by Michelle Reale

Rina liked a good sickbed scenario. In her family any number of symptoms could get you the living room couch all to yourself. Happily, at the first sign of any sickness, Rina would bring her bed pillows, box of Kleenex and the pilled, purple and orange granny squared afghan that Rina's mother had made a long time ago. Rina would prop herself up with confidence, TV Guide and remote control by her side and feel safe, a feeling she rarely felt anywhere. Every sneeze, every sniffle would have Fran poking her head into the living room saying "O.K. there, kiddo?" Rina loved that, it made it all worth it. Rina settled into her sore throats, her swollen glands and her rashes, grateful for what her body gave her, making it so easy to remain on the couch. Rina craved her mother's attention, craved it like chocolate ice cream, or strawberry licorice. She loved her father, but he gave love too easily, and Rina knew that you had to work hard for something worthwhile. Rina had to fight for Fran's love, had to get her attention in crafty and clever ways. She felt had to compete with it against something that Fran held in her eyes, something that seemed both close and far away at the same time. Snuggling farther down into the couch cushions and poking her fingers nervously in and out of the granny squares, Rina felt safe and in control.

Rina never suffered from any illness particularly sinister, unless you count the blues she'd get every now and then. Basically she suffered from garden variety ailments reported by sixth graders everywhere, but blown out of proportion by her mother: tonsillitis, ear infections, pink eye and once, the ever exotic sounding Scarlet Fever. Rina remembers, ever so fondly, the bright red rash on her tummy, chest and arms and the sympathy and uncharacteristic tenderness that the alarming symptoms seemed to elicit in her mother. Fran would make periodic checks on the rash, as if warning it to "stop right there!" and claiming territory over the body of her only child. Rina was good at affecting a very Dickensian orphan look. Fran would watch Rina, and Rina would be secretly pleased, a coziness spreading throughout her insides as she could see the rapid rise and fall of the pulse in Fran's neck. Rina loved to imagine how her mother might feel should she die from one of these illnesses. Sometimes Rina would set herself to crying as she imagined her very own funeral, an ordeal worthy of someone really great. Her friends (the ones she imagined) would tell funny, heartwarming stories about her over and over. Fran would twist her hands and say things like: "I should have baked her more brownies! They were always her favorite!" Then, with a little shudder, Rina would come to, out of her head, back into her life on the couch.

The truth was, Rina really didn't have any friends and was barely acknowledged in school except in gym class; there, when picking teams for kickball, her classmates would loudly point out that they didn't want Rina on their team. Her Scarlet Fever episode had been particularly satisfying since it netted her lots of Get Well cards, produced, no doubt, under the eye of Sister John of the Cross, who probably made it a homework assignment. Rina pretended to be popular, and had laid the handmade cards on the blanket all around her, pretending she had so many friends. Fran went along with it. She'd light one cigarette from another, blow smoke up to the ceiling and say, "Rina, you crack me up." This was one of the things Rina loved about her Mom: she knew just when to look the other way.

Rina had the cards out again, fondly remembering good old Scarlet Fever. She ran her warm fingers over the thickly crayoned tulips, big orange suns and ballooned letters. She loved the smell of the crayons, waxy and warm like church candles on paper. Rina couldn't believe that these cards were made for her, amazed that she could still get so much pleasure out of them, long after the disease had left her body. She imagined the effort that went into the making of the cards and how they broke the monotony of the make-up assignments that someone had dumped inside her screen door after school. She looked at the Math worksheet and knew that she'd never be able to understand the secret to all of those numbers and how to plug them in to get the right answer. Nothing was as interesting as observing everything from the couch. As Rina realized how quickly her recovery would be this time and how soon she'd be back in school, she felt a wave of loneliness, a feeling she became used to, wash over her.   She hated the idea of the leaving the couch and Fran's attention, breezy and gruff as it was. She imagined herself in the schoolyard at recess, a long and terrifying period of time, where her classmates played around her while she nervously fingered the lint in her uniform pocket. She takes a swipe at her tearing eyes with the ever-present balled up tissue in her fist and leaves traces of cottony fluff on her thin eyelashes that, along with her sadness, will be hard to lift.

Glancing up, Rina becomes suddenly aware of the hiss of a match and the smell of sulphur that immediately follows. Fran has lit a cigarette, a prelude to the dreaded ritual of cooking dinner. Her father will be annoyed when and if he comes home in time, by the smoke in the kitchen, mildly protesting the way that he usually does and getting Fran irritated, which is usually a bad start for the night. Fran goes through the rituals of filling the dog's water bowl, sets out a few pots and pans, and takes the rubber band off of the newspaper that she picked up off the porch on her way inside after work. Her cigarette is pressed hard between the grooves of the ashtray and she reaches for it, but has a hard time lifting it without breaking it. Rina watches her carefully, sensing tension in her mother which isn't all that unusual, but feels more intense. Fran is loving in her own way, but rough around the edges. Watching her slam around the kitchen utensils and muttering under her breath, Rina thinks about the fact that had fate turned out differently, and Fran had been her classmate rather than her mother, they would have never, ever been friends.

Rina waits for Fran to carry her ashtray and cigarette into the living room and flop down on her end of the couch. Rina doesn't care if it pisses her father off that dinner will be that much later. Rina will even give up the Disney channel to let her mother watch the 6 o'clock news, even though just listening to it makes her heart thump. Fran has a few pots going on the stove, and is opening the kitchen window to carry away the greasy smell of the frying cutlets. Puffing like no tomorrow on her fourth cigarette and slamming shut cabinet doors, she nearly misses the knock at the door. With her long strides she comes from the kitchen into the living room like she might be invading a country, blue smoke trailing behind her.

Rina hates Wilma like she hates Tori, a girl who taunted her in the fourth grade and used to poke her in the eyes. Wilma steps into the house like she owns it, and Rina sinks a bit deeper under the flannel blanker. Rina, with the acute sensitivity of one always left on the outside of things, knew Wilma's intentions the first time she'd met her. She had no name for it then and actually still doesn't know what to call it now, but she doesn't like it. And neither does her mother. Wilma was one of the many friends Fran made at "Four Cylinders" the bar that her mother and work friends went to for Happy Hour. A place where they often drank late into the night, leaving Rina and her father Pete bathed in the blue of the television, sprawled on the couch.

Wilma strides into the room like it is her own , almost with a swagger and tries to "make nice" with Rina, something that she hadn't bothered doing in the past few months since she's been coming to the house. Rina hears her father coming in the back door and knows that he'll stop in the kitchen. Rina knows that her father despises Wilma and has heard her parents yelling in the night. "The deed has already been done, for chrissakes, Fran!" Rina doesn't know what the deed is but thinks that Wilma may have stolen Fran's heart. Wilma is coming closer to Rina and everything in her head feels fuzzy.

"Hey kiddo, what's wrong this time?" She asks, laughing. Her curved front teeth and tinted eyeglasses make her look like one of the kidnappers she's seen on the news who take kids and harm them in mysterious ways.

"I've got a cold," Rina answers, miraculously finding her voice and slightly flinching. Fran stands with feet apart, arms akimbo, and this suddenly frightens Rina as she looks back and forth at the both of them. "Goddamn it, Wilma, leave her the hell alone," Fran warns. Her voice is low and dark and careful. Rina is aware that her father is still in the kitchen and she wishes he would come into the living room because if she ever needed her father she needs him right now, although she couldn't exactly say why. Wilma stiffens and stands from her crouched position where she'd been peering into Rina's eyes, but still holds her gaze. Staring back at her is the most frightening but also the bravest thing that Rina has ever done. Rina tries to telepathically communicate with Fran: "Run Mom. Hold me, Mom," but now it is like Rina isn't even in the room.

"Riiiight," Wilma drawls, and then laughs to herself.  "Whatever, Fran." Then: "C'mon Fran, let's go take a walk, Fran, let's talk, just for a little while." She raises her eyebrows at Fran with a "how about it" look. Rina perks up, peers from out under the flannel, holds her breath and watches. She can't take Fran away now. She'd been home all day by herself, all day she'd waited on her sick couch for her mother. This is WEDNESDAY, not FRIDAY, no happy hour tonight, Rina knew that.

"What the hell, Wilma, I'm cooking dinner for my family for fuck sake. My FAMILY, Wilma, do you get it? These people I LIVE with?" Fran was sweating now, a sheen on her upper lip.

Wilma pulls a cigarette from Fran's pack on the coffee table and stretches her legs, ignoring Pete who she can see through to in the kitchen, at the table with his head in his hands. She means to stay. Right about now, Rina would do one of her fake coughs and a wave of her hand in front of her face to protest all of the cigarette smoke in the room, but the air seemed to have sparks in it and a wrong move and everything could go "boom."

Under the flannel, where it was safe, Rina thought back to when she first met Wilma. Fran had brought her home to sober her up. Her father could barely conceal his disgust. He complained about Fran going out to the bar on Friday night, but bringing home someone drunk set him on the edge. Rina had often felt that she could probably raiser her parents better than they could raiser her. They seemed to need some sort of guidance. The night Wilma had come to their house for the first time, Rina noticed the way Wilma had clung to her mother, how tall Wilma kept slouching down resting her chin on her mother's breast and Fran trying to get Wilma to sit in the chair. Even when Fran got up to make coffee, "hyper bean" she called it, Wilma had circled her waist from behind and laid her head on her mother's shoulder. Rina felt jealous and strangely excited. That night Fran held Wilma's wrists gently, giving her a pep talk like one Rina's gym teacher had given her when she couldn't kick the ball. Rina had never seen women talk to one another that way and was surprised to see tenderness in her mother that she had never seen her show her father. Fran seemed to be coming close and pulling away, keeping a distance and then getting involved, a crazy pattern that confused Rina.

Rina softly lifts the flannel blanket off of her and suddenly starts to feel lighter, like her head is a a big balloon on a very small body. Thankful for the safe stronghold of the couch, she senses that something is ending in this room, someone is getting stronger and someone else is getting weaker. She feels energy moving through her and begins rubbing her feet rapidly together, a habit she has had ever since she could remember. She suddenly remembers a time she overheard the women in the kitchen saying something about her father and then the raucous, loud laughter. It hurt her not because they were making fun of her father, but because Fran was sharing something with Wilma that Wilma didn't deserve. There wasn't enough of what Fran had inside of her to go around, not nearly enough for her Dad and herself and she'd been wasting it on Wilma. Rina is trembling lightly, absolutely certain that she understands something now. She watches her mother screaming at Wilma now, right in her face. Wilma laughs a slow, mocking laugh as she taps her cigarette ash on the rug. Rina notices her hand shaking.

"You are all a bunch of fucking losers, you know that Fran? Losers. All fucking three of you," in a disgusted voice that is quieter now. Rina senses that Wilma is finally unleashing a fury she has held for quite some time. Fran has taken a direct hit, something Rina has not often seen and her eyes open wide. Feet rubbing furiously, Rina turns to see Pete, looking down, hands in pockets, standing in the oval archway between kitchen and living room. A bit late, but it must count for something, Rina thought.

Wilma leaves, with a backward glance of disgust. Fran walks a few paces and reaches Pete. She takes his hand brusquely as if reaching for a toddler about to venture into a busy street. Wilma leaves through the front door, slamming it behind her. Fran, staring, cocks her thumb and forefinger at the door and mouths "bang, bang." Rina smiles, still halfway under the blanket. It is a form of affection, in a way that Rina understands perfectly, because she knows that Fran can't and never will say, "Everything is going to be alright."

Back in the kitchen, the cutlets lay in the frying pan, soaking up the oil. The smell of grease hangs in the air. The boiled mixed vegetables settle at the bottom of a pot of now cooling water. Rina sees Fran peer out of the kitchen window, as Wilma pulls out of the driveway. She watches her mother's back and the slight shudder of her shoulder blades. Pete, with a heavy sigh, shuffles to the front door and locks it. He takes the harvest yellow phone off the hook as if to make them somehow safer.  

Rina looks at her parents and suggests that when they can get it all together, actually get dinner on the table, they might say Grace before their meal. "After all," Rina says in a small voice, "we really have so much to be thankful for, don't we?"

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