For Better or For Worse

by Robin Palmer

  “Lucy, I know that the last few weeks have been a little strange,” Mom said as we walked up Broadway.

  A little?! I didn’t even want to know what she considered “a lot.”

  “Obviously, it’s a time of transition,” she went on.

  I glanced behind at my knapsack to make sure nothing had fallen out. Was this transition going to include me having to bolt? I sure hoped not, because if they gave out grades for cardio, I’d get, like, a C minus.

  “Even though, if you ask me, people are making a much bigger deal out of this even than they need to,” she said. “But that’s another subject—”

  As we came up on Town Shop Lingerie on our left, I held my breath. Was the surprise new bras? Because if it was, I was so making a break for it.

  “At any rate, last night Alan and I were talking and we thought with all the change that’s going on, why not throw in more and—”

  I exhaled as we passed it and kept walking.

  “—let you get a kitten. We’re going to Petco.”

  My mouth dropped open so wide you could have fit the M72 bus in it.

  Mom nodded. As she smiled, I realized it was the firstnon-fake I’m-going-to-kill-the-next-person-who-brings-up-this-wedding smile I had seen in a long time.

  “For real?” I asked, dazed. I threw myself toward her and smothered her in a hug. “Thankyouthankyouthank-you!” I cried.

  She laughed—a real laugh. “Don’t thank me yet. First you have to find her. Or him. You need to choose carefully—it’s a big decision.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. That was true. This wasn’t like choosing which pair of Chuck Taylors out of my collection to wear. This was going to be Miss Piggy’s sister or brother. For a second I wondered whether I should ask if we should go home and get Miss Piggy and bring her so she could be part of the decision making, too, but then I remembered how much she hated being out of the house and the weird noises she made. The last time we had brought her to the vet, the cab driver said that she sounded like a sick goat. “I will,” I said solemnly as we continued walking.

  Once we got to Petco, we made our way to the adoption area. There were so many cats to choose from. There were older tabbies who were so fat they looked like they had pinheads. Silver-colored Siamese cats who meowed nonstop. Fluffy little Persians who looked like ragweeds.

  And then I saw her.

  People talk about love or crushes at first sight in terms of people, but I totally believe it happens with animals, too. There was nothing particularly special about this one. She was small and scrawny and all black, and she didn’t even look that soft, like the mountain of sleeping kittens piled up on top of each other in the corner of the same cage. But the minute I saw her trying to gnaw on the metal bars before sticking her head through the side and getting it stuck, I knew she was mine. If I were a cat, getting my head stuck is totally something I’d do. And when the woman who worked there told me that she had been adopted by someone else the week before but then returned because the person wanted a kitten that was less “rambunctious” (when I looked it up on dictionary.com, I found that it meant hyper-like), I knew even more that the whole thing was fate.

  “That’s her,” I said to Mom.

  “Are you sure?” she asked as we watched her try to chase her tail but fail miserably.

  “Uh-huh. Look—she’s even got coordination issues.”

  “What do you think her name is?” Mom asked.

  I didn’t even have to take out my “Miscellaneous” notebook and turn to the list titled “Possible Cat Names Once I Finally Convince Mom and Alan to Let Me Get One.” Because the kitten had the same kind of look on her face that Dr. Maude gave her guests when they were on the crazy side—kind of a Oh-my-God-did-you-REALLY-just-say-that-because-you-sound-REALLY-nuts-right-now look, it was completely clear.

  “Her name is Dr. Maude,” I announced.

  “Okay, then,” Mom said. “Let’s take Dr. Maude home.”

  I knew there were a lot of books about how to blend families because Alan owned all of them, but I had really wished someone had written one about how to blend pets because I sure could’ve used one that night.

  In the movie in mind, I had always dreamed that when I got a new kitten, not only would it love me best, but as soon as Miss Piggy saw it, all of her meanness would disappear as she fell madly in love with this little kitten that she could teach to do various cat things. (Not that Miss Piggy did anything other than sleep, eat, and throw up hairballs. She didn’t even like to play with toys—which I had learned the hard way after, in an attempt to buy her love, I spent almost all my allowance on toys five weeks in a row.) Unfortunately, when we got home, a different movie played out. One that was more like a horror movie.

  When we opened the door, Laurel and Alan were waiting in the living room.

  “Where is she?” Laurel asked excitedly.

  Okay, I’m sorry, but Laurel hadn’t even liked cats before she met Miss Piggy.

  “In here,” I said, holding the carrier even closer to my chest. While Mom had reminded me during the cab ride home that Dr. Maude was a family pet, I needed time to make it love me the best before Laurel got her hands on it.

  “Let me see,” she said, running up to it and sticking her face down to the mesh to get a better look. “Ohhhh…she’s so…OW!” she yelled as Dr. Maude tried to nip her on the nose through the mesh.

  “What happened?! Are you okay?! Did it break the skin?!” “Alan cried. He turned to Mom. “It has its rabies shot, right?”

  I held Dr. Maude closer to me. “She’s not big on strangers,” I said. It wasn’t like I wanted Dr. Maude to hurt Laurel, but I had to admit I was relieved that Dr. Maude hadn’t instantly fallen in love with Laurel like Miss Piggy had. I began to walk toward my room.

  “Where are you going?” Laurel asked. “All the Google results say that when you bring home a new cat, it’s best to put it in a room by itself with the door closed for a while so that the two cats can get used to each other’s smell before you actually put them face-to-face.”

  I shook my head. “It’s okay,” I said. “Miss Piggy and I have already discussed this. It’ll be fine,” I said as I went into my room and shut the door.

  I found Miss Piggy where she always was: in the corner trying to groom herself but repeatedly falling over because she was so fat. For some reason she seemed to like my room the best…as long as I wasn’t in it. “Miss Piggy, I have a surprise for you,” I said in my sweetest voice. “I think you’re really going to like it.” I cringed. I sounded so sweet I was giving myself a toothache.

  She looked up and gave me a yeah-right look.

  “It’s in here,” I said, patting the carrier. At that, Dr. Maude gave the cutest little meow I had ever heard. It was sweet and dainty and everything that I was not but sometimes wished I could be. Not to mention, she totally understood English.

  Miss Piggy struggled to her feet, and her ears went back. Maybe not the most welcoming reaction in the world, but I knew that once I opened the carrier and she got a look at Dr. Maude they’d be instant BFFs.

  “Because I have Laurel, I didn’t want you to feel left out, so I got you a frister of your own!” That was true. So what if I left out the part about how I thought it would be nice to have a pet who didn’t hate me.

  “So now, without further ado—meet Dr. Maude!” I cried as I unzipped the carrier.

  The next part was a blur. There was a lot of yowling, a lot of fur flying, and what I’m pretty sure was one giant fart from Miss Piggy before Dr. Maude leaped on my head (a good way to discover her nails definitely needed a clipping) before scrambling under the covers.

  “Lucy, is everything okay in there?” I heard Mom yell.

  “Yup—everything’s fine!” I panted as I patted my head feeling for blood.

  “I told her she should have followed the advice to introduce them slowly,” I heard Laurel say.

  “I know you did, honey,” I heard Mom reply.

&
nbsp; I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t even remember the last time I was honey’d or sweetie’d. “I don’t need advice!” I called out stubbornly. “I’m an official advice giver!”

  As I reached for my iTouch so I could Google “what to do when your cat tries to kill another cat,” Dr. Maude popped her little head out from under the covers. “See, Miss Piggy? She just wants to be friends.”

  Miss Piggy cocked her head and thought about it. Then, after what I swear was a nod, she began to make her way toward us. By this time, Dr. Maude had wriggled out from under the covers and climbed up on my shoulder and had begun to nibble on my ear. “I knew you’d come around,” I said as I started to relax. “Believe me, no one knows better than me how hard change is, but you’ll see. Having a frister—”

  Before I could finish with “—is the best thing in the world,” Miss Piggy jumped up on the bed and lunged at Dr. Maude, setting off another flying furfest.

  After I managed to pry them apart with only a few scratches on my arms, I flopped back on the bed.

  Maybe Miss Piggy knew something I didn’t.

  “Whoa, chica—what’s goin’ on?” Pete asked the next day as I dragged myself into the building after school. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like something the cat dragged in.”

  At the word cat, I cringed. “That’s because I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “Well, babies’ll do that to you,” he said. “You know that from your time with Ziggy.”

  Actually, I didn’t, because when I was around Ziggy, I turned into a baby whisperer and could make him fall—and stay—asleep immediately. I shook my head. “It’s not because Dr. Maude’s a baby.” I yawned. “It’s because I had to stay awake to make sure Miss Piggy didn’t eat her.” I had tried to set up a kittycam by turning on Skype on my laptop and trying to sync it with FaceTime so I could watch them while I was at school, but I was too tired to get my head to work that way and too embarrassed to ask Blair for his help.

  “Well, they’ll be getting along soon enough,” he said. “These things take time. Remember how it was with you and Laurel at first? And look at you guys now—you’re inseparable!”

  “Actually, we’re not talking,” I said glumly as I caught the Gummi Worm he threw my way.

  “Still?”

  I nodded, trying not to let my face fall into the plant on his desk. “It’s one of those things where because we haven’t talked for a while, it would be weird at this point to just start again, so we’re not,” I explained. I shook my head. “It’s this wedding. It’s making everyone all nuts. Last night I walked into the kitchen and found my mom shoveling ice cream in her mouth with one hand and cookies with the other.”

  He thought about it for a second. “What’s wrong with that?”

  It was exactly things like that that explained why Pete was my best adult friend. He may have been a fifty-year-old Puerto Rican guy from Queens, but we were so alike it was scary. “Nothing’s wrong with it other than the fact that Mom’s idea of a wild and crazy dessert is a Fruit Roll-Up.”

  “Eh, so she’s just a nervous bride,” he said. “It happens. Believe me, as a doorman, I know about these things.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not even allowed to use the words bride or groom. Or wedding.” I shook my head. “If they’re going to have a wedding, they should just have a wedding, you know? So all the people we love can be there. Like you.”

  “Aw, Lucy, I thought you’d never ask!” he cried. “I’d be honored.”

  At that, I sat up straight. I was no longer exhausted. Instead, I felt like I had drunk three Red Bulls even though they were number one on the official Parker-Moses No Eating/Drinking list. “Huh?”

  He rubbed his hands together. “This is going to be great.” He rummaged in the drawer for the schedule. “I just gotta see who I can swap days with for that weekend—”

  I was just…talking. Off the top of my head. I wasn’t inviting him to the wedding. “Wait, what I meant was—” I started to say.

  He got up and came over and gave me a hug. After he let me go and he took my cheeks in his hands, the mist in his eyes had turned to full-blown tears. “You know, in my line of work, I come across a lot of different kind of people,” he said. “And part of the doorman’s code of ethics is ‘Thou shall not play favorites.’ But in the case of your family, that’s impossible. Because the four of you? You’re just the best. And I wouldn’t miss this wedding for the world.” After he kissed me on the forehead, he let go of my cheeks. “Now what were you going to say?”

  I could do this. Wasn’t Pete always telling me to be direct and just be myself? I could tell him that he had misunderstood me and I hadn’t actually invited him to the wedding because to do something like that without first talking to Mom and Alan would not go over well. Especially when Mom was already acting all stressy. Except, of course, if I did it in front of Wendi. Then it might not be so bad. “I was going to say…”

  “Before you go on, I just wanna say I’m so touched that you would include me, Lucy. It means the world to me.” He blew his nose into the handkerchief he carried around in the pocket of his doorman jacket. “Now that’s the last thing I’m going to say. The floor is now yours.”

  I took a deep breath. “I was going to say…I should really get upstairs…to check on the cats. You know, to make sure they’re still alive.” So much for coming clean and being direct.

  “Okay,” Pete said. “That’s good because with the wedding coming up, I don’t really have the time to be chatting. There’s a lot I have to do before now and then.”

  So did I. Like figure out how to get myself out of this mess.

  I walked into the living room to find Mom and Alan sitting on the couch holding hands, explaining to Wendi how they had met, when Alan hired Mom to be Laurel’s on-set tutor in Northampton. (Mom was a writer, but because she had been working on the same novel for eight years, the way she made money was tutoring.) Actually, it was more Alan who was explaining it all, on account of the fact that Mom was busy unwrapping miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as fast as she could and popping them into her mouth without missing a beat.

  Alan turned to her. “Honey? Maybe you could hold off on eating those until after we’re done filming.”

  “Bmmffhhmmmrry,” came her reply. Most people probably wouldn’t understand what she was saying, but it was very clear to me that it translated to “But I’m hungry” because I said that very thing with my mouth full at least once a day.

  Alan looked at the camera and flashed a nervous smile. “She’s a little hungry. Pre-wedding jitters.” He laughed nervously.

  She glared at him. “I mean, pre–small—”

  Another glare.

  “Okay, I’m just going to get back to the story,” he said. Luckily, he left out the part about the Hat Incident. “And now, a year later, we’ve finally agreed on a place to get married,” Alan went on. He laughed. “Although I have to say, at times, that felt harder to do than coming up with a plan for peace in the Middle East.”

  Mom wiped some (but not all) of the chocolate off her face with her hand and flashed a fake smile. “While we have a lot in common, we sometimes have a little trouble when it comes to choosing places to travel.”

  A little trouble? See “having to ask for Lucy’s advice-giving expertise when searching for a place to go for their anniversary” for more information.

  Alan held up a bunch of menus. “And what to serve at the wed—”—another look from Mom— “—ing.”

  Mom’s popped another Reese’s in her mouth. “Sweetheart, I’m sure Wendi is sick of hearing about this thing,” she said. She gave a little laugh. “I know I am.”

  “No, no, no! I’d love to hear about it!” Wendy squealed. “Viewers just love drama!”

  This time Mom popped three Reese’s in at once. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she laughed nervously. “There’s no drama. We’re a drama-free household.”

  Alan turned
to her. “I have an idea—let’s ask Wendi what she thinks about the meal thing. She looks like she has a lot of experience going to weddings.”

  I shook my head. If that kind of thing came out of the mouth of a Mean Person—like, say, Cristina Pollock, it would be completely obvious that they were just stirring things up with one of those big electric mixers. But in Alan’s case, he really was that clueless and was just trying to help. Unfortunately, from the look on Mom’s face, he wasn’t. At all.

  “Oh, I totally do!” Wendi said. She sighed. “Always a bridesmaid but never a bride, though.”

  Mom’s smile got a little smaller. “I have an idea—let’s not ask Wendi because it’s a private issue that is probably of absolutely no interest to anyone but us!” she said through gritted teeth.

  Alan turned to Wendi. “Wendi, at weddings, aren’t there usually two choices for the meal? Like, for instance, chicken and fish?”

  I don’t know who the heck came up with the idea of offering people fish at a wedding. Most people—i.e., me—hated fish. And if they were going to do that, it should at least be something decent like fried clams from Friendly’s. With tons of tartar sauce on the side.

  She nodded. “Absolutely. You know, the last wedding I went to they had this roasted chicken with pomegranate sauce, and it was just divine.”

  Mom’s smile twitched. “But, Alan, darling, like I keep saying, seeing that there’s such a small group, I don’t think we need to have two different meal choices.”

  Nikko put his camera down. “Not to interrupt or anything, but you might want to take into consideration those of us who are vegans.”

  “Nikko! What are you doing?! Keep shooting!” Wendi cried.

  “Okay, okay,” he sighed, putting the camera back up on his shoulder.

  “That’s right,” Alan said “How can we forget the vegans! Like Sarah!”

  Mom got up and started to pace.

  “Honey, you’re pacing,” he said nervously. “You never pace. Why are you pacing?”