IN THE SUPERMARKET, PAUL sat in the seat and Harry pushed the wagon through the aisles. I walked alongside them, pulling boxes and cans from the shelves, and dropping them into the wagon. I threw weightless boxes of cereal with the words FREE FREE LOOK INSIDE! printed in big letters. After them, I tossed bloody cuts of meat, wrapped and sealed as if they had been readied for a time capsule. I felt a sick sensation in my chest, and I wondered if I might become a vegetarian. I could not even inspect the meat for distribution of fat or bone or gristle. I shut my eyes and then I wiped my hands on the sides of my coat. Every few minutes the children would call out the name of a product they had seen in a television commercial. “Get it,” they demanded and, weary of the ordered idiocy of our lives, of the cautions against cavities and unbalanced diets, I complied. “Here,” I said, “okay,” until Paul’s lap was covered with packages and I wasn’t even sure of what I had taken.
In the pickle and relish aisle, Mr. and Mrs. Caspar, who lived in our building, walked toward us. He pushed the wagon and she preceded him, slapping the floor in Swedish clogs. Her hair was tortured into a teetering pile of curls, snaked with ribbons and artificial blond braids. She was at least as old as my mother, but she wore a tiny, pleated skirt, and the flesh of her thighs trembled with every step.
Behind her, Mr. Caspar, still handsome, rangy and weathered as an aging cowboy, walked with his head down, pushing the wagon as if it carried an intolerable load. In fact, it was almost empty. Just a loaf of bread and a few other items were at the bottom. Cradled in her arms were the gourmet items: olives stuffed with capers and almonds, smoked oysters, a jar of brandied fruit. Coming abreast of us, Mr. Caspar addressed himself to the children. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and began to change it into wriggling, writhing animal shapes. Paul giggled.
“I lost my penny,” Mr. Caspar cried. “I can’t find my penny.” He pretended to search in his wagon and then in ours. Mrs. Caspar’s lips lifted, showing the yellow sides of her teeth, the dark red of her gums. She sighed, trying to catch her reflection in a huge jar of pickles. She poked at her curls.
“My penny, my penny,” Mr. Caspar cried. His hands reached out, cupping Harry’s ear, and we all heard the clink of a coin against his ring. “Ah,” he said.
Harry poked his finger cautiously in his ear.
“Only one,” Mr. Caspar said. “I only lost one.”
“Me,” Paul said.
“Keep your eyes open, Sonny,” Mr. Caspar warned. “Maybe next time. How is your husband?” he asked me.
“He’s sick,” I said.
“Well, if we could help you out sometimes …” But it was an editorial “we.” Mrs. Caspar had fled the aisle. We could hear the receding noise of her clogs, the jangling of her jewelry.
“Thank you,” I called, as he hurried after her.
The whole neighborhood knew about Mrs. Caspar, about Estrella. “Estrella, my foot, if you’ll pardon me,” said Joseph’s mother. “She got that name from a five and dime someplace. And if she only acted her age, she would be in the old ladies’ home.”
Even my parents knew about her, although Mrs. Caspar didn’t patronize their shop. “That’s the whore of Babylon,” my mother said. A grim statement.
My father smiled indulgently. He spiraled his finger around his ear. “Nuts,” he pronounced. “Harmless.”
“She roams the streets,” my mother insisted.
“Ah, she doesn’t do anything. Who would want her? She thinks she’s Elizabeth Taylor. She runs around like someone’s chasing her.” He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “She’s a sad case.”
“Her husband is sad,” I said. “He’s always smiling.”
“That’s sad?”
“No, I mean always. A little desperate smile. He looks close to tears.”
My mother folded her arms and shrugged. My father smiled. But what they said was common knowledge. Estrella Caspar went out alone at night. Mr. Caspar used to follow her, ducking in the shadows. But she spoke of other men who followed her, who flirted: butchers, taxi drivers, young sailors. She gave beauty and romantic advice freely to younger women in the elevator, in the laundry room. A blond streak, she advised. A darker eye-liner. She hurried from the building, eager to pursue the wonders of the night, and Mr. Caspar, with his sad little smile, a grimace really, waited for her to come home again.
In the supermarket I stalked the aisles, filling the cart until Harry was unable to push it. I looked at the foods that were Jay’s favorites: the raisin cookies, tangerines in great golden pyramids, the marshmallows that we used to toast on forks over the gas jets.
Paul called out the name of yet another sugarcoated breakfast cereal
‘That’s enough!” I said, in a voice so sharp that it forced his glance down. “You can’t fill yourself up on all that junk,” I added, trying to sound more reasonable, maternal. But he wouldn’t be fooled. He kicked his heels against the cart in an angry tattoo.
At the checkout counter we came up behind Mr. Caspar, unloading his basket. Mrs. Caspar was a few feet away, talking to the store manager, who kept looking up uneasily, smiling and trying to back away. She held him with one red-tipped finger poised on his sleeve, and with the shrill insistence of her voice.
Paul kicked harder, catching Mr. Caspar in the small of his back. “Don’t!” I cried and I grasped his ankle. “I’m sorry,” I said to Mr. Caspar, but he had turned, his face already arranged in that same smile. “Where is that other penny?” he asked. “Where did it go?”
Paul, who had been prepared to weep, was caught, his eyes only shining with tears,
“Here it is,” Mr. Caspar said triumphantly. He pinched Paul’s nose gently and a coin clinked into his palm.