Chapter 7

After he moved into the Turquoise Towers, Stacy spent his days in various ways, as if his life had turned into a series of day trips. One day he went to the library, another to the park . His only rule was that wherever he went, he had to make a day long event out of it.

This was challenging when he chose the supermarket, but surprisingly eventful. He never realized that by hanging around a food store he could study human nature just as well as any classroom, if not better.

In the morning, screaming toddlers in shopping carts tossed boxes of fruity cereal around the aisles as their frazzled mothers retrieved and side stepped additional ammo. Stacy sipped coffee and watched as frail seniors leaned on carts, wending their way through the store, some carefully adding up their purchases on calculators and eliminating items.

Stacy followed one senior couple through the store as unobtrusively as he could, listening as they decided to buy an off brand of oatmeal to save money. After they passed, he picked up the box of oatmeal they wanted and placed it carefully into the cart he was pushing with his cane propped up in it. He did the same every time they put back an item and got in line just ahead of them at the cash register.

The cart was full of all kinds of items: gouda, the husband’s favorite cheese; Oreo cookies with the mint filling; Triscuits; Schweppe’s gingerale with raspberry; and fresh fruits and vegetables the wife reluctantly passed by.

As Stacy put the items on the checkout counter, the husband said to him “I like those cookies, too.”

“Well, you’re better off without them, dear,” his wife said, smiling at both Stacy and her husband, who also smiled.

Stacy smiled back at both of them. He paid for the items and waited with the bags of groceries in the cart for the older couple to finish. Then he followed them out to their car. “These are for you,” he said.

“What?’ the husband asked.

“I bought them for you,” Stacy said, suddenly feeling awkward, as if he had done the wrong thing , the wrong way. Maybe he had no business interfering with these folks. Maybe his help would be seen as charity.

“How nice of you, dear,” the wife said, smiling a bit crookedly. “But we have our own groceries.”

“This is what you wanted – all these things, are the brands, the kinds you like. You should have them. I insist,” Stacy said.

The couple looked at each other. “But why?” the wife asked.

“I just wanted to do this for you,” Stacy said. He felt stupid having to explain it.

“Alright then,” the wife said, nodding to her husband and he took Stacy’s packages out of his cart and placed them in the neat and clean trunk of their silver Camry. “Thank you. We’ll enjoy these treats. Let’s go, honey,” she said, grabbing her keys and inching past Stacy to get into the car.

It wasn’t long before the husband slammed the trunk. He extended his right hand to shake Stacy’s, then pulled it back slightly when Stacy extended his paralyzed one. But they shook hands, the senior’s firm grip leaving a mark on Stacy’s hand. “Take care, son,” the man said, nodding. “You got any family?”

Stacy nodded.

“Call them, ok?”

Stacy stood to the side, leaning on his cane and watching as they pulled out of the lot, the wife driving hurriedly. She smiled again at Stacy, then took off toward the highway. He watched as the silver sedan joined a stream of silver sedans, white, red , and blue sedans. Silently, he swallowed.

The rhythm of his life. It was gone now. Interrupted, not to be found again except perhaps in a cadence, a chance musical piece where for one moment he could both lose and find himself knowing that there was a space where fitting didn’t matter. It would, however, probably take a symphony.

Out here, in the parking lot of a supermarket, there was no way it would happen.

Stacy glanced at his watch. Three o’clock. Kids coming out of school, parents rushing on their way home to the food store to pick up things for dinner, snacks, milk, bread, essentials that weren’t, apparently, essential.

It seemed essential when he listened to them in the aisles, when the husband said he would miss his Oreos with the mint filling. And now it seemed silly to Stacy that he even bothered to notice, as it was back in Iraq when he cried after he saw a little boy blown up after he ran into gunfire in the streets trying to chase a ball.

“Why are you crying, Mack? What do you care? We’re going home. We don’t live here, thank God,” one of the guys said, spitting on the ground.

“They’re used to it,” another said.

At lunch, the same old mundane American break in the day that seemed so out of place a times, another Marine who was there said “I have kids and I worry about these kids too.”

“So why didn’t you say anything before?” Stacy asked him.

The guy shrugged. “It wasn’t the place and time.”
“When is the place and time?” Stacy asked. “We’re here. We can do something.”

“We can’t do anything,” the guy said. “Except get home in one piece ourselves. But I do worry about them.”

As if doing nothing about it but worrying helped. As if doing something about it was wrong. As if helping was odd, out of place, a source of discomfort for everyone.

Stacy broke his rule that day and limped back to the Turqoise Towers. He laid down on his bed and put on the TV to watch Little House on the Prairie where people cared and didn’t even try to hide it. A place where people could say thank you and smile and do favors in return and not act as if that was being a sucker, as if life was just about surviving your own mixed bag of fate. A place where kids could go fishing and swimming without bombs going off, where no one had to hide in sedans of different colors or rush down highways to hurry home because someone who did a nice thing for them might be a bit “off”.

He looked around the hotel room and felt a tear roll down his cheek. It was the first time he had cried since the day he saw the kid blown up.

Copyright 2008 Ruth Harrigan