Chapter 21 20

20 Marian walked slowly down the aisle, her feet following the elegant music in the shop. "beans," she says.She found the one labeled "Vegetarian," took two cans, and threw them in her shopping cart. The music changed to a soft waltz as she walked down the aisle, trying to focus on her shopping list.She has a little distaste for the music because she understands why the store plays it.It was thought that the music would make customers ecstatic and carried away, so they let their guard down and wanted to buy a little of everything.Every time she comes to the supermarket and hears brisk and lively music from speakers hidden in the dark, she will think of an article she has read, saying that if you play pleasant music to cows, the milk production of cows will be improved. amount will increase.But understanding the shopkeeper's motives does not guarantee that she will not be infected.Recently, if she relaxes her guard for a moment, she will push the cart like sleepwalking, her eyes will be straight, her body will shake slightly, and her hands will itch when she sees brightly labeled goods on the shelves , I can't wait to take it down.In order to prevent this kind of thing from happening, she drew up a shopping list before going out, and wrote it clearly in bold letters, hoping that she could buy according to the order, and any items that were not on the list, no matter how attractive the price, How beautiful the packaging is, she ignores it all.Sometimes she has a strong desire to buy, and then she adds another layer of insurance, that is, bring a pencil, and check off an item on the list every time she buys, so as to resist the temptation of the merchant.

Still, merchants always win in the sense that they can't lose, you've got to buy something anyway.Research in the office had taught her that there was little rationality in choosing between two different brands of goods, such as two brands of soap or two types of tomato juice.The product itself is actually pretty much the same.So how do you go about picking?You can only grab one and finish the job amidst the charming music.It is said that it is a certain organ in the human body that responds to these product labels, and you just let it respond, so what organ is it?Maybe it's the pituitary gland.

Which kind of laundry detergent has the best pictures and texts on its packaging to explain its effectiveness?Does she really care which tomato juice pack has the sexiest tomato?Though she didn't quite know it, deep down she cared, because after all she had made a choice, and her choice was exactly as hoped and predicted by some planner in a carpeted office.Recently, she has often unconsciously observed her every move like a bystander, with an absent-minded curiosity. "Noodles," she said, looking at her shopping list.When he looked up, he realized that he almost collided with a fat woman in a worn muskrat fur coat. "Oh, that's too bad, there's a new brand of noodles on the market." She's pretty good at noodles, and spent several afternoons in front of the Italian food aisle in the store, putting all kinds of noodles together. The brand of flour products has been studied enough.She looked at the stacks of noodles, all in the same colorful plastic packaging, then closed her eyes and stretched out her hands to pick up which package she came across.

"Lettuce, radishes, carrots, onions, tomatoes, parsley," she scripted with the list.These things don't take much effort, at least from the outside you can tell whether they are good or bad.But there are also some vegetables in bags or bundles tied with rubber bands, and some of the poor quality are mixed in.The tomatoes of this season are all grown in greenhouses and are bland. They are packed in cardboard and plastic boxes of four in the store.She pushed the trolley to the vegetable department, where there was a polished and rustic wooden sign on the wall, which read: "Fruit and Vegetable Garden".

She lazily selects vegetables.She used to like to eat vegetable salad very much, but now she eats too much and is a little tired.She felt like a rabbit munching on piles of vegetable leaves all day long.How she wished she could eat some more meat and gnaw on the delicious meaty bones!It's also a hassle at Christmas dinner. "Why don't you eat, Marianne?" asked her mother eagerly, seeing that the turkey on her plate had not moved.She replied that she was not hungry, that she had eaten a great deal of cranberry jam and mashed potatoes and mince pies when no one had noticed.Her mother attributed her disturbed appetite to overexcitement.She also wondered if she just said that she had converted to a new religion, such as yoga or Dukopolism, and could not eat meat.But it turned out to be impossible, and her parents hoped pitifully that the wedding would be held in the church at home.It was not easy to gauge their reaction as they seemed so far away from her now, but it seemed to her that their marriage to her was not so much overjoyed as a relieved feeling of fulfillment.In the bottom of their hearts, they were worried that their daughter would get a head of weird thoughts in college (although this was not stated explicitly, but it was visible), but now this worry seemed to have finally dissipated.They may worry that their daughter will become a secondary school teacher, or an spinster, or a drug addict, or a matron, or some dramatic change in appearance, such as hard muscles, a rough voice, Body hair is thick and long.She could picture the two old men drinking tea and talking anxiously about their daughter.But now, the relief in their eyes suggests they feel their daughter is on the right track after all.They haven't met Peter yet, but to them he's just an essential X-factor.But they still wanted to see him, and they kept urging her to bring him back next weekend.Those two days were very cold. She visited relatives in her hometown and answered other people's questions. She always felt as if she hadn't really returned home.

"Kleenex," she said.She looked at the different grades and colors of paper with disgust—what difference did it make for wiping her nose?And look at those printed toilet paper, printed with flowers, swirls or polka dots.Maybe there will be hot stamping printing in the near future. It seems that the manufacturer is not going to decorate this thing as toilet paper for going to the toilet, but for other purposes, such as wrapping Christmas gifts or something.They try to make use of every little thing in people that is not so easy to talk about.What's so bad about pure white?At least it looks clean.

Mothers, aunts and aunts are naturally interested in things like wedding dresses and treats.At this time, with the music of the electric violin ringing in her ears, she could no longer remember exactly what decision they made.There are two flavors of rice in cans in front of her, and she doesn't know which one to choose--she has no problem with rice pudding, anyway, the taste is artificially synthesized. She looked at her watch, she had to hurry.Fortunately, at this time, tango music was playing on the loudspeaker.She hurriedly pushed the cart to the shelf of soup cans, and stopped looking around absently.It's dangerous to stay too long in the supermarket.

One day she will be locked up inside.She doesn't even know when people close, and the salesperson will find her delirious leaning on the shelf the next morning, unable to wake up, surrounded by shopping carts full of goods... She walked towards the cashier.The store is running a promotional contest again, and the winner will get a three-day trip to Hawaii for free.On the front window was a large poster showing a half-naked girl in a grass skirt and a wreath, and next to the poster was a small label that said: "Canned pineapple, 65 points for three cans."The cashier wears a paper wreath around his neck and has orange lipstick on his lips, chewing gum.Marianne looked at her mouth, her jaw moving in a sleepy way.Her protruding cheeks were flushed with heavy make-up, and her lips were molted, and her yellow rodent-like teeth were chewing like an automatic machine.The cashier counted out her purchases.

Orange's mouth opened. "Five dollars and twenty-nine cents," she said, "just sign your name and address on the back of the receipt." "Thanks, no," replied Marianne, "I don't want to go to Hawaii.A cashier shrugged and turned away. "I'm sorry, I haven't got coupons yet," Marianne said. As she picked up her shopping bags and walked through the gates with electronic detectors onto the slush-covered street in the twilight, she couldn't help thinking that the coupons were just another gimmick.At one stage, she didn't want this thing at all, she understood that this was another way for the store to make money secretly.But they were making money anyway, and more, and she accepted it, and dropped the coupons in the kitchen drawer when she got home.But now Ainsley is collecting coupons for a stroller.This way she has to ask the cashier for it every time.She had to help Ainsley with this little thing.

The lei-wearing Hawaiian girl on the cardboard poster smiled as she trudged toward the subway. flowers.They all wanted to know what flowers she was going to take.Marianne herself liked lilies, and Lucy suggested a large bouquet of roses and gypsophila.Ainsley took it with contempt. "Well, since the groom is Peter, I reckon you'll have to do things the traditional way," she said. "But people's attitude towards wedding flowers is completely hypocritical. Nobody admits that flowers are really symbols of fertility.How about a big sunflower or a handful of ears of wheat?Or a big bunch of mushrooms and cacti, those things are fertile, right? "Peter didn't care much about such matters. If you asked him seriously, he would always say tenderly, "It's up to you to decide this kind of thing." "

She had been seeing Peter more and more lately, but she was spending less and less time alone together.Now that she has been trapped, he is quite proud to show it off in front of others.He said that he hoped that she could get to know some of his friends well. Recently, he often took her to some cocktail parties related to his business, and also took her to dinner with acquaintances or to their evening parties. Lunch with some lawyers, and the whole time she just sat there smiling and didn't say a word.In general, his friends were well-dressed and expected to be successful, married, and the wives were well-dressed and expected to be successful.They were all anxious to express their concern and polite to her.Marianne found it hard to imagine that these fashionable and well-to-do men were the carefree hunting companions and beer-drinking men Peter so often referred to in retrospect, but some of them were.Ainsley privately referred to these people as "soap men," because one of the men who came with Peter when he picked up Marian once worked for a soap company.Marianne's greatest concern in this regard was getting their names mixed up. For Peter's sake she was very willing to be friendly with them.However, she felt that this kind of friendship was too much, and she thought that Peter should also get to know friends who knew her well.So she decided to invite Clara and Joe to dinner.Besides, she hasn't had much contact with them recently, and she feels a little guilty.But, she thought, in the eyes of married friends, if you don't call them, they will complain that you forgot them, but in fact, they themselves are so busy all day long that they have no idea I'll give you a call.Peter was a little displeased, because he had been to Clara's house once and had seen what it looked like in her living room. As soon as her invitation was sent out, she immediately realized that what to prepare would be a big problem.She couldn't give them milk, or peanut butter and vitamin pills, or cottage cheese salad, and she couldn't buy fish because Peter didn't like fish, but she couldn't serve them meat because they wouldn't eat any if they saw her. , what would you think? Surely she couldn't tell; if she didn't know what was going on, how could anyone be expected to understand?In the past month, a few more things she could have eaten had been excluded from her diet, among them a hamburger, which was caused by a joke Peter once told her about a friend of his who, just for fun, Sent some hamburgers to be tested and found crushed rat hair in them; and pork, because during a coffee break one day, Amy was talking about a lady she knew who had trichinosis (she brought up the word She looked in awe when she was in the restaurant, her expression was almost like going to church), she said: "The meat she ate in the restaurant was red and bloodshot. I never dared to eat something like that in a restaurant. Come to think of it, those little worms got into the meat, and the doctor couldn't get it out.' So did the mutton, because Duncan once mentioned to her the etymology of the word "stun", which he said came from "multi-headed." ", that's a big white worm that lives in the brains of sheep, and sheep get out of balance when they get it. Not even a hot dog, her stomach will follow the same pattern, pointing out that it's probably stuffed with something like that, Better yet. At the restaurant she can order a salad first and no one will ask, but that's not okay for dinner. She can't serve them vegan baked beans. She decided to cook a casserole with mushroom meatballs, her mother's specialty, a hodgepodge, nothing could be seen. "I'll turn off the light and light a candle," she thought, "and get them half-drunk with sherry first so nobody notices." Forget the meatballs, since they are going to be served with salad anyway, so you can hide the meatballs under the lettuce leaves.It wasn't pretty, but that was all she could do. She's busy chopping radishes for a salad right now, and thankfully there are a few things she won't have to worry about. First of all, the casserole was made last night and it just needs to go in the oven now; secondly, Clara and Joe won't be here early, they have to put the kids to bed first; and lastly, the salad She can still eat. She became increasingly annoyed that her body refused to accept certain foods.She tried to reason with herself, told herself it was a pointless eccentricity, coaxed her body to change its mind, but it didn't budge.If forced to eat, her body would rebel.This happened once in the restaurant, and she didn't want to do it again.Of course, Peter was very considerate that day, driving her home immediately, helping her up the stairs as if she couldn't walk herself, insisting that she had stomach flu.But he was also a little embarrassed and a little unhappy (which is not difficult to understand).After that she decided to follow her body and do what it asked, and she even bought some vitamin pills to keep the protein and mineral balance in her body.Being malnourished doesn't count. "The important thing," she told herself, "is not to panic." Several times, after thinking about it, she came to the conclusion that her body was taking this position on purely moral grounds; Accept anything that was or is still alive (such as an oyster with half its shell removed). But every day she hopes vaguely that her body will come back. She wiped the wooden bowl with half a clove of garlic, added sliced ​​onion rings, radishes and tomato slices, and tore off the lettuce leaves.At the last moment, it occurred to her to add some diced carrots to enrich the dish.She took a carrot out of the fridge, looked around for a peeler, found it in a bread box, and grabbed the carrot by the twig to peel it. She watched the curly strands of orange-red carrot peel emerge from under the peeler in her hand, and suddenly thought about carrots.She thought, this is a root, it grows in the soil, grows leaves, and then people dug it out, maybe it also screams pain, but the sound is too low for people to hear that's all.But it wasn't dead, it was still alive, and even now it was alive... She seemed to feel the carrot writhing in her hand, and she threw it on the table with a snap. "Oh my God," She almost cried, "Don't count that in." When everyone was gone, Marianne went into the kitchen with the dishes, scraped the leftovers into the trash, and put the dishes in the sink.Before he left, Peter kissed her on the cheek and said half-truthfully: "My dear, we will never be like them." It would be a bit of a mistake to invite them to dinner.Clara and Jo couldn't find anyone to babysit them temporarily, so they had to bring them all, and managed to get three of the little ones upstairs, put them to bed, put two in Marianne's bed, and One was on Ainsley's bed.As a result, the child was crying and fussing, and defecating. The toilet here is on the next floor, which is not very convenient.Clara had gone to great lengths to carry them into the hall, coax them into silence, and change their diapers without feeling apologetic.Conversation was out of the question, and Marianne was pacing up and down, handing her diaper pins and all, pretending to be helpful, but secretly wondering if she should go downstairs in the bathroom and get the landlady ready. She used a bottle of those deodorants, and she wouldn't offend anyone by doing that.Joe bustled around, whistling and handing Clara a diaper. Clara waved in Peter's direction and said, "That's what kids do. It's just pooping. It's perfectly normal. We all poop," she said, shaking the smallest one on her lap. "It's just that some people Not so timeless, are you, you little dung ball?" Seeing this situation, Peter went over and opened the window a long time ago, and the room was terribly cold.Marianne reluctantly brought sherry to everyone, and Peter's impression of her friend was obviously bad, but she didn't know how to remedy it.She secretly wished that Clara would not be so unscrupulous, Clara did not deny that the child stinks, but she did not take any steps to cover it up, she admitted it, almost confirmed it, like Hopefully others will appreciate it a lot. After finally changing the diapers and coaxing them to stop crying, two of them were placed on the couch and the other was placed in the baby basket on the floor before everyone sat down to eat.Marian hoped this was a good time to talk.She was preoccupied with hiding the meatballs on her plate and didn't want to play host because she couldn't think of anything interesting to talk about. "Clara told me you liked collecting stamps," she ventured to say, but Jo somehow didn't hear him, and he didn't answer anyway.Peter glanced at her curiously.She just sat there with a bun in her hand and felt like she had told a bad joke and no one was laughing. Peter and Joe talked about the state of the world, but as soon as they felt that their conversation was not congenial, Peter very interestingly talked about other things.He said that he also took philosophy courses in college, but he couldn't figure out what Plato thought, so he wondered if Joe could tell him.Joe replied that there was nothing he could do, since he specialized in Kant, and he asked Peter a technical question about estate tax in passing.He said he and Clara both belonged to a cooperative burial group. "I haven't heard you say that," Marianne whispered to Clara, adding more noodles to herself. She always felt that the tricks on her plate had been seen through long ago, and everyone was paying attention to it. The meatballs hidden under the lettuce leaves were bulging, just like human bones under X-rays. She regretted pointing it out. I lit two candles, I wish I had lit one. "Yes," Clara replied casually, "Joe doesn't believe in embalming dead bodies." Marianne worried that Peter would find the idea a little too radical.She sighed secretly in her heart, Joe was too idealistic, while Peter was practical.This was seen also in the ties they wore, Peter's, a dark green scroll tie, elegant and practical;They must have been aware of the difference themselves, and she noticed that they each glanced at each other's ties, probably thinking that he would not have given him one for nothing. She proceeded to collect the cups and place them in the sink.The atmosphere of the dinner was not good, and she was a little upset.She felt responsible, like she was playing hide-and-seek during recess and she wasn't doing well as a "catcher." "Oh, never mind," She thought, "He and Len can talk." It didn't matter at all, Clara and Joe were her friends from the past, so don't ask Peter to accommodate her past, what matters is the future.She shivered slightly. It was still cold in the room since Peter opened the window.She would smell of fuchsia velvet and furniture wax, behind her there would be the rustling of dresses and people coughing, and when she turned around, she would see a group of people looking at her, and they would go Come up, walk down the aisle, and handfuls of little white papers will fly in your face, falling like snowflakes on their hair and shoulders. She swallowed a vitamin pill, opened the refrigerator and poured a glass of milk.Either she or Ainsley had to tidy up the refrigerator. In the past two weeks, their original arrangement of cleaning in turn was a bit abnormal.She had cleaned the living room for the treat, but she knew she wasn't going to wash the dishes in the sink.This meant that Embry would also throw her used dishes in there after meals, and the dishes would pile up until eventually all the clean dishes were used up, and when they needed one for a meal they would put the last Wash the top one, and let the rest go.As for the refrigerator, not only does it need to be defrosted, but the shelves inside are filled with a mess of leftover food vials, food in foil wrappers or brown paper bags... it's bound to stink before long.She just hoped that the smell would not disperse in the house anyway, at least not downstairs.Maybe she was married before it became unhealthy. Ainsley wasn't home at mealtime, she was off to prenatal counseling, which she did every Friday night.Marianne was folding the table-cloth when she heard her go up the stairs to her room.Not long after, she heard her trembling voice shout: "Marian, can I ask you to come here?" She walked into Ainsley's room and saw Ainsley lying on the bed. She walked around the messy clothes on the floor and walked to the bed.Ainsley looked extremely distressed. "What's the matter?" she asked. "Oh, Marianne," her voice trembled, "this is terrible. I'm at prenatal class again tonight, and the first lecture is on the benefits of breastfeeding, and I'm knitting, feeling Well, there's a Breastfeeding Association now. But for the second part, they got a--psychologist out of nowhere, and he's talking about the importance of father figure." She's on the verge of tears, Mary Ann stood up, went to the dressing table to search around, and found a piece of dirty facial tissue, just in case.She was a little worried, but Ainsley was not one to cry much. "The man said that when children grow up, there should be a strong father figure in the family," she continued after calming down. "It's good for children, it allows them to develop physically and mentally, and it's especially important for boys." "Well, you knew some of these things before, didn't you?" asked Marianne. "Oh, no, Marianne, what he said today was much more serious. He cited all kinds of data, and the problem has been scientifically proven." She choked up. "If I have a boy, surely he will...be gay?" Ainsley's big blue eyes filled with tears at the mention of this kind of man who had never expressed interest in her.Marianne offered her the Kleenex, and she waved it off. Then she sat up and pushed her hair back. "There is no other way," she said, her chin raised majestically.