purchase                                             

The strip mall is sparse and sprawling, grey bright orange and yellow, filled up with McDonald's and Burger King, Pizza Hut and K-Mart. It is where we shop, because we have to, because these are the options and this is our life here, now. I pull across the two lane street and into a parking lot, drawing up next to an old Civic filled from roof to floor boards in boxes of clothing, empty food containers and cartons of cigarettes. My car is 4 months old, dust covered but undented. Beside me the Civic sits on three tires and a spare donut. I notice that it is missing the passenger seat. Two spaces down a girl, easily ten years younger than me, pushes a stroller, holds a toddler on her hip and ushers a young boy of about six across the lot towards the discount grocery store. I clutch my bag given to me by my mother in law a few years ago, bought at a department store in New York unimaginable today. 

The Sears store is tiny, crammed with last season's items and offering only one or two selections in each of its four small departments. The salesmen lean lazily against the washing machines, the store is empty, the ring of the bell as I walk in echos and all heads turn to face me. He ambles up to help me, short and balding and cyanotic, breathing in shallow rapid breaths and leaning every few steps on a shelf, a dryer. Can? I? Help? You? Young? Lady? each word punctuated with one quick inhalation. I'm here to buy a refrigerator. A new refrigerator. An extra refrigerator. Because our family is coming up from New York for the holidays and we'll need more, we'll always need more, to prepare for it. He tries to sell me more, bigger, fancier. I watch him leaning along the aisles, gasping, ambling, trying to sell me something anything to make his commission. No, I say, just the smallest cheapest refrigerator you have, we don't need much, it's going to live in the basement. His efforts are valiant and I understand them, although I set my face into stern refusal and repeatedly rebuff him with no, what do you have that's cheaper until finally we reach the dark end of the aisle where last year's items languish in dust and discount. This, I say, pointing to the cheapest, that one. He sighs, takes the ticket and begins the slow journey back to the computer. I walk behind him, observing his gait, watching his shuffle, my face burning with guilt and confused consumerism, wondering how we are obligated to best help each other.

At the register he writes the ticket, I look at his clubbed and yellowed fingers, note the distention of his external jugular vein, the heavy weight of ascites pulling at the buttons along his belly. I want to ask him, why aren't you on oxygen? His oxygen saturation is clearly dismal, his lips are dusky purple, his chest rising in quick ascent. Broken blood vessels smatter his arms in the characteristic pattern of disease and while we make small talk about his sons in community college it is all I can do to keep up with the charade and not turn to him and shake him, ask him if he's even on Lasix, has anyone ever drained the fluid from his belly. He mentions the economy, the hardships of being a salesman, worrying about foreclosures and his kid's college tuition. I nod and smile in a gesture of silent agreement, fold the receipt for my extra refrigerator for our bounty of good fortune and walk towards the door. I turn to thank him, to wish him a good holiday, he smiles back and suppresses a cough and I walk into the cold bright outside, always and again uncertain about how we can best and ever actually help each other.