The Upside of Ordinary

by Susan Lubner

  “I’m not doing that anymore,” I tell her.

  “What? Why?” she asks.

  “What?” Zelda interrupts. “You mean you annoyed everyone for nothing?” Ro’s mom approaches the table.

  “Hello, young ladies,” she says. “What good workers you are. I will have to buy some of your mother’s yummy pickles.” She reaches up for the jar of dills. Before she can get her hand around it, my mother walks over to the table. She and the skull ring are practically eyeball to eyeball … if skulls actually had eyeballs. “How was your trip to Florida?” Mom asks.

  “Ro’s mom drops her arm and turns her back to me. “Wonderful, thank you. I was just about to buy some of your pickles.” She whips around and reaches for the dills again.

  “Wait!” I shout. “Try one of these first. Little Stuffers! They’re brand-new! You’re going to love them.” I push the little sample up in her hand.

  “Well, all right, Jermaine. Your mother is lucky to have such an enthusiastic helper.” She takes the cup from my hand. “How delicious,” she says, crunching away. “Do I taste a hint of ginger?”

  “Ginger, it’s in there!” My mother starts explaining about my idea for Little Stuffers. While they’re distracted, I pluck the jar of dills from the pyramid, calmly whisking it under the table and grabbing another jar of dills for Ro’s mom—making sure this one is actually pickled.

  “Can I try a sample?” Ro asks.

  “Sure,” I say. Ro picks up a little cup of pickles. That’s when I notice she’s wearing the lucky skull ring on her finger!

  “Hey!” I say. “How did you get that?”

  “Before I left for Florida one of my brackets broke.” Ro points to the braces on her front teeth. “I got another one out of the prize machine at the orthodontist’s,” she tells me matter-of-factly. Who would have guessed there was more than one lucky skull ring in this world? “You can keep my other one,” she tells me. “It can be like our friendship ring.”

  After Ro and her mom leave, I tuck the dills inside my sweat shirt and sneak them into the bathroom. I have to dig around inside the jar a bit before I can finally reach the ring and pull it out. I munch through about half of the dills, which aren’t very pickle-y yet, and then toss the rest into the garbage. Then I rinse the ring off and slide it onto my finger. If it was ever lucky to begin with, surely by now it’s had all the good luck pickled out of it. I make a beeline back to the booth. I need to make sure there aren’t any more of those un-pickled dills around. Only two other jars in the pyramid have a dated red sticker stuck to the bottom.

  “What’s going on?” my mother asks me.

  “I think some of the jars got mixed up.”

  “How did that happen?” my mother asks. “How did these pickles get here?”

  “You told me to bring extra dill pickles this morning,” Dad explains.

  “I told you to take the jars from the top shelves.”

  “I did take them from the top shelves … after I’d reorganized everything in the storage room.”

  “Reorganized?”

  “There was no order to your pickles,” said Dad. “So I moved all the dills together onto one shelf, all the sweet and spicy together … and everything is alphabetized now, starting with the bread and butters …”

  “Clark!” my mother interrupts, “some of these pickles are not ready to sell. That’s why we keep them on a separate shelf. Red sticker means not yet pickled!” Mom shows Dad the tiny red sticker with the date penciled on it. Dad’s face lights up at the sight of it.

  “Wow! Color-coded and dated! I’m impressed,” he says.

  “I’m just glad Jermaine caught the mistake before we sold any of those un-pickled dills. That would have been a a disaster,” says Mom.

  You have no idea, I’m thinking.

  Later on in the evening, a voice booms over the loudspeaker.

  “Laddddddiiiieeeesss and Gentlllllllemmen … piiiiickkkkllllle maaaaaakerrrrrrrs and piiiiickkkkllllle looover- rrrrrrrs … THE JUDGES HAVE A WINNER….”

  25

  Almost Famous

  “Hurry up, girls, we’re waiting,” Mom yells up from the kitchen.

  “Coming,” I shout back. Lying flat on my stomach, I continue to rub the carpet with the damp cloth. I can still see a tiny bit of the blue stain left from the Magic 8 Ball, but most of it is gone. Through the gap between the legs of my dresser, I notice Zelda’s orange high-top sneakers in the doorway of my room.

  “What are you doing down there?” she asks me.

  “I spilled something and I’m trying to get it out,” I explain. I give the carpet one last scrub before I inch my way up from the floor. That’s when Zelda pulls something out from behind her back and gently tosses it onto my bed. It makes a soft thwack when it lands. My camera.

  “Lose something?” she asks me. I smile. Not because I’m happy to see it, but because my sister cared enough to return it to me.

  “Thanks,” I tell her. Zelda almost smiles back, but catches herself.

  “Whatever, dummy,” she says.

  Downstairs the Scrabble board is already set up on the kitchen table. This morning’s Bangor Daily News article about the Palooza has been clipped out, each corner secured to the fridge with a magnet I collected yesterday from one of the other pickle-makers. Only the first-place winner got to have her picture taken, but Mom’s name is listed with the other runner-up.

  I play around with my Scrabble tiles for a few minutes before I spell the word hockey, to my father’s delight. Zelda is building a small tower out of the unused tiles that are facedown in the center of the table.

  “It’s your turn,” I remind her.

  “OH? It’s my turn,” Zelda laughs as she places the letter o above the h in hockey.

  “O-K!” she says, moving the o above the k instead. Then mom says, “Actually Zelda, that’s very good. Your o is on the double word score square, which gives you a total of ten points!” Mom claps her hands cheerfully, and loud enough to startle Susie, who lifts up her head and barks.

  “Oh, really?” Zelda giggles. That makes Mom laugh. Dad’s turn is next. While he tries to spell out a word, my mother makes an announcement.

  “Jermaine,” she says, “what would you think if I put your face on the Little Stuffers label?”

  “Are you kidding?” I practically scream. “My face is going to be on the label?”

  “It was your idea,” she tells me. “I can’t take all the credit.”

  “Yes!” I shout. “I love that idea!” I can’t believe it! My face is going to be on all the jars of Little Stuffers! My brain is thinking … photo shoot! And wondering about things like … national distribution! Now that Mom’s business is expanding, and Little Stuffers won first runner-up … who knows where this will lead! My mind can’t keep up with all the possibilities. I imagine my face smiling from the store shelves. Hey, aren’t you the pickle girl? strangers will ask me. I know you! they’ll point and say.

  “Maybe I could be in a TV commercial?” I suggest.

  “We’ll have to sell lots of pickles before we can afford to do that,” Mom tells me.

  “I’m almost famous!” I yell.

  “Almost …” Mom smiles.

  “Almost …” I repeat.

  26

  Memories

  “Granny, look into the camera,” Nina says. I zoom in on Granny Viola’s soft, wrinkled face. Mrs. Fairly sits next to her on one side and Nina is on the other.

  “What do I do, again?” Granny V asks.

  “Tell us stories about when you were younger. How you and Grandpa Keith met when you sat next to each other in the theater. And the year you lived in the city and sold hats at the fancy department store.”

  The nursing aides love my idea of filming the folks at the Bluebird Nest & Rest Senior Home. The video diaries will help some of the residents remember things they sometimes forget.

  Pat helps me connect my video camera to the big TV. The residents, some in wheelchairs or h
olding walkers, some on their own frail legs, gather around the screen to watch themselves talk about their lives.

  Mr. Chandler had a twin sister and grew up on a dairy farm. Mrs. Eggers wrote a book about good manners that was published. Mrs. Hopper sailed to Europe on a ship with her husband. Mr. Blakely has nine children, and six of them are doctors. When it’s over, there’s applause.

  “Wonderful.” Viola claps.

  “Terrific!” Pat hoots. A warm flash of happiness spills over me.

  “Take a bow, Jermaine!” Nina shouts above the cheers.

  And I do.