The Memory Giver (#Wattys2014)

Chapter 12

                                                          Chapter twelve

        Annabelle Miller was upset.  Hell, she was more than upset, she was downright annoyed and with good reason.  After working the store every afternoon that week, putting up with all those snotty-nosed, sugar-craving, after school knuckleheads four afternoons in a row, here she was on a Thursday night, during prime time TV hours, minding the store again.

        She should’ve been home watching The Cosby Show and Cheers and Hill Street Blues.  She’d told George umpteen times they should get a small portable for the store so she wouldn’t miss any of her shows on nights like this. The price of portable TVs had come way down and it’d cost them next to nothing. George’s standard response to her, like a parrot, crowing without thinking was if she were watching TV instead of the theft mirrors he had installed four years ago, half their inventory would go walking right out the front door along with the Huxtables.

        These aren’t the old days, Annabelle.  The neighborhood has changed.

        George was referring to the blacks, Puerto Ricans and Cubans, who now made up more than half of their clientele.  Those people have no respect for another man’s property, George constantly reminded her.

        Annabelle didn’t like when George referred to ethnics as those people. Coralee Calendar, Rachel Trueblood and Mabry Dawson weren’t those people, they were her friends, had been her friends for a long time. Annabelle knew she couldn’t readily complain about having to be there on a Thursday night no matter how annoyed she was.  George was taking care of business at the rotary, one of several community organizations they belonged to.  Those community organizations were the reason their business continued to flourish despite the rise of big box supermarkets, come to squeeze the life out of the mom and pops of America. There was no big box supermarket in their community. The local politicians had managed to keep them out—so far, but the local politicians required grease, the grease was supplied by the community organizations.  And so there she sat, while her husband attended to the business of keeping their business from going under.

        It was a quiet night.  Thursdays often were.  Everyone’s at home watching The Cosby Show.  I’m not gonna think about it, Annabelle told herself.  I’m gonna sit here and sip my tea. Annabelle’s “tea” had been replaced in the Styrofoam cup around sundown with rum and coke. 

        Just after nine pm. Annabelle’s “tea” ran out.  A small bottle of Bacardi was stashed in her purse just in case this misfortune occurred. What she needed, however, was another coke.  So Annabelle Miller got off her stool, placed a pencil in her Mary Higgens Clark paperback to hold her place, and ventured down the aisle, headed for the soda case in the back. She was feeling no pain. That’s what George used to say when he got liquored up. The “tea” had smoothed away all the edges.

        Cheer’s is coming on right about now, she thought, smiling as she called up images of Sam and Rebecca, who had replaced Diane when Shelly what’s her name went off to become a movie star.

        As she moved down the aisle, she could see the top of the Pull-Ups display in aisle two. This brought the fat Dawson boy to mind.  He’d always been a porker, but since his brother had passed, he’d gained several more unsightly pounds.  Annabelle considered the toll Adrian’s death had taken on his mother, and figured eating everything in sight was how the younger Dawson boy was coping.  They were so close. Poor fat thing’s going to eat himself to death. Either that or he’s developed a glandular problem like Ross Rainey. She laughed out loud at that one.  The Fat Boys.  She’d heard the nicknames, secretly thought that one was funny.