Going Out in Style (17 page)

She took the list and looked it over. “Very nice work, Lisa. Very nice indeed.”

Lisa smiled grimly. “Thank you, Miss Lowell.”

Who was Lisa performing for, Jessie wondered idly as she handed the list back. She looked down with compassion on the girl’s tight, unhappy face. Her parents? Her teachers? Oh, well, there was no way of knowing. Jessie was old enough to have had Lisa in day care, ten years
ago, when she first came to Ridgewood, and it had been the same then. Lisa had started making lists as soon as she learned to write.

“Where’s Albert?” Jessie said now.

Lisa looked alarmed. This was an item not on her agenda. “Albert?”

“Albert Whitaker. He was supposed to be here by now.”

“Oh. He’s over there, Miss Lowell.”

Jessie turned. Albert and Gretchen, both of whom had been (as in previous years) coerced into helping her with the sale, were lounging about shamelessly and actually
talking
, just
talking
, instead of arranging their respective tables. Albert had a coffee cup in his hand, from the big silver percolator which squatted (immense in its own dignity) in the middle of the room, and it looked like some of the coffee was spilling out onto the clothes—!

“Albert!”
she shrilled, and hurried off to deal with this new evidence of everyone else’s incompetence.

Snooky and Maya were upstairs, burrowing in Bernard’s closet for clothes to give to the sale.

Maya looked pensively at the mess. “You start in that corner, Snooks, and I’ll start over here. If you haven’t seen Bernard wearing it recently, put it in the box.”

“How do I know he doesn’t want it any more?”

“Snooky, come on. Bernard has only two or three outfits that he’ll wear. You know how he is. Most of this stuff just sits in here year after year.”

Snooky unearthed a blue-and-yellow tie. “What’s wrong with this?”

“His Aunt Thelma gave it to him. It has bad associations. She used to visit him when he was little and frighten him by doing her Humpty Dumpty impersonation.”

“There’s a scary thought. How about this one?”

“Snooky, take a look at it. Bernard’s grandmother gave it to him. She has no taste whatsoever.”

“Oh. How about this one?”

“It’s yours if you want it, Snooks.” The tie in question sported red squares on a pale pink background. Snooky knotted it around his neck.

“Nothing wrong with it,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

Bernard came into the room and looked impassively at his brother-in-law. “It suits you, Snooky. It really does.”

“Thank you, Bernard. Hey, how about this one?”

Once Snooky was finished scavenging, he and Maya put everything into a box, along with some of Maya’s old clothes, and drove over to the rented hall. When they came in, things were in chaos. Boxes were piled up in one corner and people were standing around looking lost. It was the day before the big sale, and everyone was bringing in last-minute donations. Lisa had worked herself into a frenzy, and was frantically making out list after list, her eyes clouded with tears. Susan and George were arguing over why Susan had put six of George’s shirts, ones which he insisted had hardly been worn, in an “old clothing” box. “Because, George,” Susan was saying in an aggrieved tone, “
all
your clothing looks like it should be either thrown away or given away. Hello, Snooky. Listen, I have something awful to tell you. Jessie was asking for more volunteers, and I opened my mouth and your name came out. I feel terrible about it now. Do you mind?”

Snooky smiled. “No, not at all.”

By the end of the evening, nearly all the boxes had been unpacked and their contents laid out neatly on the eight large tables arranged around the room in a rough circle. Jessie was checking the latest of Lisa’s lists with satisfaction, the one with the names of the volunteers.
“Susan,” she murmured, putting a large black X next to the name. “George. Albert. Gretchen. Snooky. Henrietta. Lisa. And me.” She nodded. “That should do it.” She put down the list and stood in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips, rotating slowly, surveying her domain with a critical eye.
Oh, yes
, she thought,
yes, yes, it’s going to go very well … I can feel it … very well indeed … we have such nice things this year
—

“Jessie,” called Gretchen, “Jessie, come over here. We don’t know where this stuff should go.”

Jessie bustled off, inflated with her own self-importance.

Half an hour later a final batch of boxes came in, along with a flurry of apologies and excuses from the owners (“The whole thing just slipped my mind, I don’t know how it happened. I’m so sorry, Jessie. I know how you feel about getting things in ahead of time”). Jessie waved them away with a magisterial gesture and deigned to unpack the boxes herself. She knelt down next to the boxes with undisguised enthusiasm, her untidy brown hair falling into her face, muttering to herself, “Oh, my, look at
this
 … that’s quite nice, isn’t it? We’ll get a good price for that—oh, my goodness, what’s this thing?… People are so
peculiar
, aren’t they?… I wonder what they used
that
for.…”

Jessie, quite innocently, was a pryer, someone who liked to look into the crowded corners of people’s lives, someone who always opened other people’s medicine cabinets while a visitor in their home. She had admitted to herself years ago that part of her interest and joy in running the rummage sale was, quite frankly, voyeuristic.

Now she continued happily rummaging through the Barton family possessions. “Good grief, what’s
this
?” She turned it this way and that, surveying it doubtfully. It looked like a miniature jungle gym made out of red-and-yellow toothpicks. “One of the kids’ things,” she concluded
at last. “At least, I hope so.” Dr. Barton was a dentist, but Jessie hadn’t realized that toothpick sculptures were a specialty. “Oh,
my
!” The next item was a lamp shade made entirely out of tongue depressors. “Imagine
that
!”

It was somewhere between the tongue depressor lamp shade and one of the strangest ties she had ever seen, a lurid purple affair with a picture of Ronald McDonald in the middle, that Jessie took a Barbie doll out of the box and began to walk it around on the floor. The doll was tall and slender and moved with stiff, graceless, jerky movements.

A little while later Gretchen came by, on her way over to Albert’s table. She cast a glance at Jessie, who was still sitting on the floor, staring in a very odd way at some kind of doll she held clenched in her hand.

“Jess? Are you all right?”

Jessie gave a little jump, as if startled. She gave Gretchen an odd, furtive, hunted look.

“Oh, yes, Gretch, I’m fine … just fine.…”

“Everything all right with the unpacking?” Gretchen asked cheerfully.

“Oh, yes. Yes,
indeed
. No problem.”

“That’s good.”

Gretchen moved on, and Jessie was left alone in the middle of the floor. She looked at the doll again and mumbled, “It
can’t
be … no, it
can’t
be.…”

Finally she straightened up and said out loud, “No … no … that
can’t
be right!”

“Is Bernard going to the rummage sale tomorrow?” asked Snooky.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said his sister.

“What’s so ridiculous about it?”

“A room filled with screaming, haggling women? Don’t be stupid.”

“Well, I’m going,” said Snooky. “Jessie assigned me to table number four.”

“That’s nice. Have fun.”

“You’re not going either?” he asked despondently.

“No.”

“Why not, My? There’s some good stuff there.”

“You pick it up for me if you see anything I’d like. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Bernard came into the living room and sat down in his favorite overstuffed armchair by the fire.

“Bernard?”

“Snooky?”

“Can I convince you to go to the sale tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Positive?”

“Yes.”

Snooky sighed. “Nobody in this family is sociable except me,” he said miserably.

The day of the rummage sale dawned bright and clear. It was a Saturday, and by ten-thirty in the morning there was a crowd gathered in front of the hall with the brightly colored sign
RIDGEWOOD RUMMAGE SALE
displayed across the door. Inside, Jessie was running back and forth like a demented hen. She yelled at her volunteers, “Lisa—Lisa—is your table all ready?—yes?—good—Henrietta—Henrietta, what’s the matter over there?”

“Nothing, Miss Lowell,” said Henrietta, who had spilled an entire bottle of nail polish on the English wool skirt and was desperately trying to clean it off before it hardened.

“All right. Are we ready, everyone?”

“Ready!”

“Albert? Gretchen? Everyone else? Man your stations!”

“We’re ready, Jessie,” said Gretchen impatiently. “Open the door.”

Jessie unlocked the door and flung it open. She was nearly trampled by the hordes of humanity spilling into the hall. The crowd descended upon the tables en masse, throwing the carefully arranged clothing here and there, demanding prices, and bargaining in shrill tones. A startling transformation came over the bored, listless Henrietta. At the first sight of the crowd, her head came up and her nostrils flared widely. She took full charge of her table and began to bark out prices in a tone of authority. She made change quickly and expertly, counting the money out from a cigar box, and monitored any attempts to make off with unpurchased merchandise.

“Mrs. Hendrick,” she yelled over the noise of the crowd, “Mrs.
Hendrick
, I don’t believe you’ve paid me for that skirt, have you? Three dollars, please. That’s right, three dollars. Oh, there’s a tiny spot of nail polish on it, isn’t there? All right, two dollars. Thank you very much. That blouse is going for ten dollars, Mrs. Ratliffe, it’s pure silk. That’s right. No, not a penny less. I’m sorry, Mrs. Ratliffe, but somebody else will buy it, then. Ten dollars is my final offer. That’s right, my final offer. Thank you. Yes, I can make change.”

The other teenage volunteer, Lisa, was giving way to tears.

“I am
not
overcharging you, Dr. Barton,” she was saying. “That pair of hedge clippers is worth eight
dollars. Yes, it is. Oh, Dr. Barton, how can you say that to me?”

Elsewhere in the room, there were cries of shocked dismay as various items, formerly given as presents, were found lying discounted on the tables.

“I gave you this cotton sweater last summer as a birthday present,” one woman was saying furiously to another, a yellow sweater bunched in her hand. “How dare you, Eleanor? How dare you?”

The noise level in the room was almost unbearable as people screamed, bargained, and jostled each other in an attempt to get closer to the sale items. Snooky wiped his sweating face and wished he was anywhere but there. The room was crowded to capacity and he could barely hear the customers at his table as they screamed prices at him.

Jessie, at table number three, was managing to carry on an animated conversation with one of the mothers from her day-care center.

“So then I told him,” she was saying as people ebbed and flowed around her, “I told him, ‘Johnny, you have to share your fingerpaints with William now,’ and do you know what he did, Mrs. Furness? He went right over like a little angel and shared them.”

“That’s my Johnny,” said Johnny’s mother. “He’s a very giving person.”

“Oh, my, yes. Why, as I told Gretchen the other day—fourteen dollars for that one, Mrs. Smith. No, I’m sorry, it’s fourteen. Oh, all right, ten. That’s fine. Did you pay for that, Ed? Ed?”

Ed, a disgruntled-looking silver-haired man, said he had.

“All right, I’m sorry. Don’t be offended now. Don’t go away mad. Anyway, as I was saying, Mrs. Furness …”

Mrs. Furness gave a whoop as she held up a blue
sequined evening gown. It glowed in rainbows of color in her hands. “Why, look at this!”

“Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s one of poor Mrs. Whitaker’s dresses. Her daughter donated it. I really wasn’t sure how much to ask—I’m sure it was terribly expensive when she bought it—”

A cunning look came into Johnny’s mother’s eyes. Bargaining began, and was successfully concluded a few minutes later. A sum of money changed hands, and both sides were satisfied.

“Thank you so much,” said Jessie, closing the lid of the cigar box. “It’s going to a good cause, you know that. Lovely dress, isn’t it? Just your style, I would think. You know, looking at it reminds me … I was there the night she was killed, poor thing.”

“What?” said Johnny’s mother. The noise level had suddenly swelled around them.

“I WAS THERE,” shouted Jessie. “THE NIGHT SHE WAS KILLED. POOR MRS. WHITAKER.”

“OH, YES. TERRIBLE, WASN’T IT? MY HENRY SAID HE HAD NEVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING HAPPENING AROUND HERE.”

“I KNOW,” said Jessie. “UNBELIEVABLE, ISN’T IT? That’s three dollars for that purse, thank you, Mrs. Kapleau,” she said, suddenly diverted. “Thank you very much. Anyway, where was I? I was driving by the house that evening, and do you know, I saw the funniest thing … at least I
think
I saw it … maybe it was a trick of the light, or I could be wrong, I’m afraid my memory isn’t what it used to be—”

“WHAT?”

Jessie repeated what she had said, but this time at the top of her lungs.

“AND THE STRANGE THING IS, IT JUST DOESN’T
MAKE ANY SENSE—I MEAN, I COULDN’T HAVE SEEN WHAT I THOUGHT I SAW, BECAUSE THAT WOULD MEAN THAT EVERYONE WAS THINKING ABOUT IT COMPLETELY BACKWARDS—”

“Fascinating,” said Mrs. Furness, who was no longer listening. Her attention was riveted on a small sequined purse. “How much is this handbag, Jessie? I could use another evening bag.…”

By one o’clock, most of the items had been sold. Snooky was slumped, exhausted, in his chair. So were most of the other volunteers. Lisa was busily checking the long list she had made of everything she had sold, and for how much. A few items were missing without being paid for.

“I don’t know how people can do that,” she said indignantly to no one in particular. “I don’t understand it. It’s only a few dollars. Look at what’s missing here: a hat, two skirts, a letter opener, and that stupid white rabbit. I can’t believe anyone would want that rabbit enough to steal it. It’s not fair, honestly, it’s just not fair.”