Read You Take It From Here for Free Online Page B

patience.
    We all endured Smidge, but the rest of us shared the burden, spread it around a bit. Henry was the only one who was her husband. The one man in her life. There are statues less patient than that man. Even a statue would have found a way to mobilize his marble-stone mouth just to tell your mother to shut her crazy ass up.
    But Henry, he just nodded. Rocked his head and absorbed her words. The more Smidge consumed, the more he doted. Sometimes I wondered if his insides were riddled with ulcers.
    “ Soooooo, Tucker calls my husband and tells him that he found his wife. Henry goes to bed. Once the bar closes I figure I’d better get home. I do, on my bike, somehow , and when I wake up the next morning I get a phone call from Sweden.”
    “Sweden? Like the country?”
    Smidge threw back her head and cackled. “Yes, Sweden! They were just looking over their recent online orders, and they wanted to know if I meant to purchase a chair shaped like an egg.”
    “What did you say?”
    “What do you think I said? I immediately answered, ‘Uh, yes, ma’am. I did!’”
    “Oh, no!”
    She pulled at her eyelids with her thumb one at a time, trying to keep her mascara away from her tears. “Well, I’m sure I wanted it when I bought it!”
    “An egg chair?”
    “And then my credit card company called to also make sure I meant to purchase a brand-new laptop computer.”
    “Smidge!”
    “I know! So what I am telling you is that last weekend I made a two-thousand-dollar drunk dial on my credit card. Which is why I am now asking you to drive faster, because I want to make sure I am long gone and far away by the time Henry finds out.”
    “You are a dead woman,” I said.
    We drove in silence for a while as I tried to imagine what would happen if one day everybody decided Smidge should be forced to do what we said for a change. Just for one day. What if she ever had to answer to anybody? I don’t think she could handle it, living under rules that weren’t hers and hers alone.
    I was just about to ask her which one of us she’d let be the boss of her, when I noticed she’d fallen asleep, a thin, red line of cherry stain on her upper lip. Her hands twitched as the empty Styrofoam cup tumbled to her feet.

 
     
    SIX

     
     
     
    W hile Smidge slept I stopped at a gas station for a fill-up, taking a moment to check my messages. Even though I had told all of my clients I was on vacation for at least two weeks, I knew there’d be an emergency. Sure enough, there was an e-mail from a client who desperately needed me to “fix the flow” in his kitchen.
I am convinced we have the refrigerator against the wrong wall. Mark insists—GET THIS—that we currently have it on the wall that is the most pleasing to his arm when he reaches. Please come tell us where the fridge should go, because I think it’s why I keep giving up on making breakfast. McDonald’s is easier than fighting over how to reach for the eggs. My stove sits untouched. My fridge only has mayo. We miss you! Help us! Take us shopping and whip us back into shape!
Your cheerful yet soon to be diabetic client,
Sean
PS: “Pleasing to his arm”!!
    I couldn’t wait to tell Smidge about this e-mail, because I knew she’d give her smug smile and say, “This is why your job is sad balls.”
    We didn’t always take our vacations with just the two of us to a place where we could rest. Since these trips originally came out of Smidge’s grief over her father’s early passing, at first we tried to make them have importance. It’s as naïve as it is noble how we thought we could leave a place better for having had us in it. Eventually we learned that our lofty goals were covering the guilt that came with the privilege of getting to travel, and not every trip needed to be a charity event. But back then we were young, and hadn’t yet experienced “sad balls.”
    Sad balls came about the summer we volunteered to go to Guatemala to help a local organization rebuild