Groceries
'Stories' is our new section dedicated to fiction. Josh Lovins is a writer living and working in New York. Below is one of his latest short stories.
You called me. You asked if I could stop by the grocery store on my way back from the dump. I heard you ask the question and I understood the question and I said I could not do that. You did not hear me say this. You continued, talking about how they might be arriving tomorrow instead of today depending on their dog's health. So I said it again a little louder. You heard me when I said it louder but it was as if you again didn't hear me, you said, in the sense that I had said it too loudly for you to hear me. I apologized for speaking too loudly. I explained how I had landed on that voice and those words and not some others. You said, Got it, okay, yeah, sorry I missed your comment. Phone is hard, we said in unison. We laughed. We thought it was funny that we had said it in unison.
What did you want from the grocery store. Cheese, mainly, you said, and I thought this was funny. Just the phrase, Cheese mainly, seemed funny to me. This was the first thing that I considered funny, but I did not laugh at it, I just smiled into the phone, and you had no idea that I was smiling. I had laughed at our saying the same thing in unison but in retrospect I hadn't considered it very funny. The memory of it would not make me laugh. But the memory of your saying, Cheese mainly, would. You said, Cheese mainly, in any case, and I did not laugh and you waited for me to say something. I said, Cheese mainly? and I was smiling when I said it, but you couldn't hear me smiling. Yeah, I'm sorry, you said, is that okay? I wouldn't be asking if you weren't driving right by the store....! And I said, No, no, I'm smiling, I thought it was funny, sorry, that didn't come through. Yeah, you said, No, I can't see your face, right? That's very true, I said, irritated. Angry people!
We hung up. We drove angrily around. Left and right, sculling all over the place, swearing at the various connectors that did not connect properly and that sort of thing. Objects that do not get in the way are no kind of objects. What use is there in a thing which does not get in your way? No use.
I came home with the groceries and set them down on the counter. You were in the basement writing some things down. I unloaded the groceries and you probably heard me clunking around because you came upstairs. You opened the new soft cheese and you got down the crackers and you took out a cracker and spread some cheese on the cracker. I folded the paper bag and put it in the paper bag drawer. You offered me the cracker with the cheese; you held it out to me and looked at me. I took hold of it and then put it in my mouth and chewed it and looked at you.
Our mutual friend screamed in the basement. He screamed and screamed. We just about jumped out of our pants. We did not know he was there! We did not even know we had a basement! We looked around, wild-eyed, like horses in a thunderstorm. We did not know what to do! He was screaming and screaming. He was clearly in the most terrible pain!
We became desperate, started digging around at the floorboards. I finally came to my senses and went running outside for a rock. I picked up the rock and brought it inside and started bashing the floor with it. We tried to figure out the right way to free him. But he stopped screaming before we had found where the basement was. Are we going crazy! you said. I didn't say anything. We went to sleep and woke up. I tried to sit up and felt a sharp pain running along the left side of my spine. I may have tweaked my back carrying that heavy rock, I said.
I came home with the groceries. You were walking back from the garbage cans barefoot, picking your way along the gravel. You had taken the trash bags out to the garbage cans that were positioned at the end of our driveway and now you were walking back. I pulled up next to you and stopped. I asked if you wanted a lift the rest of the way and you said, No, thanks, it's good for my feet. You're a champion, I said. It's very important that you do good things for your feet.
We are all to some extent curious about pain and its possibility. We have the capacity to say no to it ("No, thank you, no pain for me") and it is a difficult thing to say yes to, so its absence develops and with that absence, forgetting and curiosity. We forget, and become gradually more curious and curiosity is a kind of yes, sometimes. We come to the conclusion that the difficult thing is not saying yes to pain, but losing the capacity to say yes or no to it. We become less curious about the pain itself and more curious about the capacity to say yes or no to it.
We become most curious about the sorts of decisions that may have the effect of either attenuating or enhancing our ability to adjust our exposure to pain. I don't know what you're talking about, you said, starting to walk, moving past my open window. There is nothing painful about a gravel driveway. I'm doing this because it's good for my feet.