Jonathan Evison - This is Your Life, Harriet Chance!

“Look, I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m falling back into the same old patterns.”

Harriet looks up and down the aisle again. “Please, Bernard, not here.”

“Okay, fine,” he says. “But I’ll be back. We need to talk.”

The question still burrowing like a wood beetle inside Harriet’s brain is: Why? Why won’t Bernard go away? Why has he come back to move his slippers around the house and complain about shoddy workmanship? The conventional wisdom suggests matters unresolved, but Harriet has neither the courage nor the inclination to further contemplate her failures.

Though it’s barely 10:30 a.m., already she’s exhausted. The weight of the impending cruise sits on her shoulders, a heavy dread. If only she could cancel without breaking Mildred’s heart. From the beginning, Harriet hoped that Mildred would decline, so she wouldn’t have to go herself, but she should have known better. This is Mildred we’re talking about. She’s been counting the days since June.

Of course Harriet wants to honor Bernard, but a cruise? All that activity, the lack of familiar routine. All that newness. The mere thought of it is terrifying. Meanwhile, she may be losing her mind. Thank heavens she has her best friend to lean on. Mildred is a rock.

At the stand, the straw-haired checker with the flinty manner clutches Harriet’s Val-U-Pack coupons with white knuckles, unable to suppress a sigh. The line is stacking up into the aisle, and Harriet knows it. But for the life of her, she can’t find that five-dollar rebate from July’s circular. More and more frequently of late, she’s misplacing things. Car keys, recipes, thank-you notes. And, if she’s to believe Father Mullinix, slippers and WD-40. Hands a-tremble, she burrows around fruitlessly in her purse. She’s sure she put the voucher in the side pocket.

“Oh dear,” she says, fishing out her reading glasses. “I know it’s here.”

“Uuugh,” somebody groans near the back of the line.

“Tell me about it,” whispers somebody else. “Should have seen this one coming, right?”

Just when Harriet is about to abandon her search, she realizes she’s already clutching the voucher.

“Oh, here it is!” she says brightly, extending the coupon. “Silly me.”

Snatching it from her liver-spotted hand, the checker inspects it. “Um, this expired eight days ago.”

“You’re sure?”

“It says so right here: expires eight five fourteen. See: Eight. . five. . fourteen.”

It’s not just her children — the whole world is convinced she’s an idiot, benignly oblivious to the world around her, incapable of self-consciousness.

“Club Card?” says the checker.

“Oh yes,” says Harriet, unclasping her purse again. “Let’s see. .”

Another groan from the back of the line, where a prematurely balding fellow with a five-o’clock shadow begins tapping his sandal anxiously on the floor. Harriet feels her face flushing. For heaven’s sake, what’s this young man’s big hurry, anyway? He doesn’t look particularly busy to Harriet. Really, what kind of grown man walks around wearing cutoff jeans and sandals on a workday? Bernard would have a field day.

“Would you like help out today?”

Harriet straightens herself up. “I can manage, thank you.”

The checker eyes her doubtfully. “Let me get Chad. Chad!” she calls.

Soon, her long-suffering associate, a stout, slump-shouldered boy with an enormous brow ridge and perpetually chapped lips, assumes his post at the butt end of the checkout stand, where he pauses for a long moment, awaiting instructions, mouth agape, nose running.

“Can you help this young lady out?”

Chad gazes blankly, first at the checker, then at Harriet, before licking his ravaged lips.

While Harriet finds the boy quite agreeable, she prefers it when Chad does not bag her groceries. For, in the five years that Chad has been handling Harriet’s groceries, the young man has not proven particularly adept at this charge, nor has he improved markedly over time — routinely stacking canned goods atop bread loaves, and crushing eggs beneath melons. Still, Harriet has always known the young man to be quite helpful in other respects: remembering daylight savings, for instance, reminding her to set her clock back. As far as Harriet can tell, he is under no obligation from Safeway, or anyone else, to do so. In an age of paranoia and declining social niceties, Harriet finds Chad refreshingly forthcoming, not only with his reminders but also with his personal observations. Such as the fact that he likes cats. Or that his aunt has eight of them. Or that one of them is named Stuart. Indeed, the young man is quite personable in light of — or perhaps because of — his condition.

“Earth to Chad,” says the checker.

As Harriet and Chad inch their way across the crowded lot, the boy seems uncharacteristically reserved. It’s not raining, yet Chad has failed to comment on the lack of rain. Has he sensed her low opinion of his work? She’s relieved when he finally breaks his silence.

“My birthday is June 23,” he observes.

“Well, that’s nice, dear.”

“When were you born?”

“November the sixth, darling.”

“What year?”

Harriet can feel herself blushing again. She can’t possibly hold the child responsible for such a gaff.

“Dear, that’s an impolite question. But if you must know, the answer is 1936.”

My God, it sounds impossible. Harriet has outlasted climates. She’s on geological time. And yet, daily, she feels the minutes of her life grinding slowly to a standstill. The sight of the Olds is just one more reminder of her shrinking existence.

Skip is even firmer than Caroline on the subject of driving. Last year, he almost ruined Thanksgiving for Harriet with his exhortations.

“Look, Mom, it’s nothing personal,” he assured her in the kitchen as she basted and stirred and boiled. “This is about your condition.”

“Osteoarthritis?”

“No, age,” he said with a mouthful of deviled egg. “I’m sorry, Mom, but eighty is just too old to drive—”

“Seventy-eight.”

“I’m just saying, there’s a law that says you can’t drive before a certain age, and there ought to be one that says you can’t drive after a certain age. You’ve got a busted taillight and a chipmunk plastered to your wheel. And what happened to that rear-side panel? Did you hit something?”

Harriet averted her attention to the gravy.

“Not a pedestrian, I hope?”

“Good heavens, no! A shopping cart. And it hit me, Skip!”

As it happened, the cart really hadn’t been Harriet’s fault. Come to think of it, it had probably been Chad’s fault. He was supposed to wheel the cart back — not leave it sitting there in her blind spot (on an incline, no less!). Still, Harriet can hardly blame the poor dear. The least she can do, though, is gently remind him, this time.

“Chad, dear,” she says as he slams the trunk closed, licking his lips. “Could you please remember to wheel the cart back?”

Yes, we’re getting ahead of ourselves again, but hey, it happens, Harriet. The reflective mind is a pinball, pitching and careening, rebounding off anything it makes contact with. Really, how can we not think of Mildred at this juncture? As always, you’re counting on her.

Mildred Honeycutt, ever your savior, and right from the start.

Here you are, Harriet, in the airless basement of St. Luke’s on that scorcher of a Sunday so long ago, nervous, reluctant, miserable, as your poor, untouched Bundt cake all but collapses under its own weight in the stultifying heat. Thank heavens for Mildred Honeycutt, with her cropped hair and bold, disarming nature, not only for extending a welcome on behalf of the entire congregation but for having the courage and politeness to wash two slices of your disastrous confection down with her weak coffee.