by Pamela Ribon
“Thank you,” you said. “I appreciate it.”
“It’s just that you could grow up to be a serial killer,” I said. “And if that happens, I really don’t think you should have kids.”
“When I’m a serial killer I’ll share my baby with you,” you said. “We’ll raise him together and make the worst baby in the world.”
We shook on it.
FOURTEEN
I decided to send Tucker a text rather than risk getting tangled up in a phone call. I let him know that Smidge had requested he find something to do with Henry, preferably a task involving heavy labor.
Within seconds I received his reply: R u her assistant now 2?
I craddled my stomach as I decided to ignore his text bait.
A pain had started in my gut, a burning just underneath my breastbone. It might have been anxiety, or it could have been Waffle House; I assumed it was a combination of both.
There was no response from the Lizard, but there were three messages from potential new clients, all referrals, asking about my availability. I wrote back asking if they could elaborate on what they were looking for, what brought them to me. It was a stall, but I needed a chance to figure out just how long I had before I absolutely had to be back in LA.
An e-mail from Lindsay Waters, a former client who was so high maintenance I ended up charging her extra just to keep myself from ditching her, caught my eye.
Subject line, all caps: PLEASE URGANT NEED YOUR HELP!
A married mother of two, Lindsay Waters ran a successful public relations business that focused on the music industry. She drove a car that cost more than most people’s homes. Her actual home cost more than what people would consider an amazing lottery jackpot. Waxed, buffed, tanned, and coiffed, she had transformed herself into an image of a woman so perfect she was intimidating. She must have been, as I can’t imagine how else a forty-six-year-old businesswoman could get that far in life without ever using a comma or knowing how to correctly spell the word urgent.
The e-mail was peppered with similar atrocities, apostrophes slicing into words where they had no business, a seemingly random system of capitalization when it came to verbs, and a newly invented word I vehemently disliked: skutch. I had to read it aloud before I could ascertain she was trying to describe “a small amount.”
What was so “urgant” to Lindsay Waters was something about a diet she read about in a magazine, one that forbid wheat, sugar, and “diary.”
I quickly scrolled through her included list of dietary restrictions before I finally reached the part of her e-mail that described her actual problem, which was filled with problems of its own: “Who should be in charge of cooking meals, or is it time to hire a cook and if yes than which budget should that come from—FOOD or labor?”
My stomach cramped again. I braced myself with one arm while I debated my reply. Just over a month ago this letter wouldn’t have been much more than an amusing series of grammatical errors, one I would’ve forwarded to Smidge before launching directly into a helpful response. Her oldest son’s food allergies would be foremost in my mind as I cheerfully suggested a few ways to incorporate her new diet into the family’s daily life. I’d know the state of her finances enough that I wouldn’t even have to go through my files. Her question answered and sent, I’d then record a billable hour into my ledger and go on about my day.
But as I sat practically folded in half trying to keep my insides from poking through to my outsides, thinking about what I used to call my life before this forced sabbatical, it was becoming clear that everything I was doing was absurd.
I am a woman who’s never had to put a plate of food in front of a child, and there I was instructing a successful businesswoman how to arrange her finances in such a way that she could put her family on a diet. For the record, the last thing anybody in the Waters family needed was calorie restriction. You could line them all up fingertip to fingertip and they could still fit through a door while holding hands. The youngest girl was recently bragging about fitting into a pair of double-zero jeans.
Lindsay craved the appearance of control, and needed to be on the cusp of the “everywhere topic.” She liked it when she could use the same words other women used when she was around them. Diet, gluten, and playdate were keywords of real mothers, the right kind, the ones who got to be labeled “mommies.” Competent females who push the correct strollers, wear the same layers of expensive casual wear, who were never without a scarf or glittery flip-flops. Their thousand-dollar bags were filled with ziplock baggies of snacks, and designer-wrapped Kindles. Lindsay needed help to hang with the A-list mommy set, but it was imperative that she appear to be doing it with no help whatsoever.
When I first came into her life, the Waterses were two months behind on their mortgage. A warrant had been issued for her husband because of unpaid parking tickets. Their garage was filled with boxes and unopened postal bags from online clothing stores. After less than six weeks with me, they had a plan for their money, a schedule for their lives, and I got them to stop letting their eldest use the master bedroom. They’d had a lot of guilt about not being able to buy him a car, or pay for the college he wanted. He took advantage of that.
When I was faced with that kind of challenge I would often think, What would Smidge say to these people? Then the answers would come easily. I’d take whatever I heard in my head and tried to give the same advice in a much more tactful manner.
I told Lindsay and her husband that they had to think of themselves as the landlords of their home, and decide how their tenants should behave when they live rent-free. The rules should be simple: they pay for room and board through chores, giving back to the community, being decent individuals who don’t scream or leave wet towels on the hallway floor.
Because of my website’s popularity, I’ve sometimes been asked if I’ve thought about having my own talk show or self-help book. I know I’m not pretty enough for TV, or disciplined enough to write hundreds of pages. Besides, I don’t claim to save lives. I’m merely the sanity police. My job is to come in and restore things when people are so blinded by their own guilt and selfishness that they no longer know how to operate a coffeemaker. Mostly I urge them out of their self-sabotaging behavior before they start blaming the universe for their problems. Not fixing a broken car leads to people needing to share a car, which leads to gas problems and people being late, and suddenly that person’s asking, “Why did I get fired?”
I started out this business wanting to be helpful, and there are times when I know I’ve made a family get back on track, or saved the sanity of one overwhelmed woman who felt pressure to do it all, but more and more I was getting questions like “Can you teach me how to make a blog where I say interesting things?” or “If I wanted to throw a party with only yellow items, can you please give me a list of stores that sell yellow party things?” I don’t feel great that I know the answer to the question about yellow party store items, but I do. I somehow became an expert on keeping up appearances. And because I also needed to look like I could do it all, I answered those questions, the ones I originally was trying to eliminate. I answered the dumbest questions. I even answered the ones that might have been questionable in taste.
A client asked me to write a letter to her husband, letting him know she was ready to start scheduling sex appointments so that she no longer felt uncomfortable when her girlfriends would gossip at brunch. She was the only one of her friends who was not having as much sex, and she wanted to publicly announce, through this third party that was me, that it was no longer okay.
The article generated a small flurry of activity, which helped with my ad revenue, but it changed things after that. I wasn’t running a website about families getting organized. It was a place where people could gossip about fad diets and whose kids were too skinny and whose weren’t skinny enough. I quit checking my comments section when I saw the same few who would start feuds every day. I stopped so that I could pretend it wasn’t happening, because I
knew the bigger the flame war, the more clicks my site had. Those clicks allowed me to drop everything and go to Smidge’s side for an undetermined period of time.
Part of what had happened to my website was my fault, but part of it was the culture. Yes, it was important to get everything right, but there was way more pressure to rub it in everyone’s faces. Perfect pictures of kids, perfect table settings, perfect parties, perfect manicures. You get caught up in the cycle of the perception of effortless perfection and can’t jump off that speeding train.
Your mother didn’t want off that train. Mostly because she was the conductor.
It occurs to me only now that at no point did I debate telling Smidge’s story as a way to make money. I normally didn’t get through a day without wondering at least five times, “Is there an entry in this? Is there money to be made here?” When my existence became a commodity, I had to start thinking of my waking moments as potential income. But with Smidge, she was always my secret. My hidden family. She wasn’t something I wanted to share.
Smidge had let only me in on her biggest secret, which was more power than anybody else had ever given me in my life. That made what we were doing—however uncomfortable and undefined it was at that moment—more important than anything Lindsay Waters could find so urgant.
I wanted to write back, If this is truly your biggest problem right now, why don’t you go hug your kids, kiss your husband, and thank whatever god you believe in that your life is pretty sweet? And PS: use spell-check. It’s literally the least you could do.
But I didn’t. Instead I scrolled through my e-mail, searching for any sign that I might have missed from the Lizard. There was nothing. I tried again, writing: “Hi. Please contact me. It’s important. It’s about your daughter.”
“Hey.”
At the sound of Smidge’s voice, I turned, dropping my phone. Smidge stood in the doorframe, dark circles under her eyes, a sleep line cutting across the left side of her face like she had been maimed in her sleep.
“Hey.” I exhaled. “Sorry. You scared me.”
“I slept for seven hours!” she complained. “This whole day is almost gone!”
“I guess you needed sleep,” I said, retrieving my phone from the floor. For the first time in the decades I had known Smidge, I saw dog hair on the tile. There was an unswept Cheerio. This was the biggest sign that she was not okay.
“I had the longest dream.” She absently scratched at her knee. “I need you to promise me that when you take over my life you’ll give to charity every month. In the dream, Mark Wahlberg was there and he told me that since I never help people in need, that’s why I’m dying. I did everything right, but I didn’t think about those less fortunate. Now I am less fortunate, and Mark Wahlberg hates me. Which is kind of the most upsetting part.”
“Did you tell Jenny I was trying to have a baby?”
Your mother liked to stall by fluffing her hair with her nails. Fluff, fluff, fluff, getting her curls to spring around her head like she could Medusa me out of the conversational topic. “No,” she said as she worked up a combination of excuse and lie. “I said you were fixing to have a family and you were freaking out about it. I said the truth, so you can’t be mad.”
“That sounds like I’m pregnant.”
“Pregnant with Old Jenny. That’s what I’m calling her now, since she’s a million years old and swings those wide lady hips of hers like a go-go dancer.”
My stomach stung again, sharply, this time. I shoved the heel of my right hand under my rib cage and bent forward, my head between my knees.
“What’s going on with you?” she asked.
“Nothing. Stress. I want to know more about what’s going on with you,” I said. “Medically.”
“You don’t need to know these things. I know these things. My doctor knows these things.”
“Okay, you’re seeing a doctor! That’s news to me.”
“I did need one to tell me I have cancer. It’s not like I peed on a stick in my bathroom. Although that would’ve been much cheaper.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“Her. And no.”
“Why not?”
“Because why does it matter?”
I want a reason to know everything I already know about her cancer. I need her to give me just enough information so that I can justify the amount of internet research I’ve already done.
“Because I want to do something,” I said. “I’ve been here for weeks now and other than rolling your sheets into balls and unsuccessfully grounding your daughter, I really don’t feel like anything has happened.”
“Okay, then. Now you’re talking.” She nodded, folding her arms across her chest. “Get dressed. We’ve got some errands to run.”
I looked down to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. But there I was, in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Shoes, even. “I am dressed,” I said. “These are clothes.”
“Wear something nicer,” she said, backing out of the room. “I’ll meet you at the door in ten.” Then, as usual, just when I thought she was finished, she added, “Lipstick, too! And fix your hayir.”
The bank was our first stop, to add me to her accounts. This meant letting me in on a secret: Smidge had multiple accounts, ones Henry didn’t know about.
“It’s funny that he doesn’t know about this money, because he’s the reason I even know how to save in the first place. He taught me. He said we needed to set a good example for Jenny, that ATMs aren’t unlimited resources on the corner, like a water fountain at a park.”
“Money faucets.”
“Exactly. Sooooooo, sometimes I get money and I don’t need to be telling everybody, especially my husband.” She stared suspiciously at the bank representative as he clicked away from behind his monitor, like he was entering our dialogue into the public record.
“I don’t understand why you need me on this account,” I said. “Won’t the money just go to Henry after you . . .” I stopped myself, stammered into silence. “Can we have a code word?” I pleaded. “I can’t use the real word for what’s going to happen to you.”
“Yes, well, I’m sorry to be straining your emotions,” Smidge said, patting my arm wearily, with as much condescension as she could muster. “You’re right; it’s just so thoughtless of me. Where are my manners?”
“Smidge, I’m trying. I really am. But I am messed up. We’re at the bank, and you are signing your secret money account over to me. Why are you doing this?”
“Marsala.”
“What?”
“The code word. For what’s happening to me. Marsala.”
“Why that word?”
“I think it’s real pretty.” She grabbed my fingertips and gave them a tug. “As for the money, consider it your inheritance. No: it’s your paycheck. All this should come with a salary. Lord knows I would’ve liked getting paid for this job over the years. Okay, so you’re getting a husband, a daughter, and a savings account worth thirty-five thousand dollars. You have to admit: you can’t say I didn’t leave you anything, after I marsala.”
“As if there will be anything left after I pay off all the secret credit cards I bet you have.”
There was only the slightest of pauses before Smidge responded with “Touché.”
As she finished signing the last form she told me, “We have plans tonight.”
“We have plans? You and me?”
“You, me, Tucker, and the horndog also known as my husband,” she said. “Let’s get Henry trashed enough so he’ll go right to sleep.”
“We’re going out? Like with drinking?”
“Yep, and I am all rested up for it. Fifteen hours of sleep will do that to you. Jenny’s going to a friend’s house until late, so it’s grown-up night. Promise me you’ll do your hayir.”
“I did my hair before we came to the bank! This is done hair!”
“Oh, Danny,” Smidge said, scrunching her face so that one side of her mouth dropped to meet her chin, “I was worried you were going t
o say that.”
After the bank and a pickup at the dry cleaner, Smidge stopped the car without warning. I hadn’t been paying attention to the road, so I was unprepared to be sitting in front of Serenity Hilltop, the “fancy cemetery,” as it’s known in Odgen. People with money or even a slight modicum of fame find their way to spend eternity there. You have to apply. Whenever a new body is laid to rest, the entire town comes out. It’s quite the event.
“I’ll handle all the arrangements,” she said as I stared through the passenger-side window at the imposing green hill peppered with hundreds of gray memorials. “I know I can get up here.”
I tried to imagine myself soon standing on that hill, wearing black, weeping into a handkerchief. The whole thing still felt completely detached from my real life, like someone was describing the dream they’d had the night before.
It was crazy. Smidge had died, and she had somehow finagled to get herself buried at Serenity Hilltop, and you were there in this amazing black dress, holding Jenny’s hand and crying. And then a giraffe was getting buried in the next plot, and Smidge jumped out of her coffin and yelled at the giraffe for ruining her special day. It seemed so real at the time.
“Why are you smiling?” Smidge asked as she whacked me in the back of the head.
“You’d be so mad if a giraffe tried to get buried here next to you.”
Smidge puffed her lips in exasperation. “Focus, please. And get out of the car.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s happy hour.”
Within minutes Smidge had set up a makeshift picnic on the lawn in front of the car. She was careful to have us sit where we’d be hidden from the main road or the welcome booth, so as not to get caught sipping the mini-martinis she had quickly shaken for us.
“That car cooler is the best idea I’ve ever had,” she said after taking her first, slow gulp.
“Am I driving home?”
“Relax. I’ve got some water, and we ain’t going nowhere for a while. You can’t stop me from having a martini every afternoon at five. That’s my new thing and I love it, so you can suck it if you think you can change that one.”
