Tales from the produce aisle

I’m standing at the stone fruit display, stacking large, white and red peaches. Once finished, I’m standing in the prep area when James walks in, pushing a trolley with peach trays on it. He starts showing me the peaches I put out. They’re covered in large brown bruises and white fuzz. He’s picking them up and showing me each one. Do you know what an important time for peaches it is? James says to me. You can’t put this shit out.

***

I’d been tasked with stacking the raspberry punnets. Take a punnet, turn it over to check for bad ones, and put it back in the raspberry column next to the other berry punnets.  

It was around 6am, and wealthy Toorak shoppers liked to go jogging and pick up their groceries before dropping the kids off. 

Bleary-eyed, it was easy to make mistakes and place a punnet out with a few squashed berries in it, maybe even one with white fuzz. 

Having finished with the raspberry punnets, I was breaking up the cardboard trays and placing them in the two cardboard bins in the prep area.

The prep area was usually filled with people passing through or working. Front of house would be walking through with a mop and bucket, the juice bar girl would be wrapping cheeses on the same table James was cutting and wrapping watermelons. The office, door open, was right next door, where phone calls were made and orders were placed. 

‘Tommy!’ I shot my head up, hearing my name barked. 

Donny walked in with his own trolley and a bunch of berry punnets stacked up. The manager back then was a tiny guy with sunken eyes in a skull-like face. He had a propensity to explode with rage at any display of sub-par produce. 

He walked up to me and, gripping the punnets so the plastic warped, he showed each one to me in succession. ‘Would you eat this?’ Next one. ‘Would you buy this?’

James starts laughing loudly while wrapping watermelons, his high pitched laughter tuned to increase the humiliation of its target. It was the same one he’d force at high school to make sure everyone knew someone had said something stupid, or been shat on by a bird at lunch. 

‘Do you think we should sell fucking shit like this in the shop?’

‘No, Donny,’ I mumbled. ‘Sorry.’

‘Sorry sorry sorry it’s always fucking sorry with you!’

He stormed off after telling me to open my fucking eyes while I worked. His raspy shouts continued out into the shop. 

I continued flattening boxes, the prep area still loud with the sounds of wrapping machines and James’s persistent laughter. 

I’m pushing one of those trolleys. Double platformed, grey steel. There was only one without a busted wheel or that didn’t rock up and down at the slightest touch. It’s stacked with boxes. I keep ripping them up and flattening them, then there’s more boxes on the bottom shelf. I rip them up too. I find a pile of boxes on the shop floor, with a pair of scissors. I use the scissors to make the job faster. Boxes keep appearing everywhere I go. 

A friend asked me why I kept a spray bottle full of water on the dashboard. I told him I used it to spray my face while driving. Usually if I was stuck in traffic on the way home I would start falling asleep in traffic, going over the West Gate. 

He told me a better solution would be to look for another job. 

‘The only thing that really wakes you up when you’re driving,’ Renton said once, is falling asleep for a few seconds. Once you wake up and realise you’ve almost rammed someone up the arse, you’re not gonna fall asleep for the rest of the drive.’

The boss’s son TJ started his day even earlier than we did, selecting bizarre produce items at the local produce markets. 

He’d come to the shop midday, face sunken and eyes puffy, speaking in slurred mumbles about the fuzzy white log with mushrooms growing on it that we had to sell for $200. In a week, the log would finish its stint in the shop having dropped down in price to $50, its mushrooms leathery and hard. 

TJ was in the news because he fell asleep on the freeway and caused a three car pile up. Mum and Dad mentioned having seen it on TV. When I went to work the next day Renton told me it was TJ. He had his 3 year old son in the backseat. 

***

Pat was a huge David Bowie fan. He gifted me the nickname ‘Major’ which stuck throughout my career at the fruit shop, sometimes shortened to ‘Maj’. 

Pat was the chipper one on the team. While the others offered various grunts as greetings without turning around from stacking carrots or grooming last night’s Bok Choy, Pat would always give a big smile and a joyous hello. 

‘Tickety boo, Major, tickety boo!’ he’d say when asked how he was doing at 7 in the morning.

Pat never drank coffee or tea, I saw him once or twice with a huge can of Mother. His chipper disposition and vibrant energy were a mystery. 

I went over to Pat’s house for drinks once. We went to Cherry Bar and, because he looked kind of deranged and smelt like a bin, I ditched him to smoke a cigarette out front for an hour or so with some younger people. 

When we got back to Pat’s in the morning he let me sleep in his bed. 

‘Are you sure? I don’t mind the couch.’

‘Nah Major, you take the bed. I’m not sleepin’ yet.’

On the bedside table was a huge jar of coconut oil, the brand we sold at the shop. 

When I woke up in the afternoon, Pat was still in the living room watching live music videos on Youtube. He blew out a stream of white smoke from his glass pipe and greeted me with that same, irrepressible energy. 

***

I never could forget the pain in my hands, even in dreams. Ripping cardboard, throwing and catching heavy boxes of lettuce, celery, even apples while your hands went numb in the fridge, my hands dully ache even in dreams. Once I stuck my hand in my pocket for my wallet and plunged it palm-first onto the business end of a knife. You never forget the pain in your hands. 

I arrived at work around midday for a closing shift and walked through the front entrance, down the aisle of impeccably stacked apple varieties. The Granny Smiths, Pink Ladies, and Royal Galas were all organised in uniform blocks. Renton was at work on the Jazz apples. 

Almost doubled over by his trolley, Renton was clutching his stomach with one hand and stacking apples with the other. 

I stopped by him. ‘Hey Renton.’

With a pale, sickly glance in my direction, he greeted me.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fucking Crohn’s has me bad. Barely slept last night.’

Renton’s Crohn’s disease was a well-known but seldom discussed issue among the team. His perseverance to work during attacks of a severe auto-immune disease made it difficult to call in sick when you had a cold. 

‘What does it feel like?’

‘Like somebody’s kicking me in me guts every 30 seconds.’

***

One morning I was mopping the shop floor near Tony’s section. Tony always wore shorts, showing off the rock hard calves of a man who was carrying tremendous weight on his top half.

Tony was always trying to quit drinking and smoking for his son, because his doctor told him he wouldn’t live to see the kid graduate primary school if he kept this up.

Working on the radish section, Tony was bent over, breathing in hard, sharp gasps. 

Squeezing out the water from the mop, I asked Tony if he was all right. 

He lifted up his huge torso. ‘Yeah Maj, all good.’

***

I’m late for my flight to Berlin. My luggage is strewn around the fruit shop, tucked behind the registers, one piece is in the corner with the tupperware, and another is lost out the back with the box crusher.

I’m back working over summer because I don’t have a job. I’m telling everyone I live in Berlin, I don’t live here anymore and I don’t need the fruit shop. I’m telling customers as I serve them, just in case they think I still work here. James is telling me I’ll never make as much money in Berlin as I could working here.

***

One busy day working on the registers, I found out three of my co-workers had quit. Having finished their university degrees, they were getting white-collar jobs with full-time salaries. 

I finished mine about 4 years ago, during which time I’d moved from casual employment to a part-time contract at the Fruit Shop. 

I met their news with smiles and congratulations, but inside me I could feel something disintegrating. With them gone I’d become one of the older employees. 

This left me in the age bracket with Tony, Renton, Pat, and Katie. 

Katie was standing by the end of the registers, looking over product expiry dates in the date book. 

Katie was the front-end manager and she had a son. She drove two hours one way from Korrumburra to arrive around 7am at the Fruit Shop. We bonded over stomach problems and haemorrhoids. She gave me big hugs when I arrived at midday for a closing shift, telling me ‘Thank god you’re here darling,’ and reeling off the day’s problems that couldn’t be solved without me until I’d started. 

Anxious, the several cups of coffee mingled with exhaustion from my 4.45am wakeup began to create a surging panic. 

Excusing myself from the next customer and gesturing to one of my high school-aged colleagues, I stumbled down to the end of the registers and collapsed onto Katie’s cushiony shoulder. 

‘What’s wrong, what is it? Tell me, tell Katie, darling.’ 

While customers lined up a few feet away, I stammered out my concerns about everyone leaving and how I didn’t know what I was doing and my life was going nowhere. 

Katie let me finish. She then asked me what the hell I was still doing here. 

‘You don’t need to be here, Tommy. You could be anywhere. You could do anything.’

I sniffed.

‘You should look at me, and feel sorry for me,’ Katie said, gesturing to herself with both hands. ‘I have a son, I never went to university. I’m stuck here. You could be anywhere!’

***

Around six months later I was gone. Pat was gone by then, while Katie, Renton, Tony and I were no longer on speaking terms. Word was, some gossip had gotten round at the Christmas party and Katie was heartbroken. 

Still to this day I don’t know what I’d supposedly said. 

When we visited Australia together, Rosie told me she wanted to see the Fruit Shop. I told her it wasn’t really close to anywhere we were going. 

I knew be back there soon. All I had to do was close my eyes.