The little boy bumps the apartment door open with the toe of his sneaker, lets it fall back, bumps it again. It’s the end of a hot summer and Mike’s waiting for his mother, who has slept late. He’s dressed himself in shorts and a blue T-shirt. He’s eaten a bowl of cereal, mixing the last of several boxes, and watched television most of the morning. Now he calls to her, impatiently, and Maryanne comes, slowly, her head down. She frowns as if trying to remember something. While Mike watches, she stops and looks for something in her purse.
“Go ahead,” she says.
He runs down the hallway. He can reach the elevator button now and so stretches up to do it. Holding this position, smiling over his shoulder, he waits for her to round the corner. He looks down at the ashtray between the elevator doors, at the butts and black stains in the white sand.
“Look!” he cries when his mother appears, and he stretches taller on his toes.
She leans over and pushes a half-finished cigarette into the sand. “Good,” she says, exhaling smoke.
He pushes the button and comes down heavily on his heels. “What’s the name again?”
She sighs. “I can’t keep telling you. Newfound Lake.”
His father left Washington a few days ago for this place where the boy’s uncle lives in New Hampshire. Before he left, he gave the boy a fishing pole and tackle box. He said that next year they would go fishing together, and the boy has started practicing from his bed.
In the cool damp air of the basement, she asks the building manager, Mr. Wallace, if they can have a yard sale on the building’s front walk. He stares at them. No one has ever used the front walk of the Queensborough for a sale, he says. The boy can smell his perspiration, a sharp smell like his father’s after he walks home from work.
We need to pare down, she says, and it would be a shame to throw the things away. She tells him people had yard sales all the time where she grew up. Sometimes the whole neighborhood would pitch in. The boy hears her voice change tone, grow warm and more lively. He looks eagerly at Mr. Wallace, hoping he will ask her something more.
Instead, he opens a drawer at the side of his desk. “How old are you, Ms. Leary? Twenty-five? How much stuff could you have?”
“Enough,” she says, her voice flat again.
“Where do you think you’re going to put everything?” Mr. Wallace asks.
They’ll keep everything on the walk and front patio, she tells him, and leave a path open to the front door at all times.
Mr. Wallace unwraps a piece of gum for himself. “Isn’t a yard sale the same thing as a garage sale?” he says. “You need to find a garage!” He grins broadly, and slaps the desk.
The boy sees his mother jump at the noise. “We don’t have a garage,” the boy volunteers quickly. He’s worried about his mother and the day. She said this would be a fast stop, but he has felt it become, like many things in the past few weeks, strangely difficult.
The manager stops chewing and swallows. “Don’t look that way, Mike. How old are you, anyway?”
“Five,” he answers.
“Well, you can have your sale.”
They settle on a week from the day, the first Saturday in September, and his mother thanks him and leaves the office. When they are out in front of the Queensborough, momentarily dazed by the bright sun, the boy says, “He was mean.” She doesn’t answer, and he looks down and kicks the ground. “Grandma had yard sales?” he tries.
His mother has her sunglasses on now and is lighting a cigarette. She starts down the stairs and he steps quickly after, reaching for her hand, as he often does, to remind her of him.
When he wakes the next morning, his yellow curtains are already soft with sun and the pigeons are cooing on his window-sill. He worries his mother has started without him. He jumps out of bed and runs to her room, realizing on the way that she’s still asleep. The apartment is quiet. There are no breakfast noises or smells. There are no boxes packed. He stops running and walks the last steps to her door. Pushing it open, he stands in the door frame, very still. The quilt lies crumpled in a chair and the overhead light is on.
She snores softly, her lips coming apart to make a wet puffing sound with each exhale. He calls to her, twice, loudly, wanting the noise to stop.
She groans and rolls over.
He says, “I thought we were going to pack for the sale.”
“We are.”
“When?”
“Soon. I’m tired. I was up late talking to your father.”
“You were?”
“Yes. We—” She stares in his direction, waking up more as she focuses on him. “He’s having a nice time fishing. Go have cereal, Mike, and I’ll be up in a minute.”
“Has he caught anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“I guess he forgot. Go on.”
In the kitchen there is no cereal or milk but he doesn’t feel like eating. In a stack in the corner there are some boxes his mother has collected from the Safeway across the street and Chapman’s, the liquor store next door. He looks at them a minute, then picks out a small one and takes it into the living room. Standing in his pajamas, the box dangling at his side, he looks around at their belongings, at the brown corduroy sofa, the end tables draped in shawls, the wobbly bookshelves, the overstuffed chair and footstool. There is a square coffee table with a scratched glass top and a shelf underneath cluttered with newspapers and magazines. Against the far wall, his mother’s upright piano stands next to a small cabinet holding the television and stereo. To his left, behind the sofa, is a window that looks out over the flat gray roof of the Safeway.
He bounces the box against his knee. He has no idea what to pack. All of it seems necessary to him, all of it familiar and indispensable. He’s about to abandon the job when his mother walks into the room. She has pulled on jeans and a black tank top; her shoulders are bony and tan. She danced before he was born and she is still very thin.
“Come on,” she says. “I’ll show you.”
She starts picking up things. “Anything we don’t use anymore and is just taking up space. For example, these coasters? We never have parties.”
She twirls around with the coasters in her hand. He stares at her, then lifts the box slightly and she tosses them in, one by one, like Frisbees, each time stylishly flicking her wrist. They hit the bottom with a hollow sound. When she finishes they are both quiet, staring at the discs in the box.
She smiles at him briefly, then runs a hand through her hair and leaps to the far end of the room. She pulls the old CDs off the shelves and scatters them on the floor at her feet.
“What about books?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says. “Especially your father’s.”
“Which ones?”
She turns and studies him. “Never mind,” she says. “I can do that part. Why don’t you just help me with your things. Go through your room and figure out what you don’t need anymore. You can keep the money from what you sell.”
He thinks about this. “I don’t want to sell anything,” he says.
She turns away.
“I could think about it,” he offers, but she is throwing paperbacks to the floor and doesn’t answer. The sunlight has brightened since the early morning and there is much yellow in it. He hears cars on the street below, and people laughing. It feels strange to be inside, holding a box. He turns when his mother, stepping out of the mound she has created around her, slips on a book and almost falls.
She fills the boxes quickly and loosely, then pushes or kicks them across the floor. She is working hard, fast, talking to herself. The boy has been to his room and looked through his things. He has collected some unused coloring books and a few Matchbox cars he no longer favors. When he came out to show his mother, he found her throwing clothes out of her closet. He hadn’t thought of clothes. He went back to his room and pulled out the red snowsuit he has worn for several winters. He folded it carefully and placed it neatly in his box.
Now he trails her around the apartment. The surfaces of everything seem bare to him, all the pretty boxes, picture frames, and vases lying in boxes or on the floor. He sees nicks and stains he’s never noticed, and hollow squares of dust, the outlines of removed things. When she is working in the small den where his father sleeps, he asks once more if he can help. His mother, leaning deep into a box, tells him there is nothing he can do.
He plays by himself for a while until, overheated, the blood pounding in his ears, he stops and lies on his back in the middle of the living room. The cardboard boxes have filled the humid air with a cloying, sweet scent. He rubs his nose to rid it of the smell. Soon the humming in his ears subsides and he realizes with a start that the apartment is very quiet. He scrambles up and runs from the room, calling.
He finds his mother curled up on the chair in her room. “I fell asleep,” she says when he appears, breathless, in the doorway. She blinks a few times, then pushes the hair out of her eyes. “What’ve you been doing?”
“Playing,” he says, his stomach tight. He pulls at his pajama top, tugging it out and away from him, balling his fists inside. “Why are you sleeping?”
“I got tired.”
“Why are you tired?”
She looks down and does not answer. “Are you hungry?” she asks suddenly. “Should we have lunch?”
He shrugs and they are both quiet.
“Come sit?” she asks softly and pats her lap.
He leaves the doorway slowly, stepping carefully over the things on the floor.
“Well, never mind if it’s such a chore,” she says.
“No, it’s okay,” he says, hurrying to her then.
In his room he presents his orderly box. She makes him try on the snowsuit and when the sleeves don’t reach his wrists she sighs and tells him he can take it off. Then she looks at his box again and agrees there may be nothing else, but she wants to make sure. She kneels in his closet, and he plops down on the bed.
“This?” she says, stretching an arm behind her. Between two fingers she holds a little corked bottle filled with water from the place in Maryland where they spent a weekend the summer before.
“I want that!” he shouts.
She stands and turns around, the bottle still in her hand. “Oh, Mike,” she says and she is looking at him, but then she isn’t. He knows this trick of her gaze. Her eyes redden and she focuses on a place above his head.
“Would someone buy it?” he asks.
She blinks and looks at him. “Maybe. It’s a pretty bottle. You never know what people will want.”
“Okay,” he says.
She smiles sadly. “No, you should keep it. They’re your memories.”
The bottle is made of clear glass with a picture of a crab etched into the front. His father bought it for him at a store in town on their last afternoon. When they got back to the cabin, the boy waded into the water until it came up to his knees. His parents were standing behind him on the shore, and when he’d been out there a long time they called to him.
It won’t fit the whole bay, his father said.
I know, he answered.
What’re you doing, honey? his mother called.
Scooping the sunlight, he explained.
And his parents had laughed. He understood then that it was impossible, to scoop the sunlight, but he liked their laughing and he liked the idea that he could make them laugh. Standing in the path of sunshine bouncing on the water, he had turned toward them and scooped and splashed some more.
Now he shakes the bottle. A bit of sand swirls up from the bottom, but the water looks dull. “No,” he says. “It’s okay, but I don’t see why anyone would want it.” He slides off the bed and puts the bottle gently in the box for the sale.
In the week before the yard sale, morning becomes night and night day. They eat eggs for dinner and sandwiches for breakfast; they are often awake at midnight and asleep at noon. They eat at the coffee table in the living room, the kitchen table too roomy, she says, for just the two of them. He tries to set their places the way she used to, scrupulously folding white paper napkins into triangles and placing the fork and knife neatly on top. They sit Indian-style on pillows on the floor.
“Isn’t this more fun?” she asks, and he watches her across the table and nods.
She sleeps late in the mornings, but at night she moves about. He hears her in the kitchen, at the piano. She plays softly, humming over the notes in broken phrases. A few times he hears her footsteps outside his door.
As the sale approaches, he does everything he can to help. She says it will be fun, but he just wants it to go well. He searches his room and finds more things to sell, some puzzles and games, a few toys.
Twice the boys from the building come by and ask him to play, but he refuses. He wants to stay home. He feels vigilant, brave, necessary. It is early September, the days already shorter and the apartment, much to his consternation, always in dim half light. He walks from room to room in the early evening while his mother sleeps, turning lights on everywhere, trying to banish with electric light whatever it is that is making her sad.
“Negotiate anything, get rid of everything. That will be the motto of the day,” she says cheerfully, holding a pen in her mouth while she peels off a sticker. It is the day of the sale and she has brushed her hair and pulled it back into a soft fresh ponytail. She was up this morning before him and he thinks she looks wonderful. When she sees him looking at her, she explains that negotiate means being willing to compromise.
“You’re only five,” she says. “You probably don’t know that word yet.”
He nods gravely and returns to his work.
Flanked by two rectangular patches of lawn, the front walk is five sidewalk squares across by eight squares deep. In the center, three steps lead up to a narrow patio and the Queensborough’s front door. Carpeted in bright green plastic, the patio runs the width of the walk and is as high as the boy’s waist. On this ledge he sets in decreasing size from left to right several pairs of old shoes, starting with a pair of his father’s and finishing with his own winter boots. In between are a couple pairs of his mother’s shiny heels. She waits patiently for him to finish, her hand on her hip, a funny smile on her face.
“They look great,” she says when he is done, and she tousles his hair. “Now help me with the other things.”
They spread an old blanket on the right side of the walk, and although the morning is still and hot, he anchors every corner with rocks from his collection. They fold the clothing in neat rows and set out the other small items, all labeled now with prices. The furniture stands in a row on the opposite side of the walk, leaving a path open, as promised, to the steps and the front door.
When everything is ready, they sit on the patio ledge next to the shoes and survey the scene. The whole area shimmers in bright morning sun. Pots of pink and red geraniums at either end of the patio fill the area with a humid fragrance. The boy doesn’t know where all these things from his home have been kept, but now, arranged in this way in the open air and sunshine, they look fine to him. It is nine o’clock, and people are beginning to move about the neighborhood. An old man pushes his shopping cart toward the Safeway; Mr. Cusano, the owner of the café across the street, comes out and with a great clanging lifts the metal awning that covers his storefront at night. As he turns to go in, he waves to the boy.
“You know him?” his mother asks.
“Yes,” he answers, feeling important.
He looks at his mother and thinks about the course of the day, how the whole of it will be spent in this space. He’s relieved to be out of the apartment, relieved that she seems happy. Even though they can run upstairs if they have to, she has said they should make it feel like a day out, like an adventure. She has packed a lunch for them, and a bag of things to do.
By the time the cicadas start, filling the damp air with the sound of heat, the sale has been going an hour and a half. They have sold nothing. Sitting on the ledge, bouncing his heels nervously against the wall, he watches his mother out of the corner of his eye. She reads a magazine and the morning wears on. People come and go, some stop to browse, but no one buys anything. He concentrates on every person who passes.
Then a girl walking a dog stands a long time looking at the dresser and rocking chair. When she turns to speak to his mother, the dog jumps up on the boy’s legs. He starts to push him down, but when he sees his mother stand and smile at the girl, he holds the dog’s paws and lets him lick his hands. The girl decides to buy both pieces. She has just graduated from college and moved to the city with her boyfriend. She and his mother talk for a while about college and moving, first apartments and jobs. Then his mother says she won’t take more than thirty dollars for both things, even though the original price was twenty for each.
“Save your money,” she says. “You never know when it might be useful to have some of your own.”
More time passes without a sale, but the boy feels at ease. He starts a new coloring book and his mother returns to her magazine. Occasionally she gets up to straighten things browsers have displaced and gradually they sell more, his mother handling all the sales and keeping the money in an envelope in her pocket. She smiles at everyone who turns off the sidewalk, and she thanks each person who takes away something that was theirs.
At one o’clock she says it is time for lunch, and they move into the shade of the gingko tree at the corner of the building. While she unwraps his sandwich, she asks him if there’s anything he’s looking forward to about going back to school next week. “First grade,” she says. “I can’t believe it.”
He feels the weight of her attention and wants to answer the question well.
“I hope the beekeeper comes again,” he says.
She looks at him, puzzled.
“He came last year and told us about bees. He touched the fur on its back and—”
“I don’t remember this. Someone brought bees into your classroom?”
“Yeah. A bumblebee. We could pet it, if we wanted.”
“Did you?”
Remembering his fear, he looks down. “No.”
She says it must have been an interesting demonstration, but he should be careful, that it was probably a special kind of bee and not like the ones outside.
“But,” he insists, “he said bumblebees don’t want to sting. He put it in his mouth and let it fly off his tongue.” Seeing her expression, he rushes on. “He did. Just like this. Watch.” He breaks off a piece of pretzel. “This is the bee,” he says, cupping the bit of pretzel in his hand, then popping it into his mouth. A few seconds later, he opens his mouth and sticks out the tip of his tongue. The pretzel balances there unbroken. “That’s how he did it,” he finishes, chewing quickly and swallowing.
She laughs and the boy, pleased, talks faster. “The bee stayed there for a second, and the beekeeper rolled his eyes, and then it flew away.”
He hopes she will ask more questions—there’s a lot to tell her about the bee, he realizes—but she’s quiet now and looks away.
“I should see if he needs any help,” she says, getting to her feet. “He ran by earlier.”
A tall man dressed in running shoes and shorts is looking at the books on the blanket. The boy watches him over the line of his sandwich, which he holds in front of him, his elbows propped on his knees. The man picks up one of the large books and starts to open it at the same time his mother tries to wipe some dust off the front cover. They fumble and the book totters and almost falls to the ground. They both laugh, and she reaches up to tuck a few wisps of hair behind her ears. With the book successfully open and secure in his hands, the man begins talking, occasionally shifting the book to one hand and pointing at the page with the other. His mother stands quietly, her head tipped slightly to one side.
The boy finishes his sandwich and opens the box of cookies. He eats three, one more than he is allowed. A few minutes later his mother turns to check on him, and he quickly hides his fourth. She waves, then takes a few steps with the man toward the patio. They rest the book on the ledge next to the shoes and lean over it, his mother flipping through the pages now, too, talking and pointing. The boy concentrates on his coloring, leaning close over his crayon, warm and waxy in his hand without its paper. He grips it hard, making red half-moons beneath his fingernails. People pass near him and through his eyelashes he keeps an eye on the ones who stop to look at the sale.
A short time later, he wakes from a sweaty nap. The shade of the tree has shifted and he and the remains of the picnic are in full sun. Sitting up, he looks over and sees his mother and the man still talking, the book closed now and tucked under the man’s arm. People are returning from picnics and pool outings, many with fresh sunburns across their shoulders and noses. Mr. Wallace steps out and stands on the corner of the patio. He looks at the sale and seems to measure with his eyes the amount of room people have to go in and out. He raises an eyebrow, first at the boy, then at the boy’s mother, who doesn’t notice. Eventually he shakes his head and walks back into the building.
The boy stands up and begins straightening and reorganizing. Many things are gone and he’s able to fit what remains into a smaller space, hoping this will stop Mr. Wallace from saying anything to his mother. He picks up the little bottle. Pretending to move it from one place to another, he slips it quietly into his pocket.
While he is straightening, he hears the man and his mother saying good-bye. He thanks her for the book; she says she has enjoyed talking; they both say how glad they are to have met. Then, hearing their voices go quiet behind him, he turns.
He sees the man reach out and touch his mother’s arm. He sees her smile and blush and look down.
The boy plucks at the green plastic carpet, his chin propped on his knee. Sitting on the far side of the patio, he is away from the shoes, away from the sale. When the runner is gone, however, his mother comes over. “How’s the sleepyhead?” she asks, sitting down next to him.
He doesn’t look at her, but a question rushes fiercely out of him. “Do you know him?”
“That man I was talking to? No, I just met him today. He bought one of my favorite dance books.”
“You didn’t finish your lunch,” he says, looking up, not able to stop now, his throat hot and tight.
“I wasn’t that hungry,” she says softly. “You did a good job, though. I saw you.”
He shakes his head. “I had four cookies.”
“That’s okay. Today’s special.”
She smiles at him, her eyes sparkling. Her bangs are curly and damp around her face, her cheeks rosy with sun.
“Why is it special? Why do people have sales?”
“Oh, lots of reasons. To make a little money, to clear out old things. It’s a way of starting over, honey.” She puts her arm around his shoulders and tries to pull him close, but he resists.
He turns from her and stares at the geraniums, at a bumblebee moving among the blooms. “Look,” he says quickly, and, almost without thinking, reaches out and touches the yellow and black fuzz. The bee moves under his finger and the pitch of the buzzing deepens. He pulls back and the bee flies to another flower farther away. The boy turns to his mother, full of pride, his eyes wide.
“Be careful, Mike,” she says. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
The sun drops behind the Queensborough and the shadow of the building begins to creep over the walk. He looks around at the last of their sale, wanting everything back. The dresser, the picture frames, the puzzles, the clothes—all of it came from the time before, when the days were brighter and different and his father was home. He closes his hand over the bottle in his pocket. He wants to tell her he kept it, but just then she takes his other hand and lifts it into her lap.
“My brave boy,” she says and begins stroking the soft underside of his forearm in a long line from his elbow to his wrist. It tickles and he likes it, but she doesn’t seem to notice and then she stops.