I didn’t know it back then, but my mother was a straight up con woman at the now extinct department store practice of deferment known as “layaway,” a system where one would basically placate the Layaway Lady by sliding her just a jingle of money at a time, with a promise to pay the full amount, and then reneging on the whole deal at the last minute when the items you wanted went on sale on the main floor. It’s a lost art, hustling the Layaway Lady. But a woman gotta do what a woman gotta do, and my mother somehow slowly chipped away at the Layaway Lady’s sanity until she got those prices
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