Cassandra knew she had been recognized before she had finished loading the produce onto the checkout conveyor. She considered raking her groceries back into the cart and moving to the other open line, which snaked back along the magazine rack. Or even pretending she had forgotten something, disappearing into the aisles, abandoning her cart, then ducking out the far door. But the customer ahead had already been handed her receipt. Cassandra was trapped.
“You’re that lady on the home makeover show, aren’t you?” the checker said. She had a strong, direct voice that suggested she was the one who made the announcements about the special on the store brand pizza, or the advent of fresh bread in the bakery.
“Yes,” Cassandra said. She lifted the bag of apples from the cart in a way that indicated further conversation was a burden she would not accept. She was, after all, a private person. Reticent. She had agreed to the show only out of desperation, a way to save her daughters, her family. She had been paying for it since.
“You’re the one with the adorable daughter,” the checker said. “The one in the wheelchair.”
“That’s the one,” Cassandra said.
Daughter-in-the-Wheelchair was the culprit. “I’ll bet we can get on that show,” she had said. “They like pathetic. We do pathetic better than almost anyone.” She borrowed the camera to shoot the audition tape—her first role as a paraplegic media star.
“What’s her name? She has that great name.”
“Portia,” Cassandra said, as politely as she could manage. She did not smile. In the preceding months she had smiled until her cheeks threatened to split like overripe fruit. “Just fake the touchy-feely stuff, Mom,” Portia had said. “Your fifteen minutes will pass.” Not soon enough. The show aired months before, but re-runs just kept coming.
“When she opened that door to her bedroom all done up like Victorian England?” the checker said. “I went through half a box of Kleenex before the commercials.”
“Elizabethan,” Cassandra said.
The checker blinked, brandishing the cucumber—Cassandra’s cucumber—above the scale, like an eighteenth century highwayman with a flintlock pistol. Cassandra felt the pressure of people accumulating in the line, another audience. “They were going for Shakespeare, who was Elizabethan. You saw how specific Portia is about historical specifics—” quickly searching out the name tag— “Delia.” Cassandra tried to produce the facsimile of a smile.
“Yeah, Shakespeare everything. So adorable.” The cucumber nodded in agreement.
“Yes. Yes she is.” Media-genic Portia, now a celebrity, was currently appearing in the school production of “Grease” as Rizzo. Had they cast the girl in the wheelchair as a caution against street racing? Too painful to think about. A production company wanted Portia to test for a small role on a sitcom. Not exactly Juliet, but a dream come true. For both of them. Less than two years since the accident and her daughter was getting on with her life. Now if Cassandra could just get on with hers.
“And you got that fabulous bedroom all for yourself.”
They’d taken the Japanese print from above the bed, that over-used Hokusai from the Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji, the one of the boats about to be swallowed by the huge wave, the mountain watching from a distance. They had assumed she was some sort of Japanophile, but the print had been Norman’s. To watch the show, you’d think that she and Norman were almost married—one of Portia’s exaggerations. Norman had decided to go to Kuwait to move cargo. One year, he said, and he’d be back with a stack of money. But a roadside bomb got him instead. Would he have actually returned had it not?
The gay designer with the funny hair had the bright idea to paint a room-sized image of the wave on her new bedroom wall. She considered painting the wall over, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Lying in bed, waiting for sleep, Cassandra often felt she was about to be swept up in a giant wave raked out of the Sea of Japan. She thought of the blotches on the back of giant ghost crabs, said to represent the faces of those who the crabs had eaten. Yet she often awoke from dreams of being rocked gently by the sea.
Delia flipped through her price book, distracted.
“Jicama,” Cassandra said. “Dollar twenty-five a pound. It’s supposed to have some sort of healing properties.”
“Thanks, I couldn’t think what it was. I just wish I had a bathtub like that is all.” She punched in the code for the dusty-skinned tuber. Delia was talking about the bathtub with the lava rocks and the waterfall, which had broken down twice since the show.
“Not unless you’re a plumber.” Cassandra said. There—she’d managed to appear bitchy and ungrateful and small once again. She wished she could edit that out. Cassandra had seen the raw footage of her youngest daughter, Rosalind, trying to hide the disappointment upon seeing her mermaid room. She’d wanted skate punk, but some other girl had already gotten one of those earlier in the season. So Rosalind was just going to have to remain a little girl for the foreseeable future. They’d edited that so Rosalind appeared properly grateful.
Delia scanned the little yogurts that Portia loved so much, hands a blur. She paused again. “It must be tough taking care of two daughters and losing your fiancé. And then the cancer.”
It was her life, her private life they were discussing in the grocery store. “It’s in remission. You get through stuff.”
She instantly regretted the emphasis, but Delia seemed to take the hint. The items danced through the ruby disco light of the scanner – pork and beans, mac and cheese. Poor nutrition, but cheap. Cassandra still had a monthly house payment to make, now two hundred dollars more because of the increased reserves for the higher property taxes from all the improvements. Some of the other families on the show had received a brand new house, their old payments eliminated. Her family wasn’t as competitively pathetic as Portia thought.
Delia stopped again. “Oh, you poor thing.” Her hand snaked between the card reader and the cycloptic register display mounted on a pole to show the prices to the customer. The display reminded Cassandra of a crab’s eye on its stalk, watching her. Delia’s hand rested, for an instant, on Cassandra’s. There was a quick squeeze. For a moment, Cassandra wondered if Delia was going to try to scan her.
“Could we move it along here?” said a male voice. Just behind Cassandra was an old woman in a tweedy purple coat browsing the tabloids by the register. Behind her was a middle aged bald man in a sweatshirt, craning his neck.
“Be right with you, sir,” Delia said. “This is the woman on that home makeover show.”
“I don’t care,” the man said.
“We’ll be right with you, sir,” Delia said. She smiled, but not like she meant it. She turned to the microphone. “Can we have a third checker please?” Her voice resounded through the store like a goddess addressing mortals, “third checker” lingering like a magic spell. The scanner beeped in steady rhythm and Delia bagged with her other hand. She was good at what she did when she actually did it.
“Life must be so much better for you now,” Delia said.
What was Cassandra going to say? That neighbors still left casseroles on her doorstep all these months after the show aired? That her faith in humanity was restored and she was indeed grateful, but, as awful as it sounded, if one more person lunged to hug her, she was going to use the mace in her purse?
“I could use one of those home makeovers myself,” Delia said. “My husband left me with a kid and no forwarding address. I’m in an apartment though, so they’d never pick me.”
“Excuse me,” the man in the sweat pants said. “There’s still no third checker.”
Delia turned to the man. Cassandra recognized the anger in Delia, the strain of moving forward against the current of life, about to be swept away by a wave of frustration.
And she could not avoid remembering the bus, which blocked her view of the new house until the right moment, rolling forward. The neighbors, most of whom she had never spoken to, all gathered to be on TV and cheer. Most had helped, if not swinging hammers, then cleaning, baking, serving lemonade, even contributing money. It wasn’t a rich neighborhood. They didn’t have to do that.
Might as well get this over with, she thought.
“Sir, it’s okay,” Cassandra said to the man. “Delia and I are almost done here.” She reached her hand between the eye-on-a-pole register display and the credit card reader and grasped the back of Delia’s hand, which clutched a plastic bag of broccoli. She gave the hand a little squeeze.
