Memory is a T.J. Maxx

by MT Cozzola

When she was seventy-three, my mother got arrested at a T.J. Maxx. They brought her to a little security office and laid out the charge: switching price tags, which she denied. "The tag came off! I was trying to fix it!"

Eventually they let her go, but Mom was so outraged—"How dare they accuse me? After all the money I've spent there!"—that Dad wrote a letter to the CEO. "Loyal customer," etc., etc., and "Respected member of the community," etc., etc., and "Unless my wife receives a full apology we shall never patronize a T.J. Maxx again."

He died two years later, apology still pending.

One night Mom couldn't take it anymore. She pulled out a copy of Dad's letter and confided the whole story, swearing me to secrecy. She repeated her defense, "I was just trying to fix the tag," but she really missed T.J.'s. "Do you think the security guard would remember me?"

"Of course not," I said. "It's probably not even the same security guard."

So the next day after mass she stepped once again through the automatic door, grabbed a cart, and returned to her weekly routine. She was never caught switching price tags again.

I don't make it to the suburbs much since she died, but today I'm here looking at towel sets. The ones I like, gray and white striped, cost more than I want to spend. I've already frittered too much on this trip to visit my aunt. I don't know why I've taken an unpaid day off work and driven on a highway I despise, just to sit beside—well, there's the answer—just to sit beside my late mother's sister. To see her face, hear her voice, and be brought back to Mom for a moment.

First I went to a bakery to get cookies to bring with me. The bakery didn't have cookies, so I bought a loaf of bread. I ate the bread in the car because it seemed too early to go to my aunt's. I'd said one-thirty and it was only one. Then I went to Whole Foods for the cookies and spent too long hunting for more groceries because I didn't want to stand in line for only one item.

Consequently I got to my aunt's a little late and apologized when her daughter let me in, though she didn't seem concerned about the time. She only said, "I thought Liz would be with you."

That sent me on a tangent of how busy cousin Liz was. "She travels constantly. She went to Portugal. She went to Reno. Do you know she's going back to Italy?"

The real reason was that I hadn't asked Liz. I'd thought a one-on-one with my aunt would be better. She's in her nineties, with short-term memory loss that makes her hesitant to talk and that's what I wanted, for her to talk. Not for her daughter or me or cousin Liz to talk.

Except basically I was the only one who talked, and not even about things that mattered. After my unnecessary and possibly misleading tangent about cousin Liz I talked about my work and my husband's work and the weather and the trip to Italy we'd taken.

I pulled out my phone and showed pictures of random Italy things. I reported several details regarding Italian Airbnb’s. I was afraid to leave silences because when I paused, my aunt looked down at her hands, probably afraid I'd ask a question she couldn't answer. Whereas when I blurted out inanities like, "So much pasta!" she'd chuckle and her eyes would sparkle like Mom's. But I ran out of dumb things to say so I said I had to get back to work.

Once in the car, I turned toward Mom's old house a couple blocks away, thinking I should probably drive past it. But instead, I found myself driving straight to her old T.J.'s. There was nothing I needed but I grabbed a cart. The last time I was here, Mom insisted on pushing it because she said she liked the support.

We'd gotten separated at one point, me chasing down the perfect silicone spatula and her browsing international foods, and I found myself in kitchen goods, alone. "Mom?" I retraced my steps, searching. Had she fainted in the bedding section? Fallen in luggage? Collapsed in shoes?

We never should have come. It was too late in her illness. You don't bring a woman in hospice care to T.J. Maxx. You sit quietly on her couch discussing the afterlife. You hold her hand and ask if she'd like to nap now.

"Mom? Mom?" I scanned for a crowd of people huddled over a prone body.

"Mar? What do you think?" She was standing at a blue-painted chest of drawers. Vine leaves and flowers were painted on the top. She pulled out a drawer and it stuck. She was okay.

"Um, for where?" I kept my voice calm.

She shrugged. "Maybe a hallway? You couldn't fit much in these drawers. And they don't glide right." She pushed at the drawer to get it back in.

"Cute colors," I said. "You could put it where that little table is."

"I'm dying. I need to get rid of stuff."

"Good price, though." We looked at it awhile longer, then drifted to mirrors and pictures, then socks, and eventually left with some pajamas and a package of imported biscotti.

More than ten years later, I see new versions of the same old bargains. Twee painted furniture, random soaps, towels in every color. We were easy here, Mom and me. No judgments on her Xanax-controlled blood pressure. No head-shaking over my latest haircut. Just two explorers in a world of constantly restocked possibilities.

I notice a red clearance sticker on a less attractive towel set. If there's no quality difference between those towels and the ones I like, and if the clearance sticker peels off easily enough, should I try it? Would Mom have done it? Did Mom do it? What did she mean by fixing, exactly?

An employee passes behind me. "Need any help, Ma'am?"

I wonder if the security office would be the same. If the chair would be the same. If it would hold some scrap of her DNA 20 years on. Maybe that's why I feel Mom beside me here, when all I felt at my aunt's was awkward.

"No, I'm good," I say and push my cart along.