by Niki Lenz
“What? No. Dad. How could I make up a whole milkshake? How could I make up two straws? This was all Youth Pastor Steve’s idea.” I waved at the spiky-haired guy from across the room and he waved back, still looking confused.
Dad dragged a hand down his face. “Olivia—Miss O’Connor. I am so sorry. I think I’d better get my little con artist home.” I felt the plan falling to bits like my crunched-up taco shells. Why did my dad have to invite a date to this thing? And why couldn’t Gretchen have just gone and washed dishes like a nice person? And why was my dad giving me that look like he was…disappointed in me? He hadn’t even given that milkshake one little taste! Gretchen stuck her arm through his again, and I imagined peeling all of her red nail polish off. Bea waved at me and mouthed the word “Sorry!”
I hung my head and followed my dad out of the fellowship hall. Miss O’Connor shrugged and pulled the milkshake closer. She took a long drink and grinned to herself.
Bea called me up the next day and asked if I wanted to come over for dinner at her house. I hesitated, thinking about our babysitting adventures and then the tuna casserole night and wondering if I had the energy for that kind of chaos.
“Um, are you sure it’s okay with your mom and everyone? I mean, isn’t everybody pretty busy?”
Bea laughed. “Oh no! We scared you last time, didn’t we? Things have calmed down around here, I promise.”
I took a deep breath, and smiled, and said, “Great!” But I planned to escape as soon as things got wild.
* * *
Bea’s house was noisy. And messy. But she was right, there wasn’t thick panic in the air like the last time I’d come over. Her mom sang in the kitchen, stirring something that smelled amazing on the stove. Mr. Morrison lined up Cheerios on the high chair’s tray, where Julian was gobbling them up, his drooly face smiling.
“Somebody needs a diaper change,” Mr. Morrison said, lifting the baby out of the chair.
“I’ll do it,” Bea said.
“Wait, you’re volunteering for the dirty work?” I whispered through gritted teeth.
Bea laughed. “He really likes it when I do it. I blow the best tummy raspberries, don’t I, little guy?” She rubbed her nose with Julian’s nose and I followed her to the toddler’s room.
The sounds of the kitchen grew muffled in the background. “I am so glad you came over,” she said, laying Julian down on the changing table. “We didn’t even get a chance to talk after Operation: Milkshake-Two-Straws.”
I groaned. “That was basically a disaster. Dad figured out I’d set up the whole thing and he was ticked about it. I got a whole lecture in the car about misleading the church members and stuff.”
Bea gave me the side eye. “Did he notice that we were trying to get him and Miss O’Connor together?”
I shrugged. “What can I say? The guy’s dense sometimes.”
Bea smiled hugely, her face close to Julian’s, but she was still talking to me. “That’s that, then. There’s nothing else we can do about it. I guess the secret Cupids are done.”
I picked up a squashy blue dog from the floor. “Hey, it’s Mr. Jiggles! I haven’t seen him in forever!”
Bea smiled. “He lived in the attic for a while, but I decided to pass him on to my little brother.”
Little brother?
For some reason, I had never thought of Julian as Bea’s little brother. He was the new toddler in her family. He was her noisiest problem. He was a royal pain in the you-know-where. But somehow, I had forgotten that after the adoption he was also Bea’s little brother. I looked at the squirmy kid with new interest.
Bea finished up the diaper change and then leaned over and blew spitty bubbles on her brother’s tummy. He exploded in laughter so contagious we couldn’t help but join him. Bea grabbed Mr. Jiggles and gave him a tight squeeze before tossing him in the crib in the corner.
“Does it stink having to share your parents with this guy?” I asked. Something curdled in my guts as I remembered Gretchen’s hand on Dad’s arm at the banquet. The secret Cupids could not possibly be done.
“Sometimes it stinks so bad I think the wallpaper might peel,” Bea said, scooping up Julian and plopping down in the rocking chair. “Especially if he’s had a bunch of prunes.”
I laughed. “No, I mean doesn’t it bug you?”
Bea shrugged. “It’s weird….At first I was so mad. I hated that my whole family got messed up and rearranged. You know how I like things a certain way. And at times it seemed like I was the one making all the sacrifices….” She smoothed Julian’s hair. “But then we fell in love.”
“Wait, what?” I asked.
“With Julian. We all did. Mom first, from like the second she held him. Me and Dad took a little longer. But now…I couldn’t imagine our family without him.”
I crossed my arms. “But he cries and poops and takes all your parents’ time and attention and everything!”
“Yeah, but he also makes my mom sing lullabies. And my dad loves to bounce him on his knee while they watch baseball games together. And I read him the same three books every freaking night because those are the ones he likes best. He somehow makes all of us better.”
“Beaeeeee,” Julian said, smiling and pulling at one of her pigtails. “Beaeeee Beaeeee Beaeeee.”
Bea gasped and her hand flew to her mouth. “That’s right, buddy! I’m Bea! You said my name! Did you hear that? He said my name!”
We both erupted into giggles, as Julian, who was very proud of himself for mastering his sister’s name, repeated it about eleventy billion times.
Bea flung him onto her hip and trotted him out to the kitchen and had him do his trick for both of her parents. You would have thought he’d composed his first symphony by the way they reacted. Their joy was pretty contagious. And even though I noticed subtle changes in the way the family worked, everyone seemed happy. I watched Bea smiling and giving her little brother nose kisses, and I conceded that he hadn’t, in fact, ruined the family. Maybe there was still hope for mine.
Every March, the Springdale School District hosts a special Muffins with Mom event. Basically, your mom comes to school in the morning and sits at a sticky cafeteria table and eats a slightly stale blueberry muffin with you. Sometimes you give her a card and a paper flower you’ve made. It was all pretty silly, until I didn’t have a mom to invite anymore.
During my very first Muffins Without Mom, my dad came to rescue me. He scooped me up and took me out to our favorite diner for a steaming plate of biscuits and gravy.
He was my knight in shining armor. He was Batman answering the Bat-Signal. He was a lifeguard saving a drowning girl.
So it became our tradition. Every year he rescues me from the dreaded event, swapping muffins for biscuits and gravy. It makes me feel like we’re okay, just the two of us. That anytime I need a mom, Dad will do just fine.
I pulled on my rainbow-striped leggings and an oversized unicorn sweatshirt and brushed my teeth methodically in the mirror.
The shower was running in Dad’s bathroom, so at least he was up and getting ready. I banged on the bathroom door. “Dad! Don’t forget Muffins with Mom is today!”
He stuck his head out the door, the shower still running. “Is that today?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice getting all high-pitched and panicky.
“I know.” He grinned, shutting the door in my face.
Jerk.
“Well, I’m going to walk to school with Bea,” I said through the door.
“Okay, I’ll be there at nine. With bells on.”
“Please don’t actually wear any bells,” I said, and I was rewarded with a chuckle.
Bea and I walked at a brisk pace because even though spring was on its way, it was still chilly in the morning. I could see my breath come out in wispy puffs, and I tried to make sure my feet took two steps t
o every sidewalk square without stepping on the crack. Still didn’t want to break anyone’s back.
“So…today’s that thing,” Bea said, giving me a sideways glance.
“I know. Is your mom coming?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure I could get her to stay home. She’s bringing the monster.”
Bea said it like she was complaining, but the corner of her mouth twitched.
“He learned a new word yesterday,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand. “Let’s just say if you said it your dad would make you put a dollar in the swear jar.”
My eyes widened and both of us laughed. Bea leaned in. “I hope Julian doesn’t try out his new vocabulary at school. He’s so embarrassing.”
I think Bea hoped it would make me feel better when she complained about Julian and especially her mom, but it still made me miss my mom so bad my ears burned.
“Well, Dad will rescue me, like usual,” I said, attempting to smile.
“You’re lucky,” Bea said, and then her face went slack and she tried to backtrack. “I mean, not lucky that your mom…I mean, just lucky your dad is so cool and…Sorry.”
I smiled. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”
After a brief half hour in homeroom, we were sent to the cafeteria to either eat a muffin with our mom, or watch other people do it. What a horrible tradition.
Bea said hi to her mom and they got in line. Bea’s mom held a squirming Julian on her hip and other ladies kept coming up and cooing at him and fluffing his curly hair. Bea smiled so big her whole face glowed. She looked proud and really, really happy. It made me wanna pinch her a little bit, to be honest.
I pulled my notebook from my backpack and decided I would ignore everyone until my dad arrived. I drew a pile of biscuits in my notebook, smothered with some peppery Southern gravy. And at the top of the page I wrote, “Biscuits and Gravy beats Muffins any day!”
But as the minute hand on the cafeteria clock ticked on and on and my dad hadn’t made his appearance, I started to get a twitchy feeling in my feet. I was surrounded by kids and moms and muffins and it squeezed me, suffocating me. I needed to get out of there. I stood up and flung my backpack over one shoulder and marched toward the bathrooms.
“Grace?” Miss O’Connor touched my shoulder and stopped me midmarch.
“Oh, hey,” I said, trying to step around her.
“Um, your dad couldn’t make it. He had an emergency.”
I turned around to face her. “What? What kind of emergency?” My heart pumped triple-time as I remembered the day of Mom’s accident. I pictured Dad on the ambulance stretcher and I couldn’t move air in my lungs. Not again. I can’t live through that again.
Miss O’Connor read the distress on my face and quickly put her arm around me. “Your dad’s okay. He just had to go visit someone at the hospital. It had to be now, you know?”
Someone from our church was hurt enough or sick enough or just plain old enough that they needed the pastor to come pray with them in the hospital. I felt my chest loosen, but only slightly. My hands were shaky. I thought about whoever it was and sent up my own prayer for them, and for the family they might be leaving behind.
This was part of being a pastor’s daughter. You had to share your dad when duty called, but it didn’t mean you had to like it.
Sighing, I resigned myself to Muffins with Mom without the other half of Team Gravy.
I hated muffins.
I nodded to Miss O’Connor and tried to squirm out from under her arm to go hide in the bathroom, but she snagged my backpack. “Hey, can I hang out with you? I could really go for a muffin about now.”
“Don’t you have class?”
“All the teachers are in here,” she said, gesturing around the crowded cafeteria.
I shrugged. Fine. If she wanted to share in my misery, that was just great.
We got into the muffin line, which was much shorter now, and I tried to glance over at her without her noticing. She was dressed for school, in a long dress printed with kittens playing with balls of yarn. Her hair bounced wild and curly, and her cat-eye glasses hung around her neck on a chain. Overall, she looked eccentric, but then I glanced down at my unicorn sweater and rainbow leggings and figured we made an excellent pair. In fact, if I had to be stuck at this thing with anyone besides Dad, I’d probably want it to be Miss O’Connor.
We reached for the same chocolate chip muffin at the same time and then laughed. “You take it. It’s the last one,” Miss O’Connor said.
“No, you can have it. I’ll take…this poppy seed one.”
Miss O’Connor leaned close to my ear. “Nobody likes the poppy seed ones. How ’bout we just split this?”
I smiled and nodded.
We carried our muffin and a stack of napkins to the only empty end of a long cafeteria table. For a second, I worried that kids would make fun of me for sitting with a teacher, but everyone liked Miss O’Connor and I guessed I didn’t really care what they said anyway.
“How’s your famous-American research going?” Miss O’Connor asked, plopping down across from me.
“Great!” I said. “Did you know that Teddy Roosevelt built the Panama Canal and went on an African safari and won the Nobel Peace Prize and went on a river expedition in Brazil for forty-eight days!” I could feel my cheeks pinking up. Tone it down, nerd.
But Miss O’Connor hung on my every word, nodding, chewing manically on a bite of muffin. “Wow! That’s an impressive amount of research you’ve done already!”
I shrugged. “I like him. Definitely our coolest president.”
“I could not agree more.” Miss O’Connor smiled, her eyes crinkling around the edges. She smelled like muffins and flowers. “And have you come across much about Edith and the children? They were quite fascinating as well.”
I scrunched up my nose. “Alice is great. But so far, I haven’t found a shred of evidence that Edith was even the tiniest bit fascinating. In fact, it seems to me that she stole Alice’s father away from her.” I stared at my chunk of muffin. The room full of mothers was suffocating again.
Miss O’Connor’s voice was soft. “Ah, maybe you need to dig deeper. See, it was Edith who put the family back together after Teddy and Alice had suffered so much.”
I gulped. Just like me and Dad had suffered so much. I felt my knee go bouncy under the table and I wanted to bolt more than ever. I tucked this little bit of information away to research later.
“So…this event must be kinda hard,” Miss O’Connor said, carefully chewing her last bite of muffin.
“Yeah. I pretty much hate it. But Dad usually saves me.”
“I know. He was so worried when he called me. He wanted to make sure you didn’t have to sit here alone.”
I smiled a half smile. “I don’t even think he realizes how much he depends on you for stuff.”
Miss O’Connor blushed. “We’re good friends. He’s a good man. A good pastor. He is a godly man of God who is my pastor.” She stumbled over her words and she tried to look everywhere else but at me. I studied her face, cheeks pink and eyes darting around the crowded cafeteria.
Aha! I was right! She likes him!
She’s totally crushing on my dad!
I knew it!
“So, how come you never got married?” I asked, finishing off my half of the muffin.
Miss O’Connor smiled. “Never met the right guy, I guess.”
“What about a good man, who is a good pastor, who is a godly man of God who is your pastor?” A wicked grin stole across my face.
“What? No. I mean, I’ve never thought about your dad that way.”
“Never?”
She looked down at the table. “You aren’t really supposed to go around having crushes on your pastor. That is deranged. But I do like his sense of humor. He’s pretty funny.
”
“He is. And he’s brilliant. Plus, you guys like the same stuff.” I couldn’t help but notice that Miss O’Connor and I liked a lot of the same stuff too. Quirky clothes and sewing and taco mountains and history. I was starting to see Miss O’Connor as more than just my teacher and Dad’s friend. She was my friend too.
“There was this one time, last summer at the church’s bonfire night…” Miss O’Connor’s face got all dreamy, and I gave her an encouraging nod. “We sat next to each other, talking and laughing. He toasted my marshmallows for me, extra burnt, just how I like them.”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Nothing. I thought there was…I don’t know…a spark or something? But then the next day we were back to being buddies.”
Her eyes looked sad. “Look, I’m not going to argue with you that your dad is great. But he’s never indicated he wanted to date me.”
These two kids liked each other and both of them thought they had no chance. I felt a bubble of hope rising in my chest. I could help them finally be honest with each other.
“And what about that woman he’s seeing?” Miss O’Connor asked.
I twirled my hair around my finger. “Nobody he’s gone out with has ever made him laugh like you do. Or knows all about how Andrew Jackson taught his pet parrot to curse. Or watches Jungle Survivor and roots for people to eat all their food on the first day like we do.”
She laughed. “Well, that’s very specific criterion.”
I smiled. “It really is.”
She stood up, shaking crumbs off her dress. “If only we could re-create the magic of the melty marshmallows…”
I’ll have to work on that.
Miss O’Connor hadn’t just helped out Dad by keeping me company among the muffins and moms. It was nice to sit across from her, to talk to her, and to listen to her. She made me feel warm and full, like I’d just polished off a giant bowl of macaroni and cheese. Was it possible that finding the right person for Dad could actually make me happier too?