Perhaps selfishness kept me kissing you in the Food City vegetable aisle. Drunk on the familiar, my defenses fell, and suddenly we were necking like teenagers in the tomatoes. All the while, Mrs. Friend gawked from afar and knocked hard on every cantaloupe in her vicinity. I knew better than this, but sometimes you showed up fully, as if you remembered all our best moments. On those rare occasions, I couldn’t help but give in to the taste of memories with you. This time I was telling you how the big juicy tomatoes you liked were called Mortgage Lifters, and when I looked back at you, there was my girl. Suddenly so close, your hands cupping my cheeks like the first time, pulling me into our past. It was the only place we really lived anymore.
One more time I’d think, when we were safe at home in the den and I felt you behind me, beckoning my arms to curl into your frame. It was my favorite of your spontaneous gestures. I knew when I heard the crackling step of the record player’s needle that your body was looking for mine. By Otis’s first lines, “These arms of mine, they are lonely…” I’d feel your loose hug and your lips in the crook of my neck as if you meant to tell my skin a secret. We’d rock slow back and forth for a while, your hand in mine, the other resting on my stomach where it belonged. When the song rang out “And if you will let them hold you, Oh how grateful I will be…” I was ready for you to lift me like a ballerina and twirl me toward the den rug.
I’ve always been this distracted by you, a spinning top. Even today, as I’m unfurling in the Food City, I’m quite aware that we’re way too gay for ol’ Mrs. Friend’s Saturday morning. Our spectacle would be the highlight of her upcoming church conversations, with us at the top of her prayer list yet again.
“Stop, Ruth,” I whispered and guided your hands from my face to the grocery store buggy, suddenly embarrassed. This wasn’t our cabin, nor was it 1973. It was just a cold October day in 2011, and we still needed toilet paper and dog food to get through the week. Though you were just fifty-nine, the dementia was setting in fast. I watched your hands grip the metal bar of the buggy like a walker, your eyes fading back into that familiar glazed stare. These slight gestures were my sign that I was alone again.
“Good morning, Mrs. Friend.” I chirped, guiding our retreat to the bread aisle.
With a labored “Hmh” Mrs. Friend let her honeydew melon fall from her eighty four year old fingers into the metal buggy two times her size. It just was a jump shot meant to scare me. She paused to see if the honeydew would break, and when it didn’t, she said my name like a curse.
“Maggie.” Her tone was vindicated. Ever since Sunday school she’d known I was rotten to the core. She’d been staring me down my whole life. Though it had been almost fifty years since I’d felt the burn of Mrs. Friend’s switch at my hind, I picked up the pace.
“I’m sorry…” you whispered to me while I pinched hefty loaves of rye bread to calm down. “I don’t know what I’m doing…” Your voice was distant in a way that made me wonder if you even remembered our Food City PDA from moments before.
I stopped to hand you your favorite pumpernickel loaf. I was tired today. These days, a deep-down tiredness seemed to blanket me every hour. I shook my head and looked into your eyes, my beautiful wife. I’d spent my whole life here, buffing the dirt off my hometown, shining up the best parts and guiding you away from its rougher edges.
“Cracked pepper turkey or pastrami?” I smiled and squeezed your hand.
“Do I even like pastrami?” You touched the logo of the rye bread like a child’s shirt.
“You fucking love pastrami. So do I. With a thick tomato slice.”
Something in me knew this was our last grocery store outing. Everyday you were leaving me a little more alone. I knew no amount of curious-colored heirlooms and wild feathers would keep you here. I could only help you remember the names of the things you loved. These days my only job was to try to bring the softer parts of the world back home for you to enjoy.
“A mortgage lifter?” You smiled back at me, tossing the bread to the bottom of the buggy like Mrs. Friend. My instinct was to grab it, exchange it for a more perfect loaf. But there were no perfect loaves. For all my trying, I’d never been able to make this world perfect for you. I realize now, you’d never asked me to in the first place. Every squished bread sandwich I’d ever made you was the best meal of your life, every scorched tomato, the sweetest one the garden could offer.