by Pamela Ribon
I didn’t live that way. I couldn’t. I need quiet, even at the expense of a mess. I don’t mind being buried under piles of laundry and stacks of papers as long as the background noise is either the television or the radio—not both. Never both. Being in Smidge’s house was like living inside a slot machine. The bedlam made me uneasy, like I needed to grab the counter with both hands to steady myself.
“Smidge! I’m here!”
From the back of the house, I heard my best friend shout back, “Good! Come get this!”
I headed toward her room, sidestepping the old basset hound camped out in the hallway. “Hello, Dr. Phil,” I said as I gently tiptoed over his enormous floppy ears that stretched almost halfway across the floor.
Smidge was wearing a pair of white shorts and a blue tank. Her thick hunks of dark curls were pulled back into a low ponytail, covered by a floppy sunhat. One slender arm rested along a bookcase as she slid a cobalt flip-flop onto her foot. She tottered there, head nodding toward the small, leopard-print suitcase on the floor beside her bed.
The rest of the room was pristine. We could have just as easily been standing in an IKEA display, or the bedroom of a child hampered with severe allergies.
“Just that one bag?” I asked. Smidge normally carried enough pieces of luggage to outweigh her by a factor of two.
“Yes, smarty-face,” she said. “I’m traveling light!”
When she raised her arms in celebration I noticed she’d lost weight since I’d seen her last, around six months ago, when she flew out to my apartment for an overdrunken event we called Danielle’s Definitely Divorced Weekend. I don’t remember much of it, but I know somewhere she had pictures of me wearing a black veil, hugging a palm tree, simultaneously crying and laughing. I look deranged. She claimed it was her favorite picture of me.
Catching my stare, she pulled her arms across her chest into a defensive hug. “What?” she asked as though issuing a schoolyard challenge, her chest puffed up and chin tilted.
“Nothing.”
Her eyes remained slits as she warned, “Better be nothing.”
Then, just as quickly, all the toughness melted from her face. “Come here, yay!” she said, dancing into my arms for a long hug. We remained that way until I heard a toilet flushing in the master bathroom.
“Who’s here?” I asked.
Smidge scrunched her face and shrugged as a way of an apology. I needed no further answer.
Vikki Lillian was a woman instantly recognizable by her big teeth and even bigger parrot necklace. A woman for whom I had absolutely no patience. As she came lurking around the corner, I watched her decide to act like she was surprised to see me.
“Oh, hello, Danielle,” she said, all singsong and gooey. “Well, didn’t you just about frighten me?” Her face held that fake shock as she tangled her fingers into her hideous necklace. The parrot was green, sitting on a branch, half the size of her hand, and I couldn’t help but wonder if summers ended with her finding a bird-shaped white patch across her splotchy chest.
She rocked on her heels, fixing her gaze Smidge’s way. “I was just here to see if Smidge needed any help while y’all go off gallivanting on y’all’s trip. With Jenny or Henry or the house. Y’all are sometimes gone for so long and this house is so big, I know you’ll need help keeping it up when y’all are gone for who knows how long.”
Sometimes hearing that accent, no matter how many years I’d been surrounded by it, with some people it still sounded like someone was plucking a banjo. Ping, pawng, y’all y’all.
“Isn’t she sweet?” Smidge asked, not meaning it in the slightest.
“That’s nice of you,” I told Vikki. “But Smidge has a housekeeper.”
Smidge smacked her thighs. “No, I don’t!”
She did. Her name was Tamara; she was forty-six and always entered through the back door, even though your mom would insist she came through the front. Smidge wasn’t embarrassed to have someone working for her; she just didn’t want Tamara getting the daily credit when she only came once a week.
“It’s not like company’s coming over to see if my sheets are clean and my towels are in the closet,” she’d say. “When people say my house is clean, it’s because I wash the damn dishes every day and know how to use a broom. That praise is mine.”
“She doesn’t have a housekeeper,” Vikki corrected me, so happy to think she was up on something.
Smidge gave me her wide-eyed warning to let it go.
“I told Vikki I’m good here,” she said, “but she just keeps on insisting there must be something she can do!”
Vikki shook her head, presumably to dislodge all the self-righteousness she was about to need. “Y’all are just so lucky,” she said, “getting to drop everything to go wherever you want, whenever you want, without feeling bad. I just don’t know how y’all do that. Well, I mean, I guess you’ve got Henry to help, and with Danielle here not having any kids or a husband. All alone, you might as well travel. That’s what I’d do if I were like that with nobody in my life. Nothing else going on, why not see some Chinese people?”
Vikki had started hanging around Smidge about a year earlier, when Smidge’s knitting club dissolved after everyone finally admitted they were unable to knit and purl at such high levels of intoxication. People were starting to get testy with one another, leading Smidge to make a declaration that she wouldn’t hold more than three women on her porch at once. I have to admit it’s not that bad of a rule. Despite the lack of an invitation, Vikki kept coming every Tuesday night, and eventually Smidge felt sorry for her. “I think her husband hates her,” Smidge confessed to me one night, whispering into the phone as if Vikki was within earshot. “He’s probably afraid she’ll chomp on him with those horse teeth of hers.”
After that, Vikki always seemed to be there, acting like she’d always been there, like it was normal for us to be a threesome. Even if I’d just traveled hundreds of miles to get to that porch.
Vikki loved being a shadow to Smidge, like her sole purpose was to stand around waiting for the moment Smidge needed someone to agree with her. But the joke was on Vikki; Smidge already knew she was right about everything. Smidge let Vikki have just the smallest perception of the wonderland that could be her friendship, without anything tangible to take home. I don’t think Smidge would have even lent her Fiestaware.
Smidge interrupted here with one of her singing segues, a habit of hers that never failed to suck all the attention in the room straight over toward her. She usually did it to change the subject, but sometimes it was to make a conclusion. She could draw out that word until it sounded like she was frozen, trapped in the middle of singing “Do Re Mi.”
“Sooooooo!” she sang. “Let’s hit the road, Danny. I wanna stop at Sonic for a cherry limeade.”
And that was it. No Bye, Vikki. No Thanks for stopping by. Smidge acted like Vikki was already gone, a doll dropped as she wandered into another room.
Some decent part of me knew I should have at least a pang of sympathy for Vikki as I watched her slink out of the house, but it was hard to feel for her when she insisted on bringing these situations upon herself. And the parrot necklace made me irrationally angry. Did she sleep wearing it? She must have. She probably showered with it.
That’s when you appeared in the doorway, arms crossed in front of your budding chest, head swiveling at us like you were an audience member on Jerry Springer. “Y’all are mean,” you said to us, your tiny little mouth a bracket of disapproval.
Your mother snorted. “I learned it from you.”
FOUR
You followed us all the way to the driveway asking your mother for some extra cash. “What if something happens while you’re gone?” you whined. “What if Daddy forgets to feed me and I need emergency pizza?”
Even though we all knew you’d be fed and safe, Smidge made a big production out of slipping you a twenty. “Give me Odd Hugs,” she said, once you’d stuffed the bill near the perfume-shaped lump in your
pocket.
You two began the series of contortions that was your Odd Hugs ritual—repeated awkward embraces that mocked affection while still technically counting as touches. A leg lifted here, an elbow bent into someone’s side there—your mother was fond of pulling faces while she leaned toward you. You preferred making chicken wings out of your arms while asking, “Like this? Like this?”
“What’s that smell?” she asked you after your tenth Odd Hug. “Why do you smell like a brothel?”
You kissed her on each cheek in a mock French fashion, quickly noting, “Y’all better get going before Vikki packs a suitcase.”
Your mother said, “Love you, stinky,” and we drove away.
Smidge wanted a road trip, a back-to-basics, paper-map-and-fast-food, feet-up-on-the-dashboard, singing-Madonna-songs girl trip. We headed east, toward a destination only Smidge knew, even though she was making me drive her large, green sedan that I liked to call the Pickle. We wouldn’t hit Mexico going east, but we would eventually hit the Atlantic.
Where there were cruise ships.
“How about a hint?” I asked again.
“Unh-uh,” she said. “I wanna see your face when we get there. And I don’t want you to ruin it with all your thinking. No brains! Just driving.” She took a second before she added, “I love you. You are my prettiest friend.”
“Thank you.”
“Pretty, despite those flesh sticks you call fingers. You knew we were leaving; you didn’t have time for a manicure?”
“I type a lot, Smidge. You know manicures are wasted on me.”
She grunted. “Never gonna get a new man wagging around those skin stumps you’ve got going on.”
This was not the time to stand up to Smidge. I would never be so dumb as to say to her something bold like, “I think I know what’s best for me.” If I ever lost my brain and told her something like that, I already knew what would happen.
First, her head would jerk back, like someone had shot her between the eyes with an invisible bullet. Her dark, thin eyebrows would search for each other, straining to meet just above her freckled nose. Then her sharp chin would drop to her pale chest, already flushed patchy-pink with outrage. With her right hand slapped to the back of her head, she’d fluff those bundles of chestnut hair, outraged that I’d offended her right down to her secretly gray roots.
And then she would speak, which is when it’s over. Once Smidge’s singsong, Southern-soaked voice got into your head, once it flowed past your ears and IV-dripped deep into your bones, there wasn’t much more to do but obey.
“You know what’s best for you,” she’d say, not as a question, but a shocked statement. “I’m sorry. Did you just say you know what’s best for you?”
Smidge would turn indignant, about to say the very last word on the subject. Pressing the fingertips of her left hand with the perfectly painted index finger of her right, she’d count off with her bony fingers, getting to the heart of exactly what she felt was wrong with me.
“No husband. No kids. You ain’t got a house.”
Smidge wouldn’t say the word ain’t around most people, but I’m hardly people. I’m a constant. I’m expected, like ground under your feet when you get out of bed. Smidge never saw me as someone else, this other human. I’m an extension of her. I’m extra Smidge. So when she called me out, it’s because she saw something she didn’t like about the entity that is Us.
Usually it was better to deflect her hits and blows one by one, like Wonder Woman using her steel cuffs. But in a situation where she’s listing my flaws, it doesn’t matter why I don’t have those things. I don’t have them. And to Smidge, having those things would prove I’d done something right with my life. Husband. Kids. House. They’re the merit badges earned by grown women.
I suppose I could have tried the truth, something like: “Well, I got separated before we ever had enough money to even think about buying a house, and real estate is rather expensive in Los Angeles. I’m only newly divorced, not that I’m counting the months, or anything. But I’ve been pretty busy with my career to have kids, with or without a boyfriend or husband or even a nanny.” Perhaps I’d end with a very quiet, very quick: “It’s also possible that I have different goals for myself than you have for me.”
But saying all those words would risk too big a fight, so what I’d say instead would be a very levelheaded, “Smidge. You know you’re the only one who knows what’s best for me.”
“Cor-rect,” she’d say, leaning over to rub my arm while handing me a glass of wine she’d somehow magically make appear via her powers over the space-time continuum. Then, unable to keep from having even more of the last word, she’d cluck, “Honestly. What would you ever do without me?”
We were about thirty minutes out of town, driving past a whole lot of nothing, when we passed an empty road lined thick with trees in bloom.
“That’s a pretty road,” I said, pointing. “Look at all those purple flowers.”
“You don’t know that road?” Smidge asked, crinkling her forehead until she cut her freckle number in half. “That road’s famous. Some man did this thing where he would film every person in this parish walking down this one street. Every year he’d come back and do it again. I think it’s in some faincy-paints museum.”
“That sounds cool.”
Smidge’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe you don’t know this!” she said, her excitement growing. “Every year for like, sixty years now or something, he comes back to film them again. Everybody. From babies to old people. They say if you missed the day the man came to town and didn’t get filmed walking down that street, it’s like you didn’t live here. Like you didn’t count.”
I could picture the scenes. Bodies shifting from tiny to big, sometimes disappearing, sometimes new ones showing up. People moving away, coming back, making families. “I bet that’s so neat,” I said. “Watching all those people grow up on camera.”
“They call it Big Count Road,” she said, nodding. “In fact, that’s how the Count on Sesame Street got his name.”
“What? Seriously?”
“No!” Smidge yelled, pushing my arm so hard I swerved the Pickle and had to wave an apology to the driver in the next lane. “How could any of that be true? You’re so dumb sometimes, Danny, I swear! Oh, my God.”
You might think the tendency to believe the things people say is a normal human function, even considered a trait of nice people. It should be a sign of decency, humanity, perhaps something to honor and respect. If you were talking to Smidge, you’d find out you were wrong.
She thought my trusting nature was something to be exploited, mocked as often as possible. Smidge wasn’t the only one who delighted in telling lengthy tall tales, seeing how far she could get before I started to question the validity of her story. James used to do it all the time. The worst was when he and Smidge would conspire together, ganging up to breathlessly share something they’d witnessed on the way home, and how they couldn’t believe I’d missed it: a dog walking a cat; a kid floating above his front yard, clutching a giant birthday bundle of balloons; Carmen Electra in a wig store.
Smidge was particularly pleased with herself on this Big Count Road speech, probably because she made it all the way to mentioning a Muppet.
“Do you how hard it would be to film every single person walking down that street every year?” she asked. “And how long did I say he’d done it, sixty years? With what kind of old-timey editing equipment was he doing that? How old is that man? Jesus, Danny. All those brains you’ve got, but sometimes just no smarts. I’m gonna have to call that idiot ex-husband of yours and brag about that one. I bet James misses this so much.”
“Yes, won’t that be nice? The two of you talking about how stupid I am for believing in you.”
“The Count,” she muttered. “On Sesame Street. My Christ.”
When we got to Sonic, I made her pay for my lunch.
FIVE
Once we were back on the road, Smidge let
out a giggle as she remembered something.
“Soooooooo,” she sang. “Guess what I’m fixing to tell you: what had happened to me last Friday night.”
Smidge held her gigantic cherry limeade with both hands, bouncing the already nearly empty Styrofoam cup on her knees, both feet kicked up on the dash. The sugar was working, obviously, but I think the vacation was starting to get into her blood as well.
“Tell me what had happened,” I drawled.
“First of all, I made the mistake of going out with Vikki, who was so boring. Here’s how boring: so, so, so, so, so, so boring.”
“Six sos!”
“Six. Maybe even seven.”
“That is boring.”
“Yes. And it’s your fault for going out with that guy who had rapist hair when we were supposed to talk on the phone, leaving me to fend for myself with Vikki. In fact, all of what I’m about to tell you is your fault, so I hope you’re ready to start feeling guilty.”
Rapist Hair was originally named Lane, but when I e-mailed Smidge a photo of him she replied with just: Rapist hair. Do not date.
She was right, of course. Not about the hair, but the dating part. He started strong. Tall, good chin, dark eyes, but he had a terrible habit of intentionally making bad jokes and then acting offended when I didn’t laugh at them.
It got worse. Once inside his apartment, I saw he had an iguana. I would like to receive some kind of medal or certificate for not screaming while running from the building right then and there as if he were an actual rapist. Instead, I waited at least ten minutes before pretending there was an emergency that would somehow render me unable to contact him for the rest of my life.
Nights like that sometimes left me thinking, “Maybe I’ll just move in with Smidge. Be her Boston wife. Jenny can think of me as some weird aunt and I’ll live in the back room and clip coupons in front of a dusty, old television while having an intimate one-sided relationship with Drew Carey on The Price Is Right, where I yell at him about the rising cost of olive oil.” There was something about it that felt so much easier, letting her make all my decisions. Just melt into someone else’s life and disappear, no longer worrying about what I’m going to do next.