Don't Rhine on My Parade

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning I awoke as usual. The sun was barely up and the sounds of happy children playing were bashing about my sleeping brain like jackhammers on concrete. I rolled sleepily over in bed and tried to cover my ears with my pillow. I try this every morning and it has yet to work. Hope, as they say, springs eternal.

  You know that feeling you get, when you can’t remember something, but you’re pretty sure it’s something bad and it’s hanging over your head just waiting to fall on you with all its awful remembrance? That’s exactly where I was that morning. Something was wrong. I just couldn’t place it. I swung my feet out of bed and saw my clothes from last night laying where I had tossed them before crawling into bed.

  The memories struck. That was not my t-shirt.

  “Crap,” I muttered.

  Mark reached out a long arm and snagged me back into bed. “What’s up?” he mumbled into my hair.

  “The girls,” I sighed.

  “Really?” he asked sarcastically as a loud crash and then screaming could be heard from their room. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “I got it. I got it.” I pulled back out of his arms and threw on a bathrobe. “You owe me.”

  “Just five more minutes,” he grinned and then ducked as I threw my pillow at him. He promptly pulled it over his head and flopped back down. I stuck my tongue out in his general direction and went to make sure I still had two living children.

  Megan’s bed is supported by wooden bars that slip into notches in the frame. When the bed is mistaken for a trampoline the bars are sometimes knocked out of place and the mattress sags to the ground. Usually, at this point, children are scolded and told not to jump on the bed. Given the severity of the lecture and the general mood of the child, it is at least five to ten minutes before the bed is once again mistaken for a trampoline, causing the whole vicious cycle to repeat.

  I was not in the mood for it this morning. Cassidy had one leg stuck down between the top of the mattress and the frame, where their jumping had dislodged two of the support bars. You would think, from the screams emanating from her mouth, that she was in deadly danger of being sucked down in the Sarlacc monster and digested for the next thousand years. I extricated her as gently as I could and sat her and Megan on the bed.

  “Are you supposed to jump on the bed?” This may sound like a rhetorical question, but when dealing with small children there is no such thing.

  “No.” They shook their heads sadly, apparently heartbroken at their own disobedience and resolute in their desire to do better in the future.

  I felt a grin tug at the corner of my mouth. I squelched it and tried to look grim, “If you jump on the bed again you’re going to be in trouble. Do you want to start this day by getting in trouble?” Unfulfilled threats are one of the cornerstones of parenting. How else will your child learn to disregard everything you say, if you do not teach them early on that your threats are empty?

  “We promise never to do it again,” Megan said seriously. Cassidy nodded. What she really meant was ‘never again, until I completely forget this conversation took place and think that jumping on the bed looks fun.’

  I kissed them each on the top of the head. “Be good for a little longer while Mommy gets a shower, ok?”

  “Who’s coming over today?” Megan asked. She considers the day a total bust if no one comes to visit.

  “No one,” I answered.

  “But I want someone to come over!” she whined. “Can Granny come over to play?”

  “You just saw Granny last night!” I exclaimed. “And the day before. I think that’s enough Granny for one week.”

  “But Granny loves us!” Megan argued.

  “Yes. And I love you too,” I said sweetly.

  “Granny loves us the mostest,” she announced.

  “Fine,” I snipped, “but you’re not seeing her today so you’ll have to make do with the second mostest.” I marched out of the room. Nothing like winning an argument with a four year-old to start your day off right.

  Back in the “adult” side of the house, Mark was already in the shower. I picked up Cecily’s t-shirt and sat down on the bed. Pretending like last night hadn’t happened was an option, but probably not a wise one. I could still see the look in her eyes when she said she would hunt me down and kill me. She meant it. I think I could happily live the rest of my life without ever hearing those words again. The time for hiding was definitely over.

  “The time for action is at hand!” I mouthed quietly and tried to strike a heroic pose in the mirror. It might have looked better if I hadn’t still been wearing my bathrobe.

  “Watcha doing, babe?” Mark asked behind me, still toweling off his hair.

  I leapt several feet in the air in a most ungraceful way. “Good grief, you scared me,” I scolded. He laughed and I threw a mock punch at his shoulder. “Ha, ha. Hey, anyways, do you mind if I go out tonight?”

  “No. Go ahead. You have plans?” He turned to go back in the bathroom.

  I looked down at the shirt in my hand, “Um, yeah. Cecily invited me to go out and show her around the town.”

  “Cecily?”

  “Our next door neighbor.”

  “Oh,” he looked surprised, “I didn’t know you knew her.”

  “Really?” I put on my best innocent face, “I thought I told you. I’ve been talking to her on and off and she seems like a really cool person.” You just have no idea how cool, I thought.

  “Okay.” He shrugged. “Sounds fun. I’ll get home around six and watch the kids and you go have a good time.”

  “Thanks, Mark.” I had to stand on tiptoe and pull him down a bit to give him a kiss on the cheek. “You’re the best.”

  “I know,” he answered cheerfully and disappeared in the closet to finish getting dressed.

  I spent my time in the shower thinking furiously. There was no way I was going unprepared into the meeting tonight. I had a couple of ideas, but I would need to do a little research on the internet to confirm.

  I sat down at my laptop after breakfast and began to surf the web. I started with research. It stood to reason that if vampires were real, then their counterparts, werewolves, probably were as well. In all the cheesy movies vampires and werewolves went together like peanut butter and jelly.

  Reading about supernatural creatures led to more and more pages of different creatures, more than I had ever dreamed possible. I read about banshees and ghouls, wraiths and nephilim. Most of these creatures seemed extremely far-fetched. Yet, I would have said the same about vampires if you’d asked me a week ago.

  There were even more defensives against supernatural beings than there were beings, so I decided to go basic and keep my focus on the main two. Even I knew that silver and holy water were effective weapons. But how to use them?

  I took a moment to pick out two of my silver necklaces that I didn’t wear very often. I hated to destroy them, but if they protected my kids then it was worth it. Taking them into the kitchen I dulled and mangled my butcher knife, hacking the silver links into pieces and then carefully gathering the metal shreds into a Ziploc baggie.

  Cecily had said to stay inside, but she had also said, that if I went out, to stay in public. My plan was going to require me to go out so I would just try to be as careful and aware as possible.

  Of course, since I had somewhere I wanted to go, Megan and Cassidy took forever to finish breakfast. Cassidy liked to stuff her cheeks with food and then just sit there for minutes on end. I was feeling a tad bit frazzled by the time I got their hair brushed, shoes on, and in the car.

  “Are we going to Granny’s house?” Megan asked.

  “Ganny’s ouse! Ganny’s ouse! Yay!” Cassidy cheered.

  “No. We are not going to Granny’s house. We’re going shopping.” I tried to make it sound like shopping was the equivalent of Disney World.

  “We already went shopping,” Megan said. She was getting too observant for her own good.

 
“Yes, but that was grocery shopping. This is a different kind of shopping.”

  “What kind of shopping?”

  “Big people shopping,” was my mature answer. Hey, it’s better than ‘none of your business.’ And I couldn’t exactly tell her that we were heading to the nearest ammo store to see if they would load some shotgun shells for me.

  “What kind of big people shopping?” Megan wanted to know.

  “None of your business,” I broke down. Drat. It just slipped out. I was hoping to have at least one conversation with my children in which I did not use a phrase that drove me crazy when I was a child and my mother used it on me. Next thing you know I’d be telling them that spanking them hurt me more than it hurt them and that children should be seen and not heard.

  “Just shopping, honey,” I clarified, sort of. “Don’t worry about it. It will be quick.” Famous last words. It wasn’t quick. I had a hopeful idea that ammo loading would be a simple process that even an idiot like me could manage. Then I could just purchase whatever equipment I needed, take it home, and create silver shotgun shells in the privacy of my own home.

  One look at the overwhelming array of paraphernalia convinced me otherwise. So did the price tags. I had to explain what I wanted to the clerk, persuade him that I was serious, and wait while he took my baggie of necklace chips into the back room. All the while trying to entertain two increasingly cranky children. Needless to say, an ammo store is not the most child friendly place in the world.

  As he rang me out, the clerk kept looking at me like a crazy lady. He even made a few werewolf jokes. I really had no idea what I was doing, not really. My few minutes of research had informed me that silver was notoriously difficult to pour into a bullet mold and that filling a shotgun shell was much easier. Since both were out of my capabilities I went with the “easier” one.

  It stood to reason that if werewolves and vampires were really troubled by silver, pumping one full of silver pellets from a shotgun blast might have a detrimental effect on their health. That is, assuming that since vampires were real, werewolves were too. After last night I was feeling a trifle open-minded.

  Death threat firmly in the forefront of my brain, I was not even tempted to use the Voice. Instead I used sarcasm, criticism, and threats to get my way. I also used one of the best weapons in the parenting arsenal. I allowed my children to misbehave loudly. Nothing makes a store clerk quicker to help you than a screaming child whom they want to get out of the store. By the time we left the ammo store everyone there was looking harried. I wouldn’t be surprised if, after today, they hung up a sign that said “No Children Allowed” on the front door.

  Next stop was the local nursery. My Wikipedia search had produced a list of plants to use as window and door guards. Yeah. It sounds stupid and it probably was. But, who was I to argue with centuries of folklore?

  I was looking for mistletoe to repel werewolves, since I had no idea what wolfsbane looked like. Maybe I should have Googled that. Can you tell I’m not much of a botanist? And of course, a little garlic for the vampires. As I understood it, the vampires, at least, could not enter without an invitation, but I wasn’t going to take chances. Not where my family was concerned.

  The guy at the nursery thought I was a little touched in the head, but he was very helpful. Turns out wolfsbane is a very pretty blue flower. I got enough to make a small grouping to pin over each door and window in the house. I also bought each of the girls a rose for their somewhat good behavior. Well, they didn’t kill anyone or destroy anything. I figured that was worth rewarding.

  We made one last stop at the Catholic church. I left the car running by the front door and ran up the steps to quickly look around. Sure enough, they had one of those little water pots with holy water by the entrance. Looking furtively about to make sure no one was watching, I scooped up some of the water in a clean sippy-cup and screwed the lid on tight. Now I was ready to battle the forces of darkness! After all, if I could battle the forces of the terrible twos and the fearsome fours, I could do anything.

  The car ride home was obviously training ground for my superpower of patience.

  “Mommy?” Megan asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Mommy?” she said again.

  “I said yes, honey. What is it?”

  “What’s my flower called?”

  “A rose, baby.”

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it need water?”

  “Yes, sweetie. It needs water. We can put it in a vase on the counter when we get home.”

  “Can I put the vase in my room?”

  “No.”

  “I want to play with it though.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged. “You can play with it. It will just die a little quicker.”

  There was a scream from the backseat. Cassidy was holding her rose in one hand and a fallen petal in the other.

  “Boken!” she yelled.

  “It’s okay,” I calmed her. “The petals are going to fall off.”

  “I don’t want my rose to die!” wailed Megan.

  “No die! No die!” Cassidy was trying to force the petal back on her flower.

  I almost ran over a man in the crosswalk I was getting so distracted. Maybe buying the flowers was not such a good idea. I tried to concentrate on the road.

  “All flowers die,” I tried to reason with them. “Just enjoy them while you have them.”

  Megan was sobbing now. “Why do they have to die?”

  “When you cut them off their stem they die, baby.”

  Cassidy was sobbing now as well.

  “We should never have cut them off the stem!” Megan was getting hysterical. “Put them back! Put them back, Mommy!”

  I ground my teeth. “Megan! Cassidy!” I said sharply keeping my eyes on the road. “Stop that crying this instant! I will take those flowers away from you and throw them away if you do not stop right now!”

  Silence reigned in the back seat for about twenty seconds. Then it started again, “Mommy?”

  I sighed. “Yes?”

  “Can we put them in water?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you read to them?”

  I almost said yes just to make everyone happy. “No. But you can read to them.”

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know how to read.”

  “Maybe you can just tell them a story and look at the pictures.”

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes!” My patience was wearing very thin.

  When your child is a little baby, you try and try to get them to say the magic word: Mommy. When they finally say it you are so excited and proud. Your baby knows your name! How special! How wonderful! Little do you know that the word will be used a hundred times a day, over and over and over again, until you think you will scream if anyone says ‘Mommy’ ever again.

  “What kind of stories do flowers like?” Megan wanted to know.

  “I don’t know, Megan,” I answered. “I’m sure they like everything that you like. Now, who wants to watch a movie in the car?”

  “Yay! Oo-ie!” Cassidy yelled and, once more, I escaped interacting with my children by distracting them with brain rotting mush. Modern technology and convenience win over home-town values yet again.

  With the back seat occupied watching Wilbur and Charlotte, I was free to spend some time thinking. I was operating in “Mom Mode.” Think about what needs to be done, make a plan, follow the plan, get it done. If you look at it that way, I was doing great. I had finished all my shopping and I was on the way to making my house safe. Or safer. Maybe it was stupid. No. Stick to the plan. Wikipedia says that certain herbs repel supernatural creatures, and when has Wikipedia ever been wrong? It couldn’t hurt. The worst that would happen is that Mark would notice a smell of garlic coming from every room. The best is that it might actually do some good.

  Next on the agenda was a nap. If I was going to be up late tonight de
aling with . . . nope, not going to think about that yet. Naps. Naps are good. In my younger, wilder days I could stay up ‘till three or four in the morning and be fine the next day. Not so anymore. Old age was catching up with me. If I didn’t get at least eight hours of sleep a night I was a cranky mess the next day.

  Then I would have to think about what to wear. The problem every woman faces. Do I go with the high heels that make my legs look fantastic but are a pain to walk in? Or do I wear the flats? How low a neckline will I actually feel modest wearing in public? For some reason, an outfit that looks killer in the bathroom mirror suddenly feels skanky when other people are around. If I had to face a magical version of the UN I wanted to look my best. Nothing gives a girl confidence like knowing she looks good.

  I got everyone home, fed, and down for naps and still hadn’t made up my mind on the wardrobe question. I was going through outfits in my mind while I quickly put together little clumps of wolfsbane and garlic. Martha Stewart I am not. The internet didn’t say anything about how much of each herb was required, so I was going small to avoid husband detection. I sprinkled each one with holy water and then dragged a chair around the house to stand on so I could reach above each door and window. From my eye level, at least, they were inconspicuous. I doubted Mark would notice. After all, this was the man who failed to notice new window curtains until a week after I installed them.

  That done, I tried to wipe my mind of all worries so that I could take a nap. No sense in tossing and turning for an hour worrying about things that were out of my control. I remembered to turn the phone ringer off and made sure the “Do Not Ring Doorbell” sign was clearly visible on the door. I managed to focus my brain on everyday things I needed to get done and went quickly to sleep trying to calculate how many loads of laundry I actually did every week. The planets must have been in alignment, because the girls and I got to sleep for two hours.

  I awoke with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was the feeling you get as a child when you are walking up on stage for your part of the piano recital. For a moment I considered hiding under the covers for the rest of the afternoon and having Mark tell Cecily I was sick.

  I glanced up at the barely visible bunch of herbs I had tacked over the bedroom window. Even if they were completely effective, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding out in my home. And chances were they didn’t work at all. Maybe they just made supernatural creatures very angry. Rather like shooting a BB gun at a grizzly. But then, if some creature was intent on breaking into your home, it probably didn’t make too big a difference if they were really angry or just sort of angry.

  The rest of the afternoon dragged by. I made sure the house was neat, the girls were bathed, and supper was almost on the table before Mark got home. Unlike some men, he was pretty good at watching the girls and putting them to bed. I just figured that, if I wanted him to do it very often, I should make it as easy as possible for him.

  I still wasn’t sure what to wear. I wanted to look nice, but not overdressed. Stylish yet comfortable. Orlando was a good forty-five minutes away, so I also didn’t want something that would wrinkle horribly in the car. I tried on about five different outfits before flopping back on the bed in my bra and underwear. This was ridiculous. Not only was I going to meet creatures that shouldn’t exist, I also couldn’t find anything to wear!

  Cassidy came wandering into my room and looked over the pile of clothes on the floor. She has always been very interested in fashion. Scarily so for a two year-old.

  “What doing?” she asked.

  “Trying to find something to wear,” I groaned.

  “Wear this,” she said and pointed to a pair of black dress slacks.

  I sat up. They were comfortable, stylish, and dressy. Maybe I should go with them. Now I just needed to find a good blouse to match.

  “Okay,” I smiled and held up a shirt. “What about this shirt?” I asked, half joking.

  “No!” Cassidy looked shocked. “No. No. No. Ugly shirt.”

  “What!” I looked at the shirt again. “I like this shirt. I’m going to wear this one.” I slipped into the pants.

  “No!” Cassidy put her hand firmly on the shirt. “No, Mommy. No dis shirt.” She pointed to another blouse on the bed. “Dis one. Dis one pitty.”

  I looked at it. I couldn’t tell why one was ugly and one pretty. I kind of liked the first one better. “I like this one,” I said, pointing at it.

  Cassidy folded her arms over her chest and scowled at me. “No,” she said.

  I sighed and pointed at the second shirt. “This one?”

  Her face broke into a huge beaming smile. “Yes!” she clapped her hands. “Pitty shirt. Booful Mommy.”

  Well, there you have it. If I wore the shirt I would be beautiful. Can’t argue with that logic. I gave in to the tyranny and finished getting dressed. I decided to go with flats since there was a good chance my knees would be shaking too hard to stand upright in heels. At this point I was feeling rebellious and angry so I put on silver earrings, a silver necklace, a couple of silver rings, a silver bracelet, and a silver anklet. That way if something ate me I would give it indigestion.

  I went to make sure the girls hadn’t re-wrecked the house while I hadn’t been paying attention. They were both sitting on the couch reading library books quietly. I felt a catch in my throat as I looked at them. I loved them so very much. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to them. Hopefully tonight would clear everything up and we could go back to being a normal family. I sat down between them and gave them both a huge hug and kiss.

  “I love you guys,” I sniffed.

  “Mommy?” Megan asked.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “I have a secret to tell you,” she said. I smiled and leaned over, expecting to be told that she loved me too. “Cassie has poopy pants,” she whispered in my ear.

  I sat up straight. “Cassie, do you have poopy pants?”

  “Yes,” Cassie smiled at me.

  I heard Mark’s car pull up in the driveway and I debated leaving the diaper changing to him. No, I sighed, that wouldn’t be very nice. I scooped her up and carried her back to the changing table. Horror of horrors, there were only three diapers left, and no spare box in the closet. My mind must have been in la-la land. I couldn’t believe I’d let it get that low. I’d have to stop and get some with Cecily.

  That should be fun.

  “Piper?” I heard Mark calling from the front hall. “Cecily’s here!”

  I washed my hands quickly and looked at my reflection in the mirror. Here goes nothing, I thought and marched out to meet my fate.