Monday
Before my gangstah-rap neighbor emptied his AK-47 into his buddy, the most exciting thing to happen in our village was the opening of a new grocery store. The store hired a pianist who played Beatles tunes, no doubt to persuade shoppers to part with their money more easily. My neighbor, rapper King Bling, was helping his fans part with their money too, but the shooting ended all that. Once he made bail, he moved and hasn’t been heard from since.
And so it goes in my little corner of the North Shore, about twenty miles from downtown Chicago. There are benefits. The King, as he’s known to his disciples, gave our cops something to do besides ticket speeders. And the new grocery store gave me the chance to buy prepared dinners so I could dispense with cooking.
Both of which come in handy when I’m producing a video, as was the case now. We didn’t finish the shoot until seven. I raced up the expressway toward home, dropped into the store, and was eyeballing a turkey pot roast—the only one left—when my cell trilled. I fished it out of my bag.
“Mom, where did you get the shoes?” I heard chatter and giggles in the background.
“What shoes, Rachel?”
“The ones you gave Jackie.” My daughter, Rachel, had successfully, if unbelievably, graduated from college and lived in an apartment in Wrigleyville. Jackie was her roommate. “Everybody thinks they’re awesome.”
I smiled. I’d bought a pair of shoes online a few weeks earlier. They looked like gray sneakers on a raised three-inch platform. They were adorable, just my style. When I tried them on, however, they were so steeply pitched I knew my middle-aged body would break one of my middle-aged legs in minutes. I’d sighed and given them to Rachel’s roommate, who is decades younger but wears my size. “I don’t remember. Online someplace.” I eyed the pot roast and closed in.
“Did you have a Groupon?”
I wracked my brain. “I think I did. How did you know?”
“You never buy retail. Okay, bye. Oh, wait, Q wants us to take you to dinner.”
Q, short for Quentin, is Rachel’s boyfriend, and he’s lasted longer than her usual flavor-of-the-month guy. They’d been “just friends” in high school but five years later discovered the other person was “pretty cool,” as Rachel put it. Apparently it was more serious than I thought, if he was suggesting a meet-up with Mom. That, or else he had perfected the suck-up-to-the-parents routine.
“What a lovely thought,” I replied, still eyeing the turkey pot roast, which smelled delicious even from a distance. Unfortunately, another shopper, a man with bushy eyebrows, narrow eyes, and one of those small baskets over his arm, was homing in on it too. I had to move fast.
“Let’s talk about it later. I’m getting dinner…ready.”
“Oh, Mom, I know you’re in the grocery store. I can hear the music.”
Busted.
The man with the basket caught me staring at the pot roast. His gaze wandered from me to the food. Back to me. I gave him a steely look. He turned back to the pot roast, shrugged in disdain, and picked up a slab of ribs instead.
I scooped up my dinner. It’s the little victories that count.