Lot 72

3

The last time Summerfield Market experienced major change was when the boys came home from Europe and the US government stopped giving out ration stamps. Lowell Summerfield's grandfather built the store when the town was little more than a German settlement in the New World. Lowell had been the old man behind the counter when I was a kid. Now he was positively ancient, and he glowered at his customers over half-moon spectacles from a stool. His son, also an old man now, ran things in the office—a raised platform in one corner of the store. The grandson, a barrel-chested middle-aged man with muttonchop sideburns, worked as the butcher and had always, to me, seemed a little too enthusiastic about his bloody work. The whole place stank of cheap floor polish and moldy ceiling beams and something I could never quite name. Or maybe I just didn't want to think too hard about it. Unless a person wanted to spend an hour or more driving on roads crisscrossed with patches of black ice, Summerfield Market was the only source for anything resembling groceries.

I selected a cart with three working wheels and set off toward the single island cooler and four wooden bins that counted as the produce section. There, trying to decide if I might just be better off buying canned tomatoes, someone called my name.

"Jess Kellerman?"

I looked up from the greenish-orange fruit in my hand to see a chunky redhead wrapped in enormous, colorful swaths of knit wool. The light reflected from the lenses of her emerald green glasses, giving her blank, robotic eyes. Her bright orange lips were parted in a perfect O.

"Yes?"

"Oh, goodness, I guess you don't remember me. Why would you? Big star like you. I didn't think you'd ever show your face in this sorry little burg again."

I wouldn't have, if I hadn't chained myself to this town with my stupid promise. She was dying when I promised it. She's been gone for a larger portion of my life than she lived through.

I smiled at the stranger inching toward me.

"I'm Myrtle, Myrtle—"

"Meyer," I finished. The memory of a beautiful girl, all homegrown curves and perky pom-poms flashed through my mind. On the night of our senior homecoming game, she stood on the field in a green velvet dress that showed more cleavage than I'd ever seen in person and had a slit all the way up her hip. Every cup-wearing boy on the field must have been in agony. "Of course, I'm sorry I didn't recognize you right away. I was inside my own head. I should have known better. You always were the prettiest girl in town, and you're still just as bright as the sunrise." True words. She had been pretty. She was very colorful. Call me Honest Abe.

She waved my words away and rolled her eyes. "I'm a fat old farm wife who ended up just like we all knew we would. But not you." The finger she waved in my direction was tipped with a nail so pointed I wondered if she had to register it as a lethal weapon. "You're the living, breathing American dream come true, aren't you?"

"I've been lucky." Undeniably, luck had played a part in it, but also I worked my ass off and practically sold my soul to the devil. You couldn't have convinced me to tell Myrtle Meyer any of that, though. Let her be jealous of me for a change.

"Don't tell me you've moved back here. You'll be bored to death after Hollywood."

I put the tomato back in the bin. "Trust me, after Hollywood, sometimes boring is just what the doctor ordered, but no. I haven't moved back. My Dad's birthday is tomorrow. Jake and I came to celebrate with him."

"Well, isn't that the nicest thing? Family is everything, I say. Where would any of us be without our people?"

I don't know where I would be, but I suspect I would spend less time in therapy.

Myrtle was fluffing her huge hair and looking around the empty store. "Is Jake here with you?"

"No. He went to get some stuff from Do It Best for Dad's latest project."

"Well, ain't that the way?" She threw her arms up, causing her layers to flutter around her like owl's wings. "On those old farms, there's never a day when something don't need to be fixed."

"I suppose what they lack in structural integrity, they make up for in character," I said. In the case of my father's house, it was the character of an over-the-hill ax murderer.

"We all heard about Jake's award. I said we should get the whole town together to watch the ceremony on cable television, but then everybody started fighting because the best internet signal around is at the school, but everybody knows the Johansson's have the best big screen TV. They went down to the Best Buys in Toledo and bought themselves some kind of eighty inch plasma screen doohickey that hangs on the wall just like they're living on the Star Trek Enterprise."

"Sadly, I don't think they usually give time during the televised awards for stuff like set design. They only show best actors and faces people at home will recognize."

Her big, fake smile grew wider.

I wanted to slap it off her face.

"And just when are we going to see your face on that show, eh? Must rankle a little that your big brother made it to the big time before you did."

"I'm very proud of Jake." No twisting of the truth there. I really was proud. Jealous, yes, but also very proud.

She favored me with the same condescending smile she'd flashed in my direction years ago, went on for a while about her husband's big contract with the Campbell's Soup factory down in Napoleon, Ohio, and dismissed me because she needed to get home to her children. "We have five, you know. There is no blessing in the world as great as motherhood, no amount of money could replace the richness of what I have."

My dusty old womb and I watched her waddle off toward the cash register.

Lowell caught me watching and stared me down until I gave in and turned away, taking refuge behind a shelf full of salad dressing and olives.

"It doesn't bother me that I don't have kids," I told a bird on the front of a pickle jar. "I never wanted them. Family sucks."

He kept on holding his pickle between his feathers as if it were a cigar.

I rolled my eyes at my own absurdity and went in search of the canned tomatoes. Turned out they were in aisle three and, miracle of miracles, they were both locally sourced and not yet past their expiration date. Just to be on the safe side, I loaded four cans in the cart and turned one hundred eighty degrees, and that's how my gaze ended up scanning across a shelf full of rat poison.

I stood there staring at little cardboard boxes full of death and my mind took off, racing down a dark and dangerous road I thought I'd blocked off a very long time ago.