In seventh grade my parents gave me permission to shop at the mall without a chaperone. My best friend Madeleine’s parents gave her the same gift, and it was supposed to be the best day of our lives. On the way to the mall however, in my mom’s station wagon, Madeleine got so excited and nervous that she wet her pants. She didn’t say anything until we were standing inside and the station wagon was gone. After a few minutes of debate, we called my mom on the payphone and she came to pick us up.
Trips to the mall have been less exciting since. For all of high school and until now, my senior year in college, I hated the mall. I hated the way it smelled like French fries and Yankee Candle, I hated its indoor clocklessness, and I hated the other shoppers. I would leave feeling sad, as if I had eaten several Cinnabuns and was wearing a baby tee that said “Naughty”.
But today I’m starting over, rekindling my burnt-out love affair. I want to buy things—useless things for myself—at Westfarms Mall in Newington.
Westfarms Mall is very large. It’s like an international airport, or a complex organ system. There’s a throbbing main aorta, circulating people through secondary arteries toward each of the four major department stores: Filenes, J.C. Penney, Lord & Taylor, Nordstrom. The mall directory divides itself into terminals, giving stores codes like C209 and B115. Hundreds of people pump through the halls.
There are strollers everywhere, and old people shouting on cell phones clutched distrustfully to their ears. Teenagers enter and emerge from clothing stores, notice other clothing stores and do it again. Two women at the hair kiosk brush shiny false ponytails vigorously and talk in Korean. A grungy man in a ski cap and sweat pants sits in the massage chair at the front of Brookstone and stares at me as I pass.
“Where can we go for belly button rings?” wonders a deeply tanned high schooler with Cleopatra eyeliner and an Abercrombie Lifeguard sweatshirt. I follow her and her friends as they head towards what I hope is a belly button station but instead is the pretzel store. I turn into American Eagle before they notice me standing behind them writing down what they say.
Inside, a skinny boy sings along to Avril on the loudspeaker as he thumbs through the women’s sale rack. I watch from the other side, mouthing the words along with him. “Too many, too many problems…Broke down inside.” I buy some underwear and a moderately inexpensive purse. I’m not sure why. It must be the gentle pull of things, things, things to buy. “And then you just need a yellow shirt to go with your bra,” someone says to her friend as they brush past.
I sit down for a moment in a rest area near the entrance to Filenes with my back to the Rainforest Café. Sounds of the jungle and the creaking of giant mechanical butterfly wings, monkeys, and bullfrogs lull me into a calm daze. I feel so still, as if the entire mall is revolving around me. Behind me a mother gives her children some pennies to throw in the Rainforest Café’s wishing pool. “I wish for GameBoy,” one says.
Another mother pushes her daughter’s stroller close to the wishing pool. “Wanna see ‘im? Wanna get out and see ‘im?” she asks. The girl gets out of her stroller and peeks inside, where a mechanical alligator wags its tail.
“Snake!” she screams, and jumps back in her stroller.
Other kids whip their pennies at the alligator’s face. “I got him in the eye!”
Soft jazz plays behind the canned rainforest. People pass me on all sides—some are almost beautiful, but no one is quite right, and it’s better that way.
Two more girls brush by in teenage uniforms, wearing jeans with the exact same worn-out circles on their butts and the same tanned back fat squeezing out the top. Their matching highlighted ponytails swing in sync and every high school boy falls in love a little.
A man takes a picture of his family smiling and heading down the escalator, while an older lady across from me eats a pretzel slowly with her eyes shut. She gets up to leave, and a woman in a green outfit comes to sanitize the couch.
A boy runs up the stairs in athletic pants and a gold embroidered yarmulke, while the black lady sitting next to me is swarmed by her three granddaughters who hug her and cry, “I love you!”
Eventually, everyone looks the same. I find myself wishing I had an Abercrombie sweatshirt just like everyone else, but I suppose ultimately every sweatshirt is the same sweatshirt. Every cell phone is the same cell phone, every haircut is the same haircut, and every conversation is the same conversation. Everyone does the same things. Everyone you ever knew and everyone you’ll never know are doing the same things.
I think about calling my mom and reminding her of the time Madeleine peed in her pants, but then I remember that we never told her. We just said we didn’t really feel like going to the mall after all, that it was only a lot of stores trying to make us buy things. She was touched, and I immediately believed my own lie. Only now, however, do I think there’s more to the mall. There’s something about it—both dauntingly commercial and hauntingly organic. Plus, oh snap—they have Pacific Sunwear.
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