Supermarket Blues

In which two people go shopping, and much is revealed. Also, plenty of soup.

             The first time she walks into the grocery store, the sight of the shelves terrifies her.  They are overheaped, intimidating, taller than they should be, bending at the sides with the weight.  She’s been to supermarkets before- dozens of them, maybe hundreds, ones with added restaurants and hardware sections and Laundromats stuffed with rows of colored cloth.  But something about the light of this one, something about the way the cans of vegetables in the third aisle rattle when a shopping cart rolls past leaves her sweaty, utterly terrified.

                She’s walking next to him, and he takes her hand as they travel through the air-conditioned double doors and the first cramped aisle of freezers.  He’s looking for hors d’oeuvres for his mother’s dinner party, a stunted affair, which will end later when the mustard runs out and a woman’s gloves are found crammed inside the space heater.  “What do you think?” he asks her as they enter the aisle, and he puts one hand out to the side, like he’s going to touch it against all the doors.  “Should we get her some fishsticks?”

                Her breathing is shallow and raspy against the sides of her throat.  “Sure,” she replies.  “Sure sure sure.  Get what you want.”

                “What does it matter, though,” he says.  “Really, I don’t think she’d do anything if I showed up with a pizza or something.  I could get her a tin of anchovies.”  He stops in the aisle and lays a hand on the door of one of the freezers.  “Hey, popsicles,” he says.

                She is shaking now, a little from the cold, mostly from a sickly overwhelmed feeling.  “They won’t want popsicles,” she says, rubbing her bare arms with short rapid strokes.  “They’ll melt.  They’ll never want popsicles.”

                “Blue or cherry?” He opens the door and sticks his head in.  “God, this feels so good.  It can’t possibly be summer outside.”

                “No.”  She keeps walking down the aisle, laying her feet carefully inside each of the tiled squares.  Everything around is an explosion of color; bur then she looks down and everything is white, white.

                “I think I’ll get some frozen vegetables,” he says, and takes his head out of the freezer.  “At least then it’ll be a case of mistaken identity.”

                A woman pushes a shopping cart past, an expression of indescribable confusion on her powdery face.  Her nose wrinkles up a little at the edge, making her seem permanently disgusted.  In the cart there’s a little girl with her white-blonde hair up in pigtails, lying against the side of the handle part that’s meant to carry eggs.  She stares at the other occupants of the aisle as her mother stops and yanks open one of the doors, grabbing a carton of ready-made waffles off the bottom shelf.  The woman tosses them onto the bottom of the cart, where they rattle tonelessly against the mesh.  The two of them keep going, and the girl watches until finally she breaks off to stare at her own reflection in the refrigerator doors.  The aisle seems emptier after they’ve passed through, its colors lifeless, some washed-out dustbowl town.

                He dusts off the knees of his jeans like he’s been kneeling.  “I’ve got to buy some soup,” he says.  “She’ll be furious with me if I don’t get any soup.”

                Out of the frozen section, things are harder.  There’s none of that artificial stillness: a group of androgynous shrieking children runs underneath the garlic trays, an older man in a loud silk suit peruses the tomatoes.  A group of teenagers is slouching by the watermelons, unlit cigarettes in each of their hands.  She grips his wrist tighter until he complains.  “This isn’t the soup aisle,” she says.

                “I know, I know, but what do you put in soup, right?  Parsley and stuff.  I’ll but some lemons just in case.” He picks up a carton of strawberries and puts his fingers in through the holes.

                She walks toward the vegetables and picks up the closest green thing.  “This would work,” she says.

                “What’s wrong with you?”  He puts down the strawberries and looks at her angrily.

                “Nothing.”

                “You don’t look good.”

                “I just… I don’t feel good.  Can we get this over with?”

                “You wanted to do this.”  He walks over to the apples, stacked in a pyramid wider than he is tall.  “You’re the one who said we never do anything couple-y like this.  It’s fun.”  He picks up one and examines it for bruises.

                “Your mom’s going to be mad if we don’t get back in time.”

                “It doesn’t matter.  She can make them jell-o.  She can serve them salmon pate straight from the jar.”  He puts the apple back and turns to her.  “You know what, it’s fine.  We’ll go.  Just let me get something first.  One thing.”

                She closes her eyes for a second and feels the raw smoothness of her breath in her lungs.  She wants to run outside and rub her hands against the walls of the supermarket, scratch everything clean inside and out.  “It’s fine. We can do the soup.  Just hurry.”

                He grabs a bundle of carrots and puts them into his pocket.  “Hurrying,” he says.

                The aisles at the edge are quieter, but the cans against the shelves are like nails meandering slowly off a chalkboard.  Someone at the far end knocks a few over and the sound repeats itself half a dozen times, like a reprimand.  She is warm, suddenly, and wishes she’d brought a jacket so she could take it off.  They walk next to each other, arms linked, and he stoops down whenever he sees something.

                “Potato, you think potato would be good?  I think so, it seems sort of stuffy but with them you never know if that’s good or not.  Or maybe leek.  I don’t ever know what that is, they might, some kind of mushroom?  I think someone there’s bound to be allergic to mushrooms.  I’d go with tomato soup, but none of them have kids.  It makes me imagine all these women in cocktail dresses at some kind of playground, you know, eating grilled cheese and swinging on the monkey bars or something.”  He sounds nervous, his voice shakes as he picks up a can and puts it in the crook of his arm.  “Hold this?  I always used to get lost in grocery stores when I was a kid.  I’d spend half an hour crying and trying to pull everything off all the shelves.  Once I broke about thirty bottles of milk, one right after the other.  Here, I’ll take that one back.  One’s a vegetarian.”

                Finally, after what seems like half a lifetime, they’re standing in the express line, next to a huge display of organic baby food.  As they get closer to the register, she keeps noticing more things about the cashier- he’s stooped, like he’s permanently bowing; he has small black hairs on his upper lip that are too sparse to be a moustache.  It’s nearly their turn when she has to go, shoving her way past the racks of gum and breath mints, slouching under the telephone-wire of a closed register and emerging next to the dry ice machine.  When she leaves, the air conditioning lifts up the back neckline of her shirt like a last farewell.

                She’d thought she would feel better once she got outside of the store, but the panicked feeling hasn’t lessened.  When she looks back the huge concrete structure seems to loom slowly over her, waiting for her to stop paying attention to it.  She gets to the car and finds it locked.  She starts walking again, and when she reaches the street she keeps going, down the nearby onramp and onto the highway.

                It takes maybe ten minutes for him to find her.  He slows and rolls down his window when he spots her.  “Get in!” he says, without stopping.

                “Aren’t you going to ask where I’ve been?”

                “It only took you a minute to find you.  There was a problem with the ATM.  Get in the car.”

                “You don’t seem worried about me.”

                “I am worried.  I’m absolutely beside myself.  I don’t know if cream of wheat can spoil but I don’t want to risk it.  Should I open the door for you?”

                She keeps walking, and after a second or two he pulls over in front of her.  He leans to the passenger’s side and pushes the door open.  She gets in and puts on her seatbelt.  They sit for a moment with the car off, one window letting the sounds of traffic whistle unevenly in.

                “What’s wrong with you?” he says finally.

                She reaches up a hand to adjust the rear view mirror.  The back seat is covered with miscellaneous articles of clothing, most of them hers.  “Nothing is wrong with me,” she says.

                They sit in silence for a minute more, and then he turns the key and the car starts with a heaving outward sigh.  They pull onto the road and she sticks a hand out the window, flat with her fingers spread, her elbow propped on the top of the door.  When they’re going the fastest they can go, she sticks her head out the window and yells, her hair streaming out behind her like a flag, eyes watering in senseless pressure.

                “You’re crazy,” he tells her, and fiddles with the dial on the radio, trying to find a station that has something left to play.