All She Can Take

T W E N T Y - O N E

 Sid scoped out her building from across the street to see if anyone was lurking around. Whatever happened last night it seemed to clear the streets. There wasn't a soul present and police had set up a mobile unit at the end of the block. Sid breathed deeply and thanked her stars before limping briskly across the street, up the walkway, into the dank lobby, onto the dank elevators and back into her tiny apartment; where she felt surprisingly safe. She unloaded the cookies and other groceries onto the kitchen counter and felt her heart rate begin to return to normal. Just twenty-four hours ago she was cursing everything in this apartment yet today it was her haven. Her safe house. Man, this money had turned her world upside down.

Her phone rang. She smiled at her phone ringing but didn't answer it. It was just Chante. She didn't want to talk to her. If Chante was nothing else she was observant. She would pick up on the difference in Sid's voice as soon as she answered the phone. Press her to explain her jumpy demeanor and Sid didn't know if she could hold up to interrogation. But she was glad to hear it ring. Happy that her phone was back on. Happily sent the call to voicemail.

She put AJ down to play and walked gingerly over to the storage closet in the hallway. She pulled out an old diaper genie, a bouncer, and weird baby sling that she'd never gotten used to wearing. Or never knew how to wear properly. One or the other. She dug until she spotted what she was looking for. Something she had gotten during her time at Grazie but had never thought of it much until just then. It was a little worse for wear but it was still intact. She remembers the day she brought this home.

Sid was helping a bride do a last-minute run-through at The Grazie before she was set to walk down the aisle in fifteen minutes. Right as she was ready to do her march down the aisle, the maid of honor whispered in her ear that they couldn't find the bride's thirteen-year-old son. Rather than throwing the entire event into a frenzy, they set out like some hodgepodge search team to find the kid. Sid, using mom instincts she swore she didn't have before and doesn't have now, somehow found him at the skate park down the block. Fully suited in a tan sports coat and matching slacks, the boy was having a hard time with the whole wedding thing. Sid could understand, this boy --she learned-- had lost his father years ago and this new dude, while nice enough...was not his dad. Could never be. He was simply the man taking his mom away from him. 

The kid showed Sid his heart and she bared hers a little too. She knew what it was like to lose a father. To have a person responsible for half of who you were be totally gone before your brain even finished developing fully. It shifts something in a person. Loosens it to the point where it seems that the cells that you inherit from that person are always a little off. Knocked loose and looking for a binding agent. And worse, having a dude not waste any time trying to take father's place. It was all the exact brand of shitty she could relate to.

She connected with him...and promised to slip him a sip of beer if he was chill for the rest of the day. He was back at the restaurant and carrying the rings down the aisle within fifteen minutes. Once the bride found out about the ordeal after the wedding she gave Sid a nice bottle of Merlot and one of the centerpieces. Silk hydrangeas with twinkling lights circling the bottom of an oversized mason jar. Loose burlap circled the mouth of the jar. It was rustic chic and even though the flowers weren't real Sid loved it. 

But once she got home and saw it in her sad little apartment she put it away. Now, she wiped some dust off the side and carried it into the kitchen. She cleared the counter of the butcher block cutting board and sat it there, right in the middle of the tiny square of the countertop. She opened the cabinets and pulled down a clear jar with the word Cookie written playfully across it. A housewarming gift from Tomi from when she first moved here. After a quick rinse and a wipe down with paper towels, Sid tore open the bag of cookies and dumped them into the cookie jar. Her nose burned with the threat of tears. She eyed the centerpiece and the full cookie jar next to one another. Ordinary little things are magic in spaces long devoid of them.