Two pounds, eight ounces. Two pounds, thirteen ounces. Three pounds, four ounces—oops, too much. Lacey watched the mom in a puffy fur-lined winter coat and skintight yoga pants scoop green beans back out of the scale and into their bin. Then she twisted the bag with a neat knot and tossed it in her cart behind a toddler playing with her phone. HAND-TRIMMED ORGANIC HARICOTS VERTS read the sign. $6.99 PER POUND.
“Over twenty bucks,” Lacey said. “For a pile of beans.” But no one was listening to her in this suburban Whole Foods. All over the produce section, people were weighing, fingering, sniffing. Slanted wood bins spilled over with multicolored fruits and vegetables. Six kinds of pears. Tomatoes on the vine, off the vine, heirloom, conventional, organic. Peaches from Ecuador, peaches from Colombia, peaches from Nepal. Carrots that were $2 a pound and bananas that were $4.99 a pound.
A cold mist spurted out over the lettuce section, wetting the arm of Lacey’s jacket. She yelped and moved away, rubbing at the leather. She pulled a few grapes off a nearby display and ate them, staring blatantly at one of the cheerful green-aproned stock girls, who only grinned as if to say, Eat more! Eat as much as you can hold! Aren’t they juicy and delicious?
“This place is freaking me out,” she said to Ellen, who was studying her grocery list. “Why don’t I wait in the car. I mean taxi. I mean, whoops, we have no taxi now, so how the hell are we gonna get back?”
“Don’t be dramatic. Here, what does this say?”
“How’m I supposed to know? Didn’t you write that?”
“Yes, but—did I mean two pounds of eggplant, total? Or two-pound eggplants, quantity unknown?”
Eggplant, gross. Lacey fidgeted away, one eye on the only person in this chilly room who was as out of place here as she was. Eddie. The chubby Latina aide who’d come with them was carefully leading him around displays, occasionally stopping to hand him a sample of overpriced exotic fruit. She talked quietly and steadily to him, even when he made those twisting movements with his head or let out a sharp half laugh, half bark. Basically, all the things that Lacey herself should be doing. From across the produce section, Lacey watched as other shoppers noticed Eddie, took in his cane and the aide and his gray army sweatsuit, the bandages on his face and the way he lolled his head. They stepped nervously out of his way, or ostentatiously made room for the aide to bring him through. She saw a wife elbow her husband and whisper.
Why couldn’t he be an amputee, like Mike? How much simpler that would have been—then, he’d be treated with deference and respect, the meaning of that outward injury so clear and immediate. And I’d be able to understand him, Lacey thought. It’d be Eddie, minus a leg, giving orders, being uptight. Finding fault with her. So what was she really wishing for, here?
It was ridiculous that he was even here on this outing. Lacey could barely bring herself to be near him, so thank God for the aide. When Ellen had come over a few days ago, burbling about a dinner party and the need to get some of the other women together, as a kind of morale booster—and how she desperately missed cooking, the dumbest thing of all in Lacey’s opinion—but there was nowhere else to have it other than Lacey and Eddie’s room, they were the only ones she knew who had a kitchen, well, “kitchen” … she must’ve caught Lacey in a rare good mood. After all, a dinner to boost morale was just what she and the FRG girls used to put together, except for them it meant Wednesday’s free wings night at Warwick’s on North, whereas apparently to Ellen it meant a four-course feast that took a million hours of preplanning and shopping. Where were all these other women going to sit, down on the nasty floor with the mice poop? So why had she agreed to this? That was easy: because of Ellen, of course. Because it was the first time in a long while that the professor had looked excited and happy about something, and Lacey didn’t have it in her to say no, even though she dreaded people seeing the shithole they lived in.
A more confusing question: Why had she gone along when Ellen suggested that Eddie come with them to this suburban Whole Foods, in a special taxi-van the hospital had arranged, happy to have him practice “real world” interaction? Why had she brought his barking and blindness and innocence out here in the Friday afternoon pricey-grocery-shopping madness of the real world?
Because I want to be who Ellen thinks I am. Devoted wife. No bad thoughts. Immune to the humiliation of Eddie, of me.
Now Ellen was consulting with the aide about her list, the two of them nodding and pointing and sorting out what had to be purchased. Eddie spoke and they both turned to him, Ellen tipping her face up, careful, listening. He’d started saying some two-word sentences now, It’s gone (about lunch), I’m done (after a haircut). This was celebrated in Neuro; apparently putting together a verb and a word was a big deal in terms of his brain regluing parts of itself together. Of course, no one would say whether he’d ever progress further, they never committed to an actual educated guess. They seemed to think that this two-word development, plus the fact that Eddie—aside from blindness—was remarkably okay in his physical movements and spatial awareness, rarely knocked into something and could dress himself, do all the bathroom stuff on his own … that this was all pretty good. But it’s not enough! Lacey raged. Were they going to leave him like that, and her with him? Was this going to be their life?
Ellen answered Eddie, or responded to him. She didn’t look like she wanted to jump out of her skin when he did one of his high-pitched laughs next. She and the aide kept talking to him, and each other, and Lacey watched the three of them go around a corner and into the next aisle. Then she took out her phone.
“Hello?” Jim said, wary, incredulous. He’d picked up before the second ring.
“Yeah. Can you talk for a sec? Everything’s all right, I mean.”
“Oh man, I was gonna say. I thought something had happened, or something.” Neither of them said aloud what that might be. “So, how are you? What’s going on? This is me being cool, by the way. You like it? My heart’s revved up over sixty, though.”
“Yeah, it’s stupid.” Lacey picked up a box of sea salt–crusted oat crackers and set it down. “I went with an urge, but…”
“Go with it! Always, always go with the urge.”
She laughed. “You have to tell me that? So where are you? You got the girls?”
“Yeah. One of them has a party to go to so we’re gonna drop her off and then go to the mall. ’Cause I’m a sucker.”
“Daddy treats them right.”
“Can’t help it. They’re getting so big. So beautiful, you know? You should see Marissa in her winter dance picture. She’s a knockout. Except for this loser standing next to her.”
“What, you?”
“Very funny. No, some skinny piece of shit who makes her cry and who she texts all hours of the day and night but who somehow knows better than to show up around here.”
Lacey smiled at the vehemence. She trailed Ellen, Eddie, and the aide by an aisle’s length, holding the phone close.
“How’m I doing?” he said. “Do I sound natural? Is this okay, is this what you want?”
“I want everything and nothing. Don’t go down that road.”
“So tell me how he is. But mostly how you are.”
Lacey told him about the special night-vision goggles Eddie now wore for optics treatment. They were building up his sight reaction times, testing him for any responses to light and darkness. Maybe it was just her, but it seemed like the doctors were now a little more interested in working on his eye. They had either started listening to her, or were impressed with her dedication (the notebook where she wrote down every day and time Eddie mentioned the flashing in his eye), or they wanted to get rid of her by actually working on it. But there was movement there, more so than in the past weeks.
She told him about Ellen and this crazy dinner party plan; about Jane who kept calling her every few nights; about how beat-down she felt. How she missed music, all her music, driving around listening to her CDs or Z100 or the time she made Otis listen to both Pink albums and got him to dance around the house with her. That hearing half a Bruce Springsteen song on the shuttle bus driver’s radio yesterday had brought tears to her eyes.
“But you probably think Bruce is corny.”
Jim answered gravely. “Lady, you have no idea how many Springsteen shows I’ve been to. This is not a matter to be joked about.”
“Hey, can you do me a favor?” They’d reached the frozen section. Ellen was motioning for her, and Lacey held up a finger: One sec.
“You bet. I’ll get in the car now.” A smile in his voice.
“A favor for there.”
“That kind’s a lot less fun.”
She let it hang in the air between them, the sweet ache of wanting each other. A gay couple pushed their cart past her; six bottles of fizzy water and a bunch of flowers.
“Will you go see Otis? I’ll tell his grandma. You can say you’re a friend, whatever. He can’t come down again until next weekend and I just want … someone to check in on him. Like, take him out to eat or something.”
“’Course I will. I’ll go over there tomorrow! I could have done that a lot earlier, if you’d—if we hadn’t—”
“I know. Listen, Jim?” Eddie was shaking his head at the aide. She kept a hand on his elbow but he didn’t want to go any farther. Lacey hung back near the canned soups. “It doesn’t mean … whatever it could mean. This call, you seeing Otis. Don’t think I’m going to be all over you for stuff.”
“Look. When it comes to you, I’m a pro at not letting things mean what they really mean. All right? So don’t even think about it.”
“Thank you. You can tell Otis I miss him like crazy. Text me how he looks, how he’s doing. Tell him I been e-mailing his teacher and—never mind. Never mind.” The aide was craning her head around for Lacey, so she spoke fast. “Also one night after I’d had a few I started feeling like I wanted to call you so bad I pulled the battery out of my phone and put it in a bag of water in the freezer.”
“Lacey. I—”
“I gotta go. Thanks.”
She ran to catch up with them. “What’s the matter?” Eddie was stuck still in the middle of the aisle; a backup of shoppers from both directions waited to go around him.
“He tired of the crowds, maybe? Que pasa, papi?”
“Let’s go, Ed.” Lacey tugged on his sweatshirt. “We gotta get out of the way here.”
He turned away from her, frowning. It was an expression she knew minutely and she almost expected him to come out with a quick and scornful reply. “Push bar,” he muttered to the shelves of body lotions and vitamins. “Push hand.”
“You can hold my hand,” Lacey said. “Here, right here.”
But that wasn’t it. He batted at the shelves, her hands, the aide’s. By now the blockage of carts was causing murmurs and audible frustration. Eddie stepped in small circles, left and right, saying his two-word sentences over and over. Like Rain Man, Lacey thought. Then he started to yelp and she got desperate.
“Maybe he wasn’t ready,” the aide whispered.
“Oh, that’s really fucking helpful now, thank you,” she hissed back. “C’mon, Eddie. Let’s go, we can go outside. All done, okay? All done.”
“Can we get through here already?” someone called from a cart back in the aisle. “What’s the problem?”
Lacey whirled to face a train of shopping carts. “What’s the problem? You want to know about our problem? Okay, let’s see. The problem of the bomb-filled road in Iraq where my husband’s Humvee flipped? Or the one where his head got bashed in and he lost an eye and has dents in his skull because he was over there fighting to protect your right to buy organic shampoo!”
People glanced away; the carts began to back up awkwardly.
“Anyone else want to hear a problem?” Oh lord, the aide whispered. “How about the problem of my bosses and how they decided to stop holding my job for me? Or the one about my dead car that got towed out of the hospital garage and now I’m getting charged a hundred forty bucks for the privilege of going to get it?”
Barely anyone was left now but Lacey stared them all down, the retreating carts. She was just getting warmed up, she was ready to roll. Then Ellen came back, eyes wide. “What happened? I could hear you all the way over in the bakery!”
Eddie was still turning around in tight half circles, making popping and peeping sounds with his mouth.
“He’s done,” the aide said. But Ellen was asking Eddie himself, Are you all right? What do you want? In a tone of such naturalness, as if she were asking anybody else in the store, that Lacey about fell over. How did she do that? “Push bar,” Eddie told her.
“Like this?” Ellen brought his hands to the cart handle. “He was touching it before,” she explained. “I said he could take over pushing.” Lacey and the aide were silent, flabbergasted. Eddie lit up, expertly swiveled the cart to and fro. “So, great. This way I can focus on finding fresh bread crumbs. This way, Eddie. Thank you. Why do you think they would only have the dried kind? They taste like sawdust.”
When Lacey tried to go with them, Ellen gently shouldered her away. “We’ve got this.” She smiled up at Lacey and whispered, “You do this all the time; why don’t you take a little break, get something at the coffee bar.”
“I’m fine! What, do you think I’m losing my grip? None of these people get it. They have no clue what we’re going through! You think I’m gonna back down from letting them have it once in a while?”
“I would never think otherwise. But look how well this is going.” And it was. With only one of Ellen’s hands lightly guiding the cart, and the aide walking alongside to block any oncoming traffic, Eddie was utterly focused on pushing. No laughing or barking. No more circles.
“All right. Thanks. How much more do we have to get?”
Ellen went back to the list. “Damn, I knew I’d forgotten something. Can you run back to produce and get four—no, better make that five—pomegranates? Make sure they’re the heavy ones, those will have the most seeds. We’ll meet you at checkout.”
“But—”
“Don’t worry, we’re fine!” And around a corner into the next aisle went the three of them.
Lacey walked slowly back to the giant room of fruits and vegetables, all the rows of food products flowing past her. She was tingly, in a daze, as all this energy left over from shouting at strangers leaked away. And Jim. Talking to Jim. Heat rose up through her stomach and chest, and she replayed every moment of the call in her mind.
“Excuse me?” A girl in a green apron, holding out a tray. “Would you like a sample of our new German-style lager?”
“Sure.” Lacey picked up the paper cup, half full. And then she set it back down. “Actually, no. I’m good.”
This fizzy hunger inside was all she needed right now. So Lacey went around and around the produce section, past peppers and clementines and clear plastic boxes of strawberries. She hugged herself, smiling.
Now what the hell had Ellen wanted her to get?