Read This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! for Free Online

forty-eight, with sallow cheeks and scarecrow hair, Caroline looks like Skip’s elder by at least five years.
    “What are you two doing here? I had no idea!”
    We thought we’d pop by for a visit,” says Skip. “We both had the day off, so we figured, you know, let’s drop in on Mom.”
    “How wonderful! Oh, but I do wish you would have called ahead, dear, so I could prepare something. Let me make you a sandwich.”
    “Nah, it’s all right, Ma, I just had a few pickles. I’m good.” “Caroline, honey, let me make you a sandwich. You look so thin.”
    “Gee, thanks, Mom. You always know how to make me feel good about myself.”
    “Honey, I didn’t mean it like that. C’mon, I’ll set up the patio. I do hope you’re staying the night? We can rent a DVD!”
    “Look, Mom,” says Skip. “The thing is, we didn’t just pop by for a visit.”
    “Oh,” says Harriet, crestfallen. “You mean, you’re not staying?”
    “We can’t, Mom.”
    “Surely you can at least stay for dinner?”
    “Mom,” says Skip. “I got a call last night from Father Mulligan.”
    “ Mullinix , dear. Where on earth did he get your number?”
    “He told Skip about the phantom WD-40,” says Caroline, lowering herself into Bernard’s recliner.
    Skip sits down on the sofa, and immediately leans forward. “He said you were acting really strange, Mom. He was worried.”
    Harriet feels herself blush, at once from embarrassment and irritation. “I was exhausted,” she says. “I served downtown all day at the prayer station. There’s no air-conditioning down there. Did Father Mullinix tell you that? I was overheated. But I’m perfectly fine now, I assure you.”
    It comforts her to know that Skip genuinely worries about her.
    “Mom,” he says. “We’re just concerned. He said you thought you had dinner with dad at the Bon Marche.”
    “Frederick and Nelson.”
    “Right. Frederick and Nelson.” Skip doffs his cap, runs a hand through his thick hair. “Mom, Frederick and Nelson closed twenty years ago! I don’t even think that old buffet did dinners.”
    “I saw him, Skip, with my own eyes. I touched him.”
    “Mom, I had a dream my hands were made of soap. But look, they’re not!” He submits his outthrust hands as evidence.
    “It’s not the same thing.”
    “It is, Mom. It was a dream.”
    “No. It wasn’t.”
    “Okay, what then? A hallucination?”
    “Not exactly,” says Harriet.
    “Whatever it was, Mom, it has nothing to do with reality.”
    “Fine, maybe it doesn’t mean anything. There, are you satisfied? But just suppose I took a little comfort in it, how about that? Well, then, I suppose you two would want to deprive me of that, wouldn’t you?”
    “Mom, that’s not how it is,” Skip insists, fishing a fresh pickle from the jar. “What have we deprived you of?”
    “He’s right,” says Caroline. “We’re just concerned about your well-being.”
    “Oh, stop Caroline. Like you were concerned with your father’s well-being?”
    “Mom,” Skip says. “This is different. Dad was incapacitated.”
    “He’s reaching out,” says Harriet. “Don’t you see? That’s what this is about. I’ve been thinking long and hard about it, and I’m sure he’s come to help. Maybe to guide me.”
    “Let’s hope not,” says Skip.
    “That would be a first,” mutters Caroline.
    “What is that supposed to mean?”
    “It means he was never much help while he was alive.”
    “Take that back, Caroline.”
    “Oh, c’mon, Mom. You did everything. You cleaned, youcooked, you did every single thing he ever told you to do. The Major just sat around polishing his belt buckles and reading newspapers.”
    Though Harriet appreciates the affirmation, it annoys her that she should have to defend a protocol designed specifically to eradicate obstacles for her children. Why should Harriet apologize when she tended to every runny nose and broken bone, prepared every meal, consoled every heartbreak and