an ego meltdown.
Chapter 2
Abby walked out of English class and went to the lockers lined up in the hall. She stood in front of hers and froze. She couldn’t remember the combination. A myriad of numbers swirled inside her head as panic rose within her. With shaky fingers, she spun the dial and frantically tried a series of numbers: 38 to the right, 16 to the left, 23 to the right. She pulled the lock, but it didn’t budge. She tried another series: 16 right, 14 left and 32 to the right. Again it didn’t open. Her desperation increased. She couldn’t be late for gym class again. She tried a new set of numbers as the late bell began to ring. It kept on ringing as if to torment her more. Why wouldn’t it stop ringing?
The ringing of the telephone eventually woke Abby just as it went into voicemail. Opening one eye, she looked at the alarm clock sitting on her night table, its large red numbers reading five AM. She groaned. The fact that she still had crazy nightmares about high school could be mulled over later. Right now she had a few hours until she had to open the bookstore. She closed her eyes once more.
The phone rang again. Who in the world? Then Abby saw the caller ID. Mother. Now what could have possibly happened? Stupid question. This deserved a mental slap. With Mrs. Minton, it could be anything–with the emphasis on anything.
She grabbed for the phone just as it went into voicemail again and lifted the receiver. It slipped through her fingers onto to floor. She leaned off the bed and stretched to reach it, nearly falling off. “What’s wrong, Mom?”
“Oh, thank God, you’re still home,” Rosalee Minton wailed into the phone.
“Most people are ordinarily home at five in the morning. In fact, they’re usually sound asleep,” Abby hinted. When she got no response, she added, “Are you certain whatever this is can’t wait until later?” and punctuated the question with a huge yawn.
Instead of ending the conversation, her mother continued in a voice more shrill and high-pitched. Regretting that she’d picked up the receiver in the first place, Abby said, “Mom, please try to calm down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying when you screech into the phone.”
“O…kay,” she said in a tone of annoyance and expelled her breath. “Now pay attention to me this time.”
Abby yawned again. Her mother began to speak as if Abby were a deaf two-year-old. “I…just…can’t...take…her…any…longer!”
“Hold on, Mom. First of all, who are you talking about?”
“Who else but your aunt?”
Abby sighed deeply. Her mother and aunt had a love-hate relationship. They lived together in a large two-family house along with Abby’s brother Steven, her grandparents and her cousin Alycia.
“What did Aunt Raelene do now?” Abby asked. A mental picture of Raelene sprang up in front of her half-closed eyes, the smiling, myopic, hypochondriac half of the two odd sisters from Hell squinting through her Coke-bottle thick lenses.
“Are you sitting down?”
“No. I’m lying in bed, remember?” Abby massaged her temples. “Mom, can’t this wait? I’ll call you back later.”
“No. This is terribly important and can’t wait.”
To her mother, everything was important. She wondered if she should get out of bed and grab the bottle of extra-strength Excedrin from the medicine cabinet to preempt her soon-to-be pounding head. The thought of downing two painkillers was mighty enticing. The only thing she could bank on, aside from the headache she’d soon have, was the fact she wouldn’t be going back to sleep. Her mother had put the kibosh on that happening now. She could only hope this was going to be one of her briefest gripe sessions on record and she’d be able to make it to the bookstore in time to open.
“So tell me, Mom, what did Aunt Raelene do that was so horrible you had to call me at this ungodly hour?”
“She destroyed my kitchen cabinets.”
Another Technicolor image flashed in Abby’s head of Aunt Raelene. There she stood in her stocking feet, all four-feet-nine of her, grinning with her mismatched dentures slipping and clicking, as she demonically splashed gasoline on the honey-oak cabinets and ignited a wooden match to set them all ablaze.
With that vivid image in Abby’s mind, she asked, “Did she burn them down?”
“No, much, much worse.”
What could be worse? Setting off a pipe bomb?
Her mother answered her unspoken question. “She ignored my cabinet labels and put the condiments on the shelves incorrectly.”
Slapping her already pounding head, Abby refused to ask why her aunt was putting away spices in her mother’s kitchen in the first place. What she didn’t know wouldn’t kill her. “Is that all?”
“Of course not. I’m no nit-picker! She put the rest of the groceries in the pantry totally wrong, as well. I found the green beans where the corn should be and the tuna fish next to the beets and–”
“So let me guess, Charlie the Tuna complained?”
“How can you treat this so lightly? It will literally take me hours to put everything back in its proper order. And then there’s the linen closet–”
“Aside from calling to complain about Aunt Raelene, is there anything else you need to tell me?”
“Oh, yes, dear, now that you mention it, there is. Can you stop by Dr. Newcome’s and pick up some more pills for my nerves?”
For years, her mother had been getting pills for her nervous condition from Dr. Newcome. When Abby first learned about this, it had made her nervous. She’d had terrible visions of her mother becoming addicted to the pills. Despite the Patient Privacy Act, she had asked the doctor about the pills. The short, white-haired GP had given her a tremendous smile. “If those sugar pills keep you mother happy, I don’t think we should change things now, do you?” He winked and went to see about his next patient.
“Sure, Mom. I’ll swing by his office on my way home from the store.” Abby wondered why her mother couldn’t ask Alycia to run the errand. It would give her something constructive to do. If nothing else, Alycia needed a job. Watching soap operas and Oprah wasn’t exactly living up to one’s potential. Neither was making aluminum foil protective helmets to prevent the pod people from reading her mind and getting a bead on her location. According to Alycia, the pod people were aliens from another universe who wanted to take over Earth by replacing humans with their own kind. If they had any smarts, they might skip taking Alycia.
Abby could feel the throbbing getting stronger in her head. “Anything else? I’ve got to go.”
“No, I don’t think so... Just don’t forget my pills. Thanks to your crazy aunt, I’m going to need them.”
“I won’t forget,” Abby said, and hung up. Now that she was wide awake with a ringing ear and a pounding head, she got out of bed and padded into the bathroom. Washing two Excedrin pills down with water, she hoped she caught her tension headache in time, while it was still manageable. Lucky for Alexander Graham Bell, he was already dead. At that
