King. Tanya Chapman
are pretty good. By the time I push everything to the other side and do the other half, it’s looking better. I prop the front and back doors open so the place can air out. The smell of second-hand stuff clears and now everything smells like pine. The shiny floor perks the place up, gives it a bit of hope.
Every now and then someone walks into the shop. I tell them to go ahead and look around, that I’m just doing some spring cleaning. The real thrift shoppers don’t mind cramped racks and messy piles – they’re used to going through the jumble, hunting for that one perfect thing.
I move the racks around and box up some of the stuff that isn’t likely to sell: clothes with missing buttons or stains. By the time I take all the wrecked clothes away, there’s room for some of the better stuff to be seen. I organize by season and colour. I make the shop look more like a place where secondhand things won’t be given the lemon face. I even make a window display.
Usually the window is the spot where things get put when you don’t know what else to do with them. Kind of like the lost and found of the lost. But not anymore. I put all that junk in the back and make a display by hanging up my favourite of the glamorous dresses. I don’t have a mannequin or anything, so I improvise. The ceiling is made of the kind of tile where you can push up a section and then loop a string around the bracket that the tile sits in. I put the dress on a hanger and then suspend it from the ceiling. Then I accessorize. I tie some bracelets and necklaces with fishing line and hang them so that they dangle somewhere around where wrists and a neck might be. This is a lot harder than it sounds. It takes a while and tons of adjustments.
But finally I go out to the sidewalk to judge the effect. If you look at the display really quickly, you almost think that there is a lady standing there. Now she needs a partner, so I find a suit and do the same hanging-up trick. I stand back and watch them. They don’t have a care in the world. They’re just standing around letting time go by. Maybe they’re talking -having a vodka twist and smiling about the weather.
It took me my entire day, but the shop finally looks like it might have something to offer. I turn the radio on – it’s stuck on an oldies station but that’s just fine with me: ‘Oh oh oh the charms about you will carry me to heaven.’ I drag an old fan from the back and aim it at the people in the window so when I turn it on the breeze spins them. They’re dancers now. Wrists and waists twirl around.
A lady comes into the shop and eyes the jewellery that I left on the counter.
‘What a load of junk.’
I show her the bracelet on my wrist, letting the light reflect off the gems. ‘This came in the same batch,’ I say.
She laughs. ‘Good god. I haven’t seen stuff like that since my great-grandmother died.’
She quickly selects three paperbacks from the stack and hands me seventy-five cents. Then she picks up a handful of the jewellery and lets it fall through her fingers with a clatter. ‘Remember when you were so young that you thought these things were real?’ She laughs and I watch the jewellery fall on the counter. A ruby-and-diamond earring bounces off the register and hits the floor. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she says. But she isn’t.
The lady stuffs the books in her purse and leaves. The bell above the door rings on her way out. I find the lost earring and hold it up to the light, all sparkle and no damage done.
I bring one of the dresses home and wear it around the trailer. When King sees me, he bows. All night he speaks in different accents, calls beer champagne and me his little chandelier.
Sissy and I are sitting at the kitchen table in her trailer. Sissy and Spiney’s trailer looks a lot like mine except it’s tidier. Sissy tries to make it look nice by buying new things for it all the time. Her idea of a new thing is anything that looks like it should be part of the space program, like the silver salt and pepper shakers on the black-topped glass table or the clock that looks like it should have hands but really it’s digital. My trailer looks pretty much like it did when it was new in the sixties. I figure, why mess with a good thing?
When I say that Sissy is mostly a never-ending talker, it’s because some days – days like this – she hardly talks at all. She gets depressed. Depressed like she doesn’t want to get out of bed. And on days like this she needs me. Not that I can solve any of her problems, but I can convince her to get out of bed and make me a cup of tea. And that’s more than she’d do otherwise. Spiney is no good for her in these times. He just gets frustrated or gets all over her, trying to make her feel better.
Also – and here’s the kicker – it makes Sissy feel better to ask people the questions they don’t want to ask themselves. I think she likes to see them squirm. It’s like she’s feeling so crappy that she wants to make other people feel bad too, just so she won’t be alone with her sadness. This is the only time that Sissy can be mean.
But it’s not really her asking the questions, not the Sissy that we know and love – it’s someone else. It creeps in, and you can’t really do anything about it except wait it out and love her despite the meanness. So I volunteer for the hot seat every time. Spiney can’t handle that either – the hot seat, I mean.
‘Hazel, why don’t you learn how to cook?’
‘It’s too late for me, Sissy.’
‘It’s never too late, that’s dumb. What do you think a stove is for anyway?’
‘A place to set your drink when there’s too many empties on the counter?’
She doesn’t like that, so she just stares at me and waits for me to say something serious. But as much as I love Sissy, I’m just not prepared to tell her I’ve never even seen the inside of my oven. King does all the cooking and she knows it. So I drink my tea, which makes me think of the word ‘teetotaller, teetotaller’ over and over and wait for the next question.
‘Don’t you think that King has slept with lots of girls like the one he played caps with at Old Joe’s?’
I can’t let my hurt show or she will be on this topic all day. So I just sit and think of ‘teetotaller’ again. But, of course, I’m also wondering just how many caps girls he really did sleep with. But then for my own sanity I decide that it doesn’t matter since we got that all worked out anyway. I just nod at Sissy and sit very quietly and wait.
Finally. ‘Hazel, don’t you want to have kids? What are you going to do when you have kids? You have to cook something then, you know.’
Sissy knows damn well that I don’t want any kids. But Sissy wants kids, a lot of them. The thing is, she can’t have them. I chalk it up to her acid birth. But now I know what’s bothering her. When she gets down it’s either the kid thing or she thinks that there are too many bad vibes floating around her and she can’t get away – even if she runs real fast in her head. Her words, not mine.
So now that I know it’s the kid thing, I know the cure. I drag Sissy to the Duster and head down to the farmers’ market. Sissy loves the market, she’s crazy for it. This is our third trip since I’ve known her. So far she has picked up two albino rabbits, a giant guinea pig and a turtle that now has its own little swimming pool. Sissy’s yard is really crowded, but a cure is a cure. So we go to the farmers’ market.
The drive to the market is quiet. We don’t say much of anything until I pull into the dusty parking lot. Then I say, ‘There sure are a lot of things here that are going to die if someone doesn’t take care of them.’
Sissy’s eyes get really wide. ‘No. Do you think someone will kill them?’
‘For sure. Doomed.’
I hate to say stuff like this, but it has to be done. Our conversation is like this routine that we pretend we’ve never been through before. And besides, like I say, a cure is a cure.
‘Oh god, Hazel, do you think Spiney would be mad if I brought home just one thing?’
‘Well, maybe if it isn’t too big.’
‘Yeah, something little.’
‘How