Plotting at the PTA

by Laura Alden

  “You mean . . . ?”

  “Yup. Food poisoning.” Lois made a gagging noise. “She’ll be better in a couple three days, but right now she needs some TLC.”

  “She needs her mommy.”

  “She needs some common sense.” Lois snorted. “I’ll be back by Friday. If I’m lucky, Thursday.”

  “You’re a good mom, Lois.”

  “That and a buck might get me a cup of coffee. If I can talk Ruthie into a senior discount, that is.”

  She’d hung up and I wondered if a grown-up Jenna would ever call me and ask for help. I tried to imagine my tomboy, my don’t-make-me-wear-pink daughter picking up the phone and saying, “Mom? Can you come over? I don’t feel good.”

  No, that image didn’t work at all. I’d go to her, of course I would, no matter if she lived in Rynwood, in California, or in Siberia. I’d get to her as fast as I could and mop her fevered brow, murmuring terms of endearment that would make her smile despite her illness.

  But Jenna hardly ever got sick, and she was starting to realize that I couldn’t fix all of her problems. When she grew to adulthood, what would she call me about?

  I considered it all week, and by Thursday afternoon, I thought she might call if she had to go to the hospital. I’d just decided that though a sliced thumb wasn’t nearly enough to warrant a call to me, a broken leg would be, when the phone rang. Though I was only two feet away, I couldn’t make myself pick up the receiver. Only stared at it.

  After two rings, Paoze reached across the counter and took up the receiver. “Good afternoon, Children’s Bookshelf. How may I help you?”

  Feigning unconcern, I straightened a pile of bookmarks.

  “Beth Kennedy?” Paoze turned to look at me. “One moment, please.”

  He leaned forward to pass me the phone over the counter, but I was already there, snatching the receiver out of his hand. I listened for a very short minute. “I’ll be right there.” I dropped the phone, ran to grab my purse, and shot out the door.

  * * *

  I rushed into Maude’s room. Her frail form lay under thick layers of blankets. Auntie May was sitting bedside, stroking her friend’s limp hand.

  “How is she?” I whispered, kneeling on the floor.

  Auntie May shook her head. “The doctor won’t say.” She sniffed. “They won’t tell me anything. Just look at her, though. Just look at her!”

  Maude’s face was even paler than normal. Her hair, usually brushed into a tidy do, hung on her head in flat strands. In spite of the blankets, her body was quaking with shivers.

  “Is she running a fever?”

  “What part of ‘they won’t tell me anything’ didn’t you hear?” Auntie May whispered. Or as much of a whisper as she could manage.

  I reached out to feel Maude’s forehead, but Auntie May knocked my hand away. “Don’t wake her up,” she said. “First time she’s slept in two days and now you want to take that away from her?”

  Guilt spewed into the air and came down over me like a net, wrapping tight. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

  “Now Miss I’m-So-Busy says she’s not really that busy? Sure, with Maudie here close to death you’ll make time, but when she needs—”

  “Nooo.” Maude flung her head to the side.

  “There, there.” Auntie May patted her hand. “I’m here. Beth’s here. She’ll tell you all about Kelly.” She sent me a look filled with broken glass and razor wire. “Won’t she?”

  “Well, I . . .” What I had was nothing. Not really. The buckets of speculation didn’t count; neither did the tubs of conjecture. My notebook was filling up, but it was filling up with unanswered questions. None of it would comfort Maude.

  “Kelly.” Maude lifted her head off the pillow, neck cords straining. “Kelly? Are you there?”

  The skin on the back of my neck tingled. I listened, keeping completely still, waiting, trying to hear. But all I heard was my own short breaths and the jangle of Auntie May’s bracelets as she comforted her friend.

  I closed my eyes, searching deep, but there was no Kelly anywhere near. I swallowed down my relief. It was always a good thing when you were the only one in your own brain.

  “Kelly?” Maude struggled to sit up. “I’ll find out, I promise. If it’s the last thing I do.” She looked at me, but showed no sign of recognition. “I won’t die until I find out, my Kelly. I won’t. . . .” She fell back against the pillow, groaning.

  That did it. I reached for the call light and pushed the button firmly.

  “Hey, now.” Auntie May grabbed at it with her clawlike hands. “What are you doing?”

  I held it out of her reach and made sure the red bulb on the console above the bed went on and stayed on. “Maude is sick. She needs help and I’m making sure she gets it.”

  “Aw, she’ll be fine.” Auntie May patted Maude’s cheek. “See, she’s looking better already.”

  Maude turned her head from side to side, moaning things I couldn’t make out. Something about justice, something about murder. It sounded like a bad made-for-TV movie, but maybe those movies were more realistic than I’d given them credit for.

  “She needs a nurse,” I said.

  “Pills.” Auntie May made a gagging noise. “All they want to do is give you pills.”

  “Better than needles,” Maude said weakly.

  Auntie May shot me a startled glance. “Maudie? Was that you? How are you feeling? Is your fever gone?”

  But Maude had descended back to nonsensical ramblings. A picnic, now, with deviled eggs and ham sandwiches and stale potato chips.

  “All right, ladies.” Tracy, the nurse’s aide, came bustling into the room. “What’s the problem here?”

  Maude fluttered her eyelashes. “Tracy? Is that you?” she asked in a quavery voice.

  “All day and half the night.” Tracy stood at the foot of the bed, hands in the pockets of her scrub pants, and surveyed her patient. “Hmm.” She flicked a practiced eye over Auntie May and, finally, looked at me. “Beth, can we talk?”

  “Well, sure, but don’t you . . .” I nodded at Maude.

  “I’ll tend to her in a minute.” She gave Auntie May a hard look. “And after that I’ll be taking care of you.”

  We walked a few steps away from Maude’s doorway. Tracy looked over my shoulder. “That woman will drive me batty,” she muttered. “Come on in here.” Across the hall was a door labeled LINENS. The lock was a keyless entry and the buttons made fast electronic beeps as Tracy entered the code and nodded me inside.

  Surrounded by white sheets, white pillowcases, and white towels, Tracy gave a deep sigh. “I started to tell you this once before and I never got to finish.”

  Which was what I preferred, really, because there were things I didn’t want to know, but she seemed intent on talking.

  “It’s about Maude.” Tracy leaned back against the concrete block wall.

  “You’re not going to tell me anything that will violate the privacy laws, are you? I wouldn’t want to put you at risk.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Thanks. But what I’m going to say doesn’t have anything to do with privacy. It’s common knowledge and I’m surprised you don’t know already.”

  There was an awful lot I didn’t know, including the temperature of the sun’s surface, the size of a hockey puck, and what we were going to have for dinner that night. “Don’t know what?”

  She shoved her hands in the pockets of her scrub top. “She was in the papers and everything, but it was so long ago that maybe it was before you moved here. See, for years Maude was in the—”

  Her beeper went off, loud in the small space. “Hang on, okay?” She unclipped the beeper and scrolled through the numbers. “Rats. I have to go.” The beeper went back onto her pocket. “I get off at three. Could you stay until then? I’d really like to talk to you.”

  I glanced at my watch. Two forty-five. “Sure.”

  She hurried off to whoever it was that needed tending to, and I went back to Maud
e’s room.

  “What did Tracy want?” Auntie May demanded.

  Maude’s eyes were shut and her breathing was even. I gestured toward the sleeping woman and spoke quietly. “Tracy was called away. I don’t know what she wanted.”

  Auntie May grunted. “That girl likes to talk more than she should. Just like her mother. Grandmother, too. Yep, Eunice was a corker for talking. Told her once that she’d talk to a post if it had ears. So I painted ears on a fencepost and introduced her to it.” Auntie May snorted out a laugh. “Eunice didn’t find it funny. No sense of humor, that one.”

  I picked up my purse, made my good-byes, and went to the nurse’s station.

  “Tracy’s working an extra half shift,” said a harried man with a clipboard in one hand and three-ring binder in the other. “Someone called in sick.”

  “Is there any chance I could talk to her for a minute?”

  “She’ll have a break in two hours.”

  I couldn’t possibly wait around that long. However . . . “Could I borrow a phone book, please?”

  He thumped it on the counter. “Just leave it there when you’re done,” he said, and strode down the hall.

  I flipped pages until I came to Tracy’s last name, but there was no Tracy. And no entry for her husband. Frustrated, I flipped the book shut. Tracy must be one of those people who’d canceled her landline. How was I going to call her at home tonight if I didn’t know her phone number?

  I walked the halls for a few minutes, looking for Tracy. A CNA finally took pity on me and told me that Tracy was giving Mrs. Johnson a bath. “She’ll be half an hour, at least,” she said cheerfully.

  After thanking her, I started my walk back to the store.

  Maude wasn’t going to rest peacefully until I found out once and for all what happened to Kelly. Plus, I wouldn’t rest easy until I satisfied myself that I’d done all I could.

  Ever since that night at the lake I hadn’t been sleeping well, I wasn’t able to concentrate for beans, and now I was sick with guilt over Maude.

  Think, Beth. Think.

  If only I could.

  * * *

  That night I made a quick dinner of boneless chicken breasts, bread from the bakery, and coleslaw from the grocery store. We went to the park with Spot and met up with Pete for another lesson in disc golf.

  “They’re catching on fast,” Pete said, and got big grins from both kids.

  The bike ride home was punctuated by bursts of laughter and short stretches of silence. A happy way to travel, and one that made me want to sing made-up songs of spontaneous joy. If I did, however, Jenna would roll her eyes and push ahead, which would have spoiled the mood, so I kept my music inside. It doesn’t get, I sang silently, any better than this. I will bet, that this is bliss.

  The three of us held together as a group throughout the final evening chores of emptying the dishwasher, packing up backpacks for the long Memorial Day weekend with their father, getting into pajamas, and brushing teeth.

  When I knocked on Jenna’s bedroom door, she was sitting up in bed, reading The Lightning Thief.

  “How many times have you read that?” I asked.

  “Not enough.” She turned the page and didn’t look up.

  “Another half hour,” I said, “then it’s lights out.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  I went into Oliver’s room for his bedtime routine of a lullaby and a kiss good night.

  “Mom?” Oliver held his stuffed dog, Big Nose, up in the air.

  “What, honey?”

  “I like Mr. Peterson. He’s nice.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Sometimes he makes me laugh so much my face hurts.”

  I smiled. Pete had the gift of relating to children as if they were real people and not a slightly different species that just might turn into something human if everyone was very, very lucky. He also had a gift of making people see the funny side of almost everything.

  “Do you think I could make people laugh like that?” Oliver asked.

  “You”—I kissed him on the forehead—“can do anything you put your mind to.”

  “Like getting good grades even in math?”

  “Yup.”

  “And like writing Mrs. Hoffman’s story? Parts of it are really sad, but maybe I can make it turn out good.”

  For a moment I couldn’t speak.

  Oh, Maude. I want to write you a happier story. I want you to have danced at Kelly’s wedding, I want you to be babysitting her children, I want you to be surrounded by love and laughter, I want you to go gently into the good night that waits for us all.

  The lullaby of choice that week was “All Through the Night.” I sang it through, twice, then kissed him again. “Sleep tight, Ollster.”

  “No bedbugs, Mommy,” he said, already half asleep.

  I tapped on Jenna’s door and poked my head in. “Twenty minutes.”

  “Mmm.”

  Smiling, I went downstairs. If staying up too late reading was the worst habit she picked up from me, maybe I wasn’t doing such a rotten job as a mother.

  But the time I reached the first floor, my smile had dropped away. Maybe I was doing okay as Mom this week, but I’d been neglecting my store in favor of looking for answers to Kelly’s and Amy’s deaths, and that wasn’t a good way to run a business.

  With the lullaby still humming in my head, I went into the study and hunted through my purse. An empty sandwich bag, a small toy truck, and a pen that didn’t work, but I couldn’t find what I wanted.

  I plopped the purse down on the computer chair and looked around. Where, oh where, had it gone? Could I have slid it into one of the bookcases?

  Not in with the thrillers, not with the mysteries, not with the historicals, not with the parenting books or the biographies or anywhere else in the study.

  In the next half hour, I ransacked the kitchen, the laundry room, the family room, the living room, the dining room, and my bedroom. I went out to the garage and looked there. I climbed into the car, looked under seats and in the trunk.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing. I couldn’t find it and panic was setting in. The notebook. The spiral notebook with all my Amy notes and my Kelly notes and my lists and thoughts and questions and finger-pointing.

  It was gone.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning I woke up with a cat on my stomach. For a moment I lay there, sleepily petting George’s black fur, happy to know my children were just down the hall, content with my life, and . . .

  “Oh, no! It’s gone!”

  I pushed a protesting feline aside and jumped out of bed. Finding that notebook was priority one. Well, two, after I got the kids up, dressed, fed, and off to school, but it was a two that was very close to a one.

  Morning records were broken as I rushed about like a mad thing, assembling lunches and pouring orange juice. Once I caught the kids exchanging surprised looks. Jenna shrugged and went back to her cereal. Oliver frowned, then blew bubbles in his juice until I told him to stop.

  “Are we late?” he asked.

  “No, honey. I just need to get to the store as soon as I can.”

  “Why?”

  Because your mother is an addle-brained idiot who can’t be trusted to keep track of something as simple as a notebook. “I have work to do, that’s all.”

  “Oh.” He drank some juice. “Dad says he’s going to take us to a parade this weekend. Why is the parade on Monday? I thought parades were on Saturdays.”

  I looked up from the kitchen counter where I was slapping strawberry jam onto peanut buttered bread. Now, he wants an explanation of Memorial Day? I didn’t have time to do this, but I didn’t want to miss a teaching opportunity, either. “Well . . .”

  “Because Monday is the holiday,” Jenna said. “Not Saturday.”

  “Oh.” More juice went down. “Okay.”

  Sometimes the easy explanation really is the best answer. Why did I make things so hard for myself? I flashed Jenna a grateful smile, bu
t she was busy drinking the milk out of her cereal bowl.

  Fifteen minutes later, I waved good-bye to my beloved children. Ten minutes after that, I was in my office, searching for the notebook.

  All night long I’d tamped down my panic by telling myself I’d left the dratted thing at the store. It was in my office. Of course it was. In a drawer or on the desk or on a chair or on the floor. No need to worry. Or, no need to worry that much. It’ll be fine. It’ll all work out.

  But things weren’t working out. The notebook wasn’t in my office and there was no way I would have left it up front.

  Knowing that, however, didn’t stop me from inspecting the books behind the counter to see if the notebook had gotten mixed up with them. Didn’t stop me from shoving aside the wrapping paper to see if it had wandered back behind.

  “What are you doing?”

  I heard Lois, but since I was on my hands and knees, head tilted at a funny angle, my right eyeball peering at the small gap between the counter and the wall, I couldn’t see her. “Looking for something. How’s your daughter?”

  “Into applesauce and chicken soup,”

  “That’s good,” I said absently. No notebook down there. No room, really, but you never knew. “Beyond soda crackers?” I stood up, brushed off my hands, and looked around. If it wasn’t at home, wasn’t in the car, and wasn’t here, where was it?

  “What on earth is so important that you’re getting all dirty first thing in the morning?”

  “Oh . . . nothing.”

  Lois made a noise, and I knew she was going to launch into a diatribe about my penchant for understatement.

  “Look,” I said, “there’s something I need to do. I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for a response, I hurried out the front door.

  * * *

  Half walking, half trotting, I covered the short blocks to Sunny Rest with the hope that I’d dropped it underneath Maude’s bed. Or maybe it fell out of my purse in that linen closet and slipped between the pillowcases and washcloths.