“No, it’s somebody’s business they started up. The ads say they’ll come clean out your attic or whatever. I’d say they make their money on volume.”
Dellarobia found it odd that people would donate their discards to a private enterprise instead of a charity. Passers-by must see the stuff piled up here and automatically eject their own castoffs, a townie equivalent to the wildcat landfills that grew alongside country roads. Some universal junk-attraction principle.
Dovey was not a secondhand shopper by nature as Dellarobia was, but she’d heard this place had racks of worn-once designer dresses. Appearances did not suggest that Vera Wang was on the premises. Inside the dusty storefront they met a boggling display of items that were all going for twenty-five cents. Salt shakers, unmatched but decent flatware, a cheese grater, a set of cast iron skillets of the type Dellarobia had never been able to afford. She set a dollar’s worth of high-quality cookware into an empty cart and lifted Cordie into the fold-down seat. The twenty-five-cent shelves went on and on. Dellarobia was stupefied by the bargains.
“Why isn’t everybody we know here?”
“Mama, you could put Daddy’s picture in this,” Preston suggested, holding up an overlarge canary yellow picture frame.
“You are so right,” she said. Preston moved on to a tape recorder. Dellarobia examined a big meat platter with a treelike gravy gutter built into it, exactly like one her mother used at Thanksgiving and other big-deal family meals, occasions that had always left Dellarobia feeling their family was insufficiently large. Why hadn’t her parents had more children? As a child she’d never thought to ask, and now she would never know. So much knowledge died with a person.
Cordelia was determined to climb out of the cart, which she called the “buggy.” Where did she learn that? Dellarobia lifted her out of the wire seat, kicking, sending one blue plastic clog flying, which Preston ran to fetch and put back on his Cinderella sister. She accepted the compromise of standing up in the cart. “Buggy mama buggy mama,” she chanted, grabbing both sides and rocking, her pale hair a wild waggling halo. Her unassailable wardrobe choice today was her favorite striped summer dress, with corduroy pants underneath and sweaters over it. Dellarobia thought of those ragtag campers with the knitting needles she’d seen up on the mountain. She could see Cordie running off to join that tribe.
Dovey moved out of twenty-five-cent range to nab a pair of silver high-heeled sandals. She and Dellarobia gravitated toward a long rack of wedding dresses, mostly in majestic plus sizes, just to run their hands over those expanses of satin and organza with their pearl-encrusted bodices. So much whiteness, perfectly seamed. “They’re all in such great condition,” Dovey said reverently.
“Duh. This is not a garment that gets a lot of wear.”
“Oh, yeah,” Dovey laughed. “Hey, is there a maternity bride section?”
“Ha ha. Actually there should be.”
Cordelia started up a weird double-time stomping routine in the buggy, like something from an exercise class. The child seemed energized by commerce. As they cruised between close-set racks of women’s clothing, she chirped continually, “Like dis, Mama?” Dellarobia wasn’t looking for herself, but noticed the vintage jackets with interfaced collars and lined sleeves. So much quality going for nothing, like those cast-iron skillets. The older merchandise here was better made than literally everything in the dollar store. She tried on a fitted corduroy blazer, forest green, circa Angie Dickinson. It made her feel like a higher-quality person. She decided to wear it around the store. Her daughter set herself to pulling down every flowered, sequined, or otherwise gaudy blouse from the racks, tilting each one cornerwise off its hanger and asking, “Dis cute?”
“She has her own sense of style,” Dovey observed. “You’ve got to give her that.”
Dellarobia did give her that, but wondered why. Preston was indifferent to fashion. He had drifted downstream, floating out the mouth of the clothing aisle into an estuary of household appliances where he was trying everything out: pushing all the buttons on the blender, popping the toaster, ironing with the iron—something he must have seen at Lupe’s house, not hers. All other appliances here were greatly outnumbered by the irons, a whole battalion of them lined up like pointy-headed soldiers at attention. She was getting the gist of this place: long on items that people were ready to part with.
Dovey had paused to commune with her phone, probably remembering to text Felix about his wallet and while she was at it, check the weather in Daytona Beach or something. Dellarobia knew little about Internet devices, except that her son’s hunger for information was already pulling in that direction. Since the day of her first paycheck and last last smoke she’d paid up the mortgage and opened a bank account in her own name. Cub knew about the former, not the latter. He didn’t even know exactly what she earned. Dellarobia handled the finances.
She followed Preston around the corner into a world of housewares, somewhat randomly assembled, shockingly cheap. The linen section had uniform pricing: blankets, bedspreads, and curtains all two dollars each; sheets one dollar. She couldn’t believe her eyes. New sheets, even of the worst quality, cost a fortune. She found twin sheets for Preston’s bed and a set for their double plus two crib sheets, six bucks total, and stuffed these finds around Cordelia, who was not taking kindly to being hemmed in. Briefly Dellarobia confronted the thought of Cordie outgrowing her crib, the kids getting too old to share intimate space. Everyone in their little house was going along with the story they could afford: that no one would grow, nothing would change.
Dovey wheeled her cart up to join them. “Whoah. You’re buying used sheets? You don’t know who’s slept in those.”
“As opposed to the sheets at your house. Where I do know.”
“Good point,” Dovey said. “Nothing a little Clorox won’t cure.”
An elderly woman pawed through sheets while the little boy at her side yanked down slick bedspreads from a pile, inciting waterfalls of polyester. The woman crooned in a steady voice without ever looking up: “You’re a stinker, Mammaw is going to give you to the froggies. Mammaw is going to throw you in the garbage can.” Dellarobia pushed Cordie out of earshot, not that she was above such thoughts, but still. They should be the accent pieces of a parenting style, not wall-to-wall carpet. At the far end of bedspreads, a leather-skinned man was unfolding comforters to assess their heft. He picked out two extra bulkies and wheeled toward the checkout with nothing else in his cart. Homeless. So free enterprise was standing in for the charities on both ends here.