Life and Other Inconveniences

by Kristan Higgins

  I laughed a little. This was so weird. Then I got up, slid to his side of the booth and sat down next to him. “You ready?”

  He looked utterly wretched. “Yeah.”

  “You’re not really inspiring confidence on my part,” I said. “If this is on par with, say, walking the plank”—I started to laugh—“or being keelhauled, you can pass. Matey.”

  He smiled. “Go for it.”

  I did.

  For a second, he did nothing. But then he caught on.

  Oh, kissing. Kissing was so great. Miller’s hand went to the back of my head, and he kissed me back, the pressure of his lips just right, and warm and wonderful. He tilted my head a little, making the kiss last longer, and when it was done, he rested his forehead against mine.

  “Better than keelhauling,” he said, and kissed me again, briefly. “Thank you.”

  “That’s gross,” said a voice. One of the unsupervised kids, about six, and damn cute, his blond hair sticking up straight, one tooth missing.

  “Go back to your parents,” I said.

  “Kissing makes babies.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Go.”

  I looked back at Miller. “Date, or friends?”

  He touched my chin with one finger. “Date,” he said.

  I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Good.” We smiled at each other for a dopey minute. “I’m going back to my side of the table now.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  I was guessing that Riley and Rav had more game than Miller and I did, but who cared?

  “Okay, so getting back to your list of failings,” I said, “um . . . I’m not really experienced in the dating world, either. And that’s been fine. I mean, Jason and I were together in my head longer than we were in reality. After he got married, I had a couple first dates. And two second dates. And maybe a third, but I stopped trying about five years ago because it just didn’t seem worth the effort.”

  “Does it now?”

  “It does.”

  “Even with a fucked-up widower and his horrible child?”

  “You sell yourself so well. But yes. I like your horrible child.”

  Suddenly, there was a crash. The man by the window had fallen out of his chair. “Call 911!” his wife shouted.

  The random kids started screaming. “He’s dead! He’s dead!”

  “No!” said the wife. “Oh, God, please!”

  “He’s dead!”

  “Shut them up!” I barked at the parents, dashing over to the fallen man. He was wheezing, grabbing at his throat. “Are you choking?” I asked. He was a big guy. The Heimlich or CPR would be hard. He shook his head.

  “Oh, God, save him! Please, Jesus, please! Lord Jesus, save him! Save him, Jesus!”

  “He’s dying!” one of the kids wailed. “Just like Lucky! I miss Lucky!”

  “Tanner! Get off the table!” the father yelled.

  “I miss Lucky, too!” cried another kid.

  I checked the man’s pulse, which was fast and weak.

  Miller was already on the phone with the dispatcher. “The pirate restaurant. Moby’s? The one with the pirates! Come on! It’s right on fucking Main Street!”

  “Please, Jesus!” cried the wife. “Don’t fail me, Jesus! Calling on you, Lord! Come through for me, Jesus!”

  The man was flailing at his pocket, his breathing so tight and hard it was a whistle. I felt his pocket—something hard and tubular—and pulled it out. An EpiPen.

  I ripped off the cap and plunged the needle into his thigh. One of Riley’s friends had asthma, and I’d done this once before on a field trip, years ago.

  “She stabbed him! That lady is killing the man!”

  The server was leaning over, too, her boobs nearly falling out. “Is he all right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ambulance is on its way,” Miller said.

  The man’s breathing was easier now. Easier still . . . the whistling turning to a wheeze, and then to normal. He lay there, panting, his color going back to normal. He reached down and pulled the EpiPen out.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, abruptly feeling my own heart thud.

  He nodded.

  “He’s dead!” one of the kids sobbed.

  “No, he’s not! He’s getting better!”

  “Lucky is dead, dummy! Dead!”

  “Honey, are you okay?” the prayerful wife asked.

  “Oh, boy,” he said. “Was there shellfish in that dish?”

  “Are you allergic? To shellfish?” the waitress asked. “You could’ve mentioned that!”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “You’re allergic to shellfish and you came here?” Miller asked. “Here? To a seafood restaurant?”

  “This happens all the time,” his wife said. “Get up, sweetheart.” Sure, she was calm now! She could’ve maybe mentioned the EpiPen while she was talking to God!

  The fire department trooped in. “Hey, there, sir, how you doing?” they asked, and I stepped back. Miller and I returned to our table.

  “That was exciting,” I said.

  “You saved his life,” Miller said.

  “Oh, I just . . . yeah, I kind of did, didn’t I?” I smiled. “Hey. I did! Wow!”

  My savior buzz didn’t last long. Miller looked at his phone. “Shit. Kimmy says she needs me home now.” He hit the button. “What’s wrong? Is she hurt? Oh, God. Okay. Yeah. I’m on my way.” He slid his phone into his pocket and sighed. “Tess poured corn oil on the cat, and it went all over the kitchen floor, and the cat ran upstairs, and Tess chased him, and basically, the house is a wreck and Kimmy can’t deal.”

  “Okay. I’ll drive, mister. You chugged that drink.”

  “Thank you. You don’t have to stay, though.”

  “I love cleaning up corn oil.”

  He gave me a look and raised an eyebrow. “Well, you just saved a man’s life. I guess cleaning up corn oil will be easy compared to that.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Cleaning up corn oil was a lot harder than jamming an EpiPen into someone’s leg. A lot less rewarding, too.

  “This is quite a mess!” I said cheerfully. “How will you clean it up, Tess?” She was currently diving on the floor and sliding around like a cheerful otter, completely soaked in corn oil. Miller was paying Kimmy, who was more than ready to leave and stink-eyeing Tess. The cat was MIA, the lucky thing.

  Apparently, Kimmy had been trying to make brownies, and even without the corn oil, the kitchen was a disaster. The handheld mixer was still on the counter, the beaters dripping chocolate, and eggshells were in the sink. Flour and sugar had spilled on the counter, and every ingredient was out and unwrapped, including a stick of butter that looked like Tess had taken a bite out of it.

  But the real mess was, of course, the floor. An entire half gallon of corn oil. According to Kimmy, Tess had poured it on the cat to make him “pretty.” There were smears of oil on the walls, on the floor; Kimmy had fallen and bruised her knee and was quite grumpy.

  “All right, Tess, let’s clean this up,” Miller said, rolling up his sleeves. He handed her some paper towels.

  “Thank you, Daddy.” She smeared them in the oil and put them on her head. Miller sighed.

  “Put them in the trash, honey,” I said. “Otherwise, we’ll slip and fall on the floor, and it will hurt.”

  “I like hurt,” she said happily, rubbing the paper towels on her face.

  “In the trash, Tess,” Miller said.

  She complied.

  It was good that he was trying to make her take responsibility for the mess, but this wasn’t a job a three-year-old could do. After a few token paper towels, I said, “Great job, Tess. Why don’t I finish, and Daddy can give you a bath?”

  “Are you sure?” he as
ked.

  “Yeah. No problem,” I lied. If I got this cleaned up, and Tess went to bed, maybe Miller and I could . . . I don’t know. Sit on the porch and talk. Maybe kiss a little more, because that kiss had been really, really nice.

  Thus motivated, I got to work. It immediately became apparent that there weren’t enough paper towels in the world to do the trick. I tried sprinkling the floor with salt, but there was only about a quarter cup left. Ditto the baking soda. Too bad it wasn’t corn oil they were short on.

  Half an hour later, I’d gone through an entire roll of paper towels and yesterday’s newspaper and still hadn’t made a lot of progress.

  “Hi.” Tess, dressed in clean pajamas, stood in the doorway, looking deceptively like an angel.

  “Hello.”

  “I help you.”

  “No, honey, you stay there. I’m almost done, and you’re nice and clean.” My jeans were soaked from knee to ankle with corn oil.

  “I have to find Luigi,” Miller said. “He’s probably miserable.”

  “He shiny now,” Tess said, sitting down on the living room floor to watch me.

  “Tess,” Miller said, “we talked about putting things on Luigi. He doesn’t like it. It’s not nice.”

  “He like it.”

  “No, Tess! He doesn’t. You have to be gentle with him. He’s old.” Miller looked at me. “I’m so sorry about this.”

  “It’s really okay,” I said. “The toddler years can be really frustrating.” No shit, Sherlock, said my inner critic. But hey. Validating feelings was one of the things we therapists did best.

  Miller gave a little nod. “Tess,” he said, “you stay here. Right here. Don’t go anywhere else, okay?”

  “You can make sure I’m doing a good job, Tess,” I said, so she’d have a reason to stay put.

  Miller went to find his cat.

  “It’s fun to make messes, isn’t it?” I asked Tess.

  “Yes. It fun.”

  “They can be hard to clean up, though. Maybe next time, you can make a mess in the bathtub or the sink. Or outside.”

  “No. I make messes here.”

  I opted not to argue and got back to wiping. The corn oil smeared rather than absorbed. Once I got it all up, I’d have to wash the floor. Maybe I should use kitty litter or something. I could Google how to clean up corn oil, but I didn’t want to touch my phone. I glanced at Tess, who was scootching in a circle but still technically obeying her dad.

  This kitchen was adorable—true to the arts and crafts nature of the house, with plain white-painted cabinets and soapstone counters. Miller had nice taste. Or Miller and Ashley did, as the case probably was. There was a picture of them on the fridge, arms around each other, back when Miller’s hair was completely black.

  I’d forgotten how pretty Ashley was. Tess looked so much like her. They looked so . . . content. So certain of their love. My throat tightened. I liked you, Ashley. Thanks for being nice to me.

  Then I gathered up another wad of newspaper, turned to throw it out, knelt down and got back to work.

  Tess wasn’t sitting in the doorway. Shit! Before I could finish the thought, I heard a mechanical whine, and my head was jerked back as my hair was pulled mercilessly tight. “Ow!” I yelled, jerking away. I slipped on the greasy floor, sprawling, hitting my chin. The noise stopped. What the hell? I reached back and felt metal.

  “I make you hair pretty,” Tess said.

  Oh, no. No. No.

  The kid had put the beaters in my hair. It was tangled so tightly I had tears in my eyes, and the mixer, which I’d unplugged when I fell, hung heavily. I tried to move it, but my hair was wound right to my scalp.

  “You look funny,” Tess said, and she began to laugh. Then she slid and fell to her tummy and started licking the floor.

  Fuck. “Miller?” I called. “Um . . . we have a problem here!”

  He came running.

  “Slow down,” I said. “The floor’s slippery.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Holy shit!” Tess echoed.

  “Tess, what did you do? Is that the mixer? Oh, God, Emma, I’m so sorry.” He came into the kitchen, sliding on the floor, and helped me up as Tess swam around the floor, flipping onto her back. So much for her bath.

  “Here. Let me at least pop out the beaters.” I heard a click, and some of the weight was relieved.

  “Maybe I can get them out,” I said, taking baby steps toward the bathroom. I slipped and grabbed the counter, my foot grazing Tess’s leg as she scooted under the chairs.

  “No kicking!” she shouted. “No kicking me!”

  Yeah, she was a handful, all right.

  The bathroom mirror showed me smeared in corn oil, red-faced from the pain of my neck hairs being pulled, and two metal beaters jammed against the base of my skull. My hair was wrapped around every part of the beater that I could see. I touched one, then yelped a little. God, that hurt! The entire back of my head throbbed with pain. This was what happened when you didn’t wear a ponytail.

  I was going to have to cut them out. Or go to a salon, but it was eight thirty at night already.

  “Tess, no!” Miller shouted from the kitchen, and then came a high-pitched scream. “Shit! Oh, honey!”

  I went out, my feet still greased with corn oil. Miller held Tess in his arms, and she was screaming in fury—and bleeding from the chin all over Miller’s shirt.

  “She climbed on the table and jumped and hit her chin on the counter,” he said, panic in his voice.

  “Let me see,” I said, slipping over to them, grabbing onto Miller’s shoulder when I started to fall. I could barely hear myself over Tess’s screams. She had about a half inch cut on her chin. “It’ll need stitches,” I said.

  And so it was that, with two metal beaters stuck in my hair, requiring me to hunch over the steering wheel to avoid contact with the headrest, wincing every time we went over a bump, I drove Miller and Tess to the Urgent Care Center in Mystic, which, ironically, was just down the street from the pirate restaurant.

  Tess screamed the entire fourteen-minute drive, kicking my seat and whipping her corn-oiled hair around as Miller sat in the back with her, trying to press a dishcloth against her chin as she thrashed in her car seat.

  I stopped the car. “Meet you inside,” I said as Miller unbuckled his daughter. My ears were ringing; I couldn’t imagine how he could still hear with her face against his shoulder. They looked like something out of disaster footage, both of them filthy and bloody.

  And then there was me. I pulled the car into a space, got out, and yelped as I caught the damn beater on the car. Cursed, because it hurt like the devil—the whole back of my head was on fire—and went inside.

  There were a couple of firefighters in their turnout gear milling around. One did a double take when he looked at me.

  “Jesus, lady, what happened?” he said. “Oh, hey! You’re the woman who gave that guy the EpiPen! Uh . . . date went south from there?” The firemen, accustomed to people’s pain, laughed.

  “It’s like Fifty Shades of Grey, kitchen edition,” his colleague said, and they guffawed and high-fived.

  I would’ve been irritated, but they were firefighters and saved lives and had twinkly eyes and all that. “Happy to entertain, boys,” I said. “And I do mean boys. You see a screaming toddler?”

  “They just went in.”

  “And the guy from the restaurant? How’s he?”

  “We’re not allowed to tell you.” He gave me the thumbs-up just the same. So much for HIPAA.

  I checked in with the receptionist and was directed through the doors to exam room four. The second the doors opened, I could hear Tess. “You hurt me, Daddy! You hurt me!”

  “Honey, you jumped off the table. I didn’t hurt you.”

  “Yes! You did!”

  I w
ent in. “Hi, guys.”

  The doctor was in, and she, too, did a double take when she saw me.

  “Are those beaters?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fun night for you two.” She looked at Tess’s chin. “Yep, she’s gonna need stitches.”

  “Good luck,” Miller said.

  The doctor chuckled. “We’d like to give her a little sedation, rather than hold her down. Is that okay with you?”

  “Jesus, yes.”

  “Great. It’ll just dope her up a little so she won’t fight us. Because we would lose, wouldn’t we, honey? You’re fierce! Dad, you can stay but only if you’re not a fainter.”

  “Be quiet!” Tess yelled, then resumed sobbing.

  Miller kept trying to hold Tess’s hand, but each time, she yanked it away and tried to touch her chin. “Honey, don’t touch it,” he said. “It’ll hurt more.”

  “I hate you,” Tess said. “I hate you!”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I still love you.”

  My heart broke a little.

  The nurse anesthetist got the stuff for an IV and prepped Tess’s arm, then injected the drug. Within seconds, Tess relaxed, her eyes glazed. The silence was beautiful.

  “Hey.” A nurse poked her head in the doorway. “You want help with those beaters?”

  “Miller?” I said. “You want me to stay for the stitching?”

  “No, no. It’s fine.” He was petting Tess’s tangled, oily hair, and another piece of my heart broke off.

  “Thanks,” I said to the nurse. “Long story.”

  “You want me to take a picture of you?”

  “No, I do not,” I said. “Actually, sure, just one for my daughter.”

  She took the picture, and I texted Riley. And how is YOUR night going?

  OMG! came the immediate response. Is this Tess’s work?

  It is. They have to cut the beaters out. Also, she cut her chin and we’re at urgent care.

  Is she okay???

  Yep. Needs stitches, though.

  Mom, just shave your head. You’ll be totally on fleek.

  Twenty minutes and half my hair later, the beaters were out. Sophia, the nurse, handed me a mirror, and I flinched. I had a few thick strands on the right side of my head, almost nothing on the lower half of the back of my skull, erratic lengths on the top, and all of the left side.