What It's Worth

After our Sunday morning yard sale, I'm one couch, one futon, one twenty-seven-year-old bureau, and one princess desk poorer and $420 richer (minus $10.81 for a giant cheeseburger and a breakfast platter when the day was through). I'm 99 percent moved out of my apartment and 100 percent in awe of Simon, who did all the hard work of bargaining and selling and standing in the middle of the road waving merchandise, dancing like a showgirl, and flashing his charmingly crooked smile (and a little leg) while I hid upstairs in the apartment and cried as I watched my things get carried off by strangers.

But the strangers were, as it appeared from my crow's nest view, and as Simon reassured me, happy and excited with their purchases. The couch, looking STUNNING minus the grody slipcover, went to a house of biology students around the corner. The bureau that my parents bought in 1979 for my nursery went to a couple of girls who couldn't believe their good fortune. The futon went to a married couple recently moved here from Bozeman, Montana, who were so nice Simon let them carry away a $600 piece of furniture for $150 via out-of-state check. The princess desk was the first thing to go, bought by an old lady from Gualalajara. She asked Simon to help her get it to her apartment, and although he'd already done enough lifting for a lifetime that day and his herniated disc was already starting to swell a little, he agreed to drive it (and the matching nightstand, and a lamp he threw in for free) and her to her apartment, where he also unloaded it. I cried and took pictures as they left, and I cried some more when he told me that those were the now the nicest things in her apartment and she would love them almost as much as I did.

For the next half hour, I cried and took pictures while people picked through my high school clothes and college books and memorabilia from one particular past relationship. The guy from the apartment building next door (wearing nothing but a zebra-striped robe with huge silk lapels) relieved me of my old set of measuring cups and spoons and a vegetable peeler, but not before he made sure the kitchen utensils weren't of sentimental value such that he'd have to sit in his apartment and listen to me bawl for another half hour after he took them away.

My landlord kept checking in to make sure everything was going okay, but all he could seem to say was "You have a lot of memories in that stuff. A lot of memories in this place..." which I assume was meant to be reassuring and validating, but just made me cry more because god. yes. the memories. all out on the sidewalk and upstairs clinging to the empty walls. I told him about my dad fixing the dong-ding doorbell when I first moved in, and he told me about how he's going to replace the stunning 1880s beveled glass front window and install a dishwasher in the kitchen. Then he practically begged us to take the other apartment in the house, which is three times larger than mine, but also smaller than Simon's and more expensive. I told him thanks, no, it's time to go, but not to worry because I have someone to look after me full-time now.

Down on the street, a guy in a shirt that said "Who's Your Santa?" bought the stuffed panda given to me as a gift from the Mall of America. A woman in olive green Victorian boots looked perfect in the green floppy hat I wore during my first trip to the Pacific Northwest, circa 1998. Dresses I got for high school awards ceremonies went for $1; $30 textbooks littered with my most pretentious sophomore marginalia went for fifty cents; four punkass emo kids came by as we were cleaning up, and we let them carry away three dehydrated soup mixes, a couple of women's belts, a book by C. J. Jung, and a Beanie Baby penguin for free. George took the coat rack and my great-grandmother's wobbly "antique" chair, and he lent us his enormous pickup truck so we could get my bookcases to Simon's place in one piece. I have half a mind to spend all my earnings on people who helped me sell it off: George, his manservant Martín, my landlord, and, of course, Simon.

Although he insists he did the easy part--waving at passersby, drinking coffee, taking money for my stuff (much of which I got for free to begin with; score!)--I know I couldn't have done it without him. The few times I was left to hold down the fort while he was taking a pee or hauling my 200 lb. couch up a flight of stairs for strangers, it was all I could do to sit there on the steps, behind all my stuff, and look vaguely pleasant to the potential shoppers. I was tear-stained, covered with dust and grime, and grimacing over the pains in my back and chest and neck and calves and knees. I could do more good upstairs packing and cleaning and making quesedillas than I could as a saleswoman, and Simon was kind enough to notice and respect that.

Meanwhile, in Oakland, for the last three nights, Eve has been exploring her new home, one sniff at a time. She creeps through rooms crouched low and moving ever so slowly, like a ninja on alert, although most ninjas probably don't prefer their mommy scout out a room first to give the all-clear. At night and while Simon and I are away we keep her closed up in the bedroom--her "safe" room--athough in a few days I think she'll be ready to roam free, as long as we don't catch her on the kitchen counter again, huddled in the corner next to the teapot and the toaster and the loaf of bread.

Between the endless moving and crying, the hauling of large and heavy furniture, and the sleepless nights at the mercy of a restless crack kitten, Simon hasn't lived the life he deserves for the past few weeks. At every turn, I find myself in complete awe of this man, who has gone above and beyond what I'd expect from anyone in a similar situation. Eve and I have complicated his life more than you will ever know and in ways you can't imagine, and although we're all in this together, I can't help but feel like I'm the one getting the sweet end of the deal. I'm clearly getting more than I'm giving, but then how in the world can I ever repay him for everything he's done? For the time being: I'll make him quesedillas when he's hungry. I'll do his dishes. I'll try to keep my clothes off the bedroom floor. I'll be kind to him. I'll be grateful for him. I'll tell him I love him a hundred times a day. I'll never give him reason to regret all those boxes and all those stairs and all those 3 a.m. whiskered pounces.

Although there have been a lot of tears over relinquishing relics from the past, there has never been a moment of panic that maybe I shouldn't be doing this, that maybe I was making a mistake and in a few months time I'll wish my former life--and all my stuff--restored. No, because everything about this is progress, and everything about it is good. I gave up my old apartment so I can live under one roof with the guy I love; it's something I've been wanting for a long time. It's something I often wondered if I'd ever have.

And those persimmons we didn't know what to do with? We put them in a big wooden bowl and gave them away at the yard sale--all but one, which I'm keeping for myself to savor in a moment of downtime, whenever it might come. If Simon wants a taste, though, I'll give him the whole thing because he deserves a ten-acre orchard of whatever he wants. So for now, the bowl is empty again, and to a sentimental sap like me, there's sadness in that too. But the best news in this--and in everything--is that there's a tree in our backyard ripening more fruit even as I type this, and now that we know it's there, all we need to is go out and pick what we want.

wrote Leah at 6:39 AM | Comments (20)