Stephen Dixon - Gould

Brons wanted a dry cereal the New York halfway house didn’t provide and Evangeline said they were out of toothpaste and dental floss and while she was at it they could also all use new toothbrushes and he said he’d go out to buy them and she said “I didn’t mean you had to do it tonight,” and he said “Ah, I want to take a walk, this house is sometimes like a prison.” At the market he got the cereal and a box of animal crackers for Brons, went to the drug section and saw that except for the floss the dental stuff was expensive. He held three toothbrushes, put back the one he’d chosen for himself, dropped the floss into the basket with the cereal and crackers and then thought Screw it, do it, you just don’t have the cash and Evangeline will like you got everything she needed, and after quickly looking up and down the aisle and only seeing an old lady facing the other way, slipped the brushes and toothpaste into his side coat pocket. Oy, God, what’d he do? why’d he do it? and looked up and saw the woman staring at him, hand to her mouth as if horrified at what she’d just seen, or maybe not and she was only staring that way because of how he looked: messed-up hair, rather shabby clothes, face which for a few moments must have gone pale and looked sick and frenetic — but she seemed to have seen him, he was almost sure of it — now she was turned away, facing shelves with cleaning and diaper things for babies and feminine hygiene — the look one has when catching someone in the act like that but one you’d never do yourself, but if she did see him he didn’t think she’d tell anyone in the store while he was still there, she was old, frail-looking, very thin and short, she’d be afraid, for instance, she’d by chance bump into him on the street one day and he’d recognize her and knock her down, something he’d never do but maybe his appearance to her said he might. Should he put the brushes and toothpaste back? “Oh look at me,” he could say to himself aloud, hoping she’d turn around so he could say it half to her too, “I’m so absentminded, I don’t know where my head is today, excuse me,” putting the brushes and toothpaste back in the racks, “I don’t know if you saw them with me before but if you did I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea, it was just a stupid mistake,” or say all this but first look befuddled and slap his pocket and say “Holy shit — excuse me,” and take the things out and put them in the basket and then walk around casually for a while, get one more thing — cheap bag of chips — and pay for all of it. No — something about what she was doing now, keenly interested in a row of different shampoos on the top shelf — she didn’t see him and he had an idea and said “May I help you, ma’am?” and she turned to him and looked a bit startled but didn’t back away, which he should take as a good sign — it was just his appearance; he also needed a shave — and he smiled and said “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you, but I was just thinking, you need any help there . reaching?” and she said “No thanks, I was only comparison shopping,” and he said “Prices better here? Where else do you shop? I thought this was the only large market in ten blocks,” and she said “Associated, on Ninth Avenue, two blocks west, but they’re much more expensive on almost everything and the quality isn’t as good,” and he said “Oh yeah? That’s good to know; I’ll tell my wife,” and from the way she smiled and said good-bye — neither seemed fake — he was almost sure she hadn’t seen him but he’ll still, just in case she did and only tells them after he leaves, not go by the front of the store for a week or in it for two or three, or he might never have to go in again, since by then he and Evangeline will have their own place uptown. He got a bag of chips, two oranges on sale and went to the shortest checkout line, one with only one person on it. Everything seemed all right, business as usual, till he noticed the checkout man eyeing him sort of suspiciously while bagging the groceries of the customer who’d just paid, and turned around and saw a man behind him without a coat and holding two loaves of bread — what was the man doing coatless when it was so cold out? snow was predicted tonight, temperatures dipping into the teens and there were already freezing winds. Maybe he worked in the café a few doors down, or the one on the next block and he didn’t bother with a coat because he was so close and was buying the loaves because they’d run out of the bread they had delivered early each day — Gould had seen the tall bags of them lying up against the café doors at seven or so when he went out for the paper or a run or else they got him, and his stomach went cold. Well, shit, Jesus, too late if they did have him, for what could he do now, take the stuff out of his pocket and drop them into the basket? But wasn’t he only imagining the worst again, which he often did, for he already explained the suspicious looks: his clothes, appearance, and he wasn’t a regular here — had only been in the store three times in two weeks and always for just a couple of small items, and in this city, or just this kind of poorer neighborhood, if they don’t know you they don’t trust you, or something like that, but nobody’s going to jump him just because he might fit the profile of what they think’s a potential thief. He was fine, so long as nothing dropped out of his pocket or the pocket flap didn’t open and someone could see right inside, and once out of here and around the corner he’ll stick the stuff into his supermarket bag and go home, maybe even run with the bag he’d be so relieved, and in the room have a glass of wine or shot of scotch, even if Evangeline complained about him drinking late at night — said it did something to his stomach, made him toss around in bed, keeping her up. “Next,” the checkout man said, and he put the things in the basket onto that rubber runway, man rang everything up, wasn’t looking suspiciously at him anymore, guy behind him was looking at the clock above the front window, the old woman was now on the next checkout line, three customers away from being taken — his would have been the best line to get on: just he and the guy with his two identical loaves, and he was almost done, and one of the people in front of her had a shopping cart of maybe fifteen items. She didn’t look at him when he looked her way, maybe that was why she didn’t get on his line: didn’t want to talk to him anymore, felt their conversation — attention he gave her in the health-and-body-care aisle — was too much or had gone far enough or else she didn’t want to be on his line because of the trouble she expected on it . but then she wouldn’t have gone on any line, right? She would have stayed away from the checkout area, wouldn’t have wanted to be seen and eventually blamed by him. The checkout man said what Gould owed, he paid, his stuff was bagged and handed to him, he said “Thanks,” man said nothing and looked hard at the guy behind Gould in a way that suggested “What do we do next?” and Gould thought “Oh shit, get out of here,” and started for the door and just as he had his hand on it to push it open, someone grabbed him from behind — the coatless man — the checkout guy ran around the counter and shoved his hands down both Gould’s coat pockets and Gould said “Hey, what the hell you doing? — get off me, get off,” and tried slapping the man’s hand away from the pocket with the things in it but his arms were held tight, tried wriggling out of the grip and got one arm loose, checkout man yelled “Cliff Hugo,” and two young men with store aprons on ran to help the coatless man hold him, and he started dragging them all through the front door, wanted to get outside, once on the street they couldn’t touch him, or was it the other way around, they couldn’t grab you inside? — but he wrenched and tugged and grunted and lunged them along with him till he was past the door, on the street, still holding the bag, he suddenly realized, and dropped it and got his other arm free and slashed his hands in the air, whirling round and round as he did till there was nobody within fifteen feet of him, then felt his pocket — wait, the guy already took the stuff, but one of the brushes was still in it — and the checkout man said “You bum, you thief, these what you looking for?” and held up a toothbrush and the toothpaste. “You’re lucky we don’t hold you for the cops. Don’t ever come back here, you creep, and take what you paid for,” pushing the bag of groceries toward Gould with his foot, “that’s the last you’ll ever get from us,” and Gould kicked the bag and said “Stick it you know where,” and the coatless man said “Up our asses? Up yours, you dope. Feel good we didn’t bash the bejesus out of you, which we could have — we’d the legal right to — defending ourselves against a bona fide thief. You’re worse than a fucking street hooker,” and Gould said “That so? I am? Well you forgot this, mister,” and took out the other toothbrush and threw it on the ground to them and the checkout man said “Oh, bravado, or bravo — whatever they call those heroics — but just what we needed from the jerk. Forget him, we got work to do,” and picked up the brush: “Every little bit appreciated,” and laughed and they all went in, the two young men laying dirty looks on Gould before they went through the door. People on the street had stopped and were looking at him but keeping their distance and he said to a group of them “It was for my kids . I didn’t hardly have the money for everything,” in an Irish brogue and what he thought were the words and the way the Irish would use them, though why he went into it he didn’t know. “The big store’s gotta make its extortionate profit, that it? So what’s a poor father to do? And three kids, not two, and I wanted them to have clean teeth after they finished their overpriced store cereal, they’d have to be sharing a single toothbrush between them anyway, but have you seen what even the cheapest toothbrush and toothpaste cost today? An arm and a leg it is, an arm and a leg.” By now everyone but what looked like a bum had walked away, some shaking their heads at him and giving him that expression and he yelled “Where you going? Why you running? It’s the godawful truth that I’ve been telling ya, but what am I wasting my breath on you for?” and started down the street to the house — maybe so they’d have more trouble pointing him out some day later: “No, couldn’t be the shoplifter; that one was dressed like a beggar and was loony as they come and had this thick Irish accent”—a few large flat snowflakes were now slowly falling and he thought “Perfect, just what the scene called for,” and slapped at the flakes and said “Fuck it, I don’t care if any of the store people are there, what’s mine’s mine and like they said I paid good money for,” and ran back for the bag. The bum was standing over it and Gould said “That’s mine, sorry,” and picked it up. It was wet and torn, an orange had rolled out of it to the curb and he stuck it into his side coat pocket, put the other orange into the other pocket, folded up the bag best he could with the rest of the things he bought, had to hold it from the bottom so it wouldn’t split apart. When he got back to the room Brons was asleep in his cot, Evangeline was sitting up in bed drinking tea and reading, he wasn’t going to say anything about what happened but she said “My goodness, look at you, you’re a mess,” and he said “It’s beginning to snow, flakes falling so lazily, but sort of a cross between snow and rain — more like a floating slush, if that’s possible — so I suppose my hair got a little wet,” and she said “It’s not that. The collar of your coat’s torn, you have a scratch on your forehead that’s still bleeding, you look roughed up — what did you do, get mugged, fall?” and he said “No,” patting his forehead with a tissue, “but do I have those?” and looked at the tissue and said “Ah, it’s more slush than blood. I didn’t even know. Though I actually got close to being mugged, but didn’t want to say anything,” and told her what happened, didn’t embellish or hold back, right down to the Irish brogue: “Don’t ask me why; maybe to get them off my trail and so they wouldn’t think the thief was Jewish,” and she said “Oh stop. And the whole thing’s horrible. Why’d you ever do it?” and he said “I could make up a lot of excuses but I just didn’t think I could afford all the things you wanted or that I’d get caught, even if I knew how dumb it was,” and she said “Was it ever. Suppose they had reported you or held you for the cops? You’d have gone to jail. It would have disrupted our lives so much that I’m sure I would have had to quit school for a few weeks. And we would have been thrown out of here, since the landlady has this rule about that kind of behavior — it’s written right up there on the common dining room wall — and then where would we have lived till we get our place? I couldn’t have slunked back to your parents; and also think what it would have done to them and to Brons,” and put her finger over her lips. “If we needed toothpaste that bad,” she whispered, “we could have borrowed someone’s here, though we still have enough in the tube to roll it up and get a couple more brushings from it. And I only said we needed new toothbrushes, not that we were out of them,” and he said “This will sound stupid too, and I’m not saying it to elicit any sympathy, but I thought you’d like that I brought everything back that you asked for,” and she said “I would have if you had paid for it. And a brogue. You’re not an actor. You can’t even tell a story in two different voices. Let me hear it,” and he whispered in what he thought was close to the same brogue “For my poor kids I did it, my three little dear ones and their sweet mother, whose teeth are rotting to the quick because they’ve no toothpaste to use and I can’t afford a proper dentist,” and she said “It stinks. You were probably as bad at fooling them with it as you were at taking their goods. Please, I beg of you, for Brons and me and yourself too, and because shoplifting’s wrong, all wrong, no matter how bad the situation gets — don’t ever do it again,” and he said “I hate this life — here, this freaking craphole and so little money. But you’re right; I’m a flop at everything I do — I know, you didn’t say that — and I never want to be forgiven for it. And whatever you do don’t tell Brons till he’s all grown up, and only if you have to, for some reason,” and Brons said from the cot “I already know, Gould. That was real dumb what you did. It’s the only good store around here. Now I won’t be let in because of you,” and he said “Yes you will. I’ll just have to stay outside.”