The Supermarket

9porter Joe Ashby Porter The Supermarket This is a true story that happened recently. My husband Bob had gone to work and I'd driven Priscilla and little Gavin to school. When I came back I noticed that some of our daffodils were in bloom. Our lawn is one of the prettiest in Verdant Park, a pretty suburb of Lexington, Kentucky. Verdant Park has a grade school, a shopping center, shady streets. Bob has a twenty-minute drive to work in downtown Lexington. I picked up the kitchen and had a second cup of coffee. Robins were finding worms where our lawn meets the Smiths' and the Smiths' Irish setter on its leash chased them. The Smiths are older, he's an orthodontist. Their son Frank is in junior high. I noticed that the detergent rash under my wedding ring was angrier and was spreading to adjacent fingers. In the bathroom I brushed my teeth. I washed my face and stood before the mirror to examine it in the mixed sunlight and flourescent light. I put on my makeup and arranged my hair. The gravel in the drive crunched pleasantly under my tires. In the smooth empty streets it seemed a mere formality to wait for the red light to be extinguished and the green to come on. As I pulled into the shopping center parking lot I tooted and waved at a friend who was driving away. The developers must have expected Verdant Park to grow more rapidly than it has grown— I've never seen more than a quarter of the parking lot in use. Marcy Smith from next door seemed to be at the beauty salon. The lilac Chrysler was hers, I supposed. The market itself is large in proportion to the parking lot. I had worn sunglasses and as I stepped onto the door opener platform I shoved them onto the top of my head as if there were other eyes there in my hair which now needed protection from the flourescent panels covering the ceiling. I always forget to bring a sweater when I come shopping and the air conditioning feels chilly at first on my upper arms. At first also I notice a whispering hum I take to be from the air conditioning and refrigeration apparatus. The door is on the side at the front corner. As I enter, ahead of me stretches the open space between a row of check-out stands at my right and the store's plate glass front at my left. Signs painted onto this plate glass announce specials, all mirror-writing from inside. Only one checker, a woman my age, stood among the registers. I pulled free a cart with the whanging noise you hear only in supermarkets. Editorial note: Since our acceptance of "The Supermarket," it has appeared in the author's collection, The Kentucky Stories (Johns Hopkins, 1983). We thus gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint. 10 the minnesota review I idled in the international corner, my foot hooked over the lower rack of my cart. The only common feature of the odd things brought together here was that they were foreign. I chose some Iranian flatbread and a Swiss chocolate bar. I remembered that the last time I'd had Swiss chocolate was on my honeymoon. I decided to nibble at it as I shopped. The next section along the wall is for bread and other baked goods. The odor comes through the wrappers to make me feel safe and a little hungry. I've often thought it would be delicious to fall onto a bed of loaves of bread. Today it occurred to me that this section felt comfortable for another reason. If I were imprisoned in the building I could easily get to the baked goods and also to the peanut butter and jellies in their jars in the adjacent tier. Whereas to someone without an opener the beautifully labelled cans elsewhere in the store might as well have contained ashes. I didn't need anything in this section and was passing by when a redness among the cakes caught my eye. I came closer and bent to examine it. Someone had written on...