“Prices May Vary”

The Nowhere Grocery Store didn’t seem to be anywhere. The parking lot, littered with half-painted spots and deteriorating potholes, was broken up by islands of pushed over buggies and clumped plastic bags. The Store had a battered, pinkish fluorescent sign out front that simply read “Grocery” and that alternated between desperate flickering and offness. Its windows advertised fresh produce and childhood memories in happy, emboldened red stars. The Store itself was short and tan and had warm, fogged air that followed patrons in through its off-white sliding doors.

Twilight was approaching when the girl wandered into Nowhere Grocery. She wore yesterday’s clothing: the burgundy sweater with the heavily frayed edges, the loose, ratty blue jeans that she didn’t remember buying, and her dark, frizzy hair tied back by a scrunchie that clung on for dear life.

Inside, the fluorescent lights buzzed slightly, their sound blending in with the indistinguishable music drifting from the Grocery’s square, gray speakers. At the counter, a crop-haired clerk chewed their gum loudly, so loudly that the girl could hear it from four lanes over.

“Excuse me—,” the girl began, her voice timid.

“Baskets are over there,” the clerk interrupted, pointing to a stack of blue baskets nestled just inside the automatic doors. They were emblazoned with the words:

THE NOWHERE GROCERY STORE

Not What You Need, But What You Did

The girl hooked a basket around her arm, wandering away from the crispness of outdoors into the stagnant air of the Store. In a stand near the entrance sat four bouquets, all white, wrapped in a thin brown paper. The girl picked at the thin petals, her arm brushing the tag. Squinting at it, she read the tag: Priced at: swallow your pride. The nearby greeting card aisle was scarcely stocked; its long, plastic holders seemed empty, headers like GET WELL and FROM THE KIDS looking out of place. Tearing at a petal in her hand, the girl pulled the only card on the aisle from its home in the FOR HER section. She removed the card from its envelope, careful not to tear it, too. She flipped it open, reading her own messy, scripted scrawl.

“Happy Birthday, Mom! I’ll call soon.” The girl replaced the card. She never did call.

The Store seemed to go on forever like the warehouse in Indiana Jones. The girl took in the blue and green signs above each aisle. They were hung by transparent string, swaying slightly, despite the lack of a breeze. They said things like “Canned Foods” and “Chargers You Lost.” The floor protested with each step of the girl’s shoes, which squeaked against the floor as she moved past her old electronic chargers. As far as she could tell, the Grocery was vacant, with the exception of the clerk at its front.

The girl traced her way through the pristine shelves, recognizing some things, but not most. There was an aisle for her old hair clips, the ones she hoarded in the fall. And one for her destroyed CD collections, the ones that were thrown from a second-floor window in her senior year of high school. There was even a produce section, lined with oranges and more oranges. She remembers the summer she ate them and only them, the summer of The Baby. There were piles of watermelon because the Forcer said they paired well with his weed and everything else. There were potatoes because they were cheap and The Baby would eat them. There was a sparse clothing aisle that fluctuated in both quantity and quality by year. She noticed the pharmacy sign and envisioned herself ignoring it; her legs carried her forward anyway.

They were lined up like tiny orange ants across the pharmacy counter. The off-white of the counter made the bottles look even more dangerous, like poisonous animals warning their predators. The girl grasped one of the bottles with shaky hands, ignoring the tempting rattle of opioids against plastic. The price label simply read: Priced at: too much. The girl agreed. She had gotten them mostly for him, the Forcer. The Forcer who took and took until he could take no more.

The pharmacy continued on after the rows of pills, lined with small shelves punctuated with precise, tiny holes. The holes reminded her of the ones in that apartment, holes from fists, holes for bugs and secrets. Gripping onto the cold metal, the girl’s eyes traced the mostly empty shelves, landing on the three, bare stick tests. She leaned over to read their tags: Price: regret. Price: pain. Price: panic.

That panic came rushing back to her. The panic of squatting in the small, green bathroom, using the flame of her lighter to read the results of all three. She sat in the dark because the Forcer said they didn’t pay those “goddamned expensive bills” in the summer. He was his best in the summer, so she tried not to mind. He would hold her in his bed late at night, letting the breeze from the open window wash over them as he whispered in her ear, “We’re on our come up, baby girl. I’m sure of it.” And she had been sure too until the first breeze of autumn rolled in and with it his temper. Autumn brought his need to push her against the rattling front door, hard enough to litter her arms and back with shades of violet and blue. With the chill came long jackets made of thin material to hide the finger-shaped rings around her wrists.

She smelled it before she saw it; the taste of iron on the back of her throat was unmistakable. Two aisles over, labeled “Utilities, etc.,” the floor was covered in darkened blood. The 9mm sat on the shelf, a nearby label brightly advertised a sale due to “Ease of Access.” Her old white Reeboks sat next to it on the sales rack, splattered with the same maroon liquid as the floor. Two bullets labeled “Well Used” lay bare on the shelf above them. With effort, the girl turned from the scene, but she couldn’t walk away from the memory, from the reverberation of the shots in her ears, the weight of the pistol in her hands as she pulled back on the trigger. The power of the first bullet slammed the Forcer against the wall—smearing it with crimson liquid and halting his progress to The Baby’s room. His teeth chattered red as he tried to speak, droplets staining the dingy yellow carpet she hated. The Forcer always left the weapon’s drawer unlocked like she was too stupid to know where it was. Like she couldn’t find it. She told him it worried her. He knew how worried she was about The Baby. She always told him.

When she left, she wasn’t in her right mind. She remembered moving into the dim bedroom, stepping over the Forcer as his breathing became more ragged. She shoved the bills from his nightstand into a bag and wrapped The Baby up in an old white blanket. The screen door slammed loudly behind her as she ran. She didn’t look back. The pill’s high wore off eventually, but she didn’t want to take anything of the Forcer with her. Those habits were his, just pills and promises that he drew her into with his charming words. No, she would keep running. She and The Baby were alone.

Near the back of the store, she found the section, marked “Baby.” The shelves were backed with every single toy and bottle and jarred food the girl had ever purchased. Three sections over, past “Wall Décor” and “Wasteful Office Supplies,” the girl found the gray shoes that had replaced her hastily thrown away Reeboks. They sat with a basket of Tide To Go pens, the ones she used for her waitressing uniform on the nights when she didn’t have enough quarters for the machine.

In the aisle past “Frozen Foods,” “Alcohol and Other Bad Ideas,” and “Thrifty Goods,” the girl found more home décor, sitting among a few folded men’s shirts and some old work boots. She bought them for Marquis as a birthday present, back when she would smile when he asked her out and shake her head in exasperation like Why would you want that? Want me? The Forcer made me damaged goods. He didn’t seem to understand that the Forcer had changed her. She wasn’t to be admired, to be wanted—not anymore.

It was a well-used picture frame, empty on the inside. She traced her fingers across the brown frame, taking a heavy strip of dust with her. There was no picture, only the navy background, but the girl knew what it was supposed to hold. She bought it in the third summer after leaving the Forcer, the summer that she reapplied to school. She could still see Marquis’ dark face, hooded by his camouflage hat. His surname, SEARS, was velcroed slightly crooked on his uniform. Only he had noticed, complaining that she hadn’t told him. She’d laughed and told him he was being too orderly. Price: too expensive for a frame.

Worth it, she wanted to argue back. Marquis Sears paid for his bills in the summer and brought her wildflowers on the weekend.

As she hugged the frame to her body, she slipped into the closest aisle: “For M.” She’d never meant to buy him these things. He never asked, instead insisting they skip birthdays and anniversaries. He then, of course, ignored his own stipulation.

“It’s your own rule,” she argued.

“Well, it’s a dumb rule. I saw it and I thought of you,” he would argue back. He bought her cute fuzzy socks. He bought her chocolates. He bought her coffee mugs and mystery novels.

Eventually, she stopped believing him when they promised no gifts. He never could stick to a plan.

A glass jar shattered into a million pieces on linoleum reverberated from the aisle two rows back. The crash wasn’t loud, but in the stillness of the store, the girl was startled by its sound. She clutched her shopping basket as if it could offer some sort of protection. From around the corner came a woman wearing an apologetic smile.

“Good day for it,” the woman said. Her mouth was set in a permanent grin, ringed with bright red lipstick. Her short brown hair stuck up in tufts, creating the effect of a halo. She wore a blue vest, with the word Store Manager embroidered in yellow.

“Is it?” The girl didn’t really think it was a good day for it. Then again, she never did.

The manager nodded fervently and grabbed a nearby item—a four-pack of toothbrushes—and ran the device in her hand over it. The device left a sticker labeled much needed, which seemed like a little much. The girl clutched the frame and an idea started to form in the back of her head. Maybe what she’d given up could be found on these shelves. The item had been lost for…too long. There was a high probability it wasn’t in The Grocery, wasn’t here buried under the rest of her life.

Should she ask for it? Would it even be here?

But before she could, the manager wandered away, stickering and straightening up the items on the shelves.

The girl traveled farther, her hand tracing over old Pepsi bottles and a globe full of Double Bubble until it began sliding past book spines. Some of them she bought for Marquis, the ones about war heroes and Vietnam. But most of the books were her well-used, covers falling off, three hundred page textbooks. They had coffee stains and baby spit-up crusted in their pages. Each one labeled the same: Priced at: worth it. The girl remembered all those late nights after work, The Baby asleep, that she read. She read and she wrote, desperate to write a future for The Baby. Marquis always offered to help with that future. She always refused. They got married before he left, before she was sure she wanted to.

Past the books, the store opened up again to reveal a wall of hanging jewelry. The jewelry was overwhelmingly cheap: chipped stones, fake pearls, and tangled chains. She only ever bought one piece worth anything. It was tucked on the highest shelf, so she had to stand on her tiptoes to yank it down. Its holder tore as the crucifix landed at her feet in a tangled heap of silver. She bought it just before he left, hoping that it would protect him. It hadn’t. With one last look, she left it there.

Marquis held it in his hands when he left. She could still feel the slight tug of it on her neck and his callused hand brushing across her salty cheek; the parking lot was unusually warm for spring.

“You come back to me, Marquis Sears. Don’t leave.” Don’t leave like I left the Forcer, she meant. Like I left and never looked back. The girl didn’t ask him to promise, but he did anyway.

When it had almost slipped from her mind completely, she found it. She ran into it in the display case. Literally, the square case knocked into her hip as she tried to leave the section. Inside sat an open, dark velvet box. The girl dropped her basket, ignoring the resulting loud clatter. In the box, it sat, its white bust ripped into pieces by a crack she didn’t remember leaving. The Purple Heart seemed to stare back at her as she reached for it.

She remembered the day it came to her. She was in the kitchen drinking coffee, reading her Southern Politics book. The Baby was down for a nap and the knock at the door pulled her from the list of war reparations. She answered the door.

“I have been asked to inform you that your husband has been reported dead…”

The girl had dropped her cup of coffee. The chaplain had picked it up. Don’t do that, she had wanted to say. You didn’t help him. You can’t help me.

They gave her their deepest sympathies and left her. He left her like she left the Forcer. Like her husband left her. She went through everything in a daze, conflicted and bruised. The funeral, the will, the heart.

When they gave it to her, she hadn’t known what to do with it. It was all very official, almost too official for her. It was engraved with his name across the back, Marquis Sears, under the words For Military Merit. She wanted to hold on to it, kind of. Mostly she wanted to throw it into the nearest river and watch it sink into darkness. She kept it as long as she could until the money, his money, didn’t come through for school and she was choosing whether to buy milk or bread. The Baby or herself.

She sold it to Busters Pawn for twenty bucks. The owner tucked it in with his other medals under the counter, like a dragon building its military-themed hoard. Marquis’ legacy sat between two other lost souls.

It had been years before it had come back to her. She was in the shop buying a necklace for The Baby’s birthday and there it was, still in the hoard, although it was ringed with more medals of fellow lost souls.

“How much?” she asked.

He looked it over with a raised eyebrow. “Thirty-five bucks.”

She put the money on the counter and walked out with the Heart tucked in her bag. She shoved it to the top of her closet so she wouldn’t have to look at it.

The girl clutched the dark velvet box to her chest and marched toward the registers. Walking deliberately past all the memories, all the items she’d labored and loved and lost, the girl made her way to the counter.

When she reached the front clerk, they looked at her expectantly. Flipping it over, there was no price on the box. The girl looked desperately at the clerk, unsure of what to do.

Giving her a once-over, the clerk glanced over the printed list on their counter, popping a pink bubble. “Sorry, no sales on War Memorabilia, Organs, or Painful Memories today.”

The girl looked down at the rectangular box in her hand. She wanted this back. She could not separate the times it was hers from the times when it was not, in which she gave so much that she became admired, borrowed, bruised, taken, repurposed, repeat. “I don’t think I have enough,” she said. “I gave it all away.”

The cashier shook their head. “You’ve done this before. I mean, you’ll have to reclaim it this time, of course.”

The girl looked helplessly at the box. “I—I don’t think I can. I’m too broken.”

She remembered the sound of an anguished scream, one that sounded far away. Only it was her own voice, then the sound of The Baby crying from the back room, now muddled together in her memory. She remembered the Chaplin putting a hand on her shoulder like he could save her at all. Like she wasn’t already sinking.

The clerk shrugged to say, “not my problem” and took the box from the girl’s hand. In one swift motion, they typed something into the register. The clerk pulled out a slip of paper and wrote a receipt.

“You want a bag?”

The girl shook her head.

“Have a good one,” they said, handing her the Heart and the receipt before turning back to straighten up the register.

Numb, the girl walked out of The Nowhere Grocery Store, past the littered buggies and faded parking spots. The nighttime air chilled her legs as she approached the lot’s shrouded edges. She gazed uncertainly into the night and the fog stared back. Gripping the Heart to her chest, she stepped into the clouded mist.

‍