The two women don’t speak to each other. They don’t look at each other. They keep their heads bowed. They have arrived in separate cars at this common destination. They pull out bags and bits and boxes, sometimes larger items: furniture, bicycles and children’s toys. They stack them up, stuff them in the bin, pile their odds atop someone else’s ends, and drive away, on to the cleaners, the drug store, the doctor’s appointment, the bank. They don’t know each other, but if they had come that close anywhere else, this is the sort of town where they would have said hello, how are you, isn’t this weather we’re having beautiful. That’s a lovely blouse. Something. You never know who knows who, when you will see each other again, and well, it’s polite.

Not here. They can’t bear it. They can’t bear what they are doing.

They are burglars in reverse. They are stealing from themselves, stealing from their parents, pulling away what they can while they still have the strength. They are cleaning their drawers and closets, emptying their houses, their apartments, desperately trying to keep up with the slow flood of gifts, of inheritances, of freebies, of hand-me-downs and -ups, of combined households, of how did we end up we three coffeemakers anyway? of prom dresses, of someone can use this, of this was on sale, buy two, of appliances that almost work. And then there are those things that just appeared. They were funny once, or meant something once. Now it is all too much.

“Joe, where the hell did this come from?” She is shouting from one room.

“Honey, I do not know. Get rid of it.” He is watching television. Those NBA guys, they know how to put on a show.

The mounted talking bass. The plaque of plastic nachos.

Then he sees the box.

“Honey, you aren’t getting rid of that.” He almost remembers the night he won the bass. His best buddy handing it to him, the laughter, the slaps on the back. His best buddy who died last spring.

“I’m getting rid of you if you don’t move.”

He steps aside, out of the driveway, into the grass. The hose hangs limp from his hand, dripping. The wagon leaves without him. Maybe she will come home happier.

Take my life, please. At least some of it. It’s all that is left to do.

The woman from the apartment gives away the shirt she didn’t mean to buy but green was in last summer and she needed something for yoga. This other one her lover pulled off her body on a hot summer afternoon years ago. So romantic. Hot and steamy and sweaty. Yes, yes. The one time that fool undressed her the way they do in the movies. After that, he didn’t bother. Who knows whose fingers will touch that shirt now, lift it off of another body. They will never know how he lifted her up, wrapped his arms around her and reached under …

She has enough shirts. She has enough of everything. She can almost remember a time when most of what she had she used. She is not sure if she has more or uses less or both. She opens kitchen drawers now and stares, wondering if she will ever mash potatoes again. She pulls out a foam thing-a-ma-jig and slams the drawer. One more year, and the potato masher goes. She feels like the wicked witch. “And your little dog, too.”

The woman from the house pulls out the exercise bike that takes two to move out of the basement. She has been hanging laundry from it for years. The two men got more of a workout moving it than anyone ever did actually using it. She stands there, wondering if she should have called EMS to be on standby. They do not look good. She hands them bottles of water and prays while their faces return to a usual hue.

These last years, that is what they will do, keep giving away their lives, trying to find homes for what they have, for what’s left. They will help fill the gaps. The hungry need food. Check the dates on those canned goods. Recycle the cardboard and plastic. Shred the paper. Take back the unused medicine. Find readers for the books. Write their wills. Find plots for themselves at last.

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Christina Johanningmeier was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in Florida. A recovering journalist and archivist, she lives in South Carolina.

Photo: Clem Onojeghuo