by Pamela Ribon
“I’m so sure!” she guffawed, her voice bouncing off the walls of the mostly cement room. The other patrons gruffly squared their shoulders, harrumphing around their laptops, hunched over their paperbacks, exaggerating their actions so that Smidge could catch a hint. She didn’t, even when the couple finishing their breakup coffees gave her red-eyed glares.
I was one hundred percent sure Smidge had never come close to betraying Henry, and this seemed like a very weird time to start doing it. Maybe she had decided to spend more time with the people she previously wouldn’t, just so she could leave more strangers with a great impression of her. Her legend could live on in even more minds. Maybe she thought you got into Heaven by the number of attendees at your funeral.
Seth Sampson raised both his hands like he was reffing his own touchdown as he shouted, “I swear to God!” as Smidge made a sound like a frightened chicken. I decided to wander over before it got any worse.
“Hey, Danielle,” Seth Sampson said with a cheery smile, as if he didn’t remember anything, as if we were the oldest of bestest friends who hung out in coffee shops telling jokes all the time. Just a regular Rachel and Joey.
Smidge presented Seth Sampson to me as if I was an adoring crowd. “Look who’s back in town!” She placed her fingers to her cheeks, but it didn’t hide her flush of emotion. “Did that sound celebratory?” she asked him.
“I like it,” he said.
“Well, I didn’t mean to cheer, it’s not appropriate. Seth Sampson is back home to help his mother, who’s not feeling well, bless her heart. Dans, isn’t it nice of this boy to come home to help take care of his mama? Isn’t he a nice son?”
Seth Sampson fiddled with a wooden stir stick, flipping it between his thumb and forefinger as he looked me over.
“Danielle Meyers,” he said. “I hear you’ve done all kinds of exciting things in your life. Like move to California.”
I narrowed my eyes in disdain. “Are you being sarcastic?”
Smidge waved a bony arm toward me, as if shooing a gigantic fly from her picnic table. “Forgive Danny,” she said. “She sometimes speaks in Asshole.”
Later that night on the porch, Smidge studied her toes while I tried to figure out the best way to start asking questions about Seth Sampson.
She had her feet perched up on the wall in front of her, wineglass dangling from her left hand. Her toenails were meticulously painted and it occurred to me that she was either doing her own toes or she was somehow finding time to sneak away for secret pedicures.
If I were dying, I’m pretty sure the first thing I’d stop doing is worry about the state of my feet. In fact, my impending death would be a fantastic excuse not to think about any of my twenty nails. My fingertips would become a wasteland of ripped cuticles and sharp, jagged edges.
I launched into my best impression of Smidge, raising my voice an octave, heavy on the drawl. “Oh, Seth Sampson! I just don’t remember you being so real-funny! But you sure are a hoot and a holler, I’ll tell you what. Is this coffee spiked? Because I am drunk off of how awesome you are. Can I feel your muscles?”
Smidge raised herself in her chair, already on the defensive. “Oh, you know,” she tossed, as if that was enough on the subject.
“No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”
She draped one arm over her head, rotating her hand at the wrist as she stared off into space, formulating an answer. “Well, Mother, since you’re so curious about my social life, I will tell you that I just happened to run into him.”
I’d yet to hear back from the Lizard. I briefly wondered if I should give it another try, or if silence was her answer to the situation and the extent of her willingness to take part.
“You just happened to run into him?” I asked.
She leaned over to the side table, examining the label on the wine bottle.
“Yes, just like how you happened to run into us,” she said.
I couldn’t let it be. “You guys were sitting kind of close, is all.”
Smidge let her spine unhinge at her neck; her head dropped and rolled to the side as her eyeballs bulged, like she had been struck by a temporary possession. “We were sitting at a table. For two. Like two people.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Oh, okay, Danny. You caught me. I wanted to see if I could bag the head boy from high school. I wanted to know if this sickly ass still had the hotness.”
“Just because you say it sarcastically doesn’t mean it can’t be the truth.”
“I see what you’re doing here,” she said. “And it’s not going to work. Back to the plan, missy. No more stalling. What it is time for you to do is: a Henry experiment.”
“Right now?” Henry was upstairs in a battle with a certain brand-new ninth-grader over an essay she hadn’t finished writing for her English class.
“When he comes back to the kitchen, I want you to chat him up.”
“Chat him up? What does that even mean?”
Smidge tucked a hand across her waist and held her wineglass with the other, like she was wandering through an art show. “He needs to get used to you being close to him,” she said. “If not, it won’t happen after I’m gone because he’ll think it’s like a betrayal or something. We have to have it already in his head that you are a separate, sexual being.”
“Please don’t call me a sexual being.”
“Look, I’d probably find someone to have sex with him even if I weren’t dying. Then I could finally live in peace. I love him, but I don’t need to have him in my face every night.”
“Smidge.”
“Pawing all over me.”
“Smidge.”
“You’ll have to get used to that. He likes grabbing butts.”
“Smidge.”
She was on a roll. “Married people should only have to do it once a month. When you’re with Henry, I say you don’t have to do it more than four times a year. But you should probably do it more often at the beginning. You know, if he’s sad.”
“Please stop.”
“Although, I admit I don’t like thinking of you two kissing. I like how Henry kisses.”
“I am so uncomfortable right now.”
“Then go in there and flirt with that man. Bump into him. Touch his hand. See if he looks you in the eye and gets real close.”
“Give him the old Seth Sampson treatment?”
Smidge pinched my arm. “I wasn’t flirting with Seth Sampson,” she insisted.
“I’ll do this only if you promise you won’t see him ever again.”
Smidge launched into a full-scale production of moral outrage, putting her glass down onto the table before adjusting it like it was the sole audience member for this monologue she was about to deliver, ensuring it had the best view.
“I didn’t even try to see him! I ran into him. I already said that!”
“Then it’s easy to make this promise.”
She tucked her lips into her mouth, scrunching her face in frustration. It’s possible the difficulty she was having wasn’t over getting to see Seth Sampson again. It was in letting me tell her what to do.
“Fine,” she said. “Because I don’t ca’yir. I promise.”
“Who’s making promises?” Vikki had let herself in through the screen door and was wearing some kind of yellow housedress that had seen better days and what appeared to be several lonely nights. She had her hair pulled into pigtails, of all things, topped off with a trucker cap that read Rest Stop.
“Knock, knock!” she added as an afterthought.
“It’s Vikki!” Smidge cheered. “Come sit. Danny’s gonna go into the kitchen and get us all some more wine and you can keep me company.”
Vikki practically pushed my ass off the bench. “Sounds fun! Now, what were you promising?”
“Ohhhhh,” Smidge said, drawing the word out for a few seconds. “Just that I wasn’t cheating earlier, when we were playing a game. Right, Dans?”
I held my hand on the doorkn
ob. “I didn’t say you were cheating. I said it looked like you were thinking about it. Like it looked fun to you.”
“Thinkin’ ain’t cheatin’,” she said, turning her back to me, fluffing out her hair. “Ain’t no thought police up on this porch, right, Vikki?”
Vikki looked from Smidge to me and then back again, her overglossed mouth a twisted pout of confusion. “Well, I’m sure I don’t know what y’all are talking about, but that wine sounded like a good idea.”
“One second,” I grumbled as I pushed my way inside.
I’d hoped fate would be on my side and I’d find an empty kitchen, but no such luck. Henry was at the sink, scouring the roasting pan from that evening’s dinner.
“Let me ask you something,” he said, drying his hands on a nearby tea towel, slapping it back and forth between his palms like he was making a tortilla. “When exactly are you going home?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Smidge asked me to stay.”
“Yeah.” He turned back to the sink. “I know. It’s just . . . the school year already started and . . . Am I going to have to buy you a Christmas stocking?”
I stood there, unsure of what to do next.
He opened the cabinet to his left and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. “I’m drinking this,” he said. He took a step toward me and then another and suddenly he was right next to me, reaching a hand just past my cheek to open the cabinet door behind me. “Need a glass,” he explained.
“Oh, good!” said Smidge as she made a beeline to where we were standing. “My two favorite people, right next to each other.” She smirked before looking over her shoulder toward your bedroom. “Since Jenny’s on my shit list tonight for that essay bullshit.”
As she chattered on, her hands went to work. One was on Henry’s arm, the other my hip, gently pulling us into what was threatening to become a group hug. I tried to wiggle away, but she gripped my side, pulling me into the position she wanted. Smidge slid herself into the space between us. Reaching toward the speakers on the counter, she decided, “This should be louder.”
Once satisfied with the volume, she snapped and bounced, eyes closed. “Nnh!” She grooved, turning the two-by-two space in front of the sink into a dance floor. “Oh, people!” she moaned. “I forgot how good this song is.” She hip-bumped me into Henry before shimmying off toward the porch. “I miss my drink!” she shouted to no one in particular, then disappeared around the corner.
“Your wife is crazy,” I said.
“She sometimes still feels guilty about James is all.”
“What do you mean?”
Henry cleared his throat. “I don’t know. Just forget that.”
“Forget what, exactly?”
The sudden clamor on the porch announced Tucker’s arrival. “Howdy, ladies! How is your Friday going? Good, good. Henry in here?”
Henry tried to scoot past me, but I stepped in front of him, grabbing his arm.
“What did you mean?” I asked again, a sense of dread rising in my stomach. It felt like I was peeking inside a darkened room with one hand on the light switch, not quite ready to flip. I ducked my head, trying to force him to look me in the eye. His cheeks were flushed as his lips pursed and twisted, searching for some kind of emergency exit.
“Nothing,” he said. “Smidge said you might have left the bathroom door unlocked on purpose, so I figured this was about James. But she was joking; I get that now. I forgot how you didn’t—”
“What is going on, people?” Tucker’s booming voice was laced with accusations as he took in the scene he’d stumbled upon in the kitchen.
“Nothing,” Henry and I said at the same time.
“Then why are y’all standing like that?”
Not Tucker’s question. Yours.
I’ll never forget the sound of your voice right then, Jenny, so uncomfortable and unsure. I don’t know how long you’d been watching us, but any length of time was probably too much. Once your father uncharacteristically yelled at you to go to your room, everything looked even more suspicious than it had already been.
“Yes, sir,” you said, your voice already cracking from tears, as you ran full speed into your bedroom, slamming your door with all your force.
Tucker gave me a sarcastic wink. “This place is a whole lot more interesting now that you’re becoming a sister-wife.”
EIGHTEEN
I had been awake most of the night trying to figure out what Henry was talking about. What kind of secret about James would Smidge be holding from me?
In the morning I stepped out of the shower to find a small, square rash on my back, just to the left of my spine. It extended outward in a small line toward my armpit. I probably should have been instantly alarmed, but all I could muster was a weary sigh.
Considering all the ailments and unknowns I was enduring, a rash seemed like one I could handle. Nothing too serious could come from a visit to the dermatologist.
Dr. Fowler’s eyes bulged behind round, thin glasses with a yellow tint, and she started each of her sentences in almost a whisper, a mumble that built up steam as she tumbled toward the final punctuation. She sounded like a fleet of police cars on the chase.
After giving my back a perfunctory inspection, she said, “Thrmrrfuhl say-that’s-either-shingles-or-HERPES.”
That has to be pretty near the top of the list of words people don’t enjoy getting yelled at them.
“Herpes?” I asked incredulously, which is the only way anybody ever asks that question.
“Impra probably-SHINGLES.”
“I thought shingles was restricted to the elderly.”
Dr. Fowler left the room, presumably to mumble-yell an order to a nurse. A few minutes later I met Glenda.
She was cheerful, the opposite of Dr. Fowler, with a shiny bob that gave a perky swing as she nodded, which was something she did constantly, as if she were continually agreeing with her own happy thoughts. Her dark eyes seemed unnaturally round, as if she had just come back from having them dilated.
“Okay, Danielle,” Glenda said, smiling wide enough that I was tempted to start counting her teeth. “I hear you got the shingles,” she said. She shoved her fists into her lab coat pockets and shuddered, but never once lost her smile. It felt like she was hosting a children’s show and I was today’s special lesson. “I bet you’re in a lot of pain!”
“I thought maybe I was dying,” I confessed.
“I bet you did.” She tsked.
Glenda swabbed the blisters on my back as she told me the test was just a formality; she was pretty sure I had shingles. She gingerly placed a hand on my shoulder. Her eyebrows were plucked to two thin strands, her forehead wide with calm.
“I’m sorry to tell you, sugar kitten,” she said, “but it’s about to get worse.”
“My life?”
She laughed. “The pain! But, yes. Your life, too, I suppose. By the way, the medicine we give you is the same we give people for herpes. So if you use the pharmacist down on the first floor, you pay no attention to the look she might give you.”
Then Glenda turned serious. “This is from stress,” she said. “Something’s going on with you that you can’t quite handle. Your skin looks like someone’s been rubbing sandpaper on a baby lizard.”
That’s when I realized the most important question: “Is this contagious?”
“To people who haven’t had the chicken pox, it is, immhmm. But you’d be giving someone chicken pox, not this.”
Smidge had never had the chicken pox. She bragged about this on all of her online profiles.
“Short. Talky. Never eats meringue. Never had the chicken pox.”
As I was getting back into my clothes, the sleeve of my shirt brushed against my arm. It felt like I’d just tried to wear a coat of fire. I became one of those cartoon characters whacked by a frying pan, spine all wiggly, face stretched in pain.
Glenda gave me a comforting pout. “Shingles is an inflammation of a nerve, the whole nerve. On you: your left side
, spine to fingertip.” She gestured down my arm, two fingers extended like a flight attendant pointing out the exit doors. “Everything that touches you along this line for the next couple of weeks is gonna hurt like hell. Load up on painkillers, stay inside, and try to sleep this off.”
It is possible that I sounded a little too relieved when I called Smidge from my car to tell her I needed to fly back to Los Angeles, that I was contaminated and couldn’t be around her.
She didn’t take the news well.
“Oh, so you’re abandoning me, is that it?”
“It’s not abandoning. I’m sick and I can’t be near you.”
“I’ve been sick and near you before. We shared a toilet during the Food Poisoning Epidemic of 1995.”
“This is different. If you caught the chicken pox, it could—I’m not sure, but I know it would probably make things worse.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Maybe get Vikki to help you,” I offered. “She’ll like that, and you can boss her around and she won’t ask as many questions as I do.”
“Ugh,” Smidge grunted. I could hear her washing dishes, the rush of water splashing against the sink, the clink of plates piling.
“Besides, I need to check in at home. Business is piling up and I have a few clients I need to tend to.”
“Oh, for your dumb job where you teach people how to open their bills and buy carrots in a bag? You’re right. That sounds real important.”
“I’m sick, Smidge,” I whined.
“Are you sick?” she mocked. “Do you have an owie on your arm?”
She interrupted herself with a coughing fit. I could picture her struggling against the sink to choke down the spasm inside her lungs, angry that she’d had to take a break to catch her breath.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You should be.” She waited for me to respond, to take it all back, to drive over wearing a hazmat suit, I guess. It was that time in our fight where I was supposed to bend to her wishes. But I couldn’t.
My e-mails were piling up, clients were starting to get frustrated, my future income was threatening to dwindle away. My website was down for three days before I realized it. No telling how much potential work I lost during that time.
