Life Without You

“And you might want to not be so judgy,” I shot back.

“I’m your sister. If I don’t tell you straight up how it is, who else will?”

“Mama would,” I said, not even having to waste a moment on thought.

A raspy bark of laughter came over the line. “Damn skippy,” she said.

I smiled.

I could picture her, my older sister, blonde and blue-eyed with high cheekbones and dewy skin that would make even the most-skilled dermatologist scratch his head in wonderment. I had no idea what her secret was, but it was definitely working for her.

“So what are you doing today?” Charlie asked, breaking into my random thought trajectory.

I frowned at my blank computer screen.

“Working,” I lied.

“Naturally,” she said flatly. “You’re always working, Dellie. You need a break,” Charlie insisted. “A real one.”

I could feel my eyebrows knitting together. A break? I didn’t have time for a break. I didn’t have money for a break. How the heck was I supposed to have a break?

“A break?” I repeated dumbly.

“Yes, a break. As in, a vacation.”

“And just how do you propose this so-called break might happen, Charlie? I have too many things to do and no money to fund any kind of vacation. You know that.” I could hear the frustration edging into my voice.

Yes, I wanted a break. I desperately wanted a break, but there were all those other ugly bits of reality to deal with. There were deadlines to meet, emails to send, bills to pay.

“Mike and I…” she started, but I interrupted.

“How is Mike, by the way?” I asked, hoping she might drop the issue.

“Fine,” she replied, sounding slightly puzzled and caught off guard. “Mike is just fine. But seriously, Dellie, we’re both worried about you. And I know that Mom and Dad are, too. After everything that happened last year—”

I felt tears start to sting my eyes. “Yeah, everything that happened last year,” I said quietly.

“Last year was a hell of a year, Dellie. And you need some time. You never got to take any time, and we worry about you.”

“I know,” I whispered, unsure that she could actually hear me on the other end.

“We worry about you a lot,” she said again, this time with more emphasis.

I worried, too. About more things than I could count.

I worried about them worrying about me.

I worried about work and whether I would have enough to cover the bills.

I even worried when I wasn’t worried.

When was I ever going to get a real break from worrying?

Maybe when you stop breathing, I heard a little voice in my head taunt.

“I know you do,” I repeated, wishing I could just flip a switch and change things. “I don’t mean to make any of you worry.”

“We only worry because we love you. You know that, right?”

I nodded. “Yes,” I said, knowing that the nodding wouldn’t exactly be effective over the phone. “And I love you, too.” I took a deep breath.

Time to talk about something else.

“So what’s new at the Jackson house today?” I asked, hoping she would take the bait this time.

“Not much. I have to go to the hardware store later to look at some paint samples for the dining room, but right now I’m doing laundry,” she said. “Lots and lots of laundry. The amount of laundry that little people generate boggles the mind. I literally run at least one load every day!” She laughed, and I could hear the breathlessness creep in, a sign that she was pushing it a bit too hard. “When it was just Mike and me, laundry happened every few days. But now? Every day.”

“And it’s just going to get worse, you know,” I teased her, thinking of my sister’s three children and a fourth one that was soon to follow. We were running into the final countdown on her due date.

“Don’t remind me,” she moaned in mock resignation. “Burp cloths, bibs, towels, and even more eensie weensie sets of clothes. With all this technology, you’d think we’d have robots to take care of all this stuff like they did on The Jetsons.”

“Be nice, wouldn’t it?” I asked with a smile, knowing that she didn’t really mind. Charlie was being a wife and a mother and raising a family that she adored. She was happy with her life, even if it did require copious amounts of laundry detergent sometimes.

“I did have a reason for my call, other than to discuss my laundry woes with you, you know.”

“I thought as much,” I replied, playing dumb, not sure I wanted to hear where she was going with this.

She sighed, loud and long. “Okay. We really, really think you need to take a vacation, Dellie. A real one, one that lasts more than a weekend. More like a month,” she said.

I got up from my chair, feeling the tense muscles in my legs protest slightly. I’d been sitting way too long, glued to my chair in hopes that some stray thought might jump-start an actual burst of legitimate productivity, afraid that if I got up and away from my computer that I would miss the golden window of opportunity, should one present itself.

Alas, so far, all doors and windows, golden or otherwise, had not been forthcoming. Now seemed as good a time as any to get up from my throne of idleness and move around a little.

I started to pace.

“And I know you say you can’t take time away from work and you can’t afford it, but hear me out,” she pleaded.

“Hearing,” I said dubiously.

I paused in my pacing to peek out my living room window through a slight break in the blinds. As per usual, the neighbor one unit down and to my left was giving the entire apartment complex a visual feast, sporting an ill-fitting white wife beater tank top stretched over his sizable beer gut to barely meet the top of faded madras shorts. Madras.

He’s dressed up today, I thought absurdly.

“Getting away for awhile, even just to be in a new place, would be good for you. It might even get you out of your creative funk. And don’t say you’re not having one—you told me last week when we talked that you felt like the stuff you were working on was…less than inspiring?” she said, obviously searching for a kinder word than I had used in our previous conversation.

I raised an eyebrow.

“So since you’re so convinced you can’t actually put work on hold for a bit, take it with you. That’s one of the nice things about your job, remember? You can take it anywhere you want to go,” she barreled on.