The Checkout Girl by Susan Zettell

heart these days.
    Connie reads Shelly hockey statistics from the newspaper because Shelly seems able to memorize them. Just like that. She has pockets of brilliance, but they don’t add up to anything. She’s fickle. She’ll give up an interest in a flash and never repeat information she once knew by heart, not even when coaxed. Connie says Shelly has a bright light in one little part of her brain, and that light shines on only one tiny bit of knowledge at a time. When the light switches and shines on something new, all that was once known becomes lost in a deep impenetrable darkness.
    â€œUp now, Shelly,” Kathy says, and pulls her sister to her feet. She helps her wash up in the bathroom and they go to the table, where Connie is serving the pot roast.
    â€œBobby Orr, #4. Bobby Orr, #4,” Shelly shouts as she rocks back and forth in her chair.
    â€œShush, Shelly. Eat,” Connie says.
    â€œBobby Orr, #4,” Shelly whispers while filling her mouth with food. Bits of pot roast and gravy spray across the table.
    â€œI saw Ted Kennedy on TV yesterday,” Connie says to Kathy. “Joan was with him. She has some tan, that woman, and she must wear sunglasses all the time because when she takes them off her eyes look raccoony. She did look relaxed, though. I don’t know how she could be after that girl drowned. Mary Jo. The inquest has started, I guess.
    â€œI wish the Kennedys weren’t Catholic. It was so nice when Jack was elected; we were all so proud of him. It was a miracle. Then Robert. Now they’re both dead, and that leaves the alcoholic philanderer. Now he’s responsible for a girl’s death. I suppose his brothers set a standard he couldn’t meet. Could just be he’s normal like the rest of us. Anyway, I wish he’d smarten up. His poor mother, what she must be going through.”
    A snowmobile drives by, a loud, screaming whirr. Shelly covers her ears and screams along with it.
    â€œI hate those things,” Connie says, getting up and going to Shelly. She takes Shelly’s arms and holds them down at her sides, saying, shush-shush, until Shelly stops screaming.
    â€œIt’s the Dietrich boy down the block,” Connie continues, and she sits again. “Rides up and down the street making that horrible racket. He drives on people’s lawns. It’ll ruin the grass, doing that. I passed one tearing into the Lutheran Cemetery when I was driving to work, so I phoned the City. The guy said they’re drafting a by-law to keep them off the streets.”
    â€œThis is good, Mom,” Kathy says, trying to deflect her mother from her snowmobile rant. “Blade roast’s on sale. Want me to pick one up?”
    â€œNo thanks, honey. Al bought a side of frozen beef from some farmer he knows out near Heidelberg. Ended up selling me some roasts and hamburger for next to nothing.”
    They settle in to eat then, comfortably quiet, the clink of dinnerware on their plates. Al is Albert Smola, Connie’s next-door neighbour, father to Kathy’s best friend, Darlyn, baton twirling queen of North America. Al always has a friend, someone he knows who gets him cheap beef. Or flats of farm-fresh eggs, bushel baskets of peaches, grocery bags full of peas in the pod, and once a box filled with rhubarb roots, so that every house in the neighbourhood now has a rhubarb plant somewhere in their garden. Al always shares the bounty with his neighbours, but most especially with Connie.
    Al sells insurance and Watkins products door-to-door to farmers. Likes to get out in the country, he says, so he works a rural route. One year he carried a line of dishes, Melmac, but it was too near the end of the Melmac craze and they didn’t sell. Connie bought a set at a deep discount. Sky blue pine cones on white plastic, the plates now scored with knife marks and the pine cones worn away. They never look clean. Connie lets Shelly bang around with