If you haven’t pre-ordered Shopping for a Yankee Swap, which is coming 12/23/2020, now’s the time to act so it’s there on your reader account. The busy rush of the holidays (even when we’re stuck at home as much as we are now) means we need whatever mental escapes we can find!
Here’s a fun excerpt from the upcoming book as Shannon and Marie go thrift shopping for the Yankee Swap.
Shannon
If there is one thing you need to know about my mother, it’s this: She’s generous with advice, information, and product recommendations. Especially the advice.
But she’s stingy as can be when it comes to her Yankee Swap secrets.
Until my cat and her dog nearly burned the house down on Christmas, the annual Yankee Swap was Mom’s time to shine. A weird tradition in its own right, it tends to be the province of weirdos. I mean, who came up with the idea to bring the craziest gift possible, have people pick numbers out of a hat, and then systematically steal the most prized gift from each other?
You have to have a sense of humor and be a bit of a sadist–and a holiday one at that–to enjoy such a ritual.
And “funny eclectic sadist” has my mother written allll over it.
While Declan is up north with Dad, Tyler, Jeffrey, and Andrew, getting wreaths and finding his special tree, I left Ellie with our nanny, Mia, for a day of shopping with Mom. Being married to a billionaire has its financial perks, so you’d think we’d spend the day on Newbury Street, but no.
We’re at a recycling center in Framingham, staring at a tangled ball of rescued Christmas lights. It’s so big that it looks like a mutant cat from outer space hacked it up as a giant green-plastic hairball.
We’re in the back of this huge warehouse, a place open to the public, part of an enormous complex. Junkyard isn’t the right term for how Funicularelli’s Salvage Yard works. You can dump your junk off here for a fee, or bring working, usable items and drop them off for free. Whatever they can sell, they do, placing it all in a huge showroom floor-like space, where nothing has a price on it.
That’s right.
You haggle.
See that gleam in Mom’s eye? Her middle name is Haggle.
Marie Haggle Scarlotta Jacoby is in her element.
“Mom?” I call out. Apparently, I’ve lost her in the lawn chair aisle, where a mountain of cheap plastic chaises have folded themselves into an organized favela, complete with union reps and a water filtration plant. No joke: The pile of chairs is at least two stories high.
“I’m over here!” A hand appears above a rattan curio cabinet that looks like something out of the TV set for Three’s Company.
“What’re you doing?” She’s bent over, on her belly, rolling on what looks like a giant barrel on its side, with plastic spikes poking out of it.
“Remember these? Cellulite Buster!” She sings a jingle no self-respecting advertising person would write, but the kind that haunts their nightmares. Rolling onto her back, she sits up, rocking forward, pushing her ample tushie into the spikes. “Mmmmm,” she moans. “My glutes are killing me after Jason woke me up this morning for some nookie.”
“MOM!”
She scoffs, closing her eyes, rocking to some 1970s disco song she begins to hum. “Oh, please. As if you and Declan didn’t get it on. When they have to get up at 4 a.m. for something, the morning wood must be appeased, especially if they’re not headed to work with their brains full of job stuff.”
I start to argue but snap my mouth shut.
Because she’s not wrong.
And now I feel guilty it didn’t happen this morning.
“You are three seconds away from a public indecency charge on that thing, Mom.”
“Give me five and I’ll have an experience even better than the one your father gave me this morning.”
I press the ball of my foot against the roller and shove hard enough to make her stand quickly, forced to use her yoga-teacher reflexes. I used to wonder how old Agnes could be so crude. What could make an elderly lady have such a dirty mind?
Now I know.
Dirty old ladies don’t become that way. They just are.
“I am not leaving Ellie with a nanny all day just for you to embarrass me nonstop in public.”
Confusion fills her eyes. “Then why did you come shopping with me?”
A bald dude wearing a dirty blue t-shirt with the salvage yard’s logo–a dumpster with a heart on it and the words We Rescue the Junk in Your Trunk!–passes us, pushing a huge cart loaded with bags of what appear to be stuffed animals. One wheel on the cart gyrates like a dying fish on the beach.
“Ooo, is there a Mickey Mouse in there?” Mom asks.
“You always told me used stuffed animals are nothing but vectors for lice.”
“That’s true for everything but Yankee Swap.”
“You’d give away lice-infested toys?”
“If it’s goofy enough to be the most popular item, yes.”
“Minnie Mouse,” the workman mutters.
“Excuse me?”
“Not Goofy. Minnie Mouse.”
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
Mom watches as he passes us and begins unloading bag after bag of stuffed animals. I’m starting to feel like we’ve been teleported to the horror movie version of Al’s Toy Barn.
Something hot pink catches my eye, the big swath of color standing out in the dreary grey of fluorescent light hell. As I focus on it, I realize it’s a Lisa Frank area rug.
And it’s a unicorn.
“I think Carol had that when she was in middle school!” Mom gasps, the sound of my sister’s name transporting me instantly back to the mid-1990s, when I was the annoying little sister and Carol saved up all her mother’s helper babysitting money to buy that damn rug.
“Did she donate it?” Mendon is close enough to Framingham for this to be possible.
“Oh, no! We still have it.”
“You do? In her old room?”
“Probably? It’s not on the floor. Maybe in the closet, or in the attic? I was saving it for my granddaughter.”
“That’s really gendered of you, Mom. What if Jeffrey or Tyler wanted it?”
“I already offered. I’m not that out of touch, Shannon,” she says tightly. “I may be at the tail end of the baby boomers, but I’m plenty hip.”
“Right, Mom.”
“Oh, look! Macrame plant hangers!”
And she’s off.
I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the odors of old wood, various fabric softeners and upholstery cleaners, dried bleach from the recently washed linoleum, and the unique scent every thrift shop has–distinct yet similar. No retail shop with shiny new merchandise from China or Pakistan or Made in the USA can compete with the eclectic beauty of second-hand stores.
Because places like this are repositories of memory and function.
Other people’s memories, and the persistence of value.
No one wants to throw away something that’s “perfectly good,” even if it’s scratched a little, has some threadbare spots, or looks a wee bit shabby. We’re all the Velveteen Rabbit at some point in our lives, right? Except we go through cycles of rebirth and reinvention, within our own lifespans.
Sometimes the piece of you on display is in need of replacement, other times it’s new, and sometimes you just need to find the right person to see you still have value, even if you’re a bit used up.
The soft spot in Mom’s heart for second-hand stuff came after the very gritty financial need to save money, but it’s not a distant second in her reasons for shopping this way. Drawn to the different, the motley, the hidden and buried treasure, she unearths what touches her.
As for why it resonates, who knows?
And, really, who cares? It just does.
That’s more than enough.
Once I married Declan, I teleported to a financial dimension that might as well be science fiction for the vast majority of people. Dec considers places like this to be literal trash heaps. When we first met, he thought a thrift shop was an antique shop. After I explained the difference, he was perplexed by the idea that you would buy someone’s used items.
He once compared it to buying used condoms or tampons and got an earful from Mom. I’ve never seen him shut up so fast.
Screech, screech, screech.
Someone’s pushing a shopping cart down an aisle on the other side of the enormous warehouse, another cart with a broken wheel. When you spend enough time in discount and secondhand shops, you know that sound all too well. Everything is thrifty in a place like this, even their own equipment.
“Honey! Look! A wine refrigerator!” Mom shouts, her voice echoing. There are only three or four other people in the entire store. Mom’s a pro like that, too: She only shops during the quiet times, and she knows when they are. When eBay became a thing, people who make a living buying low and selling high began flocking to places like this, coming during sale days and red-tag clearances to make a small profit off whatever they could find.
Mom avoids those times.
She’s not here to make money.
She’s here to make discoveries.
“A wine refrigerator? Here?” As I turn the corner and follow her gaze, I realize she’s staring at a small fridge, the size you use in a dorm room. It has a clear glass front, but it looks… off.
A hospital sticker is on the front, and a big orange warning label with details on how to discard sharps.
“See! You billionaires aren’t the only ones who can have these fancy things.” Bending into a squat, she starts to lift it.
“What’re you doing?”
“Buying it!”
“Mom! I don’t think that’s a wine refrigerator. I think that’s for storing insulin safely!”
“Even better. It’ll do double duty if anyone in the family ever develops diabetes.”
“Why don’t you just store wine in the regular kitchen fridge?”
“Why do wealthy people have wine fridges?”
“So they can have temperature-controlled storage,” I say automatically, a mental image of ours flitting through my mind. “But you don’t have a collection.”
“Not yet,” she sniffs. “We haven’t been able to have one because we didn’t have a wine fridge, silly!” The guy in the blue t-shirt walks by carrying a big stack of plastic storage bins, three on top of each other, and plunks them down a few feet to Mom’s right.
“Excuse me?” she asks him. He’s shaved bald, has a greying goatee, and lashless brown eyes that look like a serial killer’s.
Until he smiles.
“Yeah? Whatcha need?”
“How much for this?”
He blinks rapidly. “Just that? You’re not getting more? Normally, you fill the cart up and we give you a price.”
I look at him. “She comes in here that often?”
The guy laughs. “She comes in here so often, we’re close to creating one of those punch card systems. You know, buy nine cartloads, get the tenth half off.”
“FREE!” Mom exclaims. “It should be free!”
Tension that used to live between my shoulder blades, a muscle memory of a time when money was what I thought about, talked about, worried about, and always needed more of, returns for a brief moment, just long enough for me to realize what I’ve lost–and gained–over the years.
I didn’t marry Declan for his money.
But it sure is true that while money can’t buy happiness, it can buy a kind of peace that I deeply appreciate.
As Mom and the guy talk about the fridge, he explains that it’s from a lab that studied stool samples.
My brain grinds to a screeching halt.
“Stool? As in poop?” Mom asks, pulling away from her find.
“Yeah. Gotta tell you, it’s one of the weirdest junk hauls we ever got. Twenty-five of those. Turns out the government changed some regulation and the lab had to get new ones. Decommissioned these. This is the last one.”
“Did you tell everyone what they used to store?”
“Sure. No one cares, right? Just bleach the hell out of it before you put your beer or whatever in. You want it? I’ll put it aside for you so you don’t have to push it around in the cart.”
Mom eyes the fridge, her lips twisted to one side, teeth biting down as she contemplates.
“How much are they going for?” I ask, certain they’ll cost more than Mom would ever pay.
“Twenty bucks or so. Depends. You know how it works,” he says to Mom. “Fill the cart and we start the fun.”
“Fun?” I ask.
“You pay by the cart here.”
“There’s a flat rate?”
“No. You fill it up, I eyeball it, and give you a price.”
“And then I counter with a fairer price.”
“Hey, lady. Fair is in the eye of the beholder.” He winks at Mom.
“So is value,” Mom shoots back.
“Hey! Cory! Getcher ass out on the loading dock!” someone shouts from behind a cheap plastic bi-fold door. Fluorescent lights flicker from what looks like a hallway.
He thumbs toward the voice. “Gotta go. It’s the beginning of the month and that means cleanouts.”
“Cleanouts?”
“Apartments. People moving. They leave their junk and our guys go and get it.” He rubs his palms together in a gesture of eagerness. “Lots of work right now.”
“Anything good coming in?”
He laughs as he leaves. “You one of those people who think all the good stuff is in the back?”
And then the doors swallow him.
Mom plants her hands on her hips and mutters, “He didn’t answer my question.”
Cory jogs back, slaps a Reserved sticker on the fridge, and winks at Mom again before rushing away.
“Let’s get back to our real goal, Mom.”
“We have a goal?”
“The Yankee Swap? Remember?”
“Oh. Right.” Funicularelli’s uses the same furniture they’re selling to display many of their wares. Bookshelves have books on them. Curio cabinets are filled with tchotchkes. If you want to buy the furniture, I assume they clear it and just relocate all the merchandise somewhere else.
I come upon Mom opening and closing a box. Inside is a figure of a woman on her knees, in front of a man with a huge penis.
“MOM!”
“What? It’s in a tasteful box.”
“What is that?” I pick it up and turn it over. “Envelope licker?”
Understanding brightens her eyes. “Oh! I see. Like the little sponges you use when you’re a secretary. I wondered why her tongue was so huge.”
“What’s the point of the guy’s… you know?”
“I think you rest the flap of the envelope between his legs and his doinker pushes it close to her sponge tongue.”
“DOINKER?” I erupt into uncontrollable giggles. Haven’t heard that term before.
“We’re opening and closing an office supply item that has a man’s raging hard-on as a working part, Shannon, and doinker is what makes you fall apart? Really? I raised you better.”
“What does raising me have to do with anything?” I ask as Mom quietly closes the box and slips it into the cart.
“Hmph.”
“You’re actually buying that thing? Is that it? You found your Yankee Swap gift?”
“That? You think that would win the Yankee Swap? Heck, no. I’ll give that to Agnes.”
“Agnes?” I snort. “I’ll bet she hand carved that thing seventy years ago.”
“Pretty sure she was around when that sponge was born, deep in the ocean.”
For the next half hour, we wander, my mind attaching prices to everything. Declan would consider this a gigantic waste of time, insisting that my new assistant, Shayla, could order whatever I need and have it shipped to our house. He’s pushing me lately to rely on other people so that I have more time for family life and, to his credit, he’s doing the same.
Declan’s presence is precious, and we’re gradually getting more and more of it.
But farming out the pieces of life that I actually enjoy doesn’t make sense to me.
Sure, I could skip all this. Go on eBay and find a quirky item. Order it and help someone to make a tiny profit off the very activity I’m enjoying with Mom right now. Calculating the value of my time and delegating work to people whose time is “worth” less might make sense in a business setting, but these hours with Mom can’t be project managed.
My mommy brain downshifts and I start to really enjoy the slow shop. You know the kind, when you take your time, look at everything, reflect on whether you like it, and move on.
So simple.
So rare when you’re parenting a little one. How do I prioritize something that’s solely for me?
Maybe that’s Declan’s point. Give over the work that isn’t central to who I am, so I can focus on me.
“Shannon?” I turn to find Mom standing there, cart overflowing, holding a ThighMaster.
“Hmm?”
“Which color ThighMaster do you think Jason would like most?”
“Does Dad… have a favorite ThighMaster color?”
“He broke the last one. It was blue.”
Do not ask Mom how he broke the ThighMaster. Do not ask Mom how he broke the ThighMaster. Do not ask Mom how he broke the ThighMaster. Do not ask Mom how he broke the–
“He broke it during a Boy Scout meeting.”
Whew.
“What was Dad doing with one of those at a Boy Scout meeting?”
“Something to do with teaching the boys how to build a trebuchet. You know. A catapult.”
“I know what a trebuchet is. We never learned anything like that in Girl Scouts.”
“Maybe Ellie will.” She contemplates the item in her hand. “I think I’ll get him two. One blue, one pink. Jason said they have a nonbinary child in the troop, so let’s get some welcoming colors.”
“Why not get green and yellow, then? Just avoid the gender stereotyping entirely.”
“Ooo! I like that idea!” Mom pushes her cart down the aisle toward a tangled heap of ThighMasters at least six feet high. “You know,” she says, manhandling one, “Jason could attach this to the porch ceiling and it would make a fine plant hanger.”
That’s what’s so great about thrift shopping: You can use your imagination to turn a cheesy ’70s “As Seen on TV” product into a functional piece of home décor.
My stomach is now growling so much, it’s howling at the moon. We wheel the basket over to Cory, who is chatting with a fellow worker in rapid-fire Portuguese. They finish quickly, and he turns to us.
Mom’s entire demeanor changes.
Marie Scarlotta Jacoby has spent her entire life squeezing every bit of value out of every penny she can get her hands on. Declan and I have tried over the years to let our money be theirs, but Dad and Mom are proud to a fault, and it’s trickled down to my sister Carol, too. She’ll let us help with Tyler’s therapies, and we created accounts to fully fund college for both kids, but other than working for Anterdec, she won’t take more help.
So we have to get creative.
No, I won’t step in and buy this for Mom, though it’s tempting. I could hand Cory a couple of hundreds and make his day, but that would strip the thrill of the shop away from Mom. What might seem like kindness and generosity on the face of it really wouldn’t be.
But I’m totally buying lunch, and she doesn’t get to skimp.
The music to High Noon plays in my head, Dad’s old westerns with the whistling twang running through as Cory takes a pencil and taps once on every single item in the cart, keeping a mental tally in his head. You can see the adding machine ticking through numbers in his brain, until finally he looks up, moves his mouth soundlessly, then looks at Mom and says, “One seventy-two.”
“One twenty-five.”
“You’re killing me, lady.”
“That’s not a no.”
“One sixty.”
“Pffft. One thirty.”
Bzzz
My phone rescues me from their haggle, Declan’s text coming at the perfect moment.
How’s it going at the dump? he asks.
It’s not a dump, and Mom found a new ThighMaster for Dad.
I don’t even want to know what that means. Are you having fun?
Preorder now. The price goes up after release!
Little Lies by Helena Hunting writing as H. Hunting
