You Take It From Here (14 page)

So it seems that Mary-Lynn is using some kind of hippie nurse to teach her how to wash her towels.

Perhaps one could imagine asking a domestic consultant to take over her life after she’s gone, but Smidge would’ve scoffed her head off if I’d ever suggested she needed any of the services I provided. I’d never once dared to give Smidge a word of advice when it came to running her own family. She had a way of doing things that was set in stone; her rules were to be obeyed without question.

I had to assume she was only suggesting this arrangement because she was in shock over her diagnosis, grasping at straws. I could understand that. I’d be panicking, too. I needed to get her to take a step back, to tell me what was really going on. I wanted to get her to talk to me about what her doctor had said and what her options were.

But what I really wanted to know was what I could do to fix her
right then
, because I made a silent promise to myself and to your mother, back when I was sitting alone in that stupid bar in Atlanta, that this time around I wasn’t going to be a shitty cancer friend.

I’m not sure how an entire week passed without us talking even once about her illness, especially since we spent those days pretty much attached at the hip. We ignored any topic
that might become sensitive as we spent our days shopping, gossiping, taking you to get your hair changed back to something normal. We fell into a pattern.

We were settled on the back porch one night, holding our half-empty wineglasses, listening to the Willie Nelson album that she insists on listening to (but I do not enjoy), and watching the sky turn lavender, when a coughing fit hit her. It seemed to start from the center of her stomach, knocking her in half with absolutely no warning. As her body rocked, Smidge held her wineglass aloft, saving precious cargo from going overboard during her tidal wave. It wasn’t like someone clearing her throat, or a reaction to swallowing the wrong way. This was a chunky, watery cough, something angry inside of her. It was the first time I’d heard it, and it was alarming.

Soon she calmed down, the blood pooling back from her face, her skin settling into a more normal peach. But I could see in her watery eyes, and the way she was biting down the left side of her lip: she wasn’t prepared for that. That kind of coughing might have been new for her, too.

When she sighed it sounded like a bicycle pump, an achy wheeze that required all her effort.

All cancer is unfair, but the kind Smidge had was an extra special kind of unfair, the one people would always use as a disclaimer when discussing her illness.

“Lung cancer, but she never smoked.”

“She got it young. Very rare.”

Smidge had lung cancer with an asterisk. Carcinogens saved up for only the
very-est special-est.
People always marveled at how healthy she was, how she took care of herself,
even running a couple of marathons right after you started kindergarten. Smidge transformed herself from a skinny stay-at-home mom to a toned lady-who-lunched.

It didn’t matter that the collective number of cigarettes we’d all smoked in our lives couldn’t fill a pack. It didn’t matter that Smidge was only thirty-one and the mother of an eight-year-old. She wasn’t a coal miner. She didn’t sleep on a pillow of asbestos. She was just living her life, and then she got cancer.

Your mother hated all the medical attention almost as much as she hated being in the hospital. She hated the tubes, the tests, the decisions, the conferences. She hated being sick, being weak, and most of all she hated being in need of other people. So she got angry. She eventually got so furious she burned all those cancer cells right out of her body. Her fury spiked her internal furnace to one million degrees and she raged that sickness away in less than two years like it evaporated.

They say seven years is how long you have to be in remission from lung cancer to be completely cancer free. Smidge made it to just past three.

There was a clanging sound coming through the house, headed right toward us like a runaway train.

“Smiiiidge?”

The voice came from behind my head, causing an involuntary spasm in my shoulders. Vikki was just as pleased to see me, though you’d never know it through her fake face.

“Hey, there, weary travelers!”

Even in the darkened light of the back porch I could see the wine stains on Vikki’s exposed teeth as she smiled her mostly insincere greeting. She was drinking from a yellow
plastic cup shaped like a beer stein that read
Neville Seniors ’92
in red letters right above the words
This Is How We Do It.
Under her other arm a bundle of ropey fur trembled and yipped.

“Hey, Barksy,” Smidge greeted the wiggling pup. “What is up, Vicksburg?”

Vikki released her dog and plopped her ample hips between us. As she angled herself some room, she patted each of us on a knee. “I hope you ladies have fun adventure stories to tell, because I need to know it was worth what Jenny went and did to her head.”

“You saw that?”

Vikki grunted. “Bless her heart. It’ll grow, Smidge. Hair does that.”

Suddenly we were moving, the swing bench activated by Vikki’s flip-flopped feet. It didn’t take long before it was too much for me. The closeness and the movement felt like we were all on a bad date, trapped on a carnival ride. I moved to a nearby easy chair, folding myself against the cushions.

As Smidge showed Vikki the picture of the giant chair I had taken with her cell phone, I couldn’t help but stare at Vikki’s purple sundress and the many ways it had failed her. The top bunched so low on her chest I could see white arcs poking just above what must have been the start of her nipples. As she rocked the bench, her knees pushed the fabric from under her dress, making her look like she was expanding and receding. Growing and shrinking like a giant, breathing grape.

Wherever elastic touched her skin she was puffed and sunburned, like she’d spent the day at the beach drinking straight
from the ocean. Her parrot necklace stuck to her chest in the heat, but it had gone askew and the bird perched on her left shoulder, poised for flight.

Each of Vikki’s toenails was painted with a yellow blob of a smiley face. I heard the ice settle in her cup and realized she was drinking her red wine on the rocks.

Barksy sniffed my ankle, bobbing his moppy head to mash his damp nose against my skin. He gave a disappointed snarf and then settled beside the screen door.

“Well, that sounds like a fun time,” Vikki said.

“I owe Danny here another vacation,” said Smidge. “This trip was more just for me. I kind of took over everything.”

“I bet you did. You’re such a good friend, Smidge.”

“I know.”

Like I wasn’t even there.

TWELVE

T
he next time I failed at being Smidge’s understudy, it was an accident. I didn’t know I was being evaluated. I thought I was alone, going through the motions of something I’d successfully accomplished just short of ten thousand times.

Making a bed.

I was putting new sheets onto the guest mattress, and had just smoothed out some of the wrinkles with my palm when she let me know I’d screwed up.

“You tuck that sheet under at the bottom so it doesn’t pull up when you’re sleeping,” she said. She had one hand gripped on the doorframe, the only thing keeping her from walking over and doing it herself.

“I’m just going to kick it out as soon as I’m under the covers,” I told her. “I don’t like sheets tucked in around my feet. Feels like I’m in a body bag.” And then I tucked the sheet in just as she wanted it.

“Too soon,” she joked.

At that point it seemed I hadn’t slept in a month. Whenever I eased myself into bed, my muscles twitched and pulled,
begging for some sort of rest. I’d been so stressed I hadn’t even had a chance to note how stressed I’d been. My body, however, was well aware it hadn’t stopped being on alert since I stood underneath the world’s largest chair weeks ago.

“I know you want to go home,” Smidge said, staring at the floor, fiddling with her wristwatch. “But maybe you could think about staying. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I mean, I know what’s going to happen, but I keep having these coughing fits.”

I felt weak at the sight of her vulnerability. It’s true I’d been thinking of home, of how I was supposed to be back by now. The bills piling up, the clients I wasn’t visiting. The day before, I’d received an e-mail from someone asking me if I wouldn’t mind drafting up a budget that could include an additional nanny—her third—because she wanted a “sleepover nanny” who could take care of the kids once the installation of her sixth—and detached—bedroom was finished.
“I literally have no idea how to figure out how much money we have. What would I do without you? Love and hugs, and when you get back I am taking you out drinking.”

I felt that familiar panic upon reading that e-mail, a feeling that I was winging it with every new message, with each client’s additional problem. It was always a juggling act, and I knew it was only a matter of time before someone figured out I had no idea what I was doing. I was making a guess, my hunch, and turning it into a decision that was to be followed. Even when my clients were at their happiest, I could still feel like a fraud. I figured it was because I usually didn’t stay with them past that one problem. They disappeared, for the most part. Occasionally I’d get a holiday card, or someone would
ask for an additional month of consultation. An extra room to organize here and there. Coming up with things to write about made me nervous, too. I didn’t feel like I had much to say, but I knew if I didn’t update I’d lose money, I’d lose clients. I juggled, but with my eyes half closed in anticipation of disaster. It’s why I didn’t have an assistant. I knew another person around would expose my weaknesses even sooner.

Going through my recent batch of e-mails, I had to pass on a client because I didn’t have time to travel to San Francisco. Normally I would have fit that job in over a weekend, but I knew I couldn’t get away. I was searching for quick fixes, little questions I could handle. A consultation over e-mail for fifty bucks a pop was about all I could do in my little amount of time that wasn’t taken up by Smidge.

She was taking over, even if I didn’t think I was going to allow her to have so much room. How little does she think of my life that she can just knock everything off my plate and hand me hers?

Then again, it seemed wrong to help a stranger over a friend, and I had to remind myself that even though I had doubts about my work—sometimes I felt I didn’t deserve to be where I’d gotten in such a short period of time—the truth was, I had made something of myself, something Smidge seemed to ignore completely. The fact that she insisted on telling me how to do everything down to making a bed proved she either had no idea what I did with my day, or absolutely no respect for it.

My life didn’t look like the one she chose, and nothing like the one I’d originally planned. Somehow, she felt that gave her the right to choose a new one for me.

“When did you come up with this idea, anyway?” I asked her. “For me to do this. Why me?”

She brought her hand to the light switch. “I saw it in a dream,” she said. “You know I’m always right about my dreams. Remember how I knew Robert was cheating on you?”

Senior year of high school I fell in love with a guy I thought was perfect until Smidge had a dream that he had been making out with the girl he tutored in Spanish and then that turned out to be true.

Once she had confirmation, Smidge spent the next three months going around our high school offering psychic services. She’d storm up to people in hallways, sometimes yelling at complete strangers.
“Don’t take the bus home today! If you are on that bus, it will crash! I fell asleep in trig and now I know things! You’re welcome!”

“What was in the dream?” I asked.

A smile found its way to the corners of her lips. Frail and serene, like my fairy godmother was about to grant her super-best wish for me.

“You were on the front porch, standing next to Henry, and y’all were watching Jenny get into some car, like she was going on a date or something. Henry put his arm around you, not saying anything, which he does when it means something. And—I don’t know—it just looked right to me. Like that was it. In the dream I knew somehow that I was gone, and this was the future. The future that’s supposed to happen.”

Then I was in the dark. Smidge had flipped the light switch, shutting the door behind her as she left. Through the walls I heard her find Henry.
“Sooooooo!”
she sang, changing the big subject.

I could imagine Smidge wrapping herself around her husband’s back, arms hugging his arms, her chin on his shoulder as she peeked over him to see what he was reading, maybe teasing him about how long his hair was getting, something she must have wished could be their biggest problem.

Days could stretch on with their lack of answers, but nights were even worse. I was alone with all those thoughts rocking from one side of my brain to the other like those mineral-oil motion lamps that tip and turn, an endless current of worries. I wanted to fix an unfixable problem, I knew that. I also wanted to help in places where I’d been specifically forbidden. I knew Smidge needed someone else besides me. I wasn’t enough for her, and even though that knowledge tore me up inside, I felt it was my duty to get some assistance.