You
know what frightens me on an existential level, in re-telling these stories?
How close Stephanie and I came to never meeting. Heck, we lived a thousand
miles apart, and just chanced upon each other because we traded zines. We wrote
each other a few notes, the notes became letters, and at some point in one of
the letters I scribbled a flirty wisecrack, and she wasn't offended. A few
letters after that, I invited her to visit San Francisco, and amazingly, she
accepted.
But
what if she'd had the good sense to say no? Of course I'm not going to visit
you in San Francisco. I don't even know you. What, are you crazy?
If
she'd said no, I wonder what her life would've been like? Would she have met
some other man, and lived happily ever after? Happier than she was with me?
Would she have accomplished great things, without me holding her back? And I
also wonder, would she have developed the same health problems? The doctors
never told us what caused her kidney failure -- that's a question they never
had any curiosity about, so we never knew. If whatever caused it was something
in San Francisco, well, then I guess she'd still be alive.
There's
no telling where I'd be if she'd declined my invitation to visit. Certainly not
in Madison, Wisconsin. There's no telling who I'd be, but I'd be a
60-year-old man with no happy memories, so undoubtedly I'd be much crankier and
meaner.
What
would I even remember about Stephanie Webb, if she hadn't had the courage to
fly out to Frisco and fall in love with me? By now she'd be a distant memory,
just a pen-pal from the late 1990s, an old acquaintance I'd lost touch with. My
life for the past twenty years would've been as empty, lonely, and meaningless
as it was before meeting her, and as it's going to be now that she's gone.
* * * * * * * * * *
The
first time we went shopping together was while Stephanie was visiting me in San
Francisco, spending a week that stretched into two weeks. On our third or
fourth day together, I was running low on groceries and she was yearning to
cook – or to see if she even could cook in my residential hotel, where
all I had was a single plug-in burner and a microwave oven. Both were against
the house rules, of course – the hotel had no kitchens, and cooking wasn't
allowed.
We
happened to be walking around in the Marina neighborhood, talking about what to
do for dinner, and we turned a corner and – poof – there was a great big
grocery store. It was the Marina Safeway, which I later learned was legendary
among locals as a "pick-up" spot. Romantic entanglements at that
Safeway are prominently featured in Amistead Maupin's Tales of the City,
but back then I hadn't yet read the book.
We
went inside, wandered the aisles, and bought potatoes and onions, noodles and
soup and some other sundries that Stephanie did indeed turn into a delectable
pasta concoction. What I remember most, though, is when Stephanie asked,
"Do we have bread?," and then paused, while we both lingered on the
word "we." There was something about the word "we" in the
context of shopping for groceries, that said more than just "we." It
said, a couple. Romantic entanglements. It said something more serious than a
loaf of bread, and it told the truth – we were "we."
* * * * * * * * * *
"We"
lasted the rest of our lives, and wherever we lived, we preferred to go
shopping for groceries together. For the next fifteen years we almost always
did. She especially loved the produce section, where she could tell a good
cantaloupe from a bad cantaloupe, and she taught me how to choose an avocado.
She was a wizard with the budget, and when we could only afford $30 on a
shopping trip she could do amazing things with coupons and specials, and
somehow morph it all into a full cart and a week's worth of food. She knew
which brands were better and which brands were "good enough" and
which brands weren't. She rarely bought Stove Top™ after they changed their
stuffing mix from "ready in ten minutes" and delicious, to
"ready in five minutes" but just a little bit less delicious.
For
the past few years, though, Stephanie's disability made everything more
difficult for her, and shopping was no exception. From her wheelchair, she
couldn't reach the upper or bottom shelves, and if she'd forgotten something
and had to loop back seventeen aisles, that distance felt a lot further on
wheels than on foot. So Steph would make a list, but shopping was usually one
of my chores.
Stephanie's
rules of shopping: Annie's or Trader Joe's Macaroni and Cheese, but no Kraft.
Town House crackers please, not Ritz. Melba Toast in the original flavor only. "And
don't buy fat-free anything; they might as well call it ‘flavor-free'."
Generics are allowed, but if Steph doesn't approve of the taste or texture,
don't buy that product in generics again. Thus generic mustard and mayonnaise
were OK, but the ketchup had to be Heinz. Generic milk was
approved, but butter must be Land-O-Lakes.
Doug's
rule of shopping: Stephanie likes little surprises, so I'd always buy something
that wasn't on the list if I knew she'd like it. Crumpets. Sugar Babies.
Tootsie Pops. Ice cream or sherbet. But remember to rotate the surprise treats;
just because she liked crumpets last week, doesn't mean she'd want crumpets
again this week.
Once
in a while, even in the wheelchair era, we still went shopping together, so she
could personally pick the ingredients to prepare an especially marvelous
recipe. And after paying for our purchases, we would "train" through
the parking lot toward the car – I would push Stephanie in her chair, while she
pushed the cart full of groceries. We called it our happy little train, and now
it's another happy little memory as I walk out of the store, pushing a cart
instead of Steph's wheelchair.
These
days I shop for one, or one plus a cat. It's a sad task when I think about it,
so I try not to think about it. Virtually every aisle, every shelf, every
corner in the store holds something I bought for Stephanie. That's her
preferred salad dressing, and we always had a couple of jugs of that juice in
the fridge, and that's the jam she liked, and those are her allergy meds, and
we should always have a supply of her favorite yogurts in the fridge, and so
on.
But
now, we don't have any of Stephanie's yogurt in the fridge, and most of those
ordinary purchases have ended. I don't have much appetite, and no need for most
of Stephanie's staples. If I'm still buying it, though, I'm still following the
rules. If it's ketchup it's Heinz. If it's butter it's Land-O-Lakes. If I ever
have a hankering for mac and cheese, it won't be Kraft. Accept no substitutes,
and no fat-free anything.