twenty-something

True North | A Story By Patrick Raymond
Part Seven

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The cart was a good one, new. It didn't have a squeaky or crooked wheel, and it glided around the store without a single jerk or sound. Ollie cursed his luck for picking the one uninteresting, non-defective cart in the supermarket.

His mother needed cranberry sauce, marshmallows, french-fried onions, milk, and wine. She's asked him to go alone, but he begged for company, afraid to return to the place he'd slaved away at for four years during high school and early college. He always felt something between pride and guilt when he returned to the store. He worried that, in their eyes, he was the big, bad college boy, returning to rub his success in the noses of the lifers and high school kids.

Ollie lazily pushed the cart behind his mother, as she slowly browsed the shelves of silver cans with colorful labels. She quickly placed a can of green beans in the basket, and with her back to him once again, said, "So Henry tells me you're thinking of marrying Chris."

He stopped the cart immediately, in the middle of the aisle. She kept walking, browsing the shelves.

"You two plan this? He said you'd said the same thing."

"That's funny."

"Hilarious."

"Well, are you?"

"Mom, I am not having this conversation while we shop for marshmallows."

"We've already got marshmallows, honey. Now we're onto the cranberry sauce."

He couldn't do much else but sigh. "Why do you always do this?"

"Don't be such a Drama Queen, Oliver." It was her new word. She'd used it exactly three times since she'd picked him up at the bus station. She must've started taking notes while watching Will and Grace. Watching that and Rosie O'Donnell were his mother's idea of supporting his homosexuality. She liked Ellen, too -- both of her sitcoms -- before she was cancelled. "The grocery store's as good a place as any to have a heart-to-heart."

She was into having important conversations in odd places. Some people get off on having sex in the kitchen or in public; Ollie's mother liked to air revelations in places where people were likely to catch them. Sometimes she was nonchalant. Other times she was intense. She was always embarrassing.

"Not right now, mom," he said. "We'll talk about this later."

As if he'd planned it, they were interrupted by the store's intercom. "Attention shoppers," someone announced. "The store will be closing in fifteen minutes at one o'clock. At this time, please make your final selections and bring them to the front registers. Thank you, and happy Thanksgiving."

"Shit. It's almost one?" Ollie said.

"Well, that's good. Should get back home anyway. The turkey's in the oven, and I don't trust your brother to watch it."

"Chris is going to be here any minute!"

He ran for the wine and she grabbed some frozen peas. They met at the front and then stood in silence, impatient in the long checkout line. Ollie avoided eye contact with the familiar faces that worked there. He picked up a copy of TV Guide and flipped past the bright, glossy pages right to the ugly, newsprint program listings. For some reason, just as he noted a Thanksgiving marathon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he started talking to her again.

"I am thinking about it, mom." He threw the magazine on the belt with the groceries.

"Thinking about what, honey?" she said, barely glancing up from her issue of some women's mag.

"Marrying him. Asking him to marry me. Civil Union me. Whatever."

She looked up, a blank stare, then threw the magazine on the belt with the TV Guide. Her face filled with emotion as his revelation sunk in.

"I'm thinking about it --just thinking --but I --"

"Oh, Oliver," she gushed. She hugged him tight. "I didn't think you were actually -- oh, this is so exciting!"

As they both became aware of their surroundings, and the eyes of their fellow customers, their hug grew awkward and loose.

"I'm so--so--" she stumbled.

"I know."

"Oh, damn it. I forgot the milk." She broke their embrace and ran off towards the dairy cooler.