Today Will Be Different(26)

Could this be happening? Could the elixir I’d been squirreling away for decades have lost its fizz?

Was it me? Was it Joe? Was it the passage of time? Was I too tired to care? Earlier this year, I’d told a mother at school I’d been married fifteen years. She asked, “What’s the secret to a long marriage?” I thought for a second, then answered, “Staying married.”

Was it happiness I’d found in my long marriage? Or capitulation? Or is that all happiness is, capitulation?

The story of our marriage was in frames all over our apartment: Joe and I riding to the Emmys in the back of a limo. Me surprising Joe during a medical conference in Chicago and having someone take our picture in front of Cy Twombly’s peonies. (Moments later, Joe asked me to marry him in front of the Bean with a ring he’d grabbed at the museum gift shop.) Our wedding in Violet Parry’s backyard in Martha’s Vineyard. Giving birth to Timby at home on Thanksgiving Day, the TV on in the background, the cast of Sunday in the Park with George performing during the Macy’s parade. Sunday, by the blue, purple, yellow, red water. Joe opening the Wallace Surgery Center. Timby’s first day of kindergarten.

But standing there in the weak October sun, a different story of our marriage presented itself. It was as if all those years, Joe and I had been followed by a photographer snapping pictures of us unawares…

Joe and me reading quietly in bed, Timby playing Legos at our feet.

Me looking out the window, seeing Joe and Timby below, walking home from the Science Center.

Me standing on the Galer Street lawn in the drizzle, early for pickup.

Yo-Yo snoring in the living room, so loud none of us could sleep.

The three of us sitting on the curb outside Portage Bay waiting for them to call our name for brunch.

That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments between. At the time, I hadn’t pegged them as being particularly happy. But now, looking back at those phantom snapshots, I’m struck by my calm, my ease, the evident comfort with my life.

I’m happy in retrospect.

Oh, Joe, take me back and I promise I’ll make love to you twice a week and never eat a bagel on the toilet again. I’ll appreciate the quiet moments and—

Hey! Could it be? Alonzo! Walking on a pedestrian overpass spanning Elliott Avenue.

I watched him go down the stairs and head into the Costco parking lot.

This was perfect. I needed to apologize for calling him “my poet.”





Alonzo had changed into jeans and a red polo shirt, but he was unmistakable from afar with his sturdy frame and regal carriage.

“Let’s go!” I said to Yo-Yo, who jumped so vigorously out of his sleep I feared we both might tear muscles.

Cars were few on the edge of the Costco parking lot. Yo-Yo’s friskiness toggled to despair as I tied him to an empty shopping-cart rack and sliced the air with my index finger. “You. Stay.”

Alonzo’s mop top bobbed over the parked cars in the distance and stopped at a rack filled with pony packs of marigolds. Alonzo took in the unremarkable sight and threw his head back with a jolly laugh. Poets. I needed to be more like them.

Alonzo spotted something on the ground—I couldn’t see what—and leaned over to pick it up. He then disappeared into the shadowy maw of Costco.

This was my Costco, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t lost Timby in here more than once, so I’d perfected the art of finding moving targets. My secret? To canvass the place like I was drawing that house with the X through it without lifting my pencil.

I entered and jogged along the left wall, checking the aisles to my right. When I reached the top left corner, I crossed through wine and hung a left, which landed me in toilet paper. Still no Alonzo.


Last time I was here was a year ago. After an hour spent filling my cart so high it handled like a bumper car and required an arm across the top so everything wouldn’t slide off, I made my way to the checkout line. A wave of misanthropy swept over me. Why did that lady need a whole drum of Red Vines? What would someone even do with a hundred combs? Did that fatso really need a laminator all to herself? Couldn’t she just go to Kinko’s? Or that guy, what was he doing with six gallon jugs of generic scotch? And why must they all wear shorts?

Thank God I wasn’t one of them! Me with my case of highly rated New Zealand sauvignon blanc, my pound of fresh pineapple spears, my salt-and-pepper pistachios, my twelve-pack of dental floss. My items painted a clear picture of my sophistication… my superior taste… my sparkling intelligence…

I abandoned my cart in the checkout line and walked out empty-handed. I felt bad for the person who had to return my stuff to the proper shelves. I felt worse when I realized it was probably cheaper for Costco to just throw it all away.


I crossed through produce. Impossibly cheap! Good color! Firm to the touch! What’s the catch? Too many seeds. As good as it all looks on the outside, take it home and it’s filled with a freakish number of seeds. English cucumbers: dense with flat leathery seeds. Lemons: you dull your knife on all the seeds. Cherry tomatoes: jammed with tiny, slimy seeds. Not that I’d ever buy chicken at Costco, but if I did, I could imagine slicing it open and seeds pouring out.

A mob of Seahawks fans blocked the way to the bakery. Racks of cupcakes were being rolled out, a dozen to a shrink-wrapped sheet, each frosted blue with a green 12. Across the aisle, a bigger mob swarming cupcakes decorated with Pope hats, also with the number 12. The only thing you need to know about Seattle? Nobody was offended.