Janice Johnson - Taking a Chance

At ten last night Jo’d said, “Gosh, you look tired. I’d like to finish around the tub, but if you want to go to bed…”

Weariness showing in dark circles under her eyes, Helen looked up and said simply, “Why? I can’t sleep anyway.”

“Oh. I didn’t know. You never said…”

Helen concentrated on splitting a tile in half and handed one piece to Jo. “The doctor thinks I should take sleeping pills, but they make me groggy. Besides, I don’t want to get addicted.”

No wonder she seemed dazed half the time! Jo realized in shock. Lack of sleep would do that to you.

Tentatively, she asked, “Do you miss your husband—Ben—the most at bedtime?”

Head bent, Helen shrugged. “No, it isn’t that. We hadn’t slept together in a long time. He had cancer, you know. It was…slow.” She gave a sound that might have been a laugh, as if the one small word was so utterly inadequate she could almost find humor in it. “It’s just that, when I go to bed, my mind starts to race. Don’t you find that?”

Jo nodded. “If I’m worried about something, or trying to make a decision, I can’t sleep either.”

“I think about Ben, or how scarred Ginny is by all this, or how I’ll manage financially—” She broke off with a small, choked sound.

Jo sneaked a look at her averted face. She never quite knew what to say in situations like this. Other women seemed to have a knack she didn’t. Her inclination was to fix problems, to offer practical advice, to charge ahead. In some ways, she had become aware, she had more in common with men than other women.

“Sometimes,” Helen continued drearily, “I’m not thinking at all. I just lie there, so tired. I think I’ve forgotten how to sleep.”

“But you must sleep!” Jo exclaimed. “Some, at least.”

“Oh, eventually. A few hours a night.” She scored a tile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go on about it. It’s just that I’d rather have something useful to do anyway.”

Jo was actually a little irked at Kathleen, who after all did own the house and would be the only one of them to truly profit from their remodeling. She’d worked, of course, but off and on, with a distracted air. She and Emma had had another fight Sunday morning, one that had left Kathleen looking…older. She had to be thirty-five or thirty-six, but was such a beautiful woman Jo had never noticed lines on her face before. Sunday they had been there.

Even so, she didn’t have to be so eager to let Jo be in charge.

“I’m so glad you know what you’re doing!” she’d exclaimed several times, always right before vanishing for an hour or more.

It was especially irritating given that Jo didn’t know what she was doing, not in the sense of actually having done it before. She’d picked out a do-it-yourself book at Home Depot and was following the directions. Any competent person could have done the same. Helen had quietly taken over cutting tiles to fit, and she’d never done it before, either.

Kathleen, Jo was beginning to think, was a little bit of a princess.

Now Jo changed to a pair of chinos and a scarlet tank top with a matching three-quarter-sleeve sweater over it. She brushed her hair—what else could she do to it?—and added a pair of gold hoop earrings and a thin gold chain with tiny garnet beads. Inspecting herself in the mirror, she decided the result was…fine. She was the same old Jo, just cleaned up. What you saw was what you got. Her makeup was basic, eyeliner, a touch of mascara, lipstick.

Besides she refused to get very excited about this date, after learning that Ryan had two kids. She didn’t know any more about them except that they lived with his ex-wife. She hadn’t wanted to sound too curious, so Jo hadn’t asked about them. But if the kids were at his place half the time and he was constantly juggling dates because he had them, she wasn’t interested.

At a knock on her door, she said, “Come in.”

Emma opened it and slipped in. Closing the door behind her, she inspected Jo critically. “You look really nice.”

“Thanks.”

“Your stomach is so-o flat.” She came to stand beside Jo and look into the mirror, too. “Oh, yuck. I’m so fat.”

With shock, Jo said, “What?”

Their side-by-side images horrified her. The contrast was painful even though she had always been wiry. Emma was pale, her cheeks sunken, her hair dull, her limbs like sticks, while Jo felt almost obscenely healthy in comparison, with high color, shiny thick hair and noticeable muscles and curves despite her narrow hips.

“Look.” The teenager splayed her hands on her abdomen, covering the bony jut of her pelvis. “My stomach pooches.” She turned from side to side, making faces. “I’m eating too much. I know I am! I shouldn’t have had that Jell-O last night…”

Was she serious? “But you’re so thin! Too thin. Anyway, wasn’t the Jell-O sugarless?”

“But it was sweet.” Emma sat on the edge of the bed. “I shouldn’t eat dessert,” she said with finality.

Feeling as if she were arguing with the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland, Jo tried anyway. “Emma, you’re so skinny, I’m afraid you’ll break! Why do you think you’re fat?”

“Oh, I guess I’m not really.” She shrugged. “Not now. But I was. You should have seen me two years ago. I was, like, pudge city. So now I’m just really careful, so I don’t gain any weight.”

If she weighed ninety pounds, Jo would have been astonished. “Boys don’t usually like skinny that much.”

“The other girls are so jealous!” the teenager said with pleasure, as if she hadn’t heard Jo or didn’t care what boys thought. “They’re, like, pigs. They can’t make themselves not eat pizza and ice cream and junk like that. They want to think everybody eats it, but then I don’t, so they know they’re lying to themselves.”

“Jealousy isn’t the best basis for friendship,” Jo said carefully.

Emma looked at her as if she were crazy. “I’m not going to be fat just to make them feel better.”

“You don’t have to be fat. Just don’t…” Jo had the sense not to say, Rub their noses in it.

Emma wasn’t listening anyway. “Uncle Ryan is here. Did I tell you?”

No. She hadn’t.

Jo grabbed her small purse and stuffed her wallet, a brush and lip balm in it. “You don’t mind that I’m going out with him?”

“No. You’re cool.”

Jo smiled over her shoulder as she reached for the knob. “Thank you. I’m touched.”

“Mom’s showing him the bathroom. She’s bragging, like she did all the work,” Emma added spitefully.

Jo hurried down the hall.

Ryan’s voice floated from the bathroom. “This tile looks great. I can’t believe how much you’ve gotten done.”

“We worked hard,” his sister said.

We? Jo’s temper sparked.

But Kathleen, seeing her, smiled graciously. “Jo is our expert. And Helen has become a whiz at cutting tile. She’s hardly broken any.”

The bathroom did look good, if Jo said so herself. Ryan did, too, but she tried to concentrate on the room, not his big, broad-shouldered presence or the slow smile he gave her.

They’d gone with a basic, glossy, four-inch-square tile in a warm rust. The grout was a shade lighter. The floor was still raw plywood; Jo was concentrating on getting the bathtub surround and the countertop done so the sink could be reinstalled. Wallpaper would be last, an old-fashioned flower print in rust and rose and pale green.

“I just did the grout this afternoon,” she said. “I guess I have to wait a couple of days to seal it.”

Ryan nodded absently. “I can put the sink in tomorrow evening if you’d like.”

“We’d like!” Kathleen exclaimed. “Now, if only we had a toilet upstairs…”