Helene took him to small claims court. He sent his wife and corporate attorney. Helene lost. But she says she is glad she at least fought for herself.
Through her business Helene has learned an important lesson: that material things, which once defined her life, are not important. "They're just things," she says. "Frankly, I do not see that many happy families. Often, the ones with the most are often the most unhappy. I wouldn't trade places with any of them."
This latest chapter in Helene's life, in which she has written her own version of a happy ending, has won her the deep admiration of her friends and children.
"It's pretty amazing, seeing what she's gone through," says her son, Steven, a gemologist who lives in Oklahoma City with his wife and two children. "She has a lot of guts." Last year, Steven presented his mother with a fitting gift, a sweatshirt that said "Garage Sale Goddess."
Stephanie, too, is proud of what her mother has accomplished. But she worries about her working in the heat and freezing cold. She worries about her chasing petty thieves down alleys, and tongue-lashing anti-Semites. "I'm so proud of her, but she makes me crazy," says Stephanie. "I'm afraid one of these days she's going to get shot. It's the '90s."
Helene worries too, about the day she is too old to schlep people's belongings around a garage or too frail to wake up at dawn and pound signs into roadway medians. But she doesn't dwell much on the "what ifs."
"You don't know what you have inside of you until you're put to the test," she says. "This part of my life is about me, getting to know me and what I can accomplish."
As my garage sale winds down late Saturday afternoon, a charming man with an Israeli accent, a manager for El Al airlines, comes in looking for stamps. Within seconds, he tells Helene his life story, how just two months before, he had an aneurysm while in a supermarket and was hospitalized for a month. For a brief moment, two unlikely lives have intersected.
Dirty and tired, her money apron bulging with cash, Helene prepares to leave. The day's tally is about $2,000 in all--not bad for four days' work. She'll get another $100 for us in coming weeks, selling at another sale some of our items she couldn't unload this week.
She climbs into her dull gray, 15-year-old Mercedes--the same gleaming one she brought home on the QE2. Now, its engine grinds and grumbles like a garbage disposal. She sticks her head out of the window and offers a parting joke: "I told my daughter if we went into business together, we could be Sanford and Daughter."
She cackles at her own joke, and drives off.
