Shop

I always missed Annabel most at the supermarket.  Don’t ask me why—it was by no means the place we went most often.  But somehow, grocery shopping was something that brought out the most Annabel in Annabel.  The first couple of times I went without her—and once she was gone, Stop and Shop took on an irresistible pull—I hyperventilated and passed out, leaving my family without groceries for a few days more.  It didn’t take more than three tries for me to find another way to get through shopping; I wasn’t a stupid guy, and everyone was getting pretty hungry. 

And, of course, I couldn’t allow anyone else to take on what now had to by my job.  So, I gathered my best memories, took a deep breath and spent my shopping trips with Annabel…

*  *  *

We passed through the filthy double doors, the left of which refused to open.  Annabel grabbed a cart out of the long line, indicating me to grab another.  This didn’t surprise me—by now I knew the routine.  “Come on, Drake,” she called after me, keeping me close at hand.  She skipped over to the vitamin aisle, always our first stop, where the decisions were important.  Annabel didn’t waste time here, deftly picking out the things she needed, and then moving on.  “Come on, Drake.”  She was used to keeping everything close at hand.

We stopped in front of the peanut butter.  “Do you know what my problem is?”  Annabel considered the product in front of her for a moment before reaching out and dropping three different jars into her basket: Skippy, Jiff, and Crazy Richard’s All Natural. 

“What’s that?”  I asked as I watched the face of the Transformer Robot appear and disappear on Annabel’s shirt as she moved her arm.  We walked a few feet down the aisle, and plunk, plunk, plunk, three cans of coffee found their way into the cart. 

“I’ll eat anything,” Annabel answered, wrinkling her lightly freckled nose.  “And when you like everything, however are you supposed to choose what you want?”  She huffed shortly through her nose, much in the way another girl might giggle.  Into the cart went five different kinds of bread, the only similarity that they were all wheat. “Come on, Drake.”

The only thing that was a definite choice on what to buy was the chocolate.  Her worst weakness, Annabel had confided in me the first day we met, was Cadbury dark chocolate.  Three weeks later I brought along a bar when I asked her out.  She had been delighted with the request, but I suspected, the chocolate even more. 

She grabbed two bars this time, a record low.  Usually it was three, or four, or seven.
Forty-seven minutes, nineteen products, and thirty-four “Come on, Drake”s later, we reached the checkout counter.  This was the best time to see Annabel do the only thing that made her wriggle and squirm: make decisions.  Taking a deep breath, Annabel tucked a single red curl behind her ear, closed her eyes, and plunged her hand into our nearly full cart.  She pulled out a package of soap. 

Now it was my time to be useful, taking out all the other soaps and putting them in our empty cart.  My job was, on this expedition and others like it, to make sure that Annabel didn’t buy two of anything, and that all the chocolate got purchased.  “What did I ever do without you?”  Annabel asked as she blindly pushed forward, every now and again making me take something out of her hands.
I just smiled an answer; speaking would have taken up the energy I needed to grab four times the groceries Annabel did and keep up with her.  The cashier, a high-school kid with a serious acne problem, stared at us as if we might attack at any moment.  “My fiancée isn’t good at making decisions,” I explained to him patiently.  Annabel laughed; we got this reaction often.

By the time we were done, Annabel had gotten enough groceries to last a week, my arms felt like they were about to fall off, and the cashier looked like he was about to cry, and we had an entire cartful of groceries to put back.  But Annabel was as content as could be, and to me, that was all that mattered.

*  *  *

“Sir?  Excuse me, sir?”  The cashier was looking pointedly at my credit card, which I had lying in my hand, but hadn’t given over.  I had only one cart, only one of each product, and no Annabel. 

“I don’t want it,” I muttered, and walked out the door, leaving everything behind.