Everything Good...

After having cleaned the house from 12-2 and reviewed tomorrow’s lecture from 2-3am, I find myself standing in the middle of the aisle at a big box store carelessly tossing items into my shopping cart, the only acceptable place for an insomniac at three thirty in the morning. Walks with the sweet, black-faced dog are out, at least until half past four, when a casual dawn arcs over the horizon and the world is made new (and safe) again.

I select a melon sized jar of peanut butter off the shelf for my hungry boys when I spot her in the aisle.  She is driving a red motorized cart straight at me. Her hair a battleship gray and her body round and large, she is the only person I’ve spotted in this lonely store tonight.  It is an overwhelmingly welcome sight.

“Did you see the price of peanut butter?” she asks, nodding her head up at the top shelf, conversing as if we’d done so for hours, old friends sitting around a bowl of popcorn.  

“No, I didn’t.”  I am frugal, but my cluelessness about the price, and my cavalier ease of mobility, are an embarrassment of riches. 

“Seventeen cents.  That’s how much it’s gone up.  Actually, they made the bottles smaller so it’s not so obvious, but if you calculate it out, ‘turns out to be seventeen cents.” 

“That’s crazy," I say.  And it sounds goofy.

I glance into the basket atop her cart, voyeurism as an involuntary response.  Boxes of fruit bars are stacked neatly in one corner, set against a wall of frozen food dinners, enveloped in copy paper white, Great Value packages. I’d been reaching for a $3 jar of Nutella before this, but my hand now inches away.

“You like that stuff?” she asks, gesturing toward the Nutella.  “I’ve been wanting to try it. But they’ll have to drop the price. My husband buys all that stuff, like you know, honey, and we just don’t need it.  Health foods.  I think he likes the idea of it.”  The tone is rueful.

She interjects a new thought: “So whatcha doin’ up this late? You work the late shift?” It’s a harmless but prodding question.

“Nope, just shoppin’ for some last minute items.  Busy days, you know.” It’s a cagey response.

She smiles.  Slowly.  Knowingly. And then I think I see a glimpse of something – as if she’d solved the puzzle – “I accuse Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick” – when she pats my hand and asks, “you have a little one, don’t yah?” 

“Uh, yes, I confess”.   I hear men stocking shelves in the next aisle.  It's as if we're programmed to be scared by these encounters.

“He’s going to be all right”, she adds.


 
“No, no, I know, he’s great. He’s a riot!" I exclaim lightly, but it comes across as jumpy, caffeinated, transparent. What’s that they say about nothing good happening after 2am?

“He’s going to be all right”, she repeats, this time looking up at me, straight in the eyes.

I resist the glib, the sarcasm, the platitudes that roll so easily off the tongue, because it's all so (wonderfully) weird and personal. Instead I say “thank you”.

“Go get some sleep, honey." She says it like it's a direct order.

“Go get some honey,” I reply.  She accelerates forward and smiles, an image so lovely, this wheelchair-bound angel who reads human faces like they're food labels.