You Take It From Here

by Pamela Ribon

  You were flung across your bed; facedown on that puffy green-and-pink comforter, crying into your forearms, shuddering in misery. Your hair dangled in stripes of black and gold, making your head resemble a discarded pom-pom.

  Standing in a teenage girl’s room during a tantrum is not unlike auditing Acting for Drama Majors. You’re technically sitting to the side; you don’t have to participate, but you can’t help feeling all the emotion in the room. I could practically see squiggle lines of hormones coming off your body, floating into the air, sailing over toward my face. If dogs were around, they’d be whining. If cats could wander past, they’d instantly go into hissing fits. It’s just too much passion, too much angst, so much sadness. Over a haircut.

  As I searched for something to say, I worried that if I waited much longer you’d begin slamming your face with your own palms, martyring yourself on your bed, not just to punish me but to punish the world for making you be alive in it.

  “Your mom made me come in here,” I said, establishing blame early on.

  You muffled your reply into your elbow. “I don’t care.”

  “You know how much hair means to her,” I said.

  Your head slowly rose and lowered, the world’s saddest bob.

  “More than it means to normal people,” I added.

  You’d gotten to that part of the cry that was mostly shivering and gasping, so I gingerly took a seat at the edge of the bed, waiting for you to finish thinking about how hard everything in life is and why do they make it so unfair and why were you ever born and thirteen is hard.

  Then I told you a secret. “The worst haircut I’ve ever gotten in my entire life your mother gave to me.”

  That got your eyes poking out. Your sweet face was wet and shiny, sweaty around the temples from hating everything. Pink-cheeked and blotchy, cry-face had reduced your eyes to puffy dots. I didn’t say it then because it wasn’t the time, but your little, hot head emerging from your arms reminded me of how you looked the day you were born. Angry, damp, and purple, looking for someone to blame.

  “Your mother is never going to admit this, by the way,” I said. “She heard people just flat-out tell me how terrible my hair looked. She’d roll her eyes and nod at them, like she’d been saying the same thing and I refused to do anything about it.”

  “She’s so unfair,” you whined.

  “She really is. And that was awhile ago. She’s seen pictures from that time; she knows how bad it was. She still hasn’t apologized. She pretends it didn’t happen. She’ll do that with this, too.”

  “No, she won’t. She’ll bring it up for the rest of her life.”

  You either didn’t see me or didn’t notice how I winced.

  “She always thinks she’s more important than everybody else,” you moped.

  I knew I had to bring you back from mother-hate, because Smidge was expecting a full report and I couldn’t lead with, “Well, she’s done crying and now she blames you for everything.”

  “I don’t know if that’s it,” I said, most unconvincingly.

  “It is it. She’s so mean.” That got you worked up into a new round of heaves and whimpers.

  “She just has a lot of conviction,” I said. “And pride. She knows she gave me a bad haircut. You know what she said when I last brought it up? ‘It was the style at the tiiiiime.’ She insisted it would have worked on me if only I believed in it. Like a haircut and a fairy are exactly the same.”

  You turned your head to the side to wipe your face. “What did it look like?” you asked. “Your hair.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to sound like I was searching for the words. I reached out and stroked your head, pulling on a few strands. “This,” I said, grandly gesturing toward your severed locks.

  You laughed as you swatted at my face, catching me under the chin as you sat up, folding your knees.

  “I hate it,” you said, playing with the toes of your socks. “My hair. That’s really why I’m crying. I’ve been crying since last night when I did it. I was going to tell Mom that, but she freaked out before I could even say anything. But I know it looks bad.”

  “Kind of a light term for this. It looks like you were hazed.”

  You gave the most miserable mumble. “I know.”

  “I think your mother wants me to beat you up.”

  “You should.”

  “I can’t hit a crying girl. That’s just mean. But look at you: can’t we just say I did this to you?”

  You placed both hands on top of your head and pressed down, as if you were trying to shove the hair back inside your skull so it could spring back in a new style, like snakes from a trick can of peanuts.

  “I just wanted to look different,” you said through clenched teeth. “My old hair made me look like a baby, and Aubrey’s a grade older than me and—”

  You halted right there, knowing you’d accidentally said too much.

  “Aubrey?” I asked. “That’s a boy’s name?”

  “Don’t tell Mom. She’ll kill me if she knows I cut my hair for a boy.”

  This was turning out to be quite a time for secrets in my life.

  “Do you think he’s going to like your hair? This Aubrey?”

  “No. I just thought . . . he’s cool, and I didn’t think he’d like me if I was cute.”

  “Well, you know,” I said, “mission accomplished.”

  You kicked your legs out in a tiny tantrum. “Now Mom’s going to start on all the nicknames.”

  “There will be a lot of nicknames, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to be grounded! Ugh! I hate everything!”

  I recognized we were hitting a critical moment. I had to keep you from spiraling out. You were a ticking time bomb; my clippers were halfway through the red wire and you were sitting there, holding up the green one, taunting, “Are you sure?”

  “Maybe you could write your mom a letter of apology?”

  That is what I said to a thirteen-year-old. It came out like a sad, weird question, totally showing my cards. I had no idea what I was doing and was just trying to keep from saying anything real.

  You spotted my weakness immediately, your torso twisting like you were agonizing through your own personal exorcism. You flung back onto your bedspread and wailed, “A letter!”

  I should’ve cut the green wire.

  “Well . . .” I started, but you were writhing around so much you’d think I’d just dumped acid straight onto your skin.

  “I’m so sure!” you yelled. “You write letters to Santa or your congressman. Not your mother! Like she’s the editor of my life, or something?”

  I can tell you now that I didn’t have a random coughing fit just then, Jenny. I was covering up the fact that your teenage angst caused a giggle fit I desperately wanted to hide. It made me remember I was never going to be thirteen again, and I was just so happy about that.

  “You’re right,” I said, trying to control my breath from shuddery chuckles. “That was a dumb suggestion. Don’t write a letter. I’m sorry.”

  I got up and adjusted the blankets around your tortured body. I figured since I was leaving you just as I’d found you, there was no real harm done. I never called you an ungrateful brat or a crybaby, so I was already doing better than my mother would have done in that situation.

  Smidge was waiting for me in the hallway with her coach face on, sizing me up like I’d just gotten cut from the softball team. Eyes narrowed, mouth bent into an unimpressed frown.

  “That was fast,” she said, her interrogation beginning with a statement.

  “Well, that’s just how I mom,” I said.

  “Did you beat her?”

  “No.”

  “Did you tell her she looks like shit?”

  “I used other words, but yes.”

  “Is that why she’s crying?”

  “She’s crying because she’s thirteen. And because she doesn’t like the haircut.”

  “Good,” Smidge said, pus
hing me aside as she headed toward your room. “Then she won’t mind when I beat it off her.”

  TEN

  I found your father hiding in the backyard garage. Henry might have defined it as “working,” since he was busy sanding a table while Tucker hunched over a workbench, rewiring a lamp. Those boys could call what they were doing whatever they wanted; I knew they were hiding. The dead giveaway being they were down to one beer, which they were now sharing just to avoid going anywhere near the house.

  I slid inside the garage, shutting the door behind me in an attempt to absorb a few minutes of quiet. The men watched me, smiling. We were equal parts chicken shit and independent observers, able to step away from the situation. Not even Henry could be asked to genuinely care that much about his daughter’s haircut, which is why I nominated him to go in there to bring us back some beer.

  Tucker seconded. “It’s your house, man.”

  “Such betrayal,” he said, clutching at his heart. “And here I thought I was among friends.”

  “I’d also like a soda, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  I’d be lying if I said I never thought about Henry, if we’d be a good couple. We make each other laugh, and Smidge always says we’re the same kind of patient. But Henry’s so quiet it can be hard for me to keep a conversation going with him. He often seemed miles away, politely nodding whenever I paused for breath. I assumed we’d grow bored of each other; the kind of relationship where we retreated to separate rooms to read books we will not swap. Meals eaten while watching television programs.

  I wasn’t sure how Smidge thought she could just snap me into her place, that I’d be loud enough or big enough to occupy her space in his heart. He holds her everywhere.

  I’m not saying I’m jealous, but I did find him first.

  Not that your mother had a reputation, but I don’t think anybody assumed she’d only been with one man her entire life. Smidge could be surprisingly old-fashioned. She made sure to go out with enough boys who would want to brag about dating her that nobody ever confessed how platonic their relationship actually was.

  We were still in college the night your mother pointed toward the slender boy in jeans and slicked-back hair leaning against the bar at The Pantry, the one who was ordering three beers that—unbeknownst to her—he had plans on taking straight to our table.

  “Who is that boy?” she asked, her fingernail pointed like it could shoot a web on command. She asked with decision, with finality, and I knew that despite what I was about to tell her, she had found her next big thing.

  “That’s my date,” I said. “That’s Henry.”

  Smidge leaned back. “What?” she asked. “That’s the guy we’re meeting here tonight? Oh, nuh-uh. He is not your date.”

  I sighed. “And why would that be?”

  “Because he’s now mine. I’m sorry, but that guy is not your type. He is exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

  These were about the craziest words I’d ever heard her say, which is how I knew she meant them. I’d never seen her instantly smitten with someone, but she couldn’t stop staring.

  “Smidge, I kind of like him,” I admitted.

  “Yeah, but you don’t even know if this is a date, which is why I’m here, remember?”

  She was right, of course. Henry was in my English lit class, and we’d struck up a conversation when we both showed up too early one day. He asked if I ever went to The Pantry. When I told him I did, he said he’d maybe see me there that next weekend.

  Since he didn’t really ask me, but instead described a possible bump-into, I felt like I needed Smidge there in case he turned out to have a girlfriend or a group of friends with him. I didn’t want to look desperate or confused.

  “But he waved when he saw me,” I said.

  “Oh, honey,” Smidge said, “the wave might have been toward you, but that boy was looking right at me.”

  And he was. I still haven’t seen two people ever fall more instantly in love.

  “Why did you two come back so soon?” Henry was asking me in that garage, clearly having had his entire day, if not week, ruined by our immediate rearrival.

  “Smidge wanted a short trip,” I said. “It was a surprise to me, too.”

  Tucker adjusted himself in his chair, sliding the legs roughly along the concrete, purposely making himself heard. “Guess you didn’t fight her too hard,” he said into his hands as he worked.

  “I packed lots of outfits,” I said defensively. “I’m not happy about this recent development.”

  “They still fighting?” Henry asked, glancing worriedly toward his home.

  “You could go in there,” I said. “Maybe try to calm them down.”

  The withering look Henry shot me indicated he thought I was kidding. But I desperately wanted Henry to step up and stand by his wife’s side as they dealt with their daughter. I wanted him to be indispensable, strong and stern, solemn and calm, powerful and heroic enough that Smidge would realize she needed Henry for everything she was about to face. She needed her husband to be her partner, not me. Henry has always been there for her.

  She knows she can’t say the same about me.

  Years ago, if someone had asked me how I’d behave if my best friend was diagnosed with stage II lung cancer, I’d have been telling them to immediately place a bet on me winning a gold medal in the Friendship Olympics, Hard Times division. Smidge and I had been through so much, I didn’t think there was anything I couldn’t handle.

  I was wrong.

  You probably don’t know this, Jenny, because a lot of that time was sheltered from you, but I was a shitty cancer friend.

  I’m still embarrassed when I think about my behavior over the two years Smidge went through treatment. I try not to think about it, and it’s a testament to Smidge’s character that she didn’t constantly bring it up. It’s the kind of thing you’d think she’d hold over me. Yet, in all the mean things she’d spat over the years, it was usually about the ugliness of my visible features, not what I had going on underneath them.

  When she was sick, when things were really bad, I couldn’t find a way to separate her from me. All the tests and hospital visits, the surgeries, the late nights where she was sleepless, sick, and destroyed from chemotherapy, it felt like it was all happening to me. I was catching her cancer. I could feel my cells mutating, replicating, poisoning me right along with her. I was miserable, and I knew I just couldn’t handle it.

  I can only imagine Smidge was as shocked and disappointed in me as I was in myself.

  I gave no good excuse for avoiding her, but I offered many, bowing out of Smidge’s next blood test, or another round of chemo. We e-mailed each other as I tried to keep up with everything, calling Henry to ask if there was something I could do, knowing full well he’d tell me everything was fine, and that I shouldn’t worry too much, and to stay on my side of the country tending to my own busy life that was falling apart in its own way. James and I were already having problems.

  You were mostly staying with your grandparents, then. Henry’s parents rented a nearly furnished condo so they could pick you up from school and take you to practices, be there while you did your homework. You called it Grampy Camp. They were so good at keeping you entertained, of making this time feel special, not sad.

  When your mom was at her worst, when she got down to ninety pounds and they thought maybe she wouldn’t make it, your grandparents took you on a road trip to the Grand Canyon. When she was still in bad shape a week later, they just kept driving. You went up through Nevada, and over to California. You went up every roller coaster and down each waterslide Southern California had to offer. That’s when you got to pet a baby tiger and hug a dolphin.

  You even spent a weekend with me. We went to Disneyland and later the beach, where you didn’t want to get your face wet because you’d gotten a butterfly painted on your cheek that you were trying to preserve.

  “I wanna surprise Mama and say it’s a tattoo,” you told me. You w
ent home after eight weeks, most of a summer, once Smidge had turned a corner and put on some weight. Once she was safely out of the woods.

  I don’t know if you ever figured out the truth about that summer, but I have a feeling nobody’s ever told you that you weren’t just having Grampy Camp.

  One night Henry found Smidge on the floor of the kitchen. Around three in the morning she’d woken up hungry for the first time in days. She was trying to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, when she was hit with a wave of pain that lowered her to the floor. Eventually she fell asleep. Henry found her still clutching a jar of grape jelly. He gently woke her, pulled her into his lap, and fed her off a spoon, her weary head tucked under his chin. Neither of them was crying, no words about how terribly unfair life can be.

  Smidge’s church organized a spreadsheet so people could come by with food or books, magazines and casseroles.

  Millie Mains lived down the street from you and had that dog you said could count to five. She was young—a teacher, I think—and you thought she was the prettiest grown-up you’d ever seen because she had orange hair. You know she’s the one who brought you those stuffed animals, right? Did someone tell you that?

  Millie would come by in the mornings to pick up all your family’s laundry and then she’d leave it folded and clean on the back porch at the end of every day. She always tied the bundle with a green ribbon, sometimes topped with a small stuffed toy. For two years, every day, Millie Mains washed your laundry. Once Smidge was better, Henry got down on his knees and built that woman a new back deck.

  Your daddy is a good man. And your mother was being hateful insinuating that Millie Mains was trying to get into his pants. Still, maybe Millie would be more interested in this life-altering arrangement than I was.

  After Henry left to find beverages, Tucker and I stayed quiet. He was keeping himself busy with the lamp, but I’d brought nothing to do to pass the time. I found that moments of silence made my brain shift to pondering unanswered questions, so I started pacing, stopping only to lean against various corners of the garage.