You Take It From Here (25 page)

“Don’t be an asshole, Tucker.”

“There we go. That’s how I like an exit.”

I unplugged my cell phone and threw the charger into my purse.

“She’s a cancer,” he said.

It stopped me cold. “She what?” I’d misheard, but he didn’t notice my fear.

“You know what cancer does?” he asked. “How it mutates? How it jacks all the cells up, tells them to keep growing, keep making more cancer cells, and that’s how you get a tumor?”

“I know how cancer works.”

“Well, that’s how your little friend there works, too. She infects people with the wrong ideas. She makes them sick, and then she spreads her evil until the bad stuff grows, until they wither up and die. With you it’s even worse. You let her get inside your bloodstream, move up to your head, and mutate your life.”

“Good-bye, Tucker.”

“You can fix that,” he said as he followed me into the living room, the sheet wrapped around his waist, gathered in his fist. “She doesn’t affect me because I’m not scared of her. She
knows if she ever tried some shit with me, she’d get knocked down so fast her bony butt would snap in half.”

“Big talk.” I opened the front door and stumbled over my luggage onto his front porch. “Like you’d ever hurt a woman.”

“Ask yourself something, Danielle,” Tucker said, standing in his doorway half naked and resigned. “You got a dog with rabies, does it really matter what gender it is before you shoot it?”

TWENTY-ONE

I
shouldn’t have been too surprised to find your mother sitting on top of a suitcase at the Odgen airport, sipping an iced coffee, flip-flops tossed aside on the carpet. Her toes were spread, nails unpainted; a pair of sunglasses shaped like two red hearts rested on top of her head.

“Surprise!” she cheered. “Isn’t it nice to have someone meet you at the airport?”

I didn’t want to talk to her. My head was still swimming from what had just happened with Tucker, something I couldn’t, and certainly didn’t want to, discuss with Smidge. Then there was everything Henry was alluding to about James that I was actively trying to ignore. I had to get on that plane. I may not have had much of a life to go back to, but it was something, and it was mine. Besides, she hadn’t checked on me once since she’d hung up on me days ago, and now she wanted me to pretend that it was nothing.

“I have to check in,” I said, looking over her head toward the arrivals gate, wondering if anybody would help me toss
this little woman onto the curb. Only a single willowy blonde with penciled eyebrows and sad shoulders stood manning the computer. She wasn’t going to be muscle enough. I’d need a couple of guys from baggage claim.

“Guess what?” Smidge waved her yellow, floppy hat like it was a victory flag. “I’m coming with you!”

“To where?”

“To California, dummy! I want In-N-Out and some palm trees. I told you I’d pay you back that vacation. Here it is! Let’s go. I’m freezing.”

“You can’t come with me.”

She reached into her giant purse and revealed what appeared to be a boarding pass. “Uh, I think that I already am. So, stick that in your mouth and suck it.”

Stunned, I asked, “How did you know my flight?”

“I called and asked!” She pointed at the skinny woman at the arrivals counter. “Bella was in my knitting group that five months we all thought knitting was fun. We used to be the best of besties before she started dating that guy who looked like Tom Petty.”

“It can’t be legal that she told you my flight,” I said to nobody in particular as I hustled to the counter.

I gave Bella the glare of a lifetime as she began the approximately thirty-seven thousand keyboard strokes and clicks necessary for anyone to receive a boarding pass.

“Come on, Dans,” Smidge said, knocking into my side. “Don’t be sore with me. You know we need to have one last trip, and this can be it.”

I turned to her so quickly the little hairs around her head
floated in the breeze. “You don’t pull that card on me right now, Smidge.”

“Oh, I’m pulling it,” she said, standing on her tiptoes for extra importance. “I’m pulling that card right now in front of you.” She held her boarding pass inches from my nose. “Here’s the card. It’s pulled. Look
at
it. Besides, you owe me for not taking all my calls.”

“What are you talking about?”

Her chin dropped until it just about folded into her neck. “Uh, what are
you
talking about? I called you and Tucker every day, but he said you weren’t taking my calls. I can’t believe you stayed at that man’s house. You probably have scabies now.”

“How did you know I was at Tucker’s?”

“Henry went checking on you for me.”

“He must have deleted your calls from my phone.”

“Well, I hope your privacy is all that man invaded.”

What if something had happened to her?

“Here you go, Miss Meyers,” chirped Bella the Snitch. “Enjoy your upgrade!”

“Upgrade?”

Smidge grabbed my hand. I felt her cold, sweaty palm in mine and realized there was a different look in her eyes. For the first time in our lives, she looked genuinely frightened, as if she was unsure she was going to be able to gain my forgiveness this time.

“Do you know how many miles I had saved up?” she asked. “I cashed them all in for a free flight for me, and first class for both of us. Well, first class once we get to Houston.
You know this shit-kicker town has to puddle-jump us out of here first.”

That was an official Smidge apology. Not with epiphanies or remorse, not a heart-to-heart that ended with a hug and some tears. Smidge gave oversize gifts and unnecessary acts of kindness that stated silently, yet at a million decibels:
“Okay, get over it now. Here’s your present.”
With Smidge it’s the grand gesture followed by a huge sweeping under the rug of everything that should have been said.

“I haven’t seen your place in ages,” she said. “Does it still smell like mice?”

My apartment
never
smelled like mice, but it was most likely filled with dead plants.

“What about Henry? And Jenny?” I asked, my voice already sounding defeated. “Don’t you need to stay with them? I mean, shouldn’t you?”

I felt as helpless as my suitcase motoring away on the conveyor belt, overturned and stamped with only a slight promise it would reach its final destination.

Smidge paddled my butt with both hands. “Let’s get on board, missy!”

Once we were on the second plane, the one with the preflight mimosas in first class, after they’d whisked away our empty champagne glasses and asked us to turn off all electronic devices, Smidge decided to get down to business.

“Oh, I opened a safe-deposit box for us,” she casually said as she adjusted her overhead air-conditioning button. “For you,” she added. “For things you aren’t going to be able to hold onto while you wait around for me to die, because that’s
going to be obvious. I mean, we don’t really know when I’m going to go, so we shouldn’t pretend it’s tomorrow. Right—that’s what you figured out? And why you were being such a butt-face?”

I sighed, letting the alcohol relax me away from her verbal bait. “I suppose.”

“And you’re right. I ain’t dying tomorrow.” She dug into the front pocket of her jeans, an effort that seemed to take a lot out of her. Her chest heaved; her rib bones raised the surface of her skin, which had goose-bumped in the chilly cabin temperature. “But just in case I do,” she said, “here is the extra key. Right now all I have in it are the duplicates to my car information, registration and insurance stuff. Henry never pays attention to the cars, so you have to do that. Make sure they’re clean. If it were up to Henry we’d only drive dusty kidnapping vans and mud-splattered Jeeps like that Tucker.”

I was happy to latch onto a new subject, no matter how dangerous it was personally. “Do you know Tucker still has dog toys in that thing?” I asked.

“And do you know he still puts a stocking up for that woman every Christmas?” she countered.

“You’re lying.”

“He does. Somehow he got it into his head that she’d come home for the holidays.”

I tried to picture Tucker staring at an empty stocking, having made too much roast chicken for one person.

“That’s rough,” I said.

“It’s stupid and pathetic, is what it is. He is the worst.”

“Smidge. That’s not nice.” I was weak in my defense; halfway worried that she’d notice I was taking up for him, the other half wondering if I should. This new, additional secret was weighing more heavily on me than I’d like. If Tucker felt that strongly about how I seemed to let Smidge control things in my life, there’s no way he’d be okay with the truth of what we were discussing while sitting on a tarmac in Houston, Texas.

Smidge gave a tsk. “That man lets himself be miserable and he won’t listen to anybody who tells him how it is. He acts all tough when I’m around, like he’s a hillbilly robot. I know his sissy truth. He cries more than my teenage daughter.”

“I had no idea you thought that way about him,” I said.

“Well, it’s not nice to call a man weak, but that’s what he is. Henry won’t let me talk about it anymore around him. Gets him riled up not knowing how to stick up for him when he agrees with me. Hey, did you two have funny business while you were staying over there? You better say no.”

“Smidge. I was sick.”

“So nothing happened?”

“No.”

“Good.”

The seats started rumbling as we gained speed down the runway. I looked past Smidge’s shoulder to the small window, watching the airport blur by. I felt better knowing we were finally headed toward my home, away from Tucker, away from Smidge’s house. All of Ogden was behind me, and for once it felt like I was fleeing the bulk of my problems.

“That’s another reason I want you with Henry,” she said.
“If he doesn’t have anybody, it’ll be all ‘Sad Henry the Widower’ hanging out with ‘Lonesome Bitter Tucker’ all the time. The two of them will turn into junkyard dogs. Having contests to see which one of them could grow the nastier beard the fastest. My daughter lives there; she shouldn’t be subjected to male sadness. What kind of husband would she pick if that’s the kind of daddy she lived around?”

Smidge unhooked her seat belt, lurched forward, and snatched her purse from the nook in front of her. “In fact,” she said, “I’m adding that to the list. Do Something About Tucker.”

Technically, I suppose I’d done that. It dawned on me that I could potentially destroy her entire plan right now by telling her what had happened. Would she still want me to be with Henry after that? Would she even talk to me?

Smidge checked to make sure the flight attendant wasn’t looking. A devious, gleeful smile spread across her face.

“I’m not wearing my seat belt,” she confessed, chuckling. “It’s the little things, Danny.” She shoved her purse back. “Looking over my life I would say I haven’t intentionally broken enough rules.”

“I imagine this happens every day now,” I said. “You think of another thing you regret about how you lived your life.”

“No, not really. I don’t believe in regrets. What happened, happened. Nothing you can do about it. People waste too much time trying to reassess blame, put everybody’s feelings into proper perspective. I say just shut up and move on. What good is all that lingering?”

The plane lurched, and people gasped. As we bobbed and jolted for a few moments, I could feel some people on the
plane definitely having moments of regret. Smidge wasn’t clutching her seat. She was distractedly hugging her right side as she scribbled into her notebook.

When the plane settled and the overhead light made its comforting
ding
, Smidge leaned back, stretching her shoulders, rotating one after the other.

“You wanna play a game of cancers?” she asked.

“A game of what?”

“You’ve got questions, and I’ve got answers. With a
C
.” She drew an arc in the air with her fingertip.
“Canswers.”

“That’s clever.”

“Not really. I saw it on a brochure and it made me angry. I don’t like it when they try to make this thing cutesy.”

“Me neither. But lung cancer doesn’t seem to get cutsey. I mean, what color would that ribbon be? Brown? Gray?”

“I can tell you want to know what it’s like.”

“Does that sound morbid? I just want to understand.”

She turned toward me but didn’t look me in the eye. I could see her debating the right words. Maybe trying to decide what I could handle.

“Give me your hand.”

I held out my right hand, but she swatted it away as she took my left. She placed it against her right side, just under her arm.

There was a bulge pushing through an unnatural space between Smidge’s ribs, like a golf ball had gotten lodged into her side. The lump seemed both solid and fragile, human and unhuman.

“That’s a tumor, sissy,” Smidge said.

Dazed at the realization I was holding cancer in my
hand, I lost my breath completely before pulling back like I’d been singed.

“Every question you’ve got for me ends with that answer,” she said, tucking her hands under her legs with a chuckle. “Sorry, I mean it ends with that
canswer.
”