Bad Things That Happen to Girls: Winner of the 2015 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, selected by Lauren Groff

Birdie worked at the Rite Aid, and then she didn’t. Like snow clouds coming apart, it was that easy. All she had to say was “I quit,” and it didn’t matter that the blue apron trembled as she untied, folded, and laid it on Guy’s desk, or that he protested loudly in the bewildering, sports-related dialect to which she’d grown accustomed over the years.

“Fourteen seasons, Bee. I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t mean it: You are the mvp of Store #165. Player of the decade. Without you, strikes and balls rolling across the playing field.” A space heater in the background on too high, and Guy dabbing at his neck with a handkerchief, sweating in disbelief. She knew she was letting him down. The other employees called him nasty names while smoking in the parking lot, but Birdie, who didn’t smoke, had always found his bad teeth and elephantine bellow endearing. She even liked the work. The repetitive motion of matching each item to its twin on the shelf. The round chill of coins. The American expressions, too, pleased her mouth with their formulaic poetry that promised resolution to every problem. How can I help you? Cash or credit? Did you find what you were looking for?

Watching Guy frown and shake his head, she felt terrible guilt, almost wished to take the words back. Guy had “drafted” her fresh out of English classes at the community college, back when she could only find middle-of-the-night work vacuuming offices. She’d been pregnant then and sharing a bed with her teenage sister, Olga, in the drafty alcove at the back of their cousins’ house. The cousins, who already resented the time and expense of sponsoring their immigration from Romania, had not been pleased when a pregnant belly appeared on their thirty-one-year-old spinster cousin. With their scowlings and mutterings, Birdie had begun to fear her unborn child would grow up like Cinderella, ash-covered and invisible. The Rite Aid job had rewritten their futures. It made Birdie independent and American, made her daughter American. All thanks to Guy.

“Trish turns thirteen tomorrow,” Birdie said. Her daughter’s name, that magic word, fortified Birdie’s resolve, made the vision as muscular and detailed as memory: the rv they’d buy, the silver ribbon of road unfurling before them. They two alone at the edges of the country, leaping over the Martian stones of Utah, toeing the Pacific’s ferocious surf, loading their shirts with fresh, orchard peaches in Georgia, nectar soaking through the fabric, infusing their skin with sugar. They’d take turns picking spots on the map and live on the road for as long as they wanted. At night they’d bed down on the rv’s sofas, at home anywhere, whispering stories back and forth as the stars flickered on outside and the wind rocked them to sleep. She had to quit, of course. For Trish.

“Well shoot, Bee. Happy goddamned birthday from Uncle Guy, but I’m not sure what a crapping thing that has to do with you leaving me all bases loaded. The girls haven’t got you into their union business, have they? Crapping pay inflation. That’s the kind of thinking that ruined baseball, and I won’t have it in my clubhouse. So you want to leave? Fine. Door’s thataway.”

Guy threw himself back in his chair as if waiting for Birdie to retrieve the apron and shuffle back to her post. Until the record blizzard in spring, Birdie herself hadn’t believed she’d ever leave this job. Not she who showed up fifteen minutes before each shift, who never argued, who did not drink, who worked Christmas Eve and Thanksgiving Day uncomplainingly. But during the two long and perfect snow days last April, Trish had confessed she was losing herself, said, “Please don’t make me go back to regular life.” How could Birdie explain to Guy, who had...