There’s a new boy bagging at Shop-Way tonight.
Tova flattens her lips as he puts her strawberry and marmalade jams side by side in the grocery bag. They clink ominously as he jostles in the rest: coffee beans, green grapes, frozen peas, a bear-shaped bottle of honey, and a box of tissues. They’re the soft, lotion-y kind. The expensive kind. Tova began buying them for Will when he was in the hospital, where the tissues were sandpaper. Now she finds herself too accustomed to them to switch to the more affordable brand.
“I’ll hardly need to see that, love,” Ethan Mack says as Tova presents her loyalty card. The cashier is a chatty fellow with a heavy Scottish accent who also happens to be the store’s owner. He raps a callused knuckle against his wizened temple and grins. “Got it all up here; had your number punched in no sooner’n you came through the door.”
“Thank you, Ethan.”
“Anytime.” He hands her a receipt and flashes his slightly crooked, but kind, grin.
Tova scans it to make sure the jams rung through with the promotion properly applied. There they are: buy one, get one half price. She ought not to have doubted: Ethan runs a tight ship. The Shop-Way has improved since he moved to town and bought the place a few years back. Won’t be long before he has the new boy trained in proper
bagging technique. She tucks the receipt into her pocketbook.
“Some June, innit?” Ethan leans back and crosses his arms over his belly. It’s past ten in the evening: the checkout lanes are empty, and the new boy has retreated to the bench next to the deli counter.
“It’s been drizzly,” Tova agrees.
“You know me, love. I’m like a big duck. Rolls off my back. But I’ll be damned if I haven’t forgotten what the sun looks like.”
“Yes, well.”
Ethan smooths piles of receipts into neat white bricks, his eyes lingering on the circular sucker mark on her wrist, a purplish bruise which has hardly faded in the days since the octopus grabbed her there. He clears his throat. “Tova, I’m sorry to hear about your brother’s passing.”
Tova lowers her head but says nothing.
He continues, “You need anything at all, just say the word.”
She meets his eyes. She’s known Ethan for years, and the man doesn’t go out of his way to avoid scuttlebutt. Tova has never met a sixty-something-year-old man who so enjoys gossip. So he’s surely aware of the estrangement between her and her brother. Tone measured, she says, “Lars and I weren’t close.”
Had she and Lars ever been close? Tova is certain they were, once. As children: certainly. As young adults: mostly. Lars stood alongside Will, both in gray suits, at Tova and Will’s wedding. At the reception, Lars gave a lovely speech that made everyone’s eyes mist over, even their stoic father’s. For years afterward, Tova and Will spent every New Year’s Eve at Lars’s house in Ballard, eating rice pudding and clinking flutes at midnight while little Erik slept under a crocheted blanket on the davenport.
But things started to change after Erik died. Once in a while, one of the Knit-Wits probes Tova, asking what
happened between her and Lars, and Tova says nothing, really, and this is the truth. It happened gradually. No blow- out argument, no fist-shaking or hollering. One New Year’s Eve, Lars phoned Tova and informed her that he and Denise had other plans. Denise, his wife, for a time anyway. When they would come for dinner, Denise was fond of loitering around the kitchen sink while Tova was up to her elbows in suds, insisting that she was there if Tova ever needed to talk. Well, it’s not a crime for her to care about you, even if you don’t know her well, is what Lars said when Tova registered her annoyance.
After that fizzled New Year’s, there was a skipped Easter luncheon, a canceled birthday party, a Christmas gathering that never made it past the we should get together state of planning. The years stretched into decades, turning siblings to strangers.
Ethan fiddles with the small silver key dangling from the drawer of the cash register. His voice is soft when he says, “Still, family is family.” He grimaces, lowering his awkward frame into the swivel chair next to the register. Tova happens to know the chair helps his bad back. Not the sort of gossip she seeks out, of course, but sometimes one can’t help but overhear. The Knit-Wits like to natter on about such things.
Tova sighs. Family is family. She knows Ethan means well, but what a ridiculous saying. Of course family is family; what else could it be? Lars was her last living relation. Family, even though she hadn’t spoken to him in years.
“I must get going,” she finally replies. “My feet are quite sore from work.”
“Aye! Your aquarium gig.” Ethan sounds thankful for the change in subject. “Say hello to the scallops for me.”
Tova nods gravely. “I will tell them hello.”
“Let ’em know they’re livin’ the high life compared to their cousins over there, in the seafood case.” Ethan ticks his head toward the fresh seafood department at the back
of the store, the one that, with a few local-catch exceptions, offers mostly previously frozen seafood. He leans his elbows on the checkout counter with a bemused look in his eyes.
Tova’s cheeks flush, having picked up on his facetiousness an instant too late. Those scallops in the cold case, rounds of translucent white . . . at least Sowell Bay is too provincial to support a grocery store that sells octopus. She heaves up her grocery bag. Predictably, its contents list toward one end and the jam jars clink again.
Sometimes there is simply a correct way to do things.
With a pointed glance at the new bagging fellow, who is slumped on the deli bench now, jabbing at his phone, Tova sets the bag down and moves the marmalade to the other side of the grapes. The way it ought to have been done in the first place.
Ethan follows her gaze. Then he stands and barks, “Tanner! What happened to stocking the dairy case?”
The kid stuffs his phone in his pocket and stalks off toward the back of the store.
Tova hides a smile at how satisfied Ethan looks with himself. When he notices, he runs a hand over his short wiry beard, which is mostly white these days but clings to a reddish hint. Soon, he’ll let it grow in anticipation of the holidays. Ethan Mack plays a very convincing Scots Santa Claus. Every Saturday in December he’ll sit in a chair in the community center in a polyester costume, taking photos with the town’s children and occasionally a small dog or two. Janice brings Rolo to visit Santa every year.
“Kids need a little direction now and then,” Ethan says. “Then again, I suppose we all do.”
“I suppose so.” Tova picks up her grocery sack again and turns toward the door.
“If you need anything at all . . .” “Thank you, Ethan. I appreciate it.”
“Drive safe now, love,” he calls as the chime dings.
AT HOME, TOVA unties her sneakers and turns on the television to channel four. The eleven-o’clock news is only tolerable on channel four. Craig Moreno and Carla Ketchum and meteorologist Joan Jennison. Channel seven is tabloid nonsense, and who can stand to watch that blowhard Foster Wallace on channel thirteen? Channel four is the only sane option.
The show’s jingle drifts into the kitchen, where Tova unloads her groceries. She hadn’t bought much; her refrigerator is already stuffed with casseroles, left on her porch over the last few days by the Knit-Wits and other well- wishers intending to comfort her over Lars’s death.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she says, bending down and rustling around her jammed fridge, trying to finagle a space for her grapes around an oversized pan of ham-and-cheese gratin Mary Ann dropped off yesterday.
A scratching sound startles her. She stands upright.
It’s coming from the porch. Another casserole? And at this hour. She makes her way past the den, where the television is blaring a commercial for life insurance. The front door is still open from her carrying in the groceries, so she squints through the screen door, expecting to see an offering on the doormat, but it’s empty. And no car in the driveway, either.
The door creaks as she opens it. “Hello?” More scratching. A raccoon? A rat? “Who’s there?”
A pair of yellow eyes. Then a reproachful meow.
Tova lets out a breath she hadn’t meant to hold. Stray cats roam the neighborhood, but she’s never seen this gray one, now sitting on her porch step like a king on his throne. The cat blinks, glaring up at her.
“Well?” She frowns, flapping a hand. “Shoo!” The cat tilts its head.
“I said, shoo!” The cat yawns.
Tova plants her hands on her hips, and the cat saunters over and winds its narrow body between her feet. She can feel each tine of its rib cage against her ankle bone.
She clucks her tongue. “Well, I have ham gratin. Would that suit you?”
The cat’s purr has a high-pitched tinge to it. Desperate. “All right, then. But if I catch you using my flower beds as
a litter box . . .” She slips back through the door, leaving Cat, as Tova decides it should be called, peering through the screen.
After returning with a loaded plate, she sits and watches from the porch swing as Cat devours cold ham, cheese, and potato. When Tova returns the dish to Mary Ann later, she won’t mention who consumed it.
“Shame to see it go to waste, so I’m glad to share,” she confides to Cat. And she means this. How much food do her friends think she can possibly eat? Tova sets a mental reminder to collect Cat’s dish in the morning and goes back inside, closing the door behind her.
From the den drifts the sound of the news, which has returned from a commercial break. “Well, Carla, I know I’m ready for some summer weather here in Seattle.” Craig Moreno chuckles.
“I’m more than ready, Craig!” Carla Ketchum’s laugh is watery. Next, she’ll lean her forearm on the desk and beam at the camera before turning to her co-anchor. She’ll be wearing blue, as she seems to believe it flatters her best. And because it rained today, her blond hair will be wavy instead of tamed into a bob. Of course, Tova can’t see any of this from the kitchen, but she’s certain.
“We’ll see what Joan has to say about that. After the break!”
Now the camera will pan back to Craig Moreno. His tone will rise a smidgen when he says Joan’s name. This began a few weeks ago. Presumably when he and the weather lady began having relations.
Tova doesn’t stay to hear the forecast. Doesn’t need to— it’ll be cloudy and drizzly. More June gloom.
