Smarty Pants

Chapter 1

Chapter 1Today was the day.

Kit Tanner looked up from the window of her sister, Rae’s, apartment, in search of the clock on the bedside table, but she already knew what it would say. Midnight. Meaning it was no longer Saturday night, but Sunday. The first of May.

The first year without Kelly Tanner, her mother.

A knock sounded against the door. Kit shifted in the wicker basket seat she’d been crouched inside since seven or so when she’d excused herself from Rae and her daughter, Anissa’s, Barbie movie marathon, claiming a headache. The sounds of the high-pitched theme song had transitioned to a lower-octave political drama’s dialogue when Anissa was tucked away in bed, but Kit had long since believed Rae had turned in. She was a nurse, working a shift tomorrow morning at dawn, and hence why Kit was even here: she was the built in babysitter. She’d much rather be in her small apartment, squashed between undergrad parties for a school she’d failed out of when their mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer. She’d rather have been in the middle of a cacophony, than this eerie silence that followed her sister’s knock.

“I hear you in the chair,” Rae said, her tone quiet yet stern. “That thing makes a hell of a noise.”

Kit unfolded her legs in the chair and heard the tell-tale groaning of wood. She realized she’d been played by her too-clever-by-half-sister. She knocked again, but this time it was only for a warning. “I’m coming in. So you better not be naked, or engaging in some one-handed comfort.”

Kit’s stomach turned. The idea of comfort was foreign. She merely placed her hands on her knees and braced herself for Rae’s lecture. Her hair was shorn close to her scalp, still growing in from her own treatments six months ago; the short hair allowed for her radiant blue eyes to take centre stage in her face. The worn lines around her mouth and eyes aged her thirty-two years beyond what was normal. She wore a light pink T-shirt and no bra, not that she needed one. In order to cut her own diagnosis of breast cancer off at the hilt, she’d gotten a double mastectomy right away. Then treatments, and—

“Hey now,” Rae said, folding her arms across her chest. “Don’t stare at my tits.”

“I was—”

Rae laughed as lightly as she could. “I knew you’d be up.”

“Oh?”

“Yep.” Rae glanced at the bedside clock. It was now 12:07. “I sort of want to call in sick to work.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Because if you’re not going to say it, I am: I thought this would be easier than it is, but it’s not, and so all I want to do is wrap my kid up in her neon pink blanket, make her French toast and cinnamon buns and all the carbs in the world, and then dog pile in front of various Disney princesses for the afternoon.” When all Kit did was not, Rae huffed and sat on the bed. “With you, too.”

“Thanks. That sounds nice.”

“It sounds depressing,” Rae corrected. She ran a hand through her hair as if it was still long. “So I’m going to go to work anyway, but you have my full permission to make the most intoxicating food for my kid. And just leave some for me in the warming tray in the oven.”

“Warming tray?”

“It’s where you keep your cooking sheets. Heathen.”

Kit barely smiled, though Rae’s words were funny. She was being her big sister, calm, cool, and collected through the most hectic times, including their divorced dad moving across the country and marrying another woman, and then their mother’s cancer, and Rae’s own diagnosis. Kit knew that she literally had nothing to be too sad over. Sad, yes, as Rae would tell her, she had so many reasons to be sad. So many people did. But too sad? No, they did not need to be too sad about everything. Too sad would be calling in sick to work, just because it was the anniversary. But sad was crashing her sister’s morose window-gazing and offering up all the junk food in the pantry.

“You know,” Rae said deviously. “I think those cinnamon buns say on the side that they can be baked in fifteen minutes or less. Wanna try? And then sue for satisfaction?”

Kit smiled.

“Ah, good. There is life here.”

“I’m sorry,” Kit said. She looked out the window again, noticed several lights flicker in the apartment complex across the street, and then shrugged again. “I’m just a little bummed.”

“Okay, okay. I can work with a little bummed. In fact, cinnamon buns are the perfect solution. Come on.”

Twenty minutes later, they were both standing in the kitchen with the oven light on, their gazes fixated on the cinnamon buns as they puffed up in the centre. Kit’s stomach grumbled, clearly hungry from her lack of dinner. She’d eaten what Rae had served, but mostly picked at it. She hoped her appetite would stay by the time the remaining minute had passed. The microwave timer dinged, and Rae snapped up her oven mitts gleefully. She placed the buns on the counter and hissed as she tried to grab one right away.

“You gotta put the icing on first,” Kit said. “That should also help soothe your burn.”

“Ah, see? You should be a nurse.”

“No thank you.”

“Well, a chef then. Or maybe a professional nanny?” Rae lifted a brow in a coy manner before she opened the frosting that came with the cinnamon buns. “Then again, most children are little hell raisers now. Not as calm and perfect as Anissa.”

“I don’t know about that,” Kit said. “I saw her get very territorial over that Barbie movie.”

“Ah, a budding critic. See? Everyone has a place, a role, a calling.” Rae’s eyes locked on Kit’s. “So you should, too.”

Kit shifted from the kitchen counter to get plates for their treat. She didn’t want to answer her sister’s question because there was no point. She was halfway through her cinnamon bun, devouring it in a matter of frenzied, hungry bites when she brought up Kit’s job—or rather, lack of job—yet again.

“I know you had that online gig for a while, something with design,” Rae said, waving her hand in the air dismissively.

“It was for online classes. Classes I should have been taking.”

“Exactly. I know the last year has been f*****g hard. The past five years. But you’re not dead. I’m not dead. Anissa isn’t either, though she may be diabetic by Wednesday, or all of us might be.” In spite of her words, Rae took another cinnamon bun onto her plate. After a moment of thought, Kit did, too. “But,” Rae went on, “you’re acting like you’re dead.”

Kit didn’t say anything. She’d taken the silent treatment through most of this. Rae took over their mother’s role as typical spokesperson for the family, handling all the email updates to the family across Ontario and in the US, along with handling the bills, the medical transport, and anything else. When she had her own cancer, Kit had taken over as the person in charge of the bills and other organization things, including taking care of Anissa, but she had never taken on the spokesperson role. She was not good at that. Her sister still updated people about her progress, even in the midst of treatments and hours after surgery, but she did so with a flare that Kit envied. She was downright funny about it. She refused, in no uncertain terms, to let cancer make her take everything too seriously.

“I mean,” Rae went on when Kit did not fill the silence. “You can’t even be a fun kind of dead. You could be a zombie, or a ghost, or some kind of other silent mime like character, but you’re just boring instead. And I’ve watched enough boring movies in hospital waiting rooms to tolerate this, Kit.”

“Harsh,” Kit said. “Calling your sister whose babysitting—for free—boring. Harsh.”

“Ah, there you are. I love that sarcasm. And I am paying you. In carbs and gold.”

“Experience and gold?”

“Same thing.” Rae shrugged, but her eyes lit up at her own DnD reference. “Have you watched those videos I sent you, then?”

Kit nodded but didn’t have the heart to tell her sister that the five-hour DnD session hosted by a voice actor called Matt Mercer were too long to truly watch all the way through. She found highlight reels instead, memorized some of the jokes for her sister’s benefit, and then nodded.

“You should play. We should all play! Anissa is even getting to that age where she’s starting to eye unicorns in the toy store. Maybe, just maybe, I can convince her dragons are cool instead.”

“And then reread the Harry Potter series?”

“Naturally, before moving onto Tolkien. And Ursula K. Le Guin…” As Rae licked her fingers, she waxed poetic about her favourite fantasy authors. She didn’t watch Game of Thrones, a fact that always surprised Kit until she remembered that during the treatment years, they’d let their mother’s HBO membership slip. So she was now either waiting until it was all well and truly done, until she got through the books first (as she preferred to do), or until the HBO logo no longer reminded them both of cancer. Which could be a while.

“What do you like?” Rae asked. Kit had just grabbed their empty plates to put them in the sink and was about to search the hall closet for appropriate Tupperware for the rest of the buns. “I mean, other than being sad alone in your room?”

“It’s not my room. It’s your room.”

“So grammar and semantics,” Rae said. “You like editing, clearly.”

Kit smiled wryly. Before their mother had been diagnosed, she’d been in school for English and Math. The most boring of all boring things, according to her sister, but both topics that made her feel as if she understood the world. We spoke it, or we counted it. She’d wanted to be an accountant. Now she couldn’t bear the thought of being in a desk all day, sorting through estates, especially worrying about the math that came after death, and that she’d handled for their mother’s estate flawlessly.

“You should join a book club,” Rae suggested, still on this topic though Kit was now lingering in the kitchen, wanting to actually go to bed. “Or maybe write a book. Get some gig work online, something, anything.”

“I can afford my place.”

“Of course, you can. Mom left us a truck full of money. But what the hell good is money if you don’t do something with it? That you love?”

“I will buy you more cinnamon buns. And McDonalds for dinner tomorrow.”

“You know the way to my heart. So I can’t fault you for constantly changing the topic right now. I just…I love you, okay, Kitty?”

Kit bristled under the pet name. Only their mother called her that. Rae seemed to sense the transgression, but instead of backing out with a joke, she cried. It was just a small tear running down her cheek with a minor gasp—more out of seeming surprise than anything substantial—but Kit was next to her in a matter of seconds. They were hugging, holding each other with no space between them like they had in the hospital waiting room when they truly understood, before even the doctors told them, that their mother was gone.

A year ago, Kit thought. It’s been a year. Yet it still felt like she was there.

When she pulled away from Rae, the tone of the room had shifted. She blotted her face with a paper towel and started several sentences in a rush before finally settling on her final. “I’m just tired. I wanted to be sure you were okay, and now you’re sugar-filled, so I’m going to bed. I love you, okay?”

“I love you, too. I will take good care of Anissa tomorrow.”

“Never worried about that. But take care of you, too.”

Kit stood in the kitchen, barely moving, until she heard Rae’s bedroom door closed. Then she sat back down at the kitchen table. Her sister kept a stack of paper there, most of which had the logos of the many hotels they’d stayed at during treatment. She grabbed one for the Holiday Inn and wrote “LIST” at the top. She stared at it. She wanted to make a list, like her sister always told her to do, of the things she’d wanted. The things she did. All before cancer, all before all of this. From the moment they found out she died, to the moment now in the kitchen, hugging in the same way, Kit was sure that every single night had been the same thing, over and over, little variation. Home, eat dinner, watch something stupid on TV, and then go to bed. Sometimes do work the next day, but mostly wander around, take items in and out of storage, pay pills and settle estates.

But her life had had more in it before everything went wrong. She crossed out the word List and wrote KIT BEFORE. She tapped the pen against the sheet of paper. She yawned. It was already well into the middle of the night, and she was still going to have an early morning with Anissa. She didn’t want to let go of this task, though. She was determined it was important. If she didn’t write it down now, she was never going to do it.

The lights in the apartment went out. Kit was plunged into darkness and cried out in surprise. The microwave beeped, along with the laptop in the living room area as it transitioned to battery power. Before Kit could cry out, the lights flicked back on—but it came with a sudden chorus of beeps, bells, and whistles as the fire alarm followed it.

Rae was out of her bedroom door in a matter of seconds. She wore the same light pink shirt, and pyjama pants. She darted to Anissa’s room first, leaving Kit in the kitchen still wondering what was going on.

“I know, I know,” Rae soothed from Anissa’s room. “It sucks, but we gotta go. It could be a real alarm, but I don’t think it is.”

She emerged with Anissa on her hip. She had her baby blanket over her shoulder, though Anissa was now six and really didn’t need it anymore. Rae was at the door of her apartment before she glanced back at Kit in the kitchen. “You coming?”

Kit ripped off the sheet of paper and tucked it into her jeans’ pockets. “Yep, on my way.”