The Caviar In Her Grocery Cart

Lane three, again

So that is how I came to be standing in lane three watching my husband turn purple over a jar of caviar.

He did not know I had been to a lawyer. He did not know about the document examiner, or my father, or the copies at the library, or the fact that at eight the next morning the bank in the county seat was going to receive a very organized packet about a signature that was not mine. To him, this was just his difficult wife embarrassing his poor mother over a little food.

“I’ll pay for my things,” I had said. “Sharon can pay for hers.”

And when Sharon said, “Oh, Rachel, I never dreamed you would make a scene,” I did something I had never once done in six years of marriage.

I let her.

I let the scene happen. I did not smooth it over. I did not laugh it off or wave my card or tell Kaylee to just ring it all together, sorry about this. I stood there with my hands on the cart and I let the silence stretch until it was unbearable for everyone but me.

“Ring up mine,” I told Kaylee, and I started setting my own things on the belt, one at a time, the chicken thighs, the onions, the coffee, Debbie’s birthday card. A hundred and eleven dollars and change. I paid it. I took my two bags.

And I looked at Sharon, and I looked at Wade, and I said the last thing I said to either of them as a wife.

“The rest is yours. You have the money for it. I know you do.”

Then I walked out to the truck with my two bags, and I sat there in the parking lot of Miller’s IGA, and I did not cry. I had done all my crying already. I watched through the big front window as Wade fumbled with his phone at the card reader, as the transaction did whatever it did, as Sharon touched her collar and looked around to see who was watching. And then I started the truck and drove home to the house on Coulter Road that was mine, that had always been mine, that would stay mine.