Last Known Address

She mechanically but speedily grabbed and scanned items. She knew it made sense for her to be in lane one; she was head clerk, the most experienced and fastest. But she hated the express lane. The endless queue of people with their overbooked calendars invariably blamed her for their lateness and stress, no matter how fast she was. She was beyond tired of their impatience, their lack of even minimal courtesy, and especially their creative math when it came to fifteen items or fewer. ‘Oh, sorry. I counted the apples, oranges and pears as one item because they’re all fruit.’ Or, even worse, the petulant: ‘So, I’m a couple of items over. Sue me.’

She passed through a can of frozen orange juice, but it wouldn’t scan. She ran it again. Still no ding. She moved her thumb over the bar code, clearing the frost from it. She felt, then saw, a thin line of hardened juice on the bar code: another container had leaked in the freezer case. She used her nametag, with its decade-of-service gold star, to scrape it off. She hated the star; to her, it felt like a tick, latched on up there, sucking the life out of her. She’d been working here since high school. Living here, since high school. Dying here, since high school. She’d imagined so much more for herself.

Her hand closed tightly around the can. She felt the blood surge up from her swollen feet, anger rising through her like a deep-sea diver coming up too fast, knowing it was certain death, but the need for air too great. A young man wearing a too-small business suit stood in the middle of her line, checking his watch, scowling.

Where was Tom? Or Shirley? Or Ting? Or Mr Fucking Knelbrecht? Was this some kind of April Fool joke? But she knew it wasn’t. It was business as usual.

Kathryn froze, closed her eyes, orange juice in hand. She wanted so much to hurl the can. She imagined it, spiraling upward, breaking through the narrow horizontal windows above the high shelves of charcoal briquettes, stacked above the bags of de-icer. Barbecuing season still seemed a long way off, but the de-icer hadn’t been needed for a while either. It wasn’t winter, but it sure as hell wasn’t spring yet in northern Iowa. The sun was shining only anemically today. Kathryn knew more snow would come before spring truly arrived. ‘Betwixt and between,’ her mother would say. ‘You’re just betwixt and between, honey. Wait a spell. Something’ll shove you one way or the other.’

Kathryn tried scanning the juice again, to no avail. She began punching in the numbers from the bar code, but found that her star had scratched through two of them. She pressed the intercom code again. ‘Price check on one.’ She kept her finger on the button, toying with the idea of announcing, ‘Naked woman on one.’ That would get Matt and Mr Knelbrecht, and the guys from the back, running up for sure. Tom would emerge from his break only if she said ‘Naked guy on one,’ and then he’d try to saunter by inconspicuously. She put the juice aside and returned to the basket, picking up item after item, not looking, not counting, not caring that this woman probably had thirty items in her basket.

Betwixt and between. Ding. Her mother. Ding. Just thinking of her made her blood boil anew. Ding. What she’d done was unforgivable. Ding. Kathryn was already pissed at her for just planning the trip, let alone actually going on it. Ding. Ding. Didn’t she realize how much Lucy would miss her? She wasn’t thinking about anyone but herself. Ding. Even when she’d shown that damn picture to those men in the restaurant, she’d been thinking about herself. Ding. Another example of C.C. Byrd dealing with that one messy corner left in her life: the embarrassing unmarried daughter situation.

Matt arrived just as she scanned the last item. Finally. Kathryn held up the juice, he nodded, ran to get another. Good kid. She sacked the woman’s groceries, then reached under the counter and grabbed the paper towel and Windex. She angrily scrubbed the scanner while she waited for Matt.

It didn’t seem right, her almost-fifty-year-old mom taking off on a road trip, like a college kid. And here she was, working overtime at the SavR King. Being the responsible one. One irresponsible moment with that handsome blackjack dealer in Las Vegas had determined a level of responsibility for her that would last her lifetime. She adored Lucy, and would do anything for her. But she battled the persistent feeling that doing anything for herself was at odds with doing something for her daughter. Not to mention what she made her daughter do. Lucy had tearfully begged yet again this morning not to be made to go to school. Pretty tough to take from a second grader.

She leaned on the intercom button again, knowing it would be more productive to try to get a response from deep space. ‘Checker needed up front, please.’ Was Matt squeezing the damn oranges to get the juice?

Standing there at register one, under the sign that, this morning, falsely advertised ‘EXPRESS’, Kathryn picked up the scratched can of juice. She closed her eyes, felt her fingers clenching around the can.

‘Kathy, honey? Are you okay?’

Kathryn opened her eyes. It was Mrs B. Sweet old Mrs Benettucci, standing there, still holding her basket, with maybe five items, but starting to sag under its weight. Kathryn reached over and took her basket. ‘Here, Mrs B., let’s set that up here.’

She turned to the woman waiting to pay. ‘Free juice today,’ she said, tossing the scratched can into her bag, smiling, punching the total key. The woman looked only mildly placated as she swiped her credit card. Kathyrn handed her the long receipt, far too long to be under fifteen items. ‘Have a good day,’ Kathryn told her. The woman silently took her receipt and left.

Mrs B. shuffled to the check-writing platform; it came only to her chest. She placed her knobby hands on top.

‘How are you today, Mrs B.?’ Kathryn asked, punching the numbers into her keypad so Mrs B. could swipe her SavR King Valued Customer card. As the old woman worked at threading her card into the slot with her trembling hand (Kathryn knew she liked to do it herself, and if anyone was to be indulged, it was Mrs B.), Kathryn smiled, looking at the top of Mrs B.’s head. She knew from long experience that Mrs B. had twenty-two silver bobby pins holding her eleven gray pin curls in place, her head a neat pattern of Xs so she could look nice for someplace other than the grocery store.

‘Oh, can’t complain,’ she said. They smiled at each other, an unspoken acknowledgement that Mrs B. had a lot she could complain about, but rarely did. Kathryn quickly scanned a small box of fiber cereal, two bananas, a small drum of old-fashioned oatmeal, a quart of milk and a tube of arthritis ointment. Mrs B. had pen in hand, poised above her checkbook, waiting to dole out a quarter of her weekly budget for, basically, breakfast. Kathryn wondered if Mrs B. ate cereal for two, if not three meals a day.

She looked at Mrs B., then suddenly was aware that only one very irritated man remained in her line, the guy in the ill-fitting suit. He was watching the remainder of her line following Ting toward register six, like little goslings with grocery baskets over their wings, following the goose. Ting, about as high as she was round, even waddled like a goose.

‘Oh, and this please,’ said Mrs B., after she’d checked the total on the screen. She handed Kathryn a small tin of mints.

‘Sure,’ said Kathryn. ‘Do you want it in your bag or your purse?’

‘Bag, please,’ she said to both Kathryn and Matt, who was now standing at the end of her counter.

‘Sorry,’ said Matt, almost breathless. ‘We’re, like, completely out of that kind of juice, so I went to the back to check and they spilled, like, a whole box of cabbages back there.’ He grinned. ‘They’re rolling all over the place. Tom’s back there imitating Knelbrecht, saying, “Heads will roll for this!”’ Kathryn thought Matt had a great laugh.

She smiled at him. ‘No problem. But in the future, if the item’s not up front, just come tell me right away, please.’

He nodded, then tucked the mints into one of Mrs B.’s two canvas bags. Kathryn made a mental note to thank him for remembering to use both of Mrs B.’s bags, even for just the few items. Mrs B. walked and bused everywhere, therefore liked the weight split between two bags. Plus, Kathryn knew, she liked getting double bag credit.

She took Mrs B.’s proffered check, stamped it, opened the register, slipped it under the drawer, and removed a dime. She placed the coin carefully in Mrs B.’s soft, wrinkly palm. ‘Here’s your bag credit, Mrs B. Don’t spend it all in one place.’

Mrs B. chuckled, and Kathryn fed on it like a transfusion. She knew it wouldn’t cure her disease, but it might help her survive one more day.

CHAPTER EIGHT Meg

‘Y’all better pull over soon, Shel.’

Meg heard C.C.’s voice, understood her words, but they sounded hollow, as if they were coming from the far end of a tunnel. Lulled by movement and the low and steady drone of the motor, she’d fallen into a deep car-sleep; emerging was like swimming up to an unseeable surface. She wondered how long she’d been asleep.

‘There’s a lot of traffic right here. I’ll pull off at the next exit.’ Shelly’s voice too sounded distant, boxed in. Meg blinked, started to lift her head, felt a sharp pain in the side of her neck. She licked her dry lips, groggily remembered C.C. announcing several miles ago that MJ. had woken up and might need to pee. But Meg had drifted right back into a sleep that felt deeper than she’d had in weeks. With her head resting against her wadded-up sweater on the window, her neck felt like it had petrified at that angle. She massaged it with one hand, rubbed her eyes with the other, finally coming out of her stupor. A loud, sharp bark made her jump, sending a shooting pain down her neck.

M.J.’s bark was surprisingly deep, given her small size. Meg gingerly turned around in her seat. MJ. barked again, staring directly at her. There was an unmistakable look of urgency in the dog’s eyes. She remembered the same look in Buster’s eyes when he would stand by the back door, waiting to be let out. He never barked, though they’d wished he would. Meg had tried to teach him to bark, to complain, because too often she would come from another room to find him standing silently by the front door, waiting patiently, looking absolutely pained, and she would have no idea how long the poor dog had been suffering silently. Sometimes she would just get a feeling, maybe noting his absence for a while. She’d often find him leaning on the door, looking like he’d give anything for the power of speech at that moment. Or opposable thumbs. After a while, he learned to come find them, then just her. Grant, whether watching TV or reading a book, would be so absorbed he would rarely notice the dog’s urgent stares. So he’d find Meg, home his big brown eyes in on her.

Buster. Meg closed her eyes again, a small moan escaping as she pictured not their old lovable, floppy-eared shepherd mix, but instead his urn. She had initially set it on the mantel, thinking: that’s where urns go. But unbeknownst to her, days before the trip, Grant had moved it. Merely moved it. She’d thought he’d taken it.

For three days, Meg had believed Grant’s note: that he was going to Lake Louise to sprinkle Buster’s ashes. She had been hurt and angry that he would do such a meaningful and important ritual without her. But she had not suspected more to his unannounced departure. It was only on the third day that she found Buster’s urn. It was completely full, tucked behind the curtain on the wide, low windowsill of the living room. It was as if Grant had said his own final goodbye to the dog by placing the urn where Buster had so often sat in life: at the window, watching the squirrels cavort across the hillside and into the woods. Panicked at what her bones already knew, Meg had searched the house, found all the wrong things missing: Grant’s camera equipment, his laptop, his box of old manuscript starts from college. His baseball cards. The photos of the kids from his dresser. Left behind were his Fighting Cougars mug from work, the Cougar book ends–a gift on his retirement–many of his clothes, all of his ties, and his briefcase. Their wedding photo remained on his dresser.

Although Meg had tried to rationalize all this–Well, he’s just gone off to do some photography, some writing, she thought, even though he’d never actually done that before, just talked about it–after finding the urn, there was a foreboding inside her for the rest of that day, one that grew all night, like a tsunami slowly rolling in from another continent, not knowing when it would crash over her. It had kept her awake all night.

The next morning Meg wandered in her thin, blue robe, no slippers on her cold feet, through the quiet house, clutching her robe closed with one hand, checking all the spots where the missing items should be. Only hours later, when, sobbing again, she’d picked up Buster’s urn, cradling it in her arms, had she seen the other note. He’d anchored it–or hidden it–under the urn. It only confirmed what her heart already knew.

Meg, I’ve left. I had to. I’m doing this for both of us. All the bits of glue that were keeping us together are gone. I think we both know that. I have needs I can no longer deny. I’ve ignored my own dreams and aspirations for too long. Maybe you’ll find a dream of your own.

I’ll write when I land somewhere. Take care.

Grant

His words ate at her like parasites, from the inside out. Who was he to say she didn’t have a dream? Hadn’t she already achieved that dream? Of raising a family, meaningful work, a life-long marriage? It was his note that had ended her dream.

A car honked. Meg blinked, that amorphous pain in her torso again. She couldn’t even tell exactly where it was. Maybe that’s what a broken heart felt like, when it spilled over inside you. She stared at the traffic zooming along the lanes of interstate.

‘I am not kiddin’, Shell!’ said C.C. ‘She’s going t’pee on me!

She won’t even eat a cookie.’ Meg looked back and saw C.C. offering the dog a piece of Nilla Wafer, saying, ‘Cookie? Cookie, girl?’ but M.J. turned her head.

‘All right, all right. I’m working on it! Hang on,’ said Shelly. She made a hissing sound as she frantically scanned the heavy traffic. She flipped on the turn indicator. ‘C’mon, somebody let me in!’

Shelly made her way, at seventy miles an hour, across one of the lanes. The dog was whining in the back seat, punctuated by nervous noises from C.C.

Meg rubbed her face vigorously, sat up, rubbed and stretched her neck till it was moveable again, then helped Shelly watch for holes in the traffic that they might dart into.

‘Maybe after this green car, get ready…No! Wait! That van is changing lanes.’

‘Nice signal, asshole,’ Shelly said to the van as it flew by.

Meg felt displaced and disheartened. A passenger in her own little car, far from home in every sense, she was just so much flotsam being carried along this anonymous highway, and her suddenly anonymous life. That tsunami had hit, swept through her life, her home, shot her over the edge, a crushing, noisy waterfall, dropping her here. A passenger, in her car, and in her life.

Another horn blared. Cars of every color and shape whizzed by, passing the slow ones doing the speed limit. Why was everyone in such a hellfire hurry? What, exactly, were they rushing to with such life-threatening speed? Did they even know? Meg wondered. Did she?

‘I swear, girls! If we don’t get this dog outta this car, and soon, we are gonna have a little sea of dog pee back here!’ Meg looked back, saw C.C. trying to carefully ease her coat under M.J., over her lap, just in case.

‘Shit!’ said Shelly, scanning and twisting back, then forward. ‘Come on! Somebody let me in! Please? Damn! Okay, if you want to play hardball…’ She pulled on the emergency flashers. Nervously monitoring traffic both in front and behind, she cried, ‘Meg, roll down your window and point! I’m going to have to just go for it!’

Meg stared at her briefly, then, like an automaton, rolled down her window. The wind made her eyes water as it whipped into the car. She waved at the driver coming up, mouthed ‘Emergency’ and pointed. Amazingly, the driver slowed. Shelly veered into the gap, then kept on going. Meg screamed as they cut off a huge pickup truck, his horn blasting. M.J. started barking in the back seat.

‘Coming through! Dog pee-pee emergency! Sorry!’ yelled Shelly, veering across lanes. The pickup truck driver shot Meg the finger. She pulled herself back into the car, rolled up her window, holding her back tightly against the seat. Finally Shelly got the car to the wide shoulder of the highway, braking slowly at first, then very firmly. Meg felt squeezed by her seat belt.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ cried C.C. Meg clicked her seat belt release and was out of the car before it had come to a complete stop. She pulled open C.C.’s door. She grasped M.J.’s narrow sides, lowered her to the asphalt. She wasn’t sure the dog’s toenails had even touched down before the relief finally flowed into M.J.’s eyes, and a yellow rivulet twined along the asphalt.

‘Thank you, Jesus! In the nick of time!’ C.C.’s hands were on her heaving chest as she sat in the car. ‘Better tie this on her again.’

She thrust the twine toward Meg. Meg untangled it, made a slipknot, and placed the loop over M.J.’s needle-nose and small head, remembering again that they needed to get her a proper leash and collar. But maybe not. They’d made good time. They’d likely be dropping her off later today. And the dog didn’t seem to mind the twine at the moment. Though Meg thought she probably wouldn’t mind an inverted spike collar, at the moment.

‘Wow. She has a big bladder for such a little dog,’ said Shelly, who had appeared by Meg’s side. ‘Boy. Look at her go.’

M.J.’s eyes were glassy and fixed. Meg tried not to look below, but found herself mesmerized by the pee moving across the asphalt. It was meandering down the slight grade, toward a dry ditch on the side of the road. C.C. was waiting, still sitting on the end of the car seat, door open, her spiky heels hooked on the edge of the car frame, staring at M.J., directly at her feet.