Lost in Mesopotamia

Outside Newport Market, the wheels of the shopping cart rattled under Mr. Brodsky’s grip. In it, a brown paper bag sprouted spinach leaves and crowns of broccoli. He detested vegetables. He hoped one of the cart wheels would hit a pothole, scatter the greens on the pavement and save himself the trouble of heaving them into the house and into Mrs. Brodsky’s kitchen. It was her kitchen. His kitchen privileges were limited to boiling water in a kettle and pouring it over freeze-dried coffee before being sent off. 

Mr. Brodsky brought the shopping cart to a stop near his old Volvo and unlocked the door. Ten years earlier, he had completed his PhD in ancient languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, Arkadian—and was granted a professorial post at the local university. With his decent paycheck he could afford a newer model of car, but just as he had settled for a modest home in the suburbs, he now settled into his worn car seat and exited the parking lot.

Navigating the wet streets on the way home, he eyed the brown paper bag. It reminded him of how he’d first met Joan, the checkout lady at Newport. To look at Joan was to look at Sara, his first crush at Jewish summer camp. As teenagers, he and Sara had pitched a tent on a patch of dry land between two rivers. “We’re between the Tigris and the Euphrates,” he told her unabashedly, sharing his passion for ancient civilizations.  

Rain fell. Mr. Brodsky switched on the windshield wipers and turned up the heater. Initially, Joan had expressed scant interest in him beyond the usual “paper or plastic?” She used to work in the meat department, she told him. After years on her feet, a bloodied white apron around her wide hips, and a hairnet covering her blond curls, she wanted out. She told the manager she was going to night school—one that trained high school dropouts and ex-convicts. Men were to become auto mechanics and women were to become cashiers. Her thighs swollen with veins and her lips blue from going in and out of the freezer, she told the manager she wanted out of meat and into checkout, or else. The manager complied.

Mr. Brodsky recalled pushing his cart aimlessly in the market aisles, building up the courage to approach Joan at checkout. She worked shifts. She rang cereal boxes and ketchup bottles at dizzying speed. On occasion, she stopped to tell her customers to return a piece of soon-to-expire meat and get a better cut for the same price per pound.

To his delight, one day he found her working the ten-or-less-items lane. That was his chance. Customers did not linger or eavesdrop much. He wanted to ask her if she carried a picture of herself at fifteen. She even giggled like Sara. He advanced in line with a head of cabbage, his breath short. If she snubbed him, he could dash out with his pride dented, but not crushed. He reached Joan at the register. “I hate broccoli and I hate being chased out of my own kitchen,” he confessed. Joan nodded politely. She scanned his items, then read his credit card. “I see you a lot around here, Mr. Brodsky,” she said, smiling. Mr. Brodsky melted. She bagged his cabbage and rang the next customer’s items. That was the beginning of a friendship. Yet, whatever friendship there was, or imagined, it stayed inside the Newport confines.

A couple of days later, emboldened, he asked Joan if she would go out for coffee with him. Not that same day, he explained, but during semester break when he had fewer papers to grade, when Mrs. Brodsky vacationed with her mother in the dead of winter by the lake. He told Joan that Mrs. Brodsky routinely texted him from her lakeside cabin to check if he was surviving without her. Other times, she texted to remind him of a cauliflower casserole she’d kept in the freezer for him. She followed up with pictures of his mother-in-law wearing yellow galoshes on the ice. Joan did not take him up on his coffee offer that day. “Maybe some other time,” she said and put a new paper roll in the cash register.  

Mr. Brodsky swerved his Volvo in the cul-de-sac and with the remote raised the garage door to his house. He entered and clicked the door shut behind him. He eyed the groceries on the passenger seat. He had forgotten to stop at Walgreens to renew his medication. He lowered the four windows and kept the engine running. It wasn’t long before noxious fumes invaded the cabin and went up his nose. He coughed. His eyes watered. His lungs ached. He wondered who would go first—he or the broccoli.

The way the paramedics said it later cast doubt on the affair. The first responder swore up and down to Mrs. Brodsky that he found Mr. Brodsky slithering over the dead grass of the front lawn, the car tailpipe sputtering black smoke. His partner concurred with plenty of “Yes, Ma’ams,” and “No, Ma’ams.”

Mr. Brodsky could not corroborate nor dispute their retelling; he was now perched on his sofa, legs splayed, his head resting on a pillow, a wet hand towel to his forehead.

“Do you want me to call it in?” the first responder said, putting away his defibrillator kit.

“Call what in?” Mrs. Brodsky asked, perplexed.

“You know,” the first responder said. “We can call Social Services, if you wish. Counselors can step right in.”

Mrs. Brodsky stared at her dazed husband. “You go, gentlemen, I got it covered,” she said, and escorted them out the front door, not before stopping to kiss the mezuzah. Outside, she signed papers that the paramedics put in front of her, and kept copies.

Mr. Brodsky peered through the living room windows, saw the next-door neighbor who had made the emergency call. The belching smoke from under the garage door must have given him away. He struggled to his feet and limped to the garage. He got in the car and turned the engine over.

“Wait,” he heard. Mrs. Brodsky dashed after him into the garage, and seized the car door handle to keep him from backing out. Her free hand knocked something off the garage shelf. It fell with a loud thud and came to a rest.

Mr. Brodsky’s heart leapt in this throat. “My Hebrew stone tablet!” he shrieked, noticing the chipped Babylonian tablet resting on the floor.  

Mrs. Brodsky panicked. She fell on all fours and turned the clear plastic case right side up. A fragment had chipped off the tablet, and tumbled at the bottom. She pried the lid open. “I’m very—”

Mr. Brodsky, seated behind the wheel, sent his arm out the window and snatched from her hands the broken piece and the ancient tablet—the size of a hardcover book. “I’m ruined,” he called, and backed out, nearly crushing her toes. He swerved into the cul-de-sac and gunned the engine. His wife, who had converted to Judaism, more for her sake than his, grew smaller in the rearview mirror.  

Mr. Brodsky drove the streets aimlessly. He eyed the now-flawed stone tablet, then the Newport Market bag. His anger turned to hunger. He grazed on raw spinach. Bile went up his stomach. His one hand on the wheel, he rummaged in the bag and lifted something cool and tender to the touch. It was the chuck roast he had bought earlier today—boneless, 2 lbs. 3 oz, good until January 17, price $12.63. He got his phone out and dialed. He went through the available options, pressed nine, and put it to his ear. “We don’t give out personal information, Sir,” he heard, upon asking if Joan worked that afternoon.  

The winter sky darkened as he approached Newport’s parking lot for the second time that day. Snowflakes hit the pavement. He grabbed the chuck roast and strode purposefully toward the sliding doors. He halted. It was Joan. He had never seen her outside the market, never seen her without her avocado-green apron. Now she wore a woolen dress under an ankle-length coat, a smart handbag in her grip, and a camel-color scarf around her neck. The white, scuffed, rubber-soled shoes were the one thing that gave her away as working class.   

Mr. Brodsky wet his lips and swallowed hard. It was now or not at all. “Joan,” he called after her, his voice blown by the wind. She stopped and turned. Her blond curls bounced on her shoulders, just like Sara’s. She clicked open her car. Mr. Brodsky drew closer. She flinched. He stepped back. The meat fell from his hand.

“Mr. Brodsky,” she said, a detectable relief in her voice. She loosened her clutch on her handbag. “Oh, it’s you.”

Mr. Brodsky lifted the meat from the ground and extended it to her as an offering. Bright nightlights in the parking lot came on all at once. “I was wondering,” he stammered, hoping the lights did not overexpose his awkwardness. “I was wondering if you’ll have dinner with me.”

“When?”

“Tonight,” he said, his teeth chattering from the cold. “I thought we could roast the meat at your place.”

“You told me you’re married, Mr. Brodsky.”

“Twenty years, next spring.”

Joan laughed. She tightened the scarf around her neck. “Mine lasted twenty months.” She took a tentative step toward him. “Here, let me look at that meat.”

He gave it to her.

Joan brushed off the snow from the meat’s plastic wrapping. “Mr. Brodsky, I don’t meddle in people’s affairs, but I figured you’re… I mean… don’t you keep…”

“Kosher? No, not anymore. Although my wife buys Passover matzos.”

Joan scrutinized the marbling on the meat, as if interpreting the etching of an ancient clay tablet. “Rick must have cut it,” she said. “I recognize his work. It has the right ratio of red meat and fat.” She gazed at Mr. Brodsky’s near frozen, meaty face. “Do you like baked potatoes with that?”

They sat in her Cutlass for a minute before she drove. “Why are your eyes bloodshot?” she asked. “And why do your clothes smell like engine smoke?”

Mr. Brodsky looked out the window and blinked. “My medication ran out this week. Sometimes it affects me.”

Joan kept her eyes on the open road, the headlights piercing the falling snow. “Show me one person without medication, and I’ll show you a Hollywood star without Botox.”

He laughed. She laughed.

Moments later, she slowed and parked before a walk-up complex whose sign read Coconut Grove Apartments, and below it, Vacancy. They got out.

“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable in that armchair,” Joan said upon entering her one-bedroom unit. “I’ll sauté some onions and sear the meat while you watch the nightly news. Or, how about some music?”

Mr. Brodsky sat where he was told and withdrew folded papers from inside his black greatcoat. “I think I’ll grade some papers in the meantime.”

“Yes, you said you’re a teacher.”

“I’m a professor.”

“What do you teach, or is it profess?”

“Ancient languages of Mesopotamia,” Mr. Brodsky said, and glanced at the first paper in the crumpled stack.

“Is it like Latin?”

Mr. Brodsky put on his reading glasses and scoured the first page of the paper. “I teach Aramaic. It originated in present-day Iraq. It is older than Hebrew.”

Joan went into her bedroom and returned dressed in sweatpants, a red turtleneck, and woolen slippers. “Aramaic,” she said. “Who speaks it, who writes it?”

“Hardly anyone,” Mr. Brodsky said, and scribbled over the paper with his ballpoint.

Joan stood with arms akimbo, wrinkles etched in her forehead. “Then why teach a dead language to college kids?”

Mr. Brodsky wrote a letter grade on the first page and circled it. “In a thousand years we could be saying the same of English.”

Joan chuckled. “We’ll be dead by then.”

“Humans are matter, and matter doesn’t matter,” Mr. Brodsky said, and pushed up from the armchair to use the restroom. “Languages are what matter; they should live forever,” he called from the toilet. He relieved himself and pulled up his underwear. He opened the door and stepped out.

Joan said, “Please put down the toilet seat, and wipe the piss drops off the floor.”

“I always do,” he said, and entered the small kitchen. 

Onions splattered in a skillet. He salivated. All he had had since morning was a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, prepared by Mrs. Brodsky. And whatever chicken wings and bean salad were left in his fridge at home, she had given to the paramedics for saving her husband’s life.

Joan said something.

“What did you say?” Mr. Brodsky asked above the noise of the stovetop hood.

Joan lowered the setting. “I said, do you usually hit on cashiers at grocery stores and ask to be fed at their house?”

“No,” he said, a hurt in his voice.

“Why me, then?”

Mr. Brodsky said, “You remind me of a girl I once loved.”

“Tell me about it,” Joan said, and laughed. “It’s the story of my life.”

Mr. Brodsky found a wooden spoon in a drawer and stirred the caramelizing onions. He was moved to tears. “Tell me, does Newport sell glue?”

“We do. What do you need fixed?”

“Something broke at home.”

Joan set the meat in a heavy pot and turned up the heat. The meat sizzled. She put a lid on it and set a timer. Big potatoes went soft in the microwave. She sat at the kitchen table and solved crossword puzzles, periodically asking Mr. Brodsky to bail her out. The timer chimed. She brought out some good china and silverware and asked him to carve the meat. They ate, only stopping to drink from their sodas, and attempt to solve 18 Down, a clue that stumped them both. For dessert, she cut him a slice of apple pie from Newport sans ice cream.

Mr. Brodsky put an apron around his waist, elated at being allowed in the kitchen. He washed the plates and glasses, scrubbed gently the Teflon skillet, scoured the pot—following Joan’s every direction—and then sank into the armchair and continued to grade papers. Joan filed her nails, applied a fresh polish, and checked for bags under her eyes with a hand mirror. Once her nail polish had dried, Joan dimmed the lights and locked the front door. They slept in her bed under one heavy blanket, his head gravitating toward her pillow. Her hair smelled like Sara’s.

At seven in the morning, he awoke, his neck sore. Joan’s eyelashes quivered. He wondered if his onion breath amounted to bad breath and if Joan too had eaten from the onions. He should have packed a toothbrush, like he did when his father and mother sent him off to Jewish summer camp, or sent him off to aunts and uncles during holidays, so they could jet across continents without him.

He peeled off the winter blanket. He had slept in his underwear and one sock. He got up quietly and put on his clothes, which he’d he had draped a chair.

Joan awoke. “I’ll make you coffee and toast,” she said, and put on a housecoat, tying the sash. “Then I’ll drive you to your car.”

Mr. Brodsky poured half-and-half in his coffee, and chewed on buttered toast.

They drove back to Newport Market. “On Tuesdays we have ground beef at thirty percent off,” Joan said, breaking the silence. “I’ll ask Rick to save you a couple of pounds.”

Mr. Brodsky removed the cap from his ballpoint and corrected the last of the student papers. “That’s my car,” he said, pointing to his Volvo in the almost empty lot.

Joan stopped and idled the engine. “You are an endearing fellow in a peculiar way, Mr. Brodsky. Have a great day.”

Mr. Brodsky got out. “Great day, yes,” he said, and gestured at the large, illuminated windows of the market. “I’ll just go in and get some groceries.”

Joan drove off.

Mr. Brodsky felt a tremor in his chest pocket. He reached for his vibrating phone. Mrs. Brodsky had sent him several messages during the night and this morning. Her last message was to pick up her dry cleaning, and not to forget the coupons in his glovebox.

An ambulance siren cut the air. Mr. Brodsky ducked behind a station wagon and peered over the hood. He thought he recognized the paramedics careening down the street, probably out to save men in garages.

Mr. Brodsky raised the collar of his greatcoat and trudged over the hardened snow to the market doors. He pushed a wobbly shopping cart to the meat department. He did not wish to speak to Rick, the butcher. He put two pounds of extra-lean ground beef in the cart and made his way to the cleaning supplies aisle. There he found an extra-large tube of Krazy Glue. “I must fix things,” he said aloud.

He sat in his Volvo and switched on the cab dome light. He reached for the stone tablet and brushed off real or imagined grains of sand from a distant land. He tested the broken piece against the corner of the tablet. It fit seamlessly. He separated the piece and spread glue on both ends. He applied pressure until it set. He let go. “Healed,” he blurted, solving last night’s crossword puzzle clue for 18 Down. He put his hands under the Hebrew tablet, holding a newborn he’d never had. The ancient stone bore witness to the Judean exile in Babylonia. He traced his finger over the chiseled markings and signs, and read the inscription: “In the days of Ezekiel, a Hebrew grain merchant gave away his daughter Sara to her beloved.”

Mr. Brodsky lowered the window and gulped a lungful of air, overcome with emotion. He nestled the healed tablet into the seat and drove to Walgreens. There he filled his prescription, popped a pill in his mouth, and drove to the dry cleaners.

It was mid-morning when he arrived home. He shut the garage door behind him. He put the stone tablet back on the shelf and went in the house.

“Did you get my pants suit and blouses?” he heard.

Mr. Brodsky hung her clothes in the closet and came into the kitchen with the grocery bags. He took out the ground beef, set the skillet to medium heat, and began to cook.