Before John leaves for New Zealand, he gives me grocery money and an apology for not stocking the kitchen himself. I try to tell him not to worry, I can go to the store, but he doesn’t know—or can’t remember—how to hand things over.
At the market in St. Leonards, the cereal selection is the same as back home, though they’ve put koalas and kangaroos on all the boxes. I pass on the chocolate cartoon garbage and reach for Shredded Wheat, my mom’s go-to. In the raw food section, I load up on berries and dried fruits and three kinds of nuts. If the kids won’t eat it, the Rover will. I toss a box of graham crackers in the cart for Martin, whose puppy affection makes me feel magnanimous. In the refrigerated section, ground chuck is on special. I decide, after standing there with the door open too long, like I think electricity grows on trees, to buy five pounds. I can divide it up into burgers and freeze them, like my mom used to. (Once or twice a month after a sale, she’d pull a block of anemic brown turds from the freezer, slap it against the Formica to break the patties apart, and voilà!—dinner for five.)
In the shampoo aisle, I slow down to find a mousse Tracy told me about, but I’m distracted by the rows of hair dye, something I’ve never tried. Each shade is displayed on a twist of shiny plastic hair that sticks off the shelf like a tongue. Deepest Mahogany, Sassy Amber. My mom, usually a blonde, went red once. I remember seeing a photo of her posing with her monogrammed tote bag in London. She was young—my age, actually—and pregnant with GT. She wore crisp cotton pedal pushers over her belly, and had trim ginger locks. I pick Scarlet Fire.
I turn down the baking aisle, and there, just ahead, is Eugenia Brown, the woman who sacked me.
I’m moving fast now. I can’t wait to run into her.
“Eugenia? Is that you?” She looks up from the instant cake mix. “Kelly, it’s Kelly,” I say, prompting her, forcing her. “Remember? You hired me? Well, hired and fired.” I don’t know where this surge of cockiness is coming from, but I am hot to embarrass her. I glance around, hoping to draw in a witness to make it more awkward.
She smiles tentatively. “Oh, yes, hello.”
“Hello to you! I’m just here shopping for my new family,” I say, beaming. “Wonderful children. Great situation. Really love them.” I’m on a roll.
“Oh, that’s good,” she says.
“It’s better than good. It’s fantastic! We make such a good team. They are just so”—I pause, flipping through attributes, looking for something with just the right bite—“grateful!”
“All right, well, I better keep moving.”
I stand square to her, pulsing with out-of-control bravado. “I hope you were able to find a suitable replacement. A young Asian, isn’t that who you said worked out best for you?”
“We’re fine,” Eugie Brown says, looking angry now. “Good day.”
I may have gone just a touch too far. “Okay, well, tell the kids I said hello! Richard, too.”
In the checkout line, I salute myself. I am a competent individual, a freethinker, a force. No one works me over!
But while I load the grocery bags into the back of the van, I catch sight of myself in the side mirror and realize that I don’t look so much like an independent woman as I do a barely distinguishable version of my mother on any given day of the seventies or eighties—snubbing sugar cereal, stockpiling hamburger meat, sorting through hair dyes, demanding eye contact, standing down the occasional adversary. Even more surprising is that the recognition of her in me does not give me pause. Here, in this moment, I find the likeness kind of exhilarating.