Take Care of Things

“Take Care of Things” is Wilma Jerzyck’s euphemism for initiating retaliation. It names the first move in her code of confrontation, turning a decision to intimidate or attack Nettle Cobb into a brisk, practical-sounding task. The phrase’s changing force—from a plan, to a choice she briefly postpones, to a threat she repeats—shows both Wilma’s appetite for control and the narrow interval in which Pete’s secret intervention can hold her back.

Meaning and Rules

Wilma intends to go to Nettle’s home first thing Friday morning to “Take Care of Things.” The expression belongs to a combative code she has made for herself: when quarrels become serious, she chooses the duelling ground and the weapons. Its rules are to get the last word and make the first move. In that vocabulary, taking care of things means acting quickly and decisively against the person she blames, not resolving the dispute or seeking a compromise.

The phrase also softens the violence it describes. Wilma tells Pete that she might see how many times she can turn Nettle’s head around before it pops off the stem, and thinks of the planned confrontation as a matter to be taken care of. The ordinary, almost administrative wording sits beside an explicit threat. That contrast exposes the function of the expression: it lets Wilma present aggression to herself as the completion of a necessary job.

The Friday-Morning Reversal

After a night in which she expected to lie awake, furious and taut, Wilma instead falls asleep quickly and wakes feeling refreshed and oddly calm. Sitting at her kitchen table in her housecoat the next morning, she considers whether it is too early to take care of things permanently. She recognizes that her phone call has already frightened Nettle, and decides that she might let Nettle spend time worrying about what will happen next. A few drive-bys or more phone calls could keep the threat alive without an immediate attack.

For a moment, the phrase shifts from a fixed intention into an action Wilma believes she can postpone. She entertains the possibility that Nettle’s fear, or Nettle’s supposed instability, might make events resolve without Wilma having to strike first. The reprieve is real in its immediate effect—Wilma does not drive her Yugo through Nettle’s door that morning—but it does not amount to forgiveness or a change of heart.

Pete’s Hidden Intervention

Wilma does not know why her anger has subsided. Pete has secretly put Xanax in her tea, and the narrative identifies this as the third occasion on which he has drugged her; earlier, he used two tablets after Wilma’s brief but satisfying exchange with Nettle. He is relieved to find her temper diminished the next morning. The intervention explains the sudden calm that Wilma interprets as her own reconsideration, while showing that Pete’s fear of what she might do has led him to act covertly rather than confront her openly.

The deception creates a temporary gap between Wilma’s intention and her action. Pete’s drugging prevents the Friday-morning confrontation, but it changes neither Wilma’s belief that Nettle vandalized her bedlinen nor her resolve to retaliate. The distinction matters: the delay is imposed from outside Wilma’s stated code, not produced by a reconciliation or a renunciation of violence.

The Phrase Returns as a Threat

In the aftermath of the muddy-sheets incident, Wilma paces through the house, swears she will get Nettle, and says she will put her in the hospital. She then declares that she is going up there the next day to “Take Care of Things.” Pete realizes with mounting alarm that she means it. The repeated expression has become a promise of imminent action, and its calm formula cannot conceal the danger Pete hears in it.

Wilma’s rules make the phrase more than a passing idiom: it compresses her method of dealing with conflict into a motto of initiative and control. Its recurrence also marks the limit of Pete’s intervention. The drugs can blunt her anger for a morning, but they cannot make her forget, forgive, or doubt her accusation. “Take Care of Things” therefore captures a delayed rather than defeated retaliation, and the uneasy household in which Pete tries to manage the consequences without Wilma knowing how.