SHOPPING by Joyce Carol Oates1987 How does the story's ending contribute to the meaning of the text as a whole?

An old ritual, Saturday morning shopping. Mother and daughter. Mrs. Dietrich and Nola. Shops in the village, stores and boutiques at the splendid Livingstone Mall on Route 12. Bloomingdale's, Saks, Lord & Taylor, Bonwit's, Neiman-Marcus: and the rest. Mrs. Dietrich would know her way around the stores blindfolded but there is always the surprise of lavish seasonal displays, extraordinary holiday sales, the openings of new stores at the Mall like Laura Ashley, Paraphernalia. On one of their Mall days Mrs. Dietrich and Nola would try to get there at midmorning, have lunch around 1 p.m. at one or another of their favorite restaurants, shop for perhaps an hour after lunch, then come home. Sometimes the shopping trips were more successful than at other times but you have to have faith, Mrs. Dietrich tells herself. Her interior voice is calm, neutral, free of irony. Ever since her divorce her interior voice has been free of irony. You have to have faith.

Tomorrow morning Nola returns to school in Maine; today will be a day at the Mall. Mrs. Dietrich has planned it for days. At the Mall, in such crowds of shoppers, moments of intimacy are possible as they rarely are at home. (17-year-old Nola, home on spring break for a brief eight days, seems always to be busy, always out with her friends — the trip to the Mall has been postponed twice.) But Saturday, 10:30 a.m., they are in the car at last headed south on Route 12, a bleak March morning following a night of freezing rain, there's a metallic cast to the air and no sun anywhere in the sky but the light hurts Mrs. Dietrich's eyes just the same. “Does it seem as if spring will ever come? — it must be 20 degrees colder up in Maine,” she says. Driving in heavy traffic always makes Mrs. Dietrich nervous and she is overly sensitive to her daughter's silence, which seems deliberate, perverse, when they have so little time remaining together — not even a full day.

Nola asks politely if Mrs. Dietrich would like her to drive and Mrs. Dietrich says no, of course not, she's fine, it's only a few more miles and maybe traffic will lighten. Nola seems about to say something more, then thinks better of it. So much between them that is precarious, chancy — but they've been kind to each other these past seven days. Mrs. Dietrich loves Nola with a fierce unreasoned passion stronger than any she felt for the man who had been her husband for 13 years, certainly far stronger than any she ever felt for her own mother. Some­times in weak despondent moods, alone, lonely, self-pitying, when she has had too much to drink, Mrs. Dietrich thinks she is in love with her daughter — but this is a thought she can't contemplate for long. And how Nola would snort in amused contempt, incredulous, mocking — “Oh Mother!” — if she were told.

Mrs. Dietrich tries to engage her daughter in conversation of a harmless sort but Nola answers in monosyllables, Nola is rather tired from so many nights of partying with her friends, some of whom attend the local high school, some of whom are home for spring break from prep schools — Exeter, Lawrenceville, Concord, Andover, Portland. Late nights, but Mrs. Dietrich doesn't consciously lie awake waiting for Nola to come home: they've been through all that before. Now Nola sits beside her mother looking wan, subdued, rather melancholy. Thinking her private thoughts. She is wearing a bulky quilted jacket Mrs. Dietrich has never liked, the usual blue jeans, black calfskin boots zippered tightly to midcalf. Mrs. Dietrich must resist the temptation to ask, “Why are you so quiet, Nola? What are you thinking?” They've been through all that before.

[5]Route 12 has become a jumble of small industrial parks, high-rise office and apartment buildings, torn-up landscapes — mountains of raw earth, uprooted trees, ruts and ditches filled with muddy water. There is no natural sequence to what you see — buildings, construction work, leveled woods, the lavish grounds owned by Squibb. Though she has driven this route countless times, Mrs. Dietrich is never quite certain where the Mall is and must be prepared for a sudden exit. She remem­bers getting lost the first several times, remembers the excitement she and her friends felt about the grand opening of the Mall, stores worthy of serious shopping at last. Today is much the same. No, today is worse. Like Christmas when she was a small child, Mrs. Dietrich thinks. She'd hoped so badly to be happy she'd felt actual pain, a constriction in her throat like crying.

“Are you all right, Nola? — you've been so quiet all morning,” Mrs. Dietrich asks, half-scolding. Nola stirs from her reverie,1 says she's fine, a just perceptible edge to her reply, and for the remainder of the drive there's some stiffness between them. Mrs. Dietrich chooses to ignore it. In any ease she is fully absorbed in driving — negotiating a tricky exit across two lanes of traffic, then the hairpin curve of the ramp, the numerous looping drives of the Mall. Then the enormous parking lot, daunting to the inexperienced, but Mrs. Dietrich always heads for the area behind Lord & Taylor on the far side of the Mall, Lot D; her luck holds and she finds a space close in. “Well — we made it,” she says, smiling happily at Nola. Nola laughs in reply — what does a 17-year-old's laughter mean? — but she remembers, getting out, to lock both doors on her side of the car. The smile Nola gives Mrs. Dietrich across the car's roof is careless and beautiful and takes Mrs. Dietrich's breath away.

The March morning tastes of grit with an undercurrent of some­thing acrid,2 chemical; inside the Mall, beneath the first of the elegant brass-buttressed3 glass domes, the air is fresh and tonic,4 circulating from invisible vents. The Mall is crowded, rather noisy — It is Saturday morning — but a feast for the eyes after that long trip on Route 12. Tall slender trees grow out of the mosaic-tiled pavement, there are beds of Easter lilies, daffodils, jonquils, tulips of all colors. Mrs. Dietrich smiles with relief. She senses that Nola too is relieved, cheered. It's like coming home.

The shopping excursions began when Nola was a small child but did not acquire their special significance until she was twelve or thir­teen years old and capable of serious, sustained shopping with her mother. This was about the time when Mr. Dietrich moved out of the house and back into their old apartment in the city — a separation, he'd called it initially, to give them perspective — though Mrs. Dietrich had no illusions about what “perspective” would turn out to entail — so the shopping trips were all the more significant. Not that Mrs. Dietrich and Nola spent very much money — they really didn't, really they didn't, when compared to friends and neighbors.

At seventeen Nola is shrewd and discerning as a shopper, not easy to please, knowledgeable as a mature woman about certain aspects of fashion, quality merchandise, good stores. Her closets, like Mrs. Diet­rich's, are crammed, but she rarely buys anything that Mrs. Dietrich thinks shoddy or merely faddish. Up in Portland, at the Academy, she hasn't as much time to shop but when she is home in Livingstone it isn't unusual for her and her girlfriends to shop nearly every day. Like all her friends she has charge accounts at the better stores, her own credit cards, a reasonable allowance. At the time of their settlement Mr. Dietrich said guiltily that it was the least he could do for them — if Mrs. Dietrich wanted to work part-time, she could (she was trained, more or less, in public relations of a small-scale sort); if not, not. Mrs. Dietrich thought, It's the most you can do for us too.

[10]Near Bloomingdale's entrance mother and daughter see a disheveled woman sitting by herself on one of the benches. Without seeming to look at her, shoppers are making a discreet berth around her, a stream following a natural course. Nola, taken by surprise, stares. Mrs. Dietrich has seen the woman from time to time at the Mall, always alone, smirking and talking to herself, frizzed gray hair in a tangle, puckered mouth. Always wearing the same black wool coat, a garment of fairly good quality but shapeless, rumpled, stained, as if she sleeps in it. She might be anywhere from forty to sixty years of age. Once Mrs. Dietrich saw her make menacing gestures at children who were teasing her, another time she'd seen the woman staring belligerently at her. A white paste had gathered in the corners of her mouth… “My God, that poor woman,” Nola says. “I didn't think there were people like her here — I mean, I didn't think they would allow it.”

“She doesn't seem to cause any disturbance,” Mrs. Dietrich says. “She just sits — Don't stare, Nola, she'll see you.”

“You've seen her here before? Here?”

“A few times this winter,”

“Is she always like that?”

[15]“I'm sure she's harmless, Nola. She just sits.”

Nola is incensed, her pale blue eyes like washed glass. “I'm sure she's harmless, Mother. It's the harm the poor woman has to endure that is the tragedy.”

Mrs. Dietrich is surprised and a little offended by her daughter's passionate tone but she knows enough not to argue. They enter Bloom­ingdale's, taking their habitual route. So many shoppers! — so much merchandise! Nola speaks of the tragedy of women like that woman — the tragedy of the homeless, the mentally disturbed — bag ladies out on the street — outcasts of an affluent society — but she's soon distracted by the busyness on all sides, the attractive items for sale. They take the escalator up to the third floor, to the Juniors department where Nola often buys things. From there they will move on to Young Collector, then to New Impressions, then to Petites, then one or another boutique and designer — Liz Claiborne, Christian Dior, Calvin Klein, Carlos Falchi, and the rest. And after Bloomingdale's the other stores await, to be visited each in turn. Mrs. Dietrich checks her watch and sees with satisfaction that there's just enough time before lunch but not too much time. She gets ravenously hungry, shopping at the Mall.

Nola is efficient and matter-of-fact about shopping, though she acts solely upon instinct. Mrs. Dietrich likes to watch her at a short distance — holding items of clothing up to herself in the three-way mirrors, modeling things she thinks especially promising. A twill blazer with rounded shoulders and blouson5 jacket, a funky zippered jumpsuit in white sailcloth, a pair of straight-leg Evan-Picone pants, a green leather vest: Mrs. Dietrich watches her covertly. At such times Nola is perfectly content, fully absorbed in the task at hand; Mrs. Dietrich knows she isn't thinking about anything that would distress her. (Like Mr. Dietrich's betrayal. Like Nola's difficulties with her friends. Like her difficulties at school — as much as Mrs. Dietrich knows of them.) Once, at the Mall, perhaps in this very store in this very department, Nola saw Mrs. Dietrich watching her and walked away angrily and when Mrs. Dietrich caught up with her she said, “I can't stand it, Mother.” Her voice was choked and harsh, a vein prominent in her forehead. “Let me go. For Christ's sake will you let me go.” Mrs. Dietrich didn't dare touch her though she could see Nola was trembling. For a long terrible mo­ment mother and daughter stood side by side near a display of bright brash Catalina beachwear while Nola whispered, “Let me go. Let me go.”

Difficult to believe that girl standing so poised and self-assured in front of the three-way mirror was once a plain, rather chunky, unhappy child. She'd been unpopular at school. Overly serious. Anxious. Quick to tears. Aged eleven she hid herself away in her room for hours at a time, reading, drawing pictures, writing little stories she could some times be prevailed upon to read aloud to her mother, sometimes even to her father, though she dreaded his judgment. She went through a “scientific” phase a while later — Mrs. Dietrich remembers an ambitious bas-relief6 map of North America, meticulous illustrations for “photo­synthesis,” a pastel drawing of an eerie ball of fire labeled “Red Giant” (a dying star?) which won a prize in a state competition for junior high students. Then for a season it was stray facts Nola confronted them with, often at the dinner table. Interrupting her parents' conversation to say brightly: “Did you know that Nero's7 favorite color was green? — he carried a giant emerald and held it up to his eye to watch Christians being devoured by lions.” And once at a large family gathering: “Did you know that last week downtown a little baby's nose was chewed off by rats in his crib? — a little black baby?” Nola meant only to call attention to herself but you couldn't blame her listeners for being offended. They stared at her, not knowing what to say. What a strange child! What queer8 glassy-pale eyes! Mr. Dietrich told her curtly to leave the table — he'd had enough of the game she was playing and so had everyone else.

[20]Nola stared at him, her eyes filling with tears. Game?

When they were alone Mr. Dietrich said angrily to Mrs. Dietrich: “Can't you control her in front of other people at least?” Mrs. Dietrich was angry too, and frightened. She said “I try.”

They sent her off aged 14 to the Portland Academy up in Maine and without their help she matured into a girl of considerable beauty. A heart-shaped face. delicate features, glossy red-brown hair scissor-cut to her shoulders. Five feet seven inches tall, weighing less than 100 pounds — the result of constant savage dieting. (Mrs. Dietrich, who has weight problems herself, doesn't dare to inquire as to details. They've been through that already.) 30 days after they'd left her at the Portland Academy Nola telephoned home at 11:00 p.m. one Sunday giggly and high telling Mrs. Dietrich she adored the school she adored her suite mates she adored most of her teachers particularly her riding instructor Terri, Terri the Terrier they called the woman because she was so fierce, such a character, eyes that bore right through your skull, wore belts with the most amazing silver buckles! Nola loved Terri but she wasn't in love — there's a difference!

Mrs. Dietrich broke down weeping, that time.

Now of course Nola has boyfriends. Mrs. Dietrich has long since a given up trying to keep track of their names. There is even one “boy” — or young man — who seems to be married: who seems to be, in fact, one of the junior instructors at the school. (Mrs. Dietrich does not eavesdrop on her daughter's telephone conversations but there are things she cannot help overhearing.) Is your daughter on the Pill?9 the women in Mrs. Dietrich's circle asked one another for a while, guiltily, surrep­titiously. Now they no longer ask.

[25]But Nola has announced recently that she loathes boys — she's fed up.

She's never going to get married. She'll study languages in college, French, Italian, something exotic like Arabic, go to work for the Ameri­can foreign service. Unless she drops out of school altogether to become a model.

“Do you think I'm fat, Mother?” she asks frequently, worriedly, standing in front of the mirror twisted at the waist to reveal her small round belly which, it seems, can't help being round: she bloats herself on diet Cokes all day long. “Do you think it shows?”

When Mrs. Dietrich was pregnant with Nola she'd been 29 years old and she and Mr. Dietrich had tried to have a baby for nearly five years. She'd lost hope, begun to despise herself, then suddenly it happened: like grace. Like happiness swelling so powerfully it can barely be contained. I can hear its heartbeat! her husband exclaimed.

He'd been her lover then, young, vigorous, dreamy. Caressing the rock-hard belly, splendid white tight-stretched skin. Mr. Dietrich gave Mrs. Dietrich a reproduction on stiff glossy paper of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Beata Beatrix, embarrassed, apologetic, knowing it was sentimental and perhaps a little silly but that was how he thought of her — so beautiful. rapturous, pregnant with their child. She told no one but she knew the baby was to be a girl. It would be herself again, reborn and this time perfect.

[30]“Oh, Mother — isn't it beautiful?” Nola exclaims.

It is past noon. Past 12:30. Mrs. Dietrich and Nola have made the rounds of a half-dozen stores, traveled countless escalators, one clothing department has blended into the next and the chic smiling saleswomen have become indistinguishable and Mrs. Dietrich is beginning to feel the urgent need for a glass of white wine. Just a glass. “Isn't it beautiful? — it's perfect,” Nola says. Her eyes glow with pleasure, her smooth skin is radiant. As Nola models in the three-way mirror a queer little yellow-and-black striped sweater with a ribbed waist, punk style, mock-cheap, Mrs. Dietrich feels the motherly obligation to register a mild protest, knowing that Nola will not hear. She must have it and will have it. She'll wear it a few times, then retire it to the bottom of a drawer with so many other novelty sweaters, accumulated since sixth grade. (She's like her mother in that regard — can't bear to throw anything away.)

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Nola demands, studying her reflection in the mirror.

Mrs. Dietrich pays for the sweater on her charge account.

Next, they buy Nola a good pair of shoes. And a handbag to go with them. In Paraphernalia, where rock music blasts overhead and Mrs. Dietrich stands to one side, rather miserable, Nola chats companionably with two girls — tall, pretty, cutely made up — she'd gone to public school in Livingstone with, says afterward with an upward rolling of her eyes, “God, I was afraid they'd latch on to us!” Mrs. Dietrich has seen women friends and acquaintances of her own in the Mall this morning but has shrunk from being noticed, not wanting to share her daughter with anyone. She has a sense of time passing ever more swiftly, cruelly.

[35]She watches Nola preening in a mirror, watches other shoppers watching her. My daughter. Mine. But of course there is no connection between them — they don't even resemble each other. A 17-year­-old, a 47-year-old. When Nola is away she seems to forget her mother entirely — doesn't telephone, certainly doesn't write. It's the way all their daughters are, Mrs. Dietrich's friends tell her. It doesn't mean anything. Mrs. Dietrich thinks how when she was carrying Nola, those nine long months, they'd been completely happy — not an instant's doubt or hesitation. The singular weight of the body. A trancelike state you are tempted to mistake for happiness because the body is incapable of thinking, therefore incapable of anticipating change. Hot rhythmic blood, organs, packed tight and moist, the baby upside down in her sat in her mother's belly, always present tense, always now. It was a shock when the end came so abruptly but everyone told Mrs. Dietrich she was a natural mother, praised and pampered her. For a while. Then of course she'd had her baby, her Nola. Even now Mrs. Dietrich can't really comprehend the experience. Giving birth. Had a baby. Was born. Mere words, absurdly inadequate. She knows no more of how love ends than she knew as a child, she knows only of how love begins — in the belly, in the womb, where it is always present tense.

The morning's shopping has been quite successful but lunch at La Crêperie doesn't go well for some reason. La Crêperie is Nola's favorite Mall restaurant — always amiably crowded, bustling, a simulated side­walk cafe with red-striped umbrellas, wrought-iron tables and chairs, menus in French, music piped in overhead. Mrs. Dietrich's nerves are chafed by the pretense of gaiety,10 the noise, the openness onto one of the Mall's busy promenades where at any minute a familiar face might emerge, but she is grateful for her glass of chilled white wine. She orders a small tossed salad and a creamed-chicken crepe and devours it hungrily — she is hungry. While Nola picks at her seafood crepe with a disdainful look. A familiar scene: mother watching while daughter pushes food around on her plate. Suddenly Nola is tense, moody, corners of her mouth downturned. Mrs. Dietrich wants to ask, What's wrong? She wants to ask, Why are you unhappy? She wants to smooth Nola's hair back from her forehead, check to see if her forehead is overly warm, wants to hug her close, hard. Why, why? What did I do wrong? Why do you hate me?

Calling the Portland Academy a few weeks ago Mrs. Dietrich suddenly lost control, began crying. She hadn't been drinking and she hadn't known she was upset. A girl unknown to her, one of Nola's suite mates, was saying “Please, Mrs. Dietrich, it's all right, I'm sure Nola will call you back later tonight, or tomorrow, Mrs. Dietrich? — I'll tell her you called, all right? — Mrs. Dietrich?” as embarassed as if Mrs. Dietrich had been her own mother.

How love begins. How love ends.

Mrs. Dietrich orders a third glass of wine. This is a celebration of sorts isn't it? — their last shopping trip for a long time. But Nola resists, Nola isn't sentimental. In casual defiance of Mrs. Dietrich she lights up a cigarette — yes, Mother, Nola has said ironically, since you stopped smoking everybody is supposed to stop — and sits with her arms crossed, watching streams of shoppers pass. Mrs. Dietrich speaks lightly of practical matters, tomorrow morning's drive to the airport, and will Nola telephone when she gets to Portland to let Mrs. Dietrich know she has arrived safely?

[40]Then with no warning — though of course she'd been planning this all along — Nola brings up the subject of a semester in France, in Paris and Rouen, the fall semester of her senior year it would be; she has put in her application, she says, and is waiting to hear if she's been accepted. She smokes her cigarette calmly, expelling smoke from her nostrils in a way Mrs. Dietrich thinks particularly coarse. Mrs. Dietrich, who believed that particular topic was finished, takes care to speak without emotion, “I just don't think it's a very practical idea right now, Nola” she says. “We've been through it haven't we? I — ”

“I'm going,” Nola says.

“The extra expense, for one thing. Your father — ”

“If I get accepted, I'm going.”

“Your father — ”

[45]“The hell with him too.”

Mrs. Dietrich would like to slap her daughter's face. Bring tears to those steely eyes. But she sits stiff, turning her wine glass between her fingers, patient, calm, she's heard all this before; she says, “Surely this isn't the best time to discuss it, Nola.”

Mrs. Dietrich is afraid her daughter will leave the restaurant, simply walk away, that has happened before and if it happens today she doesn't know what she will do. But Nola sits unmoving; her face closed, impassive. Mrs. Dietrich feels her quickened heartbeat. Once after one of their quarrels Mrs. Dietrich told a friend of hers, the mother too of a teenage daughter, “I just don't know her any longer, how can you keep living with someone you don't know?” and the woman said, “Eventually you can't.”

Nola says, not looking at Mrs. Dietrich: “Why don't we talk about it, Mother?”

“Talk about what?” Mrs. Dietrich asks.

[50]“You know.”

“The semester in France? Again?”

“No.”

“What, then?

“You know.”

[55]“I don't know, really. Really!” Mrs. Dietrich smiles, baffled. She feels the corners of her eyes pucker white with strain.

Nola says, sighing, “How exhausting it is.”

“How what?”

“How exhausting it is.”

“What is?”

[60]“You and me — ”

“What?”

“Being together — ”

“Being together how — ?”

“The two of us, like this — ”

[65]“But we're hardly ever together, Nola,” Mrs. Dietrich says.

Her expression is calm but her voice is shaking. Nola turns away covering her face with a hand, for a moment she looks years older than her age — in fact exhausted. Mrs. Dietrich sees with pity that her daughter’s skin is fair and thin and dry — unlike her own, which tends to be oily — it will wear out before she's 40. Mrs. Dietrich reaches over to squeeze her hand. The fingers are limp, ungiving. “You're going back to school tomorrow, Nola,” she says. “You won't come home again until June 12. And you probably will go to France — if you father consents.”

Nola gets to her feet, drops her cigarette to the flagstone terrace and grinds it beneath her boot. A dirty thing to do, Mrs. Dietrich thinks considering there's an ashtray right on the table, but she says nothing. She dislikes La Crêperie anyway.

Nola laughs, showing her lovely white teeth. “Oh, the hell will him,” she says. “---- 11 Daddy, right?”

They separate for an hour, Mrs. Dietrich to Neiman-Marcus to buy a birthday gift for her elderly aunt, Nola to the trendy new boutique Pou Vous. By the time Mrs. Dietrich rejoins her daughter she's quite angry, blood beating hot and hard and measured in resentment, she has had time to relive old quarrels between them, old exchanges, stray humiliating memories of her marriage as well, these last-hour disagreements are the cruelest and they are Nola's specialty. She locates Nola in the rear of the boutique amid blaring rock music, flashing neon lights, chrome edged mirrors, her face still hard, closed, prim, pale. She stands beside another teenage girl looking in a desultory12 way through a rack of blouses, shoving the hangers roughly along, taking no care when a blouse falls to the floor. As Nola glances up, startled, not prepared to see her mother in front of her, their eyes lock for an instant and Mrs. Dietrich stares at her with hatred. Cold calm clear unmistakable hatred. She is thinking, Who are you? What have I to do with you? I don't know you, I don't love you, why should I?

[70]Has Nola seen, heard? — she turns aside as if wincing, gives the blouses a final dismissive shove. Her eyes look tired, the corners of her mouth downturned. Anxious, immediately repentant, Mrs. Dietrich asks if she has found anything worth trying on. Nola says with a shrill “Not a thing, Mother.”

On their way out of the Mall Mrs. Dietrich and Nola see the disheveled woman in the black coat again, this time sitting prominently on the concrete ledge in front of Lord & Taylor’s busy main entrance. Shopping bag at her feet, shabby purse on the ledge beside her. She is shaking her head in a series of annoyed twitches as if arguing with someone but her hands are loose, palms up, in her lap. Her posture is unfortunate — she sits with her knees parted, inner thighs revealed, fatty, dead white, the tops of cotton stockings rolled tight cutting into the flesh. Again streams of shoppers are making a careful berth around her. Alone among them Nola hesitates, seems about to approach the woman — Please don't, Nola! please! Mrs. Dietrich thinks — then changes her mind and keeps on walking. Mrs. Dietrich murmurs isn't it a pity, poor thing, don’t you wonder where she lives, who her family is, but Nola doesn't reply. Her pace through the first door of Lord & Taylor is so rapid that Mrs. Dietrich can barely keep up.

But Nola's upset. Strangely upset. As soon as they are in the car, packages and bags in the backseat, she begins crying.

It’s childish helpless crying, as though her heart is broken. But Mrs. Dietrich knows it isn't broken, she has heard these very sobs before.

Many times before. Still she comforts her daughter, embraces her, hugs her hard, hard. A sudden fierce passion. Vehemence.13 “Nola honey, Nola dear, what's wrong, dear, everything will be all right, dear,” she says, close to weeping herself. She would embrace Nola even more tightly except for the girl's quilted jacket, that bulky L. L. Bean thing she has never liked, and Nola's stubborn lowered head. Nola has always been ashamed, crying, frantic to hide her face. Strangers are passing close by the car, curious, staring. Mrs. Dietrich wishes she had a cloak to draw over her daughter and herself, so that no one else would see.