Chapter 7
Angie
It is a happy talent to know how to play.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thursday, after work, I’m making my way through the grocery store with the twins in tow. Mom had a church meeting, and we’re almost out of milk and bread. A woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do.
Both boys are in the cart. They’ve gotten too big to ride up top and they’re too wild at this time of day to stay near me if I let them run loose.
“I want Pop Tarts!” Levi says.
“Please,” I say, reflexively. “When we want something, we say please.”
“Please, I want Pop Tarts!” he says at the same volume.
“We’ll see,” I say, stalling out and hoping he loses interest in the idea by the time we make it through the store. “Let’s play a game.”
“I love games!” Jack says.
“Me too,” Levi says. “I love games too. You don’t love games most.”
“Do too.”
“Do not. I loooovve games.”
“I love love love super love games.”
I stop the cart, rubbing my temple to keep the low-grade headache that’s threatening to form at bay.
I put my finger to my lips. “Shhhh. Boys. You both love games. I love games. Want to hear what this game is?”
“Yeah!” they both shout.
“Okay. This game is called The Hunt.”
“I love hunting!” Levi says.
“Do we shoot sumping?” Jack asks.
“We can shoot with our finger guns when we find the thing we’re hunting for, okay?”
“Okay!” they both shout.
“The first thing we’re hunting for is bread,” I tell them. “And we have to be very still or we’ll scare off what we’re hunting for.”
“The bread will get scared?” Jack asks.
“And run away?” Levi asks.
“Like a big scaredy cat?” Jack adds.
They both bust up. I laugh along with them. Then, in a whisper, I say, “Yes. We don’t want to scare off the bread.”
“Okay, Mommy,” Jack says in a loud whisper.
Levi nods solemnly.
I put my finger to my mouth and say, “Shhhh,” again. Then I push the cart toward the bread aisle.
“I see bread, Mommy!” Levi shouts.
“Shhhh!” Jack says to Levi.
“Oh yeah,” Levi answers him in a whisper.
“Get your finger guns out,” I tell the boys, keeping my voice soft and low.
They both make their pointer fingers into guns with their thumbs cocked and ready.
I pretend to sneak up on the bread.
They both explode into “Pew pew pew! Pow Pow! Bam Bam!” noises and I grab two loaves of bread and put them in the front of the basket.
“We got them, Mommy!” Levi says.
“We did. Now we have to hunt for milk.”
“I know where!” Jack says.
They’re not strangers to the grocery store.
“Okay, let’s sneak up on it,” I say. I crouch down just the slightest, my head just over the handle of the cart so I can see to steer.
The boys make finger guns. I push our way down the aisle and practically bump into a cart rounding into our aisle.
When I look up from my hunkered position, EJ is standing there, smiling down at me and the boys.
“Hey,” he says.
Levi lifts his finger gun and says, “Pew pew pew!”
I stand quickly, tucking a hair behind my ear. “Hey.”
I’m about to ask Levi to apologize to EJ for shooting at him when EJ clutches his heart and spins in place.
“You got me!” he exclaims.
I think that’s all he’s going to do, but he wobbles to the left and then the right, clutching his cart for dear life.
Then he makes a dramatic gasping noise and buckles onto the floor in what could be the Academy Award-winning act of the decade.
He lands on the dirty floor of the grocery store, seemingly oblivious to the grocery cart scuff marks around him.
My boys break into cheers and laughter.
“Do it again!” Jack shouts. “I want to shoot you dead, Mr. EJ!”
EJ cracks his one eye open from his spot on the floor and says, “I’m dead. You can’t kill me twice.”
“Awwwww,” Jack whines.
“Unless …” EJ says, obviously thinking on his feet, even though he’s flat on his back. “Your mom brings me back to life.”
“Do it, Mommy!” Jack says.
“Bring him back to life!” Levi shouts.
People are starting to stare. But my boys are happy and that can turn on a dime at this hour.
“Okay,” I say. “Um. What should I do?”
“In fairy tales, I think there’s one way …” EJ says, winking from below me. “But we can improvise.”
Kissing him. That’s the way. And I’m definitely not kissing him in front of my boys while he’s lying on the floor of Kroger. He knows it, too. But just the mention of kissing him has my skin tingling with the memory of his touch.
I squat down next to EJ and tell my boys, “Would you look at that? Mr. EJ’s not actually dead. He’s just mostly dead,” borrowing a line from The Princess Bride. And then I take my hands and compress EJ’s chest like I’m doing CPR.
He looks up at me and whispers, “No mouth to mouth?”
I give him a scolding glance and whisper back, “You’re trouble.”
He just smiles and stands up, looking at Jack and exclaiming, “I’m alive!”
Not for long, because Jack raises his fingers and shoots EJ with a dramatic bunch of gun sounds. EJ repeats his performance, landing on the floor for the second time.
Tammy Jo Rutgers turns the corner where we’re taking up the bulk of the aisle with our two carts and a man on the floor.
She stares down at EJ. “Is everything alright?”
“Oh!” EJ jumps up in one fluid movement. “Yeah. We’re just playing.”
Tammy Jo’s brow furrows. “Playing?”
“The boys and I …” EJ’s face turns a little red.
“We were hunting him!” Levi explains.
“Hunting?” Tammy Jo asks.
“Yeah,” Jack says. “Like bread. But we shot him with our finger guns. And he falled down.”
“Oh. I see,” Tammy Jo looks from EJ, to me, to the boys. “Well, have fun.”
“We do!” Levi says.
“Bye!” Jack shouts as she pushes her cart further down the aisle.
EJ chuckles. “I wonder how this story will be told through the grapevine.”
I can only imagine.
“We’d better get our milk,” I tell EJ.
He brushes his hands down the back of his pants. “Did you already eat?”
“No!” Levi says at the top of his lungs, or at least it feels that way to me after Tammy Jo passed by. “We didn’t eat our dinner at all. Not even a snack.”
Jack adds, “We’re really hungry. We need food.”
“I want Pop Tarts!” Levi shouts.
I feel my grip on their composure unraveling. Most creative mom-tactics work with my boys, but not for longer than five or ten minutes. Fifteen if I’m lucky. Hunting is over now that they got to shoot EJ to the ground.
“Boys, may I ask your mom a question?” EJ asks.
“Sure,” Levi says.
Jack nods, looking to Levi for confirmation.
“Sit still,” I tell the twins. “Guard that bread, okay?”
They both nod, staring up at the bread as if it’s about to grow legs and run out of the cart.
EJ pulls me aside. We’re only a yard away from the cart—close enough to monitor the boys, but far enough that he can whisper to me.
“I’d love to bring you dinner again.”
“You can’t,” I say reflexively.
“Why not?” he asks.
“You already brought us dinner.”
His brows rise as if that’s not excuse enough.
“I can’t keep letting you buy us dinner.”
“Because?”
“Because …” I struggle to think of why. “It’s not right.”
He chuckles softly. “The boys don’t have to know it’s from me. I’ll just text you when I drop the bag on your porch. Or box. Do you want pizza or burgers … or that fried chicken again?”
“EJ …” I try to dissuade him, but my argument feels thin, even to me.
“Angie.”
“Fine. Get us whatever you want. But please don’t bring Pop Tarts.”
He smiles. “I won’t bring Pop Tarts.”
“Thank you,” I say, making the mistake of looking up into his warm brown eyes. “You really don’t have to do this.”
“I don’t have to. I know that. I actually want to. I want to do this—and so much more, Angie.”
EJ doesn’t say anything else. He just walks back to his cart.
I stand still, feeling way too many things, including a residual warmth from his nearness—or his kindness—or both.
EJ looks at my boys and says, “I’ll see you boys later. Be good for your mom. I think she’s got a special surprise for you for dinner.”
“Really?” Levi says.
“I love surprises!” Jack says. “And dinner!”
EJ smiles at the boys and then at me. Then he pushes his cart past us and I head toward the dairy aisle where the boys shoot down two gallons of milk.