Bridge of Sighs

another form of money. When people went to the A&P out by the highway, they had to
spend
thirty minutes, whereas they could
save
twenty-five of them by darting into our little store. They wouldn’t do it if Ikey’s was a lot more expensive, so the trick was to convince them that the time they were saving more than made up for the marginally higher prices. Part of the brain, she admitted, would know this wasn’t true, but this wasn’t the part that counted. Also, it was imperative to remember that all items sold at our store were not equal. People would mostly go to Ikey’s for things they’d run out of—milk, bread, toilet paper—and so these had to be priced within a few pennies of what the supermarket charged, even if that meant we didn’t make any money on them. What we’d mark up were the things they
didn’t
need and wouldn’t make a special trip for, things they’d buy on impulse since, what the hell, they were already there. The entire store, she maintained, should be arranged so that whatever people needed most was located in the rear and they’d have to pass everything they didn’t need both going in and coming out. The most overpriced items—candy, batteries—should be placed as near the register as possible.
    It was also important to remember, she continued, that men and women were different. Women had money to spend but little time to waste spending it. No woman would want to enter Ikey Lubin’s if she had to run a gantlet of indolent old farts lounging around the cash register swapping lies. She looked meaningfully at my father when she said this, knowing how much he liked having the Elite Coffee Club fellows in his store, even though they never spent any money to speak of. He felt they lent the place an air of commerce. If my mother hadn’t suggested it now, it would never have occurred to him that they might actually be preventing commerce. “The Coffee Club don’t hurt nobody,” he said, defending their communal character. “If a woman came in, they wouldn’t say nothing.”
    “I know that, Lou,” my mother said. “They’d just stop telling their off-color jokes and stand there looking gutshot and wait for her to leave so they could start talking again.” Which
was
pretty much what happened on those rare occasions a woman stopped at Ikey’s.
    “What do I do? Tell ’em they can’t come in no more?”
    My mother looked like she considered this an elegant solution, but instead she said, “Move them around to the other side of the center island. Put a coffeepot over there on the counter and make them buy
that,
at least.”
    “Charge them for coffee?”
    “Don’t put it that way. Say the first refill’s free. The main thing is to keep them away from the door.”
    Across the street a mangy dog trotted by the market, stopping to lift a leg and pee into the produce bin where the cantaloupes would’ve been if the market were open. When he finished, the mutt glanced over at us with what, if I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn was a grin before trotting off up the hill. I watched him go while my mother explained the rest of it—how we were going to have to stay open later, maybe until ten or eleven at night, and after church on Sundays.
    “I ain’t afraid of hard work, Tessa,” he said. “You know that. And Louie here’s a darn good worker, too.”
    “After school only,” my mother reiterated, before I could volunteer for greater servitude. “He’s got his homework after supper. And only Saturday or Sunday, not both. This child needs to have a childhood.”
    “I’m not a child,” I said.
    “Says who?” she asked, smiling at me for the first time in forever. Telling us how everything had to be from now on out seemed to have cheered her up a little.
    “Says me,” I told her, smiling too, glad we were a family again and that I didn’t have to be mad at her anymore.
    “I almost forgot,” she said, turning back to my father. “I bought you a present.” She got up and went inside, returning a moment later with a black handgun, the long barrel of which she pointed at my father, who went pale. “I
should
shoot you for buying that store,” she said, suddenly serious again. “You know that, don’t you?” Then she flipped the gun in the air, catching it by the barrel and holding it out to my father, who regarded the thing as if it might be rigged to explode if he touched it.
    “I don’t think nobody’s gonna rob us, Tessa,” he said weakly.
    I