"She told me everything that had happened before their divorce."

"Elle m'a raconté tout ce qui s'était passé avant leur divorce."

Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."

The car ride to the grocery store was silent, punctuated only by the low hum of the air conditioner. When they arrived, he strode ahead purposefully, not bothering to wait for her as she chose the cart. She always tried two or three before making her final decision, due to the Murphy's Law of misaligned grocery cart wheels. She always pushed the cart; that was her job. His was to choose the most cost-efficient brand of the items on the list. She couldn't be trusted to quickly and correctly calculate the price per ounce on the canned corn; do you know how many dollars per year you can save if you always buy the cheapest canned corn? It adds up.

She couldn't be trusted with anything regarding money.

Despite the precise organization of the list consisting of items inscribed in perfect cursive in the exact order in which they appeared in the store relative to the beginning and end of their path, he insisted on meticulously passing through each aisle. Salsa was stocked in many places--with the ethnic foods, with the chips, and with the assortment of dips crafted in-house--and he refused to let this chaotic arrangement trick him out of his hard-earned paycheck. Trips to the store consequently took over an hour on average. While the inefficiency of such a system frustrated her almost to tears, he secretly enjoyed the side effect that she would have less time to watch TV or talk to her mother on the phone.

On this particular trip, she felt empty; after several months of marriage, she had finally resigned herself to the fact that grocery shopping, which had been the most pleasurable of the household tasks when she was single, was now a chore that wasn't worth the grief their union made of it.

They continued up and down every aisle in their usual fashion. The only aisles he refused to visit were those that housed the health and beauty products; neither of them had need for such things beside the bulk packaging of Ivory soap he bought every few months. When they got to aisle 10, which she had jokingly called in her single days the "miracle of life" aisle due to the complete narrative arc of feminine hygiene to condoms to pregnancy tests to diapers and formula, she stopped the cart. This was the sole bit of power accorded to her on the trips. He continued for a few steps, then, realizing the incessant squeak of the cart's wheel had stopped following him, turned around to glare at her.

She was halfway down the aisle and had already selected the name-brand multipack of tampons: 36 super, 36 regular flow, and 18 light, all conveniently color-coded for those moments when cramps and headaches inevitably deprived one of all but the most basic recognition skills. He picked up the cardboard box and asked her how much it was going to cost them. "$7.39." She refused to break their icy gaze. He silently put the box back on the shelf and grabbed the store brand containing only had one strength (which might as well have been labeled "steel wool," since that's what it felt like). "We don't need to be wasting money on frivolities when the generic brand does the job just as well." She paused for a second, noting not-so-insignificantly that this was the closest he had ever come to referencing her period, or indeed any needs she had as a woman.

This revelation hit her. She took the generic brand and put it back on the shelf, echoing the confrontational gesture he had just made. As soon as she had picked up the original package, he ripped it out of her hands; instinctively, she grabbed it back and threw it down the aisle and into the next, where it landed, crumpled, next to the multivitamins. To punctuate this gesture, she shoved the cart, where it hit him square in what she considered to be the fleshy manifestation of all of his narcissistic tendencies.

He was too stunned to move.

She stormed out of the store into the dark embrace of the night.

"That was the instant I knew I had to leave him or else I would die." She took a sip of wine. The TV droned on in the background. "Less than a week later, we appeared in court."

I considered this for a second and turned back to that reality show about the Kardashians. Kim was at it again.

"He's a professor whose name I don't know."

"C'est un professeur dont je ne connais pas le nom."

Part of a series from a page titled "Practice Quiz on Relative Pronouns."

I contemplated the Pepperidge Farm cookies. The variety would have been suffocating, if one were the type of person to let the baked goods market dominate one's life. As it was, I was bored by the thought of being forced to select one indistinguishable package of blandness from the array. I swiped my arm across the shelf like an apathetic bear, causing a few packages to tumble into my cart.

I continued up and down the aisles, collecting food items that were bland enough to appease about 30 people. Every few steps, I had to adjust the strap on my slingbacks; this provided the perfect cadence to which I cursed the professor who had arrived on campus to give a talk on something that was only tangentially related to everything I cared about (and even that was debatable). Like the Pepperidge Farm cookies in aisle 3, each visiting professor was just as bland as the previous one: Vision as Truth in Flaubert's Madame Bovary; Corneille as Proto-Cinema: Close-Ups and Crane Shots in Illusion comique; Rousseau and Spanking...even the lecture linking hermaphrodites to the discontents of Socratic rhetoric during the Renaissance couldn't hold my interest.

When I had inquired into the topic of today's lecture, I had only been given one substantive: "Spice." My gay friend had made a joke about the Spice Girls, and I remembered being briefly angry with him for being a stereotype. All I knew about this professor (not even bothering to register his name) was that he was in the Classics department at one of the schools in the University of California system--but not one of the schools you ever hear about. The only tinge of emotion I felt in reference to this obligatory lecture was when I realized that all of the UC campuses must hate each other over constantly fighting for state funding; this cheered me up.

I wheeled my cart to the checkout. As the cashier called for a manager to process my in-store account form, I looked out the window into the parking lot: snow. Maybe I'll get into some sort of accident and receive permission to miss the lecture on account of me being in the hospital. That was my only hope.