The shop’s sign was posted near the roof for maximum visibility from the parking lot and motorway, but because I walked on the strip mall’s sidewalk, under the overhang, I passed the door once, twice, three times before I saw it for what it was. Inside was a sour animal smell like cheese or puke, and behind the counter were two teenagers, one bright faced and bouncy with a high, jubilant ponytail and the other sullen seeming, slow moving, with open-sore acne.
I like your bag, said the bubbly one, and I turned in surprise, because my bag was a sleek black backpack constructed of waterproof technical material whose finish and general air of severity looked vaguely sado-masochistic, like something a German dominatrix might carry, but the bubbly one was speaking to the customer at the counter, whose bag was pink and furry and slightly dingy, like a well-used child’s stuffy. The customer was delighted by the compliment. Thank you, she said, it’s my favorite!
I looked away, but not quickly enough to escape the notice of the bubbly teen, who registered my mistake.
I studied the wall of prepackaged goods: pecan-caramel clusters and peanut butter cups and sour worms and rings and bears in cellophane bags with festive foil adornments at the twisted necks; jars of wrapped caramels and hard candies; gift cards and fake flowers and glitter-encrusted cake toppers and birthday candles; and small and large sealed boxes of traditional chocolate assortments, an example of which, with glued-down samples, was displayed propped on its side beneath a pane of plastic.
The sealed assortment boxes were dark blue and wrapped with a label that identified their ingredients in a long and disconcerting list of fine print. Here were the hard-to-pronounce chemical-adjacent pseudo–food products one expects to find in mass-manufactured candy bars, and I tried to imagine, in the homely little kitchen where, purportedly, the chocolates were made, the edge of which was just visible beyond the soft-serve machine, neatly labeled canisters of Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow 5, Caramel Color, Propylene Glycol, Carrageenan, Glyceryl-Lacto Esters of Fatty Acids and Soy Lecithin, Sorbitan Tristearate, Maple Syrup Invertase Stabilized with Glycerol, and TertButylhydroquinone from which aproned candymakers would scoop and pour and measure.
Bye, thank you! said the woman with the pink fur purse as she jingled out the door.
Next to the register was a big glass case of individual chocolates on their little ruffled brown doilies, and on top of the case were the bespoke-option boxes, which were white and embossed with the name of the chocolate shop in gold. The chocolates in the case were surely fresher, although the idea of freshness in a product that contained so many stabilizers and preservatives might’ve been a quaint illusion, and in fact the chocolate shop itself, in concept and execution, I was beginning to understand, might be the specter of something authentic and charming and old-fashioned that, for various financial, agricultural, and geopolitical reasons, was no longer feasible.
Nevertheless, I needed a gift, and I needed to buy it in the hour I’d allotted for the purpose, and I was on foot besides and could think of no other option to pursue within walking distance, and a nice box of chocolates from an actual chocolate shop, as opposed to the shrink-wrapped version for last-minute husbands in corporate-chain drugstores—despite the similar or even identical nature of the products, as I was learning—retains a certain panache.
I liked the idea of selecting the chocolates myself, and though the chocolates in the case contained the same dubious ingredients as the pre-boxed chocolates, there would be no label to confront my recipients with the truth of what they were consuming and thereby complicate and diminish their enjoyment. I pointed to the largest white box, which was smaller than the largest blue box’s comic, sentimental—guilt-induced?— dimensions. The sullen-seeming teen enclosed her hands in fresh nitrile gloves and opened the back of the case.
For several minutes we struggled together—she waited, gloved hand poised, staring past my shoulder while I paced and scanned the candy trays with building incredulity at the bulk I’d agreed to buy, full of doubt and desperate to be done—but at last she shut the box, fastened it with a stretchy metallic cord, and set it on the scale to calculate my bill, which was more than I’d planned to spend and almost double what the bigger, ready-made box cost, and after that came the tip screen. I gave fifteen dollars to the sullen-seeming teen, which she either didn’t notice or didn’t acknowledge, which is how it should be, because I’m uncomfortable paying people to do things for me and I prefer to be treated by my workercomrades with indifference or contempt.
When the teen asked if I wanted a bag for my purchase, I said no. My mind was addled by the exertion and confusion of the experience, and I upended the heavy box of fragile sliding items, negligibly sealed, into my backpack.
Behind the strip mall’s parking lot, next to the corporate-chain drugstore’s dumpsters, were the remnants of an old farm—a low hand-built wall of lichen-covered field stones, a boarded-up barn, a boxed-over well—and in one of the farm’s old apple trees were dozens of robins. They hopped restless from branch to branch and spoke to each other in their cheerful language, and the sight of their big black eyes and fat orange breasts filled me with the feeling of spring because the robin is a spring bird, but it was January, and what were they doing in this bare winter tree?
What are you doing? I said to the robins, who promptly flew—where?
What are you doing? I said to myself later that evening when, having drunk too much sherry alone at my apartment beforehand, I arrived at the social function slightly out of mind and discovered the chocolates in a loose pile at the bottom of my backpack. The white box was banged up and stained along the sides where it’d rubbed against the spilled candy, and the little note I’d written to accompany the gift, tucked in my coat pocket for the walk, was gone—where?
It’s perfectly normal, said Ximena. Many American robins spend the whole year in their breeding range. She poured two glasses of wine and handed one to me.
I don’t remember ever seeing them in winter, I said, and took a long gulp.
There are lots of things you don’t remember, said Ximena.
Like what, I said, while a bolt of deep cold went through me.
Winter robin roosts can include a quarter-million birds, said Ximena.
I don’t think I ever knew that, I said.
Or did you learn it and forget it, said Ximena.
What’s the difference, I said.
Exactly, said Ximena.
KATHRYN SCANLAN is the author of Aug 9—Fog, The Dominant Animal, and Kick the Latch. Originally from Iowa, she lives in Los Angeles.