Kids Clothes

Sandra Thomas stood behind the front counter and watched the man enter the store. The man Sandra would be forced to guess was probably in his late twenties, maybe early thirties a couple of hours from now. And when really pressed Sandra would say, “Yeah, twenty-eight could be about right.” But at the time this was just another person coming into the store carrying a large cardboard box. ‘Baby clothes’, is actually the only thing Sandra can remember thinking about when seeing this ‘five-foot nine, five-foot ten’ man walking towards her. ‘He was smiling’, she thinks she remembers, but then again it was just another person coming to drop off baby clothes, more than likely baby clothes. When a man of his particular age, late twenties early thirties, comes into the store with a box it's more often than not a box of his kids' old baby clothes. She never paid much attention to what he looked like. 

Around the time the man was getting back into his car, Elyse was pouring herself her first, but certainly not her last, cup of coffee of the day.  What kind of car? What colour? Again, Sandra couldn't really say because she never pays attention to that kind of thing. Why would this man be any different? Sandra does understand why this time was different. Now she does but at 9:45am on a Tuesday morning, standing behind the front counter at the one of two Thrift Stores in the city, it's just another customer. Anyone who has ever worked retail will tell you how after a while every customer somehow morphs into a singular caricature. You just see shapes and no real facial recognition. Especially, when she’s already bored less than two hours into her shift and some guy walks in carrying a box. A box which did turn out to be baby clothes. 

Elyse adds some cream and sugar to the coffee she pours into her travel mug. The good thing about working at the thrift store is that it's a five minute walk from her house. She usually leaves the house by 9:50 when she's on the closing shift which begins at ten o’clock and goes until the store closes at six pm. Her husband, Alan, leaves the house by eight each morning. And because the day started out just like every other day, he did leave by 8 that morning. Elyse is usually at least semi-awake to say goodbye to her husband when he leaves each morning before she is alone in the house. But she has gotten quite used to being alone in this house. A house that at one point in time just felt so alive. A time she would lay in bed and wish to be able to go back to for just one day on so many occasions. To just be able to tell him how much you love him and apologize for not being there for him when he needed you the most. But after years of counselling and I mean years. To learn to stop blaming yourself. Even though you never truly do forgive yourself. You tell your therapist that you forgave yourself. That after a lot of self-meditation you came to finally realize that there was nothing you did wrong. That day had no reason to not be like every single day that preceded that one particular day. You had no reason to believe that after you said goodbye to your one and only child that morning that you would never say another word to them ever again. But still after all these years you still feel the guilt. Alan poured himself into his work after what happened. It was lonely for Elyse those first few years but she understood that everyone has their own way of dealing with tragic events. For Alan that meant distracting himself with his work. Which in the end turns out to be good because they have not necessarily become rich over the years but they've done pretty well leading up to their retirement. An early retirement within the next two years for both of them if they so choose. 

Elyse turns around to lock her front door as she heads on down the street with her travel mug of coffee that she will finish by the time she reaches the back entrance to her place of employment. She drives to work most mornings but not when she is going to be working with Sandra. Sandra finds it so hilarious that someone would drive to work when you can look out the back window and see Elyse’s front yard. And Elyse does agree the walk would do her good but when you got to her age you needed to conserve as much energy as possible. “Hey Sandra, I’m here,” Elyse shouts from the back of the store to what she can safely assume is an empty front room except for one Sandra Thomas. 

“Hey Lisey, got some boxes for you to sort.” Sandra responds from the front of the empty store. “How was the drive in?” Sandra sarcastically asks. 

“I walked, thank you very much,” Elyse says with a slight laugh. She hangs her jacket on one of the hangers in the back, sets her empty travel mug in the sink in the employees tiny lunchroom and heads out to the front counter and the start of another work day.

“There are some boxes of clothes on the counter here as well as a bunch of miscellaneous boxes on the floor there.” Sandra says pointing to the merchandise that had been donated by the public. Part of the job was sorting through the drop offs and arranging them in their correct department. You had your housewares. Pots and pans and any cooking equipment. Your sporting goods and memorabilia. You’d get some nice furniture from time to time but the majority was clothing. Kids clothing to be specific. Elyse was the only employee who actually enjoyed sorting through the new old products. The job of the opening worker was to do the sorting of the overnight drop-offs and any donations that came in during the day. But since Sandra knew how much Elyse enjoyed that part of her job, she had left the boxes for her.

“Another busy day I see,” Elyse jokingly says as she comes around the side of Sandra and grabs the first box of what she assumes is baby clothes. Turing the box around to look for any writing before opening the box. James 8-10yo the box reads. This isn’t the first time reading James on the side of a box with his corresponding age. James baby clothes. James toddler clothes.  James 12-54 months. Seriously, who says 54 months? But each time it sends a tiny shiver up her spine. She had given boxes of clothes away with James written on the side once upon a time. Part of her “healing” was cleaning out his closet and donating his clothes to a thrift store. Not the one she works at. The other thrift store that she refers to as thrift store number two. It was the smell of baby clothes that made this part of her job so enjoyable to Elyse. She never told anyone this was the reason because it may sound weird to some people. There was just something about that hard to describe smell that all baby clothes seem to have. Elyse opens the box marked James 8-10yo and immediately grabs her mouth in surprise. It's the smell that she immediately notices. She couldn’t possibly describe his smell but knew it as soon as she opened the box and inhaled the smells. “Jamesy,” Elyse says under her breath. 

“Are you okay?” Sandra asks as she watches Elyse face go pale as a ghost as soon as she opened the box she accepted earlier this morning from a man in his late twenties. 

“I’m fine.” Elyse answers. Amazed she was able to form any sort of coherent sentence  to respond. Her hands suddenly start shaking as she lifts up the Nike sweater and matching sweat pants sitting on top of the neatly stacked clothes inside the box. “Was this an overnight or did you accept this box of clothes?” Elyse asks after finally getting the strength together to ask the question.

“I accepted it this morning.” Sandra says as she raises her eyebrow to the strange behaviour of the normally extra cool Elyse she is used to. Elyse puts the Nike outfit down on the counter and looks back into the box. She could hear Sandra asking her questions but she was lost in what felt like a prison of fog. This isn’t possible, Elyse thought. But she knew this was possible. She never gave up on thinking this was possible. Reaching down into the box, Elyse pulls out an outfit consisting of blue pants and a Toronto Maple Leafs shirt. The same outfit she would tell the police James was wearing the last time she saw him. All the missing posters would list this exact outfit under the question of what he was wearing the last time he was seen. 

With hands that have suddenly added at least 50lbs or so it felt like, Elyse lifts the outfit up out of the box and straight to her nose. Taking a deep inhale, Elyse immediately knows that smell. It smells just like him. “What did they look like?” Elyse asks in her strongest sounding voice but she knew it came out sounding all shaky. 

“Just some guy,” Sandra answers but starting to realize how strange Elyse is acting. “Why do you ask?”

“I think I recognize these clothes.” Elyse says as she releases the clothes from her face and grabs the tag on the back of the sweater between her fingers. Taking a deep breather Elyse takes her fingers away from the tag to see what she never thought she’d see again. The initials JW, the initials she had written in her son's favourite outfit more than 20 years ago. The outfit her son had been wearing the day he went missing when he was eight years old.

“Did he say anything to you about the clothes? What did he look like? How old was this guy?” Elyse found herself losing control as she asked her questions. But how did this man have James’ clothes? Elyse thought to herself. 

“Umm he said he found a box of his baby clothes in his mothers closet.” Sandra said, trying to remember the small talk she had with that guy that just came in. “I assumed that meant she died and he’s cleaning out her closet?” She finished although starting to feel unsure about her original beliefs. “What do you mean you recognize the clothes?” Sandra asks.

“These were my son's clothes. Or are my son's clothes.” Elyse quietly answers.

“I didn’t know you had a kid,” Sandra says as she desperately tries to remember at any point in the past that Elyse mentioned having a child.

“He went missing 20 years ago,” Elyse whispers out. “He was eight years old and was wearing this outfit when he was kidnapped. I initialled all of his tags.” 

The two women sat at the front counter in the empty thrift store. One woman was holding an outfit an eight year old was wearing twenty years ago. The other woman slowly came to realize she had spoken to her co-workers long lost son.