Watermelon 2

The boy walked beside his mother's shopping cart, studying his brightly-colored super hero figurine intently and bending the legs and arms into precise positions. When his mother stopped the cart for a moment, he twined two fingers of his left hand around a metal bar in the shopping cart and held the figurine in his other hand. The girl, who must have been a year or two younger than the boy, sat in the shopping cart seat. Her upper body swayed and her arms reached out toward colorful boxes of cereal and snack foods as her mother pushed her past the shelves. Requests for this box of cookies or that bag of potato chips issued from her mouth constantly. They conversed, the three of them, about the items on the shelves as they progressed slowly down the aisles, the mother occasionally handing one child something—a jar of pickles, a box of crackers— and checking a small list in her hand.

The mother wore blue jeans and an olive green cotton top. Probably a student at the university. He saw this family in the store regularly. One evening she had called to ask about some fish she had bought that day. The color was inconsistent, she'd said on the phone, was it okay to eat? He knew it was her because he had wrapped up the fish himself and then recognized her voice when she called. He'd had to explain that the fillets came from fish of slightly different species, so the color was different. It was fine to eat.

It wasn't as if she reminded him of anyone. It was just the way they had, the three of them, the way all families had if you watched them from a certain distance. The way they move together through the store, speaking only to each other, the way their bodies lean into each other and touch an arm against a leg, a hand to a face, and then lean away. He had known that touch, had had a son of his own, a wife. But that was so long ago and in another state altogether. But something about the way the boy's finger laced around the metal wire of the cart made his chest hurt. What had he done to lose them? Probably he would never know. It was too late anyway. The boy would be a young man now, his wife with some other man, certainly.

He rang up a purchase for an older couple. A baguette, a bottle of white wine, a wedge of Jarlsberg cheese, a carton of half-and-half, coffee beans in a small paper bag. He picked up each item and held it long enough to point a wand at a bar code or enter a number into the register, then he released it gently into a paper bag, arranging the items so that the half-and-half and wine bottle stood upright. The woman had a kind face and pushed pennies and dimes around in her coin purse, searching for exact change. The man stood at her elbow watching her progress with interest. As she handed the cashier two more pennies, the man lifted the bag of groceries with his right arm and brushed her hip with his left hand as he turned toward the door. It's like a dance, the cashier thought.

Now he saw that the young family was in the produce area, directly across from where he stood behind the register. They were inspecting the watermelons, the girl leaning from her seat in the cart, the boy standing on the edge of the crate that held the melons. The three of them leaned as a group over the watermelons, exchanging a few words, pointing to one melon, then another. The woman's hair was falling loose from a braid. Her arm rested on her son's shoulders. The boy's left arm hung at his side, his hand still grasping the super hero figure. The cashier's boy had carried around a little Bat Man figure. Or had it been Robin? He wasn't sure. It hadn't mattered to him at the time.

He helped a young couple find the baking soda, then rang up a cart full of food for a woman who was shopping alone. As he placed her change into her hand, two dollars and thirty-one cents, he saw that the young family was next in line and the mother stepped into the space across the counter from him. Now the girl was on her feet between her mother and her brother. The boy had lain his toy down at the end of the bagging counter so he could concentrate on balancing on the toes of one foot while pushing off from the side of the counter to spin in small quick circles. When he faltered and fell against his sister, causing her to fall against her mother's hip, the girl shrugged her shoulders hard and whined at her brother. The mother stopped in the middle of writing the date on her check to rest an arm around the girl for a moment, steadying and quieting her. “Find everything you needed?” he asked.

“I think so,” the mother answered, smiling at the cashier for a moment. “We're looking forward to the watermelon.”

“It's a beautiful one,” the cashier said, picking up the watermelon and placing it on the scale. He enjoyed the weight of it in his hands as he lifted it again and moved it to the counter in front of the family. The boy stopped spinning for a moment to look at his mother and then at the cashier. The cashier looked at the boy, and when their eyes met, the boy's face was completely open. The blond hair so soft, the eyes a mixture of gray and green, the face unaware of itself. The mother lifted the watermelon and bags of groceries into her shopping cart and the three of them moved toward the door.

The cashier helped an old man with some bread and fruit and then a coworker came to remind him that it was time for his dinner break. That was when he saw the toy lying on the counter where the boy had left it. The cashier untied his apron and rolled it into a ball, picked up the figurine and walked out to the parking lot. The old man was slowly stepping into a brown Buick, and a blue Civic was turning left out of the lot. Too late. The cashier laced his fingers around the arms and legs of the figurine and looked down at it. Boy Robin—that's what his son had carried around with him that last year. He turned to walk back to the store, but then hesitated and turned to watch the Civic. The car was winding its way up the hill, going the back way toward the university. There was no other reason to go that way and no place for a family to live on the university but in the family student apartment complexes. He had gotten to know the town pretty well during the few months he'd been responsible for doing deliveries. He ran for his car at the far end of the lot.

When he turned onto the road that led through the apartments, he looked up the hill and saw the mother and the boy near their car at the top of one of the parking loops. The cashier parked in the closest empty spot, grabbed the toy from the passenger seat, and turned to look out the side window to locate them again. The three were standing at the back of the Civic with the trunk open, the mother standing with her arms folded looking down at something in the trunk of the car and then at her children. The cashier looked at the toy in his hand. How would he explain himself?

The cashier sat in the car and watched the mother bend forward and reach into the trunk of the car. He saw her straighten part way with the watermelon in her arms and then lean forward toward her daughter. She moved as if to place the watermelon in her daughter's arms, but the melon slipped quickly through the girl's arms and to the ground where it immediately began to roll down the hill. The cashier watched as the watermelon rolled down through the parking lot. He looked back at the family and saw them, all three, standing perfectly still watching the melon in its progress down the hill. Their mouths all hung open, their arms hung at their sides.

The watermelon had nearly reached the street when it bounced up over a bump in the asphalt and broke into two pieces. Both halves continued to roll across the street where they then broke into smaller pieces, each veering off in one direction or another and finally stopping. The pieces could never be put back together. The cashier started his car and backed out of the spot. His break would be over in 20 minutes, and he hadn't had any dinner yet. He'd put the toy in the lost and found drawer at the store and try something at the new Chinese place just down the street. The family would come and shop again and then the boy would get his toy back—the boy who was not his. He'd have time to eat if he hurried.