Shop and Let Die (17 page)

There was nothing on these
shelves that wasn’t supposed to be there, not even a dust bunny,
which impressed me. The bottom shelf was cleaner that my corners at
home. Of the two employees, I could make an assumption that one
would be a better sales clerk than the other. Call it
discrimination, but sales clerks who are creative with their
company-required uniform and dress code make my stomach sink with
dread.

Fortunately, the neat as a
pin, pressed-uniform associate made eye contact with me immediately
and headed toward me with the eagerness of a budding salesman. His
nametag said he was Mark, and he said all the right things and
clearly knew the answers to the questions my script had mandated I
ask about the walkie talkie set they were featuring that
week.

I listened to him
attentively, trying to surreptitiously watch the girls at the same
time. Mark was so eager and knowledgeable that I could see this was
going to take a bit longer than I had anticipated.

Worse, the creatively
garbed associate had taken a bottle of cleaner and moved to the big
picture window through which I had had a clear view of the girls.
He stood between me and the window. I had almost convinced myself
that the girls could handle themselves for five minutes out of my
direct line of sight. Until I heard the ominous sound of giggling
girls, followed almost immediately by the loud wail of dismay that
indicated any disaster ranging from a pretzel dropped onto the
floor to a kidnapping attempt by a mall pervert.

Knowing it was strictly
against the rules, I dropped the pair of walkie-talkies I was
looking at and vaulted past Mark, who was carefully explaining the
range and sensitivity of the gadgets.

There was milkshake
running down the table like a chocolate waterfall. One tearful face
and one sympathetically solemn one turned to face me.

“
What
happened?”

Sarah said, “I was showing
Anna how I could punch the serial killer if he dared show up. I
accidentally hit my milkshake.” She demonstrated, nearly taking out
Anna’s milkshake.

“
Aha.” I liberated a bunch
of napkins from the napkin and straw kiosk and handed a bunch to
each girl, keeping the biggest bunch for myself. “I bet if he were
here, you scared him away.”

That seemed to reassure
the girls, who ran their milkshake-soaked napkins to the trash can.
I mopped up the last of the mess, aware that the sales clerks were
watching me, probably trying to gauge whether my children would no
longer be eligible for such a breakable gift now that they’d
demonstrated the true level of their clumsiness.

Part of me wanted to
reassure Mark that I was only running him through his paces and I
knew better than to bring the walkie talkies into my house, where
they would quickly become sitty-silents.

After a quick trip to replace the milkshake—which
had spilled after only a few sips—and more earnest promises that
the girls would be careful this time, I returned to finish the
shop.

Mark was now occupied with
another customer and I got stuck with the other guy. Mark had been
neatly dressed in the appropriate uniform, wearing his nametag so
that I could see his name, and very familiar with the script his
company wanted to use to sell us poor unsuspecting parents gifts
for our children that would require a Ph.D. to use—and the care of
a nuclear engineer to keep in operating condition. The other sales
clerk was his polar opposite.

“
Mass Destruction,” as his
nametag proclaimed…much to my doubt, since this name appeared to
have been plastered over whatever the company had put on his
nametag…clearly did not care whether I bought something from him or
not. I ran into employees like him periodically, but I hated it. I
felt like a goody two shoes snitch when I wrote things like, “I was
helped by a young man with long blond dreadlocks, his nametag said
Mass Destruction and he had his employee vest fashioned into a
headband, which prominently displayed the company logo.

Inevitably, these
employees were never in place when I went back to do another
rotation on the shop—every three to six months, usually. I often
wondered whether they had quit, or whether my report had gotten
them fired. I liked to think they quit because they were the kind
of people who quickly grew restless with so many rules. It eased my
conscience slightly.

All the careful upselling
Mark had done, this one undid in a heartbeat. “Those girls would
smash these things into useless plastic in less than two hours. Why
don’t you get them some of those soft dolls that can’t get hurt and
go into the washer.”

“
Klean and Soft
Kate?”

He grinned, very sincerely
despite the pin stuck in his nose. “Yep. My little sister has
one—Mom swears by it.”

I liked him, which made me
feel horrible. Because he’d done a great job upselling me on an
item his store didn’t carry. Because he had a little
sister—hopefully not named “Miss Destruction”—and he had noticed
that she loved her Klean and Soft Kate. I thought more of him for
it, but I doubted his employer would.

“
Thanks. I’ll do
that.”

I had waited long enough
for Mark to finish up, but he was bonding with his customer, who
seemed to want the entire stock of the store described to him in
detail. I was going to have to use my exchange with “Mass
Destruction” for my report.

Reluctantly, I had to
leave with only a last glance to make sure the brochure rack and
gift card stand were neatly and prominently displayed. They were,
except for the bumper sticker plastered to the display which read:
“Programmers Do It With Byte.” I didn’t know what that meant, but I
was fairly sure it wasn’t the message the company wanted to
send.

“
Did they get all As?”
Sarah interrupted her game of blowing bubbles in her milkshake to
ask. “Or did they fail? That guy with the dreadlocks isn’t wearing
his uniform right, is he? I want to work at Beauty Boutique when
I’m sixteen. Then I could have all the makeup and stuff I want
without my mom getting mad at me.”

Anna, more attuned to my
moods, said nothing.

“
I think they did quite
well,” I lied, so that Sarah wouldn’t report the bad news to her
classmates tomorrow. And then I veered back to the pretzel stand
and bought a milkshake and pretzel for me.

I sat down at the table
with the girls and blew the high protein/low carb plan. Again. This
was getting to be a habit.

I even got the caramel
apple pretzel, with caramel dip. And ate every bite while the girls
chattered and tipped their chairs, and ran back and forth to get
new napkins, wipe their faces with them and then run them to the
trash.

I realized that my trip to
the mall, my time with Mass Destruction, my total suckitude self,
had made me tired. Very tired. I didn’t want to leave the table,
not even when my milkshake was drained and every crumb and sticky
bit of caramel had disappeared. I ignored the girls’ pleas to go
home and didn’t scold them when they stuck their faces in the trash
can to see what kind of food people had thrown away.

What kind of world was it
that had mall serial killers, or that made me rat out a perfectly
nice kid who didn’t want to play the corporate game? Of course, why
he had taken this job when he didn’t belong here was really his
business not mine. Mine was to write up the shop as it happened.
Mine was to make sure my daughter and her friend didn’t get some
horrible illness from touching the mall trash cans. To keep them
safe from shopping mall killers and general creeps. To love them
even when they had pretzel crumbs on their sweaters and milkshake
mustaches.

But I couldn’t find the
energy to get up and start on the insane merry go round once again.
All I knew was that if I got up, I’d have to write my report, cook
dinner, go to another PTA meeting. And then get up in the morning
and start everything all over again.

I wondered if I was having
a nervous breakdown. It felt as if I sat there, invisible to my
daughter, to the people rushing through the mall to get their
errands done and run to the next hamster wheel that beckoned them.
What was I doing? Did I want to do it? What if I just
didn’t?

What if I decided I would
just sit here forever and ever and never move. I thought of calling
Seth on my cell phone and telling him I’d decided to have a
breakdown and he’d need to come get the girls. But that seemed
wrong. People who had breakdowns just did it, they didn’t warn
anyone.

No, if I really wanted to
have a good nervous breakdown, I’d need to just sit there, not
talk. Just wait for people to notice. If they ever did.

As I sat quietly,
wondering if I would ever move again, Anna announced loudly, “I
have to pee.”

I didn’t respond. Didn’t
turn my head. For a moment I thought I was really going to do
it—have a good nervous breakdown and get it all out of my
system.

But then, as Anna tugged
on my arm, “Mom! I have to pee.” I had to, too. Damn. I tried to
ignore the call of nature. But I’ve had two children and the choice
was clearly to wet my pants if I wanted to continue with the
nervous breakdown. Damn.

I got up and we went to
the bathroom at the mall—it took a while to find three stalls that
were clean enough to use, but I felt better once I was moving
again.

Nervous breakdowns were
for people who didn’t have children. Didn’t have pregnancy-weakened
bladders. Didn’t wear sweats as a uniform of choice. Someone like
Mass Destruction. I bet he could have a good nervous breakdown if
he wanted to.

Given his name of choice,
he’d probably rather take out the world with some stunningly
spectacular Technicolor-fireworks hard-rock show than sit in a mall
and go nowhere.

As the girls whispered to
each other from their separate stalls, I stood by the paper towel
dispenser and thought about it. I could walk away. Get in the car
and go somewhere fun.

There were a lot more
mystery shopping jobs in California. I could live there, where it
was nice weather all year round, except for the occasional
earthquake, mudslide, or brushfire. No one to take care of but me.
I’d only need a small efficiency apartment. With lots of sunlight.
I could buy furniture with nice fabric because I wouldn’t have to
worry about sticky fingers and dirty shoes.

I let the idea wash over
me, but the wash water turned cold when the girls slammed out of
their stalls, giggling as they stuck their hands under each other’s
automatic sink. I had a flash of my beautiful Anna all grown up and
on the therapist’s couch. “My mother just left me there—in a mall
bathroom. I could have been kidnapped and murdered. There was a
serial killer, for pity’s sake. What was she thinking? I never saw
her again.”

In this version of the
future she had a black Mohawk and so many studs and rings on her
head that she jangled when she talked.

The urge to run away
receded into a throbbing need for a latte. With sugar, not sugar
substitute. I glanced at my watch as I pushed off the wall and led
the girls out toward the car. There was time to stop for my
caffeine fix. Just barely.

Anna gave me a spontaneous
hug when we reached the car, and Sarah followed suit. “Thanks, Mom.
I like going with you for this shopping game. It’s fun.”

Shopping game? Fun like a
toothache, maybe. Something had to change. I could feel it. Me. I
had to change. But how could I change when three people depended on
me to be who I was? Semi-dependable, ultra-flexible, and always on
the lookout for their best interests? I could only think of one
way. Make-up and new clothes.

I’d heard a TV
psychologist say that we behave our way to success. I could behave
like Dierdre, minus the heart surgery. I could play the part of
woman-who-knew-what-she-was-doing.

I wondered whether looking
like a successful professional woman, would get me better mystery
shop jobs? Or even, miraculously, make my husband and children take
me seriously.

Some of my tiredness
receded. It was a theory I could test. I had a shop to do at a
major upscale department store. I usually sailed by the store’s
beauty counters in order to avoid the fashionably thin salesgirls
who looked at me as if I were too far gone to save with a tube of
mascara and a shimmering blush.

This time, I would
stop.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

A New Life?

I woke up the next day, knowing it was time to
change. And knowing that change was hard. I’d tried it a million
times. Tried to be more organized, eat better, keep the calendar
up-to-date. It never stuck.

This time, I needed to
change, and I needed to make it stick. But how? I contemplated
several strategies as I went about my regular morning routine of
getting the kids out of the house and to school. Most involved some
sort of electroshock reinforcement.

In my office, looking at
the emails that Serena was generating, I realized Sue was right,
Seth and I had made Serena one hot mama. Or not mama, I guess,
since she had no children.