Skip to main content

Mother's Day


Don't think I didn't see you.

It was like this: two old folks come down my line, husband and wife. The wife leads, because this is The Store, and the men always hang back and do nothing, save for stare at other women. (They handle the "challenge" of running the credit card. Which I do for them.) I saw her unload your cart, and I saw her take care of smiling for you. You were the same as all the others, so maybe I didn't see you at first. But I think it was that lack of smile that betrayed you. You idiot, the smile keeps me pacified! It keeps the cloak up! It makes me think you've maybe got something ticking in that chest of yours! But now the deception was down, and I saw you.

Is that why you did it? Because you thought I was disrespecting you, with this unspoken stream of thoughts? Then you should not have done what you did.

"Why don't you go ahead and bag?"

A fair recommendation. She asked nicely. She was a very nice woman.

"Mrnreh!"

I think that's how you spell the sound you made. There was no chance for invisibility now. I knew things were going to get ugly, because you were ugly.

Were? Are.

"Oh, come on! It's Mother's Day!"

"Load the damn belt and get down there."

I put stress on the words, but you sucked those words back, you coward. You whispered them. And a whisper in The Store is plausible deniability. And you watched, with furrowed brow, like this hurt you somehow, as she unloaded the cart. (Until she brought the cart closer to chat with me. I helped her out with the stuff I could reach.)

She waited again, this time with a silent assertiveness, for you to go down and just put your $21.34 worth of items in a goddamn paper bag. But again, louder this time:

"MRNREH!!"

Are you a baby? Maybe this was some Benjamin Button shit.

Still not forgiving you, though.

And when that bill for $21.34 came up, you thrust your crumpled $100 in my face, again, like this was some sort of burden to you. Sucked out the last of my twenties like pudding through a straw. By the time you inched down to the end of the line, she was already done. (I saw how quick you walked up to the line. If you'd stepped on the gas a little bit, my lad, you could have gotten the second half for her.)

A glance to my right, and there was already someone down the line. A fresh-faced young man who could summon the solitary calorie needed for a smile.

I called to your wife, old crustbucket, with all the meaning a dead mummy can make, that she should have a Happy Mother's Day.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Richards

It was him or Tavvy. And Tavvy deserved to live. He deserved to live too but she had had enough. If his last act on this Earth was to spare her a little suffering he would die honorably. Kevin Claude was a good man and he wanted to end his life good. And giving up his life for another was pretty damn good. It was Mrs. Richards. She was infamous at this point. The rookies heard about her early on, speaking in hushed whispers, like she was a ghost or something. In fact, there was a theory, one which Kevin had believed for a time, that she was a ghost—a ghost who could write checks. She came in regularly—once a week, usually on a Saturday—and her appearance never changed. Same clothes, same hair. She followed the same routine every time when it came to collecting her groceries. (Checkout was always a little different each time.) That was what ghosts did, wasn't it? Played out the same events over and over? It made Kevin wondered if he was a ghost. He could take the repeti...
Post a Comment
Read more

Krissy's Second Visit

Youthful footsteps echoed throughout the store's frozen section. It is not often a challenge to determine one's age from footsteps. The slow, stumbling walk of an old man, and the tap of his walker or cane, gives him away immediately. A hop and a skip might reveal that one is a child. But in the ages between 12 and 60, there is a singular type of step, one which is not easily linked to age due to the variance in height and weight of the teenage and adult population. In the cold of the frozen section, this uniformity was slimmed even further, because nothing leeches strength from the heart and legs like cold. But in the footsteps of the confident young girl who wore a Sun Valley uniform, one could sense her youthfulness. The cold didn't touch her and she wasn't afraid of it or hateful of it. And so perhaps it was the youthfulness of her step that revealed to the mysterious figure known as the Blue Phantom who it was who came to visit him, in his hidden lair behin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sometimes We Go Bad

Sun Valley Grocery wasn't far from the local mall. The name of this mall is unimportant. It was home to more than three dozen retail businesses, not counting the built-in carousel, the massage stands, and the various food and antique vendors who hosted their shows there. The businesses dropped and swapped out on a regular basis, though there were some mainstays that had been there for generations. Among these was a clothing store by the name of Harpin's. It was a family place, run by the Harpins since before the First World War. The family was even still involved with the business, unlike a lot of families who once founded such enterprises. They had about the same distance from the store's operation as a producer has from the movies they work on, but they did cameo now and again to see how things were going. People treated it with the dignity a small business deserved, though the growth of the great apathy disease had its impact there, too. What matters is that they...
Post a Comment
Read more