Free Balance of Fragile Things by Olivia Chadha Page A

broken window, and saw the man with the Dilantin prescription standing in the fog with his mouth contorted into a pout.
    Maija stood up, shaking, and yelled, “Asshole!”
    The man jumped in his car and disappeared.
    Maija cursed at the man in Latvian as she picked pieces of glass from her thick locks. Her net of hair had caught the majority of the glass and, thankfully, protected her face.
    Eleanora took her card and bag with the smashed prescription and glasses from Maija and ran out the door. Crap , Maija thought. She would put the pills and glasses on Eleanora’s growing tab.
    In only a few minutes, the police arrived and Maija gave them a description of the assailant. “He was like a beast—ugly, sick, and a drug user.”
    â€œAny idea what triggered this?” The office took notes.
    â€œHe’s on an antipsychotic. I can’t imagine how he sees the world.”
    Shandy and Tom did not back her up. They said they hadn’t seen a thing. By the end of all the brouhaha, Maija’s watch only read two o’clock.
    After the police left, Maija took refuge in the break room and locked the door by shoving a chair under the doorknob. Her hands quivered as she drank tinny-tasting water out of a Styrofoam cup. The fake wood paneling that seemed to cover every surface in the room, from table to cabinets to the sides of the ancient microwave, felt as if they were pushing in against her. The fluorescent tube light flickered. As she sat in a cold plastic chair, she lifted her knees to her chest and held them tight for a moment. Her breath left her lips dry and cold. Why, she thought, hadn’t she seen the man’s attack coming? Her sight was really off, and it had taken her intuition as well. She should have known that he would explode. She should have smelled it, if not dreamt it. She looked at the clock that smirked at her. Two o’clock! She’d promised to take Isabella to her first gynecological appointment today. This was one of those moments for which bottling up emotions came in handy.
    She would also have to find an inconspicuous way to contact Eleanora to find out if she was healthy. She couldn’t just call her up as a pharmacy technician because that could lead to unnecessary questions. It was curiosity that really got to Maija. She could deal with emotions like anger, frustration, sadness, and happiness quite well, but she could not manage to quell curiosity once it made itself known. Curiosity would sit in the center of her thoughts like a shiny red box with a big gold bow, begging to be opened. She hated the suggestion of being haunted by a person who wasn’t even dead yet; perhaps she would attend the new member meeting for the PTA. She would have to find a way to speak with her.
    At least no one had been injured. Her thoughts were erratic, and her chest felt tight. Maija left the break room and told Tom that she was taking a sick day. Tom mumbled something about telling corporate, but Maija held her hand up to his face, which stopped the flow of words. She walked out of the pharmacy with her purse slung over her shoulder and looked under her car before she climbed in. Ach , she needed a cup of tea.

Isabella
    B irds and bees, fowl and insect: Isabella tried to understand the connection between these two flying creatures and human reproduction. Euphemisms only complicated the transmission of knowledge. She prayed her mother wouldn’t feel the need to tell her about the birds and the bees, as she’d learned about sex long ago through a friend’s older sister. As her mom drove the Cutlass through the fog, Isabella bit a hangnail and drew blood. She sat stiffly in the passenger seat, holding her backpack in her lap like a life preserver. Her mother turned on the windshield wipers to clear the mist.
    â€œOh, my God, Mama! Turn it off!” Isabella yelled. A large brown moth had gotten caught against the glass, only an inch from the wiper’s path.