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trim. Quinosset colors. Top zipped down to reveal a peeling swath of cleavage. Big fake smile, the kind Mom couldn’t manage.
    “Well, don’t you look just like your handsome father?”
    “Hi, Mrs. Sacks,” I said. “How are you?”
    Knew how she was. Last summer she’d been caught hum-jobbing Eddie Barash, local kosher caterer. Everyone felt bad for her husband Mark until their daughter Sherri explained that her mom’s transgression was a perfectly understandable reaction. Apparently Mark had an “addiction to prostitutes” and “needed help.” He’d spent the summer at sex addicts camp in Palm Springs, having sex with other sex addicts. Sherri had shipped off to a camp friend’s place in Westchester, leaving Mrs. Sacks alone to ponder her fractured fam, play hide the Hungarian pastrami with Eddie.
    “I’m fine. Just picking up some extras for the breakfast. We just got back from the island. Sher is in town, does she know you’re home?”
    “No. I haven’t spoken to Sherri in a while.”
    Not a lie. Hadn’t spoken to her since eighth grade when she’d told Emily Dollinger I had only one ball. (I have two.) Childhood friends, nothing more, though I clung to the fringes of her social circle. Once she threw a party and I stole her dad’s baseball card collection because he didn’t appreciate it. Cards weren’t even in plastic cases.
    “Sher is at GW. She loves it. Loves it.”
    “Loves it?”
    “L-O-V-E-S. Loves it.”
    “You sure she doesn’t just like it?”
    “Hahaha. Oh, Eli, you’re a joker too, just like your dad.”
    “My dad?”
    “So where are you at school?”
    “I’m taking time off. Figuring things out.”
    Mrs. Sacks eyed my groceries. “You’re the cook, or your mother?”
    “I like to cook.”
    “Maybe you’ll come make me dinner one day.”
    “Sure,” I said, unsure if she was joking, just conversing, or serious.
    “And how’s your father? Seriously. You look just like him. Blow him a kiss for me, okay?”
    Next stop: ethnic food aisle, where I browsed the Thai marinades, tried to figure out whether wasabi paste was better than the powder kind. As I turned the corner into coffee/tea/condiments, I noticed a familiar face—a middle-aged brunette bent over reading the label on a box of tea. Red thong peeking out of her jeans. She was beautiful.
    Before I was caught staring, another woman approached.
    “Sheila,” she said, softly touching the woman’s neck with her fingernails. “I got the Chapstick.”
    Kahn’s ex-wife.
    Followed the couple from a distance, watched as they filled their cart with replenishing vitamins, organic vegetables, upscale design mags. Something organic about the two of them too, the way they held hands, held up each item to obtain the other’s approval, strolled slowly, didn’t avoid eye contact with strangers.
    Even pushing the cart, Sheila Glent-Kahn had the posture of an actress, star quality presence. One of those women who didn’t wear makeup, didn’t need to. Lashes were long and real, and the way her head wove into her neck, which in turn wove into her sunken neckline, made it seem as if her insides weren’t made of separate bones and organs, just one center bone, a thin tree trunk sprouting appendages like genetically perfect branches.
    Mary was beautiful too, broad, but not overweight. Blond curls bounced like a little girl’s and provided her face with a youthful glow you might not expect from a woman whose tailored men’s clothing and well-toned triceps implied an all-work, no play, strap-it-on attitude. Both dressed immaculately—Sheila in fake-ripped designer jeans; Mary in a vest, pressed slacks, ruffled button-down. Felt like we were in the country, small town off the coast of Maine; one of the hidden crevices of America where people hide, where they all have stories (according to TV), where everyone knows you, no one knows who you are (Cheers , NBC, 1982–1993). As I wound through the aisles behind them, filling my own