by Pamela Ribon
“How does that matter? Like anybody’s going to do some research. They’ll hear ‘lung cancer’ and think horrible mother.”
“They won’t.”
“They will. I can’t handle them thinking that about sweet Jenny. That her mother didn’t love her. Just like how they thought about me.”
“People won’t think that.”
“I’m a monster, Danny. I hit my kid in the head with a spoon.”
“You were mad. You didn’t mean it.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
“She does. She will.”
“When, exactly? How long after I’m dead?”
I covered her hand with mine.
Smidge closed her eyes. “Do you remember when she was younger, she used to go to that summer camp? She’d have this list of things she had to take with her. I’d be so busy going to the store, getting her the right sunscreen, the right bathing suit, the right poncho. I’d talk to her about mosquito repellent, what girls she shouldn’t hang out with, and not to go skinny-dipping. I just hounded her with things she could and couldn’t do until she was sick of me, until she couldn’t wait to get rid of me. So she never once missed me the entire two weeks she’d be gone.”
This is where your mother cried, Jenny. It only took her entire life, but here is where real tears fell from her eyes.
“Well, this time it’s not two weeks. It’s forever. I keep thinking of other things I need to tell her and I’m just so mad that she doesn’t want to listen, and I’m even madder that I can’t remember everything I need to say.”
I picked up my phone and texted you. Tell me where you are right now.
I don’t know why you chose to respond. I don’t know if you were scared or ready to talk. I just know you wrote back.
Scoreboard.
Smidge stopped crying pretty quickly after that. She hustled herself out of the car, easing herself around the oxygen tank she dropped to the lawn.
“Go get my baby,” she said. “Tell her that I love her and make her believe it.”
THIRTY-ONE
I’m still shocked you made me break into a high school to come find you. You were smart to know the last place anybody would come looking for you was above a football field. By the time I reached you I could tell you were ready to come down from your perch on that metal scaffolding under the giant Neville Tigers sign, but you stubbornly waited for me to climb up there to join you.
I was breathless by the time I finally made it to your side. I swung my legs over the railing and dangled my feet alongside yours.
“So, how was your day?” I asked.
There were pen marks on your jeans, a red heart drawn in marker. You’d pulled on combat boots from somewhere and had tucked your cuffs into them. A kelly green hoodie was pulled tight over your head, the string cutting across your forehead. You kept your hands shoved tight into your pockets as you leaned against one of the metal railings that ran in front of us. You left me to do all the talking.
“It’s scary up here,” I noted.
You shrugged.
“Aren’t you worried you’d fall? I almost fell coming up here in the dark. It’s not lit very well.”
“Don’t care,” you said. “So I fall. So I die.”
“Probably you’d just snap a couple of leg bones, which would feel worse than dying.”
You hunched yourself over even more. “Everybody dies,” you said.
“That is true.”
“Like my mom. She’s gonna die.”
I could hear a dog barking down the street and my heart beating in my ears. Like a sad little monkey, you curled around your knees, rocking yourself. “I hate you for taking her last days from me.”
“I didn’t—”
“She’s sick,” you said. “She’s so skinny, she’s coughing all the time. I don’t know why y’all are lying to me.”
“Lying about what?”
You sprang up onto your feet like someone had shot you with adrenaline. It took me much longer to find my own way upright, our age difference suddenly becoming more apparent.
“I was on her laptop,” you said, grabbing the top of your hood, yanking it backward. It parked itself on your shoulder like a deflated balloon. “I saw her cache. I saw what she’s been researching. DNRs? Morphine? I looked up Seconal. I’m not a little baby.”
I tried to step closer to you, but you pulled back.
“Tomorrow’s her death party, isn’t it? You think I’m too stupid to know what’s going on? My mother’s dying.”
It only took a couple of steps for you to be balanced over a tight space that made me extremely nervous. I wasn’t afraid you were going to jump, but there was a very real possibility you could fall, as upset as you were and hovering over the edge of that scaffolding.
“Jenny, come down.”
“Just tell me it’s true and I’ll come down.”
“Come down and we can talk.”
“Tell me it’s true!”
“You should talk to your mom.”
You sent one leg over the railing. “Tell me or I’ll jump.”
“Don’t.”
You leaned into it. Your foot twitched. “I should die before she does. That’ll show her. Why can’t she just talk to me? Why does she always have to talk so mean? I wished she was dead, and she just took it. Why’d she do that? Why didn’t she tell me what was going on? Why didn’t you?”
While you weren’t looking, I took a step closer to you. And then I took another. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m telling my dad.”
“You can’t, Jenny. It’s not yours to say. That’s your mother’s right.”
“You got to see the world with her and I didn’t. One stupid cruise, and you know, she was crying, like, the whole time. She told me not to tell you. Why’s she always telling us not to talk to each other? Why do we do it?”
“She scares us.”
“I’m tired of her telling me what to do and not what is actually happening. I hate her. It’s not fair.”
Another step. “No, it’s not. And you don’t hate her.”
“It’s bullshit,” you said. “I don’t care anymore.”
You turned too quickly, lost your balance on the beam, and lurched forward, trying to compensate. It caused you to flip forward, going over the rail. You cried out as I grabbed you by the waist and pulled you back into me just in time.
We tumbled onto the metal grate beneath us. The wind was knocked out of me, and you’d smacked your head against one of the beams. Both of us stayed flat on our backs, silently rubbing our injuries.
It wasn’t until right then that I remembered you had much more living to do without Smidge than any of the rest of us.
And I realized none of this was happening because of Smidge. It was because of you. For you.
You were right. It was so not fair.
I found your hand not too far from mine, open and cold, waiting. I held it as I told you then, “Jenny, I’ll make sure you get everything you were supposed to get with her.”
“You can’t promise that,” you said.
“I can. I’m doing it, right now.”
After all these years of silence, Jenny, if I could ask you only one question and have you answer it truthfully, I would want to know if you thought I kept my word.
THIRTY-TWO
The party started well. I’ll give it that. I was shocked at the number of people who turned up. I hadn’t recalled the guest list being so large. Smidge must have made some extra invites. They were mostly ladies from various groups Smidge had jumped into and out of over the years. I was slightly uncomfortable when I realized I mostly knew these women from the gossip Smidge had told me about them; I was recognizing people not by their names, but by their awkward plastic surgeries, lesbian partners, or impermeable cliques.
Then there was one mystery woman, standing off to the side near the fireplace, overlooking the scene while sipping a Chardonnay. I eventually called Vikki over to have
her identify the rail-thin redhead in a long green dress and wearing an impressive diamond the size of a hard candy.
Vikki shot a look of jealousy-filled disdain. “That’s Tori Payne. Her husband owns a bank or something. And she runs that fancy-pants cemetery for the VID.”
“VID?”
“Very Important Dead.”
Tori Payne happened to be the director and chief executive of Serenity Hilltop, the cemetery Smidge was planning on crashing. Smidge was hosting her graveyard audition.
As she flocked from attendee to attendee, around thirty-five in all but growing in number by the minute, Smidge was beaming like this was her cotillion. She wore a long-sleeved navy dress with a bright red brooch. A thick Bakelite bangle in the same color red hung from her wrist. The temperature had dipped slightly, but not quite enough to explain the dark stockings she was wearing. Cherry-red patent-leather stilettos completed her outfit. She looked like a flight attendant from the sixties, perky in her French-braided hair and red lipstick, makeup covering any trace of how pale and paper-thin her skin had become lately. If she was in any pain as she played the merry hostess, flitting around her home holding a martini, she was hiding it well.
I located my glass of wine before diving back into the throng of women. I was hoping to find Smidge without being sidetracked by awkward small talk.
“The birthday girl is fixing to speak!”
Smidge was teetering along the ledge of her brick fireplace, drink raised like a torch. Someone lowered the volume on the music.
She cleared her throat, exaggerating for effect, like she was about to launch into a big speech. It got the crowd chuckling, which covered as she gave her real cough, the one I’d come to recognize. She placed a hand against the painted brick behind her to steady herself before she continued.
“I wanted to thank all y’all for coming today,” she said. “It’s real nice of all of you, and I know it’s been some time since some of us have seen each other. Look how pregnant Amy is, for instance.”
The stunning Asian in a black, fitted dress sporting a modest, five-month pregnancy bulge smiled as she gave a regal wave to the room. “Yes,” she bellowed. “I am huge.”
There was more polite laughter accompanied by a few murmurs about her in vitro fertilization. The woman behind me barely tried to speak at a polite volume as she noted to her friend, “I asked Smidge, but she didn’t know who Amy chose as the father.”
I shifted uncomfortably on my heels and searched the room for Tucker. I didn’t know whether or not to expect him, but I could imagine him showing up, claiming to be there for Henry.
Smidge continued. “Before I open these presents, I’ve got my husband out in the kitchen cutting y’all some cake. I want us all to have something sweet in our hands.”
She took the last sip from her drink and put it aside.
“Where’s Danielle?” she asked, looking over the crowd. It took me a second to recognize my own name, I was so unused to her calling me by anything so formal. I found myself standing there with my hand in the air.
“Well, come on up here!” Smidge smirked.
As I walked through the crowd, Smidge explained, “I want everybody to appreciate this cake, because my friend Danielle here went through a lot of trouble to get it. Poor woman was out in that storm making sure there was enough buttercream and fondant for all of us.”
Unsure of what else to do, the women gave a brief, gentle round of applause. Again I found myself raising my hand in acceptance.
Smidge put an arm around me, gripping me by the elbow. “Danny here,” she said, and then she suddenly stopped, dropping her face toward the floor. Mouth twisted to the side, chest heaving, I realized Smidge was holding back tears. She lifted her head, her chin raised higher than normal, and gave a quick gasp. “Danny here is my best friend,” she said.
It felt like someone had tied ten-pound weights to both corners of my mouth. Smidge kept her voice steady.
“She’s also my partner in travel, my partner in life. We’ve seen way too much together. And yet, we still haven’t seen enough.”
The grip Smidge had on my elbow tightened as she took a breath.
That’s when I saw Tucker wandering in from the kitchen, a beer dangling from his hand.
“Danny’s been through a lot lately,” Smidge said. “And wouldn’t you know it: I went ahead and put her through even more. But I wanted to thank her, in front of all of you, because I know I don’t tell her that I love her enough. And I love her the mostest.”
“Aw!” That came from Tori Payne at the front of the crowd.
Smidge hugged me then, just as I saw you in the back of the room, holding your father’s hand, tears streaming down your face. Henry also looked troubled as he watched this scene on his fireplace, this outpouring of womanhood splayed out all over his living room. The question burning in his eyes read loud and clear: What does everyone know that I don’t?
Looking over that crowd of tense, saddened faces, I realized exactly what was going on.
They all knew.
Everybody knew.
Their eyes were wide as they attempted to hide their own fears, their own worries of death coming for them at any moment. If it could happen to Smidge, it could just as easily swipe them from their husbands and children, knocking them right out of their designer heels.
At one time or another Smidge had terrorized their church groups, their book clubs, their parent-teacher conferences. Nobody in Odgen got away without coming face-to-face with Smidge Cooperton at some point. And yet, here they all were, paying silent, secret, last respects.
They all loved her just as I did: wholeheartedly, in a most terrified way, unable to stay away from her, and worried they’d never really be close enough.
I was floored with gratitude.
I called for a toast to the birthday girl.
“Danny, I can’t believe how many people are here,” she said to me as her crowd sipped and shared teary glances. “It’s enormous! It’s all of Ogden!”
“It does look like that, doesn’t it?”
“Danny, I am loved. Beloved. I am not a mean spider. You see that?”
Women began seeking out their husbands in the crowd, clutching them a little tighter. Men were carrying their children, cheeks were being kissed. Over by Henry, people were shaking his hand. A receiving line was threatening to break out.
That’s when Smidge cocked her head. “Wait. You don’t think . . . they don’t know, do they?”
I shook my head. “No way. This is because they love you.”
She smiled as she relaxed into a pleased nod. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”
When Smidge started giving away her things it was like a joke at first, a bit of charity. That girl who used to coach soccer at your high school had knit Smidge a sweater. Overwhelmed with the amount of work that went into a gift like that for a person she hadn’t seen in more than a year, Smidge pulled the yellow bracelet from her wrist and handed it over to her, insisting, “It will look so much better on you.”
The girl was so confused she accepted it, perhaps unsure of the etiquette.
Smidge smacked her palms together. “Wait! Amy with the baby! I just remembered something important.”
Using my arm as an anchor, Smidge dropped herself to level ground and headed in a speedy shuffle straight to her bookshelves. After a quick scan, she gave a squeal of success before pulling a heavy white book from one of the lower shelves.
“I still have your Nigella,” she said. “I must have borrowed that six years ago! And wait, whose Middlesex is this? I know it’s someone’s here.”
“Mine.” It was one of the moms Smidge used to sit with during your ballet recitals. The heavyset brunette giggled like she’d won a contest as Smidge placed the hardcover into her waiting hands.
“I’m sorry I had this so long,” Smidge said. “I never did get around to reading it.”
“You can keep it awhile longer,” the woman said. “It’s really
very good.”
“No,” Smidge said, a peaceful look overcoming her, like she’d just been sainted. “I’m afraid I won’t find the time.”
Smidge found excuses to unload her Harry Potter books, a first edition Agatha Christie, and three copies of The Great Gatsby. “I guess I liked this one,” she said. “So nice I bought it thrice!”
Smidge told each guest to pick a book, any book. “I don’t want you going home empty-handed,” she said. “Party gifts for all!”
This was something bigger than a free paperback. This was an olive branch Smidge was extending to each of them, for whatever slight that had caused them to drop away over the years. Taking a book with a smile was an easy way to declare all water officially under the bridge. It was a peace offering and a farewell. The women looked relieved.
Henry stepped in. “Some of those books are mine,” he reminded his wife, trying to elicit a chuckle, while letting people know they could stop pilfering his book collection at any time.
“Point taken,” Smidge said, before jutting one finger into the air. “Here is what is all mine: Ladies, I have dresses.”
“Smidge,” I said, knowing she was going to ignore my gentle reminder that she was about to go too far. Two-thirds of those women would never fit into any of her small clothes, risking the chance that each of them could be insulted anew.
Smidge turned to Tori. “I have the perfect dress for you,” she said. “Danny, you remember that dress I wore to the gala last year? The green one? Wouldn’t Tori look amazing in it?”
“I don’t know which dress that is,” I admitted.
“Well, I’ll go get it and show you. Tori should have it.”
“No! You said it was mine!”
Your voice cut through everything. All of the women fell silent, aside from the one or two who gave an audible gasp.
You approached us, stomping heavily. “You said it, Mama,” you repeated.
“Did I? I don’t remember saying that,” Smidge said, wavering just a bit on her feet.
“It’s okay,” Tori said, smiling wide enough I could see metalwork on one of her molars. “Your daughter can have the dress. I’m sure it’s too small anyway, Smidge, you’re such a slight gal.”
