Free Ending by Hilma Wolitzer

me a small American flag and I waved it in triumph at my parents, who moved closer and closer, a row at a time, as if they were ambushing the enemy.
    They may have bought other things but I remember a radio, compact and ivory, that stood on our refrigerator at home after the vacation. Voices and music faded and blared, faded and blared, interrupted by fits of static for which my father beat it as if trying to revive someone in a terrible spasm of coughing. “Damn radio, damn radio! Oh, that bastard!” And one memory of the summer was less than perfect.
    A small knot of people were in the auction room now, sitting together up front as if they were warming themselves at a hearth. A black woman smiled at me and removed her massive handbag from the folding chair next to hers, and I sat down.
    “He just beginning,” she said. It was as if we were in church and I had not missed the opening remarks of the minister.
    I wondered briefly what I was doing there then, as if I had been mugged and shanghaied and was just struggling to come to myself again. I thought, I should be home now dragging myself through some domestic rites, folding clothes warm from the dryer, making soup, chasing dust, concentrating on Jay, on Jay.
    And then the auctioneer began again, his voice as soothing and hypnotic as one’s own pulse and heartbeat. “OKAY OKAY,” he said, his mouth too close to the microphone. “THIS IS THE RIGHT PLACE WITH NO OBLIGATION ABSOLUTELY NO OBLIGATION EXCEPT TO CONTROL YOURSELF AND NOT WALK OUT WITH EVERY INCREDIBLE BARGAIN THAT IS GOING TO MAKE YOUR EYES POP RIGHT OUT OF YOUR HEAD JUST TO WARM YOU UP A LITTLE BIT AND SHOW YOU THAT YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR EXCEPT FOR THE GUY SITTING NEXT TO YOU I’M GIVING A FEW THINGS AWAY THAT’S RIGHT DON’T CLEAN OUT YOUR EARS MOTHER GIVING AWAY AS AN ACT OF FAITH AND FRIENDSHIP MOVE A LITTLE CLOSER DON’T MOVE AWAY WHEN THE MAN IS GIVING THINGS AWAY WHEN HE IS MOVED TO THE ACT OF GIVING HOW CAN YOU SEE MY FRIEND?” (to a man just entering and seating himself in the last row). “DON’T BE A STRANGER IN PARADISE MY FRIEND BUT COME CLOSER AND GET IN ON A GOOD THING.”
    The man in the last row smiled and folded his arms.
    “OKAY YOU BE THE SERGEANT AT ARMS AND SEE THAT NOBODY TRIES TO LEAVE HA HA.” A fan of ball-point pens opened in his hand. “A LITTLE LEGERDEMAIN SONNY,” (this to a small black boy who buried his face against his father’s coat). “THAT’S BIG FOR MAGIC COME ON SONNY PICK A COLOR ANYTHING YOU LIKE BECAUSE IT’S ALL YOURS WITH NO OBLIGATION TAKE IT TAKE IT.”
    The father prodded and poked and the boy finally reached one small hand out and grasped the pen nearest to it. The father immediately took it from him and wrote with it on the back of an envelope.
    “PENS THAT WRITE NOTHING BUT THE BEST HERE IN ATLANTIC CITY WHERE QUALITY IS FIRST AND FOREMOST PENS THAT WRITE UNDER WATER UNDER THE INFLUENCE TOASTERS THAT TOAST FOUR SLICES OF BREAD AT ONE TIME WITH A MAGICOLOR DIAL A BUILT-IN BRAIN THAT TELLS YOU WHEN YOUR TOAST IS READY RADIOS THAT FIT INTO THE PALM OF YOUR HAND BLENDERS THAT CHOP MIX BLEND GRIND WHIP BEAT SADISTIC BLENDERS AND PENS THAT WRITE FOR YOU AND YOU AND YOU”
    I snuffled and felt my head nodding pleasantly, almost in rhythm with his voice. I had a right to be there after all, to have a little peace, the way a sick child has a right to absent herself from school and luxuriate in her mother’s care.
    “You sick?” the woman next to me asked.
    “Yes. Only a cold.”
    “Cold, huh? Jello for that, before it sets. Nice good hot jello clean out the passages.”
    I rose from the seat, still nodding, and she patted my arm. “Jello,” she said again, and I lurched out into the gray light of the boardwalk.
    My head felt clogged with the cold and with crowding thoughts as I sat on a bench in the bus station waiting to end my pilgrimage. There was a large family sitting near me. The children, uniformly pale and restless, banged their heels