Wednesday, March 30, 2022

The Cashier at Emil's Foodtown


I knew her. We’d laughed in Ninth-Grade photography class. She’d always had a smile and would say hello. Once she said I was an excellent photographer. We'd stood close to each other in the darkroom over the vinegar-smell of the stop bath. We'd stood close to each other and watched the photographic paper develop into greys and blacks and shapes of images. 

 

But my crush crushed our friendship. Two years had gone by since I’d said a word to her or her to me. 

 

I’d seen her. One year earlier I’d joined the yearbook so I could photograph the gymnastics and capture her on film. She saw me in the gym at the meet. She saw me shooting her… recording her on two precious frames of Tri-X Pan. Film was expensive.

 

She didn’t acknowledge me. I didn’t acknowledge her. My crush was overwhelming and muting. My crush Crazy-Glued my lips and dropped a Peterbilt truck on my stomach with the tires spinning at 60-miles-an-hour.

 

The photos came out lousy and I quit the yearbook.

 

I wasn’t the only boy with a crush on her. I couldn’t decide if this made me jealous or proud. 

 

Twelve months later I was at the Emil’s Foodtown buying the things on a list my mother had given me. I had no idea my crush was working there, but there she was, the cashier wearing a crisp white lab-coat that said Emil’s Foodtown and held her name tag over the breast. No other Emil’s uniform was as white and starched as hers. 

 

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what I would do if she said, “Hello.”

 

But we knew each other. People who know each other say, “Hello.” 

 

She looked at me blankly. I looked at her blankly, meaninglessly, emptily. I looked down for fear she would think I was looking at her. I put my groceries on the counter and peeked up as she picked them up, one by one, the bananas, the American cheese, the Burry’s Fudge Town cookies. 

 

Why was I buying cookies that came with a puppet prize in the box?

 

She was silent. I was silent. The store was silent. The mass of my crush was silent.

 

She rang each item on the mechanical cash register, printing out prices, making a loud cash-register racket, over and over and over, until she punched in the cost of the cookies.

 

I felt love and desire’s skeletal fingers grasp and then crush my viscera.

 

She put the Burry’s Fudge Town cookies in the paper bag already full of the other items. It was the kind of bag we all used as book covers.

 

She breathed in… realizing I wasn’t going to say anything… or maybe just breathing in.

 

I paid. I took the receipt and my change, letting her hand fall into mine for a moment, really a fraction of a moment, maybe not even a fraction, less… yes… less… the culmination of two years of a long-distance, local, hometown relationship.

 

I pocketed the receipt and the money. I didn’t say a word.

 

She didn’t say a word.

 

We knew each other.

 

She was my dream.

 

She turned away. 

 

I still remember this, forty-five years later. I still remember needing to exit the store, needing to escape the overwhelming littleness of my life not happening.

 

I still remember my joy in now knowing where she worked. I could go back and the next time I could talk to her. It was like getting my bank passbook back after depositing a check and staring at the new balance. 

 

I was rich. I owned vital information. She worked at Emil’s. She worked near my house. She wore a crisp white lab coat. 

 

The next time I went there I would come with courage. The next time I went there I would change the course of my life.

 

I never did go back to Emil’s Foodtown… not once… not ever.