Paige Turned

by Erynn Mangum

  “The wait was unacceptable,” Judy clips to him in a monotone. “I want the tomato soup.”

  He’s struggling to get his order pad out of his apron pocket, and my heart just goes out to the poor guy. “Oh, okay, I um, let me just get this out—”

  “No croutons. No basil nonsense sprinkled on top. And a side of whole-wheat toast. Not rye, not white. Whole wheat,” she annunciates like he’s two years old and in trouble. “And I want tea. Not sweet tea, not iced tea. Plain black hot tea. With the tea bag. Am I speaking slow enough for you?”

  The waiter breaks into a sweat. I sort of want to take his hand, lead him back into the kitchen, and stand there with him in the walk-in refrigerator.

  He finally gets his order pad out and scribbles down Judy’s order. “And for you?” he asks me.

  I haven’t even looked at the menu because the odds of me actually getting food through my throat aren’t super high. “Coffee please,” I say in my sweetest tone of voice, feeling sorry for the shaking man. “With cream, please. And sugar, please.”

  “Nothing to eat?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Tyler looks questioningly at me. “I’m buying, babe. Get something to eat.”

  His mother stiffens and glowers at the endearment, and I have this inexplicable urge to slam my knife into my hand and let the poor waiter take me to the emergency room.

  Maybe I’m being dramatic.

  “I’m fine,” I say through what I hope is looking like a natural smile but what feels like me saying “cheese” with clenched teeth.

  He looks at me for a couple of seconds and then nods. “Okay, well, I guess I’ll be the only one eating real food today. I want the bacon cheeseburger with a side of fries and a Coke, please.”

  After looking at Tyler’s thin, bony mom, I suddenly have new appreciation for how the boy can put away food like the Dallas Cowboys’ football team and not seem to ever gain an ounce.

  The waiter dives and tumbles to the kitchen in a very good impersonation of the “Stop, Drop, and Roll” format I learned to do in kindergarten should I ever catch on fire.

  Judy shakes her head at him. “There is just no good help anymore. None. It must be the lack of respect children are raised with now. When I was young, everywhere treated you like the customer deserves to be treated. With respect. Waiters held doors and carried coats and wiped down menus after they were used.”

  “Well, I for one am all for dirty menus. Did you know scientists think we are all getting sick so much now because we are too clean?” Tyler says, the familiar mischievous glint in his eyes.

  The boy is playing with fire.

  Judy doesn’t even respond to her son. “Paige.” She turns her LG Premium Stainless Steel Finished eyes to me.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Tell me. Do you think you will marry my son?”

  Well, I guess we’ve already discussed my apparent infancy, the lack of good workers in our economy, the poor way that children are raised, and sticky menus. Really, what was there left to talk about other than my future marriage plans?

  I think I attempted to swallow and gasp at the same time because suddenly I am choking and the waiter hasn’t brought any water yet. Tyler is whacking me on the back, and Judy is sitting there stone-faced as every other table in this area is staring at me like I’ll be needing the Heimlich.

  “Excuse me,” I somehow get out in between the rasping cough, and I lunge for the kitchen in sort of the same way as the waiter.

  They must hear me coming because a girl with brown hair in a ponytail appears at the entrance and wordlessly hands me a glass filled to the top with water. I suck it down in record time, and before I can even ask, she’s grabbed a clear plastic pitcher and is filling it up again.

  “Thank you,” I gasp after I finish the second cup. I grip the cup with both hands and look longingly at the walk-in refrigerator.

  The girl is looking from me to my table and back to me. “Hey,” she says gently. “Why don’t you just catch your breath for a minute?”

  “Could I eat in here?”

  She grins. “Meeting the parent?”

  I nod. “I’ve never loved my own mother more.” I can just see my mother now. All warm and loving and always ready with something delicious.

  I peek around the fake fern to my table, and Tyler is looking over at me, his eyes full of concern. I hold up the water glass and a “just a minute” finger and he nods, smirking a little bit.

  Okay, so maybe he has guessed that I’m hiding out here from his mom. I bet he’s just wishing he’d started choking first so he could be the one listening to the cooks banter and smelling something frying.

  I finally walk back to the table, and the waiter has brought my coffee along with twenty-six sugar packets and eighteen of those little tubs of cream.

  I could hug the man.

  “You okay?” Tyler reaches over and rubs my back.

  “Oh fine, fine.” I wave my hand, hoping the conversation has moved to other less-awkward topics.

  The rest of lunch is uneventful, if you don’t count the nearly raw insides of my cheeks from me gnawing on them all through lunch. Tyler inhales his burger, talking easily about the economy, politics, how his work is going, and a few different sports teams.

  Judy doesn’t say hardly anything. She just alternates from glaring at me to mowing down our waiter with the visual ice picks every time he happens to appear anywhere in our vicinity.

  “Well. I’m going to run to the restroom real quick.” Tyler hands me a gold Visa card. “Give this to them if the waiter comes with the check while I’m gone.”

  “That’s doubtful,” Judy says. “This place needs a Help Wanted sign in the window.”

  “You sure you don’t want to just wait until you get home?” I ask him, trying to appear nonchalant instead of begging him not to leave me alone with this woman.

  He grins and I realize that along with a lot of affection for those blue eyes, I do hate Tyler sometimes. He leaves before I can latch on to his hand and make him take me with him.

  He is scarcely out of sight before Judy is shaking her head, looking at me. “It’s a pity really.”

  “A pity?” I ask her, trying to be polite.

  “Tyler used to be so different. He was top in his class, you know. Valedictorian. Honor roll. Quarterback.” Judy looks off into the distance, her jaw softening somewhat at the memory of a better time. “He dated only the most beautiful girls in the school, you know. All of them were accomplished. Straight As. Getting accepted into the highest schools. Prelaw, premed . . .”

  My stomach gets tighter and tighter. I’m thankful I did not eat, but I’m wishing I hadn’t gotten that last coffee refill.

  My “career” as a youth intern at my church has gone from something I love to do to something I’m ashamed of in a startlingly short amount of time. The waiter slinks over and I hand him Tyler’s card along with my self-esteem.

  “Take his last girlfriend, for instance. Now there was future wife material. The girl was well on her way to being a pediatrician, and she was willing to do whatever she needed to do to get there.”

  I started out wanting to be a counselor. Maybe I’m not there exactly, but I did think I was making a difference in kids’ lives.

  Maybe not as much of a difference as a pediatrician did. I mean, I just counsel the girls about life in high school. I certainly don’t save babies’ lives.

  Judy sighs and looks at me like I’m the piece of freshly cut basil she wrinkled her nose at and spooned out of her bowl earlier. “A real pity.”

  “Ready?” Tyler comes over right as the waiter was returning for his signature. He signs it. Judy stands and starts walking for the door while I gather whatever strength I can muster out of the depths of my bone marrow and make myself stand.

  Tyler is staring at me as I’m heaving myself out of the chair using the table to help. “You okay?” he asks in a low voice.

  “Probably not,” I say in the
weakest voice I’ve ever heard from myself.

  He frowns at the back of his mother’s head as she walks out of the restaurant, sliding her sunglasses back on her face. “I was gone for ninety seconds. I timed myself. What could she possibly have said to you in that short of time?”

  I shake my head. There will be a time to talk about it, but not today.

  Definitely not today.

  I spend the rest of the day in my sweatpants, staring blindly at HGTV, and I am too ashamed to admit how much ice cream I consumed.

  Layla calls at six. “I’ve been waiting for you to call all day! How did it go?”

  My moan is a sufficient answer, I think.

  “Oh man. Sorry, Paige. Was she just not very nice?”

  That was one way to put it.

  “I’m on my way.”

  I hang up and don’t move from the couch. I’m sitting there cross-legged, a blanket around my shoulders, my eyes bleary, my brain hurting.

  I’m trying not to keep rehashing everything that Judy said to me, but it’s hard not to hear her voice in the back of my head. “It’s a pity. A real pity.”

  Layla raps on my apartment door at a little after six thirty. She’s carrying a plastic bag with a large panda head on it.

  Figures.

  “I asked for extra mandarin sauce.” She marches into the apartment and unloads the bag onto my coffee table. “And I picked you up some spring rolls. And my mom left cookies at my apartment so I brought those too.”

  There’s a happy thought. For as awful of a cook as Layla is, her mother is like the Pioneer Woman of this county.

  “Thanks,” I croak, rubbing my head.

  Layla sits beside me on the couch and pats my knee. “So, didn’t go well, huh?”

  “Oh Layla, she’s the most awful person I’ve ever been around. And I’ve been around awful people.” When I worked at the adoption agency, I had to talk with some pretty rude people on a semiregular basis. You wouldn’t think that would be the case, but like Candace, one of the counselors who works there, used to tell me, anytime you put money and children together in the same conversation, people tend to get a little testy.

  I sigh and look at Layla. “She was just not very nice. And she ended the lunch talking about all of Tyler’s old girlfriends while he was in the restroom and how they were such a better fit for him since they were all beautiful and accomplished.”

  Layla shakes her head. “Wow. I’m sorry.” She hands me the to-go container stuffed with orange chicken, rice, and chow mein. “If it makes you feel any better, I think you’re beautiful. And I didn’t think people use the word accomplished outside of Pride and Prejudice these days.”

  I smile for the first time since this morning.

  “The first time I met Peter’s mom, she looked at me and said, ‘Oh Peter, I thought you had a thing for blondes.’”

  “She did not,” I say.

  “Did too. I swear on this Beijing beef.” My stunning friend just shakes her milk chocolate–colored curls. “My dad always told me that you have to live like a duck.”

  I’m not following the connection, but she’s looking at me like I should know what she’s talking about. I spent a lot of time at Layla’s house when we were kids, and I never heard her dad mention anything about ducks.

  I squint at her. “Because they waddle away from people unless they have food and then they attack you with their terrible beaks?”

  “You really hate birds, don’t you?” She grins. “No! He said that we need to be like ducks because they dive under the water, look for something of substance, and if they don’t find it, they pop back out and let the rest of the water roll down their backs. They don’t fester on it or soak in it, so to speak.”

  I stab my fork into the chow mein. “So I should just ignore everything she said?”

  “Yep.”

  I think about Tyler’s mother and the way she made me feel. “Yeah, but—”

  “Nope, no buts. Just shake it off, Paige.” Layla looks at me. “Seriously. Shake it off.”

  “You mean like literally?”

  “I mean like I would like you to stand up off this couch right now since you’ve probably been sitting here festering on it all day. I want you to stand in the middle of your living room and give me a good shake.”

  I just stare at her.

  “Chop, chop!” She claps her hands together.

  I look at her as I slowly set my dinner on the coffee table, slowly peel off my blanket, and slowly rise to my feet.

  She looks totally serious.

  Layla has lost her mind. The wedding prep has officially made her insane.

  “All right. Now. Shake.”

  I stare at her for a good long minute before I sort of jiggle my arms around, and Layla shakes her head.

  “No, no. Shake. Like how we used to in middle school when we found my grandma’s old records from the fifties. Come on. Shake it, girl,” she says like she’s the newest country singing sensation.

  This is ridiculous. I’m moving around like a dog skidding out of the bathtub, and Layla is dying laughing on the couch.

  I finally plop back down next to her and just sigh.

  “See? Doesn’t that feel better?”

  “You have lost it, Layla. I thought you’d lost it back in high school when you tried to bring back the stirrup pants, but you have really lost it today.”

  She just grins.

  * * * * *

  I climb in bed at ten that night. I pull my Bible back over when I see Luke’s envelope lying on my bedside table.

  Because that’s what I need on this emotionally unstable day.

  I pick up the envelope and set it on my lap, staring at the white front with my name scrawled across it.

  Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s a letter for me to give to someone else. Maybe it’s a bunch of coupons for ice cream.

  Or maybe it’s another “please come back to me, Paige” sonnet.

  Which, when I think about it, wouldn’t be too terrible. I love Luke and Layla’s mother. She’s amazing. She’s like one of those classic TV moms.

  This is ridiculous. Of course it would be a bad idea, and the number one reason it would is because I really like Tyler.

  Not so much with Luke.

  I open the back of the envelope and pull out a single sheet of white lined paper.

  Paige,

  I’m sure you are worried this is going to be another declaration of love, but please know it’s nothing like that. I have an idea for what to do to Peter’s car during the wedding and I need your help.

  I read the rest of his note and breathe a sigh that it seems to be fairly innocent, even his ideas of what to do to Peter’s car. Apparently all he needs from me is for me to steal Peter’s keys out of Layla’s purse while we are all getting ready at the church that afternoon. I’m supposed to then hand them off right before the ceremony, and Luke is going to do the rest. He wants to do the typical filling of the car with toilet paper and confetti and hanging cans off the back and writing all over the front.

  I can handle that.

  I think about Layla making me do that crazy shake and her thoughts about ducks.

  And then I think about Judy.

  So she’s a terrible person to have lunch with. So what? If this relationship with Tyler continues and this woman someday becomes my mother-in-law, then I’ll figure out how to sit through two visits a year with her, since that’s all the time she can apparently manage to spend with Tyler. If Tyler and I aren’t supposed to end up together, then I’m worrying about everything for nothing.

  I pull my Bible over and spend the next few minutes in Ecclesiastes before I turn out the light.

  Lord, I pray as I snuggle under my blankets. Please give me wisdom. And a forgiving heart. And I guess help me to be like a duck.

  * * * * *

  At the Monday morning staff meeting, Rick is in fine form.

  “I want clowns.” He walks into the room and tosses his keys on his des
k.

  I look up from my computer where I was attempting to research the best place to take someone who hates coffee. I’ve been trying to meet with this one eighth-grade girl for two months, and she always has some excuse not to go to Starbucks with me until I finally found out that she hated coffee and wasn’t that fond of tea or milk shakes.

  I asked her what she liked to drink or eat and she said, “Water.”

  Well. I guess every place serves that.

  “Clowns for what?” I ask him.

  “We’re having a party.”

  “You always want to have a party.” I look back at the computer. “We had a party last month.” Maybe if I find someplace really unique, she’ll want to come hang out with me.

  “Not true. Last month was a karaoke picnic.”

  “Same thing.” Every so often, I meet a girl like this who is very reluctant to talk to people. Those are usually the ones who need to be met with the most.

  “Not the same thing.” Rick sits down in his chair. “We should have a carnival.”

  “A carnival.” I look over at him. “Why?”

  “Because. Carnivals are fun. I love carnivals. The crappy, greasy food, the pointless prizes, the creepy made-up people.” He shrugs. “It’s like a pit of insanity right in your own backyard.”

  “Only you would actually like that.”

  “You have a better idea? We haven’t solidified our big group event for this next month.”

  We try to do some sort of event every month that isn’t a Bible study and that the kids would feel comfortable bringing their non-Christian friends to. It’s been a great outreach tool for them. And since Rick spent about four months last year teaching all of the kids how to share their faith, we have seen a lot of people meeting Jesus.

  It makes my job exciting.

  I shrug and turn in my swivel chair to look at Rick. “What about something that isn’t so elaborate?” I love working with Rick, but the man has no concept of the work that goes into things like this.

  “I’ve got it. An obstacle course.”

  I make a face. “Kind of like a third-grade birthday party if you ask me. Look, everyone is totally fine just doing hot dogs and grilling out at a park. Last time I think the volleyball net was the star of the show. Why don’t we just do that again?”