“Sure thing,” Creedence said.
He rolled down the block toward his house with the box lodged between his elbow and right hip. My brother stood at the edge of the driveway, looking at him go. He squirmed at the practicality of their rite of passage: my toys, your arms. Next.
He ran back to my mother after his friend left and hugged her. She opened up to him, protectively. She had seen what I saw. My brother would be happy to go back to a place where friends were for life and moving to different continents meant breaking hearts. Here, a box of toys was enough to turn a page. People came and went, sports gear was tossed, unpaired knee pads filled boxes, cycles of friendship terminated uneventfully.
I set up my area in a corner of the front yard, beneath the oak tree, diagonally opposite my parents’ sale. I dragged a mirrored cherrywood dresser from my bedroom. It looked ruined now that the sun shone on it, so I grabbed my varnishing kit to revive it. I loved painting over wood, giving it layers of life. That’s how Henry and I resurrected the furniture we sold at the new store on Melrose. We picked up busted antiques from Pasadena, sanded the ugly paint off, then repainted and varnished them. We transformed bookshelves, mirrors, and dressers. I brought out two small coffee tables I had stored in the garage and the antique two-tier paper cutter. I arranged the furniture on the cusp of the street. I opened a mahogany folding library ladder and placed the Vietnamese curtains and silk tops from the downtown tailor on each step.
I draped mannequins I borrowed from Henry’s store in lace and furs, then filled an antique walnut cradle with a collection of multicolored velour shorts from the seventies with matching kneesocks. I arranged a reupholstered fur ottoman and a bentwood rocking chair inside a small yurt I’d purchased at a senior-citizens arts-and-crafts sale.
Once the furniture was set up, I took out more clothes: a vintage Dior haute couture shirtdress from the fifties, ruffled cocktail dresses, Clair de Lune beaded gowns, fairy-princess slips, quilted coats, vintage Gucci silk shirts, Deva’s bell-bottoms. I ironed them on a board so they’d look pristine and beautiful hanging under the oak tree against the morning light. The more my parents crammed dirty white T-shirts into boxes that read “1 dollar!,” the harder I pressed my iron against each fold. I hung my earthquake leopard coat from an oak-tree branch—the ghost of a wild cat flying over our street.
“Is this part of the same sale?” a disheveled woman in pajamas with a Los Angeles Times under her arm and Starbucks latté in her hand asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh…” she mumbled, glancing at my collection. “I thought you guys were neighbors and they let you use their lawn.”
“No, those are my parents. I’m just selling different things.”
“Obviously,” she remarked, smiling and running her fingers over my Indian bat-sleeved shirts from the Bombay shop. She picked one out and tried it over her checkered pajamas. “I like these silk shirts. How much for all?”
I felt a knot form inside my throat. I hadn’t thought about pricing anything yet.
“I’m still setting up. Come by in a bit and I’ll have prices sorted out.”
She scoffed at me and dragged her flip-flops over to my parents’ area where she was greeted with more enthusiasm.
“Ricotta pie?” my mother asked.
The woman lifted her coffee cup, toasting her hospitality. She picked up my mother’s earrings from a broken wicker basket and dropped them back inside. They were all unpaired or with broken clasps. More visitors arrived expressing confusion about the different areas in the front yard. I heard myself repeating the same words: “Those are my parents and that’s my brother. It’s the same sale. I’m just selling different stuff.” I almost argued about this.
Stuff was going fast on the other side of the garden. My family was regurgitating into the city what they’d ingested when they first arrived, tossing it all back into the melting pot, the hand-me-downs’ hand-me-downs. The blow-up pool was given away for free to a couple of four-year-olds along with my brother’s water bed. My family stood there, sun gleaming on their wide-open faces, no hats, no sunscreen, braving the move, the changes, the influx and outflux of money.
By three o’clock the only thing I’d had the heart to sell were the Reebok Pumps I’d worn on my first day of high school. My parents had sold almost everything and were putting the rest out on the street with a sign that read FREE STUFF. On my side of the yard everything still hung untouched under the oak tree. Kids ran and jumped inside the yurt.
“What’s the price on this?” one of their mothers asked, picking up a golden enamel bracelet.
I looked back at her. She had a fanny pack, a fluorescent white tracksuit, and gray hair.
“I’m not selling that,” I said.
“And how much is that?” She pointed to the leopard coat.
“Definitely not selling that either.”
I sneered at her and she backed off, mumbling to herself.
With each inquiry I felt my voice rush out to protect those objects. It was a waste to give them away like that. Where would they sleep at night? Would they be loved or forgotten at the back of someone’s closet? For so long I thought my father was the hopeless nostalgic, the romantic seeker of glorious pasts, but really—I laughed when I saw how obvious it was—it was I who didn’t want to let go of those ancient treasures, who wanted them to mean something.
My father and brother retired inside with a shoe box full of cash.
“You sure you want to stay out here?” Serena asked me.
I nodded.
“It looks beautiful, what you did,” she said and walked back in, hauling trash behind her.