by Niki Lenz
“I’m glad you’re here, Bea,” he said, smiling at her. “I wanted to ask you something….”
Bea looked at him expectantly.
“What do you think of the beard?” Dad rubbed at his stubble. I had barely noticed it was there, and would most definitely not classify it as a beard just yet.
“It’s nice, Pastor Davy,” Bea said, trying to smile at him. He probably couldn’t tell that her smile was fake, but I knew.
“I used to hate facial hair…but then it grew on me,” Dad said, an evil glint in his eye. Bea and I both burst into giggles and I silently thanked Dad for his terrible joke, because it seemed to break the spell of sadness surrounding us.
I noticed that Dad had showered and was wearing real clothes, not sweatpants, on a Saturday. My palms went sweaty and my heartbeat went into triple time, but I tried to sound casual. “Where do you think you’re going looking all fancy?” I asked, my voice sounding high and squeaky from panic.
Dad narrowed his eyes at me. “I’m meeting a friend.”
“What friend?” I asked, narrowing my eyes back.
“A new friend. Zeke thinks we might hit it off.” Zeke was the pastor of the Methodist church. He always wore a T-shirt in the swimming pool and had one of those nylon ropes to hold his glasses on.
“Are you serious right now? You’re going on a blind date with someone Zeke-the-buzz-cut thinks you’ll like?” I asked, standing up.
Dad sighed. “Grace, we’ve been over this. I’m dating now. I’m a guy who goes on dates.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as me. “I won’t be out late. We’re going to Giovanni’s.”
“Bring us back some garlic knots, please,” Bea said sweetly.
A dreamy look came over Dad’s face. “Mmm…garlic knots. See, even if this date stinks, at least I get garlic knots.” Dad kissed me on the head before he headed out the door.
I spun to face Bea, hands on my hips. “We are really gonna need to step it up, Bea! This is date number two. Nice work getting him to order the garlic knots. His breath will be rank at least. Now, what else can we do to guarantee this is a real train wreck?”
Bea scrunched up her mouth in her thinking face. “Are you sure you want to mess with him? I’m not convinced it’s a good idea.”
“Bea, you promised me your loyalty. I need you. This date has to go down in flames. We’re gonna need some supplies.”
“Fine, but no literal flames,” she said.
“It just so happens that I’ve added a few ideas to our list.” I didn’t bother to get the notebook out, because I was pretty sure I could remember all my latest schemes.
“Number six, we give him poison ivy,” I said, raising my eyebrows at Bea.
“There’s a good chance that would backfire and we’d be the ones covered in calamine lotion. I am highly allergic,” Bea said.
I went on, undeterred. “Fine. Number seven, we put hair remover in his hair gel.”
“Whoa. Remind me not to get on your bad side. But I think you might regret that one. I mean, his hair could take months to grow back! Especially considering how wispy that beard was.”
Sigh. “True. Okay, but number eight, do the same thing to his date’s hair gel. Then she’d be the baldy.”
Bea leaned forward. “There is no time for that! This date is happening right now. We need to think of something that we can do immediately to tank this dinner. Now think, you evil genius, you!”
A slow smile spread across my face. “I think you’ll find that idea number nine will be right in the sweet spot. Not too heinous. But annoying and distracting.”
“And nobody gets hurt?”
“Not a hair on their heads.”
We climbed on our bikes and headed to Springdale’s fanciest Italian restaurant, where my dad’s truck was parked in the lot. Adrenaline pumped through my veins and escaped my body in the form of snickers. Bea kept glancing all around, with her head ducked and her coat hood pulled tight around her face. She shushed my giggles, and I tried to get serious as we crept up to the large plate glass window.
The dining room was packed with families and couples. It was dim inside, the tables lit by flickering candles on top of red-and-white-checked tablecloths. There were fake grapevines draped over all the ledges and archways, and accordion music floated out onto the street from the speakers. I squinted into the dimness, searching the faces for my dad.
“There he is,” I said. “Far corner. Looks like she hasn’t shown up yet.” My dad sat ramrod straight, with a blank but pleasant expression on his face. He didn’t glance at the menu or have his phone out, like most of the other diners did. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop.
“Maybe she won’t show at all?” Bea offered hopefully.
“Or maybe she will, but she’ll take one look at him and leave?” I added. This would be sad for my dad but would work out great for me. A victory without even putting up a fight.
Bea snorted. “Naw. Your dad is kinda cute. For an old-guy dad type.”
“Gross.”
“There she is!” Bea pressed her nose against the window as a woman came out of the bathroom and waved at Dad. Just then a waiter started to walk toward the empty table by the window to clean it off, and we had to duck. When we dared to peek again, Dad and the mystery lady were hugging hello.
“Whoa. She’s pretty,” Bea said, craning her neck for a better view. Dad’s date had a short blond bob haircut and a red slouchy sweater. She was wearing white pants.
“I don’t trust anyone who wears white pants. She’s obviously uncomfortable with children,” I whispered to Bea. “I mean, I’m a little old to be sticky all the time, but I still have been known to get wild with the ketchup and mustard.” Bea nodded wisely.
Dad chatted about something, hand gesturing wildly, his ears and cheeks pink. What history anecdote or Bible story could possibly require all that flailing? They both laughed, and I felt my throat constrict. Time to get in there and shake things up.
I dug around in my backpack until I’d found my countermove. It wasn’t exactly fireworks, but it might cause enough confusion to derail their conversation at least. I stuffed my secret weapon under my shirt and whispered to Bea, “Let’s get clucking.”
My heart hammered in my chest, and my armpits went sweaty. I felt like I was a spy attempting to complete an impossible and dangerous mission. I would have to be stealthy. No one could see me, or I was d-e-a-d DEAD. Everyone in this town could pick the preacher’s daughter out of a lineup. I waited by the back door until a busboy lugged a huge bag of trash to the dumpster, and then I slunk inside. Bea waited for me by the front window, watching my progress.
When I was close enough to see the nervous sweat on Dad’s forehead, I took a deep breath to steady myself and pulled Clucky the Chicken out from under my shirt.
Clucky had been a gift on some long-ago birthday. Something I’d tried out once or twice but found too annoying, and so it had gone back on my shelf, never to be seen or thought of again. Until today. Today was Clucky’s date with destiny.
I felt around his feathery backside until I found the volume button and turned it from Mute to Max. I took one last look at Dad and White Pants, chatting over garlic knots, and jabbed the On button. “Clucky, if you pull this off, you can cross all the roads you want, and I promise never to question your motives!” Then I chucked the toy in a potted plant near their table and hightailed it out of there. It was basically like detonating a bomb.
Clucky erupted in a loud and quacky version of the chicken dance. People from all over the restaurant looked up from their spaghetti plates with confused and amused looks on their faces. Some covered their ears. Some started doing the hand motions to the chicken dance. I managed to slip out the back door and join up with Bea before anyone noticed me. She high-fived me, and we both dissolved in a puddle of sile
nt giggles.
White Pants covered her ears. Dad tried to say something to her, but he was clearly not being heard. Between Clucky’s song and the reactions of the other people in the restaurant, the volume had gone up in there by about a million decibels.
“Oh man, this is even better than I imagined!” I whispered to Bea.
Then there was silence, and I could picture the fuzzy chicken lying motionless at the bottom of the planter. Everyone in the restaurant looked around, still wondering where the obnoxious song had come from.
“Is that it?” Bea asked.
“Wait for it…,” I answered just as Clucky got his second wind and started up all over again.
“I don’t wanna be a chicken, I don’t wanna be a duck, so I’ll shake my butt!” Clucky sang.
A baby started crying. The screeching kind of cry that makes people cringe. A big guy in a Hawaiian shirt stood up and danced along as if this was some sort of fun activity the restaurant was providing. A woman threw her napkin down and marched off to report the disturbance, like any of the restaurant staff weren’t aware.
“Total chaos,” Bea breathed. “You really have a gift.”
My breath fogged up the window as I watched the bewilderment unfold. The dancing guy was a nice bonus I couldn’t have predicted. But I still wasn’t sure if the plan was working. I studied Dad’s face. He looked confused. “I really, really hope he isn’t remembering that his daughter has an annoying toy that sounds exactly like this audio assault,” I whispered.
“He looks way too flustered to be connecting those dots. For all he knows, you’re at home with me, watching TV and pigging out on junk food,” Bea replied. Dad’s face fell, and I wondered if he thought his dates were cursed. First the forgotten wallet, and now this disaster. Good. Maybe he’d stop going on them.
It took a waiter two minutes and forty-five seconds to locate the chicken in the plant and turn it off. (Bea was timing on her watch.) The crowd erupted in applause, and Hawaiian Shirt Guy wiggled his butt one last time for good measure.
White Pants did not seem amused. She took a long drink and then pulled her phone out of her purse. I saw Dad flinch. He hated technology in general, but phones at the dinner table were a major no-no.
“Things are definitely going south,” I said, and Bea nodded.
Dad tried to ask a few questions. Or maybe he was just telling terrible jokes? But either way, after a few minutes he pulled his own phone out of his pocket.
Success. I didn’t know if we had done enough, but it was all we could do for now.
“Retreat!” I called to Bea, grabbing my bike from the bushes. We zipped through the chilly night air, pumping our legs to the rhythm of the chicken dance.
The next Friday, Bea and I snuck Skittles under the table in Miss O’Connor’s history class. We were working on our famous-Americans project, and I couldn’t help but be fascinated by Mr. Teddy Roosevelt, the most interesting president our country has ever had. The room buzzed as people worked in small groups, sharing the information we’d uncovered.
Bea accepted a purple Skittle and covertly ate it without lifting her eyes from her book. I studied her for a second, temporarily distracted from my reading. Her blond pigtails were fuzzy, her clothes wrinkled. She had dark purple dents under her eyes, and her cheekbones looked especially sharp.
“Are you okay?” I whispered.
Bea leaned toward me and whispered, “Having a toddler in the house is bonkers. BANANAS. Julian is into EVERYTHING.”
I tried to think about what that might mean, but I had virtually no experience with toddlers, so I was drawing a blank.
She continued. “He climbed up onto his steppy stool and dumped an entire bottle of bleach into the washing machine.” She held out her purple shirt, which was now splattered with white spots that looked a bit like pigeon poop.
I tried not to laugh, but I must not have done a great job, because Bea punched me in the arm and Miss O’Connor had to shush us. “It’s not funny!” Bea’s soft voice wobbled. “We baby-proofed the entire house. We put locks on all the lower cabinets. The bleach had a childproof cap, and it was on a really high shelf. I mean, he was only out of my sight for like ten seconds! He’s a mini-tornado of destruction! Look at my library books!”
Her pile of Jackie Robinson biographies looked normal from the outside. Maybe the corners were mushy, like they’d been chewed. But then she started to flip through them and almost every page was colored on or ripped.
“Oh, snap,” I said softly.
“I have never had to pay the library for damage before. Never.” She pulled a particularly rumpled paperback out of the stack and waved it in my face. “He tried to flush this one down the toilet! He was supposed to be napping! Does that seem like napping to you?”
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to answer that.
Bea’s eyes filled with tears. “This will cost me my entire savings account.” She wiped at her cheeks angrily.
This was exactly why you should leave families well enough alone! I mean, weren’t me and Dad doing all right by ourselves? What if adding another person completely ruined everything, like Julian had done to Bea’s family?
We flipped through our books, commenting every once in a while on things we wanted to add to our reports. I was distracted, though, by Bea’s troubles. I hoped they wouldn’t soon become my troubles.
Then a sentence from the Roosevelt biography I was reading snagged my eye. “Hey,” I said to Bea, who was still sniffling. “How did I never know this before?”
Bea looked up. “What?”
I leaned closer to the thick book. “Teddy Roosevelt had a daughter, Alice.”
Bea scoffed. “Even I knew that.”
“That wasn’t the part I didn’t know. His wife, Alice’s mother…died.”
Bea bit the end of her pencil. “That’s sad.”
“She died within days of Teddy’s own mother. Listen to this quote….Sometimes when I realize my loss I feel as if I should go wild.” The words squeezed something close to my heart. Teddy lost his mother and his wife all at once. I could understand the feeling of being wild with pain.
I glanced over at Miss O’Connor, who was helping another student, and then tapped my book with my pencil. “How come my dad never mentioned this? It’s like…so major? Alice Roosevelt lost her mom just like I lost my mom!”
Bea put her hand on my sleeve. “Maybe that’s why he never mentioned it. I mean, it’s not like he talks about your mom very often.”
I gulped and nodded, staring at the picture of Alice as a little girl. We were in the same club, me and her. The Dead Mom Club. And I instantly felt like I knew her better than I even knew Bea. We had this same terrible thing in common and it made us like sisters, even though we lived a lifetime apart. And I knew that if we were ever sitting across from each other, face to face, she would know what it was like to be on a team of two.
Dad has the best laugh. I mean, sure, he’s usually cracking up at his own jokes, but it’s a really great sound. And he has these big, rough hands that seem like they could catch me no matter what. He still says my prayers with me at night and tucks me in, even though I’m probably too old for that. He always tells me that if he could pick any girl in the whole world to be his daughter, he would still pick me.
I had been the center of his world for a long time now. And I wasn’t ready to give that up.
A black-and-white picture filled one page of the book. “It looks like Alice’s father didn’t stay single for long. He remarried and then had a bunch of kids.”
“Alice had little siblings?” Bea craned her neck, suddenly a lot more interested in my book.
“Yup. Five of them. Four half brothers and a half sister. Can you imagine that?”
Bea shook her head. “Five times the chaos that is currently at my house? No thank you.”
Miss O’Connor walked over and smiled at my notes. “I see you’ve discovered more than a few interesting facts about our twenty-sixth president.”
I nodded, my head still churning up the information of Teddy and Alice’s blended family.
Miss O’Connor leaned in, like she was telling me a secret. “Did you know one of his sons was named Kermit? Like the frog.”
I giggled and the bag of Skittles crinkled in my lap. Miss O’Connor raised one eyebrow at me but meandered over to the next table. She really was the coolest teacher.
Bea sighed and leaned closer to her book. “This either says Jackie Robinson was named Rookie of the Year or Cookie of the Year. The print is completely smeared.”
“I’m no baseball expert, but Cookie of the Year doesn’t sound like a real thing.” I slid her three purple Skittles plus two of my reds because sometimes you gotta share your rainbow with the people you love the most.
Dad had been moping around the house ever since his disastrous chicken dance date, and the box of garlic knots he’d brought home never got eaten. He seemed to be checking his phone a little more than usual, but as far as I knew, White Pants hadn’t asked for another date, and neither had he, so we were in the clear.
I made pancakes for dinner on Wednesday night, and Dad got a smidge happier when I fried up some bacon to go with it. We sat at the kitchen table munching on flapjacks and not talking much until Dad cleared his throat.
“This weekend…I have a…there’s this…” He almost choked on his words, searching my face frantically for some sign of recognition.
“What? What is it? Do you have another setup?” I tried not to spit the words, but despite the syrup they tasted sour.
“No. The Missions Committee does this fundraiser every year….”