A Trip to the Supermarket

When you lose the person you love most, the world stops. But only for you.

I was married to Abby for two years before she told me she had lung cancer. I still get angry, sometimes, when I remember how long she waited before she told me. I married a dying women. She later said, through tears, that she was afraid I would leave her if I knew. And maybe I would have. But I should have gotten that choice. I hated her for that.

Other times, I feel guilty, horribly guilty, when I remember teasing her about her smoking habit. “That cancer stick is going to be the death of you,” I would joke, and she would glare at me. I hate being right.

She died four months short of our five year anniversary. We had been together almost seven years at the time. Long enough to buy a house, have a baby. But we never did. She kept saying she wanted things to “stay the way they are.”

I didn’t cry during her funeral. Instead I tried to count the flowers in the elaborate arrangements that had been sent. I don’t remember the number, but I remember that her brother was wearing blue socks and sitting in the seat in front of me. I never said goodbye to her. Not when she was in the hospital, not at the funeral. I wasn’t ready.

The day after the funeral, I began carrying a gun.

When the lady at the gun shop, with the birdlike voice and the scar under her eye, first put the gun in my hand, I imagined that I was feeling the same way that Abby did every time she lit another cigarette. As the glowing red tip inched closer to her mouth with every breath, she took one more step into the Reaper’s arms. One more step out of mine.

I don’t know if I bought the gun for myself or for the world. The first night I went home and practiced loading the gun again and again. I stared at it for hours, wondering if I wanted to kill myself, or go to the supermarket for bread and peanut butter. Finally, I decided to flip a coin. Heads, I decided, would mean that I still had a few more years to go. Tails meant that the last bullet was meant for me.

This is what my life amounted to. 25 years old, huddled in a closet as if I were trying to hide from God’s sight, deciding my fate by the flip of a fucking quarter. Who was I, dammit? An aspiring photographer, living in a cheap apartment that smelled like decaying cat guts, with a woman who was really a carcass. I had been sleeping next to a fucking cadaver for the past five years. So what if she was breathing? She was still dead, dead as a dog, dead as a doornail, dead as fucking road kill. My road kill wife.

The coin landed on the pumpkin orange carpet, and George Washington winked at me.

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My lungs were starting to burn. I realized a long time ago that each breath I take in life is one less to go before I die, so I try to hold my breath when I’m idle. Waiting in line at the grocery store certainly counts as idleness, so I simply don’t breathe. My friend Dave once pointed out that holding my breath too long would accelerate, rather than decelerate, my headlong plunge towards death. I told him I wouldn’t hold my breath that long. I’m not stupid, for chrissakes.

Finally I couldn’t hold it any longer, and my breath exploded from my mouth. The gasp for breath morphed immediately into a hacking cough that felt like my stomach is attempting to cram itself into my esophagus. Bent over at the waist, clutching a jar of Skippy Super Chunk as if I was trying to strangle it, I coughed and hacked and wheezed, my mind frantically calculating the number of breaths I was wasting. Shit!

Finally regaining control, I took a deep breath and straightened. There was a fat woman in a sleeveless red shirt holding the hand of her young son, whose other hand was at his face with the pinky finger lodged inside his nostril. Both were staring at me, mouths open and perplexed. I glanced around me to discover that the expression was apparently the latest trend, as the other customers had adapted a similar pose (minus, of course, the finger up the nose).

I began to answer, but realized that I had several breaths to make up for. Instead, I just bobbed my head optimistically, smiling into my cheeks puffed with air that I refused to waste. Yes, I’m fine. Just a little cough. Maybe I should pick up some Robitussin while I’m here, hee hee.

The other patrons eventually turned away, but the kid, the booger-picking brat was still staring at me. I ignored him at first, then stared at him. Then I pretended to ignore him while secretly watching out of the corner of my eye, but that didn’t work either. Then I picked up my right arm, hand still holding the peanut butter, and feigned a hard, fast throw at his face. The little snot squealed like a kicked puppy and tried to duck, but instead ended up falling backwards onto his chubby little brat ass, causing me to burst out
laughing, which wasted more of my fucking breath quota. Goddamn crotch spawn!

My free hand slipped into my pocket, and I fondled the gun. If the bullets I had loaded were not meant for me, they must have been meant for something. George Washington told me so.

Maybe it was for this little piece of shit, now being scolded by his mother “be more careful, sweetie.” Maybe he needed a bullet right between those wide, empty eyes of his. That would fucking teach him to stare at strangers in a supermarket and waste their goddamn oxygen.

Or maybe for the mother. Woman probably wouldn’t feel a thing, but it would take a few tried to hit anything important under all those layers of blubber. Ever heard of Atkins, you disgusting, tubby bitch? You and your spawn with the chubby hands and the prying eyes.

Or that couple over there, holding hands. How dare you be out here, buying pork chops and a gallon of skim milk, in the middle of the night, barely 24 hours after they buried my wife? My road kill wife who didn’t tell me she was dying. My lovely carcass with the long blonde hair and the pack-a-day habit. The rotting lungs. And there you stand with your glowing skin and white-toothed smile, fingers entwined like you’ll never lose each other. Who the fuck do you think you are?

Tubby and her brat gathered their grocery bags and hustled off. Their lucky night. My grip began to relax on the gun and the peanut butter jar. I even allowed myself another breath as I set my purchase on the conveyor belt that carried it into the young cashier‘s waiting hands.

Sliding my purchase across the scanner, the perky counter girl smiled at me. “How are you this evening, sir?”

I returned the smile. “Quite well, actually. I haven’t breathed hardly at all since entering this line, my wife finally died after lying to me for almost five years, and I haven’t killed anyone today.”

She looked at me quizzically for a moment before bursting into laughter. “Yes, well there’s always tomorrow!” she replied cheerfully.

I took the plastic bag that contained my crushed peanuts deliciously seasoned with a hearty partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Swinging it gaily next to my hip as I strode towards the doors, I began to whistle “Winter Wonderland” as I stepped into the frozen January night.

Yes, there is always tomorrow. But as long as I have a loaded gun and a full peanut butter jar, there’s no hurry to get there.