Produce

Whenever I smell fresh carrots, celery, or lettuce, the veggies just trucked in from the fields, I think of Wanda. She and her mother would come into the A&P on Saturday afternoons. If I was lucky, I’d get to bag their groceries and be near her. But it wasn’t a sure thing.

“You get to see her at school,” Steve, one of the other box boys, complained. “Here’s my only chance to get her number.”

“You’re not … not even Catholic,” I stammered. “So … so butt out.”

“Jeez, Len, I just want to ask her out, not marry the babe.”

“But her mother’s standing right there.”

Steve grinned. “So! The mom looks pretty bitchin’ to me. If I were 20 years older …”

I envied Steve. At least he could talk with Wanda, while I always felt tongue-tied. I’d stumble through a broken conversation while sacking their groceries, my face burning. I’m sure she noticed because she’d chatter away with her mom, trying to take the pressure off me. And all the while, LaRue, the checker, stared at me with a blank face and shook her head, as if to say, “What an idiot!”

Wanda and I went to Santa Barbara’s only Catholic high school. But in 1964 the girls and boys were taught separately. I think the nuns and priests felt that having classrooms crammed full of teenagers with rioting hormones and sex drives would be distracting and maybe even dangerous. So the only time we could talk with the opposite sex was at lunchtime, down by the Coke machines lined up against the gymnasium wall. Even there I couldn’t get near Wanda, couldn’t separate her from her girlfriends and the crowd of guys hanging around. But every so often I’d catch her looking at me and smiling wryly; it was enough to keep me hoping.

One day at the store, I was surprised to see her in the parking lot, standing next to her family’s car. She waved me over.

“Sorry to bother you, Len.”

“No … no problem. What’s up?”

“You probably know that Steve asked me out on a date this Saturday night.”

I shook my head.

“Yeah, he’s been after me for a while. I’m supposed to meet him here at 6:30 after he gets off work. My mom will drop me off.”

“Uh huh.” That son-of-a-bitch Steve had snaked my fantasy girlfriend. What could I do?

“I know he rides that funny motor scooter around town. Is that what he’ll take me to the movies on?”

I grinned. The image of Wanda clinging for dear life to the back of Steve’s Honda 50 seemed somehow hilarious. But I shook my head. “No, he’ll drive his father’s Plymouth. You … should be fine.”

Wanda let out a deep sigh. “I didn’t know whether I should bundle up and wear jeans or put on a date dress. Riding on that two-wheeled contraption in a dress would be gross.”

I felt like saying, nothing you could show the world would be gross, but settled on a simple nod. The more I thought about it the angrier I got, a good part of it directed at myself. I had told Steve to cool it with Wanda and he’d ignored me. I knew I had no claim on her, but if I had just gotten up the nerve to ask …

That Saturday, Steve brought fresh clothes to work. At 6:30 he hustled to change in the men’s room. I moved through the parking lot quickly, to his swimming-pool-blue Plymouth. I let the air out of its rear left tire — not all of it, but enough for it to go flat as they drove down State Street toward the Fox Theater. I figured nobody would get hurt and it would spoil their first date. I’d have a chance to step in and ask Wanda out. Pretty stupid, right?

“You’re lookin’ sharp,” I told Steve.

“Thanks, man. You’re not pissed, are you? I know you’ve got a thing for Wanda.”

“No … not that much.”

Steve stared at me for a moment then moved toward the Plymouth. Off to the far right, Wanda leaned against her parents’ car. I hadn’t seen her there. She waved at me and grinned, as if setting out on some vacation daytrip. I watched them motor out of the shopping center onto State Street, heading downtown.

I worked all that weekend. Steve didn’t show up for his Sunday afternoon shift. At school the following day I looked for Wanda at lunchtime and couldn’t spot her. But then it was the last week of school before summer break, and a lot of kids who had taken all their finals cut class.

Still no Steve at the A&P. I tracked down Joe Ballent, the store manager.

“Ah, Mr. Ballent, do you know what happened to Steve?”

Joe had buckteeth and spoke in a soft slurred voice. “He was in an accident Saturday evening.”

“Is he all right? What happened?”

“I don’t have details. But he’s in Cottage Hospital.”

“Is it bad?”

“I don’t know. You can check on him after work — I seem to remember visiting hours last until 8.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.”

But a couple days passed before I got up the nerve to swing by the hospital. They had just transferred Steve from the ICU to the Step-Down Ward. As I entered the room I found Wanda siting next to the bed, wearing a neck brace. Tubes and wires came from Steve’s face and arms. A couple IV stands dripped liquid into his veins. His closed eyelids twitched but didn’t open.

Wanda left her chair and stood before me, her whole body shuddering.

“It was horrible. One moment we were blasting along, then …”

We sat and she continued her story. “We had to hurry ’cause the movie started at 7:15 and we barely had enough time.”

“So he was speeding?”

“Yeah, I guess. When we turned off onto De La Vina, that’s where he lost it.”

“Lost it?”

“Yeah, ya know, the car’s back end swung out and we slid to the left.” Wanda took a deep breath. “The car broadsided a telephone pole. It hit right in Steve’s door.”

“Are you … okay?” I pointed to her neck brace.

“Yeah, I was wearing one of those lap belts. But when we hit, the crash jerked my neck. Didn’t break anything but strained a bunch of tendons and ligaments. The doctors say I’ll have to wear this thing for about ten days.”

“What about Steve?”

“Broken ribs and upper arm. He banged his head against the door pretty hard. They’re keeping him knocked out until the brain swelling goes down. It could be weeks … ”

“Did the police show up? Did they decide what caused the accident?” I feared her answer, the guilt already building inside me, an overwhelming weight that sucked my breath away and left a burning sensation in my chest.

“They’re not sure. One of the car’s tires had gone flat and they think that combined with how fast he was driving caused him to lose control.”

We sat in silence, listened to the beep of machines and watched the rise and fall of Steve’s chest. His face bore several cuts that had been stitched and would likely leave scars. His cheeks sprouted coarse black whiskers, one of those guys who needed to shave twice a day to stay smooth.

Our heavy silence finally got to me and I got up to leave. “If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

“Christ, Len, I hardly know the guy … and I may not get the chance.”

“Yeah.”

I had to get the hell out of there and fast. The image of Wanda staring at a motionless Steve, the machines beeping, and the soft swish of nurses passing in the hallway freaked me out. Had I caused all of this? Should I confess it to a priest? To the police? To Wanda? To … to myself?

The following week, Joe Ballent hired another box boy to take Steve’s place and told me to train the new guy. I visited Steve one more time in the hospital, just a day or two before they sent him home. He seemed like his normal self. But the pain meds were drugging him out and I didn’t envy his withdrawal from them during recovery.

I didn’t see Wanda for a week or two after the accident. But then there she was, with her mother on Saturday afternoon, without the neck brace and looking as bodacious as ever. I had no problem scoring the job of bagging their groceries. But after all that had happened, I still couldn’t talk with her, still felt like a fool packing canned vegetables, Brillo pads, cake mixes, porterhouse steaks, with the crushable items on top into 40-carry grocery bags and asking her mother, lamely, “Would you like help out with your groceries?”

The summer wore on, dragging me toward senior year and then the great unknown. One Saturday in August, I saw mother and daughter enter the store just as I went on my mid-afternoon break. As I passed the produce section, Wanda stepped out from the end of an aisle. She was by herself. When she saw me she grinned and looked around, as if making sure her mother wasn’t nearby. She grabbed ahold of my arm and steered me toward the swinging doors that led into the produce section’s back room.

“What’s goin’ on? What’s with—”

“Shut up, Len,” she said in a low voice.

In the back room, boxes of vegetables fresh in from the fields towered above us. It smelled like a truck farm on a hot summer’s day. Wanda kept shoving me toward the rear of the room. We turned down a side aisle and ducked into a slot canyon created by shipping pallets of broccoli and eggplant.

We stopped, out of sight of anybody, the air cool around us. She turned toward me, grabbed my head and planted a wet kiss, complete with tongue, on my mouth. She kept at it. I pulled her body against mine and we made out, my first time in high school, clumsy, with noses getting in the way. But we improved.

Finally, she pulled away, gasping, and glared at me. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time. Why the hell can’t you ask me out? What am I? Just another babe that comes in the market and you tell filthy jokes about with the boys? You think I like coming here with my m-o-t-h-e-r? Come on, ANSWER ME!”

“I’m … I’m shy.” It was all I could get out.

She moved toward me until our faces almost touched. “Do you want me?”

I nodded.

“Not good enough, Len. Say it!”

“I want you.”

“There, was that so hard?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll have to work on that. Now, ask me out.”

“What?”

“You heard me, ask me out.”

“Do … do you want to go to a movie?”

“Yes, that would be nice. When?”

“Tonight, I’ll … I’ll pick you up … at 6.”

“Good. See, you’re getting better.”

“So where … where do you live?”

“The West Side. I’ll give you my address. Now come here. I’m not done with you just yet.”

We kissed and touched each other for a short while until Wanda said she needed to go find her mother. We walked through shadows toward the swinging silver doors, the odor of produce enveloping us.

“I’ll go out first,” Wanda said, “then you follow after a minute or so.” She gave me one last kiss. “And this time, don’t let the air out of the car’s rear tire. I want to survive our date.”