NOWFRIDAY, MAY 3

Leah


The key is to go to a few different stores. I used to always go to Jerry’s Liquors on Bonifant Avenue. I was a regular. Too regular. Jerry’s mouth started to form a thin line when I’d come in. I could see the conflict on his face. He was glad for the business, but judgmental about the frequency of my visits.

Don’t make this hard on me, his face seemed to say. Don’t make me feel bad for you.

Jerry, like so many others, didn’t want to be bothered with sympathy.

Now, I don’t go to Jerry’s anymore. I have five other stores I frequent, all within a fifteen-mile radius of my house. They all think I’m a regular. A devoted and loyal customer.

They’re all right.

Typically, I stop by each one once a week. One store per day, Monday through Friday. I like to go in the early afternoon. Always after three, but usually before four.

My favorite store is Pine View Liquors on Main Street. My Friday store. It’s a little bit bougie, amid the boutiques selling clothing of the type I used to wear in my former life, and restaurants serving tapas and crepes, and houseware shops displaying accent chairs to be admired but not sat upon, and teakettles to be visible in the background of Instagram posts but never used, and candles to be sniffed but not lit on fire.

In addition to beer and wine and liquor, Pine View sells bags of kettle chips that shimmer with oil, colorful artisanal sodas, and specialty chocolates stuffed with PB&J, salted caramel, and cookie butter. I always load a few such items into my basket to distract the cashier from the fact that I’m a five-foot-four woman purchasing seven hundred and fifty milliliters of Grey Goose vodka, just as I do nearly every Friday.

It was in Pine View Liquors that I first saw her.

It was like looking at myself, nine months ago.

Her jeans were neither light nor dark, just blue. They grazed her ankles and the hems were frayed purposefully, rather than from wear. I knew, because I have the same ones. A flowing white blouse rested at the level of her narrow hips. She was wearing taupe espadrille wedges—closed toe, it was only May, not quite open-toe shoe season in Maryland. But her fingernails were a shiny coral hue and I could only assume her toenails matched. Her deliberately golden blond hair was loosely wavy, as if she had braided it when wet the night before.

This morning, she woke up, undid the braid, sprayed dry shampoo at the roots and hair spray at the ends and tousled them, for a beachy-looking effect. I could almost see her doing it. She may have wound a few sections around a curling iron for several seconds to enhance the definition of the waves, for a more polished look.

That’s what I used to do.

Her mouth was twisted in concentration as she inspected the wall of white wine. The sunlight filtered in through the abundant windows on the front wall of the store, reflecting off the silky-looking yellow liquid filling the bottles, and casting a warm glow across her pretty face. The shelves of wine are in the front of the store, near the windows, while the bottles of liquor and the people who buy them, people like me, are relegated to the back.

Finally, she selected two bottles—one Riesling and one sauvignon blanc—and carefully placed them into her red plastic basket, which already held a six-pack of beer. An option for those who like something sweet, and an option for those who don’t. But what about everyone in between?

I stood frozen at the edge of the aisle, watching her, but she paid me no mind until she turned away from the shelves. She moved out of the aisle, smiling slightly at me as she passed, the way strangers in close proximity do when they don’t feel threatened by the presence of the other person.

I took her place in the aisle, still fragrant from her presence, and added the same two bottles of wine to my own red plastic basket, even though I’m not usually a wine drinker. Not anymore.

The bottles clattered against each other and the Grey Goose as I followed her to the checkout line. I pictured the bottles shattering from the force of being knocked together, the liquid gushing to the floor in a waterfall, soaking my yoga pants and sneakers, the woman turning to look at me as I melted to the floor in embarrassment.

That didn’t happen, and I didn’t know whether I wanted it to, or not.

But I had become the sort of person to whom something so shameful might happen. Not like her. Her bottles would never shatter. Mine wouldn’t have, either, back then.

On my way to the checkout line, I tossed a bag of chips and two chocolate bars into my basket. I didn’t notice which flavors I selected, and that’s because it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t taste them anyway.

I stood in line behind the woman, approximately two feet away. I imagined that I was her. I wished that I was.

And I almost laughed. Because I used to be.

I could see a single gray hair sprouting from the back of her head. It must have been missed when she last had her highlights done. I resisted the urge to reach out and pluck it for her.

I have started to notice a few gray hairs on my own head as well, even though I’m not quite thirty. They’re mostly underneath the top layers of hair, around my ears. I, too, used to sit in a black leather swivel chair for three hours every few months while a woman whom I knew very superficially would paint odorous dye onto my head and fold sections of hair into the same aluminum foil used to roast potatoes or salmon. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that, and I don’t plan on resuming the dreaded ritual any time soon. I have no need for dyed hair, for multifaceted tresses, for covering grays. Not anymore.

Last Wednesday, when I awoke in the basement guest room, my head pounding and pulsing like a car full of teenagers, my mouth bone dry, I pawed at the nightstand, feeling for my cell phone so that I could check the time. Instead, I’d located a small cardboard box. I’d held it inches from my face trying to make out the words.

Permanent hair color. Ash blonde.

I hadn’t purchased it, and I hadn’t put it there. I’d thrown the box across the room with strength I hadn’t known I possessed.

My only thought: I wish I could lock him out.

Abruptly, the woman turned. My mouth fell open in surprise and I almost gasped. Almost, but I didn’t. I swallowed it down like a shot of vodka.

“Sorry,” the woman said. She smiled slightly at me again before moving out of her place in the line and ducking past me.

That’s okay, I wanted to say.

I wanted to, but I didn’t. Instead, I stepped forward and assumed what had been her place in the line. I glanced over my shoulder to see her standing in front of the rack holding bags of kettle chips. She selected two and put them in her basket. I turned away, focusing on the bald head of the man in front of me, watching as he stepped forward to pay for his six-pack of beer.

I sensed, rather than saw, the woman standing behind me.

Would she, I wondered, rip open one of the bags of chips before backing out of her parking spot, and eat one after the other on her way home, wiping jalapeño flecks and sea salt and black pepper onto her thighs, like I do? Would she open one of the bottles of wine and pour a few fingers into a stainless steel water bottle, waiting patiently openmouthed in her cup holder? Does she have a wine opener on her keychain, along with keys to her car and her house? I do. Even though I’m not usually a wine drinker—not anymore—I do. Would she sip from the cup as she made her way home, feeling the warm blush of relief burgeoning in her belly?

I felt the buzz of attention. I felt an oddly pleasant glow of affection toward this woman standing behind me. I didn’t know for certain whether she was looking at me, but I felt like she was. I wondered whether she was taking her turn, taking stock of my gray hairs.

Was she examining my once black but since faded to charcoal gray yoga pants? Was she seeing the way they stretched, with great difficulty, over my thighs and backside, which had, in the not-too-distant past, been as small and taut as hers? Was she looking at my oversized Georgetown Law sweatshirt—one of the few items I possessed that could still be considered oversized? Was she thinking that I looked sloppy and pathetic? Was she a person who had time for sympathy?

When the bald man spun away from the checkout counter, his cardboard carton of beer in one hand, his other tucking his wallet into unflatteringly too-tight jeans, I stepped forward and heaved my basket up and onto the counter.

“How are you?” said the cashier. It was a new cashier, which was strange. Usually Simran works on Friday afternoons. This cashier had a heavy brow and thick, dark eyelashes. He was very young and hopeful looking. He shouldn’t be working in a place like this.

“Great,” I lied. “How are you?”

“Great,” he echoed. He was lying, too.

Why bother asking, I wondered, when we never told the truth?


Copyright © 2022 by Nora Murphy