Garage Sale-ing

When I was young, Saturdays were the best. While other kids might head over to the fields for soccer or baseball practice, I was spending time with Mom and Dad. With the sun hanging just above the dark blue horizon of the Atlantic Ocean, Dad would tap my shoulder, rousing me from which ever dreamland had occupied my slumber. Mom would have pancakes or cereal or sometimes even donuts waiting in the kitchen, and we would all eat together sleepily in the rising warmth of the Florida sun.

During the week, there was never any time for family meals. Dad worked construction; an accomplished steel worker who claimed to have built half the condos in the Melbourne area. Mom worked at a major hospital downtown; an ER nurse whose unflappable commitment to her patients mean that she was out the door before dawn and oftentimes not even home before I went to bed. It was hard growing up between glimpses of the fuzzy figures I knew were my parents but could never quite bring into focus. And that’s why Saturdays meant everything.

“Are you excited?” My Dad always asked, his warm hand on my shoulder breaking the night-time trance and signaling the start of another adventure.

“You bet!”

“Get dressed and downstairs in ten.”

“Okay.” He left me to choose the attire. Maybe a light blue shirt with a surfboard, maybe a pair of cargo shorts with lots of pockets, maybe neon green or orange or purple socks. But always my grey Nike tennis shoes.

“Morning, Honey,” My Mom always murmured sweetly, her voice a flowery soprano with a hint of the South. My Dad called it her marmalade tongue, which sounded sweet, but the way he smiled when he said it, I think he meant something else.

“Morning, Mom.” I would sit at a breakfast nook that was tucked high above the sands and watch the early-morning joggers, treasure hunters, and dog walkers pick their way among the shells. Our third-floor condo was just one of ten in an aging, but solid building where we were the only full-time residents.

During the winter months, the other condos would fill with the chatter, bumps, and deep bass sounds of the snowbirds or vacationers who crossed the nation to revel in a momentary paradise. By the end of March, though, they would pack up, lug suitcases and boxes out to rental cars and drive off into oblivion. My Dad called it our quiet months, the ones where we were Lords of the castle, where we spent day and night spiraling through our routine without a single disruption to interrupt the pattern. Get up, get on the bus, go to school, ride the bus home, let myself in, heat up dinner, watch TV, say hi to Dad, go to bed, start all over again.

Maybe this is why Saturdays were so special to me. It wasn’t even the thrill of the hunt, the adventuring, the loot that we would come home with. No, when I really think about it, it was that brief flicker of family that filled our souls as we sat smiling at each other over a stack of flap jacks and crunched on pieces of extra-crispy bacon. Mom and Dad drank coffee, and I had my orange juice, and we sipped together as the sun rose, the shadows shifting across the ceiling of the breakfast nook. In those moments of stillness, of simple togetherness, there was nothing else to interrupt, only us, my father and his tired eyes and thick goatee; my mother with her stringy blonde hair and deep dimples. And I, a toe-headed, bright eyed youth desperate for their attention.

When breakfast was done, the plates were cleared and Mom scrubbed the countertops so that everything shone brightly before we left.

“We don’t want anyone to think this place is a pig pen.” She would say and I wondered who would think that? Who would even come here?

My dad and I would head downstairs to prepare the truck. Throughout most of my youth my dad drove a maroon Ford F-150. He would hand down tools to my waiting arms from up in the bed, and I would tuck them into the corners of our single garage parking space deep in the bowels of the condo. We needed room for our prizes, our bounty, our treasure. Sometimes we came back full, sometimes empty, but there was always the anticipation of treasure.

“Always be prepared.” My Dad waxed prosaically.

“Okay, Dad.” I agreed. But some days, I would wonder, especially as I grew older, what was it exactly that I needed to be prepared for?

“Are my boys ready?” Mom would query, surveying our rosy cheeks and the slight sheen of sweat that had already crept over my dad’s furrowed brow as he ducked in and out of the bed of the truck.

“Start your engines.” He loved Nascar, or at least I think he loved Nascar. He had posters in the garage and signs and lights that said Nascar on them. But I don’t actually think I ever saw him watch a single race on TV.

“Hop in, Honey.” She would sweep around the cab of the truck and open the rear crew door for me, watch me climb up and wait until I was securely buckled in. Then she would look at me with those bright green eyes, and she would say the words I waited all week to hear:

“Time to go garage sale-ing!”

My mom always drove on Saturdays. Dad rode shotgun. He would sit in the passenger seat with a binder of papers on his lap. Some had pictures, others just had words. When I was younger, I couldn’t make out what they said, but over time, I learned to make out addresses, names, and phone numbers. Sometimes I could see medical terms I didn’t understand. Carcinoma, Hospice, Bereavement, Atropine…It didn’t matter. I was a ball of furious energy just waiting to be released from my tether. My Dad knew where we were going, and my Mom knew how to get us there. I knew what to do once we got there.

I had watched enough TV to know that most garage sales happened out in the open. Maybe someone set up tables in the driveway. Maybe neighbors got together and set up a few tents on the lawn and spread out their treasures for public inspection. Maybe there was even an estate sale, the kind where someone had recently died, and all of their most prized possessions were sold at bargain barrel prices. We didn’t bother with the usual. We had a system.

“Okay, Son. You know what to do.”

I did. I knew exactly what to do. When the car stopped, I was already unbuckled and running up to the door of our first Sale.

The system involved three stages. First, I ring the bell to announce that we are here. Then, if no one answers, my Dad comes to the door and uses his special key. Finally, once the door is open, my Mom brings two suitcases up the walkway and then heads back to the car.

On that last Saturday, she didn’t. My dad stared at her as we stood in the foyer of the large, three-story historic Melbourne home, but she shrugged, tinkled the keys in her fingers, and smiled at him. He wasn’t an affectionate man. But that morning, standing there in the entryway, he had put his arm around her, pulled her close and kissed her hard.

I remember looking away. I needed to get to work.

Dad had said to leave anything that seemed obvious. That’s why this was like a treasure hunt. He told me that these people had a lot of treasures, but they only wanted to sell us the most hidden ones. It was like Easter, but every Saturday, and for this hunt, we always wore gloves. Mine were black, faux leather, and they fit a little too snugly. His were also black with ventilation holes that ran along each finger, letting his hands breathe as he picked his way through each house.

I had to be very quiet. That was a part of the system, of the agreement with the owners, my Mom had told me. Like a church mouse or one of those sidling sand crabs I watched down near the surf when I took walks along the beach.

I remember that last Saturday that Dad came into the room as I was rooting around a desk in a large, wood-paneled office. His shirt was untucked, his hair mussed, his belt askew.

"Anything?" He whispered.

"Nothing yet," I admitted.

He slipped on his gloves and joined me, picking through the papers and odds and ends that people accumulate in their drawers. He found a thin, silver key just inside the top drawer and used it to unlock a long, silver box. I remember watching him, stopping my own search to marvel at his discovery. He lifted the lid and pulled out a thin, leather-bound black notebook. He opened the notebook and sat heavily into a nearby chair, as though the strength in his legs had suddenly fled.

My mom came through the doorway, buttoning the top of her blouse, and smoothing down her hair.

“What?” She asked quietly, barely a whisper as she saw my father’s face.

“Look.” He whispered back, holding out the notebook for her to see. A look had crept over her face that morning, one which I would never get over. It was like recognition and surprise all bundled up into a glimmer of hope.

“What?” I had asked, looking at my dad hopefully.

“Shhhh….” He remonstrated.

“What?” I whispered more quietly, and he turned the notebook around, showing me the final entry. It was the last of a long line of numbers that showed at total of $20,000. That was a fortune in my mind, and below it was a login and a password.

“Jackpot.” My Dad whispered.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Wednesday when I came home from school, there were three police cars in the roundabout of our condo. A woman in front of the building took my arm and led me to a big, black SUV and talked to me very calmly. My parents were in trouble. Those garage sales that I had been so excited about, they weren’t really sales. In fact, for the past three years, my mom had been bringing home records and keys and security codes from the hospital. We had been sneaking into the houses of hospice patients who had recently been transferred from homecare to in-patient care for their final days. They had traced a bank transfer from a patient to my Dad’s account, and when confronted, he had admitted everything.

“Where’s my mom?” I remember asking.

“We don’t know.” Was the response.

“What’s going to happen, now?”

“We’re going to take you to a new home for a while so the courts can figure things out.”

They did. I stayed for a while with a nice family with too many kids and a lot of love to give. Then my time was up, and they moved me to another home with a quiet man, loud woman, and two meek little children. As I grew older, I gained more freedom, and I roamed further, exploring the neighborhoods, scouring the beaches for treasure, riding my bike through downtown. On one grey, Saturday afternoon I was sitting on a long, weathered bench in the city center when a maroon-colored pickup drove up in front of me.

The window rolled down and inside was my Mom. She looked different now, looked older. Her hair was darker, shorter. She wore a pair of thin black gloves.

“Hey, Son.” She greeted me.

“Hey, Mom.” I smiled at her.

“Want to go garage sale-ing?”

I love Saturdays.