Jelly Beans

Jane is short. She can’t reach the bottle she wants on the top shelf.

— Could you help me out? I can’t reach the seltzer.

— Uhh, yeah one sec.

Kieran peels his eyes away from his cravings to pull the bottle from the top shelf.

Jane is annoyed with Kieran. He makes her needs feel like wants, or worse, irrelevant when she feels she’s stating the obvious. She wishes Kieran would pay more attention to her, but she won’t say this out loud, so she releases small bits of anger through jabs at his self-esteem, which he’ll use to make her into the “bad guy” later once he begins to realize his faults.

Kieran watches a female worker restock the shelves. She’s up above on employee walkways, using pulleys to lower down what can be replaced. She’s cute. Jane notices.

— Wow. Be more obvious.

— Relax, I’m just interested in how they do that. They look like Oopma Loompas up there. And they’re some of the first people I’ve seen in days. Besides you anyway.

— SO?

— It’s weird.

— You’re weird. And she’s not even pretty.

Jane is very attractive and is told by friends that she could’ve married better than Kieran. She knows it too, so she gets irritated when Kieran gives other women his fickle attention. She’s not angry, she’s in disbelief at the audacity of his being so oblivious to this.

Kieran looks back to the worker. She and the proximity monitors walk back and forth on the platforms to keep an eye on everyone’s distance, and Kieran thinks they all look like lifeguards. In some ways, they are.

Jane pushes past Kieran to turn into aisle two, candy and snacks. Kieran loiters. A whistle sounds from above him and gets his feet moving. Kieran smiles an apology to the worker, and to catch up with Jane. She’s displeased.

— Keep up! You’re so embarrassing.

— Sorry. I keep forgetting.

Kieran grabs a bag of jelly beans and puts it in Jane’s cart. Jane picks them up and hands them back to Kieran.

— No.

— Come on, we can’t just live off of rice and broth! I need something sweet.

— Yes, we can. If you want your teeth to rot, you can buy it yourself. Oh wait, you can’t.

Kieran scoffs. Jane feels only a little sorry, and is mostly regretful that she doesn’t feel sorrier. She knows it’s not his fault that he was laid off from his job. Kieran doesn’t mind, except when Jane uses the fact to her advantage to get what she wants, like now. Some days, Kieran almost finds irony in the fact that someone who sang “It’s A Small World” at Disneyland was ordered into quarantine. Jane isn’t impressed with his former career, and thinks he should’ve gone into fitness education like her. She can still teach spin classes online, so she feels superior.

Kieran is still holding the jelly beans, planning to steal them or smuggle them into the cart when it’s too late, while they’re at checkout. He’s smug, but Jane sees them and plans to throw them away once they’re home. Jane rolls her cart toward the chips and grabs a few of the crinkly orange bags. Kieran watches and wonders how she can be so wildly hypocritical.

— What? They’re quinoa chips.

— And that changes what, exactly?

— They’re heart-healthy. Like Cheerios? Quinoa is a grain, in case you hadn’t picked up on that in elementary school.

— So are potatoes, and they taste better.

— Potatoes are not a grain.

— Well, duh. I meant they’re healthy.

— No they’re not! Don’t you know anything?

— Yeah, potatoes are vegetables. I thought that’s what you wanted.

— Real vegetables. Potatoes are not vegetables.

— PO. TA. TO. You boil ‘em, mash ‘em, put ‘em in a stew. And they make great fried snacks, come on!

Jane’s argument is half bluster. She’s not sure if a potato is technically considered a vegetable or a starch, or if they fall into the root vegetable category like a carrot or a turnip since they grow underground. She doesn’t have to know. She wins arguments with Kieran simply because he doesn’t know the facts she assures him of are actually half-informed bluffs. Kieran ends the argument sometimes by being funny. Jane’s friends marvel at how she stays with a man like Kieran, but she appreciates his ability to make her laugh. His laughability ranges from body humor to outrageously stupid statements that he oftentimes doesn’t realize are ridiculous, but this makes them funnier to Jane. She finds his Lord of the Rings references corny and boyish, but in some ways she’s impressed by his ability to recall such geeky phrases, even if he doesn’t remember her friends’ names sometimes. She sets the bags in the cart and Kieran grabs a bag of Doritos from the shelf.

— Corn. Grain and vegetable.

— No. We should’ve gone to Whole Foods.

— Come on. This could be the last time we see a bag of Doritos in our lifetime!

— And this wouldn’t be soon enough. It’s not like the world’s going to run out of junk food! Even if we are in NorCal.

Jane moves to grab the bag from his hands, but he’s surprisingly fast for a man whose physical capabilities began with picking up a PlayStation controller and ended with “it’s all in the wrist!” Kieran spins in a circle and pantomimes throwing the chips like a basketball into the cart. The chips hit the rim and fall to the floor.

— Kobe!

— Show some respect! That wasn’t that long ago. Jesus.

— You too, then. I thought you were a Christian.

— I am.

— Then watch your mouth.

Jane huffs and stoops to pick up the chips. She looks around to see who’s seen Kieran behaving like a child. Just the nearest proximity monitor. Jane knows the monitor is laughing at her, even if she can’t see her mouth behind her mask. Her eyes are crinkled and she looks away when Jane makes eye contact with her. Jane huffs again.

Jane thinks about having kids, but she’s not sure if it’s a desire or an expectation that she’s picked up and is conditioned to envision. She thinks about having a child that turns out to be like Kieran and recalls the phrase “a face only a mother could love.” She doesn’t think Kieran is ugly, but she’s not so sure his features will mix well with hers in the gene pool. He has large eyebrows, and they curl upward to almost meet in the middle. Jane offers to pluck them twice a week. Over the several weeks they’d been stuck at home together, she’s offered on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Then there were his toes, and the skin between them. From his grandmother’s side, his feet are the slightest bit webbed, and he’s really self-conscious about it. She brought it up before when they went to the beach last weekend and Kieran refused to take his shoes off to go in the water. He said the kids in middle school called him the platypus, and Jane thought that the insult was actually quite smart for middle schoolers, what with Kieran actually being a mammal, but she didn’t say so. She continued to say nothing as he took his shirt off and kept his shoes to wade toward her.

Jane looks at Kieran and wonders how he’ll handle that conversation, or if he even wants kids. Kieran looks back at her and worries she’s seen the jelly bean bag he’s shoved into the side of his rain boot. She knows he would only say something about the world being no place for a baby right now, but Jane figures at least a baby would be something to take care of other than her plants and Kieran.

Jane is impatient. She looks at the couple twelve feet in front of them. They are taking forever deciding which box of cookies to get, trapping them all in the snack aisle. If Jane were pregnant, she could’ve skipped the line to get in, or had a personal shopper. She thinks this is reason enough to try when they get home. The monitor blows her whistle again, and the couple drops the cookies as she yells at them.

— Keep it moving, people! We’ve got 2 hours ‘til close, and people who need groceries.

The couple looks irritated as if they didn’t know the rules. Jane is irritated at their irritation. She becomes annoyed when people expect special treatment when they know the expectations placed upon them. The couple turns to move, and the whistle goes off again.

— Do not leave touched items on the floor! You touch it, you buy it! Keep it moving.

The couple looks disgruntled, but they move around the corner into the next aisle. Jane is happy they’re moving, and hurries along toward the next aisle. She moves past the cookies. She remembers the last time she had a cookie was at her mother’s birthday party eight months ago. She won’t admit it out loud, but she’s craving a bit of chocolate, maybe even a cookie. Jane looks at Kieran and wonders how much shit he’ll give her for getting junk food. She presses on around the corner. Kieran is busy looking at the cookies. He decides that chocolate chip is better than macadamia nut, then realizes that Jane has moved into the other aisle, so he runs before the monitor can blow her whistle.

— Jan what the hell? You just skipped past all the good stuff!

— I told you not to call me that. Anyway, it’ll all give you diabetes. There’s more important stuff in this aisle.

— The baking aisle? I doubt it.

— Flour. Sugar. Baking soda. We need that stuff!

— For what?

— Cooking!

— You mean baking?

If it isn’t obvious, Kieran is immature. His charm disarmed Jane when they were first married, but now she was twenty-four, and he twenty-eight. Her mother warned her about dating an older man, and now Jane just laughs.

Jane starts looking for ingredients for cookies, heart-healthy cookies. She remembers a scene in a T.V. show where the mom put flax seeds or something into the cookies to make them healthier, so she looks for those. Jane assumes that as a mother she’ll be baking loads, so she figures she better learn if she wants to have children. Her children will eat heart-healthy cookies, not junky cookies like Chips Ahoy! or Oreos. There were leftover cookies in the house when the quarantine began, but they didn’t last long, much like the rest of the food. She didn’t eat them, though. Kieran had layered them into what he called a sugar sandwich and stuffed them into his mouth. Jane cringes at the recollection, and wishes she had bought mouthwash along with the toothpaste already in her cart.

Kids love homemade cookies, she tells herself. She thinks that if she has a kid with Kieran, she could share one with the child. She hates cookies, though, so why does she want one? Jane likes chocolate, but she usually only eats dark chocolate — it’s what her mother ate when she was pregnant with her. Dark chocolate is good for the heart, milk chocolate is a childhood craving. Or one she has when she’s menstruating. Jane slows her cart to a stop, and remembers her menstrual cycle. It’s due. Was due, day before yesterday. She doesn’t have tampons on the grocery list because on T.V. a few weeks ago, the news said the stores are out, and won’t have more. Jane refuses to think she could be pregnant, it was improbable.

— Why are you grabbing the chocolate chips? I thought you didn’t eat junk food.

— It’s not junk food. It’s an ingredient.

— Whatever. Chocolate is chocolate, Jan. What’re you gonna make with that except something actually good?

— I was going to make cookies, ok? I know you wanted some, but you can forget it if you keep calling me Jan. You can forget me cooking for you at all!

Kieran almost mentions that it’s actually baking, but he bites his tongue. Jane huffs for the third time in the store and continues to think about her potential child, not the one she isn’t pregnant with, but the one she’d like to have. Someday. She wants a girl for sure, whom she’d steer away from all junk food and geeky things.

Jane moves her cart forward again, glaring at Kieran. The monitor blows her whistle — Jane stops and sees that the couple has stopped to look at the seed packets at the end of the aisle. Jane crinkles her eyebrows and thinks it’s a stupid place to put those things. Kieran is slow to stop and bumps her.

She used to be in love with him. She still is. Some days. Jane thinks it’s hard to tell when you’re stuck with a person for weeks on end. Some days she feels like she could kill him over a bag of chips. She’d get away with it, no one would ask questions while everyone is at home, and who knew how long they’d be stuck. Other days, she can’t get enough of him. Kieran is entertaining, at the very least. Jane hadn’t tired of having sex with him yet. They’re out of condoms. Kieran had run out of condoms a while ago, but Jane didn’t care sometimes on the more boring days.

Kieran is looking at the varieties of chocolate chips, and marvels at how there’s even cinnamon ones now. Jane moves on toward the end of the aisle. She sees there’s a small rack of pregnancy tests. Jane thinks this is tacky to put by a baking aisle, but then again it’s also clever. They must have ordered too many of them. She picks one up and puts it under the toothpaste.

— If you are part of one party, please stick together and keep it moving! Five minutes per aisle, please, ladies and gentlemen!

A whistle blows at the end of the shout, and Jane wonders if they rehearse in the break room, all at once, twelve feet apart. Kieran hurries up to her, he smiles sheepishly. She turns to the next aisle, and finds it’s closed. A rope hangs a sign that reads: ALL CANNED FRUITS AND VEGETABLES MOVED TO PHARMACY. STOCK RESERVED FOR THE ELDERLY, PREGNANT, AND IMMUNOCOMPROMISED.

— Aw, dang! We can’t eat any green beans. Shame. Come on, the next aisle has frozen pizzas, I think.

— But how are we supposed to…get…we’re out of—

The whistle goes off again. Jane glares at the monitor, who stares back. Jane hates her. She moves along as far ahead as she can without Kieran. He holds up the line because of his taste for frozen dinners. Jane looks at the pregnancy test box in her cart and refuses to think about Hungry Man meals and milk chocolate.

Jane and Kieran make their way through the aisles until they reach the checkout. The checkout woman looks to be smiling behind her mask, Jane can tell because of her eyes. Kieran mulls over the gum. Jane reaches for the toothpaste and pregnancy test and puts them both on the conveyor belt. Kieran places his gum on the belt. Jane rolls her eyes.

— We’re not here to buy gum.

— Why not? If we get it, we can save more on toothpaste.

— That makes no sense. That’s not even mint gum.

— Well why do you have to have two tubes of toothpaste? And you grabbed the wrong kind.

Kieran moves to grab the pregnancy test.

— Kieran, put the jelly beans on the counter.

— How did you — fine. As long as you’re paying for them.

Kieran reaches into his boot, and places the bag on the belt. The cashier stares at Kieran until he smiles and shrugs his shoulders. Jane’s face is red. The cashier tells Jane the total, and she wonders if the prices were raised again. She’s over budget for this trip. But she made a list. But she had an extra. Jane grabs the gum and tells the cashier to ring it up, too. Jane helps bag the groceries. Kieran is looking through the phone accessories next to the gum. Jane pays. The cashier stares at her. She holds out the pregnancy test to Jane behind the side of the counter.

— Don’t forget your toothpaste.

— Thanks.

Jane slips the box into her purse. Kieran sees the bag of chocolate chips, and wonders what possesses a person to make cookies with bitter chocolate. Kieran knows she has a sweet tooth. People with sweet teeth bake cookies. Jane thrusts the gum packet toward him and gestures toward the door. She’s embarrassed again, and worries about a whistle blowing because they’re finished with their purchasing. Jane has her receipt, and moves the cart to leave. She hears the cashier behind her.

— Best of luck with your jelly beans.

Kieran laughs. Jane and Kieran go outside. Their car is close by.

— What a weird thing to say. This is why people don’t buy things like condoms or underwear in checkout lanes like this. People are so judgey.

— Shut up, Kieran.

— Anyway, don’t bother telling me not to get sweets at the store if you’re just going to buy some for yourself. Don’t even think about asking for any of mine.

— I won’t.

Jane loads the groceries into the car and then gets in. She slams her door and starts the car. Kieran fiddles with the radio and Jane tells him to put his seat belt on. She wonders how much car seats are, and if they make ones that can attach to bikes. Jane’s middle aches and she wishes despite herself for chocolate, and maybe something else more fulfilling.