Word

The day before the anniversary of Mark’s death, I had a yard sale. It was supposed to happen weeks earlier, but it kept getting postponed and my neighbor and I (whose life fell apart the same time mine did) decided it would have to be Labor Day weekend or never. We plowed forward which is kind of what we’ve been doing these last four years, and two former shop girls set up business on my corner lot.

The plan was for a one-day-only selling extravaganza, but at the end of it I said to Jen, “I’ve got nothing going on tomorrow but a day filled to the brim with sadness so if you want to do this again I’m game.” She was, we pulled our wares out of my garage on a late Sunday morning, and Jen got into merchandising mode. The garage door wasn’t open ten minutes when a friend of Mark’s stopped by with a bouquet of flowers. He has never forgotten the day of Mark’s death, and I somehow managed to keep it together while talking to him even though I wanted to sob out of gratitude. A neighbor down the street came to keep us company, another neighbor stopped by on her way to the grocery store, a friend decided she needed to shop again, another friend needed some advice on wedding attire from two pros. As far as socializing it was stellar, sales not so much.

We were starting to pack things up when a young guy on a bike appeared. “Aww, man, are you guys closing,” he asked, and we told him to shop away because we weren’t even close to our sales quota. “Is this your house,” he asked me and I told him it was. “I ride by here every day. What kind of flowers are those? I really like them.” “They’re hydrangeas,” I said and he slowly shook his head and said, “Word.” He then picked something off one of the tables, held it up, and said, “What’s a sham?” “It’s a fancy pillowcase,” I said. “Huh,” he said, “didn’t know there was such a thing as a fancy pillowcase. Learn something new every day.”

We learned that he was an art student, his name was Michael, that he rode his bike to a community college every day, that his goal was to get into the art institute. When he picked up a roll of cork and admired it, Jen said, “You can have it. It’s free for an art student,” and he smiled and said “Word.” The next thing I saw was him eating potatoes from a ceramic bowl with a plastic fork which was unexpected to say the least. “You guys have really good stuff,” he said, and when I asked him what was interested in he said, “Oh, I’m interested in everything.” I stopped in my tracks and studied that kid’s face hard. When I got my bearings I asked him what school he went to and where he lived. When he told me I said, “You bike that every day??? My husband biked to the med center but that’s about half the distance you ride. How long does it take you?” “Oh, it’s not bad,” he said. “Usually an hour but I like to take my time, stop and have some coffee, maybe get myself a snack,” he said as he ate another forkful of potatoes.

He picked things up, turned them over, admired them. “I wish I could get some of this stuff today but I’m supposed to be somewhere soon,” he said. “Here’s the deal,” I said. “This stuff is going back in my garage for who knows how long. If my front door is open that means I’m home so knock on the door and I’ll open the garage and let you look all you want.” To which Jen added, “When you’re done at Kathy’s house she’s going to walk you down to my house where you can do the same thing, okay?” And he took that information in, nodded, and said, “Word.”

The street that runs alongside my house is filled with walkers, runners, and bike riders. It starts before the sun comes up and it’s not unusual to see someone walking their dog at midnight. Everyone who comes to my house says the same thing. “I’ve never seen so many people out. This never happens in my neighborhood.” I know who walks every day, who runs. There is a woman who runs between 8-8:30 every morning. She runs on the balls of her feet. There’s an older woman who walks several times a day even in the hottest hours of the afternoon. Another woman who walked two collies for years and now only one. My neighbor with her two bassetts twice a day. I know the bike riders and the patterns. There’s two groups of retirees that meet twice a week and leisurely ride by mid-morning, after-school kids riding their bikes to the creek, the weekend riders, the after-dinner riders, the hard-core riders that fly by. I’ve watched a parade of people going by my house for decades, so how is it that not once did I see a young African American guy riding a bike past my house every day that looked like it came right out of the Wizard of Oz?

A few days later I was at Jen’s house and she said, “I drove by your house and saw the cork was still sitting by your garage door. Michael hasn’t come back?” “No,” I said, “I thought for sure he’d be back by now.” As we were talking about him I asked her if she saw him ride up to the house. She didn’t. I asked her if she saw him get on his bike and leave. She hadn’t. “I swear to god, Jen, if you weren’t there I would think I dreamt that whole thing. It was like he was dropped from the sky for a few minutes and then got sucked back up.” “When you asked him what he was interested in,” Jen said, “and he said everything I thought Mark Fisher was standing in front of us.” I had the same thought, it’s why I kept looking at him after he said that, and why it took me a minute to recover. We talked about Michael a bit more, about the potatoes that came out of nowhere, about his presence, and then she said something I already knew. “You know we’re never going to see him again, right? That he was just for that day.”

I smiled and nodded.

Word.