by Dyan Sheldon
She’s like the buzzard of bad news, I thought. She starts circling overhead at the first whiff of trouble.
“Hi, Ella.” Carla treated me to one of her Nutrasweet smiles. “I promised your mom I’d stop by.” She added saccharine to the Nutrasweet. “You know, last-minute conference before my rally.” She risked a few wrinkles in middle age by making a face. “No wonder American Presidents always get so old while they’re in office. I mean, I haven’t even been elected yet, and there is sooo much to do – planning … organization … decisions—”
Lying … scheming … spending all that money…
Carla broke off with a humble laugh. “Listen to me, explaining to you. You must know as much about it as I do.”
And then some, I thought. But all I said was, “Right.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“So?” said Carla. “Are you going to ask me in?”
“Of course.” I didn’t so much as twitch. “Only … only I’m afraid my mother doesn’t want to be disturbed right now. You know, she’s right in the middle of everything.”
“This won’t take long.” Not a person who needs any encouragement, Carla stepped past me and into the hall. Short of tackling her, there wasn’t any way to keep her out. Carla held up the box. “I brought over the costumes for your mom and Mrs Wallace.” My mother always hires Mrs Wallace to help her set up her parties and dinners.
“Oh.” I laughed. “I didn’t know they were wearing costumes.”
“Everybody’s wearing a costume,” Carla assured me. “Even my parents and their friends. It’s going to be like the United Nations.”
Any time I’d seen a meeting of the United Nations on television everyone was dressed in suits, but I didn’t comment. I reached out for the box. “I’ll make sure she gets it.”
Carla pulled it out of my reach. “That’s OK, I’ll give it to her. I’m dying to see what she’s making.” She soaked me with another smile. “You and your dad are sooo lucky. Your mother is such a great cook.”
“I’m afraid I have to insist,” I insisted. “You don’t know my mother. She doesn’t like to be disturbed when she’s working.” I slowly edged myself between Carla and the hallway that led to the kitchen. “It throws off her timing.” I leaned against the wall. “Timing is crucial in cooking.”
Carla wasn’t interested in cooking. Why should she be? She wasn’t ever going to have to do any herself. But she was interested in something.
“What’s that?” asked Carla. “Don’t tell me you got a dog.”
I followed her eyes to the bottom of the stairs where a large wet patch had darkened the carpet. So that was why my mother swore when she came downstairs; she had spilled her wine.
I made my face blank. “No,” I said flatly, “we didn’t get a dog.”
One eyebrow arched ever so slightly. “Your mother really must be busy if she didn’t notice that.” She knew my mother well enough to know that the most infinitesimal speck of dust didn’t fall in our house without my mother noticing. She gave me another smile. “So what is it?”
I said the first thing that came into my mind. I said, “It’s probably from when she watered the plants.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
“What plants?” asked Carla. “Your mother hates indoor plants.”
It was true, my mother said they attracted bugs. It’s Lola’s mother who has plants all over the house.
“She’s mellowing,” I said. “She likes them now.”
Carla looked suspicious. I could almost see her ears prick up. “Really?” She sniffed. Maybe she wasn’t the buzzard of bad news after all. Maybe she was the bloodhound of doom. “It doesn’t smell like water.”
“Doesn’t it? I don’t know what else it could be.”
Even Carla Santini wasn’t going to get down on the floor for a closer inspection right in front of me. But she didn’t have to; I could tell that she could tell I was lying.
Carla sighed. “Well, I guess you can’t fight City Hall, can you?” She waved the box at me. “I’ll just give this to her, and then I’ll be on my way.”
She started to move towards the door at the end of the hall.
“She’s not in the kitchen!” I may have screamed. “She’s—” Carla turned to look at me. “She’s upstairs.”
Carla tilted her head. “I thought you said she was busy cooking.”
“She is busy cooking,” I rushed on. “But she likes to take little breaks. You know, power breaks.” If anyone in the world could understand the concept of power breaks, that person had to be Carla Santini.
Carla stared at me for a second. Coldly. And then she shrugged. “Well, that’s OK. You can give me a coffee while I wait.”
I said, “I…”
Carla smiled.
I said, “Well…”
Carla smiled some more.
I said, “I think she has a headache.”
“A headache?” Carla stopped smiling. “You didn’t mention a headache before.”
Hanging out with Lola was paying off; the lies were coming thick and fast.
“I didn’t want you to feel guilty.” As if Carla Santini even knows what guilt is. “You know, because she got it from working so hard for your rally.”
“Really? How thoughtful of you.” Her eyes darted towards the stain again. She hadn’t missed the wine bottle in the kitchen the other day. “Well what if I just pop up to see her? It won’t take more than a couple of minutes.”
I was really beginning to understand the Greeks now. Lola was right; I was a product of my environment. I was brought up by people who planned, followed rules, and were insured against everything from fires and floods to things falling out of planes and being hit by an asteroid. They believed that if they took the proper precautions they could protect themselves from anything bad. And I’d believed that, too. But if I’d been raised by Aeschylus I would have known better. I’d have known that bad things happen no matter how much insurance you have.
Standing there, watching Carla about to launch herself up the stairs to find no one there, I consoled myself with the thought that at least things were about as bad as they could get.
But if I had been raised by Aeschylus I would also have known that no matter how bad things are they can always get worse.
Carla had one foot on the stairs when the bottom fell out of the bad news box.
“Carla, honey?” my mother’s voice called down the stairs.
There was no thickness or slur in it now.
Carla was as surprised as I was, though she didn’t go into cardiac arrest. She gave me a suspicious glance, and rallied immediately. “Hi, Mrs Gerard!” she called back. “I just wanted to see how things are going. And I brought your costumes.”
My mother’s voice was slightly muffled, as if she had a bag over her head. Or a towel. “I just got out of the shower.” She laughed the distinctive Marilyn Gerard laugh; heeheehee. “I needed to re-energize myself. There’s still a lot to do. And I’m sure you must have a million things to do yourself… Why don’t you just leave the costumes with Ella, honey? I’ll talk to you later.”
Carla was craning her neck up the stairs, where there was nothing to see, her expression thoughtful. “Sure,” said Carla. “The rally starts at eight, so I’ll see you at six, Mrs Gerard. That should give you enough time to set everything up.”
“Six o’clock,” echoed the voice of my mother. “See you then, honey.”
I could hear Lola on the phone in the kitchen as I came down the stairs.
“It’s an emergency,” she was saying. “I don’t care whose car you’re under, you have to get over here pronto.”
She was silent for a few seconds while Sam gave in.
“Great,” said Lola. “Oh, and – Sam? Could you pick up some chips and pretzels and stuff like that on the way? A lot. Enough for a hundred… Ella will pay you back when you get here.”
She was silent for one second while Sam wondered aloud why she wanted a lo
t of potato chips.
Lola looked up as I came into the kitchen. “I’ll tell you when you get here. Ella and I have a lot to do.” She hung up the phone. “Well?” she said to me. “How’s Marilyn?”
“Out like a power cut.”
“Excellent. Let’s hope it takes at least six hours to repair.” She handed me the broom. “You start on the floor. I’ll tackle the counters.”
I took the broom. Reluctantly. “You do realize that this isn’t going to work, don’t you?”
“Well use the mop then,” said Lola.
I heaved a sigh worthy of Lola Cep. “No, I didn’t mean the broom. I meant Plan A.”
Plan A was a typical Lola Cep plan; simple yet impossible. Lola and I, wearing the costumes intended for my mother and Mrs Wallace, would take the food that my mother had already prepared to Carla’s party in my mother’s car. There was nothing about Plan A that couldn’t go wrong. It had more scope for disaster than a nuclear war.
“And what are you putting forth as Plan B?” she enquired. “Telling the truth? Because that’s the only other feasible option I see. There is no choice.”
“Well if we have no choice, it’s because somebody opened her big mouth.”
“I don’t believe this!” Lola flapped the garbage bag she’d taken from under the sink in my direction. “That’s gratitude for you, isn’t it?” she squawked. “If I hadn’t stepped in, Carla would have been up the stairs looking for Marilyn in less time than it takes to say ‘social outcasts’. Unless, of course, you were planning to tell Carla that working so hard for her rally had made your mother invisible.”
I swiped at the floor with the broom. “Well, maybe next time you should try not to help.” I was snarling slightly. “If you were going to pretend to be my mother, why couldn’t you have a major migraine that would incapacitate her for days?”
Lola wasn’t snarling; she was the voice of reason. “Because Carla was suspicious. I could hear it in her tone.” She started sweeping debris from the counter into the bag. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression you wouldn’t want Carla to discover the truth. I know I don’t. The last thing we need is to actually give her something to talk about. It’s worse than when she has to make things up.”
It wasn’t easy to argue with that, but I tried. “I still think a migraine would have worked.”
“Then why didn’t you say Marilyn had a migraine?” countered Lola.
“I did say she had a headache.”
“You also said she was too busy to be disturbed.”
“I’m not used to lying the way you are. I said the first thing that came into my head.”
“Well it’s too late for your mother to develop a migraine now.” Lola’s voice was heavy with scorn – presumably for me, the mediocre liar in the group. “Carla would be round here with a news team. She’d know for sure then that something is up.”
Lola was right about that, too, of course. If my mother didn’t arrive with the food, Carla would be on me like a hawk on a mouse.
“And anyway,” Lola went on, “my plan will work. You just have to believe.”
“I do believe. I believe that I’d rather be dead.”
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic,” ordered Lola. “It’s going to be a piece of cake.”
“But you’re shorter than my mother.”
“I’ll wear heels.”
“And you’re heavier.”
“They’ll think it’s the costume.”
“And I’m taller and thinner than Mrs Wallace.”
“Mrs Wallace is the hired help. No one’s going to notice if she’s gained a couple of inches or lost a few pounds.”
“And she wears glasses.”
“So will you,” Lola assured me. “Sam’s going to stop by my house and get my stage glasses.”
“Well, what about the food?” I had a really bad feeling about how this evening was going to turn out. “We don’t have enough food.”
Lola’s sigh made mine sound like the breath of a butterfly. “Well that’s why Sam’s bringing the chips, isn’t it, Ella? So we’ll have plenty to eat.”
“Pretzels and potato chips aren’t exactly part of an international buffet,” I argued.
“Oh, for God’s sake, El. Your mother’s the only person on the planet who doesn’t think snack food is fit for human consumption. The rest of the country lives on it. As long as they’ve got something to stuff in their faces they’re not going to notice whether it’s Indonesian egg rolls or chilli-flavoured tortilla chips.”
“But you just can’t—”
I was going to say you just can’t go around impersonating people, but Lola didn’t give me a chance to finish.
“Can’t… Can’t… Can’t…” she chanted. “That should be your middle name: Ella You-Just-Can’t-Do-That Gerard. That’s your first reaction to everything.”
“Well in this case it’s true!” I wailed. “You just can’t pretend to be somebody else.”
“Maybe you should become a cloistered nun,” said Lola. “Then you really couldn’t do anything but obey orders.”
I may be a coward, but I’m a stubborn one. “But what about my mother? What if she wakes up while we’re gone?”
Lola raised her arms to implore the heavens, dumping all the garbage she’d taken from the counters onto the floor.
“For Pete’s sake, El. What do you think I called Sam for?”
“To pick up the chips and the glasses?”
“That, too.” Lola smiled as though she’d just invented the wheel. “Sam’s going to mommy-sit while we’re out.”
I practically dropped my broom. “And does Sam know this?”
“Not yet,” said Lola.
Lola was finishing off the kitchen and I was finishing off lying to Mrs Wallace when Sam arrived with the stage glasses and a hundred bags of chips and pretzels.
“I said a lot, not everything they had,” said Lola.
Sam said, “So what’s going on?”
We told him what was going on while we changed into our costumes. I explained about my mother; and Lola explained Plan A. Sam didn’t bother to argue. I think he was probably so gobsmacked by the news that my mother was “sleeping it off” upstairs that he would have said yes to cutting his hair.
All he said when we were through was, “You know, Lola, I never knew how dull my life was until I met you.”
But Sam’s easy acquiescence didn’t mean that he thought any more of Plan A than I did. As far as that went, Sam agreed with me.
“You’re nuts,” he shouted through my bathroom door. “You can’t do this, Lola. It isn’t going to work.”
Lola rolled her eyes in my direction. “Good God,” she muttered, “he sounds like you.”
I, however, was too busy staring at my reflection in the mirror to pay much attention to what Lola was doing. My reflection was pretty gripping.
“I’m not going,” I whispered. “I can’t be seen in public like this.”
For my mother, the elite caterer, Carla had chosen an elaborate Geisha outfit from the upper end of the costume market. For Mrs Wallace, the hired help, she’d selected the cheapest thing she could find, which as far as I could tell was meant to be Hawaiian. It featured a plastic grass skirt, half a dozen plastic leis, a pink body suit, and a black wig made from the hair of a horse that had died a terrible death. All that was missing was a bra made out of coconut shells.
Lola didn’t let my declaration disturb her conversation with Sam for a nanosecond.
“Oh, ye of little faith!” she cried, raising her eyes to the ceiling light. “Why am I given only doubters?”
“This is reality speaking, not doubt!” Sam shouted back. “Unless there’s a blackout, you’re not going to fool anyone for more than a minute.”
Lola stepped away from the sink, scrutinizing herself in the mirror. She looked incredible. Even her own mother wouldn’t have recognized her. I half expected Lola to start pouring tea.
“That�
�s what you think.” She smiled. “Come on,” she said to me. “Let’s show Sam how wrong he is.”
I didn’t budge, which was pretty easy since the sight of myself had more or less turned me to stone. “I told you. I’m not going out there. Not like this.”
Lola groaned. “Oh for heaven’s sake, Ella. What does it matter? Nobody’s going to know it’s you, are they? That wig practically obliterates your face.” She grabbed hold of my elbow and started tugging me towards the door. “And, anyway, you look great. I can practically hear the ukuleles playing.”
I dug in my flip-flops.
“I don’t look great. I look like a guy in drag pretending to be a hula dancer.”
“Put on the glasses,” ordered Lola. “I want Sam to get the full effect.”
It took Sam a few seconds to recover from the full effect.
“Christ!” He sat up, wiping his eyes. If my mother had seen the state of my bed after Sam collapsed on it he would really have had something to cry about. “I thought you were going to be the Swedish Chef and his assistant or something like that.”
Lola kicked his foot. “Come on,” she urged. “Admit it. You would never have known it was us in a million years.”
“Two million.” Sam winked. “But I would have noticed you. Especially Ella. She looks like an Easter basket with legs.”
“Well no one at the party’s going to notice us,” said Lola. “The Santinis will be too busy, and as far as anyone else is concerned we’re just the servants. No one ever looks at the servants.”
“Maybe,” Sam conceded. “I mean, the disguises are pretty good, but I still don’t like it. And just for the record, I’m not really all that happy about staying here to babysit your mom. What am I supposed to do if she wakes up while you’re gone?”
“She won’t wake up,” Lola promised. Altogether, Lola and I found three empty wine bottles. It was amazing my mother had been able to stand for as long as she had. “She’s out for the count.”
“And anyway,” I added. “If she does wake up, the sight of you will make her pass out again.”
“Great,” said Sam. “That makes me feel a whole lot better.”
