Bing Cherries

She was in Beckert’s Bulk Foods, buying bing cherries. She remembered when the store had been called Long’s Market. Then, the front wall had been lined with bread loaves, each wrapper bright with circus balloon spots. There’d been red-and-white soup cans: chicken noodle, cream of mushroom, beef barley.  Next had come Band-Aids and baby powder and green minty mouthwash. The produce section was a long row of fresh, bright, living food:  purple cabbages and green ones rolled tight against each other in the cooler, smooth. ripe, yellow bananas arranged by bunches on a hairy green cloth, with a few brown-spotty strays crowded in around the edges.  Bananas had cost twenty-three cents a pound at Long’s, nineteen cents on sale.

Now they were thirty-nine cents on sale. The wall shelves were gone; now customers fished everything out of clear plastic boxes: gum balls by the pound, white rice ready to be shoveled out. No more bread in wrappers; now there were bagels in boxes with computer-made labels: Egg, Garlic, Onion-Flavored.

Flavored? thought Christy while picking up three egg bagels, one at a time, with a pair of tongs. What does that mean? They poured onion juice on them, or what?  I have to get bing cherries for Sue. Bing cherries, don’t forget bing cherries.

She gave the bagel bag to the weigher, who beeped up the price on his flat, square, digital scale and twisted a price sticker around the neck of the bag. "Playing Bulk Bingo?" he said. He had a toothbrush mustache that made him look like a terrier.

"What?" said Christy, looking at the hole puncher he was holding toward her. "Oh. Um, no, don’t have a card."

"Just a sec. I’ll get you one," the produce terrier said, disappearing toward the checkout area. His necktie swung like a pendulum because he walked fast.

He went before she could say don't bother. Months from now she'd pull out the supermarket card, expired, with one round hole punched in square number one. Oh well, he'd gone to get it now.

"Thanks," she said, when he came back. The guy was pleased to have been able to do something for her. He smiled.

She walked off without the bagel bag, so he got to help her again by running after her with it. She thanked him and went to find soup. There wasn’t any split pea. She had her choice of vegetable, beef vegetable, turkey vegetable, cheddar cheese, tomato. She would eat poultry, but Sue didn’t, so it was cheddar, which sounded thick and gooey, and then there was tomato. Forget soup, they could have pea salad. She went to the Deli and got a half pound of pea salad, and a complimentary cup of coffee from the snack bar.

Pea salad and the bagels, and toilet paper, it never hurt to get a roll of toilet paper, and now she was getting the hell out, before the fluorescent lights completely buzzed her mind. The lights plus the color bulbs around the video display, and every three minutes the P.A. system suggested she go get a complimentary cup of coffee from the snack bar, but she'd had hers already.

Even though hot, damp air met her at the exit, it was good to get out on the sidewalk. Where was the car? Oh, over by the drugstore. She tossed the sack into the passenger seat and slid in.





Sue was cutting cored strawberries in half neatly (of course), exactly in half. She added the halves to the fruit salad bowl after every fifth strawberry. "Get the cherries?" she asked.

"Yeah," Christy said.  She frowned and paused. "No, I didn't. I got bagels, and t.p. and something else. I remembered the cherries, I really did, but then they didn't have good soup, no split pea -- pea salad, that’s what I got. Pea salad." She took the bagels and the toilet paper out of the brown sack, and set them on the counter. "Can we just stop for cherries on the way, and put them in when we get there?" They were going to a potluck at five.

Sue gave her a distressed look.

"Okay, I'll go back. Give me a sec." Dammit. Well, Sue cared about her food. Christy took the pea salad tub out of the sack, and turned the sack upside down against her stomach to fold it. The Bulk Bingo card slipped out and slid along the linoleum.

"What's that?"said Sue.
 
"Just one of those grocery store things," said Christy. "They punch it for you, then after you get so many punches, they. . .  I don't know, give you something, I guess." Christy picked up the car "Cherries. Anything else while I'm there?"

"Want me to go?" asked Sue, without looking up.  She wiped her fingers on the terry towel that was tucked into the waistband of her slacks, and continued splitting strawberries.

"No, that's okay," said Christy.

"Leave yourself enough time to change," said Sue.

"Change?" asked Christy, looking down at her jeans. They were still clean; she just took them out of the drawer yesterday.

"Well, I thought you'd want to wear slacks or something nice," said Sue. "It's their anniversary."

"Only a year," said Christy. "You don't have to dress up for a year, do you?" She tried smiling.

"Well, whatever," said Sue, dumping the last strawberry halves into the bowl. She took off the towel, wiping her hands again.

Christy put her hand on the knob of the kitchen door. "Okay then. I'm going -- just cherries, right?"

"Yeah," said Sue. She opened the refrigerator door and slid the fruit bowl onto the top shelf. Then she stooped down and picked up the bingo card and held it out to Christy. "Here, might as well have him punch it again."

Christy opened the screen door, avoiding the card. "I don't think they’ll punch it twice the same day. Be back." She shut the screen behind her.

"Don't be silly," said Sue through the screen. She opened the door and held out the card. "You're going right over there. He won't remember you. Take it."

Christy took it and went to the car door. Once she was in, she put the card up on the dashboard, then changed her mind and laid it on the passenger seat. I'll tell her you have to get ten dollars' worth of groceries before they punch it, Christy thought, turning the ignition key.





She didn't see any cherries in the produce section. She went up and down along the display counters, fooled by red patches which turned out to be radishes, cherry tomatoes, and plums. She looked at her watch. 4:14. They were supposed to be at Betsy and Mary’s at five, and she still had to change clothes. She went to the weigh station.

The terrier-mustached weigher was gone, replaced by a very tall woman in a plaid vest.  Her silvery blond hair was puffed around her face. 

"Cherries," said Christy. "I need to find cherries."

The tall woman leaned around her counter and pointed a long, purple fingernail. "Down there, hon," she said. "Spirit Shoppe."

"Oh," said Christy. "Thank you."

The Spirit Shoppe was four shelves of booze and mixers. Christy was confused. She started to turn away, but spotted maraschino cherries on the bottom shelf.  Three dusty jars. She picked up one of them, and cradled the tall, skinny glass in her palm. No, it wouldn’t do. Sue wouldn't want soft, sweet cherries. Christy put the jar back and looked at her watch. 4:19.

Why couldn't Sue just leave the cherries out? Christy went to the snack bar for another complimentary cup of coffee. If the woman remembered her Christy would offer to pay for it.

There was no one at the snack bar. The green formica counter had styrofoam cups on it next to a plastic saucer filled with packets of  Sweet-N-Low, and a gray cardboard box held a scattering of white plastic spoons. HELP YOURSELF was hand-lettered on a paper napkin stuck to the coffee um with a price label. Christy felt a little queasy already, so she only poured out a half-cup to take with her.

She bought four pounds of cat food so she wouldn't feel bad about the coffee. She put the cat food in the trunk and drove to the Eastlake shopping plaza. Her watch said 4:34 as she got out of the car. In the produce section of Thrift Foods she found two boxes of bing cherries, tucked between the tangerines and the nectarines. The cherries were not fresh; the bottom layers were probably completely soft, and a half-pint was $2.39. Sue would scream. Christy decided to pull the price tag off in the car. She took the better-looking box to the checkout. 4:40. At least she'd found some; if Sue wanted cherries in her fruit salad then why hadn't she bought them yesterday with the rest of the stuff? Well, that wasn't fair. Sue was doing all the work, making the salad and all that. But she'd volunteered to; she wouldn't have trusted Christy to make something. And Sue was the one who wanted to go to the potluck; Christy had only met Betsy a couple of times and she didn't know Mary at all. But she’d told Sue she’d go. It would have been so nice to sit out on the porch tonight, listen to the radio or something, be home together.

Maybe she could tell Sue that she felt a little under the weather.
And as she thought of saying it, her shoulders felt light and free, and relief flowed all over her. She could stay home; she was tired. She might actually get sick if she had to stay up late at Betsy and Mary's. She'd tell Sue as soon as she got home; after that she could go in the bedroom and take a nap.

But then Sue wouldn't be able to go, either.  Sue would never go alone, and it was too late to find someone to go with her. After she'd made the salad and everything Sue would be sad if she didn't get to go.  Chrisiy's shoulder muscles knotted tight as she pulled into the driveway.  Almost five o'clock;  she'd better run in, change clothes, and help Sue get the salad and present into the car. Even if they flew right over, they were going to be late.

Christy got out of the car, slammed the driver's door, and dropped the box of cherries in the driveway. The side of the box exploded in a V-shaped tear, and cherries began to roll down the drive. The box was half-empty now; only the soft, ruined cherries had stayed mashed together at the bottom. Christy stooped to save a few of the good ones, but they were already coated with grit and silt. She gave up. and let them roll crazily down the concrete toward the gutter.

Sue was next to her, holding the bowl of fruit salad. Christy stood up, holding out the limp paper box stained with cherry glop. "I went two places," she said in a weak voice. "And Thrift only had two boxes, and... I don’t want to go to the potluck."

"It's okay," said Sue, taking the torn, stained cherry box away without looking at Christy. "The salad can go the way it is. Come change your clothes."

Christy began to follow Sue into the house, but stopped after two steps. "No," she said to Sue’s back. "I didn't mean about the cherries, I meant --  Um, I don't feel very well. No, I'm lying.  I'm not sick, I'm just. . .  You can go if you want, I could call somebody for you, Cathy maybe, or somebody. Or whatever you want to do."

Sue turned. "But you don't want to go," she said flatly.

"I just," Christy began. "No.  I don't want to go." She braced for the reaction.

"Oh." said Sue. "What do you want to do?"  She put the box of ruined cherries on the lid of the trash can.

"What?" said Christy. What was this, a trick?

"What do you want to do?" Sue said patiently. She was awfully sweet-looking in the face sometimes; the frown lines couldn't take that away.

"Sit on the porch swing," said Christy.

Sue thought for a minute. "Here," she said, handing Christy the fruit bowl. "Take this around to the porch and I'll get us some spoons, and call Betsy. I’ll say we’re a little under the weather."

"No," said Christy. "Just say we want to sit on our swing. If you want to sit on our swing.  Do you want to sit on the swing?"

"Only if I get to hold the salad," said Sue, reaching into the bowl. She scooped up a bite with her fingers.

"Hey," said Christy. "Don’t eat all the pineapple."