Short Story: Turnover

Short Story: Turnover

Caryn strode into the preschool classroom, purse swinging from her shoulder, thermal coffee cup in one hand, and insulated lunch box in the other.

“It’s my 47th birthday and I’m in menopause,” Caryn said to the church sexton, who held the door open for her deferentially. “So watch out.”

Diana looked up at Caryn from where she sat on the carpeted floor, the contents of a bag of boys’ pants in a heap before her. The small room was filled with tables piled high with children’s clothing. An uneven card table held crib sheets and tiny blankets, while long tables borrowed from the church hall supported precarious stacks of jeans and sweatshirts.

“Diana. How are you?” Asked Caryn.

“Fine, thanks,” replied Diana, “And you?”

Diana turned to greet Caryn’s three nearly-grown daughters, who walked behind her in a line that reminded Diana of the ducklings who appeared each spring in her backyard. They silently set to work. One daughter turned the hangers on a rack to face the same direction, while another snapped open eight handled shopping bags, one for each of Caryn’s children, and the third held up a pair of blue shorts for her mother’s inspection.

“These okay for Billy, Mom?” She asked and then tucked them into a shopping bag. She pulled a marker from the hip pocket of her cutoffs and wrote her brother’s name on the inside of bag in block letters.

“I want to start by rearranging the tables,” announced Caryn. Pausing only to perch her coffee and lunch on a stack of coats, Caryn began shoving loaded tables across the floor of the preschool classroom.

Diana watched as Caryn’s purse swayed against her hip.

Familiar battle on old turf, thought Diana wearily. For the eleven years they had volunteered together at the children’s room of the Long Valley Memorial Church Turnover Sale, Diana had arrived first for setup. She lived half a block up the hill from the church and her job editing a local gardening quarterly wrapped up each May. Her three sons finished school in mid-June with an annual burst of field days and concerts. By early July, Diana had time to help at the sale. This year, especially, with her three sons and husband away at a week-long Boy Scout jamboree in the Grand Canyon, Diana was eager to fill her days.

Caryn lived in Cumbria, sixty miles from Long Valley, and Diana often marveled that she was willing to drive halfway across the state to boss her around. With six children, sometimes all in tow, Caryn moved more slowly than Diana and arrived later. She shopped while she unpacked trash bags and folded donations, filling numerous bags with clothes for her children’s, neighbor’s children, now her new grandchild. Diana bought nothing. Her sons’ taste shifted unpredictably; she gave them each a budget and took them shopping once each season. She could see their discards now on the table of teen boy clothing, one abandoned fad piled atop another.

“I was thinking that we could set up a new way this year,” said Diana mildly.

“But the usual way really works, remember? We have a traffic pattern to the infant things right here,” said Caryn, using her hands to demonstrate the flow of imagined shoppers.“And then the teens go straight back there.” Caryn was puffing a little from the effort of pushing loaded tables across the carpeting. “Last year the toy department beat us in sales,” she reminded Diana. “This year we need to get the better of them.” She leaned on a table, pushing hard against its metal edge.

That’s one of the tables I duct-taped together, thought Diana, as the legs gave way. Piles of clothing slid the length of the table and onto on the floor. The metal legs were buried under the piles while the heavy wooden top of the table landed sideways among the sweaters.

“Who did this?” asked Caryn, as if she expected sabotage. She inspected the base of the table. “Is this tape?”

“I thought we could hold it together one more year with duct tape,” explained Diana.

“This isn’t going to work,” Caryn said decisively. She summoned a daughter to pick up the clothes and refold them neatly. “I hope you’ll tell the sexton that this table needs to be repaired for real. Or, no, I’ll tell him. Now let’s organize what we have.” Caryn put her hand down heavily on the other tables, testing them for weakness.

Diana sighed and roused herself from the floor. She placed a final pair of pajamas on a pile with its companions and left the room.

In the hallway, Diana stepped around trash bags full of dusty stuffed animals and vacuum cleaner hoses that spread like a manic octopus. A small army of volunteers had worked for days to cull the saleable items from the detritus. Now, two days before the sale, leftovers waited to be discarded.

Diana walked over a box of chipped mugs. She peered into a room where housewares were sold, noting the barest possible designation between piles of giveaway cereal bowls and antique china. In an alcove, a volunteer tenor crooned along with Madame Butterfly. Old-time karaoke, thought Diana, as she heard the scratches of a record behind the arias.

She walked faster through a short, carpeted hallway full of offices. She slowed as the floor surface slanted and led her downwards into the older part of the church. It’s like the medieval catacombs of Venice, Diana thought, silent under the busy markets. Arriving at the small chapel, she arranged sheet music on a stand next to the organ and waited.

“Whew! Made it through that train wreck!” exclaimed Jason, the choir director, walking into the chapel behind her. “I’m usually home in Aberdeen in July. What is this dogfight again?”

Diana smiled.

“You’ve missed the Turnover then, a rummage sale that supports youth activities. It’s on Saturday, the day before the service when we welcome the new minister.”

“Junk for the junior set, then?” asked Jason, laughing. “Lots of folks united for a higher purpose.”

“With some tensions, yes,” agreed Diana slowly. “There’s a prize offered to the department that does the most business, and rumor has it that the new minister disapproves. So there’s a lot of jockeying this year, since it might be our last opportunity.” Diana shrugged.

“You must all stay focused on the higher purpose,” Jason said lightly. “Now we focus on music. At the end of the service, the choir welcomes the new minister. You step forward to sing the five final lines as a solo. Follow up with a crisp Amen, and we’re out.” He held up his hand with fingers spread. “Five good lines.”

Diana nodded, as Jason led her through several sets of warm-up scales. “I’ve never had a solo before,” she confided between trills. “I’ve been in choirs since I was five years old – that’s nearly forty years now – and never once stepped out of the crowd. I know that I wouldn’t have been chosen if the other altos weren’t on vacation, but, still I’m nervous.”

“Singers develop late,” he said shrugging. “Listen to your lines,” he told her. “I’ll sing them to you, and you’ll tell me what they mean.”

She looked puzzled.

“I want you to sing them with conviction, to understand the words,” he said, smiling. “The words are borrowed from Psalm 144, but I wrote the music so I want this to be spectacular.”

“But no pressure,” muttered Diana.

“First line,” Jason continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “That our sons may be as plants, flourishing from their youth.

“Our children, the church’s children, will grow up healthy,” said Diana, thinking of her three boys who had towered over her since they were twelve.

“Good,” said Jason. “Our daughters will be as cornerstones, polished after the similitude of a palace.”

Diana paused to think before she answered. “Our daughters, the women, are the foundation of society. Or maybe of the church?”

“Visualize the church,” said Jason. “And work on those lines for tomorrow. That’s a lot to ask for in one day.”

Friday found Diana again crouched on the preschool room floor folding donated crib sheets. When Caryn arrived, daughters in tow, Diana gathered her purse and sheet music, preparing to leave.

“Diana, what I like to do,” began Caryn without a greeting, “is this I take the shopping bags with handles and fold them neatly, very neatly, and tuck them into another bag. The big trash bags go into the closet, and smaller grocery bags go into a drawer. Someone was mixing up the bags.”

Diana straightened a pile of girls’ t-shirts, noticing a shirt whose slogan read, “You’re not the boss of me.” That’s true, she thought, leaving the room without having said a word. Caryn is not the boss, but a forceful person. That’s all she is. I must remember that. I must speak up.

When Diana arrived at the small chapel, Jason was waiting. After the briefest of greetings, he listened to her sing.

“Fine,” he said brusquely. “Now the next set of lines. These are where you’re going for a big finish, so listen closely.”

Diana nodded.

“Our storehouses are full of good things, no one complains in our passageways, happy are those people,” he sang to her. “Tell me what it means.”

Diana laughed. “The first part means that the church has a lot of resources. That’s easy to see today, with all the Turnover junk. But no complaining. Happy are the people? Jason, isn’t that a bit optimistic?”

“Ssh,” he said. “I can’t have a reputation as the world’s first optimistic Scot. The psalmist is describing what he wants to see as if it’s in front of him. Creative visualization. Build it and they will come, you know?”

Diana nodded.

“You’ll sing the last line twice,” he explained. “And make this a big gesture. Fling your arms out wide, send the sound to the very back of the sanctuary.” Jason stretched his arms out wide to demonstrate.

In imitation, Diana sang, she paused to put down her sheet music, and reached her arms out to the sides.

“No!” He cried. “Throw your arms. If the music flies, so much the better. Happy are the people; if you sing with conviction, we will be happy.” He paused. “Do you have a place to rehearse?’

“It’s very quiet at home without the boys,” answered Diana.

“You don’t want quiet for rehearsal. You want to compete with the babble of the world to announce your vision. You want to stop traffic. Could you sing in a grocery store?” He asked hopefully.

Diana’s eyes widened in surprise and fear.

“Don’t mind me,” Jason said. “Quiet folk like you are excellent performers, it’s a well-known fact. But rehearse as much as you can tonight.”

As Diana walked back through the church hallways humming, she found her passage blocked. In front of the preschool room, she counted sixteen black trash bags stuffed and knotted closed. She tore open one bag with her keys. Children’s snow boots poured out around her.

Diana peered into Housewares, where she saw two women polishing glasses and rearranging mugs.

“Hi there,” she said. “If you’re not swamped, I could use some help.”

Pauline and Jennie helped empty the bags. Pauline did triage, sorting the contents of each bag into “boys” and “girls” piles. Jennie and Diana folded and sorted clothes into piles and shoved hangers into jackets. With the distant sound of organ rehearsal as their accompaniment, Diana felt that she was in a Buster Keaton movie, moving as twice her usual speed. The three women worked efficiently without speaking until they reached the bottom of the pile.

“Last bag,” said Pauline finally. “And it’s nothing but underwear. I’m making an executive decision to trash the whole thing.”

Jennie stretched. “Fine by me. The sexton has been rattling the keys for twenty minutes already. I think he wants to lock up the church.”

“That means that he already locked the dumpsters then. I’ll take the trash out in the morning before the trash truck comes,” said Diana. “Thanks for all the help.” We are the cornerstones of the church, she thought to herself.

The three women watched as Pauline shoved piles of underpants into the overflowing trash bin. She covered the whole thing with a crumpled shopping bag.

“No one wants to see dirty underwear,” she said, as if in explanation. “And like you said, you’ll take out the trash in the morning.”

At home, Diana wandered the rooms of the house eating cereal instead of dinner. Without the boys, the house was so tidy that she traced the wheel marks of the vacuum cleaner in the carpets. She rehearsed her solo lines before bed and fell asleep dreaming of clothes.

Diana overslept, and rushed to the church just before the sale began. As she walked in the heavy wooden doors of the church hall, she played a message on her cell phone.

“It’s about ten o’clock here and I wanted you to know that we’re all fine,” said her husband’s recorded voice. “The boys and I hiked twelve miles today. Cody saw a mother eagle feeding fresh kill to her babies. Love you.”

Diana smiled as she turned off her phone. “Our sons may be as plants,” she sang in a whisper. Diana picked up a small bag of toddler clothes waiting in front of the preschool room it and pushed open the door. She spied Caryn’s lunchbox on a table, and on the floor in front of her, Diana saw a pile of underpants and a crumpled shopping bag.

I could swear we threw those away, she thought to herself. Diana leaned down and picked up the underpants. She shoved them into the bin, deep, under torn shopping bags, just as Caryn entered the room. Hurriedly, she began to sort the bag of toddler socks and tights, pairing them at random.

“Did someone throw away underpants?” asked Caryn, though there were only the two of them in the room. “They were here a minute ago.” She leaned down above the trash bin and spoke over her shoulder. “These are perfectly good,” she said, brandishing a pair of boy’s BVDs at Diane. “Even these,” and now she waved a graying pair in Diana’s direction, “don’t get thrown away. We put them in a bag for the Salvation Army.” She continued to bustle angrily, as she dug through the trash for the better underpants.

Diana put down her purse. “We had sixteen bags here last night and only three of us to sort them,” she said mildly. “I was grateful for the help, even if mistakes were made.” She continued to fidget with the socks, as Caryn spoke again.

“Who were these three?” asked Caryn. “As often as I come, I’ve never seen anyone else here.”

“I think it’s a judgment call here,” Diana began. “We decide what to keep or discard based on our own life experience. If, say, a fellow volunteer never bought used underpants before, she might not realize that other others here at the sale do.”

But do they? Diana asked herself. I’m babbling, trying to mediate, and why? Every single year we have an entire box of underwear to get rid of at the end of the sale.

As she stood thinking, the first customers began charging into the room and helping themselves to brown paper grocery bags. They burrowed into the neat piles like gold miners who heard rumor of a find.

“All you can fit into a grocery bag, fifteen dollars,” Diana said automatically to a customer. “Fill it up as much as you like.”

“No, just to the top of the bag,” she heard Caryn say. “Anything over the handles is extra.”

“Madhouse, eh?” asked Jason, appearing suddenly before Diana. “I’ve come to talk about the phrasing of the last lines.”

Diana watched Jason hands move, illustrating his words. But she heard only Caryn from across the room.

“When I left yesterday,” she was saying to a customer, “it was perfect here, like a store. But heaven knows what they all threw away. If you’re going to do something, do it right is what I say.”

I’m angry, realized Diana. She has been the boss of me for eleven summers because she is forceful, older, and has more kids. But I am nearly as old as she is, I have three thriving sons, I am a cornerstone of the church, and now I have a solo.

“I can throw away the underpants if it’s the right thing to do,” she said aloud. Jason looked surprised and confused. “Our storehouses are full of good things.”

Jason thinks that I have lost my mind, Diana realized. He is wondering if he will need to replace me in the choir loft. But I am angry, not crazy. She took a deep breath, ready to tell Caryn what she felt. “You are not the boss of me,” waited in the back of her throat, poised for escape, when Caryn’s son Sean walked into the preschool room. He wore Cody’s discarded surfer shorts, Diana’s middle son Peter’s Polo shirt, and John’s wheeled sneakers. She’s a better mother than I am, thought Diana. I hated those shoes. I brought them here the day he left on the camping trip.

“Mom, I want to get this record,” said Sean, brandishing an album at his mother.

“Sean, do you see how busy we are here?” Caryn replied. “You’ll have to come back later. I’m swamped with customers, I have to go through the trash, and I’m running out of singles.”

As Diana watched Sean, dressed in her sons’ clothes, her anger disappeared. Let him get the record, Diana willed Caryn. She exhaled and music came forth.

“No one is complaining in our passageways,” Diana sang softly. “Happy, happy are the people.”

Diana’s voice rose as she stood on tiptoe. She saw Jason’s delighted face as she prolonged and enunciated each note. She repeated the final line louder, silencing the roomful of shoppers. She faltered for an instant, reaching for a high note like a rock climber nearly missing a crevice. But seeing Caryn’s astonished face, she smiled and reached a crescendo. Diana stretched her arms wide, hands open as Jason had taught her. The toddler socks went flying into shoppers’ bags and over the heads of small children. Again, Diana nearly lost the note until she saw a pair of spangled tights hanging limply from Caryn’s shoulder. She held the note, feeling at last the psalmist’ plea, his vision for a world with healthy children, reliable women volunteers, and less complaining than before.

As Jason’s right hand closed, telling her to finish the note, Diana closed her mouth.

In the silence that followed, in the instant when no one moved, Diana took a deep breath, stepped forward, and said, “Amen.” With a sense of blissful release, she beamed at the shoppers.

“It’s fifteen dollars a bag, ladies,” she repeated. “And if I hit you with anything, it’s free.”

Diana’s smile faltered as she considered, though only for an instant, what she had done, singing loudly and unexpectedly in the preschool room at the Turnover Sale. Next year, I will see an eagle, she told herself. I will sing two solos. And right now, I will speak my mind.

“Caryn,” she said, meeting the other woman’s look of confused surprise, “let’s sell some clothes.”