Revelation at the Food Bank

“Did you ever have sex with another woman?” I asked my husband when he was eighty-five and we had been married for sixty-two years.

I could see he was dumbstruck. I was angry about something, maybe about everything, the stupidity of everyone, the mistakes that were made every day by careless, indifferent idiots.

My husband had ordered new glasses — just ordinary glasses, a regular pair and a pair of sunglasses — and when the optician’s office called to say, “Your glasses are ready,” he drove ten miles to pick them up only to learn that only one of the two pairs was ready. Was this not ultimate stupidity? Why wouldn’t I be angry? My husband rarely gets angry, so I have to be angry for him.

Another time we went to In-N-Out and ordered two burgers, two fries, and extra ketchup. A girl handed me the bag through our car window. When we got home, we found she had given us three fries and ketchup, but no burgers. Of course, I tried to call when we got home, but you can’t call the place where you bought the food — only the corporate offices in some other state. We ate every one of the fries.

I never used to say “fuck.” But lately, I say it more frequently because our old house is so crowded with fifty years’ worth of stuff, and things keep falling down on me — books tumble out of bookcases, clothes stream out of closets, and pills crash out of medicine cabinets. Now these cabinets are also full of face masks, and latex gloves to be worn while taking in the mail.

At the start of the pandemic, my cleaning lady, who worried about us because we are so old, suggested I go to the food bank because it was safer than going grocery shopping. Why would I go to a food bank when I hadn’t lost my job, wasn’t homeless, and could pay for my groceries? She insisted that I would be less likely to catch COVID-19. I’d have no contact with people and could stay sealed in my car. She gave me directions to a church, told me they were the kindest, nicest folks, and that they...