Photo by Nashad Abdu on Unsplash
When the first green shoots rise from the earth and birdsong returns, so do estate sales. Time to renew by purging the formerly cherished. Make a few bucks, while you’re at it. Encourage the treasure-hunters. It takes guts to put your stuff out on the lawn for neighbors to pick over and reject.
Or adore and pay too much for.
Lora loves teapots. She prefers porcelain or bone china. A little touch of elegance goes a long way. Mrs. Delbiaggio, three doors down, went into a nursing home, and her son said they’d have a sale before he put the house on the market. Lora wants her teapot. She poured tea from it once, when Mrs. Delbiaggio invited her after passing Lora’s driveway and seeing Lora in her car, with the engine off, weeping. Mrs. Delbiaggio was out with her walker. She moved slowly and had ample time to observe Lora’s distress. Lora doesn’t remember why she was in the car, weeping. She wept often in those days, which weren’t so long ago, only several months when she thinks about it. Mrs. DelBiaggio tapped on the window and asked if she could help. Lora mutely shook her head and wished Mrs. Delbiaggio would be carried off by a sturdy, clear-eyed bird of prey. The invitation to tea was issued by a note left in the mailbox. The writing was wobbly, the pen held by an arthritic hand. Lora, in her early sixties, has arthritis, too. It bothers her in the mornings. Her fingers hurt. Was that why she wept?
Lora wonders how much the son wants for the teapot. Ten? Twenty? It has a small chip at the base. Mrs. Delbiaggio rolled out a long story about how her niece came by one day, and they had tea, and she offered to wash up and then chipped the pot. The niece is a lovely girl, but clumsy. Lora knows the type, Mrs. Delbiaggio suggested. Lora is clumsy, too, and not lovely. Retirement has not been easy, but neither was working at the post office for forty years. Eddie told her to quit and find something else. Like what? He never had a good answer. He just saw her malaise. A word that always reminds her of mayonnaise. Of which Eddie had too much, along with many other fatty foods. Keeled over, is what he did. Poor Eddie. His heart was the best part of him, and it’s what got him in the end.
IRONIC.
Is it also ironic when the son cancels the estate sale? Or the cruelest twist of fate? The sign stapled to the phone pole out front said to come on Saturday morning at ten. Lora watches her from her window as the usual suspects gather on the empty lawn. Lora wonders where all the items for sale are. Everyone else must be wondering that, too—Mr. Pepperton, with his passion for old magazines, and the young Nelson twins, hoping for used toys, and of course, Mrs. Linstrom, who just likes to look at the detritus of someone else’s life. Then Mrs. Delbiaggio’s son drives up in his fancy Lexus, gets out, and says the sale is off. At least, Lora assumes that’s what he says because everyone goes home.
Lora pulls on a sweater and goes over to the house. The son doesn’t answer the bell and he doesn’t answer her knock. Around the back, he can be seen in the kitchen with a toolbox on the table. Lora taps on the door. When he opens it, she asks about the sale. He said it’s canceled, he’s there to deal with the plumbing, and he needs to get back to it. The teapot sits on the table next to the big red toolbox. The toaster is also on the table, though Lora remembers it on the counter by the stove. She doesn’t care. She just wants the teapot. She tells the son exactly that.
He says she has to talk to his wife. She’s the one disposing of his mother’s assets. Lora asks for the wife’s number. The son rattles it off. Lora nods. She won’t remember it. She has trouble remembering little details now.
But the image of the teapot sitting right there on that table remains.
Lora settles on twenty-five dollars as a fair price. Then she makes space for it on her windowsill where six other teapots currently sit. It will have the center spot because it’s the largest. She will see it first thing in the morning. The painted bluebirds will sing her to a cheerful mood and the daisies twining around the handle will bring a touch of gentle sunshine. She worries about the chip, though. The chip could be a deal-breaker. But who cares about a tiny flaw? Isn’t that what Eddie always said about her too-large hands and buck teeth?
Evening falls through the trees, stretching shadows over the grass. Lora watches until the light is gone. She goes out her back door into the alley that connects everyone’s backyards, past trash bins, a laundry line, and a discarded sink. As she approaches Mrs. Delbiaggio’s back door, it occurs to her that she might find it locked. The door is open. She steps into the kitchen. The darkness is deep. Her eyes are slow to adjust. But there is the teapot on the table, where it always is, waiting for her, ready to be rehomed and given pride of place on Lora’s windowsill.
She approaches and lifts the teapot. She removes the lid and peers inside. Is there the faintest scent of Darjeeling? Or cinnamon spice? With the lid replaced, she makes her way from the kitchen into the living room where visibility is improved by the glow of the streetlamp through the front window.
“Who’s there?” a man asks.
Lora freezes in place, her heart thuds loudly.
“I’ve got a gun,” the man says.
“It’s just me. Lora, from down the street.”
A table lamp turns on to reveal Mrs. Delbiaggo’s son sitting on the couch. He looks rumpled and exhausted. A liquor bottle and a shot glass are on the coffee table. Lora inspects all the other objects on the table—a few magazines, a box of Kleenex, a dying plant—and also the area around him on the couch.
“You don’t really have a gun, do you?” she asks.
“No.”
He runs one hand through his thinning hair.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“Stealing your mother’s teapot.”
“Teapot?”
She shows it to him. He stares at it, then stares at her.
“Oh,” he says.
“I was going to buy it at the estate sale, but you canceled it.”
“Right.”
His face is pale and there are dark circles below his eyes. Lora asks if he fixed the plumbing. He says he did. She asks if he’ll put the house up for sale soon. He says he will.
“She told me to leave,” he says.
“Who?”
“My wife.”
“Ah.”
He offers her a drink and she declines. She says she should probably get going and is sorry she disturbed him. She moves toward the door. She says she’ll drop off twenty-five dollars in the morning if that’s all right, and wishes him a pleasant evening.
“You sure about that drink? I could use some company,” he says.
“Perhaps another time?”
“Sure.”
As she reaches the door, she turns back.
“How’s your mother doing?” she asks.
“Mom? Oh, you know. Griping about the new place. Doesn’t see why she has to be there. I thought she could move in with us, but Leena wouldn’t have it.”
“Your wife.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, two women under one roof can be hard.”
“Yeah.”
The son focuses and asks if she’s married.
“Widowed,” Lora says.
“Shame. Kids?”
“One. He doesn’t talk to me.”
The son nods.
He says theirs are grown and call only when they want something. Selfishness is everywhere. Self-interest, he should say, though in some cases self-interest is okay. Depends entirely on whose toes you step on.
“Well, I have to be getting along,” Lora says.
“Okay.”
“You take care.”
“Yeah, you, too.”
Lora opens the front door and steps out into the night. She pulls the door closed behind her and stands on the step, looking up at the stars. The teapot feels heavy and awkward. The handle presses uncomfortably against her finger. She didn’t notice that before. She remembers how the lid leaked when she tipped the pot to pour tea into Mrs. Delbiaggio’s cup. How could she have forgotten that?
Damn it, she thinks, sets the teapot gently on the step, and heads home.
Anne Leigh Parrish’s next novel, an open door, will be published in October 2022 by Unsolicited Press. Recent titles from Unsolicited Press are the moon won’t be dared, a poetry collection, October 2021, and a winter night, a novel, released in March 2021. She lives in Olympia, Washington.
