“I have an idea.” Cass rolled down her window. “I’m thinking we’ll be able to follow our noses.”
Phil rolled down her window as well and put her head out, taking a deep breath of the humid Florida air. She withdrew when she caught whiff of something that smelled like burning hair and rotten eggs. “Ugh! Is that Nana’s potion?”
Rory rolled down her own window and took a sniff. “Yup, that smells like the latest batch all right. She spent all night in the kitchen making it. I tried to get her to stop but you know Nana. She’s so stubborn when she decides she wants something.”
Josh had rolled down his window as well and he took a deep whiff of the unmistakable miasma floating on the breeze as he parked the car. “Wow.” He got a strange look on his face as he turned toward Phil. “That smells terrible. And yet…” He took another deep breath and frowned. “And yet, I kinda like it. Is that weird?”
Cass looked grim. “She must have perfected it.”
“Well she couldn’t get much farther from perfection,” Phil pointed out, thinking of the debacle at the bowling alley. “Come on, we’d better go get her.”
They left the car and followed their noses to a low gray building that had ramps instead of steps, for easy wheelchair access. But long before they reached the door, they could hear the commotion going on inside.
“Hurry!” Phil reached for her sisters’ hands, feeling the tingle of power, and dragged them toward the entrance. “Who knows what she’d gotten herself into now!”
They hit the door running with Phil in the lead. But it opened onto a scene of such confusion that for a moment they all just stood there, stunned. The room had been set up for a bingo game, with rows of long, thin tables covered with paper cards and piles of dried kidney beans to use as markers. At the front of the room a smaller table held a large plastic bingo ball filled with numbered ping pong balls. It was the kind that turns with a crank until one of the ping pong balls pops out the spout. But aside from one elderly woman who was quietly nibbling her pile of dried beans, no one was sitting at the tables. No one was working the bingo ball or calling numbers and no one was marking their cards.
Instead, everyone was at the front of the room in a teeming mass, not a single one of them under the age of seventy-five. They weren’t standing around talking as the Eagle Scouts had been the night before in Splitsville, either. Instead, arms were waving and people were shouting. As she watched, Phil saw one elderly man brandish his cane at another man who looked even older.
“She’s mine, I tell you! I saw her first!” he yelled, whopping his neighbor with the wooden cane. “You get away from her, Smithers!”
“She’s my angel!” the other man yelled in a hoarse, cracked voice. “She doesn’t want anything to do with you, Bernstein!” As Phil watched in horror, he raised his walker and used it like a lion tamer uses a chair, fending off further strikes with the cane and trying to push the other man to the ground. The entire room reeked of the horrible potion and the shouting was so loud Phil was tempted to drop her sisters’ hands and put her fingers in her ears.
In the middle of the mêlée, Nana was standing her ground with a man who looked to be at least ninety gripping her hand tightly. Today she wore a hot pink pantsuit and a pleased expression on her plump, pretty face. She was actually enjoying herself, Phil thought dismally as the battle royal continued. Nana always had liked causing a scene.
“Now, now, gentlemen, there’s no need to fight over me.” Nana’s silvery voice rang out over the confusion. “I’m sure we can work this out in a civilized manner. Maybe I can go out for a date with each one of you on a different night.”
“You’re not dating Harold!” screeched a woman who, if possible, looked even older than the man who was holding Nana’s hand in a death grip. She had fluffy white hair with a pale blue tint and she was wearing an old fashioned pair of horn-rimmed glasses. “He’s my husband, you hussy! And if you think you can bring your painted, perfumed self over here and break up a marriage that has lasted for sixty-five years then you’ve got another think coming!”
“She’s got my Benjy too!” shouted another little old lady whose salt and pepper hair was twisted into a scanty bun at the back of her neck. She pointed to a man who appeared to be in his eighties standing on Nana’s other side, trying to nibble on her ear with his false teeth. “Fifty-five years together and he never cheated on me once. Now just look at him!”
“Wow,” Josh muttered and Phil turned to see him staring wide-eyed at the scene in front of them. “Is that, uh, your grandmother in the pink pantsuit?” he asked, giving Phil a sidelong glance.
Phil felt her cheeks begin to heat. He was totally appalled, just like Christian had been. “I’m afraid so. Nana, um, loves being the center of attention. You just wait here—we’ll go get her.” There was a new outcry and she saw that one of the little old ladies—the one with the horn-rimmed glasses—had tried to slap Nana and missed. Instead, her wrinkled hand connected with her friend’s cheek. The second lady’s false teeth flew out of her mouth at the impact and skittered across the floor reminding Phil of a pair of those wacky wind-up walking teeth you see in joke shops.
“Help!” yelled the senior citizen who had been de-toothed. “My theeth! Thombody get my theeth!”
“Oh my God, what a mess,” Cass muttered. “Come on, Phil. We’d better get in there before somebody breaks a hip.”
They waded into the crowd of Peaceful Beach residents, dodging canes and walkers until they reached their grandmother. Nana was watching breathlessly as the action unfolded around her, no doubt feeling like the star of a movie featuring very old actors.
“Nana!” Phil shouted. “Nana, come away from here. Somebody’s going to get hurt!”
“Oh, but it’s so exciting!” Nana smiled, her plump cheeks a girlish pink. “And I hate to disappoint my new beaus.”
“Nana, these men are spoken for.” Cass nodded at the angry little old ladies who were trying to get through the crowd to rescue their husbands from her grandmother’s evil clutches. “Besides, they’re too old for you.”
“But you told me to find someone my own age!” their grandmother protested, pointing at Cass. “And besides, they’re very charming.”
“Charming or not, we have to get you out of here,” Phil said, fending off a cane with her elbow.
“Yeah, Nana, come on!” Rory insinuated herself between her grandmother and the man who was trying to nibble her ear. Slowly the three sisters formed a half circle around their grandmother, just as they had the night before.
“Well, if I must…” Nana looked disappointed but at least she seemed willing to come away from the senior citizen riot she’d caused. However, it didn’t look like the seniors were ready to let her go. Phil looked around in dismay at the sea of wrinkled, angry faces.
“It’s the potion, same as last time,” she shouted to her sisters. “Rory, do you still have that breath spray?”
“Sorry, Phil. We used it all up last night.”
“Crap.” Cass looked around, frowning. “Well, what the hell are we going to do? They won’t let us through—the men all want to hump Nana’s leg and the women all want to kick her ass.”
“Young lady, watch your language.” Nana sounded shocked.
“We need a distraction,” Phil yelled. “Something to take their minds off Nana. They’re not going to let us go as long as they’re all fixated on her.” Someone stamped down hard on her foot with the rubber tip of a cane and tears of pain sprang to her eyes. What a ridiculous way this would be to die, she thought. Mauled to death by senior citizens.
Suddenly a deep voice boomed above the roar of the angry elderly crowd. “I—nineteen,” it shouted and several of the seniors turned to see where it was coming from. “B—forty-four,” the voice continued loudly. “Come on, folks—back to your seats. You’re missing the numbers. N—twelve.”
More and more heads were turning to see where the voice was coming from, Phil’s among them. She was
surprised to see Josh standing by the big plastic bingo ball, cranking the handle and grabbing the plastic ping pong balls as they came out the spout.
“O—fifteen,” he yelled. “I’d get back to your seats, folks. The grand prize is on the line—two free tickets to the Golden Apple Dinner Theater’s production of My Fair Lady.” He caught Phil’s eye across the room and winked at her when she mouthed Thank you!
There were excited mumbles from the seniors in the crowd and some of them began drifting back to the long tables with their paper cards and piles of dried kidney beans. Now that Phil and her sisters were between their grandmother and her admirers, the elderly men seemed to lose some of their interest. One by one they allowed their wives to drag them away, the little old ladies shooting poison glances at Nana.
“I—twenty-nine. G—fifty.” Josh kept shouting numbers until most of the crowd had dissipated and Phil and her sisters were able to lead their grandmother out of the Peaceful Beach rec hall. Phil had never felt so relieved in her life as when the door closed behind them and she could get a breath of fresh air.
“My, my—that was certainly exciting.” Nana’s cheeks were still flushed and her green eyes were dancing with excitement.
“It wasn’t exciting, it was dangerous,” Phil snapped. “You started a riot and some of those people were really old, Nana. What if all the stress you just caused gave someone a heart attack?”
“Oh…” Nana pressed one hand to her plump bosom. “I didn’t think about that,” she said, her smile beginning to fade.
Never in her life had Phil spoken harshly to her grandmother, but now she couldn’t help saying exactly what was on her mind.
“Well maybe it’s time you do start thinking before you do something like this,” she scolded, voicing a thought she’d often had but had never been able to say out loud before her birthday wish. “Honestly, Nana, we have to come rescue you time and again from this kind of mess. Has it ever occurred to you that it’s time for you to grow up?”
“I…I never…” Tears sprang into Nana’s bright green eyes. “I had no idea you felt that way, Philomena. I’m so sorry I’ve become a burden to you in my old age.”
“Look what you did!” Cass turned on Phil accusingly. “I can’t believe you said that!”
“I can’t believe you made Nana cry.” Rory put an arm around her grandmother’s shaking shoulders.
Phil felt horrible. “Nana,” she said, patting her grandmother awkwardly on the back. “I’m so sorry—it’s just my latest wish acting up again. I didn’t mean to say all those things—they just slipped out.”
“Well you need to try and keep anything else from slipping out,” Cass said. “Nana knows what she did is wrong. In fact, I’ll bet she’s willing to promise to give up using witchcraft altogether now, aren’t you, Nana?”
Their grandmother nodded her silver head, her eyes still streaming. “I will. If it bothers you girls that much, then of course I will. I’ll give up my one dream of happiness—my dream of finding someone to love me in my old age when all of you are gone.”
“Now, Nana, don’t say that,” Phil implored. “You’re a very attractive woman. You don’t need witchcraft and potions to find a man. And besides, just because we’re grown up and moving out of the house doesn’t mean we won’t still come see you.”
“You’re a fine one to talk about that,” Cass scoffed. “We almost never see you since you and Christian moved in together. When was the last time you came and had dinner with Rory and Nana and me?”
“She’s right, Phil,” Rory put in. “You’re almost never at the house anymore. No wonder Nana feels abandoned.”
“I can’t help it,” Phil said, looking from her accusing sisters to her crying grandmother. “And it’s not all my fault.” She pointed at Cass. “If you would only make an effort to get along with Christian, maybe he wouldn’t refuse to let us come over for dinner.”
“Listen to yourself,” Cass scoffed. “Let you come over? Do you hear what a puppet you’ve become, Phil? Why do you always let him tell you what to do?”
“Well I don’t anymore!” Phil exploded. “I told you—we had a huge fight this morning, right before I told off my neighbor and everyone in my office, including my boss. Could you cut me some slack here, Cass? I’ve been having a horrible day and I don’t need all this family guilt crap on top of it!”
Her two sisters and her grandmother grew suddenly quiet as they stared at her in awe. Phil had never been a shouter. She supposed they were all used to her taking their criticism without a word. Part of her wished she could go back to being the quiet, meek one—the sweet girl who agreed with everyone and did as she was told and never made her grandmother cry…but part of her didn’t. That part was glad that she could stand up to Cass now and defend herself and her motivations. Although she had to admit that staying away from her family just because Christian didn’t like them was pretty indefensible.
“Well, dear.” Her nana broke the silence and came forward to take her hand. “I don’t know what that latest wish of yours was all about, but it certainly brought you out of your shell.”
“Sure has.” Rory was still looking at her wide-eyed. Cass was frowning but she didn’t comment.
“In fact,” Nana continued. “I feel like I need to get to know my oldest granddaughter all over again. What we need is a good old fashioned family dinner—all of us sitting around the table talking about our day and getting reconnected with each other. What do you say?”
“Well, I…” Of course, tonight was Christian’s pre-Fourth of July office party. It was being held at one of the senior partners’ mansions on Bayshore Boulevard, the most expensive neighborhood in South Tampa, and it was a black tie affair. Christian had been talking about it for months. He seemed to think it was absolutely essential to make a good impression, which probably included showing up with his fiancé on his arm, looking beautiful. Or as beautiful as you could be with weird sparkly sunshine hair, abnormally red lips, and eyes that changed color with the weather, Phil thought sourly.
“Please, Phil,” Rory begged. “Nana’s right—it’s been ages since we were all together at dinner.”
“We’ve missed you,” Cass said grudgingly. “I know we get together for brunch once in a while but it’s really not the same.”
“Please say you’ll come, my dear.” Nana patted her hand. “It would mean so much to me. To all of us.”
“Well, I want to but…” Phil bit her lip, thinking of how upset her fiancé would be if she blew off his important party to have dinner with her family. Then again, he hadn’t come to a single one of her office parties. She’d even asked him if he could get a day off in order to go to the annual BB&D beach day and he’d refused without even seeming to think about it. Also, in her current wish-condition, she would not be an asset to Christian at any social event.
And then the new post-wish Phil got angry. Cass and Rory and Nana were right—she hadn’t spent much time with them in ages, all because of Christian. Besides, she didn’t feel like spending an entire evening posing as Christian’s arm candy—in fact, she didn’t feel like spending any time with him at all until they talked things out. The way she felt now, she would start another fight with him the minute she opened her mouth. It was better to take a night off from each other’s company, she decided. Better for her and for their relationship.
“All right,” she said, smiling at her nana. “Christian is having some kind of an office party tonight but I guess he’ll live if I don’t come with him. I’d love to have dinner with you guys tonight. I’ll do it.” She would simply explain to Christian that he would have to go without her. He would get over it.
“You’ll do what?”
Phil turned to see Josh standing behind them, grinning and holding a plastic ping pong ball with I-17 printed on it in black letters.
“Oh, young man.” Nana fluttered toward him, her tears and anxiety completely forgotten. “We were just talking about having dinner tonight at my h
ouse with all my lovely granddaughters. And, as my savior from that awful brouhaha in the bingo hall, of course you are invited.”
“Oh, Nana,” Phil said hastily. “Josh probably doesn’t want to have dinner with a bunch of women sitting around the table making girl talk all night.”
“Sure I do.” Josh smiled at her and took her nana’s hand. “I’d be delighted to accept your invitation, uh, ma’am. And as a matter of fact—” he grinned at Phil “—I love girl talk. I have three older sisters back home in California, you know. Sometimes I kind of miss it.”
“Are you sure?” Phil asked. She knew her best friend was from the West coast and that he had three sisters, but she was surprised to hear that he really didn’t mind spending his evening in the company of a bunch of women. Christian would have hated it.
“Sure, I’m sure.” Josh grinned. “Uh, unless you don’t want me to come?” He looked at her uncertainly. “I don’t want to cut into your time with your family.”
“Of course she wants you to come. We all do,” Rory protested.
“She’s right. We’d like to get to know you.” Cass gave him a friendly smile and Nana reached up to pat his cheek.
“What did you say your name was again, young man? Josh?”
Josh smiled and nodded but his eyes were still fixed on Phil, as if he was asking her permission.
“If you really think you want to spend the evening with my crazy family…”
Josh laughed and looked at his watch. “Well, seeing as how I’ve already spent most of the afternoon with them, I don’t think a few more hours will kill me.”
“Wonderful!” Nana declared, tucking her arm into his. “Now let’s see. I think I still have some charcoal briquettes for the grill. Young man, do you know how to barbeque?”