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The
Dixie cup was a brand-name paper cup. It was quite small and came in many colours
with a matching dispenser. The Dixie company encouraged the notion of a
different-coloured dispenser in each room in the house. We had yellow in the
kitchen, blue in the bedrooms and, rather shockingly, the all-new avocado in
the bathroom. If you wanted a glass of water or a glass of anything in any room
you simply reached for a Dixie cup, used it and threw it away.
    Quite
often Mother had drinks for no reason at all, so if we shopped, when we
shopped, we always stacked the trolley high with multi-coloured cups. About
twice a week Mother would make the effort to be up and out before the banks
closed and we would go to town. It was a small circuit that we did. First to
Johnny on the Spot, the dry cleaner, to collect Father’s shirts, where I got a
free Bazooka bubblegum. Then on to the A&P supermarket, which Mother
patronized because you got free pink and white dinner plates with any purchase
over $10. She would let me buy Oreo cookies and Kool Aid in different flavours
just to make sure we got the plate. It wasn’t long before we had enough plates
for twenty people to be able to drop in unexpectedly for dinner but they never
did. I liked the A&P because of the fruit and vegetable man, Alfonso.
    Alfonso
wore a red apron, a white short-sleeved shirt and the obligatory small black
bow tie. He was very thin with a crew-cut, which made him look like a pencil
with a rubber on the end. Alfonso was quite old by then. He had lines all over
his face like one of his prunes but he smiled all the time. A sort of grandfather
but without the beard or the rocking chair. He was a man happy in his work, for
Alfonso loved fruit.
    ‘It’s a
wonderful world of fruit, Dorothy,’ he would say, letting me polish some of the
apples with a special cloth. ‘Look at this banana. See this label? That came
from a banana tree in the Caribbean. Can you imagine that? That little yellow
fruit has travelled further to be with us in Sassaspaneck than I have in my
whole life. The Caribbean. Why, they have pirates and palm trees there and
everything.’
    Alfonso
stroked the Caribbean product as if it had been entrusted to him by Pirate Pete
himself He laid the yellow offering back on his regimented display and carefully
picked up an apple. He smiled at me. It was a big-toothed smile. Probably from
so much healthy eating. He stood polishing the apple on his apron with pride
while I did another one with a cloth.
    ‘Did
you go to the zoo yet?’ He leaned confidentially toward me. ‘I do the fruit for
the zoo, you know. Miss Strange used to come in for it but now I go out there.’
He stood to attention as the manager strode past. Alfonso smiled another flash
of teeth and straightened a pineapple before going on. ‘Used to be the main
attraction in town. People came from miles around to see the Glorious Burroughs
Animal Collection. Even after the shoe plant closed down it kept us on the map
for a while. Now pretty much no one is interested. TV, that’s what did it. I
think sometimes families go to the zoo on Labor Day or something, but that’s
about it. That don’t mean the animals don’t have to eat. Every Tuesday, out I
go with the fruit. Course, it’s not as exciting as it used to be. Nothing
really escapes any more. You know, when I was a young man I was going home from
work one evening and a polar bear come right up Amherst Avenue. You see, Mr
Burroughs, John Junior, he was back from one of his trips. He was always travelling.
Seen more fruit growing round the world than I have here on my stand. So he’d
got this polar bear and he thought he would take it fishing down at the river.
It seems people used to do it all the time.’ Alfonso moved a grapefruit for
emphasis. ‘You know, Miss Strange told me, Henry the Third of England, he kept
a polar bear in his menagerie way back in the thirteenth century. He often took
it down to that Thames River in London to catch