Saving Summer

Chapter Six: Penelope Wallace

“That will be three fifty-seven.”

“But the sign said that it was two dollars,” whined the old lady. “Why am I being charged full price? See it says so right here.”

The old woman lifted the sign in her hand so that it was in view. The sign had a picture of the canned chicken and two dollars in large, yellow lettering. Penelope took one look at the sign and sighed. It was store policy to give the product at the price listed on the signs. Penelope knew that she would have to get a manager to change the price for her. 

“Just one second and I will call my manager over here to change the price for you, okay?” Penelope said in her sweetest, customer service voice. She picked up the walkie talkie from behind the register and pushed the button, “Lorraine can you come to register three please? I need a price change.”

“I will be there in a moment,” Penelope heard Lorraine call back over the walkie talkie.

“I hope that this does not take too long,” the old woman said, looking annoyed. “I have bingo to get to in ten minutes.”

“The manager should be coming any minute now,” Penelope assured the woman.

The old woman huffed, “She better! I am going to be very upset if I miss the first round of bingo.”

Penelope fought hard not to groan. Why was it always the old women who were crabby? It never failed that her rudest customers were always old ladies. It was almost as if it was ingrained in them. Plastering on her brightest smile, Penelope told the woman not to worry that she would get to go to bingo on time. Right on cue, Lorraine came walking up from between the aisles. She had an electronic scanner dangling from her hip that was attached to her belt loop. Lorraine passed through the gate that separated the register from the customers and stopped behind Penelope. Penelope moved out of the way so that Lorraine could get to the register. She pushed a few buttons on the register before backing away. 

“There you go, Wallace,” she said, not looking at Penelope.

Lorraine dashed away from behind the register and to the back of the store before Penelope could say another word. Penelope finished ringing up the old woman and said goodbye to her as she exited the grocery store. The old woman ignored Penelope as she ambled out of the door and into the parking lot. Penelope saw the old woman drive away in her tan Buick. She sighed heavily as she wished for her shift to be over so that she could go home. Since she was only working six hours today, Penelope knew that she would not get a break which meant that she did not have time to eat anything. Her stomach chose that moment to growl. The only thing that she had eaten today was scrambled eggs for breakfast and that had been almost ten hours ago. Her mind drifted as she fantasized about what she was going to eat when she got home. There was leftover spaghetti from the night before in her refrigerator and Penelope decided that sounded good enough. 

“What are you doing?” Lorraine hissed. She stood there with her hands on her wide hips as she glared at Penelope. Lorraine’s long salt and pepper colored hair swayed as she pointed a finger at the shelves. “They are not going to stock themselves. Get to it!”

Penelope snapped quickly out of her daydream. A flush of pink stained her cheeks as she looked at Lorraine, “I am sorry. I will get right on that.”

“You better! I do not want to be here an hour after closing time cleaning up your mess like I did on Tuesday,” Lorraine warned. “Otherwise, I will have to write you up.”

Penelope wanted to argue that the reason for the mess-up was Lorraine’s fault in the first place. Lorraine had forgotten to switch the price tags on a few of the items and to take out the Halloween candy to be stocked. When asked by the store manager why the Halloween candy had not been stocked up, Lorraine told him that she had set it out for Penelope to stock but she never did. Penelope recalled that Lorraine had spent most of the night in her office talking to her daughter on the phone. She had asked Lorraine several times whether there was anything else that she needed to stock but Lorraine had only shooed her away. And it was Penelope that the store manager decided to reprimand instead of talking to Lorraine. 

This was completely unfair, of course, but Penelope was used to it by now. Ever since she started working at Discount Sally’s almost a year ago, it felt as though Lorraine was out to get her. She did not understand why Lorraine did not like her. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that she was young? Lorraine did seem to not like the younger girls that she worked with so this was quite possible. But Lorraine seemed to really dislike her for some reason. 

Not for the first time did Penelope wish that she had not come back to this town. Penelope had graduated from college the previous spring and started looking for a teaching job, her field of study. An offer had been made to her by a public school in Missouri and Penelope was excited about her first teaching job out of college. But then a week before she was supposed to leave for Missouri, Penelope received some devastating news. Her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was given only six months to live. Penelope knew that she would not be able to spend time with her mother if she lived in Missouri, so she decided to put her own plans on hold for the time being and took care of her sick mother.

Her mother had passed four months after Penelope came home from college. Even though she was expecting this outcome, Penelope was still shocked. Most of the people that she had worked with had been sympathetic. Even Lorraine had acted less mean towards her for a couple of weeks. The store manager gave her a few days off for the funeral and to grieve, for which Penelope was grateful. The funeral was small as her mother did not have a lot of family left and not many friends. But all of the ones that she did have showed up to say their goodbyes. They gathered together after the funeral at her mother’s favorite restaurant in town, Olive Street Kitchen, to eat a meal in her honor.

Now almost eight months later, Penelope wondered what was keeping her tied to this town. Her mother was the last family that she had left here. Her father had died in a car crash when she was five years old and it had just been her and her mother since then. Her mother had had a few boyfriends over the years but no one stayed more than a year. After the third one, Penelope’s mother gave up on finding someone. 

As Penelope placed canned goods on the shelves, she found herself wondering if she would ever get out of this town. All of the schools in the area already had the maximum amount of teachers and could not afford to hire any more. If she stayed here, Penelope knew that it could be years before a position opened up and she was not sure that she wanted to wait that long. And even if she did wait, there was no guarantee that she would get the job. 

Her best bet was to try and get a job elsewhere but so far, Penelope had not received any hits. Everywhere she looked, the schools wanted someone with experience or a Master’s degree and Penelope did not have either. She thought about going back to school to get her Master’s degree but she knew that she would have to earn the money for tuition first. And that meant that she was stuck working at Discount Sally’s until that happened. 

Penelope heaved a sigh. She felt trapped. She did not see a way out of her current way of life. She could not earn enough money to go back to college and she could not get a job because she did not have a Master’s degree. The circle seemed endless and Penelope was unsure of whether it would ever end. She did not want to be working at Discount Sally’s when she was Lorraine’s age but it looked as if that would be the case. With that unhappy thought lingering in her head, Penelope moved to the next aisle to stock the trash bags, wondering what it would take to get out of her current situation.