After creating an exercise from which her fiction writing students wrote stories, Meg did the exercise herself.  She says, “In my story, a woman is suddenly afraid to leave a grocery store. Why? As I began the story, I didn’t know. I had this scrap of paper that said ‘Fear of exiting a supermarket.’ So I sent my character up and down the aisles. I tried to get her to make her escape. But until I discovered what was really going on with her (and she faced it), there could be no escape. I sent her into her past. I didn’t know what her problem was until suddenly the line about her husband just showed up on the page. This story that grew out of no idea or plan turned out to be one of my favorites among my own stories. It is included in my new collection of stories and a novella forthcoming from Story Line Press.”

Servings Per Container
by Meg Files

The drinking fountain was beside the exit, and so when Judith came down with a terrible thirst, she almost made it out of the store. The automatic doors slid grandly apart when she approached. But once she’d taken her fill from the humming fountain, she couldn’t step outside.

First her grocery cart had disappeared. At the mound of avocadoes, she lightly squeezed several until she found the right ripeness. With her bumpy black avocado in hand, she turned and her cart was gone. Nearby she found someone else’s — with bananas, like hers, but also with a bag of Chinese peas and a microwave pizza for one. She carried her avocado until she spotted her own cart beside a man. She wanted to say, Excuse me, that’s my cart you’re driving. Then she thought maybe she could bring herself to say, Oops, I think that’s my cart. She wanted to steal the cart away from the man. She needed her own bananas and bagels and peanut butter. But she returned to the front of the store and started all over again with an empty cart, abandoning the man’s cart and her own first one, too.

No, first she’d been stuck in the shower. She’d done the usual routine — soap face, soap body, wash hair, creme rinse hair — but when she went to shut off the water, she couldn’t do it. If she didn’t turn each handle exactly right, she’d be blasted with cold water or scalded. She’d have to turn the cold water handle faster than the hot to maintain the temperature that the separate waters made in combination. What was the correct speed of rotation for each? and how could she coordinate her left and right hands? Then she couldn’t remember whether the knobs turned clockwise or counter-, and whether they both went the same direction or opposite, and if opposite, then were both outward or both inward? She didn’t recall putting the creme rinse on her hair, but if she did it again, she’d have limp hair. Why was it spelled creme, not cream? Or was it, even? She couldn’t read the label on the plastic bottle through the blur of the water. Maybe she hadn’t washed her face. She was sure she’d soaped down her body. She could do the face again, anyway. No harm there. She tried to say, with a little laugh, You already have a limp face, but the spray burbled the words.

She did the whole body and hair routine all over, trying to forget that she didn’t know how to turn off the water. If she just reached and turned, her hands would know what to do. But when she thrust her hands out, they were suddenly rational, and she shook them in horror, as if each finger tip contained its own tiny cerebrum and brain stem thrusting down to the master hand. She thought she heard the telephone, but she stood under the water. It grew cool, but then she wasn’t sure if the water was actually cooling — and what would be the faucet dynamics then? — or if her skin was numbing. Would she even know if she was chilled or burned?

 At last she opened the shower door and stepped onto the bath mat. Water sprayed into the bathroom and she reached back in and turned off first the hot and then the cold water.

Judith had been stuck in the grocery store for an hour when she had to start again with a new cart. She did the produce section again. At least she still had the correct avocado. Bananas. What was the joke? How long do I have, Doc? the sick man says. I can’t say. But I wouldn’t buy any green bananas. At the avocado mound she squeezed a couple more, but hers still felt right. Two potatoes. Asparagus was $2.99 a pound. She weighed several rubber-banded bundles trying to find the lightest. Were you allowed to remove spears from the bundles? She loved asparagus. Though not if it was overcooked and limp. No, put one of the potatoes back. Broccoli was 99¢ a pound. But then you were paying for the stem which you were just going to throw away. Ronald said at a party once, I’ll pass on that broccoli. I get too much of that stuff at home. Judith serves broccoli once a week. I mean at the minimum. Once a week. She hadn’t realized it but it was true. Sometimes she draped cheese sauce over it, though.

This was when the terrible thirst struck, and she pushed her cart all the way to the front of the store, parking it behind the check-out counters so nobody would think she was trying to leave without paying for her vegetables. Hers would be just another abandoned cart. She drank and drank, readying her feet to carry her through the open doorway, without thinking. But no. Her feet had minds of their own. She retrieved her cart and started up Cereal and Coffee.

The man who’d taken her first cart was at the far end opening the dairy case. He had his pizza and peapods in with her peanut butter and bagels. He didn’t recognize her. He didn’t see her. Did he believe he’d chosen the peanut butter himself? Did he not even see her items in his cart? Nobody saw Judith.

She worked her way along, crackers by toothpaste by V-8 by toilet paper.

“Why are you getting that?” an old man in plaid bermudas said to his matching wife. “We must have a half dozen cans in the pantry already.”

“I know what I’m doing, Jerry,” she said. “I have a coupon. It’s only nine cents with the coupon. It’s virtually free.”

One thing you’ll never catch us doing, Ronald said once at the Grand Canyon, is wearing matching tee-shirts.

“We don’t need another can of green chiles,” the old man said.

“I’m the one does the cooking. You have no idea what we need.”

As soon as the old wife turned to the tuna and salmon, he plucked the can out of their basket and replaced it on the shelf.

Judith behind him retrieved the little yellow can with the flapping parrot on the label. She needed four ounces of diced green chiles, roasted and peeled.

One of the retarded people the store employed sat hunched over on a red plastic crate. They were always down there reshelving or something, holding a macaroni box and muttering, and customers rolled right by, not seeing them. But this fat woman was crying. She looked up at Judith. She couldn’t have been more than twenty.

“My boyfriend went to heaven,” she said.

“Oh I’m sorry,” Judith said.

The woman stood up beside her crate. She wore the store’s red smock with Ellen on her tag. “We was in love,” she said. “Now he went into heaven.”

“Here,” Judith said and handed over a Kleenex. “I’m sorry, dear,” she said, and the young woman sank to her crate.

At least she and Ellen had seen each other.

She’d never been a Judy. Even Ronald called her Judith. Not honey or darling. Occasionally she’d been a dear, but she’d heard him on the phone, and the women at his office were also dear.

Of course he wasn’t a Ron, either, much less a Ronnie.

Somebody’d left a coupon by the soup. She studied the Progresso cans. Ronald was not big on canned soup. The coupon expired the next day. Judith might still be stuck in the store the next day. Was the coupon good only up to the expiration date or did the store still honor it on the very date? The Hearty Black Bean had 1.5 grams of fat and 10 grams of dietary fiber. That was per serving. Servings Per Container about 2. She set the can in her cart and dropped in the coupon too. Let it be a sign. Progresso. She was making headway. Yes she was.

The retarded girl was following a white-haired woman down the aisle. “My boyfriend went to heaven,” she said, crying again. The white-haired woman pushed her cart around Judith’s and escaped.

“We was in love,” the girl said.

“I know,” Judith said. “Listen, you have some family, right?”

“My mom. My brother. We was in love.”

“Your mom’s helping you out, isn’t she? I know it’s hard.”

“He went into heaven.”

“That’s good,” Judith said. “He must have been a good person.”

The girl nodded and wiped her eyes. “Heaven’s good.”

“It’s hard, I know. You miss him. You don’t know why he’s gone.”

“He went into heaven, that’s why.”

Judith handed over another Kleenex and pushed on down the aisle. Bread. She needed bread. She would get cheese and have a grilled cheese sandwich with her Progresso soup. She’d do it for two lunches. She couldn’t join the poor girl’s responsory: He‘s better off out of here. She wasn’t about to tell her, Better to have loved and lost. Why did people never complete that sentence?

Something rumbled. Thunder? She’d look out when she reached the end of the aisle. It was funny to think there was actual weather outside. She saw herself running through rain, running under the black sky, running out into the parking lot and laughing with all the others who’d left their windows down.

Ronald, of course, had left her.

She rounded the black olive and pickle display at the end of the aisle. She didn’t even know what all she needed. She had no list. She could pay for the items she’d collected so far and walk right out. Once she’d gone through the check-out, she’d have no choice.

The doors slid open for a woman pushing a cart piled high with brown-bagged groceries. She had a couple string bags full of cans, too. What a good, good woman. Everybody would see her with her environmentally friendly string bags. It wasn’t raining at all. The woman pushed out into the brightness. Her husband would hear her pull up in their driveway and help her carry in the stockpile. Something about brown paper grocery bags made Judith want to cry.

From the exotic foods she could hear Ellen one aisle over telling yet someone else about her dead boyfriend. Marinated hearts of palm. She needed those. Tiny pale ears of corn. They were beautiful inside their little jars. What were capers, anyway? She needed this yellow chow-chow. She didn’t think she’d ever had chow-chow.

He’d left a note beside the coffeemaker. Judith — It just doesn’t work for me anymore. Sorry. I’ll call to take care of the details. At first she thought he meant their Mr. Coffee was broken. But it was on, half full still of hot French roast. While she was sleeping he’d made a pot of coffee, had a cup or two, and made his escape. She called his office. She never bothered him at the office. The secretary said, “Mr. Colton’s on vacation this week. I can have him get back to you next week.” The rare times Ronald called her at work, he was so out of context that she hardly recognized his voice.

Sure enough, his medium suitcase was gone. When had he packed it and wheeled it out? She called in sick. “It’s just a temporary bug. I’m sure I’ll be all right tomorrow,” she said.

“Well, you take care,” the office manager said. “Try to keep still for once.”

Judith was always vowing to be calm. Quit flitting, Ronald said. She couldn’t keep still. How ridiculous she must look, her hands flapping, her head shaking her hair away from her face, her foot jiggling.

She’d made it out of the shower, so there was good reason to believe she could make it out of the grocery store. She opened the door to frozen seafood. Maybe some shrimp. Hmmm? But she knew how this breaded shrimp you heated in the oven was: the cranial coating fell away and you had these tough little brains on your plate. Fishsticks. Maybe fishsticks. She wasn’t a fishstick person. Ronald would say she was a, what, not a shark steak, maybe a perch woman. Or not a real fillet at all, just one of those four-to-a-box composite whitefish shapes. Servings per container: 2. If she put some frozen food in the cart, she’d have to leave soon or it’d thaw. You weren’t supposed to refreeze things. They’d be ruined.

She heard Ellen’s quiet crying coming toward her. A man had her by the elbow. “I know, but we can’t have — ” he said. He was young too, wearing a red smock too, and his tag said Manager Trainee. He escorted her through swinging aluminum doors, Employees Only, and the crying dopplered away from Judith.

She moved along to the next frozen food case. She didn’t even like seafood. Meat pies. Man-size frozen dinners. One serving per container, if you were a man. Pizzas. She lifted out a microwave pizza for one. Okay. Where were the peapods. Don‘t you have a brain in your head, woman? How would the pizza be with pepperoni and peapods? She’d fix it for her supper, if she ever got home. She’d serve herself: My name is Judith and I’ll be your waitress this evening. Our special tonight is the peapod pizza. Judith laughed but nobody heard her. She didn’t have a brain in her head: it was her hands and feet running things now.

Ronald was always disgusted with men who left their families for some twit. Letting the little head rule the big head, he called it.

He liked her to wear high heels, but she disliked calling attention to her feet, though they were ordinary feet. She was surprised sometimes to see herself in photographs. Was she so slight? She didn’t like to play the twit. She was a little brown-haired woman, lacking the great thick hair brunettes could have, even now choosing frozen orange juice instead of fresh. And if she was invisible, what did all the flitting matter? She saw her nervous body on fast forward, jerking and twitching its way through the store again and again in those bland shoes. Was this the way she tried to be visible? Watch me wiggle.

Sorry, the note said. As if he’d stepped on her toe. Bumped into her. Not: I’m sorry. She’d send no announcements: It is with deep regret that we inform you of the passing of Ronald and Judith Colton. Who would notice? The remains wouldn’t even rot and stink.

She laughed out loud and in the middle of the laugh hiccupped. Ronald was exactly like her. He was rolling up and down the aisles, anonymous, matching nobody, grieving nobody, making carefully considered selections. Even his departure was anonymous. Ronald also was invisible.

She grabbed a half gallon of ice cream. Pralines and Cream. She tossed it into the cart.

“Somebody sounds happy,” a woman said. She had a child in the toddler seat of her cart and a child riding underneath.

“Oh!” Judith said. “You’re talking to me.”

“Well, you’re throwing ice cream around and laughing. Party time, huh?”

“No, I just — .” Judith was crying. Her nose was running. She’d given all her Kleenex away. “I was just trying to figure.” She hefted her Pralines and Cream. “How many servings per container?”

The woman pushed her children away. “Another nut case,” she muttered.

Judith went straight to the paper products aisle. She opened a 1000-count box of tissues and blew her nose. She tossed the box into her cart and headed back where she’d started, produce. She would by god buy some green bananas.

She’d been in the store three hours. Three hours and thirty-seven minutes. She joined a check-out line. She’d never been an express lane woman. She saw Ellen at the front of the store, waiting by the lottery ticket counter. She’d taken off her smock. Her boyfriend went into heaven, she’d told everybody who passed by her. As if he’d gone into the kitchen or the bathroom.

“Hey, Mrs. Colton, how you?” the check-out woman said. “Here you are and it’s not even Saturday.”

Her smock tag said Bea. She handled Judith’s groceries and accepted her check every Saturday morning. She’d seen her.

“It’s Judith,” she said. “Mrs. Colton’s my mother-in-law. Or was. Call me Judith. Good to see you again, Bea.” She wanted a tag for her chest, too. She’d always wanted to be seen. Always she’d dreaded to be seen.

She stopped at the drinking fountain. She shuddered. She couldn’t push her loaded cart outside. She drank cold water, but it wasn’t enough. The cart wheels would sound and vibrate as she crossed the track of the sliding doors. She’d never thought the marriage wouldn’t go on. She needed someone to see her across.

The manager trainee and a fat woman in a flowered housedress had Ellen between them. They walked her past the rows of meshed carts and the motorized handicapped carts and the Kiwanis gumball machines. Ellen was no sort of angel she could follow. She thought: I have been visible when I ought not to have been visible. The doors curtained open. The trainee fell away and the two women floated straight out. I have been invisible when I ought not to have been invisible. She lifted her grocery bags into her arms and crossed into the brightness.