Of course, we usually didn’t get anywhere near the letter “z,” but the game was pretty funny.
This time, we’d made it to a world record — h — when the bus reached my stop.
I was in a great mood. “Hey, I’m home!” I cried as I hit the front door.
Mom had beat me home. She was waiting for me.
“Hey, Mom!” I practically danced into the house. Soon I’d be climbing the Eiffel Tower. Drinking café au lait in un petit bistro. Wearing a beret bought in Paris.
“Shannon,” said my mother and I noticed that she looked as cheerful as I felt. “Guess what?”
“Good news?” I said. I was glad to see Mom looking happy for a change. It probably had something to do with this Friday night. She and Dad had been planning a night out, just the two of them. He’d been trying to get tickets for a play.
I smiled. That was it. He’d gotten the tickets.
I soon found out how wrong I was.
“I’m going to Paris,” my mom said.
It took a moment to register. When it did, I felt my mouth drop open — and all my excitement vanish.
But maybe I was jumping to conclusions.
“To Paris?” I repeated, just to make sure.
“Dr. Patek called me down to school this afternoon. She said one of the chaperones for your trip had to cancel and she thought of me as a replacement chaperone. Wasn’t that nice of her? So, I’ll be going to Paris with you, honey! Isn’t that great?”
I once heard someone say, “The world crumbled around her.” Well, it’s true. It really happens. I could feel my world crumbling around me.
“To Paris,” I said, like a broken recording.
“It’ll be such fun, Shanny. We’ll go sight-seeing and shopping. Oh, I can hardly wait.”
Paris. My mother was going to Paris. With my friends and me. On my trip. The trip I’d been looking forward to practically the whole year.
I felt as if someone was playing some huge, awful joke on me.
You know what I wanted to do, right at that moment, more than anything else in the world? I wanted to throw myself down on the floor and kick my feet and scream and hold my breath until I was blue in the face. I wanted to have a major temper tantrum and scream, like Mallory Pike’s little sister, Claire, “No fair! Nofe-air! Nofe-air!”
I took a deep breath.
And the phone rang.
“I got it,” shouted Maria. A moment later she shouted, “Mommmm, it’s Daddy!”
Mom reached over and picked up the extension in the kitchen.
“Hi, honey,” she said cheerfully.
A moment later she said, “Oh.” Her voice didn’t sound so cheerful.
Then she said, even more flatly, “Are you sure? Can’t they get someone else to … oh. Oh. No. No, never mind.”
She listened in silence. All the excitement had drained out of her face. “Sure,” she said at last. “Another Friday night. Sure.”
She hung up the telephone without saying good-bye.
“Friday night is off?” I said cautiously.
My mother nodded, biting her lip. Then she said, “Something’s come up. Your father has to go to some deposition.”
“I’m sorry,” I managed to say.
My mom shrugged. Then she gave me what looked like a forced smile. “Well, we’ll always have Paris!”
My smile was just as forced, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I couldn’t hurt my mother’s feelings, especially not right then.
“I’d better go study,” I said.
I studied. I studied French. I studied math. I studied astronomy. I read a short story for English.
I got my French translation right. I solved every single math problem. I answered the study questions for astronomy. I wrote a paragraph about my favorite character in the short story.
My homework was perfect. I knew all the answers.
So why didn’t I know the answer to this one: what was I going to do about my mother going to Paris with me?
No answer for that. No answer because there was nothing I could do.
Grow up, Shannon, I told myself. You are sooo lucky. Most kids, most people, never have the chance to go to Paris at all.
It’ll be great. Your friends will be there. You’ll have a blast.
But was I listening to myself? I was not. Because I knew it wasn’t going to do any good.
My trip to Paris had been ruined.
They started arriving at Mary Anne’s at one o’clock sharp: dozens and dozens of kids (or at least it seemed that way), all ready and eager to make the perfect Mother’s Day gift.
Fortunately, the day was a nice one. The BSC had set up card tables and picnic tables outside in Mary Anne’s huge yard. Different tables were for different kinds of projects: making jewelry and special cards and decorating boxes and cans and blowing out eggs to make special Mother’s Day ornaments to hang up all year-round. And one of the picnic tables had been converted into a potting table, with Tiffany in charge. We’d collected a gazillion coffee cans so the kids could decorate them and use them as flowerpots.
At first it hadn’t been easy to convince Tiffany to join in the BSC extravaganza. But when I took her with Kristy and me to the gardening center and started asking for help in choosing the right kinds of seeds for Mother’s Day plants, she was hooked.
Stacey met people as they arrived and got their contribution (we charged everyone a dollar to help pay for all the supplies).
“Good crowd,” I said to Kristy. We were at the box-and-can decorating table.
“I am going to make an eyeglass case for my mother,” announced Karen.
Kristy looked doubtfully at the stack of boxes. “I don’t know, Karen. These boxes are pretty big for an eyeglass case.”
“I’m going to fold some cardboard,” Karen explained. “And glue it so it is shaped like my eyeglass case, see?” She dug in her backpack and produced a bright blue eyeglass case.
“And it’s going to be gigundoly beautiful,” said Karen. “With sequins and feathers.” She paused and studied her own eyeglass case for a minute, then put it on the table in front of her. “And maybe I’ll decorate mine, too.”
One table away, standing by Mallory, Claudia was trying to keep an eye on all the tables at once while helping two of the Pike triplets make a special Mother’s Day breakfast menu-and-card combination.
“I think it should look like a real menu,” Byron was arguing. “Like those menus in fancy restaurants. You know, the kind with the tassels in them.”
“She’s not going to order from it,” argued his brother Jordan. “It’s just a special card, so she’ll remember what she had for breakfast. Making a whole big menu for orange juice and waffles and syrup …”
“Three kinds of syrup!”
“Okay, three kinds of syrup, but that’s going to look weird.”
Claudia said, “If we write it in really elegant script, I bet it’ll look fine.”
“Will you write it?”
Claudia thought for a minute, then nodded. “But only if someone else spells it!” she warned.
Tiffany was showing Hannie and Linny Papadakis how to plant zinnia seeds in a pot. “They’re very hardy,” she was explaining. “And they make a nice cut flower.”
“I want pink ones,” said Hannie.
“Here are some pink ones. Little pink ones. The seeds inside this package will grow up to be just like the picture on the package,” said Tiffany. “And look at the seeds. They come from right in the middle of the flower, so when the flowers bloom, look for them. You can even save the seeds from one year to the next.”
I smiled to myself. That was the most talking I had heard Tiffany do in a long time.
Claudia left her table to check on the others and make sure that everyone had supplies and knew what they were doing. It was while she was at the jewelry table with Mary Anne, showing Maria how to make feather earrings, that the egg incident occurred.
It started as an accident.
A Jackie Rodowsky-the-walking-disaster accident.
We all love Jackie, don’t get me wrong. But Jackie has a special knack for causing, well, unexpected things to happen. For instance, he’ll walk across a room and somehow a table will tip over and a zillion magazines will go slithering to the floor.
Or he’ll hit a baseball and knock a branch off a tree and the branch will fall and break the rearview mirror off a parked car.
He never means for things to happen. They just do.
This time, Jackie (who was at the egg decorating table with Mary Anne and Jessi) and Adam Pike somehow got a couple of the eggs away from one of the cartons. The next thing we knew, they were having an egg race, trying to walk across the yard with an egg balanced on two fingers of one hand.
“Jackie, no!” cried Claudia.
But it was too late. Looking down at the egg on his fingers (miraculously still there), Jackie never saw the table with the refreshments that Stacey and Jessi had just started setting up.
He walked right into the table.
Jessi was headed back into the house for the cookies, but Stacey, who was behind the table, had just bent over to pick up a plastic jug of lemonade. She straightened up and saw the whole table, with Jackie on top, come hurtling toward her. She made a mad grab for the table, forgetting that she’d loosened the top on the lemonade.
Sticky pink lemonade splashed out over everyone.
Eggs flew in the air. They crashed down on top of Stacey and Adam and Jackie.
All the kids began to shriek excitedly. For a minute or two, pandemonium reigned.
Then Kristy shouted, “QUIET!”
And it worked. She grinned. “Over to you, Claudia,” she said.
“Oh, wow,” said Claudia. She looked all around, then said, “Okay, everybody, go on and keep working on your presents — unless you want to help me clean up this mess.”
Everybody instantly became very interested in the projects on which they’d been working.
Claudia began helping Stacey, Jackie, and Adam to their feet.
“Cool,” said Adam. He was covered with pink lemonade and he had egg on one shoulder of his T-shirt.
Jackie looked worried, but not upset. Being involved in disasters was nothing new for him. “Gosh,” was all he said.
What could anyone say?
Stacey rubbed her hand through her hair and said, “I hear a lemon rinse brings out the shine in your hair. I don’t know about lemonade, though.”
Mary Anne came over. “Dawn left some clothes here that would probably fit you,” she told Stacey. “Jeans and shirts. And I know Jeff left some old T-shirts you guys can put on.”
“I’ll take care of the refreshments,” said Jessi, trying hard not to laugh. “Don’t worry.”
A little while later, Adam and Jackie came out fairly well cleaned and scrubbed, followed by Stacey (in an old T-shirt of Dawn’s that said “Surf’s Up”), and Mary Anne.
By then, people were trying on earrings and necklaces they’d made, proudly displaying flowerpots filled with potting soil, and beginning to wrap the gifts they’d made for their mothers.
It was quite a collection, too. Karen’s idea to make an eyeglass case had inspired half a dozen copies, all lavishly painted and sprinkled with sequins and glitter. One of the coffee can flowerpots had the instructions for taking care of the seed planted inside, decoupaged to the outside. Byron and Jordan Pike’s menu boasted elegant gold script and they folded it in half just like in a restaurant. On the outside were the words: Special Order for a Special Mom.
“Look, Shannon.” Maria held up a pair of earrings made with feathers. “Do you think Mom will like them?”
“She’ll love them,” I said, and I knew she would.
“I’m going to wrap them, then,” said Maria, and hurried away.
The action at the plant table seemed to have slowed down. I watched as Tiffany carefully scraped the extra potting soil back into the bags and neatly folded down the tops of the partially used seed bags.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
Tiffany looked up and nodded, trying to look serious. Then her face lit up with a huge grin. “It was fun,” she said simply.
Looking around at the swirl of activity and listening to the hum of contented laughter and talk, I had to agree with her. It was fun. And a lot of mothers were going to get wonderful, funny, lopsided, love-filled gifts for Mother’s Day. And I was sure they were going to love them.
Claudia stepped to the middle of the yard and clapped her hands. “Attention, everybody, attention!”
Gradually, everyone turned to look at her.
“You did great!” Claudia said. “Label each of your gifts with your name and put them on the picnic table over there under the big tree. We’ll see that you get them back the day before Mother’s Day.
“And let’s see, what else. Hmmm. I know it was important …”
Claudia looked at the sky. She looked down at her feet. Then she slapped her forehead. “Oh, yeah! I almost forgot! Refreshments are now being served!”
Mother’s Day.
M-Day.
A bad day.
It didn’t start out that way. In fact, it had gotten off to a pretty good start the day before. We’d gathered all the gifts the kids had made and labeled and stored them in Mary Anne’s old barn. All of the plants had started coming up and some even had their first blooms on them. (Tiffany had been instrumental in reminding us to keep the plants watered and put them where they’d get enough light.) The kids had all been delighted and excited and could hardly wait until the next day.
Mary Anne had laughingly confessed that she’d made Mother’s Day gifts this year for her stepmother and her father: a basket for her stepmother (who is a little absentminded) to put all her mail in, and cedar sachets for her father’s dresser drawers.
Everyone else had bought their gifts, including me: perfume, my mother’s favorite kind, in a special Mother’s Day box and shiny department store wrapping.
But I had made a card on my own.
Things had been even more tense than usual around our house. I’d been avoiding Mom, and avoiding talking about Paris. I’d been trying not to think of it at all.
But I knew that Dad and Mom hadn’t made up after the date that Dad had to break with Mom. I felt bad for Mom. It seemed like nothing was going right for her.
On M-Day, Sunday, I got up extra early and woke up Maria and Tiffany. Together we went quietly downstairs to the kitchen and set up our presents on the table: the perfume with my card; Maria’s gift, a neatly wrapped box in handmade wrapping paper containing the feather earrings she’d made (plus a special card decorated with feathery designed cutouts); and a vase that Tiffany had bought, filled with fresh flowers picked from her own garden.
“It looks beautiful,” I said, stepping back to admire our handiwork.
“Shhh!” said Maria. “I hear someone!”
Sure enough, Mom came into the kitchen a moment later, yawning. She walked over to the counter, filled the coffeemaker pot with water, then stopped.
Slowly she turned around, still yawning, and stared at us and the table.
“What is this?” she said, but she was beginning to smile through her yawns.
“Happy Mother’s Day!” we cried.
“What beautiful flowers. And that vase …”
“From me,” said Tiffany, beaming. “The flowers are from my garden.”
“Are they really? I had no idea you had such a wonderful garden, honey. These are incredible!” My mom reached out and touched the velvety petal of a jonquil in wonder.
“Here, Mom,” said Maria, not to be outdone. She thrust the package and card into Mom’s hands. “I made it myself. Even the wrapping paper!”
“The paper too? Then I’ll be very careful.” Slowly, delicately, Mom unwrapped Maria’s present. I thought Maria would burst with excitement before Mom got it undone. She held the feather earrings up and they danced in the light.
“They??
?re dyed feathers,” said Maria. “Especially for making jewelry. I knew green was your favorite color, so I mixed all the greens together.”
“Beautiful,” murmured Mom, fastening the earrings to her ears. “And what’s this?”
“From me,” I told her.
She unwrapped the perfume and exclaimed, “My favorite kind. I was almost out. I was trying to wait until I got to Paris, but now I don’t have to! Thank you!”
Forcing myself not to think about Paris, I leaned over and kissed Mom on the cheek. “You’re welcome.”
“I’ll go get Dad,” said Maria.
It was just at that moment, while Mom was admiring the cards, that I saw the note stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. I recognized my father’s handwriting with a sinking heart.
“Wait a minute,” I said.
“What is it?” asked Mom. She saw the direction in which I was looking and watched in silence as I took the note off the refrigerator door.
“It’s from Dad,” I said, reading it. I handed it to Mom. “He’s playing golf.”
“He forgot?” said Maria indignantly. “He forgot Mother’s Day?”
Mom looked crestfallen. Quickly I said, “I know! Let’s all go out to lunch when Dad gets home. That’ll be fun.”
“Yeah!” said Maria.
Tiffany nodded, looking happier.
And most importantly, Mom looked a little less glum. “Okay!” she said. “Yes. Let’s do that. We’ll make your father treat us all to an extra-special meal for forgetting.”
We laughed then, but I stopped laughing when Mom turned to me and said, “And we can wear our new dresses, Shannon.”
Oh, no! I was hoping she had forgotten those dresses. I said quickly, “It’s, uh, it’s at the cleaners, Mom.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll wear mine, anyway,” said Mom.
Whew, that had been a close call. I was glad Mom didn’t seem to really mind.