“I have never hit a soul.”

May 01, 2025

If you ever wonder, what makes a story a story? — because I sure have, though I saw and gnaw away at this craft my whole life — why then, look at this borrowed quote from the parking lot.

The other evening at sundown, I parked diagonally, walked into the little old grocer by our house, bought one thing, a 12-pack of fizzy water, girl said, “Would you like a bag?” “No, I’m good,” I smirked at the offer of a bag for one thing, and came back out.

Leaving I saw, twenty feet over, too far to require pleasantries of me, an older, classy white couple coming in, the fit, sporty man ten feet ahead, the fit sporty woman behind. They both had great, white hairdos. He even had good hair, and white docksider shoes.

“I wouldn’t,” she told him.

He shrugged with an infinity of exasperation.

“I have never hit a soul in my entire life,” she said.

What was that, I wondered, opening the car, setting down the fizzy water, and sitting still. Not much more to add. You’ve got the intrigue, the quiet bomb. That’s the center of the tootsie pop. I reeled with antecedents (“Where have they just come from? “What are they fussing about?” Did he accuse her of some violence? Why did she defend herself?) He was mad. She was mad. They were decades past talk therapy, and yet, here they still chomp away over tidbits of disagreement. So, that is how my story head works a hundred times a day.

Classy Wife did not like Classy Husband’s implication that she would ever hit someone. I don’t care what happened next in the store. I care about what she did. What did she do? Usually it’s husbands accused of some aggression, but in this case, it’s a wife who had either done something or come close to it. To whom, though? Possibilities:

Couple had just come from granddaughters’ swim class. Other kids were swearing on the diving board and talking about sex. Classy Wife (CW) had just admonished a group of tween-age boys and girls to knock off the language, “There are little kids listening,” they told her to go sit down in her rocking chair before she has a heart attack. CW jabbed her index finger into a boy’s forehead.
The classy couple had just come from the Pool & Yacht Club where her younger sister, forever aggrieved about money, and while dining on coq au vin, brought up CW’s husband’s affairs and drinking while on business trips to Germany. CW had come very close to slapping her younger sister, who used to be sympathetic to her long suffering and humiliated self.
Couple just came from a golf course. Some male group whose new money for becoming club members had come from awful, offensive crypto, as opposed to Classy Couple’s dignified brokerage accounts, said they were playing through, without even asking if they could go ahead, politely, and the jerks walked up to the tee green and teed off, all four of them. CW sniped out loud, a no-no! right when the last young man swung, “You’re welcome!” (because they didn’t even say thank you), and as a result, he shanked it straight into the pond, scattering ducks going “Quack quack” furiously. The ball skipped and struck a plastic decoy coyote with a loud clunk, and disappeared underwater. “You got a lot of nerve, granny!” he said to her, and she threw her club at him, muttering, “Try me.”

Classy husband (CH) is upset in all these scenarios. CH would have loved his wife to shut the hell up in all cases, but CW carries a lifetime of humiliation and resentment underneath her lavender polo clad shoulders, and white golf cap, or whatever she’s wearing, and she is not about to shut up.

Ever. She is unfazed at the grocery store, she is telling the truth, she is not speeding to catch up with her husband, or to elaborate on his implication that she is verging on violence.

“I have never hit a soul.”

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