Checkout

The woman in the white hat was about sixty, with a broad red face and forearms like a baker’s and a badge on her apron that said MARGIT, and she looked at him across the glass case, over the sausages, with the patient expression of a woman who has served the whole of the north-east of the District on Saturday mornings for thirty years and has seen every kind of boy with a list.

“What can I get you, love?”

He looked at the list.

“Topfen,” he said. “Den guten.”

He said it the way Mrs Hartigan said it, or tried to: the Wisconsin way, with the American R in it that was not in it, because there was no R in Topfen, and the vowels long and flat. He had heard it at the table forty-eight times. He had never once said it aloud.

The woman in the white hat looked at him for a long moment.

Then her whole face changed. It broke open, like bread.

“Na servus,” said Margit. “You’re from home.”

---

He was not from home. He did not say so. He said ja and nothing else, because it was true in the sense that mattered to her and he did not have the Wisconsindeutsch to explain the other sense, and she did not wait for him to.

“Topfen. We keep it in the back,” said Margit, already turning, in a stream of it, half English and half not, fast, with her hands going. “Nobody up here knows what it is. They ask for Quark, they ask for cottage cheese, they ask for the white stuff in the tub, I give them the cheap one. The good one I keep in the back. For two families. The Schusters on Tenth and the Hartigans up the street.” She stopped with her hand on the door of the cold room. She looked back at him over her shoulder, at his face, for one second longer than before. “You’re with the Hartigans.”

“I’m doing the shopping.”

“For Anneliese.”

“Yes.”

“Gell,” said Margit, as if this explained everything, and went into the cold room, and came back with a tub, white, plain, with a label written by hand, and put it on the counter. “The good one. Not the cheap one. She’ll know.”

---

She did the rest from the list, which he held out across the glass case, upside down for her, and which she read the right way up by turning her head, the way people do who have read a great many lists across a great many counters.

Leberwurst, grob. “Coarse,” said Margit. “Not smooth. Grob is coarse. The smooth is for children and Lutherans.” She cut it.

Speck, 1 lb. She sliced it on the machine, fast, thin, and weighed it, and it was a pound to the ounce, and she did not look at the scale.

Kren. “Horseradish,” said Margit, and he looked at the word and felt something go click, the way Erdäpfel had. “Fresh. Not the jar. Anneliese grates it herself, she won’t have the jar.” She took a root out of a box under the counter, long and knobbly and pale brown, like a walking stick that had been in a fight, and wrapped it in paper. “Don’t touch your eyes after.”

Bratserl, 24. FÜR SONNTAG.

Margit read it. She looked at him.

“For the Bowl,” she said.

“For the Bowl.”

“Gell.” She went along the case to the far end, where there was a tray of pale fat sausages in long links, and counted out twenty-four, aloud, in German, fast, under her breath, eins zwei drei, and cut the link with one stroke and wrapped them in white paper and tied the paper with string. “Green Bay,” said Margit, tying the knot. “You’ll be watching with Peter.”

“Yes.”

“Then God help you,” said Margit, “because I’ve watched with Peter,” and gave him the parcel.

---

He found the rest.

Semmerl were bread rolls, as he had thought, in a bin by the bakery, and he counted out ten with the tongs into a paper bag, and dropped one, and picked it up with the tongs and put it back in the bin, and then took it out again and put it in the bag, because he had touched it with the tongs and somebody would have to eat it and it might as well be him.

Erdäpfel, 5 lb. A sack. Easy.

Rotkraut, 1. He stood in front of the red cabbages, which were enormous and purple and shiny and looked, he thought, very like the beetroot’s older brother. He took the smallest.

Senf, den süssen, braunen. Mustard. There were nineteen kinds of mustard. He read every label. He found one that was brown and said sweet on it, and below sweet, in smaller letters, Bavarian style, and he put it in the trolley with a feeling that was very nearly triumph.

Das Toiletpaper, 9. It came in nines. He had not known that toilet paper came in numbers. He took a nine. It took up most of the trolley.

Der Peanutbutter (crunchy). Crunchy. In a jar with a red lid. He knew this one. It was Theo’s. Theo had eaten it from the jar with a spoon at the table on Wednesday night while his mother said something in Wisconsindeutsch about it that Frederick had followed all of.

He looked at the trolley. Sixteen things. He checked them against the list, every one, the way he checked a box: milk, butter, eggs, rolls, Topfen, liver sausage, bacon, potatoes, red cabbage, horseradish, mustard, sausages, peanut butter, toilet paper, apples, coffee.

He pushed the trolley with the wheel that went its own way to the front of the shop, to the tills.

---

There were six tills. Five of them had queues of five or six people. The sixth, at the far end, by the doors, said CLOSED.

He joined the queue at till four, because it was the shortest, behind a woman with a baby in a sling and a trolley full of nappies, and in front of a man of about seventy in a flat cap with a basket that had in it a single tin of soup and a lottery ticket.

At the till was a woman of about fifty in the yellow Dorsey’s tabard, with her reading glasses on a chain round her neck, and her hair in short grey twists, and a badge that said MRS ADEYEMI, and she was scanning things very fast and saying bags? to each person and have a good weekend to each person in a voice that made both sound like the same sentence, and she did not look up at anybody, at all, ever.

The baby in the sling looked at him over its mother’s shoulder. It had very round dark eyes, and an expression of profound disdain.

He looked back at it. It did not blink.

---

It was his turn.

He put the things on the belt. All sixteen. The nine rolls of toilet paper last, because there was nowhere else for them. Mrs Adeyemi scanned the milk and the butter and the eggs, beep beep beep, without looking, and the rolls, and the Topfen, which she turned over to find the label written by hand and typed a number in from memory, and the sausages, and the horseradish, and the red cabbage, and the mustard, and the peanut butter, and the coffee, and the apples, which she weighed.

Then she reached for the toilet paper, and lifted the nine rolls to the scanner, and looked up.

She looked at him over the top of the toilet paper.

He saw it happen. He had seen it happen on a great many faces, in a great many places, and it always happened the same way: first nothing, then a small puzzlement, as though they were trying to remember where they knew him from, and then the arrival, which came in from one side of the face and spread, like the colour into a river. He had seen it happen on Mr Pettigrew’s face in a car park a year ago. He watched it happen now on Mrs Adeyemi’s, over a nine-pack of toilet paper, at till four in Dorsey’s on the avenue on a Saturday morning in February.

She did not say anything.

She scanned the toilet paper. Beep.

“Bags?” said Mrs Adeyemi.

“I’ve brought bags.”

“Good,” said Mrs Adeyemi. She looked at the screen. “Forty-one pounds sixty.”

---

He had forty pounds.

He had it in the white envelope Mrs Hartigan had sealed, which he opened, and took out two twenties, and looked at them. Forty. Not forty-one sixty. He had counted the list. He had not counted the prices. Nobody had told him to count the prices. He had never once in his life counted the prices of anything, because nobody had ever given him a sum of money and a list and told him to make one fit the other.

He was one pound sixty over.

“You’re one sixty over, love,” said Mrs Adeyemi, not unkindly, not loudly, in exactly the voice she used for bags.

Behind him in the queue the man in the flat cap with the single tin of soup shifted his basket from one hand to the other.

“I’ll put something back,” said Frederick.

“You can do that.”

He looked at the things on the end of the till, in a heap, where she had pushed them. Sixteen things. Mrs Hartigan’s list. Every one of them had been on it, and every one had had a line drawn under it in green biro, as if already done.

He looked at them for what felt like a long time and was, he found out afterwards, about four seconds.

The milk was everybody’s. The butter. The eggs, the rolls. The potatoes. The bacon and the liver sausage and the Topfen, the good one, which Margit kept in the back for two families. The red cabbage, which would be on the table, and was therefore everybody’s. The horseradish, which Mrs Hartigan grated herself. The mustard, which went with the sausages. The sausages, twenty-four, for Sunday, for the Bowl, for everybody. The coffee in the red tin with the windmill. The apples. The toilet paper, which was, he thought, the most everybody’s thing there was.

The peanut butter was Theo’s.

It was crunchy, and it had a red lid, and nobody in the flat ate it but Theo, with a spoon, out of the jar, while his mother said something about it in Wisconsindeutsch. It was the only thing in the heap that was only one person’s.

He picked up the peanut butter and held it out.

“This one,” he said.

---

Mrs Adeyemi took the jar. She looked at it. She looked at him, over the top of it, over the top of her glasses on their chain, for a long moment.

“Three pounds ten,” said Mrs Adeyemi, and took it off. “Thirty-eight fifty.”

He gave her the two twenties.

And in the queue behind him, the man in the flat cap with the tin of soup, who had been looking at the back of Frederick’s head for some time, said, quite loudly, in the voice of a man who has worked something out and wants it known:

“Your Majesty.”

---

The queue at till four turned round.

So did the queue at till three. And at till five. A woman at till two with a trolley full of cereal stood on tiptoe to see over a display of chocolate. The boy bagging at till three, who was about fifteen, stopped bagging. The baby in the sling, at the door now, with its mother, looked back over her shoulder with its very round dark eyes.

Somewhere behind the display of chocolate, a boy of about thirteen in a hooded coat held up a telephone.

Frederick felt his face go hot, from the collar up, the way it had in the gym in June.

At the end of the cereal aisle, fifteen yards away, Kimura put down the box she had been reading and stood very still.

Mrs Adeyemi did not look up.

She was counting his change out of the till. One pound fifty. A pound coin and a fifty, which she took out and held in her fingers, and then put on the little tray between them, and then, instead, picked up again and held out to him, in her palm, so that he had to hold out his own hand for it, and she put the coins into his hand, one at a time.

“One,” said Mrs Adeyemi. “Fifty. One fifty.”

Then she looked past him, over his shoulder, at the man in the flat cap with the single tin of soup, over the top of her reading glasses on their chain, with an expression Frederick had last seen on the face of Mr Kaminski in a stairwell.

“He’s buying Topfen,” said Mrs Adeyemi, in the voice she used for bags and have a good weekend. “Let him buy his Topfen.” She held out her hand for the man’s basket. “Soup and a ticket. Are you buying them or announcing them?”

The man in the flat cap looked at her. He looked at Frederick. He looked at his tin of soup.

“Buying them,” he said.

“Then put them on the belt,” said Mrs Adeyemi, “and let the young man pack his bags.”

---

He packed his bags.

He did it at the end of the till, with his face hot and his hands not quite steady, the milk and the eggs on top and the toilet paper under his arm, because it would not go in either bag, and the queue at till four watched him do it in a silence that was not quite silence, and the boy behind the chocolate lowered his telephone, and the woman at till two came down off her tiptoes.

When he had finished, he looked at Mrs Adeyemi.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Count your change,” said Mrs Adeyemi, scanning the soup, without looking up. “Always count your change. Nobody counts their change any more.” Beep. “Have a good weekend.”

He counted it. One pound fifty. He put it in the white envelope with the receipt.

---

Kimura fell in beside him on the pavement outside, not fifteen yards behind now, but a yard to his left, between him and the road, with her hands empty and her eyes on everything, and they walked back along the avenue in the rain, past the church with ALL WELCOME on its board and the barber’s and the launderette, and she did not say anything until the corner with the lottery shop.

“Telephone,” she said. “The boy behind the chocolate. Thirteen, hooded coat, red trainers. I saw it. I couldn’t do anything about it; he’s a boy in a shop with a telephone and so are you.” She looked at the road. “It’ll be on something by lunchtime.”

“I know.”

“The cashier,” said Kimura, “nine out of ten.”

“Why not ten?”

“She made you put the peanut butter back,” said Kimura. “I’d have paid the one sixty. I’ve got it in my pocket.” She looked straight ahead. “I’m not allowed to. It’s in the treaty. But I’d have liked to.”

---

Mrs Hartigan unpacked the bags on the counter by the fridge, one thing at a time, and he stood beside her with the toilet paper still under his arm.

She looked at the Topfen, at the hand-written label, and nodded once. She looked at the horseradish, wrapped in paper, and unwrapped it and smelled it and wrapped it again. She looked at the liver sausage, at the cut face of it, coarse, and put it in the fridge. She looked at the mustard, the sweet brown Bavarian style, and said ja. She looked at the sausages in their white paper and string and said, without turning round, Margit, and he said yes, and she said Margit counts them aloud, and put them in the fridge too.

Then she held out her hand for the envelope.

He gave it to her. She took out the receipt and the one pound fifty and counted the one pound fifty, and then read the receipt, upside down from habit, and then the right way up, all of it, to the bottom, where PEANUT BTR CRNCHY had been printed and then, below it, a minus sign and PEANUT BTR CRNCHY again, cancelled.

She looked at it for a long time.

“You put back the peanut butter,” said Mrs Hartigan.

“I was one sixty over.”

“And you chose Theo’s.”

“It was the only thing that was only one person’s,” said Frederick. “Everything else was everybody’s.”

Mrs Hartigan put the receipt down on the counter. She looked at him, sideways, with the tea towel with the map of Wisconsin on it over her shoulder, the way she had looked at the bread on Friday.

“That was right,” she said.

And then, turning back to the fridge, in Wisconsindeutsch, very low, to herself, a sentence that he followed all of, every word, because it was short and because she meant it, and that was the first time he had ever heard her say anything at that table about him that she had not first said to his face:

Der wird schon.

He’ll do.