hello there thomas,
it was nice talking to you today. dad and i are always glad to hear from you. it’s comforting to know you’re doing well and that your birthday was splendid.
things are fine down here in florida. i keep busy around the house and in the garden, and i’m still doing my volunteer work at the food pantry. they are working on a grant for a summer feeding program for kids, so i’m helping polish up that.
dad is as busy as ever. he’s taken up painting, which is exciting to me. he doesn’t want my help, though. you know how he his. you know how much i love painting, but he’s got to do it his way.
that’s about all. love you,
Thomas replied with a few lines of happy nothingness (and used two exclamation marks, which would satisfy his mother) and then read his sister’s e-mail. This one, though shorter, had much more substance to it.
I’m sorry I got angry with you today. It wasn’t fair to you on your birthday. I’ve been going through some tough times recently and it’s affecting my mood.
I don’t know if I need to see a therapist or what.
Anyway, sorry again, and look forward to seeing you at Christmas.
Emily’s e-mails were usually written in a telegram-like style, as if she was too busy to type out complete sentences. As such, Thomas usually deleted them without a second thought. This one, however, was a heartfelt, pleading message that demanded a sympathetic, brotherly response.
He didn’t feel like sending one, not because he was callous, but because he knew it wouldn’t do any good.
Emily went through “tough times” every few months. When Dennis was born, she had postpartum depression. When Dennis went off to school, the empty, silent house threatened to swallow her soul. When Dan forgot their anniversary (for the second or third time), she drove all the way to Asheville by herself and booked the most expensive hotel she could find: “I’ll celebrate our anniversary by my lonesome. I don’t need my forgetful husband.” When she got a nasty case of strep throat, she felt like death was close by. When a female candidate lost a local election, she raged against the “omnipotence of the patriarchy” and got absurdly drunk on poorly-made White Russians.
Thomas didn’t necessarily think his sister was a weakling to let these things thwart her. (Well, he did, but he pretended he didn’t). What really galled him was her response when others tried to help her. She would mention she was going through a “tough time,” but when help came rushing to her, as it seemed she wanted, she became angry: “I’m not a child, and everyone needs to understand that before I say or do something rash.” No one apparently understood that, so she said and did rash things. Dan’s hugs, pecking kisses, and carefully-delivered advice were ridiculed, her mother’s consoling e-mails triggered firestorms, her father’s terse commands were shot back at him with razor blades attached, and the friends who dared to commiserate with her were strung up with barbed wire. Needless to say, Thomas had learned to stay away from the carnage.
Still… Emily had never even considered the possibility of therapy before. What had happened to her?
He tossed the question aside. He had a buzz, it was his birthday, and he’d just watched Blade Runner on Netflix. He wasn’t going to deal with anyone else’s issues, even his sister’s.
He typed out a straightforward message:
Sorry you’re out of sorts. If it’s really that bad, then I think you should see a therapist, like you suggest. Good luck.
He hit the send button, then brushed his teeth and crawled into bed. Within minutes he was asleep and having fantastical dreams, like he always did after he’d been drinking.
Chapter Three
“So how was the Big B-Day?” Vernon asked as Thomas walked through the back door. He was sipping coffee and pacing around, looking at the mounds of stock piled up, his eye repeatedly drawn to a stack of canned green beans. One of his vendors had given him a deal on this product, and he’d bought five boxes. Customers, however, didn’t buy green beans in the quantities they should. Vernon knew this going in, but he could never resist a deal. Well, he reasoned, at least they won’t go bad anytime soon.
“It was good,” Thomas replied. He took off his jacket and hung it on the heavy oak coat stand which stood eternally by the door, like a silent sentinel. That same coat stand had been there when he’d started work here twenty-five years ago. “Had a nice, relaxing day.”
“And now it’s back to the daily grind, huh?”
“That’s the way it goes.”
“First your money, then your clothes,” Vernon replied, chuckling. Thomas chuckled as well; he should’ve known that phrase was coming. “What’s the plan today? The usual?”
“Yup. Start with dairy, go from there.”
“Alright. Would you mind cleaning the bathroom today? Ain’t been done in a while.”
Thomas glanced over at the closet-sized bathroom, trying — and failing — to suppress a frown. Oxendine’s Grocery didn’t have bathrooms for customers (and thank goodness for that, Thomas thought) but it did have one for employees. The toilet dated from the 1970s, and stopped up if you put more than two squares of toilet paper in it. The sink dated from a similar period; its once-white porcelain was now stained and chipped. There was no mirror, and more importantly, there was no ventilation; if someone “did their business” in the enclosed space, the smell stayed potent and compacted, and once the “business doer” opened the door, the noxious fumes rolled out in one big cloud, contaminating the back room.
It was an old, dirty thing, and Thomas hated cleaning it. Vernon had taped a note to the wall that said “We aim to please. You aim too, please,” but that didn’t increase the accuracy of the male employees’ penises. Coagulated urine dotted the toilet edge and floor. Occasionally, some even landed on the side of the sink or on the trash can. Errantly discharged hand soap was splattered everywhere. The floor tiles were rutted and cracked, so dirt, dead insects, and other unclean things found their way into the holes and gouges.
Yes, it was disgusting to clean, and once cleaned, it still only looked marginally better, and Vernon would inevitably ask him if he’d got around to cleaning the bathroom yet. A bit peeved, Thomas would say yes, he had, he’d cleaned every square inch of it, and Vernon would nod sheepishly and say yeah, OK, guess you can only do so much, what with it being old and beat up.
Turning back to his boss, Thomas nodded. “Yeah, I’ll get it done this afternoon.”
“Alright. ‘Preciate it.”
“Who worked last night?”
“Lemme see… Carly and Maureen at the registers, Eddie in the deli, Noah at clerk.”
Although Thomas was mainly concerned with who had worked as clerk (an all-purpose position tasked with stocking shelves, bagging groceries, retrieving shopping carts from the parking lot, cleaning, joking with ironic locals, and informing tourists that yes, it sometimes rained during people’s vacations, but there was nothing anyone could do about it), as that was ostensibly his position, he considered the other employees Vernon had listed.