29 The Supermarket Shop
EMILY’S BIRTHDAY ALWAYS MEANS the start of summer for me. When my waters broke six years ago and I took a cab to the hospital, there were people sitting at cafe tables on the pavements and spilling into the street and it felt as though the whole city was in carnival for the arrival of my child.
The day before her party, I do the supermarket shop with Ben.
First off, I try to liberate one of the extra-wide trolleys, which is in coitus with the trolley outside the store; I pull and push with one hand, holding on to runaway toddler with the other.
An aviary on wheels, the extra-wide trolley is roughly as maneuverable as the Isle of Wight. I try to persuade Ben to sit in the baby seat. He declines, preferring to ride in the cargo hold where he can eject any purchase he disapproves of. In desperation, I crack open a box of Mini Milks and give him two; while both his hands are full of lolly, I slip him into the seat and snap the clips (bad, bad, bribing mother). Now all that remains is to track down the thirty-seven items on my list. After I threw the radio at him this morning, Richard said he thought the whole birthday thing was perhaps stressing me out a little. Why didn’t I take a break and he’d do the supermarket shop? Impossible, I said, he would buy all the wrong things.
“But there’s a list, Kate,” he reasoned, in his man-in-a-white-coat voice. “How could I possibly go wrong?”
What every woman knows and no man can ever grasp is that even if he brings home everything on the list, he will still not have got the right things. Why? Because the woman truly believes that if she had gone to the supermarket she would have made better choices: a plumper chicken from a more luxuriantly pastured region of France, a yummier yogurt, the exact salad leaf she has yearned for and whose precise name had, until the epiphany in front of the Healthy Eating cabinet, eluded her. Men make lists to order the world, to tie it down; for women, lists are the start of something, the coordinates by which we plot our journey to freedom. Don’t get me wrong here: I’m not claiming that any of this is fair. When a woman buys an item not on the list which turns out to be inedible, this is called “an experiment”; when a man does the same thing, it is “a waste of money.”
3:31 P.M. Join the checkout queue. Am sure I have forgotten something vital. What?
3:39 P.M. Oh, great. Ben has a dirty nappy. As I’m wondering how long I can hang in here and defy the astounded nostrils of nearby customers, my son puts his hand, the one holding what’s left of the second Mini Milk, down his shorts. When he withdraws the hand it is marbled with ice cream and excrement. I want to faint with misery. Instead, holding the boy aloft like a grenade with the pin out, I sprint the length of the store to the baby-changing facility.
4:01 P.M. Rejoin queue. Sixteen minutes. Estimate Ben has now eaten at least one- twelfth of the party food. As he munches happily, I grab a magazine from the rack by the till and try to lower my blood pressure by reading my horoscope.
Jupiter is now transiting your ninth house, which is truly one of the most beneficial things it can do for you. Your consciousness is lifted and your perspective grows. You find yourself imbued with loving feelings towards everyone — even children who have been impossible to control. The most positive effect of this moment is that your rage level sinks to an all-time low. The trick will be to hold on to this feeling of serenity once the euphoria wears off.
“Excuse me, madam?”
I look up, expecting that it’s my turn to put items on the conveyor belt. Instead, the checkout girl informs me that I have been queuing in a regular aisle through which the Isle of Wight cannot pass. “Sorry, madam. If you could just move to one of the designated wider aisles.”
4:39 P.M. The checkout person is so slow she may as well be underwater. Even worse, she is helpful and friendly.
“You know if you buy another one of those you get one free?”
“Sorry?”
“Fromage frais. Doncha want one free?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Having a party, are ya?”
No, I am buying eighty mini sausages, twenty-four Barbie chocolate rolls and a bumper bag of Iced Gems for my own consumption because I am a deranged bulimic. “My daughter. She’s six tomorrow.”
“Ah, lovely. Gotta reward card?”
“No, I—”
“You want one with this lot, doncha? Save yourself a bit, love.”
“Actually, I haven’t got time to—”
“Cash back?”
“No, really, I just have to go—”
“Inshee lovely.”
“Sorry?”
“Your little gel. Inshee lovely!”
“He. He’s a boy.”
“Oh, wouldn’t know it with all them curls. You wanna tell your mum to getcha ’aircut, little man.”
Why can’t supermarkets designate a Working Mother Aisle where you can be served by surly superefficient androids? Or French people. The French would be perfect.
9:43 P.M. Everything is under control. Both children are in bed. Pass the Parcel took a mere one hour and forty-five minutes to assemble. Debra warned me that you’re not allowed to have just one gift in the middle like we used to have when we were little. These days, there has to be a present in each layer in an attempt to convince kids that life is fair. Why? Life is not fair; life is layers of wrapping with one broken squeaker in the middle.
Next door, Richard is filling party bags in front of the TV. In theory, I disapprove of the escalation of gifts that kids expect to take home: like the arms race, it can only lead to mutually assured ruination. In practice, I am too cowardly to hand over the balloon and piece of cake I feel would be more than sufficient. The Muffia would take out a contract on me.
Unfortunately, the supermarket was unable to swap the pink-iced birthday cake I had ordered for a yellow one at short notice. Pink used to be Emily’s favorite color, then it became yellow. When I ordered the cake, pink was once more in the ascendant, but yellow made an overnight comeback while I was away last week. Never mind. I have bought a Victoria sponge and will now ice it myself in a wobbly but loving manner: the mother’s touch that means so much. Oh, shit, where is the icing sugar?
11:12 P.M. I finally find the box wedged at the back of a cupboard under a weeping bottle of soy sauce. A year past its sell-by date, the icing sugar comes out of the packet in one piece. It looks a lot like one of those Apollo moon rocks my dad cooked up thirty years ago. Or fifty pounds’ worth of crack cocaine. Luckily it is not the latter, otherwise would consume entire piece by myself and lie down on kitchen floor awaiting
