The Chronicles of Marr-nia (Short Stories Starring Barbara Marr)

by Cantwell, Karen

  “Come on! It’ll be fun. We’ve never gone.”

  “There’s a reason for that. It’s called ‘Ten million people descend upon Washington, DC.’ You know I hate crowds.”

  “No, look,” I showed him the paper, “they tell you how to avoid the crowds.”

  “There’s no way to avoid the crowds at cherry blossom time.”

  I shook my head and showed him the newspaper article I was reading. “The trick is in when you arrive at the Metro station.”

  “The Metro?!” He stood up. “No. No Metro trains. No Cherry Blossom Festival. I’m putting my foot down.”

  The room went silent.

  The kitchen clock ticked and then it tocked. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

  “Howard.” I took a beat. “How long have we been married?”

  “Fifty years?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Right.”

  “In those seventeen years, what happens every time you put your foot down?”

  He sighed. “You win?”

  “Good. Now that we have that settled, we’ll need to pack some supplies. We should be at the Metro station by seven a.m.”

  “Any chance we could still put the girls to bed and enjoy some . . . wine?”

  “Let’s see how tired I am after I get the supplies together.”

  At midnight, Howard was asleep and I was still following the instructions in the “Weekend” article on how to pack so you’d save time and money. Backpacks with water bottles, energy bars and Ziplock bags filled with popcorn. Antibacterial wipes, sunscreen and baseball hats to keep the sun off our faces. For lunch, to avoid the high cost and low quality of the fast food, I made sandwiches: turkey for Howard and me, BLT minus the B for Callie, since she was going through a vegetarian phase – added some cheese for protein. Hummus, cucumber, spiced beef and tzatziki sauce for Bethany – another phase. And PB&J for Amber, crusts cut off. One Ziplock baggie full of grapes another full of carrots, and voila! We were healthy and fed for lunch. Of course, what lunch is complete without a little dessert, right? The article was emphatic on this: to avoid the lines at the popsicle and ice cream vendors, pack your own special treat: frozen bananas. Luckily, I had a batch of ripe ones sitting on my counter. No popsicle sticks though, so I used wooden kabob skewers instead. I’m so smart. And I couldn’t forget the kites. I stuffed everything except the frozen items into five backpacks and crawled into bed at one a.m., tired, but excited for the family adventure that awaited us. My Shangri-La.

  Howard groaned when I cuddled up next to him.

  “You done?”

  “Yup. We’re ready to go.”

  “Do the girls know?”

  “Nope. I decided to surprise them in the morning.”

  He rolled over and mumbled something about surprises not being any fun, then quickly fell into a heavy snore.

  *****

  “What?!” Callie screamed. “You made plans without asking me? I’m going to the movies with Emily and Brandon today.”

  Bethany rubbed her eyes. “I can’t go. I have homework.”

  “Dora the Explorer has pickles in her backpack for Junie B. Jones but I don’t know where the wild things are,” whispered Amber.

  I addressed them all with certainty: “Callie, you can go to the movies another time; Bethany, you can do it when we get home; and,” I snapped my fingers in front of Amber’s face, “wake up sweetie, you’re still asleep.” Amber has an odd habit of opening her eyes, but not waking up. “Now, everyone, get dressed and downstairs for breakfast so we can leave by six thirty.”

  Moans and groans shook the house worse than my twenty-five-year-old washer when the load is unbalanced.

  “Don’t go acting all spoiled. You should feel privileged. Poor children in the slums of Mumbai would kill to have the opportunity to see such beauty.”

  More moans and groans.

  “Mom,” whined Bethany. “Would you stop with the slums of Mumbai thing? We get it already.”

  True, I had gone a little overboard after seeing Slum Dog Millionaire. But all three stomped off to get dressed, so it must have worked.

  Or not.

  Six thirty had me ready at the front door, keys in hand, stomping my foot. I was alone.

  Grrrrr.

  Six thirty-one.

  Crickets.

  Six thirty-two.

  “Hello?” I called up the stairs.

  A thump gave me some hope that humans would appear soon.

  Unfortunately, it was a lone thump.

  Six thirty-three and my blood pressure was rising. We were pushing the envelope of the whole get-to-the-Metro-early part of the equation for a happy, crowd-free day in DC.

  I needed some leverage to get this show on the road. Moms know about leverage. I yelled upstairs again, this time banging on the wall for added emphasis.

  “If I don’t see bodies down here right now, I’m taking away the Disney Channel, Harry Potter and Facebook. For TWO weeks!”

  Thump! Thump! Wump! Bang! Bonk! Splat!

  Three girls stood before me frowny and out of breath, but dressed for the weather. I’d take it. But no Howard. I called upstairs one more time.

  “Don’t make me say what I’ll take away from you, oh Man of the House!”

  Callie rolled her eyes, and Howard sailed down the stairs faster than Flash Gordon on uppers.

  It works every time.

  *****

  The ride to the Metro station was uneventful except for my not-so-subtle sighs every time we hit a stop light along the way. Each stop light cost us precious time. And then there was the road work and detour we didn’t expect. What should have been a seven o’clock arrival time to the Metro parking lot was turning into a seven-thirty arrival time. Minutes can be like hours or even days when you’re trying to avoid crowds. I looked at my watch. Seven twenty-eight. I sighed again and tapped my fingers on my armrest.

  “What?” Howard asked, acting like he didn’t know what was bothering me.

  “You know what.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “It won’t be fine. The lines will be three times as long now. We’ll have trouble finding parking.”

  “No we won’t.”

  A block from the station, he turned onto the road for the Metro parking lot. We came to an immediate stop – because of the long line of cars waiting to get into . . . the Metro parking lot.

  My sigh was so big and so long, I nearly passed out.

  “What? We’ll get in.” He was way too confident for his own good.

  I crossed my arms. “No we won’t.”

  Ten minutes later, there was just one car between us and the automatic ticket kiosk. Howard was smirking next to me.

  “Told you we’d get in.” The gate lifted, allowing the car ahead of us through, then fell back down. Howard moved up and pushed the red button on the kiosk. It beeped at him. He pushed again. It beeped again. The gate wasn’t moving.

  “Shit!” he muttered under his breath. But I heard him.

  “Full?” I asked.

  No answer.

  “I won’t say it,” I whispered, forcing back another sigh.

  “What isn’t Mommy going to say?” Amber yelled from her seat behind me.

  “I told you so,” answered Bethany.

  “Oh,” Amber nodded knowingly for all of her five years on this earth. “Guess that’s ’cuz she says it so much, she’s tired, huh?”

  Howard’s face glowed redder than a hot chili pepper. “Might I point out,” he said through gritted teeth, “that I’m the one who said this wasn’t a good idea to begin with? Who’s right there? Huh?”

  Cars behind us started honking.

  “Now is not the time, Howard . . .”

  “Oh, because when you’re right, it IS the time, but when I’m right it’s not the time?” A throbbing purple vein popped out on his forehead.

  “I was ready at six thirty this morning, remember? If we’d gotten on the road at the designated hour . . .” />
  HONK! A veritable caravan of cars was now letting us know they were unhappy.

  Howard exploded. “Aaahh!!” He jumped out of the van and flung his arms in the air like a wild man. He was screaming at the top of his lungs. “It’s full! The parking lot is full!”

  The honking stopped, but I feared the police might have been called as well. I dared not say another word.

  It took us eight more minutes to convince enough cars to back up so we could maneuver out and seek parking along the road. At eight eleven a.m., we finally agreed (after some loud “debate”) that the high school parking lot several blocks away was the only available alternative. Those spots were going fast too, so we grabbed up a spot in what looked like possibly the last row in the farthest back corner of the school lots, parked and piled out the van. There wasn’t one smile on one face in our little family of five as we trudged off, burdened by heavy backpacks. Shangri-La seemed distant at best.

  Howard predicted the walk to the station to be five minutes or less which should have put us there by eight sixteen.

  At eight forty-one, we found ourselves in another line. This time for train tickets.

  At nine a.m., after five people in front of us had to ask assistance in operating the ticket machines, we were finally standing on the platform waiting for the next train into Washington, DC. I had to hold onto both Bethany and Amber for fear of losing them in the dense crowd of other people also seeking a day of fun and beauty. Soon, I thought, soon, we’d be standing under the cherry blossom trees, light pink petals raining down on us while we all giggled with joy. This day would get better yet. I just knew it would.

  “I can’t breathe!” hollered Bethany, whose face was nearly plastered to the rather round and very large bottom in front of her.

  It was true. With each minute, the crowd got tighter and tighter until I felt like that last pair of socks being shoved into the already-packed-too-full suitcase.

  I felt a tugging on my sleeve. It was Amber. She was saying something, but I couldn’t hear her.

  “What?” I shouted.

  She yelled (I think), but the sound was drowned by the roar of the crowd. I bent down, getting my ear as close to her mouth as I could. “What?”

  “I have to go pee pee.”

  Crap.

  “Can you hold it?”

  “How long?” she asked with a frightened look on her face.

  I looked again at the crowd. The train still hadn’t arrived and as far back as we were, we weren’t going to make it onto the next one and we’d be lucky if we’d make it onto the one after that.

  “An hour? Maybe an hour and a half?”

  She danced a little, winced, and then her little face puckered up ready for a cry. My Mommy’s Heart did a flip-flop and as every mother knows, that’s where the rubber meets the road. I grabbed her up.

  “Come on everyone! We’ve got to find a bathroom.”

  The masses of people had seemed to jell into a sort of single-cell-like unit, and it wasn’t releasing the Marr family easily. I stepped on at least six toes and said “Excuse me” no fewer than ten times. Back up the escalators we went. After several minutes of unsuccessfully spotting a door that said “Ladies” or a sign that said “Restrooms,” I found a booth behind a glass window with a sign above that read, “Information.”

  “Where are the restrooms?” I asked the stone-faced man behind the glass.

  “Ain’t any.”

  “Hmm?” Surely I had misheard him.

  “Ain’t any.”

  I raised my voice a little higher and enunciated more clearly, convinced he didn’t understand my question.

  “REST . . ROOMS. Where ARE THEY?”

  “Ain’t any. Didn’t you hear me the first time?”

  My jaw dropped.

  “You don’t have any restrooms!?”

  Amber’s legs were crossed and she started dancing again.

  Howard and Callie, who had gone off themselves looking for some facilities, returned and stood behind me.

  “What’s going on?” Howard asked.

  I turned and screamed in his face. “Ain’t any!”

  He wiped a drop of spit from his nose. “Why are you yelling at me?”

  I spun around, then quickly changed tactics and put a sweet smile on my desperate mother face. “My five-year-old has to go to the bathroom – she HAS to go. I’m sure you understand the urgency. Five-year-olds can’t wait. Could she use YOUR bathroom?”

  “Ain’t no public restrooms in the station.”

  A deep, cleansing breath was in order. And possibly a shot of tequila.

  “Right. I understand. But YOU have to go during the day. Could she use YOUR bathroom? PLEASE?”

  “I’m only going to say this one more time, then you are going to have to step aside so I can help someone else. There AIN’T NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS IN THE STATION. You will need to go somewhere else.”

  Somewhere else?

  This man was lucky he was standing behind a glass partition. I had hands and felt ready to wrap them furiously around his thick neck.

  “Where then, sir would we find a public restroom nearby?”

  “I don’t have that kind of information Ma’am. Step aside please.”

  An explosion went off within me. I’d been sent over the edge. Like Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment when she wants her daughter to get her pain medication, the rant was simply beyond my control.

  “I should just let her pee her pants right here all over your floor, is that what you’d like? Huh? Then you’d have to deal with it, wouldn’t you? Is that what people do around here when they can’t find a bathroom – just pee on your floor!?”

  Howard rolled his eyes and started pulling me away.

  “Barb . . .”

  Callie was covering her face.

  “Mom . . .”

  “Sorry,” Howard said to Stone-face.

  “Sorry!?” I shouted loud enough for the Space Shuttle to hear. “Sorry?! Don’t tell him you’re sorry! That man has a bathroom and he’s not sharing!”

  Callie took off ahead to distance herself from her raving lunatic of a mother, and Bethany wasn’t far behind. Howard was pulling me away toward the exit with poor little Amber in tow, bravely bearing the embarrassment I had just caused her.

  So the Metro station wasn’t Shangri-La. It was the anti-Shangri-La.

  Outside, with fresh air to help calm my frazzled nerves, I set myself to solving our new problem. I scanned up one side of the street and down the other. Nothing but cars in parking lots as far as the eye could see on our side, and an endless line of townhouses on the other. No gas station. No flashing red sign that said, “Restrooms HERE!”

  “Let’s go.” I grabbed Amber’s hand and started walking.

  Everyone else followed.

  “Where?” Bethany whined.

  “Back to the car. If we find a bathroom on the way, great. Heck, I might stop at one of those townhouses and knock on the door if it gets really bad.” I looked at Amber. “You okay, sweetie? Can you hold it?”

  Her eyes were rimmed in red, and she was biting her lip. All she could do was nod. My poor baby. When this was all over, I’d make them pay. I’d go to every news station and newspaper in the DC metropolitan area, exposing them for their intolerant practices. Headlines would read: “Metro Turns Its Back on the Incontinent. Mother Fights for Justice.” The story would go national and soon I’d be sitting on a couch talking to Matt Lauer, who would feel my pain. Metro would be screaming for mercy, apologizing publicly while simultaneously installing state-of-the-art public restrooms in all of its stations. A Metro spokesperson would thank me, Barbara Marr, on the Oprah show for bringing this horrid lack of sensitivity on Metro’s part to the public eye.

  We had all been walking as fast as little Amber’s feet could go and I was lost in my Metro Revenge reverie when Bethany pointed and hollered out at the top of her lungs. “Look! Look at the playground!”

  Nearly at the end of my rop
e, I lashed out. “Bethany. Does it look like we have the luxury of time to be wasting at a playground so you can have a little fun?”

  Bethany’s face blanched at my fury and she shrunk back.

  “Mom,” whispered Callie. “I think she means to point out the building NEXT to the playground.”

  Howard nodded. “Looks like bathrooms to me.”

  It was my turn to shrink. Slowly, I turned my head, and there, to my wondrous eyes did appear a little playground at the base of a grassy hill, and next to that playground was a building made of brick that had the familiar appearance of a public restroom. I sent Amber running toward it.

  “Go, Sweetie – we’ll catch up.”

  Callie explored while Bethany sat morosely on a swing. I looked at my watch for the first time since we’d left the station. The groan was automatic. “Nine forty-five,” I said to Howard.

  “It will be ten thirty before we get on a train. If we’re lucky.”

  “After eleven before we get off that train.”

  “Another twenty minutes to walk to the tidal basin to see the blossoms.”

  “We’ll be tired and hungry and cranky.”

  “And we won’t miss the crowds.”

  I felt defeated. As if the God of Family Fun had spit on us. My dream of Shangri-La, dashed.

  Amber skipped from the little brick building with a smile on her face. She was ready to go again.

  “Hey!” Callie was calling from the top of the little hill behind the building. “Come here!” There was a playfulness in her tone that I hadn’t heard since she’d hit puberty. I gave Howard a shrug and the two of us headed her way, with Amber and Bethany passing by, leaving us in the dust. By the time we reached the three girls, I was huffing and he was puffing.

  “Look! We don’t have to take the Metro after all,” Callie said with the happiest grin I’d seen on her face in years.

  Amber and Bethany were jumping up and down, shrieking in glee.

  It was a miracle.

  I smiled.

  Howard smiled.

  I felt like Peter Finch in the movie Lost Horizon, standing at the rim of the mountain looking down into paradise. We’d found our cherry blossoms. I had my Shangri-La.

  And it appeared to be our own little secret, save for a few others who dotted the landscape.