Everything Must Go

Chapter 1: Everything Must Go

By seven o'clock on Sunday morning, Jennifer Benson had already color-coded the cul-de-sac.

Christine Reynolds stood at the end of her driveway with a mug of coffee and watched her best friend walk the circle of Tamarack Court with a clipboard and a roll of painter's tape. Every May the seven houses held one joint yard sale. Every May Jennifer ran it like a general moving troops. Blue tape meant housewares. Green meant kids' things. Orange meant furniture, which had to stay near the curb so buyers didn't wander up to anyone's front door. Pink meant clothing, and the long rolling rack of it stood in the Reynolds' open garage, because Christine's garage was the biggest and sat closest to the mouth of the court.

"You're on electronics," Jennifer said when she reached the bottom of the driveway. She wore a white sun visor and a fanny pack heavy with quarters. Her cheeks were pink from the cool air and from the pleasure of being in charge.

"Since when?"

"Since this morning. Marcy wanted it, but Marcy talks too much. And Jason wanted it, but Jason would try to sell somebody a phone with a cracked screen for sixty dollars." Jennifer handed her a sheet of poster board. Across it, in fat black marker, she had written EVERYTHING MUST GO. "Nothing on that table goes back into anyone's house. If it's still there at three, we drop the price. If it's still there at five, it goes to recycling."

"And they're all wiped?"

"Everyone promised." Jennifer tapped the clipboard. "I asked every single household. Cross my heart."

Christine set up a folding table at the edge of her driveway, just inside the shade of the maple, and taped the sign to the front. The neighbors had been bringing things over since the night before. There was a silver laptop, thick and scuffed, that Jennifer had carried over herself. "Bradley's old work laptop," she'd said. "From back when he was still teaching science. It weighs about ten pounds. He wiped it ages ago." There was a black phone in a cracked rubber case that Jason Fisher had dropped off on his way to the gym, holding it up like a trophy. "Liz's old one. Factory reset. Good to go." There was an e-reader from the Patels, a DVD player from Marcy and Hugh Trammell, a baby monitor the Albrechts no longer needed, and a cardboard box full of tangled chargers that nobody would ever claim.

The Reynolds had contributed nothing. Daniel had said he'd take their old junk to the recycling drop-off at the hardware store some weekend. Christine had stopped believing in that weekend a long time ago.

By eight the first cars were rolling in. Tamarack Court was a pretty street, and people came every year. The houses were all built in the same decade, with deep lawns, big windows and two-car garages, and the trees had grown tall enough to meet over the road. Behind the houses, past a strip of pines and a gravel path, lay the retention pond, a wide, still circle of water fenced on one side and edged with cattails. In the evenings the neighborhood dog walkers made slow laps around it. In the mornings, mist sat on it like a lid.

Christine was a real-estate photographer. She spent her working days in other people's houses, finding the angle that made a small kitchen look generous and a dark hallway look bright. She noticed light the way some people noticed weather. Around ten she took her camera from the kitchen counter and shot a few frames of the sale for fun. Kids on the Albrechts' lawn trying out a plastic slide. Hugh Trammell haggling over a lamp. Elizabeth Fisher crossing from her house with a tray of paper cups and a pitcher of lemonade, stopping at the Reynolds driveway to hand Daniel a cup. Daniel laughing at something she said. Elizabeth tucking her dark hair behind her ear.

Christine adjusted her exposure because Elizabeth's white T-shirt was blowing out in the sun. She thought about nothing else.

"Mom." Ethan had come down the driveway in a hooded sweatshirt, his hair flat on one side from his pillow. He was sixteen and tall now, taller than Daniel, and he had his father's long arms and Christine's habit of going quiet when something bothered him. "Do you need help?"

She looked at him with surprise. "You're volunteering?"

"I'm bored."

"Then stand here and look trustworthy. If anybody asks about the laptop, tell them it's slow but it works."

He stood behind the table with his hands in his pockets. When a man in a fishing hat came up to buy the DVD player with a fifty-dollar bill, Christine turned to dig through the cash box for change. It took her a minute. When she turned back, Ethan was straightening the box of chargers, his face red. She assumed he was embarrassed to be seen working a yard sale.

The morning blurred. Christine sold the baby monitor and the e-reader and a set of headphones. She drank too much coffee. She walked into her garage to restock the clothing rack and, on a whim, pulled her old yellow raincoat off its hook by the door. It was a bright slicker with a big hood and a reflective strip across the back. She had worn it on every rainy listing shoot for six years. But last month a homeowner had complained that the yellow showed up in every mirror and every window in the house, and Christine had bought a gray one. She hung the yellow coat on the rack and wrote two dollars on a strip of tape.

"You're selling the banana?" Jennifer had appeared behind her with a stack of folded towels. "I'll miss it. I could always spot you from a mile away."

"That was the problem."

"Well, somebody will snap it up."

Nobody did. By midafternoon the crowds had thinned. The electronics table held the laptop, the phone in the cracked case, and the box of chargers. Christine dropped the prices and still had no takers. She was considering closing up when a young woman in a denim jacket came walking up the court from the direction of the road. She had parked an old green Subaru at the curb. Christine noticed the plates were from Pennsylvania.

The woman looked about twenty-three. She had a long brown braid, freckles across her nose, and a canvas bag over her shoulder. She stopped at the table and looked down at the sign.

"Everything must go," she read. "Does that include the box?"

"It includes the whole table," Christine said.

"What would you take for all of it?"

Christine glanced over at Jennifer, who was across the court helping a woman fit a rocking chair into a hatchback. "Forty dollars?"

"Done." The young woman counted out two twenties. "I'm Taylor. I flip old tech online. You'd be amazed what people pay for parts."

"I'm Christine. Help yourself."

Taylor packed the laptop and the phone and the tangle of chargers into a cardboard box. But she didn't leave. She stood at the end of the driveway with the box on her hip and looked around the circle of houses as if she were memorizing them.

"This is a nice street," she said. "Have you lived here long?"

"Almost thirteen years."

"Wow. Is that pretty normal here? Do people stay?"

"Some do." Christine pointed with her coffee mug. "Mr. Mazur, in the brick house, has been here since before it was paved. We've been here about the longest after him, us and the Bensons in the gray house next door. The Fishers moved in four or five years ago. The others are newer."

Taylor's eyes went to the gray house and stayed there. It was a handsome place with white shutters and a porch swing and two bicycles leaning against the garage. Jennifer's daughters, Abby and Lily, were sitting on the front steps eating popsicles.

"The Bensons," Taylor said. "Is that the woman with the clipboard?"

"That's Jennifer. She runs the whole thing."

"She seems organized."

"She's the most organized person I've ever met."

Taylor smiled. It was a quick, polite smile that didn't reach her eyes. Then she thanked Christine, carried the box to her Subaru, and drove away. Christine watched the car turn out of the court. She did not think about it again for a day.

At five o'clock Jennifer marched through the garages with a roll of trash bags and a stack of empty boxes. Everything left over went into the boxes for donation. Christine helped her fold the unsold clothing. The yellow raincoat went on top of the last box, folded into a neat square, the reflective strip catching the evening light.

"I'll take these to the Hope Closet tomorrow," Jennifer said, hoisting the box onto her hip. "Or Tuesday. Whenever I can face it."

She carried it next door into her own garage and set it on the floor beside her car. Christine went inside, kicked off her shoes, and lay down on the couch. Through the window she could see the empty table at the end of the driveway, with the sign still taped to it, flapping a little in the wind.