hide two more samples in my inside coat pocket.
The trick is to get there before ten, which is no problem for us since I have no job. Some days it’s cheese whiz, another day feta cheese and gyro meat, you never know what you’re going to get. Maybe that’s why I liked it, because for Ezra it was like an adventure, a tale of deli meats and dessert.
“Is it Friday?” he would ask.
“Yes.”
“Yes,” Ezra shouted, a smile crossing his face.
“Where should we start…Kroger’s, Piggly Wiggly, Safeway, or Winn Dixie?”
He always said Piggly Wiggly. The Piggly Wiggly was close to the neighborhood where we slept every night. There was a woman who was a mirror image of Janice’s mother. I think Ezra liked talking to her.
The woman’s name was Marge, the kind of name you don’t hear any longer, and she had her own station for giving out samples. She was 71 years old and this was her attempt at supplementing a pension that had stayed the same over nine years; while property tax increases and the cost of living continued their relentless push higher. I found out little bits of information every time I went there. She had three children, six great grandchildren, one of whom was the same age as Ezra.
“Good morning,” she said, with a smile that always seemed glad to see us. I wondered if she was lonely, if her husband was still alive, and if this was her only bit of banter with someone who wasn’t a relative. I wondered if she remembered us.
She was mixing up some raspberry Jell-O with some whipped cream. Then, she added red grapes cut in half to the mixture. Ezra kept watching her slice the grapes like a chef at Benihana, wondering how long it would be before she reached for one of the small plastic cups for a sample.
“The whipped cream is Cool Whip, the Jell-O is…Jell-O, and the grapes are on sale for .99 cents a pound,” she explained, as she twisted her wrist with a big spatula mixing it all together.
“How long do you work on Fridays?” Ezra asked.
“We start at nine in the morning and end at two.” She smiled.
“Do you like your job?” Ezra asked.
“Why…yes I do. It gives me a chance to talk to people and they give me a paycheck each week.”
“My dad could use a paycheck.” I move my body between her eyes and his, and give him a frown with the edge of my lips pulling as hard as I can for my ears so that she can’t see.
“Couldn’t we all use a bigger paycheck these days?” I say, as I move away. I want to slink away, find some other free booth in the store and let Ezra eat. Ezra stands there fixated on her rotating hands, the flabby triceps swinging to and fro as she muscles the sticky mixture together.
The plastic cups she uses are the size of a shot glass. Underneath her booth are some bigger cups, the size of a Dixie cup. She scoops the maximum her ladle will carry in the big Dixie and gives Ezra a spoon and a napkin. I walk over and she gives me one too. “Eat slowly,” I whisper into his ear.
“It’s delicious,” says Ezra. She smiles.
In another aisle, they are giving away a bacon and egg breakfast sample. Ezra likes it, but not as much as the whipped cream concoction. In the bakery aisle, they are offering a plastic shot of cherry cobbler. When Ezra tastes it, he shouts, “That’s just like mom used to make.”
I’m shocked he can remember. He’s already forgetting what she looked like, confusing her face with advertisements on the side of billboards and buses. I have to show him pictures from the photo album. He remembers the trip we took out west and the large dinosaur he climbed around on for the better part of an hour. I had to physically remove him or we would have stayed there all day. Every spring Janice would climb the cherry tree in our back yard, the seed taken from the national mall during our courting phase, and pick the cherries over the course of five days so she only picked the ripest ones. She punched holes in shiny aluminum pie tins and hung them over the tree so the Blue Jays wouldn’t eat them. Her cobbler was the best I’ve ever had.
“Yes.” I remember. “Where should we go next?”
“Safeway.”
Safeway has a delicious sandwich made out of ham, cheddar, mustard, and oat bread. Ezra likes it, but I can tell after the grapes and whipped topping he’s getting full. He takes one bite out of the sandwich and throws it in the trashcan.
“Hey,” I yell. “Someone else might have enjoyed that.”
“Sorry.”
I wonder why more homeless people haven’t picked up on free gourmet food at a store. Maybe it’s the way we’re dressed. I wonder what will happen when my polo shirt and slacks are faded and torn. But shopping with no money is frustrating as hell…why would anyone come to a store if they don’t have money?
Saturday is usually a day I take Ezra to the park. All the people who have jobs are out and about, and we blend in with them, maybe playing a game of Frisbee with someone we’ve nonchalantly asked if we can join in when the Frisbee is thrown in the our direction. The fun is usually interrupted by Ezra when he starts asking questions about where they live and if they have a house. But we have fun for twenty minutes.
Saturdays meant tourists had dropped a load of coins in the reflecting pool in front of the Capital building. Early in the evening, as dusk is blanketing the mall grounds, we casually walk over and I search the area for signs of police checking us out. When I feel confident it’s clear, I take Ezra’s shoes off and shake them, pretending there’s a rock I have to get out.
This is a game we play. Ezra wades into the pool, reaches his hand in murky water and grabs as many of the silver coins as he can get. I tell him the larger the silver coins the more points he gets. He likes the cold water; although there is too much goose and duck crap in it for me to allow him to do more than wade and grab quarters. I watch carefully making sure none of the mall police are looking at us. I still dress in a polo shirt and slacks and do the best I can to comb my hair in the rear view mirror. From a hundred yards away, I look respectable.
I pretended to tie my shoe also so I can feign innocence if we are hassled by the police. To make things go faster, and add a sense of purpose for Ezra, I use my stopwatch feature on my digital watch to time him while he grabs quarters and dimes. Like a flamingo, he stoops down, swaying his body back and forth while churning and shuffling his little legs forward, his fingers sifting the water and the coins, reaching for the quarters, but accepting dimes too. His record so far is five dollar and forty cents in two minutes. Any longer and I fear we’ll get some unwanted attention.
If we found enough coins, Saturday became laundry day. We found a laundry mat that only charged a dollar twenty-five to do a wash and seventy-five for drying. Ezra likes putting the coins in the slots and starting the machine by ramming the slot with the horizontal coins in as hard as he can; I guess it will be as close to a video game as he will get. Fortunately, at the laundry mat, there is always an old copy of the paper that someone had left behind, and I can check job listings. If there was a job that looked promising I could take the page with me. Or we can use newspaper as toilet paper in the Port-o-johns if we have too.
Sunday I wake up, the sleeping bag I’m in no longer warm enough. I started the car engine. Worried about carbon monoxide building up, I try to figure out a place where I can drive to shunt the fumes away from the under carriage of the van and not wake Ezra. I drive from the Alexandria neighborhood where we slept for the night up to Arlington and over to Falls Church then back. I want to go back to sleep, but the sun is just coming up. I drive back to the neighborhood, but children are waiting for the bus just a few feet away from where I was parked last night.
I park the van under an old oak tree next to a vacant lot, but just as I’m falling asleep I hear the acorns begin to bounce off the roof. I get up and move the van twenty feet. As I hit the parking brake, Ezra begins to stir.
“Dad, when will it be Friday again?” Ezra asks me.
“Six more days counting today.”
“I’m hungry. What’s for breakfast?”
“What do you want?”
“Pancakes with strawberries on top.”
“We may have to wait awhile for that…the church services won’t be over until noon.”
“What time is it now?”
“Only 7:30.”
“I can’t wait that long.”
“Well, maybe we can find an International House of Pancakes.”
He shoots out of bed, the covers barely on him anyway. “If it’s International it must be good because people all over the world like their pancakes.”
There’s an IHOP in Arlington and I know right where it is. I can just have coffee. Pancakes with strawberries and milk, and one coffee will cost with tip about ten dollars.
As we sit at the booth, the waitress comes over. “Can I interest you in our special?”
“No,” I say. “The boy wants pancakes with strawberries on top and I’ll have coffee.”
“You don’t want pancakes too?”
“No, just coffee.” I know she’s trying to sell me stuff so her tip is bigger, I can’t blame her, but that’s one reason I hate going to restaurants. Someone you don’t know making your food, God knows what’s dropped on the floor or been in the refrigerator too long. I don’t like to be shamed into doing, ordering or saying anything. I already have enough shame to last me a decade at least. I realize I have one thing the homeless don’t…a small bit of pride left.
The waitress brings the milk a full five