“You’re being a hysteric.”
“I don’t care what I’m being,” said Owen. “That was a first and last time for that particular stunt. Deal with it.”
“You’re such a pussy.”
“And please stop calling me that,” said Owen. He was standing at the foot of the bed, pulling on his jeans.
“It’s a real boner-killer, right?” said Izzy. “That’s what Christopher always said.”
For the first time since the relationship began, Owen found himself thinking about breaking things off early with Izzy. Early, meaning before the Arrangement officially ran its course. Between her attempt to burn her ex-husband’s great-grandfather’s desk and that afternoon’s choking episode, Owen couldn’t fight the thought: Maybe I’ve ridden this particular train as far as I want to ride it.
But could he just sit Izzy down and tell her that he and Lucy were ending the Arrangement early and therefore he would not be having sex with her anymore? Or bringing her fresh eggs? Or performing any of the small duties around her house that she had queued up for him the moment he rolled off her, it was starting to seem, every time he stopped by, even for the quickest of quickies? That day it had been: Open the jar of roasted red peppers on the kitchen counter, change the lightbulb in the stairwell, and see if he could figure out what was up with the powder-room toilet, and did he think she really needed to call a plumber or could she maybe fix it herself. Oh, and drop off her plastic shopping bags filled with plastic shopping bags at GroceryLand, since he was headed there anyway and they had that big recycling box out front.
His girlfriend was choring him! It hit him when he was walking across the GroceryLand parking lot carrying Izzy’s three enormous bags full of bags under his arm. The air-conditioner installation, the bathtub-caulking fiasco, all that time he spent inspecting her drains and creeping around in her dank basement, flipping switches on her fuse box while she yelled down at him, “No, not that one! Try the next one!”
“Owen!”
Susan Howard was standing behind a portable table covered with baked goods. Three fourth-grade boys were off to the side, wearing soccer uniforms, taking turns punching each other as hard as they could.
“Soccer bake sale? Yum,” Owen called to her. “Put something good aside for me, I’ll hit you on my way out.”
Susan vacated her post and made a beeline for Owen.
“Please don’t tell me you and Lucy use plastic grocery bags,” said Susan.
“We don’t.”
“Owen.”
Owen was, in fact, at that very moment shoving Izzy’s enormous collection of plastic grocery bags into the recycling box in front of GroceryLand. The box in question had a very small opening, and Izzy’s bags of plastic bags had each been knotted tightly shut and were the size and shape of large human heads. Owen had ripped the first one open and was squishing handful after handful of ancient, balled-up plastic into the recycling bin as fast as he could.
“We just…sometimes I guess a few end up in our house and we save them until we have enough to recycle. This is, like, two years’ worth.”
“I have to lecture you.”
“Please don’t, Susan. I can’t handle it today.”
“They are so bad. Not a little bit bad. So bad. And I know you think by putting them in that recycling bin, you’re doing a good thing and helping the planet, but you’re not.”
“I’m not?”
“When people like you and Lucy—smart, educated consumers—choose to use plastic, it just perpetuates the entire system. It makes the checkout people feel less bad just shoving plastic down the planet’s throat.”
“I don’t think you can blame the checkout ladies at GroceryLand for plastic bags—”
“Of course I can! They shouldn’t even offer plastic. Plastic should be kept in a locked room in the back of the store, and if you ask for plastic, you should have to wait for them to find the key.”
“I think they’d lose their jobs pretty quickly if they did that.”
“I’m going to send you a link to a video.”
“Please don’t, Susan.”
“It’s that huge floating island of garbage that’s out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This young woman gets in the middle of it in her kayak and it’s nothing but plastic water bottles and plastic shopping bags and dead fish as far as the eye can see. She just floats there and weeps.”
“I look forward to it,” said Owen.
“Don’t be sarcastic. Watch it,” said Susan. She grasped him by both shoulders and looked into his eyes. “It will change you. Hey, Rowan, lecture Owen about plastic grocery bags. He won’t listen to me.”
Susan’s husband, Rowan, walked over from the ATM vestibule. Their youngest kid, Charlotte, was climbing on Rowan’s head and shoulders like a monkey, and Rowan was wearing a long red skirt.
“Dude,” Owen said.
“What do you think?” Rowan said, doing a twirl.
“Great, right?” said Susan. “We’re raising awareness.”
“Susan won’t let me put on a pair of pants until Colleen Lowell gets her job back.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’m kinda diggin’ it,” said Rowan. “You’ve got all this room down there, things can breathe, move around—”
Susan cut Rowan off. “Tell Owen how bad plastic bags are.”
“They’re really bad,” Rowan said.
“Sometimes we forget to bring our canvas bags, I guess,” said Owen. The plastic bags were balled up like snowballs and several of them were, for some reason, damp. It was hard to push more than two or three through the slot at one time no matter how hard he tried. “We’ve got a bunch in the house, but it’s easy to walk out the door and forget them.”
“Keep them in your trunk!” Susan said. “When you unload the car, bring them right back. That way you’ll always have them.”
“Good tip,” said Owen.
Charlotte rappelled down Rowan’s left arm and disappeared under his skirt.
“Seriously, Owen, it’s pretty important,” said Rowan.
“Yeah, you know, when you have a kid like Wyatt, sometimes things fall through the cracks.”