A & P, Max Agigian ’19

A & P

Max Agigian ’19

(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

when they do that, or if their eyes just sort of wander around while their brains do who-knows-what. Sometimes I wonder if they even have brains.

Finally he looks at the paper. “Ah, let’s see here. Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream. Peabody A&P. All right. So your mother needs you to pick up a jar of the Kingfish, uh . . . ” He looks back at his note.

“Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream, right,” I say in my most “Miss Bonnie”-ish voice. I’m a few years younger than he is, but only a few, and I know what Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream are; he doesn’t. That means I outrank him, and he should be hurrying up and delivering my message. “Peabody A&P?”

“Yes. I think she said . . . ” His brow scrunches up, and he looks skyward. He didn’t write this part down. “I think she said the one in Swampscott never has them, and she doesn’t want you going to Lynn.” He counts off “Swampscott,” one, and “Lynn,” two, on his fingers as he says the names.

“Is there anything else?” I say, imitating Mother when she wants there not to be anything else.

“No, that’s it.”

“Thank you.” I look him in the eyes, which are the last part of him to turn around before he pads back to his booth. We all watch him as he walks, and he looks tiny by the time he arrives and pulls the door behind him. As he’s sitting down, I hope suddenly that he has a magazine or something in there, to occupy his mind.

But I don’t think about that for too long, because Sandra says, “Well, what are we going to do?”

An idea hits me, which I think I had already decided on, but I didn’t realize it until just now. “What if we all go in our bathing suits?”

When neither of them answers, I say, “I don’t want to go back to Peaches Point just to put on a bunch of clothes while Mother and Daddy tell me to get out of the way. And if you two come with me, it’ll be safe, and we’ll be impressive together. Besides, there isn’t anyone saying we can’t.”

Sandra is convinced by my last point, and Joan is willing to go along with what I say under most circumstances, so we all walk back toward the entrance. I’m walking very properly, I think, as Mother taught me, and pretty soon Sandra and Joan are doing the same thing, and we have the

proper disdain for the dinky little showers with which we rinse the sand off our bodies, and we make sure to dry off very thoroughly, so as not to get the car wet when we sit in it. The asphalt in the parking lot is much too hot, and Sandra and Joan half stumble, half run to the car, but I merely quicken my pace, so that my soles are nearly burnt up by the time I get inside.

As we drive through Marblehead and into Salem, we talk about Joan’s uncle’s run for the governorship, and after that the conversation sort of peters out, until we pass by the Corwin House, where the judge lived who sentenced all those witches to death, and I say, “Wasn’t it awful that all those women had to die just because someone said they cast a hex?”, and Joan says, “It was!”, and Sandra says, “You know, Jonathan Corwin was my great-great-great-great-grandfather.”

“He was?” I say.

“He was. Nobody likes to talk about it much, but he was. I think that’s part of why my family is in local government.” Then she says, “He would have sentenced us all to death if our neighbors accused us of witchcraft.”

Now I think things are getting a little too sad, so I say back, “But they wouldn’t do that.”

“They did back then.”

There isn’t much to say after that, so we drive on in silence past the cemetery and into the center of Peabody. Some of the buildings look like they’re in worse shape than the three-hundred-year-old ones in Salem, and they’re crammed together as if there isn’t room for all of them. There’s a parking lot in front of the A&P, though, and I find a spot right near the entrance. The store is old, too, and I’m surprised that it even carries Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream.

Sandra, who’s sitting in the front seat, opens the glove compartment, where we’ve put our bags, and Joan pipes up: “Are we buying anything other than the herring snacks?”

“Well, I don’t see why not,” says Sandra.

As Sandra puts her bag around her shoulder, I have another idea. “Ladies, do we really need our bags?”

“Well, yes, or else how are we going to carry our money?” I take my bag out from the glove compartment and unfold the money inside to take out

a one-dollar bill. I refold it carefully into a little square, and then I smile and tuck it down my bathing suit top, giving it a little push with one finger to hide it from view. Sandra does a little smirk, and then she laughs, and then we all laugh, and then Sandra says, “I’m sure that would earn you a stoning!” It’s awful, but it makes us laugh more. Sandra’s great-great-greatgreat-grandfather isn’t nearly as frightening.

After we get out of the car, still giggling a little, Joan says, “Bonnie, your strap’s down.” I look at my right strap and see that, yes, it’s come off my shoulder. I’m about to fix it, but then I feel something brush against my left shoulder, and I jump! But it’s only Sandra after all, and I look at her, wondering what’s the matter. Her hand is covering her mouth, and for a moment I think she’s trying not to cry, but then I realize she’s laughing even harder, and then I realize my left strap’s down as well. Nothing else is down, though, and it isn’t going to be, so I say, “Here’s to the twentieth century!” and we all laugh even harder. Sandra tells us that we’ll be the best thing that’s happened to the A&P all year, and I remember that that’s how Mother says I should carry myself, so I say so, and once we’re done laughing, we all walk straight as we did at the beach, especially me, across the A&P parking lot and into the store.

The tile floor hurts my bare feet a little, and tickles, too, cool after the hot parking lot. It’s all grimy and made of rubber or something, not like the shiny wooden floors of the boutiques back in Marblehead. As soon as the cashiers see us, they start staring holes into us, not even trying to hide it. Since I’m the best thing to happen to the A&P all year (I remind myself), I act as though none of this bothers me, and I think Sandra and Joan are doing a pretty good job. We go past the bread and up the snacks aisle, looking out for the Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream. It’s amazing how all the housewives stare at us, especially as they themselves aren’t much of a pretty picture, some of them even wearing pin-curlers. I ignore them too. We can’t find the Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream, so we ask the butcher, who’s even worse than the cashiers— what does go on in their heads?—and he points us to the other end of the store, which seems an awfully long way to go to get Daddy’s favorite snack.

When we get to the register, we have a moment of indecision between the cashiers, but soon a really ghastly old man, the kind you don’t see on Peaches Point, comes to one of them with four large cans of pineapple juice, so we go to the other. He’s very impressed when I produce the dollar from

my bathing suit, but before I can hand it over, someone who thinks he’s very important comes over and says, “Girls, this isn’t the beach.”

I try not to blush. “My mother asked me to pick up a jar of herring snacks.”

“That’s all right. But this isn’t the beach.”

Sandra responds, “We weren’t doing any shopping. We just came in for the one thing.” That shouldn’t matter, but I don’t object.

“That makes no difference.” The man has been behaving until now, but then he looks down for a moment at Sandra, and then he looks back up. “We want you decently dressed when you come in here.”

“We are decent,” I say, surprising myself. Now I feel like Mother, too, knowing that this is just a busybody who has no right to intrude on my decisions. I’m still blushing, though, and I really wish I weren’t, especially since a crowd is gathering.

“Girls, I don’t want to argue with you. After this come in here with your shoulders covered. It’s our policy.” Then he turns to the cashier, who’s a little impressive with how much focus he’s showing, and says, “Sammy, have you rung up their purchase?”

“No.” The cashier further impresses me by punching all the buttons without looking at them. We stride quickly out, leaving behind the big little manager and the cashier, who says breathlessly “I-quit” as the doors close behind us.

“Did he say that to us?” says Joan, at the same time I say, “I hope he isn’t planning on following us.”

Sandra says “I don’t think so” to both of us as we all look back to see him talking to the manager. I’m ready to get out of Peabody so I hurry us into the car, and we drive off.

We’re mostly quiet on the ride back, but as we’re passing by the Corwin House, I notice that Joan, who’s in the front seat this time, is pale, and her eyes are wide. I say, “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” and, after a pause, “or a witch.”

Joan, still pale as can be, says back, “I think we really are the best thing that’s happened to that store all year!”