Buoyancy

“UNEXPECTED ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA.”

“Oh for God’s…” Maggie checked herself. It was both a Sunday and she was in public.

Specifically she was in the Hatcham Lessco Superstore, which she’d forced herself to walk to. She needed to build up her 67-year-old bone health, her GP had warned. And her heart health would benefit too, her therapist had urged, a man seemingly still unawares after eight sessions that Maggie’s heart seemed to have gone the way of her dearly departed. Behind the curtain, up in smoke. What a wicked magic trick that had been.

While Maggie looked around for an assistant, she clocked herself on the till’s security cam. The past five months since Christopher’s death were etched on her face in such definition that not even the blurry camera could quite conceal. She had two inches of white roots showing on her scalp and her coat, she’d only just noticed, was buttoned up wrong. The bored-looking line of people waiting for a till to become free were probably wondering why this scarecrow was holding them up. Maggie had a flashback to being in her school’s gym, a row of girls waiting for Maggie to stop looking like the pommel horse was going to bite her hand off…and literally get over it.

An impossibly young girl wordlessly swooped in, held Maggie’s bag of bagels up with fingernails-cum-pincers (whatever they were, plastic was definitely involved) as though brandishing a dog poo bag, punched some numbers on the screen, then flew off again to help some other poor sap.

“…Err, thank you,” Maggie said, too late and too feebly for the girl to hear.

Maggie had been looking forward to a conversation. Her therapist had told her it would be an important step in her healing.

“Just a simple polite interaction with a stranger could make a world of difference to your day…and theirs.”

She came to the Hatcham branch not only because it required a half hour walk, but to go to the outlet near her house held too many memories of going there with Christopher. Plus it was a small community; word got around, and she was tired of saying “no really, I’m fine,” to the staff there. Their pitying glances as they scanned her ready meals tied her intestines in knots. She wanted to squirm into the apples. Rest on a bed of lettuce. Get lost in the Black Forest Gateau.

But of course, the Hatcham Lessco was seemingly the one that had the most money poured into it. Meaning some officious higher up who probably ordered all his own nutrition in the form of supplements sourced online had decided customers didn’t want checkouts that dangled the possibility of an interaction interspersed with the magazines, gum, and batteries that were the prize of reaching the finishing line. Doing away with people and handing the reins over to the machines seemed to be the modus operandi.

Maggie felt vindicated to see it wasn’t just her. There was a harassed young mother with a toddler attached to each limb trying to get someone’s attention as she’d put a tomato through as an aubergine and now the scales of justice were beeping for her incarceration. A man who resembled Santa Claus in terms of hair and physique – if not in temperament – was waiting for confirmation he was old enough for his brandy. A couple in their twenties who looked to be running late for a dinner party were needing assistance as they’d not been given the right change. Maggie did a double take at the pair. Even she rarely carried cash these days. Were they drug dealers perhaps? She loved cooking up a backstory when people watching. It kept her mind off overthinking she was being watched in return.

Maggie calculated there was at least one member of staff per machine.

“…so why not just go back to manned checkouts?” she said to herself, causing the teen on the machine next to her to give her a look of alarm.

“Or wommaned checkouts,” she said with a bright smile to the younger shopper, in case that’s what they had been about to call her out on.

Maggie scanned her last item. A new flavour of ice cream. Part of therapy homework to try new things, and part enticements for walking back home again instead of getting a taxi.

“PLEASE PLACE THE ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA”.

“Stop rushing me!” Maggie pleaded with the machine. She’d been distracted by an advert on the ice cream, which was to win more ice cream.

“PLEASE SELECT PAYMENT TYPE.”

“Keep your knickers on!” Maggie actually stamped a foot. Most of the line of folk queuing were looking at her now – many with smiles blooming on their faces.

She fumbled with her purse, sighing as used tissues fell out. Still damp from the last session in the tiny room where she went to talk about Christopher.

“ASSISTANCE IS COMING!”

“What! Why? I don’t need assistance, I just need for you to shut up for a minute! Haven’t you heard about the ‘slow living’ trend? If you really wanted to assist me you could pay for my shopping – I’ve just had to pay for my husband’s funeral after all!”

Some of the people in line that had been chuckling zipped it after that. The swoopy assistant, looking a little scared, did some magic with a key fob which silenced the money-grabbing robot.

“PLEASE TAKE YOUR ITEMS.”

“Oh really? I figured I would just leave them here after going through all that. But you might be on to something, for once, O Noisy Beast!” Maggie finished ramming her items into her shopping trolley bag, turned to face the sea of onlookers, and did an elegant curtsey. The sea then parted like Moses’s red one to make way for Maggie charging through, chin held much higher than when she had first sloped into the shop.

Apart from one man, who followed Maggie out onto the high street.

“Excuse me? Miss…?”

The last word stopped her dead in her tracks. She hadn’t thought of herself as a ‘Miss’ since her early twenties. What do I want to be known as now, she wondered. ‘Miss’ sounds too young. ‘Ms’ sounds too fussy. And too buzzy. Wait, I can still be a Mrs, can’t I?

“Maggie,” she said firmly. “My name’s Maggie.”

“Maggie, hello. I loved your performance in there. I think you said what’s on most people’s minds when they’re dealing with one of those foul contraptions.”

She tried not to let the pride colour her face, nor the fact that it had been a good old time since a man had approached her for a reason other than to give money to charity.

He held out a flyer. “I co-run this amateur dramatics group. It’s a very casual affair, we meet every other Sunday at Hatcham town hall.”

Maggie swallowed. She knew the place, but it was a fair walk. Even further than the Lessco store.

“There’s a bus stop right outside,” he said, as if reading her mind. “I’ve got to go and rescue my shopping basket, but my numbers on there. Let me know if you’d like to join us sometime. It’s fun! And there’s free tea and biscuits,” he grinned.

Maggie’s eyes dropped to the contact details running along the bottom of the flyer.

“Your name’s…Chris?” she stammered.

Chris held his hands up. “If that’s a crime, I’m guilty.”

“No, not a crime. Just a coincidence.”

There was a pause, which Chris broke by a quick gentle pat of Maggie’s arm.

“Thanks again for that spectacle. You have great presence. And you saved a lot of people back there from an otherwise dull morning of ticking off the shopping list.”

Maggie smiled. A strange sensation, waking up the applicable facial muscles from their dormancy.

She smiled again recounting the episode to her therapist.

“So the name Chris, you think this was maybe a sign of some kind?” he asked. Maggie detected a hint of mockery, very faintly, like the feeling when you’ve walked into a cobweb and you still feel traces of it caught in your eyelashes. Whatever it was, she took it as another sign.

Maggie was through with therapy, and with caring what other people thought of what she chose to do with her life. Christopher had been a little like that too – for all she missed him, she didn’t miss his scorn when it came to some of her hobbies. She was flooded by the sudden urge to sing, write, dance, act…maybe try something she would’ve been too afraid to try before.

Maggie slumped back in her chair. “Let me guess, you order all your food online, don’t you?”

He didn’t like to give anything away usually, but the question took him by surprise. He nodded.

“I thought so. Yes, I’m certain it was a sign of some kind,” said Maggie, leaning forward again, returning the mockery with a glint in her eye that said hers was the final word on the matter. “Just as I’m certain this will be our last session. Thank you for all your help. But I’ve never been one to want to sit in a box picking apart my problems. I’m ready to climb outside of the box and explore.”

During the walk home, Chris telling Maggie that she had ‘great presence’ kept echoing through her head. She was so grateful to hear that, at a time when she’d been consumed by so much absence. He hadn’t realised it then, but in handing her that flyer he had handed her a lifeline.