was going to sell the house and move to Florida. I’m about to tell the mother all this, feeling she’d understand, when Denice flies into the kitchen, her face scarlet.
“The ring’s gone,” she says in a low, warbly voice.
“Damn it, Denice! Did I or did I not specifically say you shouldn’t ever leave it alone?” I say, pissed.
“Dustin, let’s stay focused. We have to check every bag, every purse,” she hisses before giving the ladies the eagle eye. The mother opens her pocketbook, and the daughter lifts the lid of the crockpot to show they don’t have it.
“Okay, good. Now Dustin, there’s a hippy family in Jake’s room,” she whispers. “Go shake them down while I lock all the doors.” I find two little girls jumping up and down on Jake’s twin beds. A man in a ponytail and a woman in a long, flowery dress are examining Jake’s Carhartt ballcap.
“Hey, now, we don’t allow people to jump on the beds,” I say to the girls, fighting the urge to push them off and straighten the bedspreads.
“We do it at home all the time,” says one, her bangs plastered to her wet forehead. The room reeks of sweat and patchouli.
“Why is your tummy so big?” the other girl says with a chortle. She’s wearing a unicorn backpack that bounces with each jump.
“It’s not, uh… well, anyway. Hey, let’s get down now, girls,” I say, smoothing my t-shirt over my belly, but they just keep going. Ponytail asks how much the cap is.
“Now that’s not for sale. I’m not even sure why it’s out,” I say, taking it from the guy and putting it back in Jake’s dresser where it belongs. “Okay, look everyone, we have a problem,” I tell them. “Did you see the ring when you came in?”
Pretty, pretty, chant the girls as they jump.
“We saw it,” says the woman. “We’re not into material things like that.”
“Okay, fair enough, but the thing is, we can’t let anyone out of the house until it shows up.”
“No one can’t hold us against our will, right, Mama?” says Ponytail to the woman. Yeah, say the bouncy girls, and Mama nods and says yeah, a smile creeping across her face. I can tell these people don’t like to be harnessed.
“Turn it over or I’ll call the police,” says Denice, showing up with the mother and daughter in tow.
“Turn it over or I’ll call the police,” I say to Denice, lowering my voice an octave. I point at a denim bag hanging on Mama’s flowery shoulder. “What’s in there?”
“None of your friggin’ business,” Mama says. The girls shriek with laughter and bounce faster. I’m mad now. These people are not taking Mom’s ring.
“I’ll need you to open up your bag,” I say. The room is like a sauna with so many people in it and the armpits of my t-shirt start bunching up with sweat. Mama pulls the purse to her chest and the girl with the backpack bellows leave our Mama alone, Mister Tummy!
“Um, er, Mama, let me see in your bag…” I say. I reach for it and as I do she spins away from me. It rips open but no ring. A couple of apples drop out and roll across the floor.
“Our snack!” The girls jump off the beds with a thump to grab the apples.
“Now look what you did, big guy,” says Ponytail, agitated. “Tore Mama’s purse! You gonna pay for that?” They’re staring at me and I feel like yanking them up by their greasy scalps and dragging them out the front door.
“All of you, OUT!” I hear myself yell. “That includes you, Denice. Especially you!”
“You better get my card table back to me,” she snarls, all Edward Scissorhands.
“I’ll get it to you when I’m good and ready,” I snarl back, ready to snap all ten of her nails. The mother and daughter quickly pull out in a Subaru station wagon and Ponytail, Mama, and the girls race to a tan Dodge Caravan. As the girl with the unicorn backpack climbs in I notice a square bulge. The ring! I gallop toward them but it’s like a dream where I’m in slow motion, my legs heavy, like Jake in the seaweed. I break into a slow run and when I get to the van Ponytail shoves me.
“You going to reimburse us for Mama’s bag, Mr. Tummy? Beat it, or we’ll be the ones calling the police.”
“Dude, your kid has the ring!” I shout, frantic. Mama rolls down her window.
“Let’s go, babe,” she says to Ponytail. “You could probably whip his fat ass, but let’s just get the hell out of here.” The girls are chanting pretty, pretty, pretty in the backseat. Ponytail starts the van and as the side door slowly closes I grab the backpack with surgical precision.
“I knew you had it!” I say, pulling out the ring box. The girls scream in unison and Mama snatches the backpack from me, yelling something about the rot of capitalism as Ponytail peels out.
It’s one of those cold, damp February days, the kind where you turn on all the lights because the house is so dark. I’m all alone in the front yard, the box still in my hand, and it starts to rain. I go inside and open some tomato soup, the clock above the sink tick, tick, ticking as I pour it into a saucepan. I never realized how loud that clock was until Jake died and Mom left.
While the soup heats up I go to his room and pull his cap on, breathing in his sweat and Dial shampoo, wishing he saw me get the ring back. I straighten his bedspreads and tell him he doesn’t need to worry because everything’s the same and always will be. His Chuck Taylors are in the closet, his acceptance letter is still on his desk, and Denice hardly sold anything. He fought his fight and this one’s mine.
