“Are you sitting down?”
“No. I’m lying in bed, remember?” Abby massaged her temples. “Mom, can’t this wait? I’ll call you back later.”
“No. This is terribly important and can’t wait.”
To her mother, everything was important. She wondered if she should get out of bed and grab the bottle of extra-strength Excedrin from the medicine cabinet to preempt her soon-to-be pounding head. The thought of downing two painkillers was mighty enticing. The only thing she could bank on, aside from the headache she’d soon have, was the fact she wouldn’t be going back to sleep. Her mother had put the kibosh on that happening now. She could only hope this was going to be one of her briefest gripe sessions on record and she’d be able to make it to the bookstore in time to open.
“So tell me, Mom, what did Aunt Raelene do that was so horrible you had to call me at this ungodly hour?”
“She destroyed my kitchen cabinets.”
Another Technicolor image flashed in Abby’s head of Aunt Raelene. There she stood in her stocking feet, all four-feet-nine of her, grinning with her mismatched dentures slipping and clicking, as she demonically splashed gasoline on the honey-oak cabinets and ignited a wooden match to set them all ablaze.
With that vivid image in Abby’s mind, she asked, “Did she burn them down?”
“No, much, much worse.”
What could be worse? Setting off a pipe bomb?
Her mother answered her unspoken question. “She ignored my cabinet labels and put the condiments on the shelves incorrectly.”
Slapping her already pounding head, Abby refused to ask why her aunt was putting away spices in her mother’s kitchen in the first place. What she didn’t know wouldn’t kill her. “Is that all?”
“Of course not. I’m no nit-picker! She put the rest of the groceries in the pantry totally wrong, as well. I found the green beans where the corn should be and the tuna fish next to the beets and–”
“So let me guess, Charlie the Tuna complained?”
“How can you treat this so lightly? It will literally take me hours to put everything back in its proper order. And then there’s the linen closet–”
“Aside from calling to complain about Aunt Raelene, is there anything else you need to tell me?”
“Oh, yes, dear, now that you mention it, there is. Can you stop by Dr. Newcome’s and pick up some more pills for my nerves?”
For years, her mother had been getting pills for her nervous condition from Dr. Newcome. When Abby first learned about this, it had made her nervous. She’d had terrible visions of her mother becoming addicted to the pills. Despite the Patient Privacy Act, she had asked the doctor about the pills. The short, white-haired GP had given her a tremendous smile. “If those sugar pills keep you mother happy, I don’t think we should change things now, do you?” He winked and went to see about his next patient.
“Sure, Mom. I’ll swing by his office on my way home from the store.” Abby wondered why her mother couldn’t ask Alycia to run the errand. It would give her something constructive to do. If nothing else, Alycia needed a job. Watching soap operas and Oprah wasn’t exactly living up to one’s potential. Neither was making aluminum foil protective helmets to prevent the pod people from reading her mind and getting a bead on her location. According to Alycia, the pod people were aliens from another universe who wanted to take over Earth by replacing humans with their own kind. If they had any smarts, they might skip taking Alycia.
Abby could feel the throbbing getting stronger in her head. “Anything else? I’ve got to go.”
“No, I don’t think so... Just don’t forget my pills. Thanks to your crazy aunt, I’m going to need them.”
“I won’t forget,” Abby said, and hung up. Now that she was wide awake with a ringing ear and a pounding head, she got out of bed and padded into the bathroom. Washing two Excedrin pills down with water, she hoped she caught her tension headache in time, while it was still manageable. Lucky for Alexander Graham Bell, he was already dead. At that moment, had he not been, she probably would have hunted him down and murdered him.
Abby hadn’t moved out of her family residence simply to declare her independence. She had left to protect her sanity, fearing that if she remained living with her family too long, she’d start to see little pieces of her brain break off. Her biggest fear was what to do if more than one piece was lost at a time. Which piece should she chase? Living with her family could have been a sitcom for TV. Or a horror flick. She wasn’t certain which.
* * * *
The following day, as Abby was walking toward the cash register, Francie called out to her. “You have a phone call. Do you want to take it up front or in the back?”
“Who is it?”
“Your mother.”
“Transfer the call to the back. I have water back there.”
She knew Francie understood exactly what she meant. Though she had a large bottle of Excedrin in the front, the pills always went down easier with water.
Abby slowly made her way to the storeroom, dreading every step she took. “Hello, Mom–”
“Abby!” Mrs. Minton’s excited voice nearly blew out her eardrum even though she was holding the receiver at least a foot away.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, opening her desk drawer and taking out the Excedrin she kept in the back.
“Wrong? What should be wrong? Why are you asking? Is something wrong at the store? Are you sick–”
“Mom! Stop! You called me, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. I did, didn’t I?”
“What are you calling about?”
“I have a wonderful surprise for you.”
Abby clenched her teeth. “I don’t like surprises, Mom.”
“This one you will. I promise.”
Abby considered hanging up now. Whatever she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. However, she knew it was fruitless. It would only delay the inevitable. Breathing in deeply and knowing she was going to regret asking, she meekly said, “What kind of surprise?”
“You remember Mrs. Blackman?”
Abby searched her memory of her mother’s wacky acquaintances. Mrs. Blackman was the woman who had moved into the Olivers’s old place. She wore colorful housedresses that looked like she bought them off the rack at Omar the Tentmaker’s. Abby thought she might also be a relative of Bozo the Clown because of all the makeup she wore. In fact, she once saw Mrs. Blackman when the woman had a terrible cold and definitely had seen a resemblance.
“What about her?”
“Her son, Arnold, just came on the market again.”
“Did somebody return him?”
“His divorce is now official.”
“And that’s important for me to know because…”
“You have a date with him on Saturday.”
Abby opened the Excedrin and popped two pills into her mouth. She chased them down with a large gulp of water.
“Abby, dear, are you still there?”
Despite the fact she wished she was on a deserted island. “Yes.”
“Isn’t that nice?”