by Nancy Star
“Nurse Pike,” said the voice. “From camp. I’m calling to tell you camp is canceled today due to an outbreak of lice. We will reopen on Monday if everyone cooperates.”
“Lice?” Annie didn’t know anything about lice.
“We’ve had four reports of cases in your daughter’s age group. You’ll need to treat immediately.”
Annie had no idea what she was supposed to do for lice. Her body began to itch all over. “Should I take her to the doctor?” she asked.
“Haven’t you ever checked your daughter for lice before?” Nurse Pike sounded incredulous. “We ask all parents to check for lice before they send their children to camp. This is exactly how outbreaks begin.”
“Of course I’ve checked her,” Annie said. “I just haven’t checked her lately. And I wanted to make sure the procedure hadn’t changed.”
“Well, it hasn’t.” Nurse Pike was brisk. “You check her head, but even if you see nothing, if she complains of being itchy you get lice shampoo and you treat. Then you comb and you launder. And by launder I mean clothes, bedding, stuffed animals, hats, scarves, coats—yours, hers, everyone’s.”
“Mine?” Annie asked. That didn’t seem fair.
“Are you telling me in the past you haven’t laundered your own clothes after you’ve treated for lice?” Nurse Pike asked.
“I would never tell you that,” Annie said.
“Good. Because I want to be sure you understand. I will check every child before I let any of them back into camp. So there’s no point in shirking. You might as well get the job done right the first time.”
“I always get the job done right the first time,” she told Nurse Pike.
She heard a toilet flushing. Charlotte was up. Moments later, Annie found her in the kitchen. With sleep still stuck in the corner of her eyes, Charlotte was busy digging her fingers into the back of her scalp. Suddenly, Annie was itchy there too.
“The camp nurse called to say you might have lice,” Annie said. “But don’t worry. Having lice isn’t as bad as it sounds.”
“I know,” Charlotte said.
“I have to run out to the drugstore. But I’ll be right back, and we’ll take care of everything. So don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” Charlotte insisted.
Annie quickly drove to the nearest drugstore to get the necessary supplies, but the clerk told her they’d sold out the night before. The news was the same at the four other drugstores in town. By the time she found what she needed, in a tiny pharmacy two towns away, her own scalp was itching so badly she could barely think.
She came back home with two family-size kits of lice shampoo and handed one to Charlotte. “First, you wash your hair with regular shampoo. Then you put this on.”
“I know how to do it,” Charlotte said. “Every year since I’ve been in kindergarten somebody has had lice. Is this why you went to the drugstore? Because we have lots of lice shampoo in the closet.” She went upstairs to treat herself. When she was done, it was Annie’s turn.
Five hours later, Annie took out the last load of laundry from the dryer. “Done,” she said as she removed all the stuffed animals Charlotte still kept carefully arranged at the foot of her bed. Annie was halfway through a losing battle to refluff the menagerie of bears, dogs, cats, and monkeys when she realized Mimi had never called back.
She found her BlackBerry and quickly counted Sondra’s emails. This time there were thirty. They all said the same thing. “I’m here. Where are you? I’m here. Where are you?”
Mimi picked up on the first ring.
“The package still hasn’t come,” Annie told her.
“Oh my God,” Mimi said. “This is bad.”
“What happened?” Annie asked.
“I meant to send it. Oh my God. She’s going to kill me. Oh my God. You cannot tell her.”
“Where is it?” Annie asked.
“On my desk,” she whispered. “Oh my God. She’s going to freak.”
“Why don’t you just send it to me in an email?” Annie asked.
“I can’t do that,” Mimi said. “Sondra says our email is not secure. I could fax it, though. People can’t hack into a fax, can they?”
“I need to speak to Sondra,” Annie said.
“She’s not here,” Mimi told her. “I’ll let her know you called. And I’ll fax everything over right now.”
Annie put down the phone and turned to find Charlotte standing there, scratching her head.
“It still itches,” she said.
They went to the bathroom, where the light was best, so Annie could check Charlotte’s hair with the fine-toothed comb that came in the kit. But Charlotte’s blonde hair was perfect camouflage for lice. And repeated visits to a Web site’s enlarged pictures of the ricelike eggs did nothing to make detection any easier.
“It itches a lot,” Charlotte said.
Annie skimmed the Web site and read, Sometimes the first treatment doesn’t work. They both retreated. Annie did another three loads of laundry.
When she was done, she checked the fax machine, but nothing had come.
“I’m tracking it,” Mimi said when she called her.
“I thought you were faxing it,” Annie said. She didn’t feel good about this.
“I was going to,” Mimi said. “But Sondra wants you to have the original documents. So I sent it same-day service. It’s going to be okay.”
“I’ve never heard of same-day service,” Annie said.
“It costs a fortune but I’m going to offer to pay for it myself. So we’re good here. Don’t worry. The package will arrive before nine tonight.”
Mimi called again at six fifteen. “It’s coming tomorrow morning with a nine o’clock guarantee.”
After dinner, Annie and Charlotte treated for a third time. They had just finished, fingertips completely wrinkled, heads exuding a strong chemical smell, when the phone rang.
“Welcome to the disaster called my life,” Sondra said. “This is it. We are dead. We are cremated. We are dust.”
“What’s wrong?” Annie asked.
“You know, I really thought Mimi would have known enough to take the pages over to you herself. Why would that be a hard thing to do? She hails a cab, rides out, hands you an envelope, and rides back. If she had done that you’d be finished by now. But she didn’t do that. And you haven’t started, have you?”
“It’s not a problem,” Annie reassured her. “I can pull together the Context for Change outline as soon as the pages arrive. And Mimi said it’s guaranteed for nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Sondra said. “Because when Mimi sent the package overnight she neglected to check off the Saturday delivery box. Which means the earliest you can get the package is Monday morning at nine o’clock, which is exactly the time Ralph is going to walk into the conference room expecting to see the presentation.”
“We can make this work,” Annie said. “If Mimi takes a taxi over now, I can still get it done in time.”
“Did I mention Mimi doesn’t work here anymore?”
“Is there anyone else you can send?”
“I could come,” Sondra said, “if I had nothing better to do than to ride out to your house. Unfortunately Mimi sent you the originals. Did I mention Mimi doesn’t work here anymore?”
Annie didn’t know what to say.
“There is only one way this is going to work,” Sondra said. “You and I have to hole up in my office on Sunday and piece this thing together from scratch.”
Annie quickly went over the weekend in her head. Tim was flying in Saturday morning, so that could work. But Sunday was Charlotte’s first soccer game, and she didn’t want to miss it.
“You know,” Annie said. “I don’t think we should put this off. Why don’t we do it tomorrow?”
“Because I’m running a conference tomorrow,” Sondra said. “ ‘Change, Diversity, and Failure.’ Want to come?”
“What about tomorrow n
ight?” Annie suggested.
“Sunday is when I can do it,” Sondra said.
Annie checked her calendar. The soccer game started at noon. She didn’t want to, but she could do both.
“I can be at your office at three,” she said.
“That only gives us eighteen hours.”
“Don’t you think eighteen hours is enough?” Annie asked.
“I hate working on Sundays,” Sondra said. “I am allergic to working on Sundays. It is a nearly unbearable thought.”
“What about two forty-five?” Annie suggested.
“I should have Mimi killed,” Sondra said. “I don’t think there’s a jury in the country that would convict me if I had Mimi killed.”
“Sunday at two forty?” Annie asked.
“Two thirty,” Sondra said, to get her way.
“Great,” Annie said, and hung up the phone before Sondra’s murderous thoughts could turn toward her.
Fifteen
Charlotte woke her the next morning. “Mom? Mom?”
Annie looked at the clock and jumped out bed. “How did it get to be eight?” She grabbed her robe. “I was supposed to get up at five. You better hurry. You’re going to be late for camp.”
“It’s Saturday,” Charlotte said.
“Oh.” Annie fell back into bed.
“Is the doctor open on Saturday?” Charlotte asked. “Because if he is I think I should go. My scalp really hurts.”
The earliest appointment Annie could get was for twelve. The waiting room was packed when they arrived.
“How are you?” the nurse asked Charlotte when they checked in.
“I’m okay,” Charlotte said.
“How’s Hildy?” the nurse asked.
“Will there be a long wait?” Annie interrupted.
The nurse glared.
“I’m her mother,” Annie said. “I’ve been here before,” she added.
“Then you know we can’t predict the wait,” the nurse said and slid the glass panel between them closed.
Annie and Charlotte took the last remaining seats, next to a set of six-year-old twins whose wet coughs sprayed into the air with the regularity of a plug-in room freshener. Several million germs later, the nurse called Charlotte’s name.
“It’s a chemical burn,” the doctor said after a perfunctory look. He turned to Annie. “How many times did you apply the lice shampoo? Did you read the directions first?” He narrowed his eyes awaiting her answer.
Annie didn’t have time to be scolded. “What do we do now?”
“The damage is done,” the doctor said. “You just have to let it heal. Keep out of the sun for a while,” he told Charlotte. “Don’t shampoo for three days and don’t go swimming for a week.”
“If I can’t swim and I can’t be in the sun, what am I going to do at camp?” Charlotte asked.
“No sun, no pool,” the doctor said, “Sounds to me like no camp.”
“What about my soccer game tomorrow?” Charlotte asked.
“If it’s sunny, I guess they’ll have to play without you,” the doctor said.
Annie’s eye began to twitch. “Can you see my eye twitching?” she asked the doctor. “It’s twitching right now. It’s so annoying. Do you think it’s just stress, or do you think it could be something more serious?”
The doctor just stared.
“You probably can’t see it. No one can ever see it.”
“I’m a pediatrician,” he said. He turned away and opened Charlotte’s chart, then started his entry in his compressed secret handwriting.
Annie thought she saw the word mother entered on the chart. But doctors didn’t write comments about mothers, did they?
“Stay away from those lice, okay?” he told Charlotte.
Charlotte nodded, and he left the room.
Annie was sure that in the past he’d always stopped to shake her hand when he was done. But maybe she just remembered wrong.
On the way home, Annie and Charlotte listened for a weather report. When the weatherman announced Sunday’s forecast was for a mostly cloudy day, Annie cheered.
But when they got home, Annie’s cheery mood vanished. Tim had left a phone message saying that he had to stay in Atlanta until Monday.
She didn’t want to call Trissy, but she needed someone to watch Charlotte on Sunday night.
“I have a favor to ask,” she said. “Actually it’s two favors.”
“Yes to both,” Trissy immediately told her.
It was exactly why people didn’t hate her. She might be an irritating perfectionist, but Trissy would drop everything to help a friend.
“Can Charlotte sleep at your house tomorrow night? I have to work late and Tim is away until Monday.”
“Of course. It’s my pleasure,” Trissy said. “Next?”
“Tim forgot to leave his itinerary and I don’t know where he’s staying in Atlanta. Could you ask Hank if he knows?”
“Hank is away too,” Trissy said. “Are you sure Tim is in Atlanta?”
“Yes,” Annie said. “Why?”
“Never mind,” Trissy said. “Tell Charlotte I can’t wait to see her. What’s her favorite dessert? I’m going to bake tonight. Is she a cupcake girl or does she prefer brownies?”
Annie had no idea. “Cupcakes?” she said.
“That’s what I would have guessed too,” Trissy said.
By the time Annie went up to bed, Tim still hadn’t called. But when she woke up the next morning her phone was beeping with a text message Tim had left sometime after twelve.
Is everything okay at home?
Yes, Annie wrote back. Call me, she added and pressed Send.
She made Charlotte a quick breakfast and then got dressed. But when it was time to leave for the game, Charlotte took one look at her and stopped short.
“You can’t go like that,” she said.
Annie was wearing her favorite navy suit. Underneath the jacket was a simple white shell. She had on pantyhose and conservative black heels. There was absolutely nothing objectionable. That was the point.
“Why not?” she asked.
“No one wears a suit to a soccer game.”
“I have a meeting right after your game. I’m going to drop you off at Aunt Trissy’s and go straight into the city. I told you all this, remember?”
“Can’t you change into your suit at Aunt Trissy’s?” Charlotte asked.
“I’m going to be running late as it is,” Annie said. “Don’t worry. It’s a great suit. No one could dislike this suit.”
Charlotte rode in moody silence all the way to Cunningham Park.
Annie pulled into the lot. Why was there only one other car? “This must not be the right field.”
“We’re just too early,” Charlotte said. “That’s all.”
“Are you sure?” Annie asked. “Do you think the game could be at Grainer’s field, where practice is held?”
“No,” Charlotte said. “I think it’s here. I think we should just wait awhile and see if anyone else shows up.”
“How about if we drive over to Grainer’s field and take a peek to make sure no one’s there?” Annie said. “You don’t want to be late for your first game, do you?”
“No,” Charlotte admitted.
They found a game at Grainer’s field, but the players were teenage boys. They checked out the high school next. The football team was warming up on the grass, and the cross-country runners were doing stretches on the track. At the South Mountain School, the Kinder-kickers were setting up orange cones. At the field next to Trissy’s house, a man was trying to train a Welsh springer spaniel to retrieve a stick.
After forty-five minutes of driving back and forth around town, Annie returned to their original destination.
“They’re here,” Charlotte said as she got out the car. “We’re so late. The ref is already checking playing cards.”
Annie saw that the Asteroids were lined up in a perfect row while a man went from one to the next looking from car
d to face, checking for imposters.
“I’m so sorry,” Annie said. “Now you won’t get to start.”
“Why not?” Charlotte asked.
“I read that on one of the sheets I signed. If you’re late to a game you don’t get to be in the first group that plays. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Charlotte said. “It doesn’t matter if I don’t start.”
“But it’s not fair. It’s not your fault that we’re late,” Annie said. “It’s my fault. Gerri shouldn’t penalize you for my error. I’ll explain what happened.” She started onto the field.
“Mom,” Charlotte said. “You can’t go out there. You’re wearing a suit.” To be sure there was no further discussion, Charlotte ran, head bent into the wind, to join her teammates.
Annie backed off and walked over to where a group of parents stood on the sideline. She recognized some of them from Gerri’s house, but they looked different now. Everyone was dressed alike. They wore green jackets with gold lettering that read “Asteroid Parent” on the back. They sat on green chairs and drank from identical green coffee mugs.
Annie hadn’t known the parents had uniforms too.
The ref blew his whistle to start the game.
Annie didn’t understand much of what went on, but she did note that Charlotte had started, and that she seemed to be in the front of the pack as the girls moved up and down the field.
Most of the parents stood up when the play began. Several moved their feet as if they were playing too.
“Stay with it,” a parent yelled.
“Stay with it,” Annie echoed, happy to try out the new language of parental cheers.
“Go wide,” a man screamed.
“Go wide,” Annie yelled. It felt really good to yell.
“Go Asteroids,” someone shouted.
“Asteroids are the best,” she screamed as loudly as she could.
The ref blew his whistle and held up his arm to stop play. Even from the sideline, Annie could see Charlotte’s face had turned crimson.
The ref marched over and stopped in front of Annie.
“The girls can’t hear me,” he said. “Even I can’t hear me. We can only hear you.”
Annie hadn’t been the only one cheering. But when she looked around for support everyone else was looking away.