Clean-Up on Aisle 7

by Courtney Pierce

For those of you who have read The Dushane Sisters Trilogy, you probably know my Mom nearly as well as I do. Yep, that’s her, fictional Ellen Dushane, along with all the stories about her that I wove into the prose. Mom has a wicked sense of humor, of which I took supreme advantage when I got her permission to kill her off in the first ten pages of The Executrix. In exchange for this tiny favor, I promised Mom that her spirit would loom large as the primary character across all three books: The Executrix, Indigo Lake, and Indigo Legacy. 

I kept my word. The three middle-age sisters have a field day memorializing their dead mother, with three very different views of their history.

Real Mom is 85 now, and even though she has a health wrap sheet as long your arm—heart surgery, cancer, diabetes, neuropathy, and a host of synthetic replacement veins—she keeps going like that cymbal-banging Duracell rabbit. When the time comes, she’ll be 100% recyclable, a poster child for the Green New Deal.

Mom’s a staunch New Englander, born and raised in Tuftenboro, New Hampshire. Yankees can hold a life-long grudge over insignificant things, like not returning Tupperware from decades ago. She still has a Down East accent where steps are “stayuhs” and driveways are “doh-yahds”. Pronouncing Rs is not part of her vernacular.

Looking back, my teen years were full of special moments with Mom. Every week we'd sink down into fuzzy orange beanbag chairs (gotta love early 70s decor) with a bowl of popcorn to watch an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. It was just a Mom and me thing. We'd laugh and laugh at the silly walks, silly voices, and silly situations, like slapfests and the impromptu Spanish Inquisition.

Oh . . . and here's a good one.

Imagine Mom’s delight when she discovered Liquid Paper! At the age of 64, she altered the

year on her tattered birth certificate to make herself 65, because she wanted senior discounts. At the age of 70, she clumped the fluid again to make herself 75 to get a free Thanksgiving turkey at the grocery store. When she brought home the bird, acting like she’d won the lottery, we informed her that the turkey was intended to be donated to a less fortunate family. The kicker was that she didn’t need to show her birth certificate at all. She felt guilty, so back to the store we went with her short-lived prize.

At the age of 78, she globbed on the correction fluid again to make herself 80. She thought it would seal the deal for getting a handicapped parking tag at the DMV. My sisters and I quibbled over which one of us would hold the precious access to a great parking space. You see, Mom was a 1950s housewife who never learned to drive. Little did we know that the laminated tag would equate to a life sentence as an unpaid Uber driver. My sisters and I ended up arguing over who would NOT hold the tag.

Which brings me to the next Mom ditty.

Mom is not a qualified operator of any form of machinery. However, the lone exception is the motorized scooter at the grocery store. That calamity cart is hers and, if it’s not available, she’ll send the clerk into the depths of the store to find one. Scooter cop. Mom assesses those using them as to whether they really need it or not. If she suspects it’s being used as a lazy wagon, then “Katie bah the door,” as she often says.

Photo: 7th St Medical Supply

Once Mom is behind the go-levers, she’s off and running at full-tilt-boogie. I’m helpless to keep up with her. She becomes a blurred image as she rounds the corner to the freezer section. She even leans into the turn with grace and style. I swear she tries to ditch me to instigate a chase. 

And when I hear a series of back-up beeps—some loud, some faint—they act like a GPS as she Pac-Mans around the store. I can drill down to her exact location when the beeps are followed by a store-wide announcement:

“Can we get a clean-up on aisle seven?” the overhead speaker booms.

On this particular clean-up occasion, I erupted into a full run to aisle seven before Mom could flee the scene in her getaway vehicle. An end-cap tower of Cap’n Crunch boxes had collapsed like scaffolding in Times Square.

“Oh, Lord. Mom, what did you do?” I said, out of breath. I offered her my best scoldy face.

“Why do they put this stuff right in the aisle?” she said and shook her head. “There’s not enough room to get by.”

“Operator error, I think.”

“Too bad I can’t eat this stuff," she says, sweeping her arm over the candy cereal carnage. "If it was Special K, I could reach right down and get as much as I want.” She ripped her grocery list in half and handed me the long-sided portion. “Here. You get these, and I’ll go after the rest." Off she whirred for toilet paper.

Mom logic. Inside, I smiled. Grocery shopping in a bumper car is an especially fun event for her. Unlike other independent retired people, she can’t go to a brick ‘n mortar store whenever she wants without an expensive taxi (or a free daughter).  

The internet is Mom’s true lifeline. I sometimes introduce her as Addie Cart, an in-jest nickname about her addiction to pressing the “Add to Cart” button on Amazon. Her Prime account gets quite a workout. Every day she awaits the arrival of another box—cat food,  crackers, face cream, toothpicks, protein drinks, you name it. If she makes a bad choice or orders the wrong quantity, one lucky sister receives it as a gift. 

"I hit an extra zero, so I got ten instead of one," she says.

"Just what I always wanted . . . Miralax."

"Don't laugh. It's good stuff." She winks at me. "You'll thank me one day."

My stomach cramps at the thought of actually swallowing the chalky mixture.

My Real Mom

As eccentric as my Mom is, she is forever entertaining. And I love her to death and beyond. I can't go wrong when she stores my original book manuscripts in her cedar chest, a place where her most treasured mementos are kept. She's convinced those early drafts will be valuable one day. Who knows? I hope she's right, but I remind her that becoming famous is not why I write.

The thought of losing Mom is sometimes more than I can bear. That’s why I wrote The Dushane Sisters Trilogy. To get ready. A practice session, so to speak, to protect myself from emotional devastation. I use the safety of humor as my armor.

And here she is . . . the late, great fictional Ellen Dushane. But today I celebrate my very-much-alive Mom, Helen.

Photo: Micah Brooks

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Kalispell, Montana with her husband, stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat, Princeton. Courtney writes for the baby boomer audience. She spent 28 years as an executive in the entertainment industry and used her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor, and mystery. She studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community, Courtney is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and She Writes. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

Print and E-books are available through most major online retailers, including Amazon.com.

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com 

New York Times best-selling author Karen Karbo says, "Courtney Pierce spins a madcap tale of family grudges, sisterly love, unexpected romance, mysterious mobsters and dog love. Reading Indigo Lake is like drinking champagne with a chaser of Mountain Dew. Pure Delight."

Coming in 2020!

When Aubrey Cenderon moves to Montana after the death of her father, the peace and quiet of Big Sky Country becomes complicated with a knock on the door from the sheriff. An injured grizzly bear is on the loose and must be eliminated before it kills again. The sheriff's insistence that she buy a gun for protection will present Aubrey with some serious soul-searching, because the grizzly-on-the-run is hunting for her too . . . for a different reason.