I had not been inside since they added automatic doors and turned the Town Food into a Food Town, preferring to drive fifteen minutes to the Shop Best where I was guaranteed to run into no one and where every aisle smelled like the meat counter. For whatever reason, the parking lot of Shop Best was strewn with straw—people tracked it onto the linoleum, strands pasting around the wheels of the shopping carts—and I’d often find it in bed when I woke up in the mornings, flattened between the sheets. This was a period in my life when, having moved home to take care of my parents, who were aging faster than could be believed, I went to the grocery store two, three times a day, always forgetting the most important items on the list. Sundays gave into Mondays, and when Friday came, I’d be desperate for the week to start all over again. I guess I’m saying that it was I who walked up to Gina in the produce aisle, abandoning my cart to the annoyance of an employee-child. I had lost my baby fat, was wearing the right shoes, and wanted her to see that I’d grown into the beautiful person she had always insisted I could be. [ . . . ]
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