Everything We Ever Wanted (9 page)

J ust as she didn’t yet have her bearings in her new house, Joanna had no sense of direction in her new community. Even though she’d grown up fifteen miles from here, it might as well have

been Egypt, things seemed so alien. Every bright, massive shopping center looked the same. The Revolutionary-era stone house on one corner was identical to the Revolutionary-era stone house a half-mile down. It seemed as though there was a one-lane bridge on every side street, treacherously narrow and seemingly not spanning any water as far as she could see.

Even before Joanna and Charles had moved here, Sylvie told them that their town was getting a La Marquette grocery store. Although Joanna had no idea what this really meant—for the last ten years, she’d either been shopping at cramped Philadelphia groceries or outdoor farmers’ markets—her curiosity was piqued. So on Thursday afternoon, she printed out directions to the new store and got in the car. Mrs. Cox and Mrs. Batten were talking in the yard as usual, but she didn’t look over. She’d started calling both of them Mrs. in her head—if she couldn’t know them intimately, then she would think of them as formal schoolmarms, or as strict, scary piano teachers.

The grand opening banner was still hanging over the grocery store’s automatic doors, which opened accordion style into a bakery. From there, Joanna could see a separate room for cheese, a whole aisle of salad dressings, and a large sign in the back that shouted organic, although she wasn’t sure what was organic. An older, stylishly thin woman stood at a table, handing out mini tomato-and-mozzarella tarts. “The recipe is in my book,” she crowed at Joanna as she passed, gesturing to a glossy cookbook by her side.

Joanna did a lap of the place, marveling at how many types of barley there were to choose from, ogling the flowers in the extensive plant nursery tucked away in the corner of the store, perusing the pottery, handblown glass, and folk-art weather vanes that were displayed near the fruits and vegetables. She sampled everything: all the cheese on toothpicks, little slices of right-out-of-the-rotisserie-oven rosemary chicken, crackers accompanied by thimble-size dipping cups of olive oil. On her second lap, she began to notice something. The aisles were clogged with women in pairs, their carts side by side, and baskets swinging in their arms. Women her age, in yoga pants and T-shirts, laughing together. Women Sylvie’s age, cluttered at the waitstaffed cafe tables, picking at Cobb salads. Clusters of women at the bakery counter, clucking at the cheesecake and the chocolate-chunk muffins and the lemon-mousse tartlets. There were too many baby carriages to count.

Suddenly, Joanna felt overtly singular. She began to make a game of it, finding someone like her, someone who was simply here for the utilitarian purpose of shopping for food, not to hang out. No luck. Was there an unwritten subtext about La Marquette, like the old adage about gay men and highway rest stops? She pushed her hair out of her eyes, pretending to concentrate on her list. How did these women know one another? How did one make friends here? She’d had a growing snowball of friends in the city, gathering them as she rolled, but now it felt impossible to even talk to anyone. She looked down at her unpolished fingernails, her ripped jeans, and Charles’s parka that she’d plucked out of the closet because it was the only other coat besides his good work trench that had been unpacked. She should have showered, put on makeup, blow-dried her hair, and ironed her clothes.

“Help you?” She realized she was standing in front of the meat counter. A kindeyed older man with ham-hock biceps and a droopy mustache gave her a pitying glance. Why aren’t you with anyone?

She perused the meats, trying to seem occupied. But then, desperate to talk to someone, she asked him what he thought was good today. “Cornish game hens,” he suggested. She nodded, asking if he could wrap up two. She’d made them once before and they’d turned out all right. As the butcher ripped off a section of paper, he said, “You ever have lamb? This shipment we got in is great. From a local farm.” And so Joanna said he could wrap up some lamb for her, too. She went for two steaks as well, some hamburger patties—she could freeze it all, she figured—and was even considering ordering a whole goose before her phone rang. It was her mother. Joanna gave the butcher an apologetic smile and picked up her phone.

“So have you heard?” Catherine said. No hello.
“Heard … ?”
“Heard about me, of course.”
Joanna walked up the condiments aisle. “No …”
Catherine exhaled and paused dramatically. “I’m going into the

hospital on Friday.”
“For what?” “I thought they might have called you. I thought they called emergency contacts for things like this.”
Joanna leaned on her cart. “Why are you going to the hospital?”
“Oh, honey. It’s too depressing to talk about, really.” Her voice was frail.
“Mom …”
Catherine swallowed hard. “Treacher found a lump in my breast. I couldn’t feel it but who knows. They’re going to start with a biopsy. I’m sure it’s stage three. They’re going to have to do a mastectomy.”
“Oh,” Joanna breathed out.
“I can feel the cancer growing,” Catherine continued. “It’s probably in my lungs. Yesterday I woke up with such a headache, and I just know it’s in my brain. We probably don’t have much time left. There are so many things I need to tell you before I go.”
Joanna pinched the bridge of her nose, murmuring more notes of worry. Her mother was still going to the hospital regularly, though now she went to a hospital in Maryland. It had been a surprise when Catherine moved to Maryland six months ago, not long after Joanna’s wedding. Joanna’s dad had left promptly after the divorce, relocating to Maine, but Catherine had continued on in the little house on the outskirts of the Main Line, though Joanna had no idea how she kept up with mortgage payments. Joanna reckoned the only way she’d ever leave was if she somehow miraculously managed to find a suitable property in the Main Line proper, but when a great-aunt had died and left her a house in Maryland, Catherine had announced rather matter-of-factly that she was going to take occupancy. Joanna had helped Catherine move in and had visited almost monthly since to accompany Catherine to her bigger medical procedures. The house wasn’t very remarkable, a brick ranch with a carport, an unused, above-ground swimming pool out back, and a foul-smelling mix between a stream and a swamp beyond that.
In moving there, however, Catherine had acquired a new doctor, Phinneas Treacher, who eagerly supported every crazy self-diagnosis she’d dreamed up, ordering Catherine test after test, plying her with medication after medication. During the past six months, Catherine had had screenings for lupus, fibromyalgia, and restless leg syndrome. This winter she was certain she had mesothelioma—”It’s from asbestos,” she whispered, “and we had asbestos siding on our house when I was a kid. The lawyer on TV said that sometimes you don’t even know you have it.” She’d also undergone countless tests for colon, lung, ovarian, cervical, pancreatic, and throat cancers, though they were all benign, and she took meds for type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, early-onset Alzheimer’s, and chronic pain. It was unclear whether she really suffered from any of those things, though Joanna doubted it. She was too cowardly to ask her mom why she was still orchestrating all these trips to the ER. Maybe Catherine was so used to being a Munchausen it was now routine, in the same way some people got up every morning and went jogging. The closest Joanna ever got to broaching the subject was when she suggested Catherine might seek a second opinion, but Catherine said that was out of the question. Treacher was the best. By whose standards, Joanna wasn’t sure.
“When’s the biopsy?” Joanna asked now.
“Tuesday.”
“Well, I can be there Monday night.”
“Oh honey! Are you sure?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“You’re not busy?”
“I can manage.”
“Charles won’t mind?”
“He’ll understand.”
Her mother let out a sigh. “That’s wonderful! And perhaps you can come to the sail club with me after.”
“The sail club?” Joanna repeated, wincing. Leave it to her mother. She pictured men in seersucker suits, with thin, foreign paramours on their arms. She pictured yachts in the marina with names like My Marilyn and Fantasia II.
Then switching gears, her mother asked her how she was doing. Joanna stood up straighter. “Fine!” she chirped. “Great!” She smoothed down her hair. “I’m at the market right now, looking for something to make for dinner. We have the greatest grocery store near us. Everything is gourmet.”
“Well, that’s good,” Catherine said slowly, as if yet again she didn’t quite believe her daughter. Then again, maybe she shouldn’t. Not that Joanna could get into it with her mother. She couldn’t say, Charles didn’t respond the right way when I freaked out about my bitchy neighbors. Charles and Sylvie don’t include me in their family discussions. Charles brought up an old girlfriend in a conversation I wasn’t supposed to hear. It sounded petty and maybe even insane. If she did say anything, anything at all, Catherine would just repeat what she said at her wedding: Don’t screw it up. Don’t you dare.
“Have you heard anything else about Scott?” Catherine asked.
Joanna said no, he was meeting with a group of teachers next week to talk about the situation. Just to ask him about the wrestling team in general.
“Oh dear,” Catherine sighed.
“I thought you said you didn’t think Scott had anything to do with it,” Joanna inquired, turning down the frozen-food aisle.
“I don’t. But I don’t doubt those boys were doing something. There was this special on CNN recently about how this group of girls banded together and tormented another girl on—what’s that site? Friendbook?”
“Facebook.”
“That’s right,” Catherine said. “Well, that poor girl they were picking on killed herself, can you believe it? Just like this boy at Scott’s school! And I saw this crime program the other day where a boy was sent to prison because his interrogators wore him down until he was so confused he admitted to something he didn’t do.”
Joanna stopped in front of a freezer containing organic pancakes and waffles. “Well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”
After she hung up, Joanna stared at the little screen of her phone, feeling the same emptiness and despair that overwhelmed her whenever she and Catherine got off the phone. And she felt like she’d voiced her silly frustrations with Charles out loud.
She dialed Charles’s office to tell him she was going to Maryland again, but before she could complete the call, she heard someone calling her name. When she looked up, Scott was standing at the end of the aisle, his hands in his jeans pockets.
Joanna dropped her phone into her bag, her heart thumping. “H- hi,” she stammered. Had he heard her talking about him to her mother? What had she just said?
“I thought that was you,” he said, strutting down the aisle. A red grocery basket was hooked in the bend of his elbow.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted.
Scott smirked and gestured to his basket.
“But … here?” She waved her arms at La Marquette’s splendor. Scott seemed like the type who would buy everything he needed from the nearest gas station mini-mart.
Scott wore an enormous red hooded sweatshirt with a drawing of a boom box on it and stood with his shoulders hunched. Two women carrying coffee cups passed. They glanced at both of them for a second, and then moved on. Joanna wondered if any Swithin mothers were shopping here today. Certainly they came here—this was just the kind of place they would shop. She wondered who had told the headmaster about the possibility of hazing. A student … or a parent? A teenager would risk excommunication if he told. It seemed more the work of an adult.
“So,” Joanna said. They continued to stand in the middle of the frozen-food aisle. She didn’t want to start walking because he might not follow her, and then she would be walking away from him. Nor did she want to look inside his grocery cart—it felt like an invasion of his privacy. “H-how are you?” she fumbled.
“Eh,” Scott answered.
A woman with a cart cleared her throat, and Joanna and Scott stepped out of her way. Joanna looked at Scott. “Um, do you want to … get coffee or something? Sit for a minute?”
Scott paused for a moment, and Joanna winced. Of course he was going to say no. Of course he was going to snort and say, What, like we’re friends? This was a man who loomed over her and said, Boo.
But then he shrugged. “Okay. Whatever.”
He turned toward the coffee counter. She started pushing her cart to follow but noticed the carefully wrapped parcels of meat at the bottom of her cart. They were the only items in there so far, but when she added up the prices on the labels it totaled more than eighty dollars.
She backed away from her cart as if it were a territorial dog. Scott turned and looked at her. “What?”
Her eyes were still on the wrapped packages. Scott walked over and peered into the cart. “Lamb?” He chuckled, though not unkindly. “I don’t know what got into me.”
He shrugged. “Just leave it.”
“Leave it?”
“Yeah. I worked at a grocery store when I was in high school. They make the workers put it back.” He gestured to the front of La Marquette where there were a bunch of kids manning the checkout counters. They weren’t the usual pimply, gangly, surly grocery-store workers; the girls had glowing skin and ballerina posture, and the boys, with their tucked-in shirts and combed, neatly cut hair, looked like student council presidents. Joanna found herself wondering where Scott had worked.
She glanced at her cart again. “I feel bad.”
“Jesus.” Scott rolled his eyes and gestured for her to follow him to the coffee bar. She stepped away from the cart, feeling as though she were fleeing the scene of a crime. When she flopped down at a table, her cart no longer in view, her heart was racing with excitement. She felt like she’d gotten back at La Marquette for all its snobbish beauty, for all its cliquey women and baby carriages.
Scott asked what she wanted. Joanna gave him money, which he took and stood in line to order. When he came back, he sat down and took the lid off his coffee but didn’t add milk or sugar. Joanna stared at the faux-antique French posters on the wall, having no idea what to say.
“I’m so fucking bored,” he exploded, lacing his hands behind his head. “I’m helping out at my friend’s sneaker shop in Philly, but it doesn’t take up that much time.”
“Like, running sneakers?” Joanna asked.
Scott drummed his fingers on the table. “Designer sneakers. You wouldn’t get it.”
She squinted, thinking. “Is this the store that just opened near South Street in an alleyway? It used to be part of an old cheesesteak place?”
He raised an eyebrow accusingly.
“I read about it in City Paper,” she explained, almost like she was making an excuse.
He pointed at her. “Well look at you. You get an A-plus.”
She shoved her tongue into her cheek. To him, she was a brownnoser at the front of the classroom, calling out the answer.
Scott raised his eyebrows. “Oh. I guess I should ask you about your new house, huh?”
“It’s all right.” She waved him away. “I’m sick of talking about it.”
He cocked his head.
“It’s just exhausting to unpack, that’s all.”
He was still watching her, not buying it. She sighed and leaned forward, aware of the crowds around her. “Are people out here typically … cold?” she whispered.
Scott’s eyes widened. He rested his chin on his palm, intrigued. “Cold?”
She rubbed her hand on the back of her neck. The overhead lights seemed to burn like ultraviolet. “I just mean … women in this neighborhood. Suburban women.” She gestured around them. The women she was referring to were on all sides. “How does one get accepted by them? Is there a password?”
He snorted. “How about, ‘You’re a bitch, and so am I’?”
She hid a smile.
Scott leaned forward. “Are you talking about those ladies that live next door to you?”
She looked up, startled.
“After Charles bought the house, but before you guys moved in, I drove by. I saw them standing in the yard.”
Her cheeks burned. “Well, yeah. I’m talking about them, I guess.”
Scott balled up a paper napkin and aimed it for the trash can. It went in. “They’re fucking Stepford wives.”
She stirred her coffee. There—that was the answer she’d longed for when she called Charles yesterday. That was what she’d wanted him to say.
A woman passed carrying four bouquets of tiger lilies in her arms. And then something else tumbled unwittingly out of Joanna’s mouth. “How about . . . Bronwyn?” She squinted, as though groping for Charles’s ex-girlfriend’s name. “Was she cold, too?”
Behind them, a man working at the bakery counter called the next number, and a woman strutted up and asked for a box of croissants. “Probably,” Scott replied, his tone suddenly hard.
“I’ve never met her. I guess she moved or whatever.”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
She rotated her ankle, feeling the joint pop. “Do you know why they broke up?”
He raised his eyebrows, creasing his forehead. “Like I would know?”
“Well, Charles hasn’t really given me an answer, so …”
He pointed at her. “I never pegged you for that kind of chick.”
She sat back, self-consciously touching her chin. “What kind of chick?”
“The kind that cares.”
“N-no,” she answered. Her pulse raced, throbbing at the insides of her elbows, the backs of her knees. I didn’t used to be, she almost said.
She sat back, having said way, way too much. “No, I’m not,” she said more firmly, more certainly.
This was by far the longest, most intimate conversation she’d ever had with Scott. It was wearing her out, but at the same time, she didn’t want to move. “I’m going to see my mother next week,” she said. “I was talking to her when you came up.”
Scott smiled. “I remember your mom from your wedding. She wore that red dress.”
Joanna hid a smirk. After a few cocktails, that red dress had slipped off Catherine’s shoulders, exposing the lacy edges of her strapless bra.
“What?” Scott asked, noting her look.
“Nothing.” She stared down at the checkerboard floor. It was shiny, so clean one could probably eat off it. “She’s having some kind of breast biopsy.”
“That’s funny?”
“No . . .” She waved her hand. “I mean, it won’t be anything. It never is. But I always have to go and be with her.”
“Why do you have to go?”
“Because …”
“Doesn’t she friends who live closer? Other family members?”
Joanna stared at the barista behind the coffee counter as she industriously wiped down the steamed-milk nozzles. She wasn’t about to try and explain her issues with her mom to Scott of all people. “It has to be me,” she finally said.
“That’s pretty shitty.”
“It’s … complicated.”
Joanna’s eyes finally wandered to Scott’s shopping basket. There were a few items in it—peanut butter, a jar of olives, Klondike bars, an industrial-size bag of beef jerky. It didn’t exactly add up to a meal. Then she noticed a purple box tucked into the corner. “You like Sleepytime tea?” she exclaimed, pointing at the bear mascot on the label.
Scott paled and quickly turned the box of tea over. But that just made it worse—the bear mascot was now tucked into bed, a striped sleeping cap on his head, little holes cut out for his ears, his eyes two closed half-moons. Little z’s floated above his head, and a cup of tea sat on his nightstand, steam rising from the cup.