Why Stuff Matters

by Jen Waldo

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

When Jessica, a grieving widow, inherits an antique mall from her mother she also inherits the stallholders, an elderly, amoral, acquisitive, and paranoid collection. When one of the vendors, a wily ex-con named Roxy, shoots her ex-husband, she calls on Jessica to help bury the body and soon Jessica is embroiled in cover-ups, lies, and misdirection. Into this mix comes Lizzie, Jessica's late husband's twelve-year-old daughter by his first marriage, who's been dumped on Jessica's doorstep by the child's self-absorbed mother and it soon becomes apparent that Lizzie is as obsessed with material possessions as Jessica's elderly tenants. Why Stuff Matters is a compelling ode to possession, why people like things and the curious lengths they will go to keep them. Returning to her fictional Caprock, Waldo turns her wry wit on the lives of those afraid to let go.

Release date: October 19, 2017

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 254

Sample

The Tornado

My antique mall is the only building in this part of town that has a basement, so as soon as our county is included in the tornado warning that streams across the bottom of the television screen, I tromp down to the main floor from my third-floor living quarters, unlock the front door, and prepare to be overrun for the fourth time this month.

Stepping out to the sidewalk, I peer at the night sky. The clouds are churning. Out on Paramount Boulevard the traffic lights bob and sway. Usually tornado warnings don’t amount to much, but it looks like a storm's definitely heading our way.

People from the apartments across the street lean into the wind as they make their way to the shelter I’m offering. The low-cost housing is mostly inhabited by Latinos with lots of kids. I bet they have as many as ten people per unit over there. I recognize a few faces, but I don’t know names. They keep to themselves.

Beyond the apartments, bordered by a tall wooden fence, is a residential area. The houses back there are old, and the people who live in them are also old; and, for the most part, these elderly people feel disdainful toward the stocky figures who live in the apartments and don’t speak much English. But their homes also lack storm shelters, so many of them, too, will come.

Excited by the change in routine, the kids’ll become wild when they get inside. As the caretaker of this cavernous building full of other people's stuff, this is the inevitability that I am expected to address. The apartment crowd shuffles and bounces its way inside and presses toward the central staircase. Watching for stragglers, I herd them down to the basement, leaving the door unlocked.

I allow these people inside because it's the right thing to do, and because it's what my mother did. Mom was always concerned for the welfare of others; and that apartment building is no more substantial than a cracker box. But shouldn’t they reciprocate by reining in their offspring? The children have been here often enough to know their favorite points of interest. The kids’ section is in the back of the basement and, with noisy enthusiasm, they skip and run and hop in that direction. I head them off, making sweeping motions with my arms spread wide, shooing them back to their parents, who huddle around the bottom of the stairs. A sloppy group, they chat with one another and make no attempt to control their children. Within me a small flame of temper ignites. This is a place of business, not an amusement park.

The stooped people from the houses arrive. Nervously clutching the handrails to steady their descent, they’re weighted with heavy coats, purses, and small bits of luggage. A gaunt and gray crowd, they cringe as they encounter the children's strident energy.

The kids make a game of eluding me. They run between the bins of carefully organized comic books, past shelves of action figures still in their original boxes, around display cases full of superhero memorabilia. Ken, the owner of the booth, would shudder to see his territory invaded in this way.

Over in the toy booth a fat four-year-old girl bounces on Estelle's most prized item, an eighty-year-old mint-condition rocking horse. A sign is posted in front of the horse – Do Not Ride Unless You Want to Buy. It's priced at eighteen hundred dollars. If anything happens to that horse Estelle will be crushed by grief.

Movement on the stairs catches my eye and I’m relieved to see Marlina (long i) and Carly marching downward, two hefty seventy-somethings on a mission. They both have booths on the second floor – Marlina sells china and crystal; Carly sells jewellry, both costume and fine. These two live closer than any of the other vendors, which is why they were able to come in and help me keep an eye on things.

Marlina's rosy-cheeked countenance grows furious when she catches sight of the girl on the horse.

‘Hey you! Get off there right now!’ she shouts, waving her arms as her agitation impels her forward. She glares at the crowd of parents. ‘Parents, control your children or out you go!’

They look at her like she's making no sense. No one claims the girl who has changed from bouncing up and down to lunging forward and back. Good God, she's working up a sweat. Marlina's a force and she doesn’t like to be disregarded. She steps forward, reaches out, ready to grab the girl by the arm and yank her off.

‘No, Marlina!’ I leap in front of her, blocking her way. ‘Are you looking to get sued?’

‘Estelle would die if she saw how that girl's abusing that horse.’

‘Do you think everybody's in?’ I ask. ‘I’m going to check the building.’

Upstairs, I take a walk through the first and second floors, peering carefully into dark corners and listening for sneaky movements. Last time we were taken over this way a couple of small items disappeared – a Wedgwood candy dish and a pair of opera glasses. Of course the vendors blamed me. But what am I supposed to do, turn these people away? I promised to be more vigilant next time, and I instigated a policy stating that, during tornado season, owners must secure their more valuable pieces behind lock and key before going home – and that really got folks riled because they’ve been doing things the same way for thirty years and who am I to come in and make changes?

Back on the first floor, I look out through the storefront glass and, in the reflection, see myself – a tall blond woman looking anxious. Beyond my image, I can’t see anyone else heading this way, but I decide to leave the door unlocked just in case. Some of the people from the neighborhood drove their cars over instead of walking. I don’t like that a dozen cars are parked right in front of my broad window, a hazard. The sky is an eerie shade of pinkish gray, lending an odd light to the street and buildings.

And then I witness the birth of the tornado. About four football fields in front of where I’m standing, on the other side of the apartments, a funnel pokes from beneath the skirt of the clouds. Within seconds it's a live beast reaching for earth. It writhes and stirs until it makes touchdown.

Part of a roof is lifted up. Debris spins and is flung in all directions.

The noise is fearsome, the rumbling of a thousand jet engines. And explosions add to the mayhem – pops, bangs, bams, and pows. A particularly loud Boom! is followed by the lights going out. A frightened moan rises from the basement as the building is plunged into darkness.

And then the long planks marking the boundary between the apartments and the neighborhood are plucked up, one-by-one, as though there's order behind this chaos.

The mighty tempest tears right through the apartment building. Walls burst apart. Scraps of drywall and bits of furniture fly upward and disappear. The awning over the cars in the apartment parking lot is torn away and hurled; then the cars and trucks are pushed, lifted, and flipped. A wooden door crashes on to the roof of a Buick in front of the building. A couple of car alarms go off.

And I hover here, mesmerized by this glorious destruction, as though the storefront glass is a protective shield. What an idiot.

The twister veers left down Paramount Boulevard, taking out every building, sign, light pole, and car on the other side, leaving my property untouched.

Part's Death

In the morning rescue workers with dogs come and search the remains of the apartment building. Three bodies are excavated, along with a five-year-old boy, still alive, who is taken to the hospital. News crews park their vans in front of my building. For the whole day pictures of the rubble across the street, along with photos of the three men who died there, are shown on the cable news stations. Where once there was an apartment building, now there's a ragged jumble of couches at odd angles, upside-down washing machines, and cars and trucks crushed by slabs of concrete. The houses on the other side of the apartment didn’t fare too badly – only one home lost its roof, but the rest were left intact.

If there's one thing I know about tornadoes it's that they’re capricious. This one skipped all over town, kicking up and down like a chorus girl. It took out the education building of the Lutheran church, but respectfully left the sanctuary alone. It wiped out the Sears store, cutting it off at the entrance to the mall with impressive precision; power tools, still in their packaging, were scattered all over the place. It took out the new elementary school which was the only school in town with a storm shelter; and though this was discussed on the local news as a pertinent aspect, the shelter really didn’t matter because not only had school already let out for the summer, the tornado swooped through on a Sunday night when no one would have been there anyway

More relevant in my small sphere is that one of our own was killed. Pard Kemp – Pard being a nickname derived from a nickname. Eighty-six years old. It looks like his decision to take shelter in the basement of the Baptist church came thirty seconds too late; he was knocked on the head by a flying brick in the parking lot. He was an offensive old guy – smelly the way some old people get when they’re too tired to shower or do laundry. He had very little hair, only a few teeth, and an ornery disposition that made everybody wish he’d just go somewhere and die, which he finally did.

Pard operated the double-sized booth at the rear of the second floor, as far from the front door as possible. Secretive by nature, he preferred an inconvenient location. His is one of the more enticing booths — small household implements from the last half of the eighteen hundreds. Irons, washboards, chamber pots, bellows, cuspidors, farm tools. Wandering through his booth is like a trip back in time, and who doesn’t enjoy that?

Most troublesome is what he kept out of sight, locked in the deep bottom drawer of the cabinet at the back of his booth – handguns. The guns were most likely slipped from sweaty palm to sweaty palm, offered in payment for sly favors, or given to Pard for safekeeping. Unfettered by banalities such as documentation or licensing, the question about what to do with them is going to get the vendors worked up.

I checked earlier; there are a dozen of the bothersome things. I know nothing about small firearms. Most are black or dark gray; a couple of them are silver; some are smooth; some have textured grips. Manufacturers’ names are etched on the barrel or grip – Filigree, Walther, Desert Eagle, and Beretta. Various sizes, different barrel lengths. Mostly pistols, only two revolvers. Ammunition is boxed and set to the side – cartridges and bullets in different sizes. I have no idea what cartridges correspond to what weapons. It surprises me that they have an odor – machine oil is my guess.

Pard had no living family and he left no will. While this means his modest house on the west side will go to the state, the state's not going to step in and claim all his old fixtures, tools, and prairie paraphernalia. I’ve scheduled a meeting to discuss the allocation of his inventory.

Around noon I haul the plastic chairs from the storage area in the east corner and set them up at the T-junction right in front of his booth. The vendors begin to limp in. There are forty-five of them, and all are in attendance, except Janet, who's in Fort Worth awaiting the birth of her first great-grandchild. When everybody's found a seat, I take the center position at the entrance to the booth. The folks shift and glare at each other and me. They’re grumpy. Every one of them is certain they’re going to lose out or be taken advantage of in some way.

‘I should just absorb it all.’ Dee's laying claim right from the start. ‘It’ll fit right in with my inventory.’

I’m glad to see Dee's sharp side; she's been vague lately, forgetting names and getting turned around in the building. Her assertion is reasonable. Though her space is themed around a more feminine motif- brush-and-comb sets, jewelry boxes, elegant shawls and gloves of lace – her stock is from the same era. But of course this solution isn’t acceptable to the others.

‘You’ve got no right to any of it,’ Will says. ‘I’ve known Pard for fifty years.’ Technically true, though they were hardly fond of one another.

‘I get the guns.’ This from Sherman, who thinks that seeing action in Korea entitles him to the weaponry. His inventory is military gear – service medals, canteens, hats and helmets, belts and boots. I guess he thinks small arms will fit in nicely.

‘No,’ I say. ‘They’ve got no documentation. I’m turning them over to the police.’

As proprietor of this raggedy-ass business, it's my job to at least keep things looking like they’re on the up-and-up. My announcement is met with grumbling, which is nothing new. I haven’t done a thing since I took over last year that hasn’t been met with grumbling.

The reason for their objection isn’t that I’ve made an unfair or unwise decision. The problem is that these obsessive old people can’t bear to watch anything walk out the door. Handing the guns to the police goes against their code. Here, in this place, you don’t give things away. Every item has a price and until that price is met the item doesn’t move. Their attachment to their stuff is evident in the way they overprice every item (eighteen hundred dollars for a toy), the way they always manage to be elsewhere when someone who sincerely wants to buy walks through, the way they down-talk some of their best items.

‘What if we can unload them for a decent price?’ Carly asks.

‘That's what we’ll do.’ Will's taking over. ‘We sell them and split the money.’

‘Or one of us keeps them and buys everybody else out,’ Sherman says.

‘I’ll allow them to remain on the premises for two weeks.’ I’m becoming adept at compromise. Dealing with these folks requires constant give-and-take. ‘If no one's come up with a buyer by then, I’ll have no choice but to call the cops to come get them. If a single buyer among you wants all of them, I’m making the stipulation that they’re moved off the property.’

I don’t care where they go; I just want them gone. It's not like any among us is going to take a moral stance. At least half this group is involved in some form of legal misconduct.

Barry whose booth holds jukeboxes and turntables from the sixties, buys electronics from pasty-faced men who slink in and out during off-hours. These items are never put on display; he furtively sells them from his back storage area. And Carly does the same, only with jewelry.

Roxy Lynn basically runs an unlicensed pawnshop, dealing primarily in musical instruments.

And Sue. Every member of her extended family has a doctor or two writing prescriptions for pills they don’t need, and they route them through her. There's a constant stream of all kinds of people between the front door and her booth.

I doubt there's a single one of these vendors who isn’t running one kind of scam or another. And the few of us who aren’t actually cavorting on the dark side are silently complicit.

‘Two weeks,’ I repeat. ‘Then I’m turning them over to the authorities.’

Whatever side schemes Pard had going were lucrative. He's been storing his cash in the safe in Mom's office – my office, now – for years, as do several others. Up until this morning I had no idea how much money was in his box.

Thirty-seven thousand.

In my safe.

My safe.

Mine.

The Safe

The safe is quite large, practically the size of a panic room. It's almost as tall as I am and twice as broad. The combination lock opens to my birthday, which was sweet of Mom. The interior consists of a cen. . .