This all started on a Saturday morning in May, one of those warm spring days that smell like clean linen. Delia had gone to the supermarket to shop for the week’s meals. She was standing in the produce section, languidly choosing a bunch of celery. Grocery stores always made her reflective. Why was it, she was wondering, that celery was not called “corduroy plant”? That would be much more colorful. And garlic bulbs should be “moneybags,” because their shape reminded her of the sacks of gold coins in folktales.
A customer on her right was sorting through the green onions. It was early enough so the store was nearly empty, and yet this person seemed to be edging in on her a bit. Once or twice the fabric of his shirt sleeve brushed her dress sleeve. Also, he was really no more than stirring those onions around. He would lift one rubber-banded clump and then drop it and alight on another. His fingers were very long and agile, almost spidery. His cuffs were yellow oxford cloth.
He said, “Would you know if these are called scallions?”
“Well, sometimes,” Delia said. She seized the nearest bunch of celery and stepped toward the plastic bags.
“Or would they be shallots?”
“No, they’re scallions,” she told him.
Needlessly, he steadied the roll of bags overhead while she peeled one off. (He towered a good foot above her.) She dropped the celery into the bag and reached toward the cup of twist ties, but he had already plucked one out for her. “What are shallots, anyway?” he asked.
She would have feared that he was trying to pick her up, except that when she turned she saw he was surely ten years her junior, and very good-looking besides. He had straight, dark-yellow hair and milky blue eyes that made him seem dreamy and peaceful. He was smiling down at her, standing a little closer than strangers ordinarily stand.
“Um …,” he said, flustered.
“Shallots,” he reminded her.
“Shallots are fatter,” she said. She set the celery in her grocery cart. “I believe they’re above the parsley,” she called over her shoulder, but she found him next to her, keeping step with her as she wheeled her cart toward the citrus fruits. He wore blue jeans, very faded, and soft moccasins that couldn’t be heard above “King of the Road” on the public sound system.
“I also need lemons,” he told her.
She slid another glance at him.
“Look,” he said suddenly. He lowered his voice. “Could I ask you a big favor?”
“Um …”
“My ex-wife is up ahead in potatoes. Or not ex I guess but … estranged, let’s say, and she’s got her boyfriend with her. Could you just pretend we’re together? Just till I can duck out of here?”
“Well, of course,” Delia said.
And without even taking a deep breath first, she plunged happily back into the old high-school atmosphere of romantic intrigue and deception. She narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin and said, “We’ll show her!” and sailed past the fruits and made a U-turn into root vegetables. “Which one is she?” she murmured through ventriloquist lips.
“Tan shirt,” he whispered. Then he startled her with a sudden burst of laughter. “Ha, ha!” he told her too loudly. “Aren’t you clever to say so?!”
But “tan shirt” was nowhere near an adequate description. The woman who turned at the sound of his voice wore an ecru raw-silk tunic over black silk trousers as slim as two pencils. Her hair was absolutely black, cut shorter on one side, and her face was a perfect oval. “Why, Adrian,” she said. Whoever was with her, some man or other, turned too, still gripping a potato. A dark, thick man with rough skin like stucco and eyebrows that met in the middle. Not up to the woman’s standard at all; but how many people were?
Delia’s companion said, “Rosemary. I didn’t see you. So don’t forget,” he told Delia, not breaking his stride. He set a hand on her cart to steer it into aisle 3. “You promised me you’d make your marvelous blancmange tonight.”
“Oh, yes, my … blancmange,” Delia echoed faintly. Whatever blancmange might be, it sounded the way she felt just then: pale and plain-faced and skinny, with her freckles and her frizzy brown curls and her ruffled pink round-collared dress.
They had bypassed the dairy case and the juice aisle, where Delia had planned to pick up several items, but she didn’t point that out because this Adrian person was still talking. “Your blancmange and then your, uh, what, your meat and vegetables and da-da-da …”
The way he let his voice die reminded her of those popular songs that end with the singers just absentmindedly drifting away from the microphone. “Is she looking at us?” he whispered. “Check it out. Don’t make it obvious.”
Delia glanced over, pretending to be struck by a display of converted rice. Both the wife and the boyfriend had their backs to her, but there was something artificial in their posture. No one could find rust potatoes so mesmerizing. “Well, she’s mentally looking,” Delia murmured. She turned to see her grocery cart rapidly filling with pasta. Egg noodles, rotini, linguine—Adrian flung in boxes at random. “Excuse me …” she said.
“Oh, sorry,” he told her. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and loped off. Delia followed, pushing her cart very slowly in case he meant for them to separate now. But at the end of the aisle, he paused and considered a row of tinned ravioli until she caught up with him. “The boyfriend’s name is Skipper,” he said. “He’s her accountant.”
“Accountant?” Delia said. He didn’t fit the image.
“Half a dozen times, at least, he’s come to our house. Sat in our actual living room, going over her taxes. Rosemary owns this catering firm. The Guilty Party, it’s called. Ha. ‘Sinfully Delicious Foods for Every Occasion.’ Then next thing I know, she’s moved in with him. She claimed she only needed a few weeks by herself, but when she phoned to say so, I could hear him coaching her in the background.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” Delia said.
A woman with a baby in her cart reached between them for a can of macaroni and cheese. Delia stepped back to give her room.
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Adrian said when the woman had moved away, “I’ll just tag along while you finish your shopping. It would look sort of fishy if I left right now, all alone. I hope you don’t mind.”
Mind? This was the most interesting thing that had happened to her in years. “Not a bit,” she told him. She wheeled her cart into aisle 4. Adrian strolled alongside her.
“I’m Adrian Bly-Brice, by the way,” he said. “I guess I ought to know your name.”
“I’m Delia Grinstead,” she told him. She plucked a bottle of mint flakes from the spice rack.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever run into a Delia before.”
“Well, it’s Cordelia, really. My father named me that.”
“And are you one?”
“Am I one what?”
“Are you your father’s Cordelia?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He’s dead.”
Adrian caught up with Rosemary at the front of the store. She had a paper bag in one hand and a large tote basket hanging from Skipper’s fist. Women like Rosemary never purchased their groceries by the cartload.
“If we went to the movie, though, we’d miss the concert,” Adrian said instantly, “and you know how I’ve looked forward to the concert.”
“I forgot,” Delia said. “The concert! They’ll be playing …”
But she couldn’t think of a single composer. (And maybe he had meant some other kind of concert—a rock show, for instance. He was young enough.) Rosemary watched without a flicker of expression as Delia and Adrian approached. Delia was the first to lower her eyes. “We’ll just save the movie for tomorrow,” Adrian was saying. He guided her cart to the left a bit. All at once Delia felt woefully small—not dainty and petite, but squat, humble, insignificant. She didn’t stand much taller than Adrian’s armpit. She increased her speed, anxious to leave this image of herself behind. “They do have a Sunday matinee, don’t they?” Adrian was asking.
“Of course they do,” she told him, a little too emphatically. “We could go to the two o’clock showing, right after our champagne brunch.”
By now she was tearing down the next aisle. Adrian had to lengthen his stride to keep up. They narrowly missed hitting a man whose cart was stacked with gigantic Pampers boxes.
In aisle 7 they zipped through the gourmet section—anchovy paste, smoked oysters—and arrived at baby foods, where Delia collected herself enough to remember she needed strained spinach. She slowed to study the rows of little jars. “Not those!” Adrian hissed. They raced on, leaving behind aisle 7 and careening into 8. “Sorry,” he said. “I just thought if Rosemary saw you buying baby food …”
If she saw her buying baby food, she’d think Delia was just a housewife with an infant waiting at home. Ironically, though, Delia had long passed the infant stage. To suspect her of having a child that young was a flatter to her. All she needed the spinach for was her mint pea soup. But she didn’t bother