Paper or Plastic
By
Byron Edgington
“Sir, did you find everything? Excuse me, sir?” The girl waved to get my attention. A nudge from the woman behind me did the trick. “Did I find..? Oh, yes, yes I did, sorry.” I shuffled forward in the checkout lane and emptied my cart onto the black rubber conveyor belt: quart of 1% milk, bag of Brussels sprouts, jar of wheat germ, carton of dried prunes and half box of medium eggs. Then I fumbled with my keychain and held out the Kroger Plus card.
The girl finished the transaction for the young woman ahead of me: large box of Cap’n Crunch, gallon of whole milk, six-pack of Diet Pepsi, loaf of Wonder Bread with its array of colorful balloons, a pack of Marlboro Lites and a box of Midol. “There you are, ma’am,” the girl showed her teeth like a toothpaste ad. “Have a nice day.” Then she took my Kroger card and scanned it. “Find everything, sir?”
“I think so,” I said, fishing for my wallet. If Maureen had been there, I’d have let her take care of things. I always let Maureen do the shopping, especially for groceries, clothes, the kids’ shoes… I had no desire or even competence in such things. But my Maureen wasn’t there; she’d been gone, let’s see, almost two years now. How can that be? Good lord it seems like time goes faster and faster, like on one of those kiddie rides, except this isn’t a kiddie ride.
“Paper or plastic, sir?”
“What’s that? Oh…plastic’s fine,” I said. The young man with his ears full of piercings, and a couple of metallic items through his lip hummed raucous lyrics about crazy girls or lazy girls, I couldn’t make it out with his lisping on account of the ball bearing through his tongue. Plus, the hearing aids were driving me nuts again with their buzzing and static, a swarm of frantic locusts in both ears, like in the bible or some damn thing. The same irritation I’d explained to Doc Hamilton at my physical, six months before Maureen passed. “They buzz and squeal at the drop of a hat, doc,” I told him. “Not worth the effort. I’ll just read Mo’s lips.”
That didn’t sit well with her. “William Nelson,” she’d said, shaking her head. “You’re as stubborn as always. I don’t know why I put up with you.”
“Because you haven’t gotten a better offer in fifty-three years?”
“I’m sorry, sir?” The bagging kid stopped humming and looked up.
“Nothing. Thinking out loud.”
“No problem. Milk in a bag, sir? Or you gonna carry it?”
“No bag for the milk, thanks.” I hooked a pinkie in the carton’s handle. My finger went numb right away, so I slid another one in there just in case. Used to be they sold milk in those glass bottles with the carrying handle so your fingers didn’t freeze, and so you could see the quality of the milk you just bought. Plus, like Mo used to say, milk just tastes better in glass bottles. She knew all the grocery stuff, the best deals and prices, when to buy avocadoes and when not to, where to push on a papaya to tell if it’s ready. My Maureen even knew which aisle to go to for Granola, and whipped honey and those sweet pickles I love. Who knew Graham Crackers were shelved in the cooking and baking aisle? My Maureen did. “I miss her.”
“You missed something, sir?”
“No…got it all.”
“Sir, don’t forget your receipt.”
“My what?”
“Your receipt sir, and thanks again. You saved a dollar and seven cents today by shopping at Kroger.” Those teeth again, like the old Pepsodent ad.
“A dollar and seven cents.”
“Yes sir. Come back again, okay?”
“Yes. I’ll be sure to save more next time.”
The exotically inked and heavily punctured boy grinned. He snatched another plastic bag, hummed a bit more about lazy crazy girls, and then turned his attention to the customer behind me. My fingers frozen in the milk carton handle I shuffled toward the automatic door. By now I would have had the car at the curb, and my Maureen would be waiting there for me, grocery cart stacked high with the week’s provisions. I’d have parked right next to the no parking sign, punched the blinkers on and left the driver’s door open on the Olsdmobile. Then I’d have leapt out—she always laughed when I did this—and made my falsetto voice, the one I used when we did The King and I at UW Madison where we met. Maureen Kerns; what a ham. And the perfect Anna, with her regal appearance, and her false modesty. Playing Anna, my Maureen knew exactly which buttons to push, and this king of Siam did her bidding without a thought, let me tell you. I was no Yul Brynner, but she was the perfect Anna.
I’ll never forget her adding those lines during dress rehearsal. ‘Elephants know things through their feet,’ she’d yelled at Dave Newman, my drinking buddy in college and our haughty director. Newman thought she was a pain in the ass. “Doesn’t say that in the script, Kerns. You can’t just rewrite the damn play.”
“Actors rewrite all the time, Newman,” she yelled. “It’s called improv, just one letter away from improve!”
“David,” I explained to him after rehearsal, over our third or sixth Leinenkugel at Badgerland bar, “….just let her roll. We both know she’s gonna win, so forget it.”
And she did. Opening night, junior year, ‘Theater 410,’ the best elective I ever chose, since I’d never have met Maureen Kerns otherwise. Act three, scene two: “Elephants don’t use their heads, highness,” she said, as the king of Siam shook his, wondering how in the world to deal with his headstrong English governess. “They use their feet!”
“Their feet?” I said. “What good could that possibly do?”
We were winging it up there on that stage, Maureen and I, while Newman was cringing in the pit watching his two headstrong actors ad lib like no tomorrow.
“What good? Are you familiar with the expression ‘memory of an elephant?’”
“Of course I am. What of it?” Even I wasn’t sure where Mighty Mo, as Newman had started calling her, was going with this schtick. Waiting on that stage, Union Theater in Vilas Hall packed to the rafters, I studied every feature of her, the crimson tresses that refused to stay under her cap; the sensuous face that needed no makeup, her caramel colored eyes, the graceful fingers protruding from her open gloves. The perfectly tapered waist, and cleavage that made me sweat if I stared long enough.
“It’s metaphor, your highness,” she huffed. “Elephants don’t use their heads for the important things; they use their feet, their senses. Even when…”
Maureen narrowed her eyes at me. Then she did that thing with her tongue against her bottom teeth, the gesture that signaled something coming, something worth waiting for, a signal that it was my line. “….even when it comes to love?” I said.
She winked. “Even when it comes to love, your highness.”
The theater hushed, a silence I could hear. In the pit, Newman stared at his principal actors, his eyes like slits waiting for a reaction. He told me later, after the curtain, that at that point in the play he saw his GPA drop two full points as we took liberties with his directorial debut. Said he just knew old professor Salinsky would dock him for not stopping the play right then and there. Said he saw the old curmudgeon in the front row, and when we got a rousing round of applause for the invented exchange, Salinksy clapped louder and longer than anyone. Newman slapped my back. “….so goddam relieved I almost wet myself,” he said.
“I would have clapped at that, Newman.”
“Screw you, Kerns.”
“In your dreams, Newman.”
I still hear those two backstage, sparring with each other over improvised lines and made up stage business, even though Newman had just escaped a bear hug from a smiling Professor Salinksy and knew his GPA was safe. As soon as Salinksy made his exit, Newman grinned at me, and gave me a bear hug. “Thanks, old chap,” he said with an evil wink. “Not sure what she sees in you, but you’re one lucky son of a bitch.” He followed Salinksy out the exit.
Maureen and I had scrubbed off the face paint and left the theater around eleven. That was the night we decided we’d had enough acting, enough pretending. “Look at me, William Nelson,” she’d said, as the backstage door clicked behind us in the black night.
“You’re the only thing I see, Maureen Kerns.”
“That’s not true , Nelson, but I like the thought. See this?” She leaned into me. “No face paint.”
“Your point is?”
“I love acting, Bill, but only on stage. Out here?” She swept the scene, the last few couples wandering away from the theater, University Avenue clear, the streetlights blinking yellow, U Square empty, the bike rack with one battered bicycle. “Out here let’s be real with each other. There’s too much acting off stage. Too much plastic and not enough paper. I prefer things that disappear unless you try to preserve them, make the effort. Let’s look for the old tried and true , and leave acting to the Newmans of the world.”
Hugging against the early fall chill, we walked to Witte Residence Hall and climbed the stairs to five. Stan Barnum didn’t like getting the bum’s rush from our dorm room that late at night. But I’d vacated the premises for him when that Catlett girl showed up all the way from Duluth, so he owed me one. Even without face paint Maureen made me sweat, and she didn’t mind one little bit that I stared. What a night that was. Don’t need to be an elephant to remember such things.
Real is right; no acting with her. My Maureen was unlike any girl I’d ever met. She demanded truth, even when it hurt. “Especially when it hurts, Bill,” she said, and it did hurt at times: The ugly revelation about Gavin and his extortion from our business; learning that Jessica would never hear, the genetic component in her deafness and mine, (and the looks I got from Maureen when I pissed about the hearing aids); telling Mo that the doctor had called, and how little time she’d been given. Listening when she called him right back that day, more than two years ago. “Don’t pussy foot around, Phillip,” she’d yelled at him, our family doc of thirty years. “Tell me the truth, dammit!”
Most down to earth girl I’d ever met. My Maureen never accepted substitutes, and she hated pretense. Making love with her that first night was an exercise in self-discovery. The sex was stunning as well.
The next morning, exhausted and spent from our night of, ahem, getting to know each other better, I’d awakened first and just stared at her, a riot of red tresses splashing the pillow. Gorgeous breasts rising and falling with her steady breath. That Saturday morning, the same phrase ran through my brain that I’d hear every morning for fifty-three years: ‘You’re a lucky son of a bitch, Nelson.’
Fifty three years. Where did it go? I think we tried to preserve the fragile things, the things that would disappear unless we made an effort. My Maureen and I had a funny habit, a ritual that I’m sure we didn’t invent, but it helped us through some rough patches. We called it JATS, our Journal Across The Sheets. We wrote to each other, darned near every night, in a notebook. Nothing earth shaking, or profound, just our thoughts, reflections on our day, random things we’d heard, or said, or wished. And we always scribbled something in closing about how much we loved each other, and how lucky we felt to share that bed, that life with each other. Was that improv? I don’t think so. It never felt like acting. An elephant would approve, I’m guessing.
I got in hot water with my Maureen only a few times. The loan of a thousand bucks to Gavin without telling her was one I regret. Pissing about the hearing aids all those times was wrong. I wish I hadn’t done that, but the buzz really is irritating. Then there was the new computer.
When I brought the Mac home that day, and set it up in my office, the first feature I showed her was how to use e-mail. “E-mail? What’s the E stand for?”
“Electronic,” I said. “….see, you can write a letter and then simply…”
“You mean you can. I’ll keep writing real letters, William. On paper.”
“But Mo, they are real, they’re just…electronic.”
She pushed the chair back, stood, and kissed the top of my head. “Go ahead, Bill. I’ll stick with real letters. In fact, I’ll write more of them.”
“But, Maureen, you can do both. Just…”
“Bill?”
“Yes, my love?”
Arms crossed, she studied the floor in my office, the hardwood glowing in the fading afternoon sunlight. “Remember acting class? With that Newman character. What was the number..?”
“Theater four-ten.”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“Remember what I told you after the curtain? Walking to Witte Hall?”
“Leave the acting on stage.”
“Yes, and preserve the things that disappear.” My Maureen walked out.
I hit the delete key and joined her at the kitchen table. Two years ago.
Kroger’s automatic door whooshed open. I’d taken six steps, maybe seven, like finding my mark on stage when it happened. The pain cued itself, a chest punch that buckled my knees. I dropped the milk, the opaque carton smacking the floor and rupturing, sloshing around. I stomped around in it, white liquid dripping off my feet.
“Dammit…Maureen!”
“Sir? Is there something..?”
“I’m fine,” I said. But I wasn’t. The pain squeezed my chest again. Jaw sagging, I went to one knee, genuflecting on the cold tiles like the king of Siam awaiting further instruction from his Anna. I pressed a hand against the elephant sitting on my chest and gulped draughts of air, one after another.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“I’m all right. Really.” I gasped at the fellow leaning over me. “Dammit!” The stab of anger, and the harsh response gushed from out of nowhere, my words spraying like spilled milk, and equally useless. The hearing aids squawled, angry bees nesting inside my head. “Sorry,” I said. “Can you..? Would you call my Maureen?”
“Your wife?”
“Yes… she’s in the produce aisle, or maybe in cooking supplies getting Graham Crackers.”
“I’ll check, sir. What does she look like?”
I gulped air, tugged at my collar. Then it occurred to me that he wouldn’t find her. “Never mind.”
“I’ll call 9-1-1, sir, wait right here.”
“No, don’t do that. Just…let me catch my breath. This happens all the time. Really, I’m fine.” I pushed the young fellow away. “Just take a minute.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Thank you.” The young fellow wandered off, looking over his shoulder at me. I ripped the hearing aids from both ears and put myself together. Next thing I knew the young man was back with a mop and bucket to lap up the spilled milk. I got to my feet, old bones crackling. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“No problem, sir. Would you like a replacement?”
My eyes started leaking, dammit and I couldn’t stop them. I looked outside. The Olds was right where I’d parked it. I could have gotten it, sat at the curb, waited for her. Like reciting from a long running play, I heard the English governess educating the young fellow. “She always liked to be waited on, my Maureen, to have me open the door for her. She always treated me like the King of Siam,” I told him. “Especially when I did my falsetto for her. I still see that laugh, the red curls bouncing. She said elephants sense important things through their feet, not their heads. I can hear her saying it. ‘Give me the old tried and true ,’ she said.”
The young man watched me closely, while his mop danced back and forth.
“My Maureen used to say, ‘We let our kids play outside,’ ….and left our doors unlocked. Back then the air was clean and sex was dirty, before any of this ‘paper or plastic’ stuff.’ There’s no replacement for my Maureen…”
The young man wrung the mop out in the bucket. “Sir, I meant a replacement for the milk.”
“I knew what you meant, son.” I left my groceries on the stack of plastic fireplace logs beside the automatic door and went back inside. I got a new half-gallon of milk and took it to the same checker. “I dropped one, and I need to replace it.” Fishing for my wallet again, I noticed the chest pain had receded.
The fellow with the mop motioned at her. The girl cocked her head and nodded back at him. Then she shoved the milk along the conveyor and punched a button on the register. The screen blinked a zero. “No charge, sir. We’ll take care of it.”
“No charge? Oh…thank you, I appreciate that.”
The tattooed boy smiled at me. “Paper or plastic, sir?”
“Uh…make it paper. Please.”
