11. What’s a Life Worth?
What’s a Life Worth?
AIDAN
“It’s a store in a house?” I asked as we pulled up to the curb of a suburban neighborhood somewhere west of Ocean Glen.
A kindly female voice chirped out directions from Henry’s phone affixed to the dashboard the whole way.
Henry informed me I did not need to say “thank you” each time she told us to make a left because she couldn’t hear us; she was a robot.
“It’s an estate sale,” Henry reminded me as we stepped out of his car.
The house was two stories with dark blue shutters. A middle-aged white couple hauled a piano bench out the front door while two women in their twenties stood patiently beside the steps to get inside.
“An estate is a house, no?” I asked. Over the previous days, I’d started to feel a bit like an amnesiac.
There was information stored away in my brain—factoids and skills and memories—that hibernated when I went into mannequin mode.
As soon as I was in human mode and something shook one of those loose, like a conversation topic or a movie or a unique sound, everything about it clicked into place.
The new information stayed squirreled inside the mind I still wasn’t quite used to.
Butter. Refrigerator. Don’t eat soup right away, let it cool. Sex and the City. Estates or manors are places where people live.
“At something like this, everything but the house is for sale,” Henry said. “When a person dies or moves somewhere smaller, they can liquidate—sorry, not literally turn to liquid, but sell —everything or most things they own to cover costs.”
“So this person moved…?” I asked hopefully.
“Died. Unfortunately.”
“Of…?” I asked with a gulp.
“Old age,” Henry said, clipped, as we climbed the front drive.
Death… it was everywhere. Inescapable, even at this supposedly cheerful time of year.
I added “old age” to my list of Things That Can Kill Me and tried not to think too hard about Henry’s change in tone and demeanor.
His responses to me were short ever since we finished the flats.
Over dinner, he did a crossword on his phone and then went right to bed.
I got the impression I’d said or done something wrong, but he wouldn’t say what and I was afraid—a new feeling for me, a notch above scared—that if I asked it would make things worse. I figured he’d talk when he was ready.
We stepped inside the dead person’s house. I shuddered. It could’ve been from the temperature change, but I got the distinct sensation it wasn’t that. It was, once again, fear. An emotion I did not enjoy and did not want to get used to.
Despite the commotion on the lawn, the crowd inside was sparse.
There were many rooms with lots of items, so the few browsers were scattered throughout.
I’m sure it helped that it was a Monday (my only full day in human form, which was fast becoming my favorite) and the sale had been going on since Saturday.
We ventured toward the family room, where most of the Christmas stuff was laid out.
“Don’t take any price tags as firm. They’re suggestions. We can negotiate what we want to pay when we check out,” Henry said, moving through the room and around other people with purpose.
“Oh, food. I’m starved,” I said, proceeding over to a large bowl of fruit set out on a long table. My teeth barely pierced the strange-feeling apple before Henry swatted it out of my hand. “Why did you do that?” I asked.
“Because it’s wax,” he whispered tersely, bending down to retrieve the decoration I almost ruined with my bite. “It’s fake.”
I scrutinized the contents of the bowl. “A mannequin… for food?”
“I… yeah, sure.” He waved us into the next room.
It amused me how many tchotchkes and trinkets and stuffed figurines a person could own for a single holiday.
Henry explained the holiday season to me—everything from Thanksgiving to Hanukkah to Christmas to Kwanza to New Year’s—and while the traditions and community elements made sense to me, the decorations… did not.
“Are these supposed to be art?” I asked Henry, picking up a four-foot-tall caroling teddy bear wearing a hat and holding a book of sheet music.
“Depends on who you ask,” Henry said dismissively.
“I’m asking you,” I said with a smile. I yearned for Henry’s opinions. They were always thought-out and spot-on. They informed my own.
He looked at me inscrutably for a second and then said, “I’m going to check out upstairs.
If you find any artificial trees or lights we can use for your farm scene, grab them.
” He dropped a wad of crisp green dollar bills he’d gotten from the bank on the way over here in my hand before disappearing around the corner.
There it was again. That fear. It rumbled low in my stomach.
I searched around the room as instructed.
Toward the back by the window was an animated Santa sleigh complete with reindeer.
It was massive, and the parts in the box did not look well preserved, but with Henry’s ability to restore items, it could work.
So could a set of plastic vintage snowman figurines.
They’d look good in our winterwear scene, which we’d pulled hats and scarves, long coats and mufflers for.
I hoped Henry would let me paint that backdrop with him, but in his present mood, I wasn’t sure that would happen.
“Looking for anything in particular?” asked a man in his late twenties with golden skin even though it was winter in New Jersey and russet-colored eyes much rounder than any I’d seen.
He was significantly shorter than me, and he wore a plaid green blazer over a brown shirt.
On his feet were stylish boots similar to ones Henry bought me after I ruined my sneakers by playing in rain puddles.
I instinctively felt my body react to this man’s attractiveness but knew to ignore that urge because I was after Henry’s hand.
(I had recently watched a Christmas Movie Channel Jane Austen adaptation that had me thinking all sorts of gallant, Georgian thoughts.)
“I was sent after artificial trees and Christmas lights.”
The man’s face could’ve been mistaken for a light all its own the way it brightened.
“It’s your lucky day!” He flapped his hand to follow him.
In a different room there were six tall, rectangular cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other against an empty wall.
“My grandma was obsessed with Christmas. She had a tree for every room.” The man’s voice broke at the end of his sentence.
A droplet of water slid down his cheek. My first thought was: Can my eyes do that?
“Sorry. I thought I was done crying. Guess not.” He let out a wispy laugh.
Crying. Tears. Right. I’d seen that on TV. His sadness lapped off him in almost tangible waves.
“I don’t think you’ve done anything to apologize for,” I said in an effort to make him feel better. This seemed to make him cry harder, which made my stomach grumble again. If only I could take away his hurt.
“It’s just hard, you know?” I didn’t—not really—but I nodded because that felt like what I was meant to do.
“I didn’t think I’d be dealing with all this at her favorite time of year.
Giving all of this away to cover funeral costs.
It’s…” He sniffled and reset his expression.
“Oof. Okay. Feelings off. You’re here for trees, not a sob story. ”
“You can turn your feelings off?” I asked, wondering if I’d somehow missed the memo on a basic human feature. Was there a switch on my body somewhere?
“No. I wish. They come on in spurts. I guess that’s how grieving works,” he said as he moved the tree boxes around. In that moment, I understood that death was not just painful for the person dying, but it was also painful for those left behind when they did. “How many trees do you want?”
“All of them,” I said.
“What for?” he asked.
“They’re for a window display at a store.”
“What kind of store?”
“A vintage store,” I said.
“That’s funny. I had an ex in college who used to do window displays at a vintage store.
He was such a perfectionist when it came to them.
When it came to us, too, actually. Whenever we went out to see a movie, it always had to be the best reviewed one playing, or whenever I wanted to post a selfie of us, we always had to take like seventeen options so he could pick the one with the best lighting.
It got exhausting after a while and—” He covered his mouth with his hand.
“There I go again. When I’m not crying, I’m yapping. ”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“The trees are priced at fifteen apiece, so that would make the total ninety even.”
“Hmm, how about one hundred and twenty instead?” I said, taking a stab at negotiation.
He squinted at me and smiled. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
I forked over all the cash Henry had given me.
“Aidan,” came Henry’s voice from behind me.
“Henry?” said the grieving man when he looked up.
“Xavier… what are you doing here?”
HENRY
“This is my grandma’s place,” Xavier said, pocketing the cash.
If I had known, I wouldn’t have come.
I shouldn’t have come.
I hated estate sales without Great Aunt Isla.
They made me feel like a lonely vulture picking over the bare bones of the recently deceased for profit. Even with me and Aidan’s project hinging on us finding specific set pieces and costumes, I couldn’t summon the joy of the hunt.
After hounding around through the bedrooms upstairs where I found tattered blankets, sagging bed frames, half-empty liquor bottles, and yellowing copies of Life magazine from the eighties, I was ready to find Aidan and cut our losses, but I found my college boyfriend, Xavier, instead.
He looked the same as he did when I last saw him except now he was the one with red-rimmed eyes and tearstained cheeks.
I stammered out a pathetic, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks,” he said unconvincingly.