Max Agigian ’19
A&P (A retelling of John Updike’s “A & P,” from a different perspective.) Now when Daddy is hosting a party with his society friends, Mother is always a good hostess, and what that means is that I have to be a good hostess, and I do whatever little chores she wants me to do, or in other words, the little chores that the gentlemen want her to want me to do. Back in Brookline, it’s entirely too much, even though I have to do less, really, what with schooling taking up so much of my time that Mother takes pity on me. But now it’s summer, and we’re up at the house on Peaches Point, and we’re on vacation, and Mother still doesn’t have me do half the things she’s always saying I should. In fact, the gentlemen are coming over again tomorrow, and she’s at the house tidying like crazy, and Daddy’s making sure his amenities are all in order, and meanwhile I’m down at the beach with Sandra and Joan. I asked if I should help, but Mother said, “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” and frankly, I quite agree with her. It makes me frantic to see them run around so. So I’m at the beach, and I’m out of Mother’s and Daddy’s way, and they’re out of mine. But soon the young man who greets you when you come through the gate, the one you see in his little booth, comes down the beach, calling up and down that he has a “message for a . . . Miss Bonnie?” This isn’t at all the first time someone has called me “Miss,” but it always makes me feel like they think I’m much older than I am. I don’t know whether I like it. I have to get used to it anyway, so when he starts coming toward us and calls out again I walk-run out of the little waves at my feet and say, “That’s me. What is it?” His eyes go up to my face and he says, “Your mother called and left a message with me for you. I wrote it down here.” Now that I’m closer to him, he looks silly, with his cap and shirt and trousers but no socks or shoes on, and his feet all sandy, and the bottoms of his legs and the tops of his feet all hairy. I wonder how he’s going to get all that sand off before he puts his socks back on. He clearly wasn’t ready to go out onto the beach. “What does she want to say?” I ask. His eyes aren’t on the paper; they’re on me, and also Sandra and Joan, who have come out of the water to join me. I wish he would just answer. It makes me feel creepy when they stare and stare and don’t say anything. I can’t tell if they’re thinking anything 17
