She was standing in line at the grocery store. It was one of those slow days, a Thursday to make it worse. She had rushed from work in her little Renault to make it and it had almost given in. Melanie hated shopping at this hour; she felt rushed by her fellow shoppers in picking out produce and the cashier lines were always interminable. She had now been waiting in hers for more than ten minutes, feeling as though she had chosen the wrong one of the two when she realised she had forgotten to pick up butter. She absolutely needed it for her weekly brown butter cookies to be a success. She didn’t have to share it with anyone else tonight as her roommate was working her night shift.
She peered ahead and determined there was at least another five minutes to wait, especially with that young boy behind the cash register who was looking overwhelmed and even seemed to be breaking a sweat now. She sighed and asked the person behind her, a small bald man if he would be so kind as to safeguard her spot while she went to get it. He said something which she couldn’t really make out but decided that was sufficient and ran for the butter. Of course, there was a horde in front of the dairy aisle, and she had to plough through arms and shoulders before she could put her hand on the cold block of milk. She ran back, thanked the man, who once again grunted something incomprehensible and stood back behind her trolley. Her eyes fell once more to the cashier - he felt familiar to her, even though she didn’t often come to this grocery store. She couldn’t take her eyes off him and he looked up at her in between scanning two products, in that sixth-sense human reaction, even though there were about two meters between them still. As they made eye contact for a split second she was taken aback by his eyes. She couldn’t quite make out their colour just yet, but their shape, and that piercing gaze... It was almost like... Surely there could be more than two people on earth who had similar eyes, otherwise, there wouldn’t be many more human faces which could be configured, she reassured herself. It happened all the time, actually, lookalikes. Just this morning she scrolled through a collage of different actors who had no blood relation yet who looked suspiciously similar on her phone.
She forced herself to look away now, not wanting to be a creep who made his already jam packed line worse to deal with. She knew her fair share about working customer-facing jobs herself. Actually, she thought back, that had been the first job she had taken after leaving him at her sister’s. She was a cashier at an upscale clothes shop, her days filled with impossible customers; mostly older women who would get upset if they couldn’t return a clearly worn article of clothing. That first month was spent thinking about two things; the boy, and staying sober. In a way, those customers had been her only distraction, and she almost came to enjoy their little fights. Sixteen years... She had made it, never touched another pill ever again. But that hadn’t been enough for her family. Instead of the yearly celebrations she had expected from them once she got out of rehab, where her mom or dad would cheer how far she had come, she barely received any phone calls. Apparently, they had gotten used to her absence. Every family needs a black sheep, she understood that and was willing to bear it, but when they forgot to call for her thirty-first birthday recently - a civility they usually respected - she broke down. Sixteen years that she hadn’t seen the boy either, and she wasn’t even allowed to ask after him. ‘You should be grateful that your sister is so selfless, and not reproachful, Melanie’: the words her mother had uttered when she tried to argue that her sister not granting her any news was cruel resonated in her head. Melanie had always wondered if she would recognise him if she was to run into him. After all, she didn’t live that far away from her sister, so it wasn’t completely off the table. She had never been allowed even one picture, so imagining how his little baby face had evolved wasn’t easy. It wasn’t even the being the mom part she missed - that she conceded was not for her - she just felt odd, that she had put this human here on earth and now couldn’t even ask how he was doing, how he felt about being here. She would have loved being an aunt at least, or something of that sort.
The bald man was now saying something again, confused, she just looked ahead and realised the line had cleared in front of her and she had left a dangerous gap between her and the next customer. She apologised and quickly moved up, now having a clearer view of his face. She tried focusing on the gum packs and granola bars above the conveyor belt, but her eyes kept getting drawn to him. A feeling rooted deep inside her made her certain it was him. Making sure he had to focus on his screen as he was printing out a receipt, she managed to get a better look at his eyes, which were the same exact colour as her own, an almost disconcerting grey-blue. She didn’t care about waiting in line any longer, in fact, she never wanted the line to end. Her heart began beating faster and she could hear its echo in her ears. Her palms, clutching the kart, were profusely sweating by now. Her desire to meet him had never won over her desire not to disturb his sense of self, so she had sworn to herself to never force it or even disclose their relation in case she ran into him. In her heart, she had always hoped that one day, her sister would finally pick up the phone and ask her to come over, to join them for lunch and just talk. She didn’t even know what they had officially named him. She had confided in her sister that her one wish was for him to be called Holden, a name she had fallen in love with that year when they were reading The Catcher In The Rye at school. She peered down at his name tag - Nicholas. Nick, that wasn’t so bad. It was stupid anyway, to name someone after a character in a book.
She had to force herself to look away, trying to think of what movie she would pick out to watch tonight, as she could feel some tears making their way into her eyes. But her mind wouldn’t cooperate, it was completely blank of any movie name she had ever heard of, and her eyes, which she had shut for a bit, kept reopening and looking towards the cashier. ‘I must look like I’m about to puke or have a stroke’, she thought, which finally knocked her back into a more composed self. Maybe she was just imagining things. Sure, he looked slightly similar to her, but again, what did that truly mean? There was a woman at work who looked like her twin, to the point where everyone kept mixing up their names and mistaking one for the other. She would need stronger evidence to warrant this state of discomposure. She tried to come up with nonchalant questions that would allow her to unmask his age but each sounded worse than the previous one. The word trainee gleamed under his name on the tag, so surely he was no older than 18, and she thought how cruel of his boss to make him work during such a busy time. Then again, maybe that was good actually, it would teach him how to deal with stressful moments at work. She caught herself anxiously wondering about his well-being again and again and had to keep reminding herself that this was a perfect stranger, who only maybe was her son, and even then, she was still a complete stranger to him.
But it was stronger than her, she wanted to know at all costs, and she wanted to have some form of contact with him. It was hard enough to never see him, the only reminder she had of him was her C-section scar and an old pixelated picture of his puffy little face, but now that he was - granted only potentially - right in front of her, it was impossible to suppress her curiosity. What had she ever done to him after all? Her family all treated her like she had put him on this earth for the sole purpose of tormenting him, yet she had accepted letting her older sister raise him so her kid could have a sibling. She was the one who had made the biggest sacrifice for him. There was finally this opportunity, shining brightly in front of her, and she had to come up with something. She was moving mindlessly with the line, staring at him without care at this point - the boy was too busy with the rush anyway - and was now only two customers away from him. She thought again about the ‘trainee’ on his tag, she could say something about that. That wouldn’t be weird, she would show concern as a nice and sensitive customer, and a former cashier. She would ask how long he’d been in training, and then at what age he had started working, mentioning casually that she began at fifteen. She could feel her mouth getting dryer and her palms wetter. Once she arrived in front of him, she was so focused on her questions that she almost forgot to reply to his ‘hello’. Forcing a natural smile as his blue eyes met hers, he quickly looked down and scanned her groceries as fast as he could. That was her cue.
“So, how long have you been a trainee?” She finally asked.
“Sorry, not long. I’ll try to be quicker.” He replied, nervous and avoiding her gaze. She wanted to collapse into the ground.
“Oh, that’s not what I meant. Sorry. I’ve been there myself.” She tried to reassuringly smile at him when he furtively glanced at her. “It gets better,” she added and before she had time to go on he was asking her whether she would pay by card or cash.
She looked at the line behind her, visibly unamused by her attempts at a conversation, then back at the boy who looked anxious to be done with said line, and replied; “card.”
She drove back in a haze, with cars blaring as they passed her. When she finally parked in her spot, she couldn’t get herself to move out of the car and take the groceries from the back seat and then all the way up. She stayed there, sitting and looking ahead, not really knowing what she was feeling anymore, overwhelmed. It was growing colder, and instead of prompting her to go up to her apartment, she turned on the heating. After about an hour, she finally mustered up some courage and made her way home. She placed the shopping bag on the kitchen table and started pulling the groceries out absentmindedly, but soon realised almost all of them were oily and sticky. Then she saw the culprit, the butter, which, left near the heating vent, had completely melted and transferred itself onto the other items. She looked at it all, defeated. Perhaps there was no good reason to go prodding in the past. Things were as they were, and she should let them be that way. She fished out a pasta box and pack of ham that weren’t too badly damaged and threw the rest of the bag away.
Natalia @natspikks is a freelance writer and student of Linguistics and English Literature. With roots in Slovakia, she currently spends most of her time between Belgium and Luxembourg. In her work, she likes to examine what it means to belong. Her creative writing is published or forthcoming in “The Storms Journal”, "Flare: An Anthology of Chronic Illness”, and “Life–A Series of (Un)Eventful Events - Young Voices from Luxembourg”. Books and museums are her favourite things to get lost in.
Comments