Wendy Dolber

A Certain Kind of Energy

I first noticed her standing outside ShopRite contemplating the shopping carts, a hand wavering between the large and small baskets. She was dressed in black satin shorts and a puffy shirt like in the old Seinfeld episode, only this one, with its splashes of flung colors, looked like Jackson Pollock could have designed it. She stood out, among the leggings and hoodies of most of the women, weaving their way around her. She didn’t seem to care that she was in everybody’s way.

Finally, I reached around her, and said, “May I?” and caught hold of one of the small carts. She looked at me as if I had come out of nowhere and our eyes met for a brief second. Hers were sharply blue fringed with long brown false lashes. One was coming unhinged in the outer corner of her left eye. A whipped confection of a hat perched on the side of her head, a spray of feathers arising from a single large black rose. The feathers were quivering. Then she broke away, wheeled the cart around and pushed it through the door, looking like a brightly colored bird who had somehow gotten separated from the flock by some catastrophic event.

I followed my usual route to the left through the produce department. She made a sharp right and disappeared down an aisle. When I saw her again, she was standing in front of the row of cold cases, her hand poised to open the door. She stood there like a statue, swaying slightly in her stiletto boots, gazing in the direction of the almond milk. She was crying. I stole a glance at her face, young, pretty, expertly applied makeup, only now the black eyeliner followed the unhinged eyelash down her cheek. Her nose was running.

Grief is a kind of energy that exists in the world unfelt beyond our senses, until it becomes relevant. I had cried in that same spot remembering how my husband had always been game to run out to the market to get me my beloved vanilla almond milk. Unsweetened. Until he couldn’t. I cried in the produce, pasta, meat, dairy, paper goods, even the dog aisle, nobody seeming to notice. For months, I couldn’t accept that our beautiful, shared life had been short-circuited in this way.

I decided to just give her space, opened the door of the case next to where she was standing and all but crawled in, twisting my body to the right to get the almond milk behind the door she was blocking. She looked at her feet but didn’t move.  

I drifted off to finish my shopping, hit the refined carbohydrates aisle, grabbed a package of Oreos and put them back, then down the paper aisle, where I stood in front of the tissues, thinking of her. I piled four boxes into my cart. I wondered was she still standing in front of the almond milk. I rolled down the aisle and peeked around the corner to see. She was. I opened a tissue box and held it out to her. We looked at each other. She took a tissue, shaking her head, as if to say, “it’s all so much.” I stood next to her for a moment, sharing the feeling, if such a thing is possible. Then I drifted off.  

Wendy Dolber is the author of The Guru Next Door. She has had short stories published in Sixfold and Sequoia Speaks (upcoming). Her work has been long-listed for The Lasceax Prize and she is a past recipient of a New Jersey State Council on the Arts grant. She lives in New Jersey.