When people in the grocery store are shopping alone, they often look worried and intent and they ignore others. Mother taught me about the social etiquette of grocery stores, and a lot of it came easily to me, despite the noise and confusion. Because no one expects to stop and chat with strangers, they avoid eye contact, making it easy to watch them covertly without annoying them. They don’t mind that I don’t make eye contact, though it is polite to look directly at the person who takes your card or money, just for a moment. It is polite to say something about the weather, even if the person in front of you in line said almost the same thing, but you don’t have to.
Sometimes I wonder how normal normal people are, and I wonder that most in the grocery store. In our Daily Life Skills classes, we were taught to make a list and go directly from one aisle to another, checking off items on the list. Our teacher advised us to research prices ahead of time, in the newspaper, rather than compare prices while standing in the aisle. I thought — he told us — that he was teaching us how normal people shop.
But the man who is blocking the aisle in front of me has not had that lecture. He seems normal, but he is looking at every single jar of spaghetti sauce, comparing prices, reading labels. Beyond him, a short gray-haired woman with thick glasses is trying to peer past him at the same shelves; I think she wants one of the sauces on my side, but he is in the way and she is not willing to bother him. Neither am I. The muscles of his face are tight, making little bulges on his brow and cheeks and chin. His skin is a little shiny. He is angry. The gray-haired woman and I both know that a well-dressed man who looks angry can explode if he is bothered.
Suddenly he looks up and catches my eye. His face flushes and looks redder and shinier. “You could have said something!” he says, yanking his basket to one side, blocking the gray-haired woman even more. I smile at her and nod; she pushes her basket out around him, and then I go through.
“It’s so stupid,” I hear him mutter. “Why can’t they all be the same size?”
I know better than to answer him, though it is tempting. If people talk, they expect someone to listen. I am supposed to pay attention and listen when people talk, and I have trained myself to do that most of the time. In a grocery store sometimes people do not expect an answer and they get angry if you answer them. This man is already angry. I can feel my heart beating.
Ahead of me now are two giggling children, very young, pulling packets of seasoning mix out of racks. A young woman in jeans looks around the end of row and snarls, “Jackson! Misty! Put those back!” I jump. I know she wasn’t talking to me, but the tone sets my teeth on edge. One child squeals, right beside me now, and the other says, “Won’t!” The woman, her face squeezed into a strange shape by her anger, rushes past me. I hear a child yelp and do not turn around. I want to say, “Quiet, quiet, quiet,” but it is not my business; it is not all right to tell other people to be quiet if you are not the parent or the boss. I hear other voices now, women’s voices, someone scolding the woman with the children, and turn quickly into the cross-aisle. My heart is running in my chest, faster and stronger than usual.
People choose to come to stores like this, to hear this noise and see other people being rushed and angry and upset. Remote ordering and delivery failed because they would rather come and see other people than sit alone and be alone until the delivery comes. Not everywhere: in some cities, remote ordering has been successful. But here… I steer around a center display of wine, realize I’ve gone past the aisle I wanted, and look carefully all ways before turning back.
I always go down the spice aisle, whether I need spices or not. When it’s not crowded — and today it’s not — I stop and let myself smell the fragrances. Even over floor wax, cleaning fluid, and the scent of bubble gum from some child nearby I can detect a faint blend of spices and herbs. Cinnamon, cumin, cloves, marjoram, nutmeg… even the names are interesting. My mother liked to use spices and herbs in cooking. She let me smell them all. Some I did not like, but most of them felt good inside my head. Today I need chili spice. I do not have to stop and look; I know where it is on the shelf, a red-and-white box.
I am drenched in sweat suddenly. Marjory is ahead of me, not noticing me because she is in grocery store shopping mode. She has opened a spice container — which, I wonder, until the air current brings me the unmistakable fragrance of cloves. My favorite. I turn my head quickly and try to concentrate on the shelf of food colorings, candied fruit, and cake decorations. I do not understand why these are in the same aisle with spices and herbs, but they are.
Will she see me? If she sees me, will she speak? Should I speak to her? My tongue feels as big as a zucchini. I sense motion approaching. Is it her or someone else? If I were really shopping, I would not look. I do not want cake decorations or candied cherries.
“Hi, Lou,” she says. “Baking a cake?”
I turn to look at her. I have not seen her except at Tom and Lucia’s or in the car to and from the airport. I have never seen her in this store before. This is not her right setting… or it may be, but I didn’t know it. “I — I’m just looking,” I say. It is hard to talk. I hate it that I am sweating.
“They are pretty colors,” she says, in a voice that seems to hold nothing but mild interest. At least she is not laughing out loud. “Do you like fruitcake?”
“N-no,” I say, swallowing the large lump in my throat. “I think… I think the colors are prettier than the taste.” That is wrong — tastes are not pretty or ugly — but it is too late to change.
She nods, her expression serious. “I feel the same way,” she says. “The first time I had fruitcake, when I was little, I expected it to taste good because it was so pretty. And then… I didn’t like it.”
“Do you… do you shop here often?” I ask.
“Not usually,” she says. “I’m on my way to a friend’s house and she asked me to pick up some things for her.” She looks at me, and I am once more conscious of how it is hard to talk. It is even hard to breathe, and I feel slimy with the sweat trickling down my back. “Is this your regular store?”
Yes, I say.
“Then maybe you can show me where to find rice and aluminum foil,” she says.
My mind is blank for a moment before I can remember; then I know again. “The rice is third aisle, halfway along,” I say. “And the foil’s over on Eighteen—”
“Oh, please,” she says, her voice sounding happy. “Just show me. I’ve already wandered around in here for what feels like an hour.”
“Show — take you?” I feel instantly stupid; this is what she meant, of course. “Come on,” I say, wheeling my basket and earning a glare from a large woman with a basket piled high with produce. “Sorry,” I say to her; she pushes past without answering.
“I’ll just follow,” Marjory says. “I don’t want to annoy people…”
I nod and head first for the rice, since we’re on Aisle Seven and that is closer. I know that Marjory is behind me; knowing that makes a warm place on my back, like a ray of sun. I am glad she cannot see my face; I can feel the heat there, too.
While Marjory looks at the shelves of rice — rice in bags, rice in boxes, long-grain and short-grain and brown, and rice in combinations with other things, and she does not know where the kind of rice is that she wants — I look at Marjory. One of her eyelashes is longer than the others and darker brown. Her eyes have more than one color in them, little flecks in the iris that make it more interesting.