by Owen Tucker
Note: this story was first published in The Bellingham Review’s Fall 2011 Online Edition. Illustration by author.
She first saw them in the parking lot, their arms out the windows and pounding on the metal. She had heard their music before that. Later she saw them again, as they slipped through the aisles of the grocery, whispering loud enough to clear walls.
She was just going for a cream—something direct, fast acting, palliative. She wanted only to put something on the outside and feel it ease inward. She had heard enough of trench coats and moral corruption and apologies from mothers, had seen enough repeating images of the now empty school halls with yellow tape slung between the walls. The radio was off and the car was quiet, though her palms craved her nails, and there was no reminder until they came laughing and swearing in their weighted cage.
They went in first—boys entrusted to themselves and the world to them, perhaps some blocks or miles or even further from their usual restrictions and authorities. Boys in clothes too large or too small. Boys full of plots, old and used, though convinced they had just extracted themselves from the very source of plots.
Soon after she followed. The door chime announced her entry, and she did her best to avoid seeing the piles of newspapers with pictures of bouquets and sullen culprits. She held her purse against her side.
She heard their heavy whispers through the racks as she stood before the lotions and balms and powders. At the sight of the options, her hands’ discomfort was even greater, and she rubbed the palms on the coarse fabric of her coat. She felt the burning intensify until she forced herself to make fists.
“I’ll just put it through there like nothing, can you see it? Can you?” Through the spaces in the racks of creams, she watched them hunched and fidgeting. She chose a box from the shelf.
They called each other bitch and queer and guffawed at the joking removal of certain items from the shelves. She turned around an end display and caught them opening packages. She saw a bulge below the shirt of one and knew the answer to one question she had overheard. His arms were lean and muscular, and the hair on his face was thin. Another stepped and stepped as if the ground was hot, and she expected more than slightly to see a puddle form on the tile below.
She stroked her burning palm against the sharp edge of the small box as she walked. Passing by the produce, she saw a man in a hooded sweatshirt trying to choose an orange. She watched him touch one after another, squeezing and pressing before moving on to the next. Holding an orange, he looked up to her. She brushed her hair behind her ear and then turned into another aisle. Her shoes tapped lightly on the floor.
Two of the boys stood by the cereals. She heard one say, “Shut up, there’s a lady present.” They laughed and slapped each other and went into other departments, and she aimed for the checkout.
An old woman stood marking her receipt with a pen, circling amounts and making notations, while a boy straightened up groceries in their paper bags. She set her one small box onto the conveyor belt, placed a separator behind it, and waited for the old woman to finish. The man at the register drummed his fingers and raised his eyebrows, and she wished she had not seen him do it. She knew he would speak of tragedy. It was unavoidable. That was a tax that went unaccounted, a small bit of reminder, a calculated sigh at the state of everyone and everything.
“You have kids?”
But she had not expected a question like that.
He picked up the price gun as the old woman moved on. The boys came to the register, and to her left she saw them place the most ordinary things—deodorant and floss and a candy bar. They stood all but silent, only the odd whisper of an insult and the humming of an unhummable bass line. The cashier raised his laser to them, as if it might penetrate their outer layers.
She spun toward them. Still clutching her purse to her side, her right arm folded across with the hand slipped through the left’s bent elbow, the expression she offered them was at once of wonder, suspicion, tenderness, and some deep abiding disappointment: a motherly look. The boys responded physically, with stillness, unsure of what to expect—a series of slaps, perhaps, or tears, or a tirade. They did not answer, but they did stop moving and humming. Then one of the boys stepped backward into a rack of magazines. A moment of quiet ballooned: popped. She reached for the separator, and then there was no distinction.
She said, “Let me get these things.” She swept the items toward her as if pulling in her winnings. “It’s so little. Let me.”
She looked away and then she looked back. They stood blinking.
She said, “I’m just so glad you’re alive.”
She bought their sundries and her own cream and left. She found herself almost saying thank you, and imagined, correctly, her face flush with embarrassment. In her car she set her purse on the passenger seat and locked the doors. She squeezed the cream into her hand and spread it over her tender red palms. The skin glistened. With her eyes closed, she spread her fingers outward until taut and tried to wait for a change in sensation, though unsure of how such a change would feel, and when, after some moments, she thought that it had come, she opened her eyes to find only the sharp points of her own nails pinching into begging, soft skin. It inflamed and soothed at once. She looked out to the parking lot and saw their car was gone.