Harrison Avenue // H.S.

Clean Up on Aisle 5

[Ellison]

Harry has a bad habit of getting lost in the grocery store.

Lost may not be the best way to describe it - distracted maybe, too likely to meander through rows of different colored canned foods and then be nearly impossible to find.

Harry never seemed to fully catch onto the rush of New York City. Or, at least, any rush that did develop has yet to translate to his approach when food shopping. He might walk the streets with a quick place and a set plan, but as soon as you put him in a grocery store, it's over.

He gets lost in the labels, enamored by different types of fruits. He chats with workers behind the bakery counter, or becomes smitten by the cat named Cleo that lives in the bodega on our block, and I almost always end up leaving him behind. My approach is to stick to whatever list we have, while he maintains a more leisurely stroll, and it's one of the few places where we are truly out of sync.

Grocery shopping for Harry is almost something romantic, and rather than approaching it as a mundane task that is somewhat necessary for everyday life, he finds every opportunity to make it an experience. He'll search for the perfect apple in a bunch and he reads the ingredient lists on the back of boxes. Once at the Asian grocery shop we sometimes stop at in New York, I had to eventually just leave him in the store because it was taking him so long to pick out what we needed for dinner that night – and it was a time where he wanted no input from me (he was the cook for the night and wanted to maintain some element of surprise). I'm not sure that he even noticed that I had left him until he saw my text telling him that I'd be at the coffee shop one store over.

So, it doesn't come as a surprise that I've lost him in this grocery store either – though, at least this time I have Ethan to keep me company.

Harry, Dylanne, and I are in South Dakota for the week, visiting home because Ethan - my once baby brother - is graduating high school. The three of us are shopping, Dylanne at home with my parents, for last-minute necessities that my mom insisted on for the celebration party that is being thrown at the house.

To be entirely honest, as much as I love Harry, as much as I absolutely adore him, I did not want to invite him on this excursion to the store knowing how he is. Ethan invited Harry though, and now we're stuck with him.

I'm on a mission to get in and out of here as quickly as possible. Hometown grocery stores are notorious for unwanted (by me) reunions with people I haven't seen in years, and I'm certainly not keen on the idea of traveling down nostalgia lane with people from the town I was so desperate to escape.

Last time we were here, again Harry dragging me behind on timeliness, we ran into my old science teacher. I think she must have forgotten how big of a pain in the ass I was as a teenager, because she was really nice and wanted to know what I had been doing with my life, and even seemed excited by what I had to tell her.

It was horrible.

"Hey, Elle," Ethan's voice is quiet, returning from his short departure from me to grab hot dog buns. "Random question - do you and Mom not hate each other anymore then?"

I immediately stop what I'm doing, the pen in my hand pausing mid-stroke from crossing off more items on the list. My eyes move to Ethan, my eyebrows scrunching together as I try to process where this topic came from, and a puff of sigh leaves my mouth.

"Definitely random," I shake my head at him, still unsure. Ethan drops the hot dog buns in the cart I've been pushing around and then sort of rocks back on his heels as he waits for me to say more. "Where did that come from?"

"I mean," Ethan says with a quiet sigh, pausing for a moment as he looks to the side. When his eyes return and look at me again he continues. "I've been thinking about it for years. You know, things have seemed better... less tense. And I guess it was in my mind because, well, thought I should probably thank you."