On Ice

OI Chapter 28

LuAnn pushed passed me into the house with a loud resigned sound, somewhere between a groan and a sigh. I scramble uncoordinatedly behind her to close the door in my hurry to follow her down the hall where she’d disappeared. As I pulled to a pained halt in the living room, I immediately noticed that LuAnn had plopped Hannah on Russ’ couch and changed the cable to a cartoon channel. Digging through a bag I hadn’t initially noticed, LuAnn pulled out a purple stuffed dog and bending, placed the stuffed animal in the crook of her daughter’s arm while pressing a kiss to her cheek.

Straightening, LuAnn told her daughter, “Watch your funnies baby.” She had this expression on her face as she studied her daughter and a faint smile of amusement curved her lips up in the corners. However, a moment later her chocolate gaze hardened as she turned her attention to me. I sort of felt like a puppy that had just done it’s business on her floor, guilty, apologetic and so anxious all at the same time.

Dropping my gaze to my sock covered feet, because I couldn’t bear looking into those disappointed eyes any longer, I waited. I longed to be anywhere at this moment than where I currently was standing. Anywhere else had to be better, right? Surely I’d feel better there, where ever it might be. Instead I felt my energy quickly waning, wishing I could curl up beside Hannah and sleep for a few hours. My head was beginning to throb again and my current anxiety was making my stomach roll with nausea.

Finally, LuAnn made this sharp popping smack sound with her mouth and took pity on me. Approaching me, she gently turned me in the direction of the kitchen and threw her arm, carefully, over my shoulder and guided me the rest of the way before easing me down into a kitchen chair. She bustled around looking in the fridge, the drawers and cupboards. A plate came out of one of the cabinets and she fed the toaster a few slices of bread. Minutes later, I had steaming pieces of dry toast sitting in front of me and she broke the silence again.

“Look, it’s none of my business,” she said, “But the next time you ask a girl to pick up a prescription for you, could you at least tell her what she’s picking up? I go in there expecting to pick up a prescription for pain killers and imagine my surprise when the pharmacist’s aid hands me a prescription for prenatal vitamins! After standing in line for another five minutes I get the bitches’ attention again and swear up and down that there’s been some kind of mistake, that they’d given me the wrong prescription. Now, she’s looking at me like I’m some sort of crazy and she scurries away to go get the pharmacist. I spend another five minutes arguing with him, giving him the old evil eye while he calls the hospital and speaks personally with the doctor who wrote the script. He hangs up and instantly has me pegged as some sort of drug addict and threatens to call the police if I don’t immediately leave the premises. Do you know how embarrassing that shit is?”

I knew it wasn’t funny, but LuAnn’s face was so expressive and she had big hand gestures to go along with her story. To look at LuAnn, it’d be difficult to tell where and who she hailed from, but the mystery was solved as soon as she opened her mouth. She was New Jersey from the tips of her cleverly and tastefully teased curls to her sky high heels. I swear that it was a mixture of that and the outlandish day I’d been having that made me laugh. The strange part was once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop and then suddenly I had my face buried in my hands sobbing my heart out. Somehow I had managed to open the dam because I couldn’t seem to stop the tears and the painful noises coming from my chest either.

LuAnn’s chair scrapped back suddenly. “Jesus! Shit, I’m sorry Calla! Oh don’t cry I’m really not that upset. It’s just the Italian in me, I swear.”

I was pulled into LuAnn’s perfumed bosom and her arms went around my shoulders, her finger’s stroking my hair and despite the initial awkward awareness it wasn’t really all that bad. It wasn’t the same as Russ’ stiff embrace or even the gentle potency of Kale’s. It was more like a combination of the exuberant energy of Jules’ mixed with, well I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, the closest way to describing it was the sense of security I’d always felt in my dad’s arms. Certain that I’d caught LuAnn broad side with my sudden water works, I was also fairly sure that she’d figured out that it more than just her ribbing. It took me a long time to finally calm down and I felt my face flame to life as I realized that I’d managed to completely loose it in front of yet another person in my life. It was somewhat depressing to realize that the control I prized over my emotions was beginning to slip away from me.