The Swanson family was a deck of cards in a windstorm, some only in contact because they had blown against the same fence.
They were siblings and half siblings, one not blood related at all but who had somehow barnacled to the rotting ship.
An email went out.
“Dad died.”
The responses ranged from “Dad who?,” to “I want the snowblower.”
Jack got the snowblower, Marcia the ceramic Virgin Mary statue and Kelly, the responsible one, was put in charge of the garage sale with a promise to split the money between those who had responded to the email.
Some hadn’t, which made Kelly a little sad as she sorted cheap tableware and some softball mitts, dusty old records and a socket set that looked like it had never been used.
Kelly had never once seen or heard dad play a record, but there were a few hundred here.
Flipping through, some of them were in decent condition, some were not.
There were jazz and R&B, some soft rock, some novelty Halloween and Christmas records, plastic still on some and her father’s name written on some sleeves in green marker as though maybe as a youngster he was claiming them against his own siblings. A spooky sounds Halloween record had a sticker that said Merry Christmas and someone had drawn a red heart on the cover of an album by a jazz chanteuse in a black velvet gown with a plunging neckline.
Kelly smiled. Wondered if dad had drawn the heart pre-first wife, before or after her late mom, or two weeks ago. Wondered if in his solitude he had played the records again. She doubted it.
Ten for a dollar, she decided.
Then she made some Garage Sale signs, hastily duct taped them to some light poles and wondered if Brad and Donnie, who didn’t respond to the Dad’s Dead email, would show up and fight over the softball mitts.
Three days later she sat in the garage during a light drizzle,looking at a pile of pants on a card table, a few candleholders, maybe twenty records and a cooler with rusty hinges, recounting the piles of fourteen dollars and 33 cents the five blood siblings and Terri, the unofficially adopted one would get.
A grey bearded man walked up the drive.
“You can have everything here for 6 dollars,” Kelly called out, just a hint of mirth, but she was serious.
Take it all, dude, otherwise I’m throwing it out.
The man smiled.
“I was here Friday.I’m… Edgar Risolainen.”
He extended his hand.
Kelly extended hers, thinking the guy might be one of the siblings' attorneys.
“Kelly,” she said.
“May I sit down, Kelly?”
He began to reach for a folding chair in the garage and Kelly blurted “Sure. Why?”
“I bought some records Friday.”
Kelly folded her arms and shivered.
“Yeah, like ten for a dollar. Want your dollar back?”
The man smiled as he shook his head vigorously.
“There was some cash in one of the records. I don’t feel it’s rightfully mine. The man reached into his breast pocket and handed Kelly 1200 dollars in hundred dollar bills.
She heard an embarrassing squeak leap out into the air.
“Ummm….wow…that’s…that’s so incredibly kind.”
“I couldn’t have lived with myself,” the man said.
Kelly stood, then bent and hugged the man.
He seemed embarrassed by it, uncomfortable. A germaphobe maybe?
She backed off. “Would you like to take the rest of this stuff?”
He chuckled.
“Oh, no, no thank you. But…maybe you should reach into some of those record sleeves and see if there’s more money in them.”
He smiled again. “Have a great day.”
“You made my day,” Kelly said, as the man walked away.
She looked at the neat piles of money she had made for the siblings and Terri. They would never know that this money came in.
Guilt knocked at the back of her teeth.
It’s not really much of a family, but…
Kelly counted the money again.
She looked back over her shoulder and leaned so she could see the man walking away.
Edgar Riss… something.
Was she supposed to know that name?
Was this Brad or Donnie or even Marcia testing her honesty?
The man got into a decent black car, looked foreign.
Kelly looked at the bills.
They were new, on the crisp side. No way had her dad stashed this money in a record, and she couldn’t picture him doing it at all.
If her dad had done it, the guy had taken the money, deposited it, then had a case of the guilts and took it back out of the bank.
She was sure she was right.
Kelly put two 100 bills on each pile, grateful that it worked out evenly and grateful that one of the piles was hers to keep.
Michael Lotromino started his BMW, and said Edgar Risolainen out loud, laughing at himself.
As he pulled away, he said “Let that go, Mikey,” out loud and shook his head.
Edgar Risolainen had gotten first chair violin over Michael Lotromino at Interlochen.
He had gone on to play in the Zurich Symphony.
Michael had often used the name in uncomfortable situations, including when he had been pulled over for a DUI, though that hadn’t worked.
Michael gave up the bow for business, music and art collecting, investing.
The Zurich Symphony would have been nice.
He lit a Djarum, cracked a window, accelerated.
Thought about how much he hated people that marked up album covers.
The woman in the garage was nice. He wasn’t going to turn around, but he thought good thoughts about her.
Wondered if the woman had ever listened to Murrette Orlon.
If she had, she hadn’t listened to the album with the red heart drawn on it. She would have seen the letter.
The letter inside the album, addressed to a Mr. Roger Swanson, with a Paris postmark, was dated 11/19/1967. Murrette was distraught, lonely, and possibly carrying his child from their liaison at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in Detroit.
Murrette Orlon OD’d on pills and booze in her Paris apartment 11/21/1967. It was her last known letter, her last known signature.
Michael Lotrimino would get 71,500 pounds for the letter at a London auction.
The Swanson family would take the couple hundred bucks they got from their father’s garage sale and blow out separately into the world again, with only Kelly ever occasionally wondering about that sweet man Edgar Ris- something.
***
Man, you are so good with words. Then the hinge swings, and you turn the plot sideways. This is my second read of yours, and yeah!
Both of my parents are living, but I’m feeling an ever-present pressure to capture their stories before the time has passed. We’ve talked about it, but haven’t put pen paper yet.