Betty looked around at the brightly lit canned goods and the growing line of people behind her, searching the labels and faces for an ally. For someone to nod sympathetically, at least. For someone to signify that they had been in her shoes too, and had survived and brought dinner home to their children.

“Okay, okay.”

The manager signed the check and sauntered back to the pork and beans display as if he had, in the dusty confines of a Western saloon, gunned down a vicious and dangerous opponent on the other side of a poker table. The bagger bagged her groceries for her while the cashier counted out her change. He wouldn’t look at her, his pimply face was flushed and the coins stuck to his hands as he tried to tilt them toward Betty.

“New job?”

Betty nodded.

“Look,” he said, leaning closer. “Get a bank account and you won’t have to deal with that.” He shot a look at the manager’s doubled back.

The bag boy held the sacks impatiently. “You ready?”

“Ready for what?” asked Betty icily.

“You want me to lug these out to your car?”

“Don’t got a car.”

“Well?”

“Just give them to me.”

He handed her the bags and the A&P breathed Betty back out onto the street.

By the time Caroline came home from school after fetching Irma from Betty’s cousin on Lake Street, the groceries were piled high on the counter, the boxes and bags spilled over with colors and Betty was stirring a great pot of stew, with cubed beef instead of canned meat. The house smelled of onions and pepper. The cooking smells and riot of pot-banging covered Betty’s lingering shame from the supermarket, her feeling of sudden inability. She felt better with the girls in the kitchen. This is what it’s all about, she thought. It ain’t about the people at the store, she told herself. It’s about feeding my kids.

As for Irma and Caroline, they had never seen so much real food, raw and ready, in their house, except at funerals or giveaways. Caroline’s funeral would be potlucked at the lonely Catholic church up north. As for Lester, he wouldn’t have a real wake, loud with memories and offerings of food or money. His death would be awful, the coffin silent and closed. The food the stunned neighbors brought over was quiet and small, left uneaten in the kitchen, twenty-dollar bills tucked inside the pages of the Bible and the dictionary on the mantel. Simon’s steel crew stood on the porch and the men talked about the job, not their absent partner, growing louder and louder the more hip-flask booze they drank until the police brought Simon and they fell silent. Betty’s gathered friends from the city talked about work and the reservation up north. Anything but the present.