In the photo, he’s twenty-five or so. Quite obviously, the picture was taken in the early 1970s. He is wearing loud plaid pants, a shiny pink shirt with ruffles down the front and at the cuffs, and a huge bowtie and vest. His afro is cropped, but not too close, and he’s smiling, one of those big, open-mouthed smiles that shows the gap in his front teeth. But there’s something off in the man’s expression, too. It’s in the eyes. They look hollow and sad, as though deep down the man is missing something. Something he’s never had and will never get.
The picture is a little wrinkled and stained, as if it had gotten wet, and set crookedly in a frame that’s much too large. It dangles haphazardly from a nail on a basement wall in a suburban Minneapolis rambler. It’s one of thousands of things left behind by this man with the smile—piles and boxes and suitcases full of stuff, which are being pawed through by a crowd of bargain hunters. Whatever goes unsold will wind up in an enormous black trash bin that stands out front, menacingly, under the picture window.
This sale was different from a typical estate sale, which is different from a typical garage sale. While a garage sale represents a thinning out, the happy prospect of making room for a den or a sauna or a new season of dresses, an estate sale represents obliteration—the end of a life, or at least a life in a particular home. Usually, the endless array of items, which range from lamps to pantyhose, are neatly tagged and arranged throughout the house by a relative, or by a company that takes a cut. Everybody wants a cut. But this particular sale was chaotic, the fallout from some ongoing disaster.
Because the arrangements are normally so logical, with their displays and tidy categorizations, it’s easy for browsers to trace the arc of a person’s existence. You can see that when they were young they traveled, went to Mexico a couple of times or Greece. There may even be Spanish language textbooks, or books on reading Latin. Reading habits are generally more ambitious in youth; there’s often a focus on modern literature and classics (which may themselves have been modern when purchased) like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, or even Rimbaud. Or there is evidence of curiosity in science or nature or philosophy. But as life progresses, ambitions dissipate or are sacrificed and the books get more modest and practical: mysteries, romance novels, true crime, and exercise guides like Stretching for Seniors. Often the newest books describe how to go on without a spouse, cook for one, cope with diabetes, or beat lung cancer. Books on diseases present significant clues. So do stacks of old TV Guides and matchbooks from Treasure Island casino. At some point, it seems, living becomes simply a matter of passing time.
Clothing choices evolve, too, of course. Sizes generally increase as the wearer ages; the fabrics become more uniformly polyester and rayon. Wash and wear. And there are more cardigans with wadded tissue in the pockets. With shoes, women’s heels get lower and the styles wider, to accommodate foot problems that result from a life of moving around.
In all, visiting an estate sale is like going on an archeological expedition through the ruins of somebody’s life; you, the explorer, make guesses and assumptions based on the evidence at hand. An abundance of holiday decorations usually means grandchildren. Lots of hammers and tools mean a handyman—someone who had no children to inherit them or had children who went to law school. And if, when you go into the bathroom, you see bars of soap and cans of half-used shaving cream and hairspray, all for fifty cents each, well then you have to face facts. The people who lived in the house are dead.
At those moments, you feel like a vulture picking at a sun-dried carcass by the side of the highway. But, hey, this stuff has to go somewhere, you think. Maybe it’ll help pay for the funeral. And you reassure yourself that at least you’re not part of the network of hardcore collectors who stand outside a house at seven for an eight o’clock sale. Those are the true vampires, hoping to snap up the dishes, records, antique bureaus, nineteenth-century silver spoons, and anything else that might objectively be worth something. That might be sold on eBay for a profit. These shoppers rush from table to table with poker faces and pockets full of cash, laughing to themselves—these people don’t know what they have. Me, I go late, on the last day of a sale usually, which is often bag day. That means you can have as much junk as you can stuff into a paper sack for one or two dollars. What I look for are the sentimental items, which some might say makes me the worst type of vampire of all. I want those things that, while worth next to nothing monetarily, were special to whomever owned them. A homemade painting of a frowning poodle. A crocheted pillow that reads, “World’s Greatest Postman.” Photographs from birthday parties and Thanksgivings. Men smiling in shiny pink shirts.
It’s an attempt, I suppose, to gather sentimentality all in one place. I’m a glutton for meaning, even somebody else’s meaning. And so my own collection of stuff is largely made up of items that once made somebody else laugh or cry, trinkets and keepsakes that were stowed in drawers and albums and chests, propped on kitchen windowsills. They are idyllic farm scenes embroidered quite obviously without patterns and little houses fashioned from matchsticks, examined and perfected as much as the builder’s talents allowed. Part of the appeal is that that these items, sitting on the “bargain” table on the last day of a sale, seem orphaned. I’m consistently surprised that nobody wants them, for they, more so than the Tiffany lamp or the ruby pendant, carry on the spirit of their former owner. Perhaps that’s why people don’t want them—nobody likes to think about the past, it seems, only tomorrow. Except for people like me. My house is full of ghosts.
Our things speak for us, especially when we are gone. They do this both by their specificity and their context. I think about my own home: What will somebody, someday, make of my collection of other people’s poorly executed art projects, photos of unrelated relatives, and a video library that includes Ikiru and Road House? Will someone get excited about the dress in which I was married, the one my husband bought at a garage sale, and will she wear it proudly to a cocktail party in the twenty-second century? Or will it be cut up and made into sofa pillows? Or, worse, will it go directly into the big black trash bin that will be waiting under my picture window? It’s a disconcerting notion, that the fate of my possessions is out of my hands. I might choose to bequeath some things, but, really, I don’t have much that’s worth bequeathing. I won’t be around to tell the stories, funny and sad, that make my things meaningful—to describe the spot where I found the rock that looks like Abe Lincoln’s head, or relate how a napkin comes from a bar where I was served free drinks by an eighty-five-year-old birthday boy. I won’t be able to define my own history. It will be defined by estate-sale shoppers, just as I attempt to define the history of the smiling, gap-toothed man.
***
The man’s suburban home was stuffed with clues, but they were muddled, confusing—they didn’t add up. Items weren’t organized or labeled. They sat in slowly rotting piles, abandoned, perhaps suddenly, reminding me of those Robert Polidori shots of Chernobyl where dingy stuffing spills from forgotten teddy bears and paint peels from walls in blisters. The man’s cupboards still contained cans of food and jars of pickles. The paper towel holder held paper towels. There were albums full of photos—the man next to a gravestone, him with a circle of kids completing some sort of craft project, him on a sofa with his arm around a pretty woman in a red dress—and a selection of African artifacts: drums, masks, and carvings, all a
little beat up. But they’d certainly taken effort to collect. These were not the kinds of things you leave behind unless you have to.
The most striking thing about this estate sale, however, was the sheer, surreal volume of what the man had accumulated. One room was floor-to-ceiling electronics. There were maybe thirty telephones, some working, some not; fifty or more radios of various types and sizes; an impressive collection of small televisions; and a couple of electric organs. Two children were banging on the organs. Nobody told them to stop. What difference did it make? Desperation breeds disrespect. And, besides, it was bag day. Everything had to go. Everywhere in the house, there was clothing—piled up along the walls, flowing out of half-crushed boxes, covering floors like torn wrapping paper on Christmas morning. Aside from what was plainly visible, in room after room there stood towering piles of suitcases stuffed tight with clothing—men’s, women’s, children’s, from all eras. Some rooms you simply couldn’t go into, as there was nowhere to begin. People threw up their hands. Flicked off the lights. Walked away.
Sales like this one are always rife with gossip. Pickers wondered aloud what had happened, and stories were circulating. Those running the sale, white people, not too friendly, seemed to be disgusted with the gap-toothed man. He’d been evicted, they explained. Couldn’t say why. But what about all the radios, the suitcases, the institutional cans of refried beans? Were these the remains of a garbage house or what? A paunchy man in a white Vikings sweatshirt carrying a receipt pad said he wasn’t sure. He scratched his head. He thought the man had been African and that he had been gathering materials and goods for a relief effort. So the man, at least in his own mind, had intended one day to send all this stuff to wherever in Africa he came from. This was evidence of best laid plans not just gone awry, but exploded.
I walked into a side room, where there was a small book collection on a shelf. I picked out two dictionaries and placed them in my paper sack, next to a carved, cracked wooden statue of a man with his head in his hands, and the photos. Browsing the rest, I spotted a book about living with schizophrenia. So there was that.
The picture of the man in the shiny pink shirt haunted me. I put it away when I got home. Then I took it out again. And then I pinned it above my desk. What had happened to him? I opened his dictionaries and found a name inscribed meticulously inside, along with dates and origins: “November 10, 1997—Diggers.” It was an African name. I started searching. First, I drove back by the house, which had gone up for sale. I called the listing real estate agent, who was abrasive about the inquiry, probably because he, for whatever reason, had been the one who evicted the man. No doubt, he must have been a handful, but the one-man-relief-effort also couldn’t have been all bad. Regarding the motive behind the many mounds of stuff, the agent said, “I believe he was going to ship it off, but he wasn’t very good with follow-through.” Most of what remained at the end of bag day wound up in the big black trash bin. Now it was officially garbage. The agent verified the man’s name, said he was around fifty years old. He wouldn’t put me in touch with the owner of the house, couldn’t tell me how long the man had lived there, didn’t know where he had gone. “As far as I’m concerned,” the agent said via cell phone, busy, on his way to a showing, “he fell off the face of the earth.”
Google came next. There were a couple of people in the Midwest with the man’s last name, a doctor in Wisconsin and a yoga instructor who had just moved from Minnesota to California. I left messages for them both, and for the property owner, whom I found through Hennepin County tax records. No one returned my calls. My curiosity growing, I phoned people at local homeless shelters, but they aren’t allowed to say who stays where, for privacy reasons. I even performed one of those online background searches that cost fifty dollars, which turned up a couple of scrapes with the law, a drug possession charge, another for domestic abuse. Some nonpayment of taxes.
Finally, a phone message came from the doctor in Wisconsin. He spoke with a heavy accent. “Yes, he is my older brother,” he said. “If you have any questions you can call me at my office. He is still in Minneapolis.” I, of course, did call his office. Several times. But I didn’t hear another word from the doctor in Wisconsin. I only know that his brother is alive somewhere in the city. Who he is, what happened, why things fell apart, remains a mystery. And maybe, in the end, the details of his life are none of my business anyway. I will simply enjoy the items that were once his—the wooden statue, a bowl, a pickax with a loose head. I will imbue these items with my own meanings, create a truth for them based on the thinnest of clues, just as somebody, someday, will do again after I am dead or gone.