Vignettes II

"I feel guilty, terrible, so guilty it lingers for days, spending money on groceries." The look she gave me across the table, kept at the ready with kleenex, disoriented me like an outsider's astonishment always had. "You feel guilty," she leaned a long time on the mouthy vowels of the word, "guilty about buying food?" She paused. "You don't have to feel guilty about buying food." Other people don't feel bad about buying groceries? You mean people just go to the grocery store and put things in their cart-- I guess I never use a cart, I guess those are there for those people who would just put things in a cart-- and it's okay? They don't feel guilty about it? "Oh, um--" I looked at my knees for thirty more minutes until she gently suggested I come in the same time next week.