“Not if you're rescuing them from a shelter.”
“They still poop, even if they're from a shelter.”
“Excuse me,” her mother said. “Not at the dinner table.”
“Is poop a bad word?” Sari said. “I thought I was being polite.”
“What about becoming a vet?” Jason asked Lucy. “Didn't you say you were thinking about that?”
“Yeah, I was—for about two seconds. I’d really rather do research. I like what I do. So I’m just going to keep rescuing pets one at a time and get all my animal ya-yas out that way. Will you all excuse me a moment?”
“Of course,” Eloise said, and Lucy got up and left the room.
“Hey, Mom,” Sari said quickly. “I told you that Jen's pregnant, right?”
“Jen who?” asked Eloise, watching as Jason topped off her glass again.
“My friend from college. Kind of frizzy-haired and short?”
“Look who's calling somebody short,” Jason said. He was over a foot taller than Sari.
“Oh, yes,” Eloise said. “She came with you once to visit. She brought laundry.”
“No, actually, I brought laundry but I told you it was hers so you wouldn't get mad at me. Anyway, she just found out she's having a boy.”
“Life's greatest adventure,” Jason said.
“I wouldn't mind being a grandmother,” Eloise said. “I always thought I would be by my age. But God had a different plan in mind.” She sipped delicately but effectively at her drink.
As soon she put her glass back down on the table, Jason refilled it. “My mother hasn't taken to the grandparent thing all that happily,” he said as he poured. “The day she found out Denise was pregnant, she scheduled a facelift.”
“Think of how great she'd look if you'd had more kids,” David said.
“As it is, there's not a wrinkle on her.”
“Zack's getting a little restless,” Sari said, standing up with him in her arms. “I’m going to take him on back so he can watch some TV with Charlie. Excuse us.”
Her mother turned toward Sari as if she were about to say something, but just then David said, “So, Eloise, Lucy told me this is the house that Sari grew up in. How long have you lived here exactly?”
Eloise swiveled back to him, and Sari and Zack slipped out of the room.
“Let's see,” Eloise said, pursing her lips. “Sari's what? Twenty-eight? But we haven't been here her whole life—for the first few years, we rented a little bungalow in Westwood. But once the kids were a little older and we had some money saved up, we found this house and fell in love with it. That must have been about twenty-three years ago. We had to stretch to buy it back then, but I really think it was the best investment we could have made.”
“Absolutely,” David said. “Even just looking at houses to rent, I can't believe how expensive real estate has gotten in Southern California.” There was a noise in the hallway. He raised his voice slightly. “This mimosa is really good. I don'teven know what's in it. How do you make a mimosa, anyway, Jason?”
“You just mix champagne and orange juice,” Jason said, more loudly than was necessary given that David was sitting right across from him. “The trick is to get the proportions right. Not everyone agrees what those are.”
“Interesting,” said David.
“You don't want too much orange juice,” Jason said. “But then you don't want too much champagne. May I fill your glass, Eloise?” She nodded, and while he was filling it, Jason said, “Hey, David, I’ve never quite understood the kind of research you and Lucy are involved with. Could you explain it in detail to me?” David proceeded to do his best. Neither man seemed to notice that none of the women had come back into the room.
But Sari's mother did. It took a while, but she did. She looked around the table and interrupted David's rather lengthy discussion of the adrenal gland in Rattus norvegicus to say suddenly, “What's going on? Where is everyone?”
“What? We're not enough for you?” David said jovially, indicating himself and Jason. “Guess I’ve been a little boring, going on about all my experiments and everything—”
“No, no, not at all,” Eloise said absently. “But where are the girls? Why aren't they at the table anymore?”
“Oh,” Jason said, “you know the way those three are. They probably started talking about something and forgot to come back in.”
“Or else they're knitting,” David said. “Those girls and their knitting—it's not a hobby, it's an obsession.”
“Ha,” said Eloise. She patted her hair carefully, even though there wasn't a strand out of place. “You're probably right.”
Actually, for once the girls weren't knitting, and the men knew it. But their job was to keep Eloise distracted. It was all part of THE PLAN, which had been hatched several weeks earlier at a Sunday knitting circle when Sari mentioned that she had taken Jason to meet her family, and her mother had fallen all over him.
“I’ve never seen her like that before,” Sari said. “She was civil all night long. The second she'd start going off into one of her insane rants, Jason would smile at her and change the subject, and she'd just let him. It's a little weird—I mean, she was practically flirting with him—but I’m going with it. Makes it much easier to be around her.”
Lucy bent over her work, her brow creased. She had finished the hat a while ago and was now knitting a mouse toy for David the kitten. She knit for another minute in thoughtful silence, and then she looked up. “Hey, Sari?” she said. “I have an idea.”
And that's when they decided to kidnap Charlie.
Toward that end, the girls had quietly slipped away from the table one by one—or two, in Sari's case, since she was carrying Zack in her arms—and reconvened in the family room.
Sari sat down next to Charlie, with Zack perched on her knee. “Hey, Charlie?” she said. “I’m going to take you out, just for a little while. I want you to meet a friend of mine.”
“I don't want to go,” Charlie said, staring at the TV.
“There'll be ice cream,” she said.
That got his interest. Charlie liked ice cream. “What place?”
“Ben & Jerry's.”
He absorbed that. “Can I have hot fudge?”
“Absolutely.”
“I want to eat it here.”
“No,” Sari said. “We have to go out to get it.”
“You go.”
“You have to come with me.”
Again, he thought for a moment. “I don't want mint ice cream,” he said. “That's spicy.”
“No mint,” Sari said. She squeezed Zack. “How about you, kiddo? You want ice cream?”
“You want ice cream,” said Zack, who was prone to be echolalic these days.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Sari handed Zack to Kathleen, flicked the TV off with the remote, and held her hand out to Charlie. He took it and she hoisted him—with some difficulty—to his feet. “Let's go,” she said.
“Hey, look,” Kathleen said to Lucy as they moved toward the door. “I’m holding a baby. Do I look like a total mom?”
“Just don't drop him,” Lucy said. “And he's not a baby. He's a kid.”
“Oh, what's the difference?” Kathleen said. They followed Sari and Charlie out of the family room, then crept quietly through the house to the front door. They could hear the men desperately chatting away to Eloise in the dining room.
“Listen to them,” Lucy whispered to Kathleen. “Aren't they good guys?”
“Sure, rub it in.” Kathleen shifted Zack over to her other hip. “You and Sari have the best boyfriends ever and I have no one in my life. Are you happy?”
“Deliriously,” Lucy said. “Thanks for asking.”
Charlie hesitated at the front door. “Just ice cream, right?” he said suspiciously. “No doctor?”
“No doctor,” Sari said. “Why? Do they bribe you with ice cream when they take you to the doctor?”
“I don't know,” he said.
&
nbsp; “No doctor, no mint ice cream,” Sari said. “Just lots of hot fudge and a friend.”
“Okay,” he said and held her hand as they walked out of the house.
As planned, Ellen was waiting for them at Ben & Jerry's, sitting at a table near the front window.
She rose to greet them as they all came inside.
“This is my friend Ellen,” Sari told Charlie. “Say hi to her and shake her hand.”
“Hi,” he said and shook her hand.
Everyone else was introduced and then Ellen asked Charlie what kind of ice cream he wanted.
“Not mint,” he said.
“All right,” she said. “They have lots of flavors that aren't mint. Come with me so you can order for yourself.” They walked over to the counter together. The others could see her prompting Charlie to speak directly to the ice cream scooper.
“So that's Ellen,” Lucy said. “Nice to finally meet her. She's not exactly what I pictured.”
“I thought she'd have short gray hair and wear a tweed suit,” Kathleen said. “But she's kind of a babe. For an old lady.”
“She's not that old.” Sari gave Zack's hand a squeeze. “Hey, guys, do you think in a parallel universe Ellen's my mother?”
“Yeah, and you're my sister,” Kathleen said. “In the perfect parallel universe.”
“What about me?” Lucy said. “Am I your sister, too?”
“Yeah,” Kathleen said. “You're the annoying much older one who's always telling us to get out of her room.”
“That's because you always mess up my stuff.”
“Come on, Zack,” Sari said. “Let's go get you some ice cream.”
“Just stay away from the mint,” Lucy said. “That stuff will kill you.”
Sari took Zack to the counter, while the other two pulled up some extra chairs to a table, and then they all sat down with the ice cream.
“Zack looks pretty comfortable on your lap,” Lucy said to Sari.
“He spends a lot of time here.”
“We all thought it was Jason you were in love with.”
“Nope. It was always this guy.” Sari cuddled him close. He had an ice cream cone, which he was steadily licking in the same spot, over and over again.
“So, Charlie,” Ellen said, “Sari tells me you like movies a lot. Especially science fiction movies.”
“Yeah.” He dug into his ice cream. There was, as promised, hot fudge on top.
“I want to see how much you know about movies,” Ellen said. “I’m going to ask you some questions, okay?”
“Okay.” He didn't look up from his ice cream.
Ellen said, “Who was Luke Skywalker's father?”
“Darth Vader,” he said. “Of course.”
“Good job. Who was his sister?”
Another spoonful of ice cream went into his mouth. “Princess Leia.”
“With the bun-bun hair,” Kathleen said.
“Shush,” said Sari, watching Charlie. He was methodically eating his ice cream, but he was definitely also listening pretty carefully to Ellen.
“What was the name of the elf in the Lord of the Rings movies?” Ellen said.
“Legolas,” he said. “And Gimli is the dwarf and Gandalf is the wizard and the hobbits are Frodo, Pippin, Merry, and Sam. Frodo has the ring.”
“Good,” she said. “Do you know this much about a lot of movies?”
“I know a lot more than that,” Charlie said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Those were easy questions. They were kind of stupid.”
“Charlie!” Sari said.
“No, he's right,” Ellen said “I don't know enough about these movies to ask really good questions, Charlie. I’m sorry. But I’m impressed with how much you know. And there's a reason I was asking you these questions. I have a friend who owns a video store. Do you know what that is?”
“You get movies there,” Charlie said.
“That's right,” Ellen said. “You rent movies there. And my friend told me he needs someone to help him out, someone who knows a lot about movies.”
“Help him out?” Charlie repeated. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, answer people's questions about movies. Like, if someone came in and said, ‘What's that movie with Will Smith where aliens come and try to take over the earth?’ then he needs someone who could say …” She waited.
“ Independence Day,” Charlie said.
“Exactly,” Ellen said, beaming. “And he also needs someone to help put movies back in the right places on the shelves and to restock things like candy and popcorn.”
“Restock?” Charlie repeated. Sari had never seen him question a word before—he usually ignored things that he didn't understand, but he was following this conversation eagerly. He had even stopped eating the ice cream, though he stayed hunched over it protectively.
“ ‘Restock’ means to put more out on the shelves. So my friend asked me if I knew anyone who could help him, and Sari told me she thought you would be really good at a job like that.”
“It's a job?” Charlie said.
“Yes,” Ellen said. “It's a job and you'd get paid for doing it.”
Charlie looked at Sari. She said, “I think you'd really like working there, Charlie. And you could buy all sorts of things for yourself with the money you made. It would be your money.”
“I don't know,” he said. “Does my mom say okay?”
“She will,” Sari said, and her eyes met Ellen's.
“Yes, she will,” Ellen said with a determined nod and Sari thought, Maybe this could actually happen. Ellen turned back to Charlie. “Now, Charlie, if you really want to have an adult job, you have to be responsible about your appearance and your behavior. You'll have to take a shower and shave every day.”
“My mother shaves me,” Charlie said.
“It's time you learned to shave yourself.”
“She says it's dangerous.”
“Not if you do it right. I can teach you. And you'll have to dress appropriately. Do you know what that means?”
“Sort of.”
She gestured toward the baggy sweatpants and the too-tight T-shirt he wore over his bulging stomach. “You'll need real pants. Some plain khaki ones would be nice and neat. And you need to wear shirts with buttons. Sari can take you shopping and help you get the right clothes. You'll want to look nice for your job interview.”
“Okay,” he said.
“And when you're at work, you have to be polite to everyone and not get upset about anything. That's very important.”
“Okay.”
Ellen smiled at him. “I like your attitude,” she said. “I think you're going to make a wonderful employee.”
“Yes,” he said. He went back to spooning up his ice cream. Some collected at the corners of his mouth, but he didn't seem to notice.
“Sari?” Lucy said. “I don't want to interfere, and I know you're the child expert here, but I’m fairly certain that if you don't do something soon, Zack's ice cream is going to drip all over both of you.”
“Oops,” Sari said, and caught up Zack's wrist, swiftly bringing his cone up to her mouth. She licked the edge in one long circular motion.
“Wow,” Kathleen said. “Nice tongue moves. That Jason is one lucky guy.”
“My boss is sitting next to you!” Sari said, but Ellen was laughing.
They couldn't stay much longer—if Eloise found out they were gone, there was no way of knowing how she'd react, and no one wanted the guys to have to deal with the fallout.
While Charlie and Zack finished their ice cream, Sari walked Ellen to the door.
“Thank you,” she said. “Oh, Ellen, thank you.”
“Don't be silly,” Ellen said. “Like this is anything but a pleasure for me. Sari, if we can make things better for your brother—”
“I know,” said Sari. “I know.” And found she was crying. Ellen hugged her tightly before saying goodbye. Sari watched her walk away. Even through her tears, she could s
ee that Ellen had a huge run down the back of her black tights and that her slip showed below the hem of her dress.
She was the most beautiful, perfect woman Sari had ever seen.
Eloise realized they were all gone about fifteen minutes before they got back. The men tried to keep her in the dining room, but eventually she insisted on getting up to clear the table, and then started calling to the girls to come help her … and finally went looking for them and realized that they weren't anywhere in the house. And that Charlie was gone, too.
“They're all missing!” she said, with some alarm.
Jason hit himself in the forehead. “Oh, that's right—I totally forgot—Sari said she was thinking of taking Zack and Charlie out for ice cream. They must have done that. I’m sure they'll be back any minute. Want me to call her on the cell?”
“Sari should have asked me,” Eloise said. Her brows had come together. “I don't like Charlie to go out without me. He gets very nervous.”
“I’ll tell her that when she gets back,” Jason said. He took her arm. “But don't worry about it—I’m sure they're fine. Let's go sit in the living room and wait for them.”
The men did what they could to entertain Eloise with their conversation, but she was less distractible now, and her eyes stayed fixed on the front door.
When the girls and Charlie finally walked in, Eloise jumped to her feet. “There you are!” she said. “You didn't tell me you were going out.”
“Sorry.” Sari put Zack down and he ran to his father, who picked him up and gave him a hug. “We went out for ice cream. It was fun, wasn't it, Charlie?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m going to watch some movies now. I have to get ready for my job.” And he went into the TV room.
“What did he say?” Eloise whipped her head around. “A job? Sari, what have you been saying to the poor boy?”
“Nothing,” Sari said. “It's just … we ran into Ellen, my boss—”
“Oh, no,” Eloise said, clutching at her heart. She took a staggering step backward. “You wouldn't.”
“We had ice cream,” Lucy said, coming forward. “That was it, Mrs. Hill. And Charlie talked about movies a lot. He really loves movies.”