The first humiliation is waiting in line on the brick walkway, which is bordered in boxwood and leads up a few steps between pillars to the open front door. This is my first estate sale. A freckled man from Chadwick Antiques sits on a stool. He lets a few people in as others leave. They come out unsmiling, lugging lamps, end tables, chairs.
The women in front of me chat about things I pretend I’m not thinking: I want to see inside the house, there’s another sale down the block, I wish this line were faster. Then it’s my turn, and I step into the entryway like an invited guest, pause, then turn left to the dining room, the silverware, silver candlesticks, silver cups, crystal jars with silver lids, all crowded together on a long mahogany table. Formal china plates painted with golden vines that twine around peacocks are stacked on the floor on a Persian rug. The rug is for sale. In a built-in cupboard, teacups and saucers tilt against thin dishes with scalloped edges. A rush of desire to own someone else’s beautiful things floods down through both arms into my empty hands.
I know now that you cannot spend time wondering who left this home, or how they left it, or when, or where they went. You cannot be disturbed by the next room, the white kitchen cabinets emptied, taped shut with blue tape, the dinner plates, glassware, cereal bowls spilled out, jumbled together, filling the marble countertop. You must ignore the man pawing and clanking through drawers of cake tins and cookie sheets, the woman quietly ruffling stacks of towels. If you consider one embroidered pillow for $12 in the sunny breakfast nook, and keep considering it, turning it over in your hands while thinking about the green of your own couch, her green, her other pillows, remembering her although you never knew her, you can maybe write a story about it, but things are being sold. They are slipping away from you in the living room where people with their arms full who arrived at 9 a.m. are standing in the next humiliating line, waiting to pay.
I carry the pillow outside to the deck, gaze at the lake, and wonder at the miniature black iron patio chair, too heavy for its intended child to drag up to the matching table. I remember an oil painting on a wall that I passed and return for a second look. It’s gone.
Upstairs, I pick up off a desk a small silver picture frame with no price. I set it down. I set the pillow down. I wander into a closet and read, “Wedding Dress—$50,” and feel obligated to touch it. I do, then I give in and begin hunting for books, articles, for any message I can receive and respond to. Crouched at a low shelf lifting linens, I discover a birthday card tucked away written to Anne, Happy Birthday, I’m so glad you came into my life. Love, Mother. An irritating older couple, boisterous children, cheerful, talkative people crowd through the bedroom doors and interrupt my ache to get something before someone else does, to uncover, to keep, to know more. I leave in a rush ten minutes later with a collapsible luggage rack and a silver-plated ice bucket that resembles a tennis trophy.
The next day is Sunday and at Mass in the cathedral I fold my hands in my lap. Women read Scripture, the priest gives a homily, but these are sentences my desire doesn’t hear. We sing the last verse of the closing hymn:
The sure provisions of my God attend me all my days;
O may your house be my abode and all my works be praise.
There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come.
No more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home.
From Mass, I drive back to the sale and wait again outside in line. “Don’t worry,” a woman leaving says, “there’s plenty more!” I don’t believe her, and I’m right. By the time I get in, it’s as if crows have picked the place clean. I take the familiar basement stairs to the laundry room, and left behind on the dryer is a set of pretty, everyday dishes. There are so many pieces that a woman offers to help me, and together we haul them in bags upstairs. At home, they sit stacked on my kitchen table. I’m having trouble finding room to keep them.
