South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [9]
Gladys hauled in the last of her groceries and sat down at the table with a plunk. Everything of course was just the same as ever. The floor in its pattern of squares, the table she and Frank had bought new a million years ago, the kerosene lamp that had been her grandmother’s, the salt and pepper set she’d been so proud of way back when. It had all been more or less this way for ages, and what was wrong with that?
But something did seem wrong with it lately. Gladys blew out a dissatisfied puff of air. Brooding was no good. She began stowing the groceries away but the more she thought about what her friend Mabel had told her, the madder she got, and before long she was flinging things around. Bang! went a can of baked beans, Crash! a box of oatmeal.
“What’s wrong?”
Madeline, back at last. “Do you know what those people have done?” Gladys demanded.
“What people?”
Gladys slammed a box of bran flakes down on the counter. “I don’t know what things are coming to. These new people come here and think they can just change things, just do whatever it is they want, it’s terrible!”
“What happened?”
“I stopped at Mabel’s for coffee on my way home, and you would not believe what she told me, it’s the last straw. The more I think about it, the more disgusted I get. They’ve done a nice job with that store, I can’t say they haven’t, but they’ve overstepped their bounds, now. Besides which, their prices are too high and half the things they have in there no one wants. Pesto and hummus,” Gladys sneered. “What for?”
“What happened?” Madeline asked again. It was clear she didn’t think anything could have happened in the few blocks between 26 Bessel and the grocery store. Little did she know.
“They’ve cut people off their credit.”
“Ah.”
“They’ve cut off Emil Sainio, for one, and Randi Hopkins, and Mary Feather.”
“I’m sorry. Do they not have money to pay?”
“Money to pay!” That was hardly the point of anything. Did this girl know nothing? When had the last owners, Everett and Nancy, ever worried about money to pay? They’d run that store for thirty years without seeing fit to change the way things were done, and they’d survived, hadn’t they? Just barely. But just barely was all you could expect in a place like this, or all you should expect. You couldn’t get blood out of turnips. The Bensons might be just trying to make a living, but they wanted too much. They wanted it at the expense of the way things had always been done, and Gladys wasn’t going to go along with that. She began shoving groceries back into sacks.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m returning these things.” Gladys felt deeply irked at Madeline’s lack of ire and banged a can of tomato puree into a bag, then followed it with a tin of smoked oysters. That gave her a pang; she loved oysters. A box of noodles went in next, then a package of frozen peas. She hesitated at the baggie of the pricey cardamom seed she flavored her rolls and breads with—she was out and that was like being out of coffee, unthinkable—but then flung it in too.
“So who are these people, the ones they’ve cut off?” Madeline asked, taking things out of the bags and putting them back in more neatly. “Are they friends of yours?”
“They’re just people. What are they supposed to do? Mary Feather’s older than dirt and they just tell her, sorry, we can’t help you any longer? It’s not right.”
“Why’d they cut them off?”
Gladys didn’t answer. Instead she opened every cupboard door and then the icebox, making sure she’d gotten everything.
“Did they just stop giving credit in general? I know some places have a policy—”
“No! No, it’s not everybody, it’s just a few.”
“So it’s just some people, people they don’t like.”
“It’s nothing to do with liking.” Gladys clamped her lips shut.
“What is it, then?”
“Is that all you can think