I needed a lot more than what I had managed to cram in the back of my Subaru for the move. It was a hasty job, which wasn’t philosophically conceived—I simply hadn’t thought the move through enough. But I recast my anxiety about leaving things behind into a dream of starting over. I took my clothes. Some books. A few lamps. My computer and guitar. But I left almost everything else on the curb with a sign reading: “It’s All Yours Now!”
Right across the street from my new apartment, there was a used goods store. Perfect, I thought. What do I need? I made a quick list, and I promised myself I would only get what I wrote down. I was only going to get what I needed this time. No more clutter. Bed frame. Work desk. Chair. Kitchen table. Pots and pans. Bare essentials. A clean slate.
But you never know what you need until you are faced with all the things you want. Nearly everything on my list was in the first room of the store, so I told the nice people working there that I would be buying these things and coming back periodically to cart them away. Then, like a fool, I browsed.
I’ve always liked secondhand stores. Antiques warehouses. Thrift shops. The kinds of places where you might find a gleaming set of silverware in a mahogany box for hundreds of dollars on the same shelf as a tape deck missing the rewind button. You might find a bargain, or an item no longer being manufactured, or a toy that you had misplaced, years and years ago, a lifetime ago. The toy could be the very one you played with. It had its own lifespan, just like you. And here you two are, coinciding again. I always enjoyed that the items had other people’s stories and lives imbued in them. Someone may have used the desk a century ago to write unrequited love letters by candlelight. I try not to get carried away, but I wonder and hope that something lives in the material.
I pushed through a beaded curtain into a second room that housed cardboard boxes of VHS and cassette tapes, VCRs and radios, standing lamps, nightstands—actually I needed a nightstand and forgot to jot it down—shelves upon shelves of old novels, glassware, cookware, paintings, armchairs, jewelry in glass display cases, magnifying glasses, large standing brass ashtrays, rotary phones, vinyl records, and dusty turntables. Some alluring nostalgia. Useful but mostly unnecessary.
The third room, which lay behind a heavy oak door, contained much the same as the first, but these particular items, on closer inspection, were damaged. A desk missing a drawer. An upright piano with only black keys. I suppose one could take this stuff home and fix it, but I am no good at repairing anything. Better to move on.
I creaked open a beat-up screen door to enter the final room, which looked just like an old general store. Aisles stacked with cereal boxes and soup cans. Refrigerators filled with liters of milk, bottles of juice, cans of soda, cartons of eggs. Frosted, brown bottles of beer in six-packs. I deserved it, I thought, and pulled open the glass door. Refreshing icy breath escaped the cooler. When I grabbed and lifted the six-pack, I tumbled backward. It was incredibly light. The bottles were empty. Caps sealed to the tops. I held a bottle up to the light. Empty. I replaced the pack and grabbed another. Light as the first. It felt good to hold the six-pack of empty bottles. It felt manageable. I felt a touch stronger, a bit more capable. I carried it around the store, thinking I would inform the cashier of the beer problem when I was finished shopping.
On the other side of the registers were long tables with board games laid out. A Scrabble board with words on it, a completed game—STRETCH, perpendicular to HIRE, perpendicular to EXIT. A notebook rested next to the game. Initials were scrawled on top, and scores were written down in columns: “J.M.” had beaten out “W.M.” and “R.P.” by 20 points. Two tiles lay in the tiny wooden rack on one side of the board, and one tile lay in the rack facing me: “M” (three points subtracted from W.M.’s score). I put the notebook in my pocket and gingerly picked up the Scrabble board, balancing the game on my palm like a waiter.
At the impulse-buy section by the counter, I saw mason jars of Bic pens without caps. Blues. Blacks. One red. There were yellow Post-it pads covered with words: “TO DO: Laundry, Groceries, Oil Change.” Some words were scratched out. I placed the six-pack on the counter and withdrew a blue pen. I tried crossing off “Laundry,” because I had actually done it already. But the pen was inkless.
The old man in line in front of me paid for a pack of cigarettes, opened it, and tapped out a crumpled filter into his palm. I bought the six-pack, Scrabble game, yellow Post-it pad, and two pens. I told the cashier that I would come back for all the furniture, as soon as I made a friend to help me.
When I came home to my new place, satisfied that I had got only what I needed, with just a few small gifts to myself, I put the finished Scrabble game in the middle of the living room floor, tossed the six-pack in the fridge, and began reading over a To Do list with my dry pen in hand. At some point, I cracked an empty beer and looked out the window, thinking that I was maybe going to make it, this time, in this new place. Then, there was a knock on the door, but, whoever it was, they were already leaving.