Colin Ainsworth

No Measurements, Just Know-How

Excerpt

After briefly talking with Dee, Theresa made her way down Aisle Fifteen first before snaking her way through each aisle in descending order. This meant, unfortunately, that she would cross off the various items of produce she was looking for last, and would fill her cart and drain more money than expected on things she didn’t think she needed. Snacks, spices she already had but had managed to misplace, a third stray can of garbanzo beans, because every time she walked by them she considered how fun it would be to make her own hummus. 

Just before the produce, just before Aisle One, Theresa’s Albertson’s had a cordoned-off section for beer and wine. Theresa’s cart was full enough, but she knew her husband would appreciate another six or twelve beers in the outside fridge, and it was a nice day out, and she was feeling good. A deed like this, thoughtful in a minor way, made her feel good. 

This, she decided, was a subtle peace. Something innate, an invocation of a kind of certainty of how to move through the world. Perhaps not joy, but the next best thing. And then, in an instant, the opposite. The wrinkles in her brain wrestling with the feeling in her gut, fighting to convince her that this feeling was fleeting, and thus, unimportant. Not worth it. And then back again, like a boxer with a second wind—No, this is all you get, you can’t question it. Imagine, she thought, if happiness didn’t feel manic. 

Nicer still, she thought, if she bought some of the good stuff for her husband. He generally settled on the cheaper fare, the kind of beer that was only palatable if it was cold, if it had been resting in a bed of ice in a Styrofoam cooler for over an hour. Theresa picked up something bottled, something foreign. A beer with a name with too many consonants in a row. She referred to her list to see if she was missing anything. 

Flowers, she thought. 

And she remembered that the best ones were out front, and that she could pay in cash, too, if she had any. 

Theresa stopped just outside the aisle and picked up her purse from the child’s seat the grocery cart provided. She always knew she kept too many things in there. Mint tins. Loose, still-wrapped cough drops. Probably around eleven dollars in scattered change. Makeup that was staining the sides of the bag. She found her wallet after some digging and was about to open it up to check for cash—and as she did, she felt a push on her shoulder blade, seemingly from another shoulder, harder than one would want to be pushed.

Before she could turn around, she instinctively had covered her wallet with her hands. He wasn’t going after the wallet, though. This was an underweight, overdressed teenage boy. And he hadn’t tripped over anything, and he wasn’t looking at his phone. This boy knew that he was going to take the six-pack of beer Theresa had just picked up and put in her cart, and as he reached to do so, he incidentally bumped into her. 

This boy said, “Sorry!” and ran out of the store, the beer in hand. 

Theresa left her cart outside the aisle. She took a few steps forward and looked around, hoping for some witness or something. She hadn’t purchased the beer, the beer wasn’t hers, but it certainly wasn’t this teenage boy’s. A woman in an Albertson’s vest walked by in the aisle over and Theresa flagged her down. She explained what happened. 

“Oh,” said the woman in the vest, Marcia. “Yeah, they do that.”

“Do what?” Theresa said, her cart still behind her. 

“It’s store policy. We can’t actually chase them or accuse nobody. Legal reasons.” 

“So, what? If you’re underage and fast you can just steal alcohol?”

“It don’t usually work. Somebody usually manning the front, but he’s on break now.”

Break now. She walked the couple of steps back to her cart and grabbed her purse. She stood for a moment, checking to make sure everything was still there, and it certainly was. 

Marcia said, “Is there anything I can do for you at this time, ma’am?”

Theresa, walking away from her cart now, “No, that’s quite all right.”

As Theresa’s steps clacked out of the store under the modestly loud KISS-FM Muzak being pumped in from above, she heard Marcia wish her a happy Mother’s Day, though Theresa didn’t turn around, then. 

When she arrived outside, there was no sign of this skinny teenage boy or her beer that wasn’t hers. It was decidedly his now, and hopefully he’d enjoy it. Theresa held up her hand over her brow to cover her eyes from the sun. The sun had come out now, a dry, white brightness. Summer was starting. 

She took two steps toward the parking lot and stopped to turn around. Surely, she was overreacting—she already had a full cart, she might as well fulfill this grocery run. And then, when she turned around to go in, she turned right back around, deciding just as quickly that the hassle of loading and unloading these groceries wasn’t worth the cost. These were not necessities. This could wait. 

In her parking lot dance with herself, she caught a glance of the front of the store and the florist outside, sitting on her customary stool with a tumbler full of iced tea. Theresa remembered that she definitely had cash, exhaled somewhere between a sigh and a deep breath, and walked back to the florist to buy nine dollars’ worth of ranunculus. 

O

At home, Theresa’s husband was watching baseball, a Sunday day game with players in pink jerseys. Ruth was there, too, still in his sleeping clothes, pacing from one end of the room to the other, asking his father various questions that he would either brush off or answer with “I’m not sure.” Theresa shut the door to the garage behind her and stepped into the kitchen, exhausted. 

“Honey, is that you?” Theresa’s husband said without getting up. 

“It’s me.” 

He stood now and walked to the counter where Theresa was putting her purse down. “Happy Mother’s Day,” he said, and he gave her a kiss on the cheek. 

“Where were you?” he asked, fairly unconcerned.

“Oh, I saw a movie,” she lied, looking down. “Thought about stopping by the grocery store. Wanted to make a cake but just got these flowers instead.”

“They look great,” he said, and he kissed her again, letting her answer wash right over him and dry right up. “I think Ruth got you something.” 

Ruth heard his name and turned around. On the counter behind her, now, was a card Theresa’s husband had undoubtedly bought the day before from the very same Albertson’s, standing up on its own, no envelope. Inside the card, in big, hand-written letters over the printed Hallmark message were the capital letters, next to a heart, “RUTH.”

“Cake?” Ruth said.

Theresa smelled her flowers and Ruth asked his pressing question again. 

“Cake?” he said.

Theresa looked to him and said, “No, honey, I’m so sorry. I was going to make you a big fancy cake and I just couldn’t find what I was looking for.”

Looking back at the baseball game now, dejected, Ruth said, “Doesn’t have to be fancy.” 

Theresa thought on this for a moment. There was flour in the pantry, sugar in the cabinets. There were maybe a half dozen eggs left in the fridge if her husband hadn’t had any while she was gone, and even if he had a few there were likely enough left. Enough fixings in her immediate area that she could make dew from scratch.

I can remember how to do this, she decided. I can learn this all over again.

About the Author

A Texan, Colin Ainsworth graduated from Kenyon College with a degree in English and Religious Studies in 2017, and he’s been in New York ever since.