by J. L. Salter
“You want me to add that water to your coffee now?”
“No thanks, I already finished it.” She held up the nearly empty cup.
He took it. “Want some more?”
“No! I mean… no, it feels like I’ve already had three cups. Plus that smoke alarm kind of woke me up anyhow.”
“Yeah, that was awful. Probably a defective battery.” He pointed to the source of the smoke. “You want any toast?”
“No, thanks. I’m trying to cut back on my charcoal intake.”
Clearly, he still didn’t catch her sarcasm. “How about a scrambled egg with cheese mixed in?”
Normally that would tempt her, but Amanda pictured at least one egg on the floor, some raw egg sloshed on the burner, and a solid clump of cheese being added too late. “No, thanks. I’ve developed a yen for those rice cake crackers. Maybe I’ll chomp on those for a while.”
No doubt Jason remembered those crackers only too well. “You sure? I don’t mind cooking.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” She was totally certain. “Thanks anyway.” It was only later that Amanda remembered no eggs or cheese were even present in her household.
Jason poked through the items which had been on the dining table since Thursday. The partly stale saltine crackers evidently seemed most promising of that lot, so he finished the entire sleeve.
The remainder of the morning went similarly, though without additional smoke alarms.
With apparently sincere motive of helpfulness, Jason ascertained the contents of the dishwasher were clean by smelling the inside of every single glass — a redundant test Amanda had never found necessary.
Putting away clean dishes is usually considered helpful, but help is a relative term. Everything involving any cabinet seemed to involve nearly all of them. Evidently Jason had a concentration deficiency. If he’d just seen the location for glasses about twenty seconds before, he immediately forgot that portal if he’d held a bowl in the meantime. Yet he didn’t catch on that all the glasses could be put up within the same short time span and then he could move on to bowls.
By the time Jason finished putting away the dishes, Amanda figured she’d scream if she ever again heard, “Where does this go?”
Once the dishwasher was empty, Jason ran the hot tap full blast for nearly fifteen minutes as he rinsed the few dishes in the sink. A single swipe of the sponge would have dispatched whatever he’d identified in or on each dish, but he apparently figured several minutes of full-bore scalding water was a better solution.
After their torturous rinsing, those few dishes were dumped into whatever portion of the dishwasher struck Jason’s fancy. His single pattern seemed to be no pattern, since no two similar items ended up anywhere near each other. It goes without saying that several top rack items were tossed into the bottom. Amanda made a mental note to rescue them later if the Tasmanian Jason ever went to sleep.
When the kitchen activity finally ceased, water soaked the counters and had splashed to the floor all around the dishwasher. No doubt Jason observed those conditions but evidently concluded it was a natural state for water-related kitchen areas to have standing water.
He got another cup of coffee and sat on the couch next to Amanda, who was watching yet another movie. Jason took a sip. Kahh! “Maybe I should’ve made that allshitz acorn stuff. This is a little stout.”
“No, I’m all out of acorns. This was okay. Next time, though, you might hold back a bit on the sweetener.” She didn’t want to sound too critical. “Uh, maybe not as many grounds, either…”
———
Jason felt pretty validated. All that kitchen drudgery had been mildly therapeutic and it brought to mind a serious topic he’d wanted to discuss with Amanda. He looked in the direction of the television without observing any programming content whatsoever. It was the archetypal scene where the strikingly handsome man realizes he’s wronged the gorgeous woman and urgently wants to make up. “Is this show at a crucial part?”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Not really. I’ve seen this movie. They’re just about to kiss and jump into bed together.”
“I think they all have that scene.” He shook his head briefly. “Had a question about all that cure-scare stuff Christine designed — I read about it on the blog. Everything was a pack of lies, right? Flax and hemp and cushaw?”
“No, those are legitimate foods.”
“What about the cable guy, analog conversion, maids, therapies…” He paused to remember everything. “The A/C glitch, Greek funeral, and the back-order part they loaned you. All that was baloney?”
“All fabricated, Jason.” She shrugged. “Did you actually believe any of that?”
“I didn’t have any reason to think you’d lie to me.”
“I’m sorry I lied. That was totally wrong. But some of it was so preposterous that we figured you’d just have to realize it was a sham.”
Jason shook his head. “You two really had me going. I believed everything, even the stuff that was completely unbelievable. I guess I’m about the dumbest guy in Verdeville.”
“No, you’re not dumb. You had no way to know I’d been convinced to conspire to make you miserable.” She faced him but didn’t meet his eyes. “Everything that happened was designed to jar you out of causing me all that extra stress during my Hell Weeks. But you never seemed to catch on. It was astonishing.”
Jason felt wounded. “It would have been easier to run me off by just being direct and honest.”
She delayed her reply to lessen the residual anger. “I tried direct and honest. I told you I was swamped at work and you should stay in your own apartment.”
“But I didn’t think you meant it.”
“I guess that’s part of our relationship we should’ve worked on: clear speaking and plain understanding.” Her delivery had more tenderness than the words themselves conveyed.
“I’m sorry I was so dense. It just never occurred to me that you’d deliberately make things awful just to get rid of me.” He sighed heavily.
“I really am sorry. It was cruel. I see things more clearly now. At the time, I was swept up in the momentum. Christine can be a powerful force sometimes. Like a tornado.”
“More like a witch. At one point I thought she had you under a spell.”
“No, I was just being selfish.” Amanda’s eyes watered. It may have been the guilt that she’d allowed him to suffer so much… or the pain in her toes.
Jason tried to comfort her, but he felt self-conscious with his arm hanging over her shoulder. So he put his hand on her thigh, but that was awkward in a different way. Finally he just held her uninjured left hand. But he couldn’t hold her hand very long; it seemed odd not to touch other parts of her. So, shifting physically and topically, Jason offered to wash Amanda’s clothes.
———
Amanda nearly shrieked. After a brief panic attack, she gently talked Jason out of laundry duty. Amanda could imagine the effects of wrong cycle and hot temperature on her best wash-and-wear garments, and it gave her chills.
Jason must have thought she was cold, because he retrieved a clean bath towel and draped it over her shoulders.
Though Amanda had begun this reversal with a rather stony attitude problem, she had already witnessed that Jason truly was compassionate — though he expressed it clumsily — and not nearly as shallow as she’d thought. He was still considerably inept around the household, but those were skills which conceivably could be acquired with dedicated tutelage. Jason’s newly-manifested compassion was an innate quality, however, and one which Amanda suddenly realized she valued highly.
At about 10:45 a.m., noting the cupboard was bare of almost everything besides a few staples, Jason volunteered to make a grocery run.
“Are you going to punish me with the same kind of awful garbage Christine fed you?”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, Amanda.” Jason hugged her left side briefly. “No human, vegans included, should have to eat hemp and flax… and tofu.”<
br />
Amanda squinted into his face. She suspected he would just purchase his own favorites. “I think I’ll tag along.”
“No need to. Just tell me what stuff you like.”
“I need the fresh air anyhow. I’ve been cooped up here since I left the hospital Wednesday, except for that visit to the doctor’s office.”
Jason sighed so heavily Mrs. Yodel probably heard it next door. He likely figured this grocery run was about to slow to a crawl.
Amanda ignored his furrowed brow. “I just need to use the bathroom and I’m ready. Will you grab my purse?”
Since she hadn’t shaved her legs in three days, she really wanted to change from her cargo shorts to jeans, but there wasn’t time and it would hurt her toes. Plus, she didn’t figure anybody would notice her at Verde Grocery anyway. Since her hair was ratty, Amanda grabbed a baseball cap, gratis from a local veterans’ group which had received a grant due to her recommendation.
She made it to his pickup just fine — much easier with the crutches at the proper height. Partly because of her injured right wrist, it was awkward getting into the truck, so Jason helped. Amanda buckled up and began writing her shopping list as soon as her driver backed out of the parking slip.
Clearly, Jason noticed her list was growing quite long. He sped up. When he drove faster, she wrote faster. When he slowed for traffic, she wrote slower.
Parked in the grocery lot, Jason seemed about to bolt from the car, but Amanda clutched his forearm. “Before we go in, we ought to talk about expectations.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve never been grocery shopping with you before, so I’d like to know what your expectations are.”
“Expectations?” Perhaps he’d never heard that word in the context of groceries. “Simple. Zoom in, hustle to the racks with whatever I need, and zoom back out. Stop and pay, of course.”
“Of course. Well, I kind of figured you’d have the commando approach. So, I wanted to brace you. Shopping for nearly two weeks’ worth of groceries and supplies involves strategy, scheduling, and maneuvering.”
“Why do women have to make everything hard?”
Amanda ignored his obviously unintended double entendre. “It’s not about being difficult. It’s about practicality and economy, saving time and gasoline. With the commando method, you have to shop nearly every day and sometimes twice in the same day. With that mad dash approach, a shopper tends to forget things or overlooks components of a particular meal.”
“Like getting buns and Sloppy Joe mix, but forgetting the meat?”
“Good example. That was your contribution to our July 4th dinner, as I recall.”
Jason nodded with no apparent embarrassment. “I think I comprehend what you call scheduling if that means getting the frozen stuff last.”
“Yes, it does! Good.” She almost felt like she was helping her young niece answer homework questions. “Now, maneuvering is mostly getting around the unintentional and inconsiderate blockers who clog the aisles and slow down the flow of your shopping experience. It takes skill.”
“Like zipping around to the other end of an aisle to get from behind the old deaf couple who stand on both sides of their basket?”
“That’s one example. Another is those triple-length carts with the huge plastic kiddie cars on front.”
“Okay, got it. What was the other part?”
“Logistics. Basically planning and forethought.” Amanda nodded sagely. “So you only have to make one trip along each aisle with no doubling back across the store for something you forgot. Of course, the cornerstone of a solid plan is a thorough list.”
“Amanda, I think you’re the one with the wrong approach. It doesn’t have to be that complicated. With my method, you zero in on the aisles with the good stuff and you grab what looks tasty.”
“And you end up with chips, snacks, and beer.”
“Right. Primary food groups.”
Amanda shook her head. “You’ve got to have a list.” She held up the one she’d been writing since they left her apartment.
“That’s a store inventory sheet!” he sputtered. “We’ll be here all day, trying to find that much junk!”
“Not if the list is in logistical order by aisles.”
“Hold on. You fully intend to go limping in there on crutches and hit the full length of every single aisle?” Jason seemed aghast. “That’s nuts!”
“They have motorized carts with little baskets. I’ll ride.”
“You’ll need a lot more than a little basket for that warehouse full of stuff.”
“Good thing you’re here. Everything on this list should fit into one regular shopping buggy.”
He sputtered a bit. “I didn’t come here for an experience. I buy stuff to eat because I’m hungry. I don’t want to think about it, or draw out maps, or write marching orders. Three steps. In-grab-out.”
That description resembled Jason’s occasional approach to other aspects of their relationship, but Amanda was focused on groceries at the moment. “Let’s just try it my way this one time. If you don’t like it, we won’t have to shop together again.”
“Aw, man!” He sounded like a third grader told to sit still in church.
Chapter 22
Amanda waited while Jason used antibacterial wipes on the seat and handles of the one battery-powered scooter nearly always available — the oldest of its type from that chain’s entire eastern division, and the only one to have been locally modified. Some of the employees called it — with absolutely no affection — Ole Crotchity.
Jason helped her get situated and then placed the crutches in a regular shopping cart. The feet of those crutches stuck out in front of Jason’s cart by nearly twelve inches and it almost looked like he was ready for a joust.
With a chorus of wobbles and creaks from Ole Crotchity, Amanda began to drive toward the far right edge of the store.
Jason caught up. “What’s that horrible noise?”
“Uh, I think my scooter squeaks. Must be one of the wheels.”
“I think it’s all three wheels. That’s piercing!” He leaned down to examine Ole Crotchity’s underpinnings. “Move forward a few feet.”
She did, and Jason signaled a prompt stop.
“It’s just the back two wheels squealing.” One had a slightly higher pitch and clashed with the other in precisely awful discord. “But get a load of that front wheel!”
Amanda leaned over and peered toward the bottom of the yoke. “I can’t see anything. What?”
“It looks like a wheel from a shipping dolly, or a mechanical mule like the movers use to haul pianos and stuff.”
“What would a dolly or mule wheel be doing on my scooter?”
“Well, steering, ideally. But that wheel has a gouge out of it, kind of a flat spot.” He examined it more closely.
A four-inch hard rubber wheel has a circumference of approximately twelve and a half inches. Through some horrible misfortune, Ole Crotchity’s jury-rigged front wheel had roughly eleven inches of a circular shape, interrupted by an inch and a half of flatness. The result, when it rolled, was a jarring bump while the vehicle’s momentum struggled to overcome the resistance of the wheel’s flat spot.
Jason’s face was nearly on the floor. “Move it forward again, just about a foot.”
She did, but nearly two feet.
“Whoa! You’ve also got a bad shimmy in that wheel.”
Amanda looked at him with restrained impatience. “I think you’re just stalling because you’d rather not have me tag along for this shopping experience.”
He shook his head slowly. “No, I’m telling you that wheel is busted and I don’t think it even belongs on that scooter.”
“Okay, so the front wheel wobbles and thumps and the back wheels squeak a bit. Let’s just shop.”
He sighed. “I’m just trying to warn you, it’s going to be a noisy and bumpy ride. But I can’t stand that squealing. I’ll be stark raving mad before we get through the first ais
le. Hold on a minute.” Jason left his buggy and returned to the place with the moist towels. He pinched off two pieces approximately an inch square, rolled them roughly into small cylinders, and squeezed out the excess juice. Then he plugged each ear. The towel pieces extended about half an inch outside his ears and looked a bit like the electrodes on the Frankenstein monster.
Besides the piercing wheel squeak, her borrowed scooter had a decidedly slow turning response. After twisting the very stiff front wheel yoke, there was at least a two-second delay before the machine began moving in the indicated direction. Plus, Amanda could only steer with her left hand, the weaker of the two when both wrists were functioning normally. She could pull on the yoke to turn left, but she had to use an extended push on the handle to veer right. That was her weakest motion while temporarily impaired.
That model of scooter had another alarming idiosyncrasy: no brakes! To slow, the driver had to release the throttle switch and simply coast. Depending on speed, slope, and terrain, it typically took a couple of extra feet to stop. Amanda had seen no speed limits posted, so she’d just reached full throttle by the time she neared the fruit section.
A frail man at the apple bin saw her approach and stared like a confused squirrel on a county lane. Amanda mistook his gasp for an attempted greeting, so she waved as she got closer. His eyes were large — he likely recognized Ole Crotchity and possibly had experience with that defective machine.
When Amanda figured her speed had frightened the man, she released the throttle button. Her momentum still took her past the fruit bins and nearly to the lettuce heads before the buggy finally rolled to a stop. The fragile-looking man had lurched back out of her way and accidently bumped the stack of oranges, which had once been a beautiful partial pyramid. But oranges, Amanda quickly noted, are so symmetrical that they’ll roll nearly indefinitely unless stopped by the wheels of a nearby customer’s grocery cart. Much to the surprise of that particular shopper, one wedged under her wheels.
When Amanda tried to back up, she realized her jury-rigged front wheel’s flat spot was lodged on one of the sticky floor drains near the vegetables and wouldn’t move. She tried pushing backwards with her left foot. Nope.