Treading Lightly

CHAPTER 4

“Why can’t I go with Dad?”

She sighed heavily. “This fight again? How many times can we have the same fight?”

“Until you give me a good answer!”

“You mean the answer you want to hear.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up a little. “Well, why can’t I go?” This time it was more of a whine than a demand.

“Because it’s too dangerous, and he’s not the most athletic person on earth.”

“So? What does that have to do with anything?”

“If the raft goes amuck, he’ll have a hard enough time saving himself, much less rescuing you!”

“First off, the raft isn’t going to ‘go amuck.’ Secondly, there will be a guide in there with us. You don’t think he’s going to let me drown, do you? He’ll lose his business!”

“He’ll have other people in the boat with him, and he’ll save them first, assuming your father will save you—which he won’t because he’s an inept spaz who couldn’t save a drowning fly from a cup of coffee—and you’ll be left, dead, floating down the river after you hit your head on a rock!”

“Mom, how do you think of these things?”

“They just pop into my head.”

“Well, get it to pop out! That’s not going to happen!”

“How do you know?”

“Because the odds are astronomical!”

“Don’t raise your voice to me, young man!” she screeched.

Her son stared at her in disbelief; he was no longer amused and hate now flashed from his eyes like daggers.

“Oh my God. Now look at what you’ve done. You’ve got me sounding like my mother!”

“Another bitch on wheels,” he muttered under his breath.

“That’s it! Get to your room!”

“My pleasure!” The entire building heard his door slam. How did things get so heated so quickly? They both needed time to cool down. And what she needed was to ram a hot poker up her ex’s butt for putting this maniacal pipe dream in her son’s head. Martin knew damn well she wouldn’t let Craig go on a trip like that. As far as she knew, Martin himself wouldn’t want to go on a trip like that. He was probably having another of his midlife crises, which she could care less about. What did concern her was that he had to throw it out there, knowing their son would want to go, and also knowing she’d be the bad guy by putting her foot down with a resounding no. That son of a bitch.

Trying to distract herself from her ex’s latest manipulative stunt and her son’s formulaic response to his artful maneuver, she moved to the pile of mail and ripped open the top letter with pent-up anger. Not noticing it was from the Internal Revenue Service, she hadn’t expected to read the imposing and alarming words the businesslike letter contained.

“Damnation! I can’t believe it! Why this? Why now? Why me?”

She threw the letter on the table and immediately ran to her room to her trusty computer to fire off an emergency message to her agent.

Sid:

Help! They’re after me! The stinkin’ IRS wants more money! Lots more! What’s up with that? They state that I couldn’t possibly have made so little in the last two years. What do I do about this? They’re saying I owe thousands in back taxes!

And have you sent out the last manuscript I sent you? I know Evette doesn’t want it, but there’s got to be someone out there who does!

—Janine

Her ire spent, she stomped back to the kitchen to grab some ice cream. That would help her mood. “The IRS! Those bloodsuckers. Does it look like I’m rolling in dough?” Some Cherry Garcia was what was needed right now. With chocolate syrup. Lots of chocolate syrup. Grabbing a spoon in anticipation, she opened the freezer to find a huge gaping space where they kept the ice cream. Two half-gallons were gone. Vaporized. The Chunky Monkey and the Phish Food were missing. (Phish Food being Ben & Jerry’s chocolate ice cream with gooey marshmallow, a caramel swirl, and fudge fish. Not, you know, “fish” food—food for fish.)

She shook her head but dared not ask her son if he had eaten them. In his present frame of mind, she winced at the thought of his possible response and figured he must’ve been the one to eat it. Who else would have? Unless her former stalker was back. But she hadn’t heard from him in a while. Perhaps she had another stalker. A new stalker. A violent stalker. The thought scared the heck out of her—worse than this IRS scare.

She thought about her previous stalker situation.

Only she, Janine Ruvacado, would have a stalker who actually broke into their stalkee’s apartment, ate their food, and tried on their good lingerie and shoes. She shook her head and smiled with the memory. Fans. Obviously she couldn’t live with them (if they were obsessed and touched in the head), and, as she was finding out lately, she couldn’t live without them either (if she needed or wanted to make a living).

“How can those leeches at the IRS think I’ve got money flying in? I can barely afford to keep my human-vacuum of a son supplied in Cherry Garcia and Phish Food!” She slammed the freezer shut then pulled it open again. “Just look at that freezer!” There were two icicle-covered lumps that had not been touched since Hoover was president. They were there when she moved in, and Lord only knows what they were. No one ever dared to find out by defrosting the things. If you could pry them out of the frozen tundra to thaw! “I should invite those sons of bitches here and let them look at the opulence I live in! One look at the Taj Mahal I call home, and they’d back off pretty damn fast,” she muttered.

Acid rock came stabbing through the airwaves at a Concord-equivalent level of volume. And her already pounding temples were now pulsing in 4/4 time. “Great.”

She thought she’d heard the phone ring but wasn’t sure. The kitchen phone was LED-less.

“Hello?” she screamed into the phone. “What? I can’t hear you. Hang on a minute.”

She stormed down to Craig’s room, pounded her fists on the door and screamed, “Turn that down! I can’t hear whoever’s on the telephone!”

When the volume was turned down with no other comments coming forth, she stomped back to the kitchen to pick up the extension she had left on the table.

“Hello? I’m sorry. My son…”

“Can’t you control that boy, Janine? Letting him listen to stuff like that will send him right on the road to drugs and alcohol!”

She rolled her eyes heavenward. Thank you, God. This is exactly what I need right now. My mother, Attila the Hun, spouting off childrearing advice with the authority of Dr. Spock. “Mother,” she said softly, taking a deep breath while trying to fight the urge to scream. Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “It’s always a pleasure to hear from you, but Craig will not start drinking and doing drugs by listening to rock music. All the kids listen to this stuff.”

“And they’re all doing drugs! Don’t you read the paper or listen to the news?”

“Yes, Mother, on occasion I read the paper and listen to the news. But you can rest with assurance that Craig’s not doing those things because he listens to heavy metal.”

“Don’t patronize me, Janine. I watch Oprah! And I’ve seen him when he goes out to his druggie concerts with his cronies!”

Cronies? Who refers to preteens as cronies? “He and his friends have fun dressing up when they go to concerts, Mother. That’s all.”

“He wears more makeup than you do! Well, anyone wears more makeup than you do. You really should take more pride in your looks, Janine. You weren’t born with much, but you can remedy that with some makeup. Just ask your son! He’ll show you.”

She took another cleansing breath. It wasn’t working. The urge to scream Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! was still upon her. “It’s a little black kohl around his eyes for the funny effect of it, Mother.”

“Well it looks ghastly. And you shouldn’t let him do it. Any caring mother would not let their son go out of the house looking like that.”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “Thank you for your support, Mother, but it’s really harmless, and to be honest, I have to choose my fights with him now that he’s a budding teen, and that’s not one fight I want to waste my time or energy on.” She sighed audibly, hoping her mother would get the hint.

“Speaking of wasting your time and energy, Janine, as I was saying, you probably should take your son’s lead and think about wearing a little makeup yourself. You’re not getting any younger, dear, and no offense, but you can use all the help you can get in the looks department. You get your looks from your father’s side you know, not mine.”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “Yes, I know, Mother. You’ve been telling me for over forty years now.”

“Which goes to prove my point, dear. You’re getting older and you’re still unattached. And what man in his right mind will want an old, reclusive, irritable woman who doesn’t even attempt to make herself look attractive? Or at least as attractive as she could possibly make herself look—if she’d take some time and do something with her hair and her makeup. You can’t change what God gave you, dear, but there’s certainly enough beauty products and makeup out there that can help you take a shot at fixing what you weren’t born with.”

Janine smiled. This ought to get her. “I cut my hair off a few days ago.”

“What?” The older woman gasped. “Why would you do such a thing? Your hair was one of the only appealing things about you!”

“Why, thank you, Mother. And now I don’t even have that in my favor.”

“Oh my God! I know! Why would you do that, Janine?”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “I gave it to Locks of Love.”

“Who’s Loxa Luv? She sounds like a porn star. Why are you giving a porn star your hair?”

“Locks of Love, Mother. It’s an organization that makes wigs for teenage girls who lose their hair from medical problems.”

“But your hair was down past your waist!”

“Yes, Mother. I know.”

“How much did you cut off?”

“All of it.”

The older woman choked on her gasp.

“It’ll make a nice, long wig for some girl,” Janine added.

“You don’t even know who it will go to?”

“Nope.”

She heard her mother tsk a few times. “How could you do such a thing?”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “I was being generous and giving, Mother. A notion you may not be familiar with.”

“What do you look like now? Without your hair, you have nothing left. Nothing!”

“Why, thank you, Mother. As a matter of fact, you’re probably right. It’s short, cropped close to the head, and now that the weight is gone from it, it’s sprung like a thousand demented pogo sticks on crack.”

“Oh my God. It sounds gruesome!”

“Yes, Mother. I’d have to say that’s exactly how it looks.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re reclusive. No one has to see you.”

“Yes, Mother, I’m saving the world by staying indoors.”

“You don’t have any awards ceremonies or anything coming up do you, dear?”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “No, Mother. But thanks for pointing that out for me. It makes me feel a hell of a lot better to know I won’t be offending anyone while not getting any attention or accolades for my work.”

“Yes, dear. Glad I could help.”

Sarcasm was lost on the woman. “Do you have anything else to say to me, Mother? I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.”

“Oh, please, Janine. Don’t start overeating, too. Between your hair, your plummeting career and your difficult son, you don’t want to add to your misfortune by making yourself overweight!”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “I was talking metaphorically, not foodwise. I’ve got a lot of problems on my plate right now, Mother. And Craig is not difficult, Mother. He’s the perfect kid. So before you start ripping him apart like you do me, my advice is to say goodbye and hang up the phone before I give you a little piece of my mind on your parenting abilities.”

“No reason to get yourself in a huff, dear.”

“Yes, Mother, there is. You can say whatever you like about me, but when you cross the line and talk about my son, you’re overstepping your bounds, and you’d be wise to back off.”

“But I…”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “Back off, Mother, and say goodbye.”

The older woman sighed. “Okay, Janine. I don’t know why you have to turn everything into a fight. I was only trying to give you advice based on some of my many years as a—”

“Goodbye, Mother,” she said as she hung up the phone on her mother, mid-sentence.

She hadn’t noticed that the music had stopped. Nor did she see Craig come out of his room, sliding along the hallway to the kitchen in his socks; so she was startled when he spoke. “You okay, Mom?”

Janine nodded. “Yes. I’m fine.”

“I heard everything,” he said gently. “I didn’t mean to, but when you knocked on my door, I thought the phone was for me so I listened in.”

“It’s okay.”

“Thanks for sticking up for me.”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry about what I said before.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, Mom. It’s not. You’re nothing like Grandma.”

A snort of air came from Janine’s nose. “That’s a relief.”

They stood in silence, neither knowing what to say next.

“Why do you let her talk to you that way, Mom?”

She shrugged. “Why fight it? It just extends the conversation. I’ve learned long ago to let her have her say and not argue. Arguing only prolongs the agony.”

He nodded.

She looked at her son. Really looked at him. “I don’t want you to ever think that way about me, Craig. I want you to be able to talk to me.”

“I can, Mom.”

She smiled sadly at the most important person in her world—the only important person in her world. “Will you let me know if I ever get too overbearing and you can’t express yourself to me? Because the day that happens will be the day I’ve destroyed the best thing in my life.”

He looked at the floor, stubbing his toe at some invisible mark. “Yeah, I’ll let you know.”

CHAPTER 5

The sunlight streamed across her face, and the sound of an ambulance screaming outside her window woke her up from her troubled sleep. Looking around, she saw that she wasn’t in prison for tax evasion, but was still in her own home. Thank God it was only a dream. A nightmare, really.

She pulled herself out of bed, threw on a robe and stumbled to the kitchen for her morning jolt of caffeine. Passing the table, she looked for the pad and found her morning note from Craig.

Not yet, Mom. I can still take ya!?

Don’t let Grandma get you down.

You’re smart, talented, and beautiful in my eyes!?

Smiling, she was glad he couldn’t see her at that moment. She looked down at the old, worn terry-cloth robe with pulls and stains, and fingered her dirty hair. He wouldn’t find her so beautiful right now. But perhaps she was wrong. When he had bed-head and crusts of sleep in his just-wakened eyes, she found him quite adorable. Beautiful. The only time she found him more beautiful was when he was sleeping. Because when he was asleep, he was without any defenses. He was her son, her child, the being she had given life to—pure and open. He was still her baby when he slept.

She looked down at the pad again and smiled. How could her mother think this boy was anything but terrific? Look at the sweet message he’d left her, knowing she was stressed and tired and feeling crappy about herself.

She shuffled over to Mr. Coffee, measured out some coffee and thought of her son as she stood there waiting for the pot to fill. The heavenly aroma filled the small, drab kitchen, and she found renewed strength in the blissful fragrance. When the trickling sound ended, she poured herself a cup and padded back to her room, mug in hand, to get her e-mail messages. Once she’d responded to anything urgent (like hopefully the response from her agent Sid), she’d get to her walking.

She logged on and brought up her e-mail program, sipping the hot coffee while waiting for the messages to come through. Looking for anything important, she was a bit miffed that she hadn’t heard from Sid. “Damn it! When I was making money hand over fist for the man, he answered my e-mails within minutes!” Lately, if she heard back from him within a week, she felt honored. “Has my latest work been that stinky?” she wondered aloud as she deleted the mortgage offers, the porn-site insertions, and the other nonpersonal spam that flooded her in-box. Feeling depression start to sink in, she put on her mannish-looking walking shoes and sports bra—no use having anything droop further, time and gravity were doing enough to help in that department—and climbed aboard her treadmill.

She popped in the videotape of Family Feud that Craig had recorded for her daily and started walking. Family Feud was on twice each weekday, which made one hour of tape. If she timed it right, she could walk about forty-five minutes worth in an hour. If she was lucky. The time discrepancy was due to her usual pit stops—which she took every ten to fifteen minutes or so. Having a bladder the size of a thimble, she could only get about a quarter mile done—tops—before she needed a bathroom break.

“House! HOUSE, you moron! How can you not say house?” she yelled at the doofusy-looking man on her TV screen. “Where do you live? In a cave?” she shouted, gasping for breath. “In an island hut? In a cell? You moron!” She shook her head. “People are idiots!” she sputtered. “Where do they find these people to go on this show? Under a rock?” she muttered, and made a face that was a cross between severe pain and the immediate aftermath of finding out your son has head lice while you’re lying with him on his pillow to talk about his day. “You don’t deserve to win the twenty thousand dollars. You’re too stupid!” she told the man on her screen.

When she had first started walking, Craig tried to show his support by sometimes sitting on her bed while she walked, watching Family Feud with her as she plodded along. The television volume needed to be way up to be heard over the noise the treadmill made, so he’d join her, casually saying it was so loud in the apartment, there was nothing else he could do without hearing it anyhow. He’d laugh at her disbelief at the answers people came up with on the show, and funny as it first was (watching his mother tromp like a hamster in a wheel while screaming obscenities at a taped game show), it lost its appeal pretty quickly.

One day, when he was in his room doing his homework, she was screaming, “Now, now! NOW!” and he’d thought she was screaming, “Ow, ow! OW!” He came running in to help his poor mother, only to find her not lying in a crumpled heap at the base of the treadmill as he’d expected, but red faced and screaming at the TV, her hands balled up in fists, as her sneakered feet pounded away. It was just as well she hadn’t hurt herself, because he’d wondered how he was going to carry his mother—who was wearing her usual workout attire of nothing but old panties, a sports bra, and ugly walking shoes—to the hospital.

After he complained that he couldn’t hear himself think over her pounding feet, the squeak of the treadmill, her screaming at contestants, and the blaring television, she tried to get her walking done first thing in the morning while he was at school. This way he would have no excuse to not do his homework; nor could he ever say he didn’t have the peace and quiet to do it well. Plus, she figured in case she did hurt herself or keel over and die, it would also save Craig the embarrassment and logistical problem of getting her to either the hospital or the morgue. In the “getting hurt” case scenario, she’d have all day to figure out a way to get herself to a hospital independently, and in the “keeling over and dying” case scenario, well, she’d be dead, and there’s not much anyone could do about it.

The afternoon after making that momentous decision to walk mornings while he was at school, she’d instructed him to dress her adequately before calling the police should he ever come home to find her lying dead in just her sports bra, old, big underwear and walking shoes. When she’d tested him, by asking him to choose an appropriate outfit for the situation, he’d failed miserably. Who’d get caught dead in an olive-green velvet blazer and old, faded gray sweatpants one had worn during a pregnancy more than a decade before but kept and still wore because they were comfy? Yes, he was right, they’d be easy to slip on her prone, stiff, dead body. But to be caught dead in that outfit! So ever since, she kept a neatly folded pair of black slacks and a fresh, crisp blouse on a chair nearby, so he would dress her appropriately should the need arise. The black slacks were slimming, and the blouse was supposed to be wrinkle free. It was truly the perfect outfit to be caught dead in. She also threw out the olive-green velvet jacket.

So now she walked in the mornings. Currently, she was alternately screaming “Brad Pitt” and “Tom Cruise” at a woman with a foot-tall, bouffant hairdo from Idaho who had just given the answer “Fred Astaire” to the question: Name a famous actor. Who did she think they polled? One hundred people from a nursing home? When her husband, wearing a light blue polyester suit, said “Charlie Chaplin” she decided to take her second bathroom break. “Will Smith, Russell Crowe, Keanu Reeves, Mel Gibson,” she muttered to herself as she walked to the bathroom. “Or, if you wanted slightly older—which it seems you do—how about Robert DeNiro, Paul Newman, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood!” she huffed.

Upon her return, she climbed onto the treadmill and started again, disgusted by the couple who obviously lived under a rock in Idaho. Suddenly she heard a terrible clunk and was almost thrown from the treadmill when the walking tread came undone and the front bar that held the tread part in place arced up and lifted on the right side—perpendicular to the walking platform.

“Hmm. That can’t be good.” Not good at all. Now what the hell was she going to do?

She tried stepping on the bar to push it back in place, but it didn’t budge. It just stood there, poking out, the tread all wavy and askew.

“Damn it! This sucks,” she muttered as she got off, no longer thinking about how badly the Idahoans were playing, which had been all consuming mere seconds ago.

Not knowing what else to do, she thought of her maintenance man.

Throwing on some clothes, she steadied herself for the trip down to the building’s basement.

The basement was where the tenants kept their stuff in small, partitioned cages. In their particular compound, Craig kept an assortment of sporting goods and miscellaneous stuff he’d collected that she’d insisted were not to be kept in the apartment. Her particular donation to their assigned pen was her clothes from the off-season, stored in large, rectangular containers.

She hated going to the basement. Her self-assigned, floor-specific claustrophobia always made her overactive imagination envision the entire building collapsing on top of her with her not being able to get out. Needless to say, just hitting the B button in the elevator brought feelings of suffocation for her.

This wasn’t the only outlandish visualization she had. She had lots of peculiar Janine-induced mental pictures. Quite a few were rather inspirational. But as unlikely as they all probably were, they freaked her out nonetheless. If the basement brought impressions of asphyxiation, the sub-basement brought more atrocious visions of terror. For below the dreaded basement…was the sub-basement. The sub-basement was a totally creepy, dark, dank place where the building’s maintenance man, Mr. Franklin—a friendly enough old coot—could usually be found. Rumor had it that his office was there, but she’d always had a sneaking suspicion that the strange old man lived down there, too.