He wasn't the only shopper in the store ignoring practical purchases (household cleaners, detergents and the like) in favor of quick-fix items and junk foods. Distracted as he was he noticed others doing just as he was doing, indiscriminately filling up their carts and baskets with trash, as though new reassurances had supplanted the rituals of cooking and eating. He saw on the purchasers' faces (faces he'd known by name once, but could only half remember now) the same secretive look he'd known had been on his own face all his life. They were going about their shopping pretending there was nothing different about this particular Saturday, but everything was different now. They all had secrets; or almost all. And those that didn't were either leaving town, like Valerie, or pretending not to notice, which was, in its way, another secret.
As he reached the checkout, adding two fistfuls of Hershey bars to his basketload, he saw a face he hadn't set eyes on in many a long year: Joyce McGuire. She came in with her daughter, Jo-Beth, arm-in-arm. If he had ever seen them together it must have been before Jo-Beth grew to be a woman. Now, side by side, the similarities in their faces was enough to take his breath away. He stared, unable to prevent himself from remembering the day at the lake and the way Joyce had looked as she'd stripped down. Did the daughter look that way now, beneath her loose clothes, he wondered; small dark nipples, long, tanned thighs?
He realized suddenly that he was not the only customer looking towards the McGuire women; practically everyone was doing the same. Nor could he doubt that similar thoughts were in every head: that here, in the flesh, was one of the first clues to the apocalypse that was stealing up over the Grove. Eighteen years ago Joyce McGuire had given birth in circumstances that had then seemed merely scandalous. Now she stepped back into the public eye at the very time the most ludicrous rumors surrounding the League of Virgins seemed to be being proved true. There were presences walking the Grove (or lurking beneath it) which had power over lesser beings. Their influence had made flesh children in the body of Joyce McGuire. Was it perhaps that same influence that had made his dreams? They too were flesh from mind.
He looked back at Joyce, and understood something about himself he'd never grasped before: that he and the woman (beholder and beheld) were forever and intimately associated. The realization lasted a moment only: it was too difficult to grasp for any longer. But it made him put down his basket and press his way past the line waiting at the checkout, then walk straight towards Joyce McGuire. She saw him coming, and a look of fear crossed her face. He smiled at her. She tried to back away but her daughter had hold of her hand.
"It's all right, Momma," he heard her say.
"Yes—" he said, extending his own hand to Joyce. "Yes, it is. Really it is. I'm...so pleased to see you."
The sincere emotion, simply stated, seemed to mellow her anxiety; the frown softened. She even began to smile.
"William Witt," he said, putting his hand in hers. "You probably don't remember me, but..."
"I remember you," she said.
"I'm glad."
"See, Momma?" Jo-Beth said. "This isn't so bad."
"I haven't seen you in the Grove for such a long time," William said.
"I've been...unwell," Joyce said.
"And now?"
She declined to answer at first. Then she said:
"I think I'm getting better."
"That's good to hear."
As he spoke the sound of sobbing came to them from one of the aisles. Jo-Beth noticed it more than any of the other customers: a strange tension between her mother and Mr. Witt (whom she'd seen most every morning of her working life, but never dressed in so disheveled a fashion) had claimed their attention utterly, and everyone else in the line seemed to be making a studied attempt not to notice. She let go of Momma's arm and went to investigate, tracing the sound of the weeping from aisle to aisle until she found its source. Ruth Gilford, who was the receptionist at the offices of Momma's doctor, and was familiar to Jo-Beth, was standing in front of a selection of cereals, a box of one brand in her left hand and of another in her right, tears pouring down her cheeks. The cart at her side was heaped high with more boxes of cereal, as though she'd simply taken one of each as she'd wheeled her way along the aisle. "Mrs. Gilford?" Jo-Beth ventured.
The woman didn't stop sobbing, but tried to speak through her tears, which resulted in a watery and at times incoherent monologue.
"...don't know what he wants..." she seemed to be saying. "...after all this time...don't know what he wants..."
"Can I help?" Jo-Beth said. "Do you want me to take you home?"
The word home made Ruth look around at Jo-Beth, attempting to focus on her through the tears.
"...I don't know what he wants..." she said again.
"Who?" Jo-Beth said.
"...all these years...and he's got something hiding from me..."
"Your husband?"
"...I said nothing, hut I knew...I always knew...he loved somebody else...and now he's got her in the house..."
The tears redoubled. Jo-Beth went to her, and very gently claimed the packets of cereal from her hands, putting them back on the shelves. With her talismans gone, Ruth Gil-ford took fierce hold of Jo-Beth.
"...help me..." she said.
"Of course."
"I don't want to go home. He's got somebody there."
"All right. Not if you don't want to."
She started to coax the woman away from the cereal display. Once out of their influence, her anguish diminished somewhat.
"You're Jo-Beth, aren't you?" she managed.
"That's right."
"Will you take me to my car...I don't think I can get there on my own."
"We're going, you'll be fine," Jo-Beth reassured her, moving to Ruth's right-hand side so as to protect her from the gaze of those waiting in line if they chose to stare. She doubted they would. Ruth Gilford's collapse was too tender a sight for them to look straight at; it would remind them all too forcibly of what secrets they themselves were barely holding in check.
Momma was at the door, with William Witt. Jo-Beth decided to forsake introductions, which Ruth was in no state to respond to anyway, and just tell Momma she'd meet her at the bookstore, which had still been closed when they'd arrived. For the first time in her life, Lois was late opening up. But it was Momma who took the initiative.
"Mr. Witt will bring me home, Jo-Beth," she said. "Don't worry about me."
Jo-Beth glanced at Witt, who had the look of a man almost mesmerized.
"Are you sure?" she said. It had never occurred to her before but perhaps the ever unctuous Mr. Witt was the type Momma had been warning her about all these years. The deep, silent type whose secrets were always the most depraved. But Momma was insistent; almost casual in the way she waved Jo-Beth off.
Crazy, Jo-Beth thought as she escorted Ruth to the car, the whole world's gone crazy. People changing at a moment's notice, as though the way they'd been all these years was just a pretense: Momma sick, Mr. Witt neat, Ruth Gilford in charge. Were they just reinventing themselves, or was this the way they'd always been?
As they got to the car Ruth Gilford was taken over by another, even more desperate, bout of crying, and tried to return to the supermarket, insistent that she couldn't go back home without cereal. Jo-Beth gently persuaded her otherwise, and volunteered to drive home with her, an invitation which was gratefully accepted.
Jo-Beth's thoughts returned to Momma as she drove Ruth home, but they were literally overtaken, as a convoy of four black stretch limos purred past and turned up the Hill, their presence so utterly alien they might just have driven in from another dimension.
Visitors, she thought. As if there weren't enough.
"So it begins," said the Jaff.