by Pamela Ribon
“Okay, everybody,” I said. “Let’s just calm down, take a second, and focus on finishing mixing.”
You whacked and stabbed at that bowl like you were holding a machete. Meanwhile, Smidge pretended to be very interested in a single chip that had fallen onto the counter. She carefully placed it back inside her own bowl.
“That’s good, everybody,” I said, sounding like I was teaching a cooking class in an asylum. “See, we can do this.”
You wiped your face, angry at your own tears. Smidge gave a small cough and a sigh. It fell quiet again, but the tension was still there. It took a second to talk over this absurdly overheated situation.
“You know, some people believe that the cookies won’t taste good if you don’t have fun while you make them. The cookies can sense if you were angry when you were combining the ingredients. So let’s all think happy things right now, okay? Jenny, what are you thinking of? What’s your happy thought?”
I remember you were mashing a wooden spoon against the side of the bright green bowl you held against your chest. You were looking down at the dough as you mumbled, “That one day my mom will be dead.”
You said it like a curse, like a wish, and like you knew exactly what you were doing. It sounded so awful, Jenny. I couldn’t believe you were capable of that. You were never young again.
I immediately said to your mother, “You know she didn’t mean that,” but the damage was already done.
Smidge faced the refrigerator, hiding her expression. She struggled with her breath like she’d been kicked in the stomach; a grunting gasp accompanied her swallowing as she stretched her neck toward the ceiling.
“Jenny, tell her you don’t mean that,” I said.
You threw yourself against the counter. “Whatever. She doesn’t care.”
Smidge snatched the spoon out of your mixing bowl and used it to smack you over the head. She didn’t hit you hard, but it made such a terrible pop it startled us all.
You stood there waiting for her to say something, anything, but she didn’t. She couldn’t do it, Jenny, without telling you everything. Her pride and her fear got in her way.
You just held the top of your head, staring at your mom, waiting for her to fix what had happened. Instead, she sent you away.
“Just go,” she said. “I’m sick of looking at you. You’ll regret this so soon, you won’t believe it.”
Before I could say anything, you were already gone, running down the sidewalk toward that party, which must not have been too much fun after that.
Smidge calmly spooned balls of cookie dough onto waxed paper atop metal cookie sheets.
“How ’bout that for a memory?” she asked.
“Smidge, she’s just a child.”
“You don’t know my daughter better than I do, so quit it.”
“I had it all wrong. It’s not your cancer that’s selfish. It’s you.”
I left the house, driving slowly to see if I could find you on the street, but you were gone. I didn’t know where that party was or I would’ve found you. I wanted to take you to Waffle House to tell you everything, but instead I ended up at The Pantry.
I figured I could just sit there and drink until I was ready to deal with Smidge again.
Sitting at the bar was Vikki, legs spread as she bent over to pick at a scab on her knee.
“I am warning you that I am drunk,” she said as I approached.
“That’s okay with me,” I said. “I plan on joining you.”
“Bad day?” she asked.
I plopped down onto the other stool. “I just watched Smidge smack her daughter on the head with a cooking utensil.”
“Where’s Jenny now?”
“At a friend’s. I went looking for her, but she’s not answering her cell phone. She’s probably mad at me, too. She didn’t call you?”
“No, she didn’t call me,” Vikki said, not bothering to hide her resentment. “Jenny doesn’t call me if you’re in town. In fact, that whole family forgets I even exist when your perfect ass is floating around Ogden.”
She looked so weary, that same face Henry was wearing, this look of bewilderment, like the life she knew had been erased while she was sleeping. “Even Tucker,” she continued, “who I almost wrote off as secretly gay, gets all moony when you’re here. Is it your perfume? Do you spray some kind of potion at them? I just don’t get it. What is just so great about you?”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I know this all must seem really confusing.”
“Well, thanks for your pity.”
“It’s not about me.”
“Nothing I ever do is good enough for that woman,” Vikki said with a shake of her head. “I have changed my hair for her, did you know that?”
“I’ve done that.”
“I stopped wearing plaid.”
“I had to throw away my jeggings.”
“Well, that was just good sense.”
We both smiled. Vikki gave a quick gesture to the bartender and within seconds we had two cold beers in front of us.
“Thanks,” I said. “You know she says these things out of love. Twisted love, but still. She thinks it’s a special bond, like she’s telling you something nobody else has the guts to tell you, which is why she’s being a great friend.”
“I used to think that,” Vikki said, pausing to take a sip. “But then I realized she’s the only one coming up with a list of my flaws. I bought a special whitening toothpaste from Italy after she told me the color of my teeth made me look ‘slightly ignorant.’”
“That’s rough.”
“When I heard she was having a birthday party, I tried to help, but it was all ‘Danny’s got this’ and ‘Danny wants to do that’ and ‘Danny says she’d rather she did it herself.’”
“She told me you were doing things. I thought you went to the party store. You didn’t get the streamers?”
“I brought some streamers over because I had them and I assumed she’d want them. But no, she wouldn’t let me do anything. I kept asking if I could go with you on errands, and she said you didn’t want me to.”
“That didn’t happen. I understand why you’d be mad about that.”
Vikki rolled her eyes. “Oh, hell, Danielle, I don’t give a shit about planning that party. You really do think I’m an idiot.” She dropped her elbows to the bar with a heavy thud. “I’m pissed because her cancer is obviously back and she won’t admit it.”
There it was. Finally. Someone had said something. It’s all I’d been wishing for, but I never thought it would come from Vikki.
“You’re right,” I said, quietly.
“I know I’m right. She’s acting like the world’s smallest dick so I’ll go away. She knows I’ll tell Henry. She knows I know, that little shit.”
“How did you know?”
Vikki rubbed her fingertips across her forehead. “Because I’m a goddamn nurse, Danielle. Didn’t you know that?”
I shook my head, openmouthed.
“Well, ain’t that something?” she said. She lifted her beer bottle. “Nice to meet you. Sorry I curse so much when I’m drunk. It’s unladylike.”
I sat there piecing together Smidge’s abrupt dismissal of Vikki, how she always found a way to separate us within minutes. Of course she would want to pull away from the one person who would recognize her symptoms.
As I tried to remember what made me dislike Vikki in the first place, why I had such a visceral reaction to her, I thought about the stories Smidge told me of Vikki’s clinginess, her tendency to show up unannounced, her nosy nature. I remember Smidge informing me that Vikki’s husband was “stuffy.” I thought about the car trip to the giant chair, when Smidge shared the tidbit about Vikki’s “raisiny ovaries.”
I shouldn’t have known these things about Vikki.
Then I remembered that right when she first started coming around, Smidge told me that Vikki thought I was “opinionated.” That I talked too much for someone who was visiting. I remember that, be
cause it seemed odd: I couldn’t comprehend why I should be quieter just because I was company. I tossed it aside as asinine, but it changed the way I thought about Vikki. I never actually asked her what she meant, or if it was even true. Then I wondered what exactly Smidge had told Vikki about me. I couldn’t imagine all the things Smidge had shared that made her feel entitled to put me in my place.
This could be considered the work of a very successful sociopath.
“Vikki,” I said, “I think I owe you an apology. And there’s a good possibility you’ve been told some things about me that aren’t true.”
“Oh, you think? Like how you never asked Smidge to tell me you didn’t want me hanging around?”
“Yeah, I never said that.”
“She told me you thought I was white trash.”
“That’s terrible. I never said it.”
“Maybe you thought it. I can tell you don’t like me.”
“I was probably being selfish at first when I wanted time with Smidge alone, because . . . Oh, I can say it now. Because of the cancer.”
Vikki nodded. “I get that.”
“But now she wants me to do this thing I can’t do. I don’t want her to suffer, but I’m just so mad at her, part of me doesn’t care if she suffers. And that makes me feel terrible.”
Vikki gave a rough pat to my shoulder. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said. “But I think you need my help.”
“Thank you,” I said, and as the words came out of me, something slid away. The giant weight placed on my shoulders shifted, eased into a new position.
“No offense, but I can’t believe she didn’t choose me,” she said. “I’m great with sick people.”
“I don’t think she wants to be thought of as sick.”
Vikki brought both her hands behind her neck. “I’ll tell you one thing I’m happy about,” she said. “That I don’t have to wear this ugly-ass parrot necklace anymore. Can you believe Smidge told me you hated it? It’s the only reason I wore it.” She flipped the parrot by the chain. It landed in the oversize tip jar. “What a weird lie to tell someone,” she said.
I kept my mouth shut.
I felt like I’d had too much to drink with Vikki, so I walked back to Smidge’s, my head stuffed with questions so twisted, I was grateful for the night air. Henry was waiting in the living room, standing in the center of the room, when I got home.
I could hear Smidge throwing up in the bathroom.
“She’s not feeling well,” Henry said.
“I know.” I was too unsteady on my feet; it felt like the floorboards were shifting in their grooves.
“The party is tomorrow,” he said. “You leave after that.”
I didn’t bother to try to explain or convince him of anything different. Tomorrow was bringing a whole new reality crashing down on Henry’s shoulders.
“And I think you should stay at Tucker’s tonight. We don’t need you here anymore.”
Henry went off to take care of Smidge, as I stepped outside for some air. That’s when I found you hiding behind the cars. I saw you smoking that cigarette and I just panicked.
I shouldn’t have hit you. I hope you can understand it was a complete and total reflex. I was trying to smack the cigarette, but I was too upset, too scared, and your face got in the way. All I could imagine was your mother catching you out there, and what might have happened if she had seen you smoking in the dark. Not in the state she was in, not with how tired and angry she was. Not with the way you two had just been fighting. Her heart wouldn’t have been able to take it, her baby girl pulling smoke into her lungs.
I knew you were just trying it out. I could tell in the way the cigarette was precariously perched between the very edges of two fingers, like you were holding a dead rat by the tail. It wasn’t in the hope that one of us would see you. This was your quiet rebellion, all alone and just for you. I’m sorry I ruined it. You were thirteen and curious, and you happened to turn that confusing age at a time that was extremely inconvenient for the life going on inside your house.
Do you remember what you said to me after I knocked that cigarette out of your mouth and onto the ground?
“Bitch, that was my last one.”
TWENTY-NINE
“You’ve had quite a night,” Tucker said. He was at his dining table focused on replacing the mechanism that flipped the digits inside an old plastic alarm clock. “Beating up a kid, getting kicked out of your house. Drunk-dialing your secret boyfriend in the middle of the night for a rescue.”
“My car’s the only one in the lot at The Pantry,” I said, taking a seat next to him. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“I didn’t want you sleeping on the streets. I try not to date homeless girls. Anymore.”
“I thought I could be in control of this situation,” I said. “Now it’s all just a mess. It fell apart all around me.”
Tucker twirled his screwdriver between his fingers. “I swear, Danielle.” He wiped his face and shifted in his chair. “I know you like to act like the world is happening to you. You’ve worked hard to make it seem like you just fell into a job, your divorce sort of ‘happened,’ you’re only here because Smidge asked you to stick around. But that’s not how life works. You’re making choices. Active choices.”
“Like how I’m choosing to be here with you right now?”
“You’re only here because Henry kicked you out. Don’t try to sugarcoat that one, sweetheart. I’m glad my friend finally did something, though. Henry drives me nuts even more than you do.”
He plugged the clock into the wall. A bright green light flooded the face as the machine hummed to life. The numbers seemed to throb as they waited to do their job.
“Sixty seconds,” Tucker whispered.
“You don’t know everything,” I said. “I’m not trying to be some kind of victim.”
Tucker smirked. He stuck the edge of his screwdriver underneath his thumbnail, sliding it across to clean it. “Every time you take a step in the right direction, Smidge gets in there and destroys all your hard work. Doesn’t that get tiring?”
The far right tile on the clock face flipped. The sound was loud enough to make me jump in my seat.
“It’s not like that.”
“It is. You just don’t like to see it.”
“She’s my best friend.”
“Please don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way. In title only.”
“You know, right now you seem just as stubborn and cocksure as she is. Must drive you nuts, how alike you actually are.”
He stood, and stretched his arms toward the ceiling before holding his hand out to me. “You coming to bed?”
Before I could decide, my cell phone rang. Tucker smiled. “Right on time.”
“She’s gone, she’s gone,” was all Smidge could get out when I answered.
“Jenny?”
“She’s not in her room, her backpack is gone. She’s not here, she’s not answering her phone. Henry’s out looking. I need you, Danny. Come help me look.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Tucker was already holding my purse. “A predictable ending to this evening,” he said. “It’s three in the morning; why wouldn’t you be headed over to Smidge’s house after an emergency phone call?”
“Jenny’s missing.”
“If it wasn’t that, it was going to be something. That girl has two parents. Two. It is their job to find Jenny, wherever she is. And you know she’s fine. We all know she’s fine! This town is the size of my Jeep. But this woman calls your cell phone in the middle of the night and suddenly you have to—”
“Tucker, shut up! I have to go do this, okay? It’s my fault she’s gone. You don’t know shit about what’s going on, so just shut up.”
He stood over me as I shoved my feet into my shoes. I knew I was about to lose this chance I had with Tucker, but I had to let go of this relationship. It was too difficult because we weren’t the only ones in it. We were outnumbere
d.
“This is how it’s always going to be with me and Smidge, and I can’t be with someone who doesn’t think very highly of me because of it.”
“It’s not about what I think of you, Danny.”
“Then how you think about women, I don’t know. But I have to do it this way. Not because she told me to, but because it’s right.” I reached for the doorknob as I said, “Goodbye, Tucker. Again.”
As I turned to leave he was suddenly behind me, his arms around mine, his hands clutching my wrist, keeping me from turning the knob. His mouth found my neck, his body pressed into mine. I could feel the heat of him, the urgency for me to stop.
“Don’t go,” he said into my skin. “Please. I want you. Listen to me, I won’t talk like this again. This is our last moment, if you go.”
“She’s dying, Tucker.”
I said it as I yanked the door open. I said it to stun him, to give me just enough time to be strong enough to escape his arms.
THIRTY
By the time I’d sprinted to The Pantry from Tucker’s I was fine to drive, but even if that hadn’t worked, I’d have been completely sober three seconds after seeing the state Smidge was in.
She was pale, gaunt, and gasping like she’d just run ten miles. I fished out the oxygen tank from where we’d hidden it in my trunk and forced her to use it. I told her she wasn’t coming with me, that someone needed to stay at the house in case you came home on your own.
Smidge adjusted the plastic tubing against her septum before checking her phone again. “She won’t answer my texts. She hates me.” She sniffed and huffed around the oxygen, struggling to calm down.
“She doesn’t hate you. We’ll find her. We’ll find her or she’ll come home.”
Smidge pressed her forehead to her hand. “She has to spend the rest of her life telling people her mom died of lung cancer. They’ll all think I’m a bad mother, a dirty smoker who didn’t take care of herself, who didn’t want to stick around to see her daughter grow up.”
“But that’s not what happened,” I reminded her.
