Confessions of a Wedding Musician Mom

by Jennifer McCoy Blaske

  “We’re having some plumbing issues today,” Steve said firmly. “The bathrooms aren’t working.”

  “Uh … right,” I said. “We’re waiting for the plumber to come. He should be here any minute, actually.” I looked up and down the street as if I was watching for a truck. “And I sure hope he comes soon because it’s really difficult having kids and, uh … no bathroom.” I cleared my throat and avoided the man’s eyes.

  Steve looked at me like I was crazy.

  The man sighed and his son started bouncing faster. “Are you sure? We’ll just be a minute. He really has to go.”

  “Sorry,” said Steve. He pointed down the street. “If you go down to the end of the street, turn left, and then turn left again onto McMurray Road, there’s a group of fast-food restaurants not too far.”

  “Right,” I added quickly. “That’s where we’ve been going.”

  Steve gave me that strange look again.

  The man looked at us steadily for a moment. I tried to look everywhere but at him.

  “All right,” he finally said. “Thank you.”

  His son tugged his hand as they walked away. “Come on, Dad!”

  After a few seconds I whispered to Steve. “I felt bad lying to them.”

  “You did?” Steve asked. “It sounded to me like you were having fun with it.”

  “Well, I had to make it believable. And I still think we should’ve let them use the bathroom. That poor kid.”

  “What are you, crazy?” Steve whispered. “You just told me somebody ran off with all the money you made. Now you want total strangers wandering around inside our house?”

  “Well, you could’ve gone with them and waited in the hallway. What did you think would happen?”

  “I have no idea, and I didn’t want to find out. Don’t worry, they’ll be fine.”

  A blue rubber ball the kids had been kicking around in the front yard came bouncing past us. Angela was running after it.

  She picked up the ball. “Hey,” she said, pointing behind her. “What’s for sale back there?”

  “Where?” I leaned over the table and turned my head. I couldn’t see anything.

  “In the backyard by the bushes,” said Angela. “There’s a boy and his dad back there.”

  Wait a minute. There was a boy and his dad in our backyard by the bushes? Surely they weren’t … They couldn’t actually be … I jumped out of my chair and ran around to the front of the table where Angela was. They were.

  I clapped my hand to my mouth. “Steeeeve!”

  “What?” he said, walking around the table to see what we were looking at. “Oh, well, that’s one solution.”

  “Don’t look!” I squealed and swatted the air with my hand. “Everybody turn around!”

  None of us moved.

  “Angela, gimme the ball!” Danny yelled as he ran up to us. He stopped and followed our stares. “Hey, that boy’s peeing in our yard!”

  “Shush!” I said, looking down at the pavement and shielding my eyes with my hand. “Okay, everybody quit staring! Turn around!” I slightly turned each kid’s shoulders before going back to my chair, folding my hands on the table, and looking straight ahead.

  Danny looked toward the backyard and started laughing.

  “Don’t look!” I said. “And don’t laugh! Are they done yet? Aaahh! No, forget I said that! Turn around! Quit looking!” I looked at the street and put my hand up to the side of my face. “Eww eww eww … what kind of people do something like that?”

  “I guess he really had to go.” Steve walked back to his chair and sat down next to me.

  I turned around to face him. “This is all your fault! If you’d just let that poor child use our bathroom when they asked us, this never would have happened.”

  Steve shrugged. “Eh, it’s not that big a deal.”

  “Not that big a deal? A stranger is peeing in our backyard!”

  “Well, we weren’t exactly in danger of winning Yard of the Month to begin with. A new brown spot won’t make that much difference.”

  I shuddered.

  “Here they come,” said Danny. He was still staring right at them, despite everything I’d said.

  I waved my arms frantically. “Okay, everybody pretend we didn’t see anything. Kids, turn around and face me and daddy. Here, everybody pretend we’re in the middle of some fascinating conversation like we never noticed anything.”

  Steve leaned across the table. “Kids,” he said gravely, “it’s time to finally tell you the truth. Your mother and I aren’t really who we say we are. While you’re asleep at night, we put on our superhero outfits and fight crime.”

  Danny’s eyes got huge. “Really?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I said. “He’s joking. Steve, cut it out.”

  “What?” Steve asked innocently. “You told us to have a fascinating conversation.”

  The father and son who’d just been using our backyard as a toilet walked past us down the driveway without giving us a glance. They both looked quite happy with themselves.

  There was dead silence for about four seconds. Then, Steve and the kids all burst out laughing.

  “Hush!” I whispered. “They could still hear you!”

  “This is fun!” Danny said, still laughing. “We should have a garage sale every week.”

  “Yes,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Because this one has been so incredibly successful.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Eighteen dollars and twelve cents was the grand total from our garage sale. Three days of digging through closets and drawers, sorting and tagging things, hauling everything out to the driveway, and spending half my Saturday sitting outside, and all I had to show for it was eighteen dollars and twelve cents.

  “Heather,” Steve said to me the next day, “what if … now, don’t get mad at me … but what if you got some sort of part-time job? Just something temporary that brings in a little side money. You know, just until your wedding business starts picking up.”

  I’d been thinking the exact same thing, but I was afraid to say it. “I really don’t want to go back to an office. I hate the work. I hate the traffic. Plus, I want to be home when the kids get home from school.”

  “Yeah, I want that too. So, let’s see …” Steve stared off to the side, thinking, “what’s something close to home that’s always hiring and you’d get home around the same time as the kids?”

  Our eyes met.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Steve asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” I grumbled.

  * * *

  I’d been hoping to substitute teach in Danny and Angela’s school. But I was told at my substitute teaching orientation that the elementary school jobs were the most requested. People who were willing to work at middle schools were likely to get called more quickly and more often, especially since the school year was well under way and lot of the elementary substitute teachers were already established.

  Since I was eager to get started—mostly because I was afraid that I’d change my mind and back out if I thought about it for too long—I marked the middle school box on my application. Within three days I received my first call. It was for a seventh grade math teacher.

  I pulled nervously into the visitor section of the parking lot at Baker Middle School—just like I’d been advised to do during orientation. I went inside and made my way to the office.

  “You’ll need to sign in here, then wear this name tag all day, for security purposes,” said the school secretary. “Do you know where Mrs. Thompson’s room is?”

  “No,” I said, scribbling Mrs. Hershey on the name tag sticker. I peeled off the back and stuck it on my blouse. “I’ve never been here before.”

  “All right.” She slapped a xeroxed copy of a map on the counter and started drawing on it. “You turn left out of the office, turn right at the second hallway, go up the flight of stairs, then take your first right. It’s the second classroom on the left.”

  �
�Thank you.” I took the map and walked out of the office into the sea of kids. I was trying not to get run down by the preteen boys plowing past me, oblivious to anything in their paths.

  I arrived at the classroom, switched on the lights, and was greeted by a teacher’s desk completely covered in mounds of paper. I dropped my purse onto the chair. I needed to find something, anything, that would enlighten me vis-à-vis what I was supposed to do when the twelve-year-olds all came barreling into the room in about ten minutes.

  I started digging through the mass of scattered papers. Let’s see what I find, I thought. I discovered: school announcements, this week’s school lunch menu, a messy lump of what looked like graded homework assignments, and a letter from the principal about schedule changes due to Thursday’s assembly. I moved the mounds around, starting to get frantic. I unearthed: two unopened envelopes addressed to Ms. Sharon Thompson, a letter from a parent, countless yellow sticky notes, a crumpled up Target receipt, a nickel, a calculator, five paper clips, and a stack of unsigned permission slips.

  I finally found piece of yellow lined paper that had Substitute Plans and the date scribbled across the top in black ink. Aha, here we go, I thought. As I squinted at the paper trying to read Mrs. Thompson’s cursive writing, two boys appeared in the doorway.

  “A sub!” one announced. He was standing in the doorway staring at me.

  The other boy walked across the room. He plopped into his seat and casually let his books fall onto his desk with a thud.

  I smiled at them and looked back down at the yellow paper. I was able to decipher some words. First, second, and fourth periods, give them worksheet 12A.

  “Get out of the way, Joe!” a girl yelled. “You’re blocking the door!”

  Joe took a step to the side. “We have a sub!” he informed his classmates as they poured into the room.

  “Well, duh,” said the girl as she glided past him and flounced to her seat. “I’m not blind. I can see that lady isn’t Mrs. Thompson.”

  I smiled at her and was about to introduce myself, but she wasn’t paying attention to me. I looked around the classroom, trying to make eye contact. No one else was really paying attention to me either.

  I looked at the yellow paper again. Third, fifth, and seventh periods—worksheets 13A and 13B. Walk fourth period to lunch at 11:35. Sixth period planning. Was that it? I flipped the paper over, expecting to find more information on the back. It was blank.

  Fumbling around the desk a bit more revealed worksheets 12A, 13A, and 13B. I put them in three neat stacks and shoved everything else to the side.

  As kids continued to trickle in, I walked to the front of the room. I wrote my name on the blackboard and stood grinning at no one in particular.

  Steve thought substitute teaching would probably be easy for me. “After all,” he’d said, “you’ve got years of experience dealing with our kids all day long.” But now, standing in front of a room filled with twelve-year-olds, armed with nothing but scribbled instructions and a few math worksheets, I could already see that this was very different from being a mom.

  There were so many kids. They were so loud. They were so big. And worse, they were strangers. At least with my own kids I could tell when Angela was lying. And when Danny was acting insane—because he was tired—I knew that dunking him into a warm bath with a couple toy boats would solve all our problems. But I didn’t even know any of these kids’ first names, let alone a single thing about them or who they were or what they were like. Not to mention the fact that dunking any of them into a warm bath was definitely not an option.

  The bell rang.

  “Good morning,” I said. Despite my best efforts, my voice was slightly shaking. “I’m Mrs. Hershey.”

  “Where’s Mrs. Thompson?” a boy in the third row yelled.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But she left this assignment for you.” I suddenly realized I’d been clutching the stack of worksheets against my chest like some sort of protective shield. I started passing them out.

  “Can I go to the bathroom?” someone called out.

  “The bathroom?” I repeated. Was there some sort of policy about that? Was I allowed to let them leave the room? “Well …” I tried to remember if this had been addressed during orientation, but I couldn’t remember anything like that being discussed. There was certainly nothing useful in the way of classroom rules and procedures on that sheet of yellow paper. “Do you need me to write you a hall pass or something?”

  “It’s over there!” yelled almost half the class as they pointed at a green plastic stick hanging from the blackboard. HALL PASS was written on it in black.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, sure. If that’s how you do it, then go ahead.”

  A boy with shaggy brown hair leaped out of his seat. He was wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt. The boy grabbed the hall pass and left the room, letting the door slam behind him.

  “Hey, this worksheet is hard!” someone shouted from the right side of the room. “I don’t even know how to do number one!”

  “What are you, stupid?” yelled someone from the left side of the room.

  “We never learned how to do this!” came a third voice.

  “Yeah we did. We just did it yesterday, remember? You cross multiply, so it’d be twenty times x …”

  “Oh yeah. Okay, now I remember.”

  “Hey, can I go to the bathroom?”

  “Parker already went!”

  “Well, can I go when he comes back?”

  “Hey!” came an indignant voice from the back row. “Will everyone shut up? I’m trying to learn!”

  Laughter erupted all over the room.

  I straightened up and cleared my throat. “Okay everybody, it’s time to be quiet and get to work.” I was trying to look and sound authoritative. “If you have a question, please raise your hand and I’ll come over to your desk. If you need to go to the bathroom, you don’t have to ask, just quietly take the hall pass and go.” I took two steps toward the desks and slowly gazed around the room. I was hoping it would make me seem a bit more formidable.

  Two girls in the back row leaned toward each other, whispered something, and giggled. The rest of the class got to work, or at least pretended to.

  The shaggy-haired boy returned from the bathroom, letting the door slam behind him. He hung up the hall pass and sauntered back to his seat.

  Two boys from different sides of the classroom instantly sprinted toward the front. They simultaneously grabbed for the hall pass.

  “I had it first!” one of them yelled, trying to wrestle the pass out of the other boy’s hand.

  “Yeah, but I have to go more than you do!” the other boy said, tugging back.

  The class laughed.

  “All right,” I said, “you in the green shirt, you had it first, so go ahead. If we have any more fights over the hall pass no one gets to leave for the rest of the period. And please don’t let the door slam …”

  Green Shirt strode out of the room. The door slammed behind him.

  The loser in the hall pass skirmish shrugged and went back to his seat. “Whatever,” he said. “Just don’t be surprised if there’s a yellow puddle on the floor.”

  “Eww!” a girl yelled, throwing her pencil down on the desk. “That’s gross Dylan!”

  “I’m just sayin’.” He shrugged again, picked up his pencil, and scribbled something at the top of his worksheet.

  Except for the sounds of pencils on paper and a skinny kid with glasses in the second row who kept coughing, the room was quiet for a couple minutes. I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do at that point, so I slowly walked up and down the rows like some sort of security guard.

  Green Shirt came back and the door banged behind him. He hung up the hall pass and went to his seat.

  Nobody seemed to need my help solving problems using ratios and proportions. It was just as well, as I wasn’t sure I could’ve helped them anyway. I sighed and looked at the clock. Okay, almost thirty-five minut
es left in the period, I thought.

  I headed back to the teacher’s desk. I was debating whether or not I should start writing notes about the day for Mrs. Thompson, like they’d told us to do during the orientation. Of course, I didn’t really have much to report. I suppose I could inform her that there was a strange epidemic of students needing to use the bathroom, I thought.

  A short freckle-faced boy materialized in front of me.

  “I’m done,” he said, waving his paper in the air. “What do I do now?”

  “You’re done already?”

  “Yeah.” He looked a little puzzled as to why I would be surprised that he was finished. “So what do I do?”

  That was a good question. I picked up the yellow sheet of instructions and flipped it over in case new writing had magically appeared on the back. Unfortunately, it had not.

  I had no idea what to do. Was I supposed to collect the assignment? Grade it? Was it possible that there was an answer key buried somewhere on the desk? Should I just tell him to stuff it in his math folder and bring it back to class tomorrow?

  I jumped as the door slammed again. As soon as the hall pass was hung back up, a girl with a blond ponytail skipped to the front of the room, snatched the pass, and headed out. Bam!

  “Uh, if you’re done, I’ll take your work,” I said to the freckle-faced kid. “I guess … I guess you can just work on homework for another class.”

  “I don’t have any,” he said.

  “Oh, well then, I guess you can read.”

  “I don’t have a book.”

  “Okay, well … just find something to do,” I said, waving him away.

  “What do we do when we’re done?” asked a girl in the second row. She was holding her paper in the air.

  I shot a glance at the clock, then back at her. “You’re done already too?”

  “Yeah. There were only, like, twenty problems,” she said.

  The girl with the blond ponytail came bouncing back into the room. The door slammed behind her.

  “Listen!” I said. “Could everybody please not let the door slam …”