SHOPPING MAUL

By William M. Balsamo

The percolator began to dance on the stove setting off a whistle than sounded like a siren. Maggie rose from the table and went to get the coffee to start her day. Her hair was in rollers and she wore a bathrobe, which reached, almost to the floor.

Breakfast was a ritual in her home and she believed that it was the most important meal of the day. The body needs a hearty breakfast or ‘the machine can’t get going in the morning.’ This became one of her favorite sayings. Yet, she consumed enough calories at the morning meal to carry her for the rest of the day.

Maggie was retired and so was her husband. They had waited all their life for retirement. They endured meaningless jobs which led to living a meaningless life just so that they would reach retirement and start to enjoy all the things they had missed in life

Charlie, her better half, retired in the early spring and none too sooner. He had hated his job and the colleagues with who he worked. After forty years at the same job he had made no lasting friendship among his co-workers and was quite relieved when it came time to bid them adieu. Maggie had worked as a clerk in an office filing forms and filling out papers. She had been confined to a small desk near the window of a small office of a small firm which sold car insurance. He job was tedious and the ten years she spent there had numbed her senses and had turned her into a robotized employee who functioned well at what she did but drained her of any incentive to advance herself to a higher position.

‘I think the coffee’s ready.’ Charlie said barely taking his glance from the newspaper. Maggie had already poured two cups of coffee, one for herself and one for Charlie. She knew how he liked his and, if she knew nothing else, she did know how to make a good cup of coffee.

‘Would you like some toast and jam?’ she asked knowing full well that he always took jam and toast with his coffee in the morning.

They had two children who were now fully grown and out of the house. Both were disappointments and hardly ever came around to visit. They did poorly at school and were less successful at jobs. Gary the eldest was married at twenty and divorced five years later. Sarah two years his junior was living somewhere on her own but led a mysterious life that no one dared to question. So, Charlie and Maggie were alone in a world that slowly was dissolving around them. When they married it was not supposed to be this way. They were promised so much more. They followed the pattern laid out by society for the perfect dream. They bought a car and a house and financed it with loans. It became the perfect nest in which to raise a family and borrowed from the future to live in the present.

When Gary was born Charlie gave out cigars to all of his co-workers most of whom had no idea that his wife was pregnant. Bringing him home from the hospital they placed him in a room painted in blue and especially prepared for his homecoming. It was to be his home for the next twenty years and over the course of time Gary took possession of the room and turned it into a pig sty.

Sarah came two years after Gary was born. She was the favored child of the two but the final results were equally disappointing. She was cute and cuddly as a child and did everything to make her parents happy. Then she went to school and was radically changed. By Junior high she was obnoxiously uncontrollable. Acne took possession of her face and she became addicted to cosmetics trying to remove every blotch, pimple and whitehead which assaulted her. She survived adolescence but not without scars and had lost the battle to be beautiful. She moved away as soon as she got pregnant by the security guard who worked in her office and has never been heard of since.

Charlie and Maggie survived the departure of both their children and spent endless nights wondering what they did wrong. It was not supposed to be this way. Their children were intended to be lovingly well-bred and filial and docile. It all turned out to be so wrong that in retirement there was little cause for celebration and less cause for joy.

“So,” Charlie said after breakfast had been completed, “How long will it take you to get ready?”

“I just got to get these curlers out of my hair and I’m ready.”

The excitement of getting out of the house and being distracted by trivia was more than either could contain and within minutes they were in the car heading off to the Shopping Mall.

Oak Tree Mall was a new one which opened lest than a month ago. It was three years in construction and boasted of being the largest in the area with a swimming pool, skating rink and bowling ally all somewhere in the complex. There were food courts, restaurants, movie theatres, galleries and coffee shops; plenty of parking and boutiques galore.

Maggie and Charlie had looked forward to retirement. They had declared their children liabilities long ago and had promised themselves that when they retired they were going to see the world and worry only about themselves.

“Hun, we’ll get a trailer and hit the road. How about it?”

“Oh, Charlie, I always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. I only saw it in pictures. I mean, I want to see the real thing.”

“No problem, babes, after we retire we got plenty of time. Just you and me. We’ll see the world together. All the things we read about.”

Then came 9/11 and the thought of going anywhere frightened them. The saw their neighbors as terrorists especially if there was any connection to people who lived across the oceans.

“Hun, no place is safe nowadays. Ya can’t rust nobody.”

“I know what you mean Charlie. I’m afraid to go anywhere.”

In many ways 9/11 was an excuse to cancel their trailer plans. They never really intended to get one anyway. It was far too expensive and since they had resigned themselves to the fact that their children would never take care of them, they decided to save all their money and us it for emergency when they both became senile.

It was 9:30 when they left their home and the Mall opened at ten. “Let’s get there before they open,” Maggie instructed while putting a stick of chewing gum in her mouth.

For some reason completely unknown to Charlie, Maggie always wanted to be the first in line for everything. It was a compulsive behavior which had carried her throughout her life and which drove other people crazy. She always arrived long before a place opened and stood in freezing rain, sleet and snow waiting for security to let her in.

But, Charlie knew of this habit and after so many years of marriage he no longer found it to be strange or unusual. So, he sped up a little and was able to reach the shopping mall by 9:40.

Ever since the mall had opened Charlie and Maggie spent every day there arriving early in the morning and leaving when it closed.

“It’s all here, babes. Everything you want you can find her.”

Maggie agreed with him completely.

“Yeah, I can’t understand why anyone would want to travel around the world when you’ve got it all here.”

They waited outside in the car for the shopping mall to open. Even though they liked to go there together they did not like to shop together because of their unique interests and priorities. Maggie was interested in the small shops and boutiques where she could hunt for bargains. Charlie liked tools and electronics. They fitted well into the stereotypes of what was expected of them at their age and played out their assigned roles with great dexterity.

Once inside the mall it was time to separate.

“So, where do you want to meet for lunch?” Charlie asked knowing that lunch was always a matter of her choice.

“How about Sizzlers? We haven’t been there for a while.”

“O.K. Sizzlers at noon.”

They soon departed each in opposite directions. There nothing new to discover because they had been at the mall the day before and left at closing time but this is the way they enjoyed life. They wanted no surprised and no disappointments. Life had already given them more than their share. At least they thought so. What they wanted now was familiarity and an environment they could control. The mall was stability for them. It was always there and opened and closed with regularity. They knew where things were and what to expect. It was also a place to see familiar faces and to exchange civilities about the weather and the other townspeople.

The mall was large enough for two people to explore and not bump into each other with great frequency. When it first opened they even got lost several times within its cavernous structure but the excitement of those first days was over and they were now calmed by its complacency.

They especially liked the early hour of the day when they younger folk were at school and the older folk had the place pretty much to themselves. There were the housewives with the kids in strollers but that wasn’t the same as obnoxious teenagers taking possession of the food courts and using them as hangouts.

The mall was so vast and spacious that even the onslaught of after school riff-raff could be absorbed, swallowed whole and digested without much ado.

Noon came faster than expected and Maggie and Charlie met at Sizzlers. The staff knew them well. “Not having been there for a while” mounted to two days. They liked the idea that waiters and busboys knew them by name. It gave them a sense of importance. They were forgotten by their own children and here were strangers and staff who knew them. They needed this sense of reaffirmation and, most of all, much needed attention.

Sizzlers offered no surprises; neither did the rest of the afternoon with the exception of a mime dressed as a clown who was imitating a menagerie of animals and delighting a group of senior citizens who had been bused in for the day. He was a happy clown with a happy face and big floppy ears which everyone thought was adorable. In addition to his mime he was able to juggle balls and make animals with balloons. Maggie thought this was wonderful and she wanted to stay for his second show.

The day ebbed on and the hours passed. Towards evening the numbers of people in the mall began to trickle down to just a few. An announcement came over the mall speakers that they would soon be closing and everyone was encouraged to go home. Maggie and Charlie felt as though they were being thrown out, evacuated from their home. They moved towards the exits and out to their car.

On their way home Charlie looked at Maggie when they reached the first traffic light. Her face reflected a glow from the street lamp at the corner.

“So, babes, what did you buy?”

“Nothing. But, there was a nice dress I saw in Maxwell’s Boutique. We’ll have to go back tomorrow so I can get a better look at it.”

The light changed and they returned home.