A hot humid day-the sun burned down on the paved driveway of John’s home.
Our home, he thought with an empty sigh.
John sat in a beach chair that still held granular remnants of the last time he spent at the beach with his wife Jane. He sat just inside the entrance of his garage. Small patches of dampness shown through his t-shirt as he sits, waits. Earlier he had put prices on their things, little neon yellow stickers on items from the past seven years they had spent together.
Putting a value on their things, he thought. On their memories.
He couldn’t care less about the old things you see, it was the idea, thoughtful things for special occasions, memories that were attached and clinging to these items without avail.
He sat there listening to the rhythmic sound of an old box fan blowing hot air around the old garage.
Selling junk, he thought. They must think it too.
Without words they would they would walk up and give him the slight crane of their neck glancing down at a memory in their hands, as if its true value had no meaning. Then the bargaining came. John never really bargained with them, he would just nod his head and take the slightest amount as another sentimental thought was wisped away like a dandelion that had passed its day, blows away in the wind, to produce another.
One man’s junk…, he thought, remembering that he heard that saying somewhere, long ago in a time of innocence. It was a time he could barely remember now, in a past when he didn’t fully grasp the intricacies of life, didn’t understand its deeper realizations.
He leaned back in his old beach chair again, his thoughts floated back to better days, when Jane and he were young, tasting the sweetness of the air between them.
A young woman walked up with a salt shaker in hand, a little man with a porcelain straw hat that once poured salt.
“How much for just this one?” she asked holding it out with a sticker on it for 1.00.
He stood up looking it her with an instant reversion to his honeymoon with Jane, where they picked up those two pieces to christen their new home and life together.
“It’s a salt shaker they come in a pair, don’t you want the other half?” he asked. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he looked at the little man in her hand.
“I know-I just want this cute little guy-I’m not going to use it anyway, I just like the way it looks. How about twenty five cents?” She bargained.
With a slight nod of his head John took her offer feeling the weight of the coin drop into his hand. It hit him hard and left a pain in the center of his chest, a pain that until that moment had not been realized. Just the same he went back to the old beach chair and sat down waiting for the feeling to subside. He knew it would, after all it was just a decision, life was all about decisions he knew this now after making them countless times in his life. And he knew… a decision never killed anyone. The pain slowly diminished and so did the throng of people that had once approached the little driveway filled with boxes of things with little neon numbers on them.
His mind wandered again in the silence of the heat of day. He looked out of the mouth of his garage door, a box that had the words Jane’s Ski clothes on it caught his eye. He thought of the trips they would take to a small lodge in Aspen to do what he loved most, carving long arcs in the snow next to his love, his wife Jane. He taught her to ski and although she never caught his flaming desire for the slopes she went along with him and loved the time spent together.
Suddenly he was pulled away from the thoughts of cool air in his lungs as the cordless phone next to him rang. It rang, once, twice and then a third before he picked it up with a wrinkled brow.
“Hello,” he spoke as if he could see the caller standing before him.
“John, the paperwork is finalized you can come by my place after your little sale and sign off on it. This is what you wanted-so you need to come over here and sign it-unless your little sale is more important to you right now!” she answered with a dose of sarcasm.
“I’ll be over this afternoon Jane, don’t worry, I’ll be there to sign it.” The serious finality of his words seemed surreal in that moment.
The dial tone rang in his ear as he laid the phone back down on the cold floor of the damp garage. The same sharp pain shot through his chest as before, as he looked ahead again, out at their memories, at them scattered across the path.
“Jane…I” he called out before collapsing to the concrete with his hand holding his heart.
The end
