Necessities

by Meg Vlaun

Someone dillydallied inside, so she stood with her back against a vinyl Monster Drink advertisement on the warm, sunbaked glass and waited. She tried to wait patiently, inconspicuously, hidden behind the decal. She didn’t need witnesses; she needed Dillydally to make up his mind, Doritos or pretzels, Gatorade or Lipton, then move on. As she waited, she eyed the pumps. It was the post-morning rush hour lull. Just one ancient forest green Jeep Cherokee, its weather-beaten paint peeling, remained at the furthest pump, hose handle returned to its cradle: Dillydally’s car—clearly not a commuter, not with that guzzler.

When Dillydally finally pressed it open, the top corner of the convenience store door jostled a bell, announcing his departure, and she slid her narrow body inside before it closed. Most kids would go straight for the tasty stuff, chips and chocolate, but she knew better: processed, sugary foods never lasted long in her stomach. When she ate those, she was hungry again far too soon.

She glanced at the attendant. His nametag read Shiva; she couldn’t see it from where she stood, but she knew it well enough. He hadn’t seen her yet. He was hard at work on his daily New York Times crossword, head down, single-mindedly focused, pencil tight between his fingers. Excellent.

She slunk toward the jerky and protein bars, behind a tall shelf where Shiva couldn’t see. She knew what she was doing. In one arced movement, she grabbed two Slim Jims, a bag of Jack Links, and two protein bars. In a second movement, she shoved the expensive jerky and bars into the waistband beneath her oversized sweatshirt. Like a fucking ninja, she thought. Flawless execution. She stole a glance at Shiva. Didn’t even notice. She wasn’t sure if she was that good, or if Shiva was just that stupid. So far, it hadn’t mattered; she’d mastered the process. Still, she didn’t press her luck. She never appeared more than once a week, never at the same day or time.

As she moved up the aisle toward the payment counter, Shiva finally lifted his gaze to her: “Oh, hello Miss Rox,” he said. “I did not see you come in!”

In her sweatshirt’s kangaroo pouch, Rox groped for the tattered fiver she lifted the evening before from her mother’s purse in the top drawer of her nightstand. Her mom snored wetly on the bed’s yellowed sheets. She wouldn’t wake, Rox knew, from her whisky-induced coma any time before two in the morning, no matter the emergency. But after two, all bets were off: her mom would wake, and she’d find Rox and wake Rox too, then lay into her to offload her shame. So Rox took the five at about ten, then left the house to her mother for the night.

The past year, Rox spent many nights in a safer place. Alone in municipal stormwater management land, a wild series of streams, channels, tunnels, drains, and ponds between neighborhoods in Springfield, Virginia, Rox found a ram-shackle abandoned treehouse where she pretended…pretended to be wild, pretended to be a runaway, pretended to be self-sufficient. She decided she didn’t need her mother except to snag a five or ten from her wallet once or twice a week. Maybe raid the pantry. She slept under her mother’s roof only when the weather was too wet or too cold for the treehouse. When Rox did sleep at home, she slept under her bed or in the back seat of their car in the garage, places her mother was not likely to find her when drunk…

But Rox preferred her treehouse, especially these days, since Sev showed up. Rox never trusted company, but one day, as she walked back from the school bus stop, she found in her treehouse a dirty little boy squatting over her stash of convenience store provisions like a wolf over an elk cadaver, eyes wild, lips smeared brown with chocolate. She scaled the broken ladder rungs two at a time, lunged in, and yowled at him. She bared her teeth and scraped at his birdlike arms with her fingernails to chase him off. She never expected anyone would approach her obliterated citadel—she wasn’t prepared to defend her stash. Her fingernails were for school fights, to prevent brutes from taking her free lunch…the treehouse was supposed to be safe. She wasn’t supposed to need claws there.

But this boy wasn’t like the cafeteria kids. He recoiled immediately at Rox’s attack. Flinging his weak, useless arms up over his head, he crumpled into a ball in the back corner of the treehouse, away from the food, then yowled like an injured cat: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it was yours,” he said, “I just saw it and I was hungry. I can get more. Don’t hurt me. Please.” He trembled as she loomed over him, and she backed down.

“I don’t have enough to feed you!” Rox yelled, seething about her loss.

“Okay. Okay! I’m sorry. I can replace it,” he said. “How did you get it? I can help.”

“How can you help? Look at you. You’re tiny and pathetic. Get out!” Rox grabbed at his arms to drag him off the waterlogged platform and let him fall five feet to the soft earth below.

“Wait, wait, wait,” the boy flailed so she could not grab hold. He wriggled sideways out of reach. “Wait!” he yelled, as she came at him again. “I have a tarp!”

Through her fury, Rox gradually registered his words. “What?” She slowed her advance.

“I have a tarp!” The boy pointed and Rox looked: the treehouse’s roof tarp was weather-shredded and nearly useless. At this point, it only covered the corner where Rox stashed her food and curled up at night in her absent dad’s old North Face subzero sleeping bag.

“What do you mean you have a tarp?” Rox’s eyes pierced.

He recoiled, then rallied: “In the back of my basement. With all the other apocalypse stuff my dad hoards. I saw it. There’s a tarp like this…but it’s new,” he explained. “There’s so much down there. He won’t notice it’s gone. I can bring it. Tomorrow.”

Rox looked at the treehouse roof again, then she looked at the ratty boy, his tiny arms wrapped around himself. At the top of his left arm, just south of his shoulder, Rox noticed four parallel bruises, each one shorter than the last, like phantom fingers.

Her eyes softened. “Really?” she asked.

“Yeah! I swear.”

“Why would you do that?” 

“I dunno. But I wanna come back. If I bring you the tarp, can I come back here?”

“And eat my food?” Rox cried, appalled at his audacity. “Hell no, you little shit!”

“No. No! I won’t eat your food. I won’t touch your food. But, can I come back anyway?” 

 “Why do you want to come back? I don’t need company—and you…you’re what, maybe seven and weak as a goddamn baby bird. You’re no help, you’re a liability!” Rox paused. “No. Keep your goddamn tarp.” She moved to grab his arms again, and he rolled away from her to the far wall. Her eyes grew wide with disbelief. “How dare you, you insufferable toad!”

“So what if I’m seven!” He stared back. “Please…I like it here. I promise, I won’t get in the way. I won’t eat your food. But I can bring a hammer and some nails when I come back. I can help you put up the tarp.”

“Let me guess,” said Rox, “it doesn’t matter if I say no…”

“No.”

“…you’re going to come back anyway…”

“Yes.”

“So I have no choice.”

“I guess not,” he shrugged.

“Fuck,” Rox said. “Fine! But don’t you dare tell me your name. I don’t want to know. I’m calling you Sev—it’s short for Seven…Call me Rox. Don’t ask any questions.”

Rox stood back from Sev and pointed at the treehouse door. “Now get out of here. You promised me a tarp, a hammer, and nails. You’re not welcome back without them.”

Sev scrambled out of the corner and down the rotten ladder. He trotted off southward, the opposite direction of Rox’s house. Rox stood in the door. “Touch my food ever again and I’ll maim you!” she yelled at his back. He threw two thumbs up over his head: Got it.

Sev returned that afternoon with tarp and a hammer and nails. As the sun set, they ripped off the old tarp and installed the new one. The next day, Sev brought a jug of potable water and his own backcountry bivouac sack. He placed it next to Rox’s. He didn’t touch her food until, after a month of providing supplies for home improvements, Rox thought it was only fair…

Now, as she faced Shiva at the checkout counter, the contraband pressed against her hard stomach, and Rox knew half of everything she stole was for Sev. He was the only person in the world she could trust, the only one who followed through on his promises.

“Just two Slim Jims today, Miss Rox?” Shiva asked.

“Yes, Mr. Shiva. Just these.”

“That will be five dollars and three cents.”

Rox held out the worn bill: “I’m sorry, Mr. Shiva. I don’t have three cents.”

“No problem,” Shiva said, “I will take from the change tray.” He took Rox’s bill, slid three pennies into his hand from the tray, then closed out the till.

“It’s SLR,” Rox said.

“What?” 

“Eight across. ‘A camera type, for short.’ It’s SLR. Single Lens Reflex.”

“Oh!” Shiva started. He looked at the crossword. “So it is! You’re right, Miss Rox! Thank you. You’re so smart, you know.” He penciled it in as she walked toward the door.

“You bet, Mr. Shiva,” Rox said as she pressed the door open, then turned her toes downhill toward her treehouse and Sev.

#

The morning commuter rush abated. Just one customer remained in the store…taking his damn time. It was fine. He needed to organize the morning’s receipts anyway. As he fretted receipts (Why do we use paper anymore anyway? Lilly always said paper receipts were a waste. She was right.), he noticed the thin shadow against his Monster advertisement. The shadow bobbed, and he imagined her shifting foot to foot with the impatience of an eleven-year-old. His mouth twitched up at the corner. He stashed the receipts and pulled out a tattered spiral-ring steno pad and a week-old New York Times crossword. He reached on top of the till for a pencil, then waited. She wouldn’t enter until this customer left. He knew.

Finally, the man with the green Cherokee at pump seven finished browsing and carted his armload of junk food to the checkout. He paid with a debit card and declined the receipt, Thank God. He bagged the man’s goods, and as the man walked out, he feigned single-minded attention on the crossword, pencil pressed between his fingers. With his head bent down, he appeared focused on the newspaper, but his eyes were glued to the six-inch digital security monitor just under the counter by his knee. He watched her slink like a cat to the jerky aisle, as she always did. He watched her grab two Slim Jims, a bag of Jack Links, and two protein bars—the most expensive food in the store. He watched her stash the jerky and bars in the waistline of her jeans.

As she started toward the sales counter, he shifted his focus back to the puzzle until she was so close he could no longer pretend he didn’t see her. He looked up. “Oh, hello Miss Rox,” he said. “I did not see you come in!”

Her eyes, those eyes, shot straight through him as though he were made of vapor, which maybe he was, anymore. They sliced him in halves, in quarters, in eighths. They pierced his heart through its cage. He had known only one other set of eyes like that: “Oh Lilly…” he breathed silently.

Rox placed the Slim Jims on the counter, then her hand slid into her front pocket.

Their eyes met again across the counter. 

“Just two Slim Jims today, Miss Rox?” Shiva asked. He didn’t need to ask. He knew. But he liked to hear her talk.

“Yes, Mr. Shiva. Just these.”

The sound of his name from her lips made Shiva’s time stand still. He remembered the first time she said his name, on their wedding day.

Shiva was the youngest of his siblings, and his parents determined he’d be the least successful in life. His older brother was smart—so smart—and got perfect grades; he got an MBA and became a corporate leader. His sister married a businessman, too. Shiva’s parents didn’t try so hard for an upward match for him. He was, rather, a family afterthought. Shiva went to a state school and got mediocre grades. When he graduated, he applied and was hired into a desk job managing customer complaint tickets about bugs in a new banking app. His office was in a twenty-story high rise downtown Springfield. His desk was hidden within a labyrinth of cubicles beneath humming fluorescents with no access to natural light. He hated it. Still, it was all he believed he deserved. He knew he was not a smart man.

Lilly looked lovely enough in her pictures, soft skin, thick hair, plump lips, but Shiva knew there was some reason their families matched them. There must be something wrong with her, too. In fact, there must’ve been something very wrong with her to be matched with him: she was a defense lawyer. Her job paid more than his.

Shiva endured the day of their marriage with a sense of foreboding. He’d never spoken to Lilly before that day. She was gorgeous in every way. When she said that she would “take you, Shiva” in their vows, her buttery voice making the vowels of his name, the hard E and soft AH, ran invisible fingers up his spine. How could anything this beautiful be his? It didn’t make sense…

Until it did.

That night, their first night together, Shiva learned that Lilly was hard. Lilly was calculating and silent and brooding and mean. Lilly refused Shiva’s touch, refused his company, refused to speak to him. She ranged a line of pillows down the center of their bridal bed and with an insistent finger, told him to stay on his side.

Their first month together, Lilly reorganized Shiva’s apartment, and if Shiva left anything out of place, Lilly derided him hotly, calling him “stupid” and “sloppy.” She moved into the guest room to avoid sharing his bed, and Shiva wondered whether in modern times not fulfilling conjugal vows was grounds for annulment or divorce. He hated her.

Still, he tried. Lilly’s work schedule was even more rigorous than Shiva’s, and she often returned late on weeknights. So Shiva bought groceries and taught himself to cook. Most of the time, Lilly refused to eat what he prepared.

One night, Shiva labored over the stove at a cauliflower dish. The sauce for the vegetable was a white sauce of butter, sweet onion, and wine. Beside the pan where the onions sizzled in butter, Shiva placed a container of flour. He added flour to the onions and butter, then white wine. As Shiva waited for the sauce to thicken, Lilly returned from work.

“What is that smell?” Lilly asked.

“It’s a cauliflower dish with white sauce,” Shiva said.

“It smells too sweet.”

“Well, it was sweet onions, so probably that is what you smell,” Shiva explained.

The sauce was not thickening, so Shiva added more flour.

“Maybe,” Lilly said doubtfully, “but if it tastes as sweet as it smells, I am not eating it.”

“Ok. I understand,” said Shiva, now becoming rather frustrated that his sauce would not thicken. He added still more flour. “Maybe we won’t be eating it anyhow.”

After ten more minutes, Shiva gave up on the sauce. He plated the cauliflower, drizzled the soupy sauce, then set the table.

“Let’s try this disaster,” Lilly said as she sat down.

They tasted the dish. Lilly’s eyes widened and turned upon Shiva: “Shiva. What is this?”

“I—I don’t know!” He melted under her glare.

Lilly pressed the plate away from her on the table. “It’s…so sweet! Cauliflower is not meant to be sweet, Shiva.”

“I know! I don’t know what happened!”

Shiva sprung from his chair and ran around to the cooktop. Lilly followed.

“Shiva. Is that the flour you used?” Lilly pointed to the container.

“Yes! See?” He tilted the container toward her.

Lilly’s eyes met Shiva’s, but for the first time, they didn’t make him wince. Moisture gathered at her lower eyelids for a moment, and she brought her left hand up to cover them. Is she crying? he wondered. Her torso quivered, then quaked. Then, both of her hands covered her mouth. Tears spilled from her eyes as she sucked in a breath, then released a sound he’d never heard her make before: she was…laughing. It began as a fit of giggles, then grew until it spread, like a contagion, over Shiva—and he laughed too.

“Shiva, that’s powdered sugar!”

Makeup ran from Lilly’s eyes as she clasped the edge of the kitchen counter with one hand and her stomach with the other. Shiva, finally realizing his mistake, doubled over and gave in. All the stress of the first months of their marriage escaped his body from his belly in great heaves of laughter: he loved this woman. And he knew right then that if he could make her laugh, he could make her love him, too.

Shiva was right. He would make Lilly laugh, and Lilly would love him.

In time, Shiva learned to read Lilly’s eyes, to know when they became so hard, so sharp, that she needed him to crack her. In time, Shiva learned he had what his siblings did not: the ability to make the most beautiful woman in the world laugh. It took no real effort; only to recognize that humor was in him all along. He’d suppressed it; it was of no value to his parents.

Shiva and Lilly laughed together for twenty years. Shiva and Lilly bought a new home. Shiva and Lilly tried to get pregnant, but Shiva and Lilly never conceived. Then, five years ago, Lilly’s Mini Cooper (which Shiva maintained she always drove too fast) was flattened in a five-car pileup by the Tyson’s Corner exit on the beltway, and inside the car, the light flickered out of Lilly’s eyes. Shiva quit his drab job in the drab office in its drab hi-rise. Shiva quit cooking. Shiva nearly quit life.

Then, Shiva’s uncle handed down to Shiva the family-owned Sunoco at the corner of Hooes and Gambrill just off Fairfax County Parkway. It was the only gas station for miles and therefore guaranteed income. The work was a slog, but it was better than a cubicle.

One day, about a year ago, a ratty malnourished eleven-year-old with an attitude and intelligence that matched Lilly’s began shoplifting from Shiva’s convenience store. Shiva knew from the first moment her eyes looked straight through him that he’d never report Rox for theft. He knew those eyes, Lilly’s eyes, and he imagined that if he and Lilly had a daughter together, their daughter would have eyes like that—like Rox’s, like Lilly’s. Every time Rox looked at him, her eyes sliced Shiva’s heart into a thousand raw pieces. Shiva needed her to come back. He needed that ache, that reason to live. He’d never chase her away.

“It’s SLR,” Rox said.

“What?” But he knew what. He knew that eight across, ‘A camera type, for short,’ was SLR. But he needed Rox to know how smart she is, just like Lilly. He needed her to believe that she was clever and cunning enough to steal from him, that she could finish the crosswords he could not. She deserved that—clearly, nobody ever told her that. She deserved so much more, he knew, but in what way was a middle-aged man who runs a gas station in any position whatsoever to provide it? That would be creepy, as they say.

“Eight across. ‘A camera type, for short.’ It’s SLR. Single Lens Reflex.”

So it was, of course.

Rox took her two paid-for Slim Jims and left the store as Shiva reminded her how very smart she is. Then, for the next two hours, Shiva calculated the cost of Rox’s stolen goods on his spiral-ringed steno pad, told himself it was the cost of feeding his almost daughter, and mopped his seeping heart off the floor.