by Niki Lenz
Gretchen smiled tightly. “Miss O’Connor should give you extra credit in history class after all that work.”
Miss O’Connor laughed, and I shook my head. “That’s one class where I really don’t need the extra credit.”
Dad held up the tan linen fabric that would presumably become his suit. “This is perfect, Olivia, thanks so much.”
She blushed, and it made the tiny freckles on her nose stand out even more. “Oh, and I finished reading The Life and Times of Woodrow Wilson. It’s fascinating. You want to borrow it?”
Dad grinned. “You know I do! Hey, you want some pizza?”
Miss O’Connor gave Gretchen one more glance before looking at her wrist (which didn’t have a watch) and claiming she was late for something.
As soon as she was gone it was like all the sunshine had been sucked out of the room. Dad almost seemed to deflate. I looked from him to Gretchen, then from him to the door my teacher had just exited through, and it was like a bolt of lightning hit me in the brains. Gretchen wasn’t the one making Dad’s whole face light up like a birthday cake. Miss O’Connor was.
“You cut it too small.” I squinted at Dad’s costume fabric spread out on the floor.
“That’s madness. I measured once, cut twice.”
I smacked myself in the forehead. “It’s measure twice, cut once!”
I was close to wadding the whole mess up and throwing it at him, when he started to chuckle. “I kid, I kid….”
“Dad, we don’t have time for your shenanigans. Do you think it’s easy to just whip up an accurate turn-of-the-century ensemble?”
Dad riffled through the directions we’d printed off the internet. “This is a lot of work just to sweat through a festival while people try to take selfies with you.”
I stood up and stretched my tired back. Who knew sewing was so flippin’ hard? “Maybe we need to call for backup.”
“Come on now, this is a Team Gravy project and we need to see it through until the end.”
I’d had a brilliant idea this morning. After seeing the spark between my dad and Miss O’Connor last weekend, I wanted to see if my instincts were right. “I’m not saying we quit. I’m saying we might need to get someone to help us who actually knows what she’s doing.”
Dad rubbed the stubble on his chin and turned the directions another hundred and eighty degrees. “I see the logic there. Should I call Grandma?”
I groaned. “Grandma is all the way in New York. How’s she going to help us?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe she can explain to me what a ‘seam allowance’ is. Are we paying these guys allowance now?”
“Ha ha. Call Miss O’Connor.” I studied his face for any kind of reaction, but he just chuckled at his own joke as he dialed Miss O’Connor, and in fact he thought it was so hilarious he repeated it to her. He yukked it up for a few more minutes, and after he’d wiped the tears from his eyes, he explained our situation. There was some Charlie Brown’s teacher–style mumbling on the other end, and then he said, “Okay, great. We’ll see you soon.”
He hung up the phone still shaking his head at the genius of his own dumb pun.
Miss O’Connor arrived in twenty minutes, hauling a sewing machine under one arm and swinging a wicker basket on the other. “Here I come to save the day!” she sang, to the tune of the Jungle Survivor theme song.
“Seamstress Olivia’s on her way!” my dad continued the song.
“Ain’t nobody gonna stand in my way!” they sang together, but then they went quiet because neither one of them could think of a rhyming last line. When they read the puzzled expressions on each other’s faces, they both burst out laughing.
Bingo. Sparks.
“You guys are total nerds,” I said, digging through the basket for a pair of scissors capable of cutting fabric.
“Takes one to know one,” Dad said, sticking his tongue out.
“So what are we doing here, kids?” Miss O’Connor asked, flopping on the floor next to me. “I see you’ve already mangled your fabric.”
“It’s harder than it looks,” Dad said, rubbing the back of his neck and grinning sheepishly.
“Summer will be here before you know it, and Dad and I have an adoring audience of history enthusiasts to entertain!” I lifted my chin and grinned.
Miss O’Connor smiled. “I can’t think of a more perfect pair to portray Teddy and Alice. I’d like to get my picture taken with the two of you myself.” She cracked her knuckles. “Lemme see what I can do.”
I headed to the kitchen for a soda, but Miss O’Connor called me out. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Kitchen? Drink? So thirsty…” I mimed choking from thirst.
“Hey, Alice Roosevelt, your ruffly dress isn’t going to sew itself. Get over here and learn something.”
“Ha ha!” Dad pointed and laughed until Miss O’Connor swatted at his finger. “Don’t laugh. You have to watch too. There’s a test on this later.”
That knocked the smile off Dad’s face.
“Okay, the first problem I see here is that you forgot to fold the fabric before you started cutting. The good news is, I think I can match this edge up with that, and lay the pieces like this—”
“But that’s not what it looks like on the pattern!” Dad interrupted.
“Well, we are improvising. Do you want a front and a back to your pants?”
Dad scratched his head. “Do I get to pick which one?”
I made a sick face. “Ew, Dad, gross!”
“What? You don’t think Teddy Roosevelt ever delivered a speech with his backside flapping in the breeze?”
Miss O’Connor chuckled and shook her head. “So what, pray tell, have you two been up to since last Sunday?” She put little pins with colorful balls on the end all the way around the pattern pieces and then handed me her scissors. “Cut, please.”
“Trying to figure out which location on our presidential bucket list we want to hit up next. See the map on the wall?”
Hung over the old piano was a pastel-colored map glued to a corkboard. A few lonely pins were stuck in “wacky historical sites” Dad and I had already visited.
“On Sundays when Dad isn’t preaching, we try to make it to the closer ones. In three weeks we’re going to Independence, Missouri, to visit the Truman Library!”
She grimaced.
“What’s wrong with Harry S. Truman?”
“Oh, nothing. How come you aren’t preaching that Sunday, Pastor Davy?” She batted her eyelashes at him.
“It’s Youth Sunday. The high school kids will have just gotten back from a retreat, and Pastor Steve is talking about everything they learned.”
Miss O’Connor flinched. “I suspected as much.”
Dad crossed his arms and glared at her. “You have a problem with Youth Sunday?”
“No, I have a problem with Pastor Steve. He spits when he talks, and he uses too many sports analogies.”
I giggled. “And he wears his hair all spiky so people will think he’s young and cool, like we can’t see that he’s going bald.”
She laughed. “Well, there’s always that to look forward to. Maybe I’ll attend Bedside Baptist that Sunday. I might be getting sick.” She fake coughed and tried to look pathetic.
Dad tapped his fist on his lips, which transformed into a lopsided smile. “So you enjoy my preaching, huh? Not too heavy for ya? Spiritually enlightening with a dash of entertainment?”
Dad was seriously flirting. With my teacher. But I was strangely okay with it. I liked to see him having fun and goofing off, not being all stiff and formal like at the pizza dinner with Gretchen.
Miss O’Connor handed him the front and back of his pants, which she had skillfully pinned together. “Well, you’re no Pastor Steve….”
Dad looked
momentarily pained. “I could add more sports! How about this one from First Corinthians nine twenty-four….” He cleared his throat dramatically. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”
“Ah, classic.” Miss O’Connor demonstrated how to slip the material through the machine and then traded places with Dad so he could give it a try. “But running a race is a little too spot-on. I love it when he tells me I have to get a ‘third down on the fifty-yard line of life.’ Like I have any idea what that means.”
Dad began to hum the Jungle Survivor theme song again, looking all lit up inside.
When he held up his completed pants seam, Miss O’Connor congratulated him on his stellar sewing skills. They high-fived and laughed when they kinda missed. When Miss O’Connor went to use the bathroom, I gave Dad a goofy grin. “You and Miss O’Connor sure do laugh a lot together.”
He grinned. “She’s fun. One of my best friends.”
I leaned in and lowered my voice. “But what if she could be more than a friend?”
The tips of Dad’s ears turned pink. “You think I should ask out your teacher? Isn’t that weird?”
I shrugged. “It seems weirder on paper. Miss O’Connor is awesome. And you two make each other laugh.”
Dad looked like he was trying to work out a complicated math problem in his head. “There is no way she would go out with me. I’ve been completely friend-zoned. She knows all about my irritable bowels….” He said the last two words with wide eyes just as Miss O’Connor came back in the room.
I didn’t bother to tell him that after the Bachelors and Baskets picnic pretty much everyone knew about his irritable bowels.
Dad and Miss O’Connor continued to talk and joke as our costumes took form, but I could tell Dad was way more in his head. He stopped humming. He only told a few jokes. But I wasn’t going to give up on this idea. Miss O’Connor made my dad happy, and that was my latest and greatest goal.
Around six the next night, there was furious knocking at the back door. Dad had just stepped out to attend a wedding rehearsal, and I was home alone and not really supposed to answer, but then I heard Bea’s voice and some pretty intense knocking.
I flung the door wide and was face to face with Bea and a squirming, snot-nosed Julian. “You have to help me,” she said, looking more desperate than I’d ever seen her before.
“Um, what exactly do you need help with?” I asked as Bea pushed past me into the kitchen.
“My mom had to take my granny to the hospital. She was having blurred vision and headaches, and my mom is worried that she might be having some kind of migraine or something?”
I patted Bea on the arm. “Oh no. Sorry about that. I’m sure she’ll be just fine after your mom gets her to a doctor.”
Bea nodded. “Yeah. You’re probably right. But my dad is working tonight, so…”
I finally figured out what kind of help Bea needed. “So you’re babysitting?”
Bea nodded, tears filling her eyes. “About ten seconds after Mom left, he tried to cut his own hair. I have no idea where he got scissors. I need an extra set of eyes.”
I let out a slow breath and closed and locked the kitchen door. “Sure, no problem. We can tag-team it. I’m sure little Julian here will behave himself. Won’t you, buddy?” I leaned close to Julian’s round cherub face, and he reached out a chubby fist toward me. For a second I thought he was trying to hug me, but his sticky fingers curled around my dangly teardrop earring and he gave a yank.
“OW!” I yelled, backing away from the baby like he might be a wild animal.
Bea cringed. “You’re going to want to remove those. Plus, any other part of your body you don’t want yanked.” She pointed to her hair, which was piled in a high and secure-looking bun on the top of her head.
I nodded and pulled an elastic band out of my pocket, twirling my hair into a ponytail before the little goober could grab it.
“Has he been fed and, like, changed and stuff?” I asked, sniffing the diaper region cautiously.
“Yeah,” Bea said, patting a large bag she had slung over her other shoulder. “And I brought extra supplies.”
“Okay, cool cool cool. Well…” We stood there sort of awkwardly in the kitchen. “What do we do now?”
Bea shrugged. “He’s super boring when he isn’t being super destructive.”
“Those are our only choices?” I asked, eyeing a slimy string of drool escaping Julian’s mouth.
“Boring, Destructive, and Asleep. Three modes.”
“Let’s stick with boring,” I said.
We lugged the toddler into the living room, and I shot Dad a message explaining the situation. He didn’t text back. Probably too busy telling people in the wedding party where to stand.
Bea pulled some cardboard kind of books out of her bag and sat next to Julian on the floor. She didn’t even read the words in the books, she just pointed to things and said their names. Julian clapped his hands after every page. This didn’t seem that hard.
“Hey,” Bea said. “I know what will be fun. Let’s play Bonk!” Bonk is where Bea and I take turns smacking each other in the head with pillows and yelling “Bonk!” and then falling over dramatically. Julian laughed hysterically. Every. Single. Time. The joke was evergreen. But then Bea got just a little too aggressive and whacked me so hard I went rolling off the back of the couch, and I smacked my head on the floor and saw stars for a second. I flew to my feet in a rage, grabbed the can of squeezy cheese we’d been snacking on, and chased her around the living room.
“I’m gonna cheese your face!” I screamed as Bea ducked behind the couch.
“You have to catch me first, slowpoke!” she yelled back.
There was a lot of running and squealing and laughing and ducking, and when we finally collapsed on the couch, breathing hard but un-cheesed, at first we didn’t register the silence.
Silence, when you’re watching a toddler, is bad.
Bea sat up at the exact same time that I did, and we looked at each other with wide eyes. “Where is he?” I asked at the same time that Bea jumped up and started calling, “Julian? Here, Julian!” like you would call a dog.
I followed a trail of fishy crackers down the hallway to my room, but I hadn’t even pushed open the door yet when I heard Bea scream.
My feet took off in the direction of her cry, heart hammering in my chest. What was wrong? Was Julian hurt? Would I need to call an ambulance or 911 or something?
I stepped into the kitchen and instantly my feet slid out from under me. I landed on my back, staring up at the dusty light fixture. Bea was laughing, on the floor beside me, and I realized she must have wiped out too. “What is going on?” I asked, sitting up and rubbing my now-doubly-sore head. “Why is the floor so…” And then I saw Julian.
He stood in the middle of the kitchen, holding the bottle of baby oil from his diaper bag. Or at least what was left of it. The contents of the almost-full bottle were now all over my kitchen floor and covering the little brat from head to toe. His hair was thick with it, and it was matted with some kind of white powder, which was joining the oil on the floor to make a paste.
“Julian, no!” Bea said, trying to scramble to her feet. It was like trying to walk with sticks of butter attached to your shoes.
“Oh my gosh. My dad is gonna—” Just then the back door opened and Dad walked in and promptly wiped out on the baby-butt-fresh floor.
Bea and I about died. We were laughing so hard, our heads were purple. Our stomachs hurt. Our faces were sore. My dad looked around at the greasy kitchen and the slimy baby and he started laughing too.
“What a little terror!” Bea said.
“At least he smells nice,” I added, and then we burst into another round of giggles.
“It’s all fun an
d games until somebody eats the diaper cream,” Dad said, carefully lifting little Julian by the armpits and placing him gingerly in the sink. “I’ll wash the baby. You wash the floor.” He sighed. “This is gonna take a lot of baby shampoo.”
Bea held up the empty bottle of No Tears Baby Shampoo, which set us off on a fresh round of giggles.
It was a major pain trying to get the entire contents of the diaper bag off the kitchen floor. Plus, after everything had been put right, Dad gave me a lecture about responsibility, even though it was pretty much all Julian’s fault. But every time I thought about the three of us wiping out on the kitchen floor, I cracked up again. Sure, Bea’s changing family meant some extra messes and responsibilities, but it wasn’t all terrible. Changes could be fun…before they turned into a messy disaster, at least.
It was finally painting day. A whole Saturday to spend with my dad. Once we got the soft yellow paint on all the attic walls, it would be time for carpet, and then we could start moving my stuff up there. Dad whistled while he rolled the high parts and I carefully brushed around the edges. Potus sniffed everything and then curled into a ball near the window when he lost interest.
“Hey, Grace, what does the painter do when he gets cold?”
I squinted at the ceiling for a second. “He puts on another coat?”
“Awww, you’ve heard that one?” Dad said, leaning on his paint stick.
“No, you’ve just trained me well in the ways of puns. I am like a pun Jedi. You’ve made me join you on the dark side.” I cracked up at myself, then realized that was exactly what my dad would do, which made me crack up more.
“So, you know I’m doing my research project on Teddy Roosevelt,” I said, dipping my brush in the paint.
Dad chuckled. “How could I forget? Your research has gotten me my first reenacting job.”
The more I’d studied Theodore Roosevelt, the more I’d accidentally studied Alice. I was so curious about her, a teenager growing up in the White House with a famous dad. I imagined it was a lot like being the preacher’s kid in a small town. Everybody had ideas about what you should and shouldn’t do. Everyone was all up in your business. Me and Alice had that in common.