Page 24 of Pucking My Biggest Fan

June

Teddy holds the grocery list with both hands, in charge of reading it out. Margot pushes the cart, because she’s earned the cart back, and she takes the corners with confidence.

“Item one,” Teddy announces. “Bananas. But not too ready.”

“Ripe,” Margot says.

“Not too ripe. That’s what I said.”

Gus is four days into a road trip, and the Cascades lost in overtime last night. I know because my phone buzzes against the cart handle while I’m weighing bananas: lost in ot. our goalie hasn’t spoken since the second period, including to his wife. how’s the house.

standing, I text back. brenda made ice overnight. actual ice. cubes.

two years she never made ice for me.

she misses you. this is a cry for help.

tell her I said to be strong.

I put the phone screen-up in the cart’s kid seat, where I can see it, which tells you something about how much I like hearing from him. Then I referee the banana selection, rule on the cereal question without opening negotiations, and let Teddy win the juice-with-the-built-in-straw argument. He argued it well, and kids should learn that arguing well works.

In the pasta aisle Margot stops the cart and considers the shelf with real seriousness. “The twisty ones hold sauce better.”

“Correct,” I say, and she looks at me sharp, because that’s her word. I hand it back to her the way you pass the salt, and she takes it, and picks the twisty ones.

“Item last,” Teddy reads. “Nothing from the candy wall.” He looks at the candy wall with respect. “There’s a new sour kind,” he adds, carefully casual, like he’s just passing along the news.

“Noted.”

“It has a scorpion on the bag.”

“Noted.”

He nods and lets it go. He isn’t giving up — he’s building his Christmas case one polite mention at a time.

By the frozen vegetables, a man is looking at me. Thirty-something, gym jacket, a basket with energy drinks and one sad frozen pizza. I feel the look before I see it. Two years of being careful taught me that, and the lesson never wore off.

“Hey,” he says. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You look really familiar.” He snaps his fingers softly, hunting for it. “You go to Rally? The one on Fourth?”

“Nope.”

Down the aisle, Teddy holds a bag of frozen corn over his head like evidence. “June. June. Is frozen corn real corn?”

“It’s real corn on pause,” I call back, level, and the man’s eyes make a small trip — me, to Teddy, to the cart, back to me. Something in his face moves. Not recognition. Whatever comes right before it.

“Huh.” He looks a beat too long, the way people do when they’d rather be right than done. For exactly one second I’m somewhere else — a room with tape on the floor and a light I angled myself. Then his friend leans around the end of the aisle and says, “Kyle. We’re late,” and the man backs off a step, pointing at me in the way men like him believe is friendly.

“It’ll come to me,” he says, and goes.

I put the corn in the cart. My hand does it fine, and that’s the last thing that goes fine for a minute. I steer us out of frozen and take the wrong turn, away from dairy, down the cereal aisle we already ruled on.

“You passed the milk,” Margot says.

“Scenic route.”