Needing Less Groceries

Part 1 of a Serial Story of Repentance

Trevor stood in the entryway to the grocery store with his hands on the blue plastic handle of the shopping cart and squinted in thought. He didn’t need a cart. It seemed odd to him that he was just now realizing that. He could fit all the groceries he needed in one of those small black baskets you can carry around the store in your hands.

Trevor had moved out of his house and into an apartment exactly ten months ago today. Jenn had taken Kayla and Mattie, their little girls, to her parents’ house for the weekend so Trevor could do it himself. She had just said that’s what they would do. He hadn’t had any response. There wasn’t a response to have, he figured. So for two days he and his friend Roger from work had moved what he took for himself (clothes, a little bathroom bag, and his signed picture with Pete Rose) into an apartment he knew he’d be sharing with Jess within the next month. Jess with the electric green eyes and the bright blonde hair. Jess, whom he’d always wanted to date in high school, and finally had for four months during senior year, before she’d moved out of state for college and that was that. Jess, with whom he’d “reconnected” on Facebook, which is to say he searched for her one night after he’d had three beers and then messaged her a week later after she accepted his friend request.

He didn’t know what aisle laundry detergent was in. That struck him as odd, too. Was it with bar soap and shampoo, down by the pharmacy? That didn’t seem right. He couldn’t remember ever having to look for it before. Jess must have brought some with her, because there it had been on top of the washing machine in the apartment they shared the first time he went to do laundry, a day or two after she’d moved in. She had moved out four days ago, and the laundry detergent was the only thing she took he needed. So now here he was standing in front of a freezer chest filled with pizza rolls at the front of an aisle trying not to look confused so he didn’t have to talk to an employee who would try to be helpful but whom Trevor would have to resist the urge to punch. He pretended like he was interested by the pizza rolls and thought for a moment. Had he ever seen laundry detergent in here before? If so, where?

But his mind fell to pieces on the one, jagged truth that had him so angry today at work he’d punched a wall in the parking garage and nearly broken his hand. Somehow he had ripped up his life and gotten nothing in return. Maybe he hadn’t been as happy as he thought he should be or could be with Jenn, but he was happier than this. Happier than he was wearing the same socks and boxers and undershirt for the third day in a row because he hadn’t realized Jess was the only reason he had laundry detergent. Happier than punching a wall or sitting on the couch tonight to watch three hours of television before falling asleep. Or pornography. He looked forward to the porn, but he was aware enough now of his misery to admit, right there in front of the pepperoni pizza rolls, that he’d be unhappier after watching it than before.

He decided to turn left, towards the pharmacy. He needed mouthwash, anyway.

What about Kayla and Mattie? Were they happy? Were they all right? He knew the answer, and again, he was miserable enough to admit that he knew the answer. They missed Daddy, but almost as much as they missed Daddy they missed Mommy and Daddy together. He heard Kayla say it once (“When will you be home, Daddy?”), and he saw it in both their eyes on Saturdays when he dropped them back off at home. They were happy to be home. They were unhappy he wasn’t.

Unbelievable. Now he couldn’t find mouthwash? It had to be in the aisle with the toothpaste. Wait, he saw it on the other side, next to the vitamins and the toothbrushes. Why were grocery stores set up this way? The grocery store wasn’t his problem. Jenn wasn’t his problem. Jess wasn’t even his problem, though Jess had certainly been a source of drama, drama of the bitter and hard-to-focus-at-work variety, over the final seven months of their eleven-month relationship. It was funny that now, standing here under a fluorescent light that was too bright and made him realize he did in fact still have a hangover, that he now realized he was the source of his own misery. How did that happen? How did he wreck everything decently healthy that he’d had so whiplash quickly?

Trevor did the last thing he would have expected, considering how badly he needed that laundry detergent. He dropped the little basket down on the floor (so hard the old man down by the shaving cream jolted and looked down his way) and walked out of the grocery store.

By the time he was out in the late afternoon sunlight he had already dialed the fourth digit in his dad’s cell phone number, which is of course exactly what a man in his position should have done.