Mrs. Rodstrom\'s List Mrs. Rodstrom

Mrs. Rodstrom's List

Mrs. Rodstrom had forgotten the list. This, she was sure, was an omen of the perfectly horrible day she was about to set out to have. Forgetting the list meant forgetting something on it. Surely, she could stand, with her eyes focused on the isles of fruits and vegetables, frozen foods and cleaning products, and remember her composing the list. She could see her flowing cursive lining one or two short words on top of another like a poem or the lyrics to a song. She could remember the brief moment of ecstasy she'd had when penning a particular item that she was quite certain she was about to forget, such as avocadoes, curry powder, and ice cream. Nevertheless, Mrs. Rodstrom had forgotten the list, and it was to be a perfectly horrible day.

"First, I will get laundry detergent," she whispered to herself as she piloted the cart toward the isle of the supermarket that held cleanings supplies in their green, blue, and red bottles marked with cheerful advertising and wording that encouraged the customer to buy, buy, buy. Mrs. Rodstrom had to try to hide her nervously shaking wrist and her index finger that tapped, tapped, tapped on the cart handle; she was unaccustomed to shopping without a list and unaccustomed to shopping without a plan. Briskly, she whisked a green bottle of their usual detergent off the shelf and dropped it with a light, "clunk" into the cart. Having completed the task, she stood with one slim finger perched on the cart's handlebar and her body facing another direction, trying to discern what to do next, what aisle of the store to visit. Her navy blue skirt billowed around her legs and her white, button-down shirt neatly tucked into the waistband, she looked a bit like an overly feminine sailor lost at sea.

"Ma'am," the first call want unnoticed on her ear as if she were a deaf woman.

"Ma'am?" this time he was a little louder and managed to stir her from her frightening daydreams of the unknown that were playing like a movie between where she stood and the rows of laundry detergent.

"I was wondering if you're all right, ma'am," he said again, and this time she had a chance to look at him, seeing him as something rather more solid than the daydreams that had captured her attention and breath for a few moments.

"Yes," she managed with a weak smile accented by her light pink lipstick. "Yes, I'm all right."

"Good," he replied with a smile about the size of her own on cracked, dry lips that she attributed to the bitter cold. His dark, chestnut hair swept over his forehead like the bangs she had once sported as a young girl, except his was finer and colored with a little light blond. He bent over, his uniform bunching at the coarse seams. "You dropped this," he said, offering her a folded piece of paper, and from the minute she spied the looping handwriting she knew.

"My list! Oh, wherever did you find it? I thought I came here without it, you see, and I thought it was certainly an omen that my day would be perfectly awful because I don't ever go without my list, and I was just lost -- "

"Well," said the young man with the same wry smile on his lips. "It's a good thing I found it."

"Yes, well, good, yes," Mrs. Rodstrom, murmured, suddenly taken aback. She considered his expression, and found it to be quite odd, not the friendly plastic smile she most often saw on the faces of the employees in this store. And quite suddenly, she realized he had not called her by name. Despite the fact she had no use to learn the names of the clerks in the supermarket where she did her shopping, all of them knew her face and name quite well, thanks to her husband's position and his partnership with the store's owner, Mark Killoski, who often came to dinner with his wife, Barbara -- whose hair was such an awful sight to behold that one had to bite one's lip in order to keep from laughing.

"So, you're new then?" Mrs. Rodstrom asked in the most casual voice she could manage, not being used to anything but a falsetto conversation about the weather with the employees of this market.

"Yes ma'am," he said again with a slight charm in his voice, a Southern-like drawl that was odd for Maine, at least Maine in winter when the tourists were all nestled in their beach front houses back home in California or Florida or Arizona.

"And you're name is?" Mrs. Rodstron demanded not unlike the schoolteacher she despised when she had once attended college those three months before meeting Brad.

"Collin," he answered, reaching toward her hand. For a moment, Mrs. Rodstrom thought that he was about to take it, and she stumbled backward, the black heel of her leather shoe catching on the detergent rack. She righted herself just as he took the folded piece of paper from her hand. "Let me get the rest of this for you. It seems like you might not be feeling very well. Why don't you take a seat in the employee lounge while I get your groceries and ring them up for you?"

"Oh, yes, Collin, that would be very good," she said heavily as she made her way to the employee lounge at the back of the store where she sometimes went with her husband for business meetings. Her head spun, and she found it difficult walked on the leather shoes despite the fact that the shoe salesman, Peter, another friend of Brad's, had assured her they were the most practical in the fashionable style. As she lowered herself on the blue sofa that rested against the wood paneling, Mark Killoski entered the room from the staircase above at the back.

"Mrs. Rodstrom?" he inquired, quite surprised. "What a pleasant surprise! I didn't know Brad had any business to discuss with me this morning. I hope all is well -- "

"No, Mark, Brad is working, and all is fine. I just had a bit of a fright, that's all. Your employee asked me to come have a seat back here until my head started to feel a little better."

"Oh my! Well, Mrs. Rodstrom, are you sure you're all right. I could call an ambulance, or maybe Dr. Wellington, or his nurse -- "

"I'm fine, Mark, just a bit of a headache, that's all. Your employee was kind enough to get me the rest of my groceries."

"Well, that's just right of him, Mrs. Rodstrom. All of the employees know that you're to be treated with special respect. In fact, I don't know why you bother to come down to the market at all when we would fetch your groceries and deliver them to your door."

"Oh, something to do, I guess, but Mark -- "

"Yes."

"This employee didn't know my name."

"Didn't know your name? Why that's preposterous! They all know your name. I'll have to speak with the young man myself. I'm sure you didn't get his name -- "

"Collin."

"Collin? Are you sure?"

"Yes, positively," Mrs. Rodstrom sat up a little straighter on the sofa and held her chin at an angle. "He said he was new. He's out there with my shopping list right now."

"Virginia," Mark said slowly. "I don't have any employees named Collin, and the last new hire was that young man Brad recommended from the high school, Antonio."