The list was Dana's, written on the back of a receipt, but Marcus was the one holding it in the parking lot of the Kroger on Winston Road, squinting at her handwriting.

"Is that 'kale' or 'kaiser rolls'?"

"Kale," she said. "You wrote it."

"I wrote it, but you dictated it while brushing your teeth."

They took a cart with a wobbling front wheel because Dana said the good ones were all outside in the corral and she wasn't walking back. Inside, the store had that Saturday-morning density, families blocking the produce aisle, someone's toddler shrieking about a balloon. Marcus bagged apples while Dana held her phone up to compare the price per ounce of two brands of coffee.

"The store brand is a dollar sixty cheaper."

"The store brand tastes like a campfire."

"It tastes fine."

He put the more expensive bag in the cart anyway, and she didn't take it out, which was how most of these conversations ended.

They split up near the middle of the store. She went for laundry detergent and paper towels; he doubled back for the sour cream he'd forgotten. When they found each other again by the dairy case she had also acquired a bag of frozen dumplings that had not been on the receipt.

"For lunch," she said.

Checkout took eleven minutes behind a woman paying with three separate cards. In the car, Dana sorted the receipt against her mental tally while Marcus backed out slowly around a man loading a case of water.

They still had to drop off the recycling and pick up his prescription, and the gutters needed cleaning before the rain came Tuesday. But first they drove home with the windows cracked, and Marcus carried in four bags at once so he wouldn't have to make a second trip, which Dana told him, as she always did, was going to break his fingers one day.


The list was Dana's idea, written on the back of a receipt in the car while Marcus circled the parking lot looking for a space that wasn't halfway to the highway.

"Milk, eggs, that bread you like," she read. "The seedy one."

"The seedy one has a name."

"It has a name I can't pronounce, so it's the seedy one."

Inside, Marcus took the cart because he always took the cart, steering it with one hand while Dana walked ahead, checking prices with the particular squint she got when she'd forgotten her reading glasses again. They disagreed about tomatoes for a while — she wanted the vine ones, he pointed out they'd bought vine tomatoes last week and half of them had gone soft in the drawer. They bought the vine ones anyway.

In the cereal aisle, Dana ran into a woman she knew from the dental office where she worked, and Marcus stood a polite distance away, pretending to compare granolas, until the conversation wound down. He'd learned not to hover. She'd learned not to make it long.

They forgot the eggs and had to double back. At the register, the card reader wouldn't take Marcus's chip, and he had to swipe twice while the man behind them sighed audibly, and Dana raised her eyebrows at Marcus in a way that meant *don't say anything*, and he didn't.

Afterward they stopped at the hardware store for furnace filters, which took four minutes, and then at the dry cleaner, which was closed, which Dana had suspected and Marcus had insisted was not the case.

"Saturdays until two," she said, reading the sign.

"It used to be four."

"It hasn't been four since we moved here."

At home he carried in the heavy bags and she put things away, and the tomatoes went in the drawer, where they would probably go soft.


Saturday morning arrived gray and damp, the kind of weather that made staying in bed feel like a moral victory. Dana got up anyway at seven-thirty, because the dog needed walking and because she'd promised herself she'd get the kitchen floor mopped before noon.

Miguel emerged around eight, hair flattened on one side, and started the coffee without being asked. "We're out of the good beans," he announced. "This is the emergency stuff from the back of the cabinet."

"Add it to the list."

The list lived on the refrigerator, held by a magnet shaped like Ohio, a souvenir from a wedding neither of them fully remembered. By nine they'd added paper towels, chicken thighs, whatever vegetable looked decent, and a birthday card for Miguel's aunt.

They took her car because his was making a sound he'd been ignoring for three weeks. First stop was the hardware store for furnace filters and a new washer for the bathroom faucet, which had been dripping since February. Miguel wandered off toward the paint chips and came back holding two nearly identical swatches of gray.

"For what room?"

"I don't know. The hallway, maybe."

"Put them back."

The grocery store was crowded with people who'd had the same idea about beating the afternoon rush. Dana took the cart; Miguel took the list. They split up at the produce section by unspoken agreement and reconvened near the dairy case, where he presented her with a container of the yogurt she liked and a bag of pretzels he'd clearly grabbed for himself.

At the checkout, the total was thirty dollars more than either of them expected, which was true nearly every week.

They unloaded the bags at home, and Miguel started on the faucet while Dana finally mopped the floor. The dripping stopped around two. Neither of them mentioned it, but they both noticed the quiet.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus held it, because she'd said if she held it she'd lose it in the car door pocket like last time.

They took the Corolla. The morning had that late-October gray to it, not raining but considering it. Their first stop was the dry cleaner's on Franklin, where Marcus ran in for his blue suit while Dana idled at the curb, watching a man walk a beagle that refused to move past a particular hydrant.

"They charged me nine dollars," Marcus said, getting back in.

"For one suit?"

"For one suit. She said something about the lining."

At the hardware store they bought furnace filters, a two-pack, and Dana talked him out of a shop vac they did not need and could not store. In the parking lot she checked her phone and said her sister had texted about Thanksgiving. Marcus said they should decide before her mother decided for them.

The grocery store was crowded, as it always was on Saturdays after ten, which they both knew and both continued to forget. Dana pushed the cart. Marcus read from the list and made small unilateral additions—pretzel thins, a jar of the expensive olives—which Dana permitted with a look. They disagreed briefly about the yogurt. She wanted the plain tub; he wanted the individual cups because he ate them at his desk. They bought both.

At the deli counter they waited eleven minutes for a half pound of turkey. Marcus leaned on the cart handle. Dana said, "We forgot the coffee."

"It's on the list."

"It's on the list, but we're past aisle four."

So they doubled back, which put them behind a woman comparing two brands of canned tomatoes with real seriousness, and Marcus, who had been irritable all morning about the suit, found he didn't mind waiting.

At home they carried the bags in together, two trips, and left the filters in the trunk.


The Saturday list had been on the refrigerator since Wednesday, held up by a magnet shaped like a lobster that neither of them remembered buying. By ten, Dana had crossed off two items and added three.

"We need coffee filters," she said, pulling on her sneakers by the door.

Miguel was already outside, wrestling the recycling bin to the curb. Through the window she watched him stop, crouch, and pick something out of the grass — a plastic fork, it turned out, which he held up accusingly when he came back in.

"The neighbors' party," he said.

"You don't know that."

"I know that."

They took his car because hers was making the noise again, the one they had agreed to deal with next month. At the hardware store Miguel spent eleven minutes in the plumbing aisle comparing two nearly identical rubber gaskets while Dana looked at houseplants she had no intention of buying. He bought the cheaper gasket. On the way out he said he'd probably bought the wrong one.

The grocery store was crowded in the way it always was on Saturdays, carts backing into each other near the bakery. Dana pushed; Miguel walked ahead and doubled back with things. They disagreed about yogurt — she wanted the big tub, he wanted the little cups for lunches — and settled it by buying both. He forgot the coffee filters. She remembered at the register, and he jogged back for them while the cashier waited, and Dana apologized to the woman behind her, who said she'd done the same thing last week.

At home they carried the bags in together, four trips. Miguel put away the cold things while Dana broke down the cardboard. The gasket sat on the counter in its little bag.

"After lunch," he said.

"After lunch," she agreed, and went to find the vacuum.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three items at the bottom in his cramped block letters: BATTERIES, COFFEE FILTERS, THE GOOD BREAD, NOT THE CHEAP ONE.

"You underlined 'not,'" Dana said in the car. "Twice."

"Because last time you bought the cheap one."

"It was on sale."

"It tasted like a sponge."

They stopped at the hardware store first because it closed at noon on Saturdays, and Marcus needed a washer for the bathroom faucet that had been dripping since Tuesday. He held two of them up in the aisle, squinting, and Dana pointed out that he'd brought the old one in his pocket for exactly this reason. He fished it out, embarrassed, and matched it, and they were out in six minutes.

The grocery store was crowded. Dana pushed the cart while Marcus went off for produce and came back with a bag of apples she hadn't asked for.

"They were three ninety-nine."

"For how many?"

"I didn't count."

She let it go. They moved down the aisles in their usual pattern, him drifting, her steering, the two of them reconvening at the ends of rows. He put the good bread in the cart with a small flourish. She added tortillas, chicken thighs, a jar of the mustard his mother liked, because his mother was coming in two weeks and Dana had already started preparing.

At the register, the total came out higher than either of them expected, which it always did. Marcus loaded the bags while Dana dug for the car keys she found in her coat pocket, where they had been the whole time.

At home they put things away, mostly in the right places. Then Marcus went to fix the faucet, and Dana heard him swearing at it, gently, from down the hall.


The list was Priya's, written on the back of an envelope in her small, slanted handwriting. David drove because he always drove, and Priya read the list aloud at stoplights so they could argue about it.

"Do we need cilantro? You never use the cilantro."

"I use it. You throw it out before I use it."

At the store, they split up the way they always did — David to produce and the aisles, Priya to the back for meat and dairy, then meeting somewhere near the middle. He picked out apples one at a time, turning each over, which drove her crazy. She texted him a photo of two brands of yogurt with a question mark. He wrote back *whichever*, which was not helpful, so she bought both.

They found each other by the bread. The cart had accumulated things not on the envelope: a bag of pretzels, a jar of olives, a bunch of tulips that had been marked down to four dollars because the edges were going brown.

"They'll open," Priya said.

"They always do," David said, and put them in.

Checkout took eleven minutes. The kid bagging put the eggs under a bag of onions and David quietly moved them.

At home they carried everything in in two trips, and Priya started putting things away while David went back out for the recycling bins. The driveway was hot. He rolled them up, hosed off the lid of the green one where something had leaked, and stood for a second in the shade of the maple, not thinking about anything.

Inside, Priya was cutting the tulip stems at an angle under running water.

"There's a splinter in the deck stairs," he said. "Third one."

"Add it to the list," she said, and he did, on the back of the envelope, under *cilantro*.


The list was Marcus's idea, written on the back of an envelope from the electric company. Priya read it aloud in the car while he drove.

"Milk, eggs, that bread you like, laundry detergent — did we really run out of detergent?"

"You did three loads on Wednesday."

"You wore three shirts on Wednesday."

They stopped at the hardware store first, because the kitchen faucet had developed a drip that neither of them could ignore anymore. Marcus wandered the plumbing aisle with the old washer in a sandwich bag, comparing it against the pegboard display, while Priya looked at succulents by the register and decided against buying one, then decided for one, then put it back.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturday mornings always are. Priya pushed the cart. Marcus went ahead for produce and came back with a cantaloupe he insisted was ripe, thumping it near her ear as evidence. She was unconvinced but let it go into the cart. In the cereal aisle they had a small disagreement about whether they still needed the store-brand granola, since the last box had gone stale in the back of the pantry. Priya won by pointing out that Marcus had been the one to buy it.

At checkout, the card reader asked twice for a PIN Marcus couldn't remember, and Priya reached over and typed it without looking up from her phone.

Home again, they carried the bags in three trips. Priya put things away — she had opinions about which shelf things belonged on — while Marcus knelt under the sink with a wrench and the new washer, the water shut off, a towel spread across the cabinet floor.

"Try it," he said eventually.

She turned the handle. The water ran clean and stopped clean when she shut it. He got up off the floor slowly, rubbing his knee, and she handed him the cantaloupe to cut.


Saturday morning arrived gray and damp, the kind of weather that made staying in bed feel like a moral victory. Dana got up anyway at seven-thirty, because the dog needed walking and because if she didn't start the laundry before nine, the whole day would slip away.

By the time she came back with Rufus, Marcus was awake, standing barefoot in the kitchen scrolling through his phone while the coffee maker gurgled.

"We're out of trash bags," he said. "And I used the last of the dish soap last night."

"Add it to the list." Dana unclipped the leash. "I already put down eggs, bread, coffee, and that yogurt you like."

They left at ten. Marcus drove; Dana navigated the list on her phone, which was really just a running note titled *STORE* that neither of them ever deleted. First stop was the hardware store for furnace filters and a replacement bulb for the bathroom vanity, where Marcus spent four minutes comparing wattages and Dana wandered to look at paint chips she had no plans to buy.

The grocery store was crowded. They split up in the produce section—Dana for apples and spinach, Marcus for bananas and whatever tomatoes looked least sad—and reconvened near the deli counter. He'd added a bag of tortilla chips to the cart.

"Those weren't on the list."

"They're aspirational."

She let it go. In the cereal aisle they debated whether they still had rice at home, decided they probably did, then bought rice anyway because neither of them was certain. At checkout, the total was forty dollars more than Dana expected, which was true every week.

They unloaded the car in a light drizzle, hauling bags in two trips. Marcus put things away wrong—cheese on the top shelf, again—and Dana rearranged half of it after he left the room. Then she started the second load of laundry.


The list was in Priya's handwriting, but Daniel had added three items in the car: coffee filters, batteries, and, inexplicably, "the good mustard."

"There's no such thing as the good mustard," Priya said, steering into the Kroger lot. "There's mustard."

"You'll know it when you see it."

They split up at the entrance, the way they always did. Priya took produce and dairy; Daniel took the aisles and the deli counter. It saved maybe seven minutes and gave them something to do besides walk slowly behind an old man reading nutrition labels. Priya squeezed avocados and put back two that felt like tennis balls. She texted Daniel: *do we need eggs* and got back *yes 18* and then, forty seconds later, *actually 12, we throw them out*.

They found each other near the frozen foods. Daniel had the good mustard. It was a squeeze bottle of Dijon, three dollars, entirely ordinary, and Priya said nothing about it because it was Saturday and she had already won the argument about the second bag of chips.

Checkout took eleven minutes behind a woman doing coupons. In the car, the AC took a while to get cold, and Daniel drummed on the wheel while Priya scrolled through the photos she'd taken of the hall closet, trying to remember what size furnace filter they needed.

At home they carried everything in two trips, which was one trip too many, and Priya put things away while Daniel broke down the boxes for recycling and hauled the bin to the curb, a day early, because he always did that and always forgot he had.

Afterward, he changed the furnace filter—wrong size, it turned out, so it went back in the car for Monday—and Priya started a load of towels. Then they sat on the back steps with iced tea, not talking much, listening to somebody two houses down running a leaf blower in July.


The list was Marcus's idea. He wrote it on the back of an envelope while the coffee brewed, and Diane amended it from the doorway, still in her robe.

"We need dish soap," she said. "And the good kind, not whatever was on sale."

"The good kind was on sale last time."

"That was a fluke."

They left at ten. The Honda's check-engine light had been on for three weeks, a small orange accusation neither of them mentioned. Marcus drove. Diane held the envelope and read the list aloud in the parking lot as if it might have changed on the way over.

Inside, they split up. This was efficient in theory. In practice, Marcus stood in the cereal aisle for four minutes trying to remember whether Diane had said *no* to the granola with the almonds or the one with the pumpkin seeds, then bought neither. He found her in produce, holding two bunches of bananas.

"These are too green," she said. "These are too far gone."

"Get both. The green ones will be ready when the others aren't."

She looked at him with something like grudging respect and put both in the cart.

At checkout, the woman ahead of them had a coupon issue. Diane read the tabloid headlines. Marcus reorganized the cart so the eggs weren't under the canned tomatoes, which Diane noticed and did not comment on, which was its own kind of comment.

At home they carried in the bags, four trips between them. Diane put things away wrong — the peanut butter with the cereal, again — and Marcus let it go. He took out the recycling. She started a load of towels.

At two o'clock they sat at the kitchen table eating sandwiches, the afternoon still ahead of them, the check-engine light still on, the towels turning over and over in the dark.


The list was Deb's handwriting, but James had added three items in the margin: coffee filters, batteries, salsa. He put it in his back pocket and they took his car because hers was low on gas and neither of them wanted to deal with that yet.

At the hardware store, Deb held up two furnace filters. "Sixteen by twenty-five, right?"

"I think it's twenty by twenty-five."

"You said sixteen last time and we had to come back."

"Then get both," James said, and she rolled her eyes and put one back, because he was probably right and she just didn't want to say so. They also bought a package of felt pads for the dining chairs, which had been scratching the floor for two years.

The grocery store was crowded in the way it always was at eleven on a Saturday, carts nosing past each other in the produce section. Deb picked through the bananas for a bunch that wasn't already spotted. James went for the deli counter and came back with turkey and a container of potato salad she hadn't asked for.

"We have potato salad," she said.

"We had potato salad. I ate it Thursday."

They split up in the middle of the store, the way they'd learned to do — he took the canned aisles and the cereal, she took dairy and the cleaning supplies. They found each other again near the frozen food, and Deb put a bag of shrimp in the cart without explaining, and James didn't ask.

At home they carried the bags in through the garage in two trips. James put things away wrong, the way he always did, and Deb rearranged half of it after he went out to mow. She could hear the mower start, stall, and start again. She stood at the sink with a glass of water and watched him through the window for a minute before she went to find the vacuum.


The list was on the refrigerator, held there by a magnet shaped like a lemon, and Dana pulled it down while Marcus was still finishing his coffee.

"You want to hit the hardware store first or the grocery store?" she asked.

"Hardware," he said. "That way if they don't have the right washer I can look it up on my phone in the parking lot and figure out where else to go."

The bathroom faucet had been dripping for eleven days. Marcus had counted, mostly to annoy himself.

At the hardware store, an employee in a red vest walked him down aisle six and handed him a small plastic bag of assorted rubber washers for two dollars and forty cents. Dana wandered off and came back holding a packet of felt pads for the bottoms of the dining chairs.

"The scraping," she said.

"I know."

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always are. Dana took the cart and Marcus took the list, and they moved through produce arguing mildly about whether they needed two bunches of bananas or one. Marcus said one, because last time half of them went brown on the counter. Dana said two, because she'd started taking one to work.

They compromised badly and got three, which neither of them noticed until they were unloading the car.

In the cereal aisle Dana held up a box.

"This is the one you like?"

"That's the one I liked in 2019."

"So no."

"So yes, but I'm being difficult."

She put it in the cart.

At the register the total came to a hundred and forty-one dollars, which felt high, and they said so to each other, and then agreed it was probably the meat.

At home Marcus fixed the faucet in under ten minutes. Dana put the groceries away and listened to the sudden, specific silence of a bathroom that wasn't dripping.


The list was Priya's, but Daniel held it, because he was the one who kept losing track of the cart.

They started at the hardware store, where they needed a replacement filter for the furnace and a set of picture hooks. Priya stood in aisle seven comparing two brands while Daniel wandered off to look at extension cords they didn't need. When she found him, he was holding a small level.

"We have a level."

"We have a level somewhere," he said, and put it back.

The grocery store was crowded in the way it always was on Saturdays, carts nosing past each other near the produce. Priya took the left side of the store, Daniel the right, a system they'd worked out years ago. She got the vegetables, the yogurt, the bread from the bakery counter where the woman always gave her a heel of sourdough for free. He got the coffee, the cereal, the chicken thighs on sale, and stood too long in front of the crackers because she'd only written "crackers."

They met in the middle by the eggs.

"Which ones?" he asked, phone out, ready to text a photo.

"Any. The cheap ones."

At checkout, the total was higher than either of them expected, which it always was. Daniel paid. Priya bagged, arranging things so the bread stayed on top.

In the parking lot, the wind had picked up. She held the cart while he loaded the trunk, and then he returned the cart to the corral because he was particular about that.

Back home, they put things away without talking much—she did the fridge, he did the pantry, and then he went down to the basement with the furnace filter while she started a load of towels.

Around two, he came up and said, "It was the wrong size."

Priya laughed. "Of course it was."

They got in the car again.


The list was in Marcus's handwriting, which meant it was mostly illegible, but Dana had learned to interpret it over eleven years. "Chkn thghs" she could manage. "Th thing for the sink" she could not.

"The strainer," Marcus said from the driver's seat. "The little basket part. It cracked."

"You could have written 'strainer.'"

"I was in a hurry."

The morning had already produced a trip to the hardware store, where Marcus stood in the plumbing aisle holding the broken piece up to eight nearly identical replacements while Dana wandered off to look at paint chips she had no intention of buying. She came back with a color called Wheat Field and said, "For the hallway. Someday." He said someday, and they left with a strainer and a package of furnace filters they'd been meaning to get since November.

At the grocery store Dana pushed the cart because Marcus steered it into things. He read the list aloud, item by item, out of order, doubling back for the yogurt he'd forgotten. In the produce section they had a brief disagreement about whether the good tomatoes were worth the extra dollar sixty. Dana put them in the cart. Marcus took them out. Dana put them back and said, "You'll eat them."

"I'll eat the cheap ones too."

"You'll complain about the cheap ones."

He conceded. In the cereal aisle he added a box of the sugary kind he liked, holding it up defensively before she could say anything, and she just laughed at him.

The checkout line was slow. A woman ahead of them was arguing about a coupon. Marcus bagged while Dana paid, and in the parking lot the cart wobbled and one bag tipped, sending three oranges rolling under a parked minivan. Marcus went down on his knees on the asphalt to get them, and Dana held the cart still and told him he had a hole in his jeans.


The list was Marcus's idea. Denise had wanted to just wing it, the way they usually did, but they'd come home last Saturday with three jars of pickles and no coffee, so she let him write it out on the back of an envelope while she found her keys.

The bank first, because Denise had a check from her mother that had been sitting in her purse since March. Marcus waited in the car with the windows down, listening to a caller on the radio argue about the Braves' bullpen. When she came back she was shaking her head.

"Twenty minutes. There was one teller."

"You could've used the app."

"Mama writes on the memo line. It's the whole point of the check."

At the grocery store they split up, which they'd learned was faster, though it meant texting each other pictures of yogurt. Marcus took produce and the meat counter; Denise took the middle aisles and dairy. He was standing over the tomatoes when his phone buzzed with a photo of two boxes of rice.

*The one we always get*, he wrote back.

*They're both the one we always get.*

*The blue one.*

They found each other again in the cereal aisle, cart to cart, and Denise put back the cookies he'd added without saying anything about it, and he let her. At checkout the woman ahead of them had a coupon that wouldn't scan and Marcus felt Denise's hand settle on his forearm, which meant *don't sigh out loud.*

Afterward they stopped at the hardware store for a furnace filter and a package of picture hooks Denise had been asking about for two months. In the parking lot Marcus loaded the trunk while she checked the receipt.

"They charged us twice for the filter."

"You want to go back in?"

She looked at the store, then at the sky, which was getting white and heavy.

"Monday," she said. "Let's beat the rain."


The list was Dana's, written in the same cramped shorthand she'd used since college: "eggs, tp, that bread." Marcus had learned to translate. That bread meant the seeded rye from the bakery counter, not the sandwich loaf, and if they were out he was supposed to text her a photo of the alternatives before committing.

They left the house at nine-thirty, later than planned, because Dana had gotten pulled into a phone call with her sister about their mother's knee surgery. Marcus waited in the driveway with the car running, then turned it off, then read the news on his phone until she came out apologizing.

The first stop was the hardware store for furnace filters. Marcus wandered off toward the paint chips while Dana compared MERV ratings, and when she found him he was holding two nearly identical swatches of gray.

"For what?" she said.

"The hallway. Eventually."

"Put them back. We're not doing the hallway this year."

He put them back, but he kept one, folded into his wallet, which she pretended not to see.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always were, carts wedged in the produce aisle while people deliberated over avocados. Dana took the left side of the store and Marcus took the right, a system they'd worked out years ago and had never once discussed out loud. She got the yogurt and the coffee. He got the chicken thighs and stood for a full minute in front of the bread, then texted her a picture of an unfamiliar sourdough. She wrote back: *fine.*

At the register, Dana remembered the batteries and Marcus went back for them, jogging a little.

In the parking lot, loading the trunk, she said, "We should get lunch out."

"We have all this food."

"I know," she said, and he closed the trunk, and they got lunch out.


The Saturday Errands

The list was in Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three items to the bottom in his blocky capitals: BATTERIES, DOG FOOD, THAT BREAD YOU LIKE.

"That bread I like," Dana said in the car, holding up the paper. "Which one?"

"The seeded one."

"There are four seeded ones."

"The one in the brown bag."

She let it go. They had been married eleven years; she would know it when she saw it, and if she didn't, he'd wander off to the bakery aisle and find it himself while she stood at the deli counter waiting for a number to be called.

The hardware store came first. Marcus needed a replacement flapper for the upstairs toilet, which had been running intermittently since Tuesday, keeping Dana awake. He held two packages up under the fluorescent lights and squinted at them, then bought both, on the theory that returning one was easier than a second trip.

At the grocery store, they split the list without discussing it, the way they always did. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles and the meat counter. She found him twelve minutes later comparing the unit prices on paper towels, frowning.

"The bigger pack is cheaper per sheet," he said.

"It won't fit under the sink."

He put it back.

At the checkout, the bagger was a teenager who put the eggs on the bottom, and Dana rearranged them without saying anything, feeling old for caring. Marcus paid. Outside, the parking lot was hot and the cart wheel stuck going over the crosswalk.

At home, they carried everything in over two trips. Dana put the groceries away while Marcus went upstairs with the flapper, and for a while the house was quiet except for the refrigerator door and, eventually, the sound of the tank filling and then, mercifully, stopping.


Marcus found the grocery list on the refrigerator, half-hidden behind a magnet shaped like a lobster they'd bought in Maine three summers ago.

"You wrote 'stuff for the thing,'" he said, holding it up.

Priya looked over from the sink, where she was rinsing out travel mugs. "The party at Dana's. Chips, that spinach dip mix, a bottle of wine."

"You could have written that."

"I wrote it at eleven at night."

They took her car because his needed an oil change, which was the second errand of the day. At the Kroger on Sheridan, Marcus pushed the cart and Priya walked ahead, moving with the certainty of someone who had mapped the store in her head. He kept stopping. There was a display of stone fruit near the entrance and he pressed his thumb against a peach.

"They're not ripe," she said without turning around.

"They might be."

"It's April."

He put the peach back. In the cereal aisle they disagreed briefly about whether they still had oatmeal at home. Priya was almost sure they did. Marcus put a canister in the cart anyway, and she let it go, because last time she'd been wrong about the rice and he'd been gracious about it.

The checkout line moved slowly. A woman ahead of them was paying partly in cash and partly with a card, counting quarters. Priya scrolled her phone. Marcus read the covers of the magazines and reported that a celebrity he'd never heard of was expecting twins.

Back home, they carried the bags in together, two trips each. Priya started putting things away and found the oatmeal—an unopened canister, already there, at the back of the cabinet.

She held it up without comment.

"Okay," Marcus said. "Now we have a lot of oatmeal."

He took the trash out. She started a load of towels. It was not yet noon.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company, but Marcus was the one who carried it, folded into the pocket of his flannel shirt. They'd left the apartment at nine-thirty, later than they'd meant to, because Dana had gotten distracted stripping the bed and then decided the sheets should go in before they left so the machine would be done when they got back.

The hardware store came first. They needed a new washer for the kitchen faucet, which had been dripping for three weeks in a way that Marcus claimed he couldn't hear and Dana claimed was slowly driving her insane. He held up two small packages in the plumbing aisle and Dana squinted at them, and neither of them was certain, so they bought both.

At the grocery store Dana pushed the cart and Marcus walked ahead, disappearing down aisles and returning with things. Some of them were on the list. Some were not: a bag of the chili-lime peanuts he liked, a jar of pickled onions.

"Where are we putting those," Dana said.

"In my mouth."

She let it go. In produce she stood over the tomatoes a long time, pressing them lightly with her thumb, rejecting four before she found two she was willing to accept. Marcus waited with the cart, reading the ingredients on a box of crackers he had no intention of buying.

The line was long. A woman ahead of them had a coupon that wouldn't scan, and the cashier called for someone, and nobody came for a while. Dana rested her forearms on the cart handle. Marcus put his hand flat on her back, between her shoulder blades, and left it there, and they didn't say anything, and then the line moved.

In the parking lot he loaded the trunk while she checked the receipt. They'd forgotten the coffee filters.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added things at the bottom: batteries, the good coffee, dish soap (not the lemon one).

They left the house at nine-thirty, later than planned, because Dana couldn't find her keys and then found them in the pocket of yesterday's jeans. Marcus drove. The hardware store first, where they stood in the plumbing aisle for eleven minutes comparing two washers that looked identical, until an employee named Gus told them either would work and they should just buy both for eighty cents.

"That's the most useful thing anyone's said to me all week," Dana said in the parking lot.

At the grocery store Marcus took the cart and Dana took the list, which was how they always did it. She read items out; he retrieved them. In the produce section she pressed her thumb against three avocados and rejected all three.

"They're for Wednesday," Marcus said.

"They're for never, at this rate."

He found one in the back of the pile that satisfied her. In the cereal aisle they had a small disagreement about whether they already had oatmeal at home. Dana was certain they did. Marcus was certain they'd finished it in September. They bought oatmeal. Later, unpacking, Dana would find a half-full canister behind the flour and say nothing about it.

The checkout line was long because two registers were closed. Marcus read the tabloid headlines out loud in a newscaster voice until Dana told him to stop, laughing, and he stopped.

They loaded the trunk together. It was cold enough that their breath showed. On the drive home Dana held the coffee bag in her lap and opened it and smelled it, and then held it over so Marcus could smell it too, and he took one hand off the wheel to steady her wrist.


The list was Marcus's idea, written on the back of an envelope in his cramped handwriting. Dana pointed out, as she always did, that they had an app for this. He said the app made him forget things.

They left the apartment at nine-thirty, later than planned, because the dishwasher had finished mid-cycle with a puddle underneath it. Marcus knelt with a dish towel while Dana ran her hand along the door seal, looking for the crack. They didn't find one. She wrote *call landlord* on the envelope.

At the hardware store, Dana held two furnace filters up like playing cards and asked which size. Marcus took a photo of the old one's dimensions on his phone before they left, which turned out to be the reason they got the right one. He didn't say anything about it. She said, "Fine, you were right about the photo," and he said, "I didn't say anything," and she said, "You were thinking loudly."

The grocery store on Saturday was a specific kind of hell. Marcus took the cart and the left side of the store; Dana took the produce and the deli counter. They met at the endcap of aisle seven, where he had already put back the cereal she'd texted about because it was six dollars a box now. She found the store brand instead. They argued mildly about whether they needed more olive oil, and he lost, and she put the olive oil in the cart.

At checkout, Dana bagged while Marcus loaded the belt. Neither of them discussed the division; it had settled itself years ago, the way water finds a path.

In the parking lot he pushed the cart back to the corral while she started the car and turned the air on. On the drive home they talked about whether to grill, and decided against it.


The list was Maureen's, but Danny drove.

"You forgot buttermilk," he said at the second stoplight.

"It's on there. Under eggs."

He squinted at the paper she'd propped on the dashboard, then gave up and turned into the Kroger lot. Saturday morning meant the good spots were gone. He parked near the cart return, which Maureen said was the only sensible thing he did in parking lots.

Inside, they split up the way they always did. She took produce and dairy; he took the aisles, because he liked reading labels and she didn't have the patience. She found him eight minutes later in front of the pasta sauces, holding two jars.

"This one's a dollar more."

"Get the cheap one."

"The cheap one has corn syrup."

"Danny. It's spaghetti."

He put the cheap one in the cart, but slowly, so she'd know it was a concession. At the deli counter she ordered a half pound of turkey and he wandered off toward the bakery and came back with a box of doughnuts he set in the cart without comment. She didn't say anything either, which was its own kind of agreement.

The self-checkout ate two of her coupons. Danny waved down the attendant, a teenager named Brie, who fixed it in about nine seconds and looked bored doing it.

They loaded the trunk in the parking lot heat. Then the hardware store, where Danny needed a furnace filter and got talked into a two-pack, and the dry cleaner's, where Maureen picked up his gray suit and her blue dress and discovered they'd broken a button.

"They'll fix it," Danny said.

"I'll fix it. It's faster."

At home they put everything away, and she made sandwiches from the turkey, and they ate them standing at the counter because sitting down felt like it would end the day too early.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus was the one who insisted on the cart with the wobbly wheel, because he claimed he could fix anything with enough downward pressure.

They'd gotten a late start. Saturday mornings had a way of dissolving—coffee, then the dishwasher that needed emptying, then Dana discovering the hall light had burned out, which meant a detour to the hardware store first. Marcus stood in the bulb aisle for four full minutes trying to remember whether the fixture took a candelabra base.

"Just buy both," Dana said.

"That's how we ended up with three boxes of furnace filters."

"Those we needed."

"We needed one."

At the grocery store, they split up the way they always did, which was to say inefficiently. Marcus went for produce and came back with a pineapple nobody had requested. Dana pointed at it.

"It was on sale."

"You don't cut pineapple. I cut pineapple."

"And you're very good at it."

She let it stay in the cart. In the cereal aisle they ran into Priya from two houses down, and spent ten minutes hearing about her son's travel soccer schedule while the ice cream sweated in the bottom of the basket. Dana kept nodding. Marcus kept glancing at the frozen section like it might come to him.

Checkout was slow. The self-scanner rejected Dana's coupon twice and then a teenager in a red polo fixed it in three seconds without explaining how.

In the parking lot, loading bags into the trunk, Marcus said, "We forgot bread."

Dana looked at him for a moment. Then she pulled her keys out.

"I'll go. You put the milk on your side so it doesn't roll."

He watched her walk back toward the automatic doors, and thought, not for the first time, that he'd married a person who finished things. He rearranged the bags. He got the milk exactly right.


Saturday morning came in gray and cool, the kind of October light that makes a kitchen look older than it is. Marisol was already up, drinking coffee at the counter and writing a list on the back of a utility envelope. Dev came out in a sweatshirt, hair flattened on one side, and read over her shoulder.

"Eggs," he said. "We have eggs."

"Four. That's not eggs, that's a suggestion."

They loaded the car with the returnable bottles first, three bags rattling in the trunk, and stopped at the recycling center where a man in a reflective vest waved them toward the far bay. Dev fed cans into the machine while Marisol called her sister and stood by the fence, laughing at something Dev couldn't hear. When she came back she had a receipt for four dollars and eighty cents and looked pleased with herself, like she'd won it at cards.

The grocery store was already crowded. Marisol took the cart because Dev steered it like a shopping cart was a thing that had wronged him. They split the list: he went for produce and coffee, she took the middle aisles. He came back with two bunches of cilantro and no coffee, having forgotten, and she sent him back while she stood in line at the deli counter holding number 47.

At checkout they discovered the chicken thighs he'd grabbed were nearly at their sell-by date. Marisol shrugged. "We'll cook them tonight."

"With what?"

"The cilantro. Both bunches."

They put the bags in the back seat because the trunk still smelled like beer bottles. On the way home they stopped for gas and Dev ran the squeegee over the windshield, badly, leaving streaks. Marisol didn't say anything about it. She was thinking about the pantry shelf that needed fixing, and whether they had the right screws, and whether that was a today problem or a next-weekend problem.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus held it, because Dana had a habit of losing paper in her coat pockets.

They started at the hardware store on Vine, where the furnace filter aisle smelled like cardboard and dust. Marcus held up two sizes, squinting at the numbers.

"Sixteen by twenty-five," Dana said. "I measured it Thursday."

"You measured it, or you looked at the old one?"

"I looked at the old one, which is the same thing but faster."

He put the filter in the cart. They also got a package of furnace tape, because he insisted the last one had gone missing, and a bag of birdseed that Dana grabbed on the way to the register without saying anything about it.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always were, carts pausing sideways in the produce section while people examined avocados. Dana took the left half of the list and Marcus took the right. They separated at the bakery and met again near the yogurt, comparing hauls like it was a competition.

"They were out of the whole bean," he said.

"Get the other kind, then. The dark roast."

"You'll complain."

"I'll complain quietly."

At checkout, Dana bagged while Marcus loaded the belt, an arrangement they'd fallen into years ago without ever discussing it. The total was more than either of them expected, which was also usual.

In the parking lot the wind had picked up. Marcus wrestled the cart back to the corral while Dana rearranged the trunk so the eggs wouldn't slide.

"Dry cleaning," he said, getting in.

"Monday. They close at two on Saturdays now."

He backed out slowly. Somebody's dropped receipt skittered across the asphalt. At home there would be the filter to change, the groceries to put away, and after that, if the afternoon held, nothing at all.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Russell had added three items at the bottom in his cramped print: batteries, paper towels, the good coffee. They took his car because hers still had a bag of donation clothes in the trunk they'd been meaning to drop off for two weeks.

First stop was the hardware store on Delaware Avenue, where Russell needed a new washer for the kitchen faucet that had been dripping since Tuesday. Dana wandered into the garden section while he waited at the counter and came back holding a small pot of basil.

"We killed the last one," he said.

"That was rosemary. Rosemary is impossible."

He didn't argue. The basil went in the cart.

The grocery store was crowded the way it always was on Saturday mornings, everyone with the same idea. Dana took the left side of the aisles and Russell took the right, which was a system they'd developed years ago without ever discussing it. She got the produce, weighing tomatoes in her palm; he stood a long time in front of the yogurt trying to remember which one she'd said she liked, then texted her, and she wrote back *plain, the big tub.*

They met again in the cereal aisle. He had the coffee, the good kind, and also a bag of pretzels he set in the cart with a slightly guilty look.

"Fine," she said.

At the checkout, the cashier was a teenager who kept apologizing for being slow. Dana told her not to worry about it. Russell bagged, badly, the way he always did, eggs on the bottom.

Back home they unloaded in two trips. Dana put the groceries away while Russell got under the sink with a wrench, and by one o'clock the faucet had stopped dripping and the basil was on the windowsill over the sink, where it would probably last a month.


The list was Dana's, written in pencil on the back of an envelope, but Marcus was the one who carried it into the store, folding and unfolding it as they moved through the produce section.

"We don't need two bunches of bananas," Dana said.

"You eat them fast."

"I eat one a day. Two bunches is eleven bananas."

He put one back. They'd already been to the hardware store, where Marcus spent nine minutes comparing furnace filters and Dana sat on a display riding mower until an employee gave her a look. The car smelled faintly like the sawdust aisle now.

In the cereal section they split up. Dana went for coffee and paper towels; Marcus took the rest of the list, which was mostly things for the chili he'd promised to make. He got distracted by a display of hot sauces and bought one with a cartoon devil on the label. When they reconvened at the deli counter, Dana looked at it and said nothing, which was its own kind of comment.

The checkout line was slow. A woman ahead of them was paying with a stack of coupons, and Marcus started narrating under his breath — "she's got one more, I can feel it" — until Dana elbowed him. Total came to eighty-seven dollars and change, more than they'd expected, which was true most weeks.

In the parking lot Dana loaded bags into the trunk while Marcus returned the cart, jogging the last few feet the way he always did, like it was a race against no one. On the drive home she read him a text from his sister about Thanksgiving, and he made a noise that meant he'd think about it later.

There were still two loads of laundry waiting, and the filter to install. But first Marcus put the groceries away wrong, and Dana rearranged half of them, and neither of them mentioned it.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company, but Marcus was the one who insisted they leave before ten. "Saturday afternoon at Kroger is a bloodbath," he said, jingling the keys.

They stopped first at the hardware store for a furnace filter, because the old one had turned the color of a paper bag. Dana held it up to the fluorescent light in aisle six while Marcus compared MERV ratings on his phone, and they settled on the middle option, the way they usually did.

At the grocery store, they split up. Marcus took the perimeter—chicken thighs on sale, a carton of eggs he opened and inspected, two pounds of Honeycrisps. Dana handled the interior aisles and texted him a photo of two brands of black beans with the message *which one do you actually like*. He wrote back *the one with the yellow label*, which was not helpful, since both had yellow labels, so she bought the cheaper one.

They found each other again near the deli. Dana had picked up a rotisserie chicken they hadn't planned on, and Marcus didn't say anything about it, which she noticed and appreciated. In line, they debated whether they needed more paper towels. They did not. They bought them anyway.

The car was warm. Marcus drove; Dana ate a handful of the almonds she'd bought and put the receipt in the glove compartment with all the others.

At home they carried everything in two trips, and Dana started the laundry while Marcus swapped the furnace filter, kneeling in the hallway with his shoulders wedged into the closet. When he came out there was dust on his forearm.

"Lunch," he said.

"There's a whole chicken."

"There is," he agreed, sounding pleased with himself, and washed his hands at the kitchen sink.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company, but Marcus was the one who carried it into the store, folded twice and tucked in his shirt pocket like a ticket he might need to produce.

"Cart or basket?" he asked.

"Cart. We need the litter."

Saturday morning at the Hy-Vee on Ashland meant the aisles were half-blocked by people considering yogurt. Dana went ahead to produce and started pressing avocados with her thumb, setting aside the ones that gave too easily. Marcus watched her do this for a while, then wandered to the bulk bins and came back with a bag of pistachios he hadn't been asked to get.

"We have pistachios."

"We had pistachios."

She let it go. They worked through the list in the order the store imposed rather than the order she'd written it, which annoyed her slightly every single week and which she had stopped mentioning around year three. Marcus reached the high shelf for the good olive oil. Dana vetoed the good olive oil in favor of the one on sale, and Marcus put it back without comment because it was, in fact, seven dollars more.

At the deli counter they waited behind a man ordering a quarter pound each of four different things. Marcus checked his phone. Dana looked at the rotisserie chickens and decided against one.

"Did we get bread?"

"You have it. Under the paper towels."

Checkout took eleven minutes. In the parking lot the wind had picked up, and Dana held the cart while Marcus loaded the trunk, arranging bags so the eggs sat upright in the corner. On the way home they stopped at the hardware store for furnace filters and a package of picture hangers, and Marcus said they should really get the gutters done before it snowed. Dana said she'd been saying that since August.


The list was Diane's, but Marcus held it, because Diane always lost track of paper the moment she got a cart in her hands.

"Bananas," he read.

"I saw them." She was already three steps ahead, turning a bunch over, checking the undersides for those brown flecks that meant they'd be mush by Wednesday. "These are too green."

"You said green was better. Last time."

"Last time we were going out of town." She put them in anyway, then added a second bunch. "Your mother eats a banana every morning."

"She's not coming until the eighth."

"She'll be here Thursday. She moved it."

Marcus looked up from the list. "When did that happen?"

"Tuesday. I told you in the car."

He didn't remember, but he'd learned that arguing about what he'd been told in the car was a losing proposition. He crossed off *bananas* and moved down. Coffee, paper towels, the chicken thighs that were on sale if you bought two packages.

They split up in the middle aisles, the way they always did, and found each other again near the dairy case. Diane had a container of the yogurt Marcus liked and a bag of shredded cheese she hadn't asked about. Marcus had olives, which weren't on the list.

"Really?"

"They're for me. I'm allowed one unauthorized item."

"That's not a rule."

"It's my rule."

At the register the total came out higher than either of them expected, and Diane made the small noise she made about prices now, a sound like air let out of a tire. Marcus loaded the bags into the trunk over the case of seltzer they'd bought two weeks ago and never brought inside.

On the way home they stopped for gas and dropped off the dry cleaning, and Marcus said they should look at the gutters this afternoon, and Diane said they should, in the tone that meant neither of them would.


The alarm didn't go off, because it was Saturday, and so Dana and Miguel slept until nearly nine. She got up first and started the coffee. He came down twenty minutes later in the gray sweatpants with the bleach stain, holding the list they'd started on the fridge whiteboard Thursday night.

"We need dish soap," he said. "And I used the last of the trash bags."

"Write it down or we'll forget again."

They did the laundry first because the machine took an hour and forty minutes and they'd learned to start it before leaving. Miguel sorted; Dana pretreated the collar of his good work shirt with the stick that never quite worked. Then he swept the kitchen while she wiped down the counters and cleared the mail pile, which had gotten out of hand — two credit card offers, a wedding invitation from her cousin, a coupon booklet neither of them would open.

The grocery store at eleven was crowded. Dana pushed the cart; Miguel walked ahead, checking his phone against the shelf tags.

"Are we getting the good yogurt or the cheap yogurt?"

"Cheap. The good one goes bad before we eat it."

They disagreed briefly about tomatoes — she wanted the vine ones, he thought they were overpriced — and settled on a compromise nobody was thrilled with. In the cereal aisle he put a box of Frosted Flakes in the cart, and she looked at him, and he left it there.

The line was long. They talked about whether to drive to his mother's next weekend or the weekend after.

At home they carried in four bags each, one trip. Miguel started putting things away in the wrong places and Dana redirected him without much comment. The dryer buzzed. It was one-fifteen, and there was still the afternoon.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Michael had added three items in the margin: batteries, dish soap, something for Sunday. She held it up in the car and asked what "something for Sunday" meant.

"Dessert," he said. "Your mom's coming."

"Right." She folded the list into quarters and put it in her jacket pocket, the way she always did, the way that meant she'd have to unfold it eight times in the store.

They stopped at the hardware store first because it opened earlier and because the porch light had been out for two weeks. Michael stood in the lighting aisle comparing wattages while Dana wandered off and came back with a packet of tomato seeds she had no plan for.

"It's October," he said.

"For spring."

"We'll lose them."

"We might not." She put them in the cart anyway.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays are, carts nosing past each other at the ends of aisles. Dana took the left side, Michael the right, meeting in the middle with cans and cereal. He picked out apples one at a time, turning each over, and she told him he was being ridiculous, and he kept doing it. At the deli counter she took a number and they waited, not talking much, reading the specials board. Someone's kid was crying two aisles over.

Michael put a pie in the cart. Dana took it out and put in a different pie, key lime, because her mother didn't like apple. He didn't argue.

In the parking lot the wind had come up and the cart wanted to roll. He held it while she loaded bags into the trunk, and then they drove home with the radio on low, the seeds rattling loose somewhere under the seat, both of them thinking, separately, about lunch.


The list was Marcus's idea, but Dana was the one who kept adding to it, scrawling "sponges" and "coffee filters" in the margin while he backed the car out of the driveway.

The hardware store came first. Marcus needed a new washer for the bathroom faucet, which had been dripping since Tuesday in a rhythm Dana swore she could hear from the bedroom. She wandered the aisles while he asked a clerk about O-ring sizes, and came back with a packet of tulip bulbs.

"It's October," Marcus said.

"That's when you plant them."

He didn't argue. He'd learned that arguing about bulbs was a losing proposition.

At the grocery store, they split up. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles and the meat counter. This was efficient in theory and rarely in practice, because Marcus always texted her a photo of two nearly identical jars of pasta sauce and waited for a verdict. She wrote back *the one on the left* without really looking, and he bought the one on the right anyway, because it was cheaper.

They met near the frozen foods. Dana had found the good bread, the seeded kind that sold out by noon, and she held it up like a trophy. Marcus put it in the cart under the paper towels so it wouldn't get crushed.

The checkout line moved slowly. A woman ahead of them was disputing a coupon. Dana leaned against the cart handle, reading the tabloid headlines aloud in a flat voice until Marcus laughed and told her to stop.

At home, they unloaded together. Dana handed things up from the bags; Marcus put them away, mostly in the right places. Then he went to the bathroom with his little paper packet of washers, and she went out back with the tulip bulbs and a trowel, and the afternoon went on like that.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus was the one who insisted on the hardware store first, because the kitchen faucet had been dripping for eleven days and he'd finally admitted he needed a new cartridge, not just tighter fittings.

"You said last weekend it was the washer," Dana said in the truck.

"It was the washer. It was also the cartridge."

At the hardware store he stood in aisle six holding two small boxes, comparing part numbers against a photo on his phone while Dana wandered off and came back with a bag of birdseed and a paint sample card she'd carried around for twenty minutes before putting back.

Groceries came after. Dana pushed the cart because Marcus drifted; he'd stop dead in front of the cereal and read the side of a box like it was a legal document. They split the list at the produce section — she took vegetables and dairy, he took the middle aisles and the deli counter, where he waited eight minutes for a half pound of turkey and texted her a photo of a sale on ground coffee.

*Get two,* she wrote back.

They reconvened by the frozen foods. He'd gotten the wrong tortillas, the flour ones, and she looked at them and then at him and decided it wasn't worth walking back. The self-checkout scanner refused to read the barcode on the birdseed three times before an employee came over and typed the number in.

At home they carried the bags in through the garage in two trips. Dana put things away while Marcus knelt under the sink with a wrench and a towel, swearing quietly at a nut that wouldn't turn. It took him forty minutes. When he finally stood up and ran the tap, the dripping had stopped.

"Listen," he said.

Dana came over, wiped her hands on her jeans, and listened to nothing at all.

"Huh," she said. "Look at that."


The list was on the refrigerator, held there by a magnet shaped like a lobster from a trip to Maine they'd taken four years ago. Dana pulled it down, glanced at Marcus's handwriting crowding the bottom half, and frowned.

"Since when do you need protein powder?"

"Since I started going to the gym at lunch." He was pulling on his shoes by the door, the ones with the broken lace he kept meaning to replace. "Two weeks now."

"You didn't tell me that."

"I told you Tuesday. You were watching that show about the bakery."

That was probably true. She folded the list into her back pocket and grabbed her keys.

They stopped at the hardware store first, for furnace filters and a can of touch-up paint for the spot on the hallway wall where the doorknob had punched through. Marcus wanted to look at grills. Dana let him look for eleven minutes, then said his name once, and he followed her out.

The grocery store on Saturday morning was a slow-moving disaster. Dana took the left side of the aisle, Marcus the right. They'd done this so many times it required no discussion — she got produce and dairy, he got the cereal and the things in cans. They met at the meat counter.

"They're out of the chicken thighs you like," he said.

"The bone-in?"

"All of it. There's a sale on pork."

She considered this longer than the situation warranted, then said fine, pork, and put two packages in the cart.

At the register the total was more than either of them expected, which was true most weeks now. In the parking lot Marcus loaded bags into the trunk while Dana returned the cart, and neither of them said anything about the heat, or the price of things, or the grill.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three items at the bottom in block letters: BATTERIES, TAPE, THE GOOD COFFEE.

"The good coffee is four dollars more," Dana said in the car, reading it over.

"It's four dollars more because it's good."

They stopped at the hardware store first, because it closed at noon and the grocery store didn't. Marcus wanted a specific kind of washer for the bathroom faucet, which had been dripping since Thanksgiving. He held up two identical-looking rubber rings and Dana said she genuinely couldn't tell the difference, so he bought both, plus a roll of plumber's tape and a box of drywall anchors he insisted they'd need eventually.

At the grocery store, they split up. This was their system. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles and the meat counter. They met near the frozen section, comparing carts like generals reviewing troops.

"You got the strawberries," she said.

"They were on sale."

"They're going to go bad by Tuesday."

"Then we'll eat them by Tuesday."

She put a bag of frozen peas on top of them anyway, so they wouldn't get crushed. At checkout, Marcus bagged while Dana paid, and the cashier asked if they had a rewards card, and Dana said the number out loud from memory, all ten digits, the way she always did.

They unloaded the car in two trips. Marcus put things away wrong — cereal on the wrong shelf, eggs in the door — and Dana quietly fixed it while he went to look at the faucet. She heard the water shut off under the sink, then a long silence, then the tap running clean and steady.

"Fixed?" she called.

"Fixed."

She started the strawberries in a colander, rinsing them under cold water, and thought she'd probably make something with them before Tuesday after all.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three items at the bottom in block letters: BATTERIES, TAPE, THE GOOD COFFEE. He held it against the steering wheel at the stoplight on Fremont, squinting.

"The good coffee is four dollars more," Dana said.

"The other stuff tastes like a penny."

They stopped at the hardware store first because it closed at two on Saturdays. Marcus wanted a specific washer for the bathroom faucet that had been dripping since Thanksgiving. He'd brought the old one in a sandwich bag. Dana wandered off toward the paint chips and came back with four grays fanned out like a poker hand.

"For the hallway," she said.

"They're identical."

"This one's warm. This one's basically blue."

He looked at them, then at her, and took the warm one and put it in his shirt pocket.

The grocery store was crowded in the way it always was at eleven-thirty. Dana pushed the cart and Marcus went ahead for produce, coming back with a cantaloupe he'd thumped and approved. They disagreed about bread — she wanted the seeded rye, he pointed out that she never finished the seeded rye — and settled on both. At the deli counter, Marcus took a number and they stood together watching the man in the paper hat slice turkey with the meditative slowness of someone who did not care about their number.

"We forgot the trash bags," Dana said in the checkout line, and Marcus jogged back for them, returning slightly out of breath, and she moved the divider bar for him.

In the parking lot, he loaded the trunk while she scraped a leaf off the windshield with her thumbnail. The washer was in his pocket next to the paint chip. He'd fix the faucet after lunch, probably. She said she'd hold the flashlight.


The list was Priya's, written on the back of an envelope in handwriting that only she could read. Daniel drove because he always drove, and because Priya liked to look out the window and comment on the neighborhood's new construction.

"They tore down the blue house," she said.

"They tore that down in March."

"Did they? I liked that house."

The hardware store came first. Daniel needed a new furnace filter and had opinions about MERV ratings that Priya found unnecessary but tolerated. She wandered to the garden section while he compared boxes, and came back with a small pot of basil she hadn't planned to buy.

"For the windowsill," she said.

"We killed the last one."

"You killed the last one. You overwatered it."

At the grocery store, they split the list, which they had learned years ago was faster and prevented the arguments that came from standing together in front of the yogurt. Priya took produce and dairy; Daniel took the middle aisles and the meat counter. They met near the bread, both slightly triumphant.

"They were out of the sourdough," Daniel said.

"There's a whole shelf of sourdough."

"Not the one you like."

She looked. He was right. They took a rye instead.

The checkout line was slow because the woman ahead of them was paying with a check, which Daniel found genuinely fascinating. Priya bagged. The total was more than they expected, as it always was, and Daniel said the thing he always said about how his mother used to feed five people on forty dollars a week.

At home they carried everything in two trips, and Priya put the basil on the kitchen windowsill above the sink while Daniel wrestled with the furnace filter in the hallway closet, swearing quietly at the bracket.

"You okay in there?"

"Fine."

"Do you want help?"

"No," he said, and then, a minute later, "Yes."


Saturday morning arrived gray and damp, the kind of October weather that made the coffee taste better. Ellen was already at the kitchen table with her laptop open, cross-referencing the pantry inventory she'd typed out in August with the list on her phone.

"We're out of olive oil," she said. "The good one and the cooking one."

Mark came in still wearing the shirt he'd slept in. "Both? How?"

"You made that pasta thing twice last week."

He conceded the point and went to shower. By nine-thirty they were in the Honda, heading first to the hardware store because the guest bathroom faucet had developed a drip that Mark had promised, in July, to fix. He came out with a washer kit and a bag of birdseed nobody had planned on.

"They're going to be gone by November," Ellen said.

"The finches stay."

The grocery store was crowded with people who'd had the same idea about beating the afternoon rush. Ellen took the cart and the list; Mark peeled off toward the deli counter for the number ticket, a division of labor that had evolved over eleven years without either of them ever discussing it. She met him in produce with a bag of gala apples, and he reported that the man ahead of him had ordered a half pound of six different things.

They disagreed briefly over cereal. Mark wanted the bran flakes with raisins. Ellen pointed out that he never finished a box of anything with raisins.

"Maybe I've changed."

"You haven't."

He put it in the cart anyway.

At the register, Ellen bagged while Mark loaded, and they discovered that they'd forgotten the olive oil entirely. He jogged back for it while she paid. In the parking lot, the rain had started, light and steady, and they loaded the trunk fast, laughing about nothing.


The list was Priya's, written on the back of an envelope in her tight, slanted hand, and Danny had already lost it twice between the driveway and the Safeway parking lot.

"Check your jacket," she said.

He checked his jacket. It was there, soft from the wash.

Inside, the store smelled like the rotisserie chickens turning behind glass. Priya took the cart because Danny steered it like a shopping cart in a dream, always drifting left. They started in produce. She pressed her thumb into an avocado and put it back, pressed another, kept it.

"Do we need cilantro?"

"You said last time we always buy cilantro and it goes bad."

"We do. It does." She took the cilantro anyway.

Danny wandered off toward the cereal and came back with a box of the sugary kind. He held it up, not quite asking.

"Fine," she said. "But you're eating it. Not the kids."

"We don't have kids."

"Exactly."

They argued mildly about brands of paper towels and agreed, as they always did, on the middle-priced ones. At the deli counter Danny took a number and they stood there together, saying nothing, watching a man in a hairnet slice turkey with enormous concentration. Priya leaned her shoulder against Danny's arm. He shifted to make room.

The line at checkout was four carts deep. Danny bagged while Priya paid, and he put the eggs in with the detergent, and she said his name in a certain way, and he moved the eggs.

Afterward they had the hardware store — furnace filters, a new washer for the leaking bathroom faucet — and the dry cleaner, where Priya's blue dress had been waiting eleven days.

At home they carried everything in from the car in two trips instead of the usual heroic one. Danny put the groceries away wrong. Priya rearranged half of them, quietly, and left the rest.


The list was Marcus's idea, written on the back of an envelope in his cramped handwriting. Dana squinted at it in the passenger seat while he backed out of the driveway.

"You wrote 'stuff for the thing,'" she said.

"The thing next weekend. Your sister's thing."

"That's helpful."

They hit the hardware store first, because it opened earlier and because Marcus had been complaining about the bathroom faucet for three weeks. He stood in aisle six holding two washers, comparing them against a photo on his phone. Dana wandered off and came back with a bag of tulip bulbs.

"It's October," he said.

"You plant them in October."

He didn't argue. She'd killed the last three things she'd planted, but the bulbs were four dollars.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always were, carts abandoned mid-aisle, a kid screaming near the bakery. Dana took the left side, Marcus the right. They'd worked out this system years ago without ever discussing it. She grabbed yogurt, spinach, the coffee he liked that cost too much. He got the meat and the cleaning supplies and stood too long in front of the cereal.

"I'm getting the sugary one," he announced when she found him.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."

At checkout, the total came to a hundred and forty-two dollars, which felt both outrageous and unremarkable. Marcus loaded the bags into the trunk while Dana returned the cart, and they drove home with the windows cracked because the car still smelled faintly like the rotisserie chicken.

Unloading took two trips. Dana put things away while Marcus went to fix the faucet, and she could hear him talking to himself under the sink, the particular tone he used when something wasn't going well.

"Do you need help?"

"No."

She poured herself a glass of water and waited. Twenty minutes later, he came out with wet sleeves and said it was fine now, and it was.


The Saturday list was written on the back of an envelope, in Dana's handwriting, which meant it included things like "call about the gutters" that Marcus would have forgotten.

They started at the hardware store because it opened at seven and the parking lot was still mostly empty. Marcus wanted a specific kind of drywall anchor for the bathroom towel bar that had pulled loose in September. Dana wandered off toward the paint chips and came back with four shades of green fanned out in her hand.

"For the guest room," she said.

"We're not painting the guest room."

"I'm not saying today."

He looked at them anyway. He pointed at the second one, and she put the rest back.

The grocery store was worse than the hardware store, crowded already, everybody with the same idea. Dana took the cart. Marcus took the list, which was a division of labor they'd never discussed and never changed. She read out the items and he crossed them off, and twice she put something in the cart that wasn't on the list at all — a bag of the ginger candy she liked, a rotisserie chicken because it was easier than cooking.

At the deli counter they waited eleven minutes for half a pound of turkey. Marcus checked the score on his phone. Dana leaned against the cart and looked at the pre-made pasta salads without any real intention.

"We need coffee," she said.

"It's on here."

"Is it? Then we need it and it's on there."

In the parking lot the cart wobbled. Marcus loaded the trunk while Dana returned it to the corral, jogging the last few steps because it was cold.

At home they put things away in a rhythm neither of them narrated. Then Marcus went upstairs with the anchors, and Dana called about the gutters, and got voicemail, and left a message.


Saturday morning came in gray and cool, and Miriam was awake before the alarm, listening to the radiator tick. Dev was still asleep, one arm thrown over his eyes. She let him have twenty more minutes while she made coffee and wrote out the list on the back of an envelope: milk, eggs, dish soap, the good bread if they have it.

By nine they were in the car, the windows fogging until Dev found the defrost. First stop was the hardware store for a furnace filter, which took longer than it should have because the sizes were all wrong and a man in an orange vest had to climb a ladder to find the twenty-by-twenty-fives. Miriam wandered to the paint chips and brought back three shades of green.

"For what?" Dev asked.

"For the bathroom. Eventually."

"Eventually," he agreed, and took the chips from her and put them in his coat pocket.

The grocery store was crowded. Dev pushed the cart while Miriam navigated, crossing things off with a pen she'd found in the console. They argued mildly about whether they already had enough rice at home. They did not agree about the yogurt. In the produce section Dev held up a pineapple and Miriam said no, they never actually eat those, and he put it back with visible regret. At the register the total was more than they expected, as it always was now, and they said so to each other on the way out, the way people do.

At home they carried the bags up in two trips. Dev put the filter in while Miriam unpacked, calling out where things went when he asked. Then he made sandwiches and they ate standing at the counter, and afterward she found the paint chips in his coat and taped all three to the bathroom wall.


The list was Denise's, written in blue ink on the back of an envelope, but Marcus was the one holding it when they walked into the store.

"Tomatoes," he read. "It just says tomatoes. How many?"

"Six. Roma ones, not the big slicing kind."

He picked through the bin while she went for the bagged salad. They had learned, over eleven years, to split up in the produce section and meet near the dairy case. It saved maybe four minutes, which mattered on a Saturday when the store was full of people pushing carts with the aimless drift of the recently woken.

At the deli counter, Denise took a paper number and stood watching the man ahead of her order a quarter pound of olive loaf, which she had never seen anyone actually buy. Marcus came up behind her with the cart.

"They didn't have the coffee," he said.

"The dark roast?"

"Any of it. Whole shelf, empty."

"That's strange." She took the wrapped turkey from the counter and set it in the cart. "We can stop at the other place."

They didn't stop at the other place. By the time they had loaded the trunk and driven home and carried everything up the porch steps in two trips, it was almost one, and the coffee could wait until Monday.

Marcus put the cold things away while Denise dealt with the recycling that had been piling up beside the back door. She flattened boxes with her foot. He found a jar of pickles behind the milk that had expired in March and held it up.

"Ours?"

"Must be."

"How is that possible?"

"Throw it out."

He threw it out. Later they would take the car in for an oil change, and then there was the matter of the gutters, but for a few minutes they just stood in the kitchen, not talking, folding the paper bags flat for next time.


Saturday morning arrived gray and damp, and Marcus was already awake, sorting through the mail that had piled up on the kitchen counter all week. Junk, junk, electric bill, a wedding invitation from his cousin in Ohio.

"We should RSVP to that," Jenny said, coming in with her hair still wet from the shower. She poured coffee into the travel mug she'd been using since grad school, the one with the chipped handle.

"Later. Do we need to hit the hardware store first or Kroger?"

"Hardware. If we do groceries first, the milk sits in the car."

At Ace, Marcus stood in the plumbing aisle holding two different washers up to the light while Jenny read the packaging on a bag of ice melt. The faucet in the guest bathroom had been dripping since November. He bought both washers and a can of WD-40 he wasn't sure they needed.

The grocery store was crowded with other Saturday people. Jenny pushed the cart, consulting a list on her phone that she'd been building all week. Marcus wandered off toward the cereal and came back with something with marshmallows in it.

"We're forty-one," she said.

"So?"

She let him keep it. They argued mildly about whether they already had enough olive oil at home—Marcus was certain they did, Jenny wasn't—and compromised by buying a small bottle. In the produce section, she made him smell three cantaloupes before selecting one. At checkout, the card reader rejected Marcus's debit card twice before working.

Back home, they unloaded the car in two trips. Jenny put away the cold things while Marcus flattened the paper bags for recycling. Then he went upstairs with the washers and a wrench, and she sat down at the kitchen table with the wedding invitation and a pen, trying to remember her cousin-in-law's actual name.


Saturday morning had that particular gray light that made it impossible to tell whether it was seven or ten. Dana found out it was 8:40 when she finally checked her phone, and by then Marcus was already in the kitchen, running water over the previous night's pans.

"We're out of coffee filters," he said. "I used a paper towel."

"That works?"

"Sort of." He handed her a mug. It tasted faintly of paper towel.

They made the list together at the table, which was really Dana writing while Marcus opened cabinets and called out gaps. Rice, yes. Olive oil, almost. The good mustard, which was not actually good, just the one they'd bought for years.

The Kroger on Belmont was busy in the way it always was on Saturdays, full of people moving slowly and apologizing to each other. Marcus took the cart because he liked to lean on it. Dana went ahead into produce and came back with two heads of broccoli, and he made a face.

"We didn't eat the last one."

"We will this time."

"You said that."

She put one back.

At the deli counter they waited eleven minutes behind a woman ordering four different cheeses sliced four different ways. Marcus took out his phone and read the news; Dana read the ingredient list on a box of crackers she had no intention of buying. When their number came up they got a pound of turkey and left.

The bill came to eighty-three dollars, more than they expected, though it always was. In the parking lot the wind had picked up. Marcus loaded bags while Dana returned the cart, and on the way home they stopped at the hardware store for a furnace filter and a package of light bulbs, and then, because it was on the corner, for coffee filters.


The list had been magneted to the refrigerator since Wednesday, accumulating items in two different handwritings. Dana's were block letters: MILK, PAPER TOWELS, THAT BREAD. Theo's were cramped and slanted: coffee filters, batteries (AA? check drawer), birthday card for mom.

They left the house at nine-fifteen, later than Dana wanted. Theo drove because he always drove, and she read the list aloud at the first red light, which he found unnecessary since he'd written half of it.

"We should do the hardware store first," he said. "It's on the way, and I want to get the right size furnace filter this time."

"You said that in March."

"And I was wrong in March. That's why I'm bringing the old one."

It was in the back seat, gray with dust in its cardboard frame, which Dana had objected to on the grounds that it would shed all over the upholstery. It did. At the hardware store Theo held it up against the shelf display for a long minute while Dana wandered to the paint chips and brought back three greens for the guest bathroom, none of which he could distinguish from each other.

The grocery store was crowded. Dana took the cart and the left side of the aisles; Theo took the list and the right. They lost each other twice near the deli. He came back with a rotisserie chicken they hadn't discussed and she didn't argue, because it was Saturday and neither of them wanted to cook. At the register she remembered the birthday card and went to get one while he bagged, choosing something with a dog on it that his mother would like.

In the parking lot the cart wanted to pull left. Theo loaded the trunk in a specific order he refused to explain. Dana got in and turned the radio down before he could turn it up.

They were home by eleven-thirty.


The list was Maren's, but David was the one who insisted on the coupons.

"They expire tomorrow," he said, spreading them across the kitchen table like a hand of cards. "Two dollars off the coffee. That's not nothing."

"That's not nothing," Maren agreed, pulling her hair back. "But you have to actually buy the brand on the coupon this time."

They dropped the recycling at the curb first, then swung by the hardware store for a furnace filter, because David had been saying for three weeks that the vents smelled like dust. He stood in the aisle comparing MERV ratings while Maren wandered to the paint chips and brought back four shades of green for the guest room, none of which they were going to use.

At the grocery store, they split up. Maren took produce and dairy; David took the middle aisles and the coffee. She texted him a photo of two brands of yogurt with the caption *?* and he texted back *the one your mother likes* and she bought the other one.

They met near the deli counter. He had the wrong coffee. He also had a bag of pretzel rods that hadn't been on the list.

"Those weren't on the list."

"They were on my list," he said.

The self-checkout flagged them twice for unexpected items in the bagging area, and a teenager in a green vest came over both times and waved a badge without looking up. Maren loaded the trunk while David returned the cart, jogging it back to the corral because the parking lot sloped and the carts got away from you.

At home they unpacked in the usual order: freezer, fridge, pantry. David changed the furnace filter, holding the old one at arm's length, dust drifting.

"That's disgusting," Maren said from the doorway, eating a pretzel rod.

"I told you," he said, pleased.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a receipt in her cramped, hurried handwriting, and Marcus kept losing his place on it.

"Did we get the yogurt?" he asked, steering the cart around a woman studying two nearly identical boxes of crackers.

"Second aisle. You put it in yourself."

He checked. There it was, four containers, plain and full-fat because Dana claimed the low-fat kind tasted like drywall. "Okay. Bread, then."

They'd already been to the hardware store for a furnace filter and a pack of picture hooks, and to the pharmacy, where the line had been eight people deep and Dana had gotten irritated about it in a way she recognized as unreasonable while it was happening. Marcus had waited without comment, reading the ingredients on a bag of cough drops.

At the deli counter she ordered a half pound of turkey and he wandered off toward the cheese, which was how it always went. She found him holding a wedge of something expensive.

"For what occasion?" she said.

"No occasion. It's eleven dollars."

"That's not nothing."

He put it back, not sulking, and picked up the block of cheddar they always bought. She felt a small pang and almost told him to get the other one, but they were saving for the roof, and anyway he'd already moved on to asking whether they needed coffee filters.

They did. He was right about that.

The self-checkout misread the scale twice and an employee named Priya came over with her key card, apologetic, and Dana said no problem, it happens, while Marcus bagged.

In the parking lot the wind had picked up. He loaded the trunk; she pushed the cart to the corral, an unspoken division of labor twelve years old now. Driving home, Dana read the receipt.

"A hundred and forty-two."

"That's not bad."

"That's not bad," she agreed, and turned on the radio.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus was the one who kept losing it.

"Check your back pocket," she said from the passenger seat, and there it was, folded into a damp square from the walk out to the car. He smoothed it against the steering wheel. Milk, eggs, coffee, the good bread from the bakery counter, dish soap, something for dinner Thursday. Dana had added *cat litter???* in the margin, three question marks, because they could never remember if they'd bought it the week before.

They stopped at the hardware store first for a furnace filter, because Marcus had been saying he'd change it since October and it was now the second week of February. He stood in the aisle holding two sizes, squinting, while Dana pulled up a photo on her phone of the old filter's edge. Sixteen by twenty-five. They bought two.

The grocery store was crowded in the way it always was on Saturdays around eleven, carts nose to nose in the produce section. Dana took the left side of the store, Marcus the right, a system they'd worked out years ago and never discussed again. He texted her a photo of two brands of pasta sauce. She replied with a thumbs up and no clarification, which meant either was fine.

At the register, Dana bagged while Marcus loaded the belt. He put the eggs on last, on purpose, and she noticed and didn't say anything.

In the parking lot he took the cart back to the corral even though there was a woman waiting to take it off his hands, because he liked the little walk. Dana turned the car on and sat with the heat blowing on her knuckles.

They were home by twelve-thirty. The litter, it turned out, they had not needed.


The list was on the refrigerator, held there by a magnet shaped like Wisconsin, and Dana had already crossed off half of it before nine.

"We're out of coffee filters," she called from the kitchen.

Mark was in the hallway, wrestling the vacuum cord back into its housing. "I thought we bought a box."

"We bought the wrong size. Cone versus basket."

"That was you."

"That was definitely me," she agreed.

They took his car because hers needed an oil change, which was itself on the list, further down, in the section of things that would probably wait until next weekend. At the hardware store Mark spent eleven minutes comparing furnace filters while Dana stood in the paint aisle looking at swatches for a bathroom they had not agreed to repaint. She brought back three cards. He said the beige one looked like a hospital. She put two of them in her purse anyway.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturday mornings always were, carts angling around the produce tables. Dana handled the vegetables. Mark took the cart and the coupons on his phone, which never scanned correctly. They separated at the halfway point—she went for the dairy case, he went for cereal and the coffee filters, basket-style, which he photographed against the coffee maker's manual just to be sure. They met again near the deli counter. He had gotten sourdough instead of rye.

"It's fine," she said. "We'll make grilled cheese."

The line at checkout took twelve minutes. In the parking lot the sun had come out and warmed the inside of the car, and the eggs went on the floor of the back seat so nothing would crush them.

At home they carried everything in two trips. Dana put the cold things away. Mark broke down the boxes for recycling and then, because it was still early, changed the furnace filter, which had been on the list since March.


The list was on the refrigerator, held there by a magnet shaped like a lobster, and Dana pulled it down while Ray finished his coffee at the sink.

"We need milk," he said.

"It's on there. Twice, actually. I wrote it Wednesday and forgot."

They took his car because hers was low on gas and neither of them wanted to deal with that first. The drive to the hardware store took eleven minutes. Dana waited in the aisle while Ray compared two furnace filters, holding them up to the fluorescent lights as though he might see something through them.

"Twenty-inch," she said.

"I know. I'm looking at the MERV rating."

"You've never once looked at the MERV rating."

He bought the cheaper one. Outside, the parking lot was bright and cold, and a man in a reflective vest was collecting carts in a long clattering chain.

At the grocery store, they split up. Ray took the left side—produce, deli, bread—and Dana took the right, and they met near the eggs the way they always did, comparing carts like a customs inspection. He'd bought a pineapple that wasn't on the list.

"It looked good," he said.

"It's February."

"It looked good in February."

She let it stay. In the checkout line, she remembered they were out of dish soap and went back for it while he loaded the belt, arranging things by category, cold with cold, because he could not help himself. The total was ninety-four dollars and change, more than they'd expected, which was true most weeks.

At home they carried everything in in two trips, and Ray put away the frozen things first while Dana broke down the cardboard for recycling. The filter sat on the basement stairs, where it would remain until Sunday, or possibly the following Saturday, and they both knew it, and neither of them said so.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three items at the bottom in ballpoint: batteries, dish soap, "the good coffee not the cheap one."

They left the house at nine-forty, later than they'd meant to, because Marcus had gotten stuck under the kitchen sink trying to find the source of a slow drip. He'd emerged with a wet sleeve and no answer.

"Hardware first," he said in the car. "I need a washer. Maybe two."

"Then groceries, then the dry cleaner's before it closes at one."

At the hardware store, Dana wandered the aisle of houseplants while Marcus consulted a man in an orange apron about faucet cartridges. She came back with a small pothos in a plastic pot.

"That wasn't on the list," Marcus said.

"Neither was the level you're holding."

"I've needed a level for four years."

The grocery store was crowded. They split up—Dana took produce and dairy, Marcus took the middle aisles—and reconvened by the bread, comparing carts like scouts returning from opposite ends of a territory.

"They were out of the whole bean," Marcus said. "I got ground."

"That's fine."

"It's not the same."

"It's fine, Marcus."

At the checkout, Dana realized they'd forgotten eggs. She went back for them while Marcus loaded the belt, and the cashier asked if they were finding everything all right, and Marcus said yes, mostly.

The dry cleaner's was closed for a family emergency, according to a sign taped inside the glass. They stood there a second, looking at it.

"Monday, then," Dana said.

At home they unloaded in two trips. Marcus put the frozen things away first, which Dana appreciated and did not mention. Then he crawled back under the sink with a wrench and the new washers while she washed the pothos's leaves in the other basin, water running warm over her wrists, the drip finally, audibly, stopping.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added things at the bottom in his cramped block letters: BATTERIES (AA), TRASH BAGS, THE GOOD COFFEE.

"The good coffee is four dollars more," Dana said in the car.

"That's why I specified."

They stopped at the hardware store first because it closed early on weekends and because the bathroom faucet had developed a drip that Marcus insisted was a washer and Dana suspected was something worse. He came out with a small paper bag and a receipt he folded into his wallet, which meant he was serious about returning it if he was wrong.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturday grocery stores always are, with people standing in front of the yogurt as if it required contemplation. Dana pushed the cart. Marcus went off for produce and came back with a bag of oranges she hadn't asked for.

"They were on sale."

"We still have oranges."

"Not these oranges."

She let it go. In the cereal aisle they debated the merits of buying the store brand and settled it the way they usually did, which was by putting both boxes in the cart. Marcus remembered the batteries. Dana remembered they needed dish soap, which was not on the list at all, and felt briefly triumphant about it.

At checkout, the total was more than either of them expected. Marcus bagged while Dana paid, and they got everything into the trunk in one trip, which Dana counted as a small victory.

At home they put things away, mostly in the wrong places, and Marcus went to look at the faucet. Twenty minutes later he came into the kitchen with wet sleeves and said the washer had been the problem after all, which Dana chose not to argue with, since the dripping had stopped.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company, but Marcus was the one who held it in the car, reading items aloud at stoplights.

"Coffee. Not the dark roast, the medium. The one in the green bag."

"I know which one," Dana said, though last time she had come home with the dark roast and he'd drunk it anyway, complaining pleasantly for a week.

They stopped at the hardware store first, because it opened at eight and the parking lot on Saturday was a war zone by ten. Marcus needed a replacement washer for the kitchen faucet, which had developed a drip that Dana claimed she could hear from the bedroom. He stood in the plumbing aisle a long time, comparing two nearly identical packages, while she wandered off and came back with a bag of tulip bulbs.

"It's April," he said.

"They were half off."

At the grocery store, they split up. Dana took the produce and dairy; Marcus took the aisles, which he moved through in a straight line, in order, the way he did everything. They met near the frozen section, comparing carts like men comparing catch. She had bought grapes and a rotisserie chicken. He had bought the medium roast.

"Did you get bread?"

"You had bread on there twice," he said. "So I got two."

The checkout line moved slowly. A woman ahead of them was arguing about a coupon. Dana leaned against the cart, tired already, and Marcus put his hand on the small of her back, absently, the way you'd rest a hand on a table.

In the car, the bags shifted in the trunk with every turn. At home they carried everything in two trips, and Dana put the tulip bulbs on the counter, where they stayed for eleven days.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a receipt in handwriting only she could read.

"What's this word?" Marcus asked, squinting at it in the passenger seat.

"Cilantro."

"That's not what that says. That says 'cilonte.'"

"Then it says cilantro."

The Kroger on Halstead was busy for eleven in the morning, the parking lot full of people who'd had the same idea about beating the afternoon rush and had all arrived simultaneously. Marcus took the cart. He always took the cart, and he always steered it with one hand while looking at something else, which was why they'd nearly hit a display of Halloween candy already out in September.

They moved through produce with the efficiency of eleven years of practice. Dana squeezed avocados. Marcus stood a little behind her with his phone out, checking whether they still had rice at home.

"We have rice," he said. "We have a lot of rice. Why do we have four bags of rice?"

"Because you keep buying rice."

"I buy rice because you tell me we're out of rice."

"I say we're low on rice."

In the cereal aisle they disagreed briefly about whether the good granola was worth eight dollars. Dana put it in the cart. Marcus took it out. Dana put it back and said, "It's my granola. You don't eat it," and that was the end of it.

At the register, the woman ahead of them had a coupon situation. Marcus read the tabloid headlines. Dana bagged, because the bagger was slow and she couldn't stand watching it.

They loaded the trunk in the sun. Marcus took the cart back to the corral, which was farther away than it needed to be, and Dana watched him jog it over and jog back, and thought, not for the first time, that he had a stupid run.

Then the dry cleaner, and then home.