OCR Text |
Show Woodworth/6 all looks the same. But there's a different quality to everything. Peter looks up at her from behind the wall of deoderants and tampons and smiles. She lifts her hand, smiles back. Waits for the light to change. Peter comes out of the store, white and blinking, and hands her a white bag. "Your mother called a little while ago for these. She was going to come pick them up, but I thought if you were on your way home, you could bring them to her." Marty hears the plastic pill bottles tap each other as Peter hands her the bag. His eyes are brown, genial. She knows he is too polite, too kind, to ever say anything to any of them, and she wishes that there <* was some way she could take the pressure of knowing from him. Her mother doesn't have the ingenuity to fill her prescriptions at anywhere other than the pharmacy where she has been shopping for years. "Thanks, Peter-" "I just wrote up a charge slip. She doesn't need to worry about signing it or anything. The receipt's right there." It is stapled securely to the top of the bag, where her mother will rip it to shreds. "Thanks." She crosses the street, turns up Baker Street. Maples all along the sidewalks. Lawns green, houses white or brick with an occassional, tasteful, yellow. But no yards. The kids play on the street, parking their bikes sporadically against trees, porches. At the end of Baker, she cuts through the cemetry, behind St. Paul's. Stone spires, granite tombstones, everything so still and quiet. She thinks of stopping, re-reading a few of her favorite parts from Steinbeck, but keeps walking. Better get the pills home before her mother makes a special |