The Stepmom Shake-Up

by Niki Lenz

  I stood at the kitchen door and listened to them talking. Miss O’Connor’s voice was too low to hear, but Dad said something about “Grace’s idea.” I fumed. Why couldn’t he just try? Be honest about his feelings? Why did he have to shut Miss O’Connor down before he’d even given her a chance?

  And then the doorbell rang.

  Maybe Bea was back for her iPad? Or maybe we’d ordered a pizza we’d forgotten about? But I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach it was neither of those things.

  I walked into the living room just as Dad opened the door. Gretchen stood on the porch, holding two coffees in paper cups. She grinned from ear to ear. “Coffee delivery!” she said, stepping into the living room.

  “Gretchen, I didn’t know you were coming over.” Dad glanced at the other woman stretched out on his couch.

  “I was in the area, and I…Oh, is this a bad time?” Her eyes glanced around at the flickering candles and then narrowed at Miss O’Connor.

  Dad fumbled to flick on the overhead light. “Well, yes and no. You remember Grace’s teacher, Miss O’Connor? She came over to look at my truck, but then she got ill, and I didn’t want to send her home alone.”

  “Ah, so you’re playing Florence Nightingale. Be careful, patients tend to fall in love with their nurses.” She threw back her head and laughed, but Miss O’Connor and Dad both looked suddenly fidgety.

  “Here, soy latte, for you.” Gretchen handed Dad the lidded cup.

  I sat at the end of the couch where Miss O’Connor’s feet were. “Dad likes caramel macchiatos.”

  “Grace, that’s not polite,” Dad whispered.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I just got you what I always get.” For the first time, Gretchen looked slightly uncomfortable.

  “It was sweet of you to think of me and bring me coffee. Thank you so much.”

  Miss O’Connor sat up, touching her forehead and grimacing. “I should go home. You all have a whole Saturday evening ahead of you, and I need a nap.”

  I said, “No, stay,” at the same time Gretchen said, “Bye, feel better!”

  Dad cleared his throat. “Olivia, you’re welcome to stay here until you’re one hundred percent again.”

  “No thank you. I’ll get my coat.” She swayed on her feet dizzily and I ran to the front closet to get her jacket. My whole brilliant plan had crashed and burned and somehow Gretchen had weaseled her way into our Saturday.

  Dad and Gretchen laughed, their heads close together. Making fun of me, no doubt. He’d probably told her all about how I’d tried to set him up with my teacher, like I was some clueless kid who didn’t even know how love worked. I couldn’t help but notice Gretchen hadn’t bothered to bring a paper cup for me. I enjoy a mocha just as much as the next girl. I glared at her perfect hair and her stylish back as I thrust the coat at Miss O’Connor.

  “Thanks for the tea and toast.” She smiled weakly at me. “And for all the rest.” She winked, but winced as if it would split her head in two.

  “Will I see you at church on Sunday?” Dad said, opening the door for her.

  “Guess it depends on if I’m still barfing,” Miss O’Connor answered sweetly.

  Gretchen recoiled, and it looked like it took everything in her power to not cover her mouth and nose until Miss O’Connor left. She would probably whip out the Lysol and spray the couch and hallway as soon as Miss O’Connor was out the door.

  “Take care of yourself,” Gretchen said through gritted teeth. She put her arm around Dad’s shoulders and smiled, but it didn’t look like she was breathing.

  “I always do,” Miss O’Connor said, with her back to us. She was already halfway down the sidewalk.

  “Dad, I can’t believe you let her go home! She’s sick! She needs us!”

  Gretchen swept over to the couch but decided not to sit. “She needs to rest. Plus, your dad doesn’t want to wait on her hand and foot all evening.”

  Dad stared at the closed front door, and I saw something flicker across his face, but then he took a drink of his soy latte and swallowed with some difficulty.

  “Kindness is never wasted,” he said softly.

  “What’s that?” Gretchen didn’t glance up from her phone.

  “My dad always says, ‘No kindness is ever wasted.’ ”

  He pulled me into a side hug.

  “Well, I, for one, don’t enjoy cleaning up other people’s vomit. Not my favorite way to spend a Saturday. Grace, why don’t you take this and go to a movie?” She pressed a crisp twenty-dollar bill into my hand.

  Did she think she could just buy me off? Shoo me away? And the worst part was, Dad didn’t say a thing to stop me.

  I put on my coat as Gretchen and Dad chatted in low voices. The other half of Team Gravy didn’t even notice when I left.

  I went to the one place that always helps my brain work through things when I’m super mad. The duck pond.

  Evening was settling in as the ducks swam in lazy circles around the murky pond. The water was as dark as my heart. I picked up an acorn off the ground and flung it, accidentally hitting a ducky square in the tail feathers. It gave a disgruntled squawk before moving out of range.

  How could this have happened? Everything had blown up in my face. Dad was more interested in Gretchen than in Miss O’Connor. And mood music and a pile of s’mores hadn’t even distracted him for ten minutes. I chucked another acorn, but luckily this time I didn’t hit any feathered friends.

  After my mom died, I knew everything was broken. Our lives would never be happy again, and I would always be missing something. Dad tried so hard to fix everything. On my first birthday without Mom, he planned a “spa day” at home, complete with facials and mani-pedis. We wore towels on our heads and green masks on our faces. He made me believe as long as we had each other, we didn’t need anyone else.

  But then he’d gone and decided that wasn’t true! When pushy Miss Donna and Miss Marge mentioned he should meet a nice lady, he didn’t say, “No, me and my daughter are perfectly fine, thank you.” He wasn’t as happy with Team Gravy as he’d led me to believe. He wanted more.

  And recently I’d been feeling like I wouldn’t hate having a stepmom around. As long as it was the right one. As long as it was someone who wouldn’t mess us up. But Gretchen had just done what I’d feared the most. She’d sent me away. And Dad was too busy staring into her sparkly eyes to even notice.

  I chucked another nut.

  “Knew you’d be here.” My breath hitched, and I snapped my head toward the sound of his voice.

  Dad sat down, then picked a few acorns off the ground and handed them to me. “Playing dodgeball with the ducks again?”

  “How did you know where I went?” I asked. Even though I was secretly pleased that Dad had found me, I had to keep reminding myself that I was angry with him. He was the one who was breaking up the team.

  Dad studied an acorn in his hand. “Remember the time when you were five and you told us you wanted to run away from home?”

  I had a flash of memory. I was stuffing my Hello Kitty backpack with a box of graham crackers and a jar of peanut butter.

  “You were so mad at me, you told me you wanted to live at the park. You strung a blanket up right over there.” He pointed underneath a platform on the play structure, and I could faintly remember sitting in my makeshift tent, eating my graham crackers and peanut butter and feeling angry at my dad.

  “Why did I want to run away?” Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been worse than getting handed twenty dollars and being told to get lost.

  “You and I had been working on a jigsaw puzzle for weeks. It was of the White House. Which means all the pieces were basically white. It was some serious parental misjudgment to buy it for you in the first place. Some would say I had set you up for failure.”

  I remembered squinting at the jagg
ed white pieces, holding them up to the light. Trying over and over again to make them fit. “You finished the puzzle without me. When I was sleeping.” My footie pajamas had made a pattering sound all the way down the stairs. I’d stopped when I’d reached the living room and stared at the puzzle, completely finished.

  Dad hung his head. “I thought it would make you happy! You were getting so frustrated with it. I stayed up half the night to surprise you.”

  “And I took one look and declared I was moving out,” I said, smiling a little bit at my dramatic kindergarten self.

  “I wanted to try to stop you. I thought about locking you in your room! Of course, Mom knew best. She said to let you have some space. But we definitely followed you in the car.” Dad laughed, his eyes crinkled at the memory. “We sat here and watched you until it started to get dark. I wanted to go over and beg your forgiveness and buy you ice cream and fix everything, but instead we waited. And when the first streetlights came on you packed up your bag and headed home.”

  “You were here the whole time?” I asked, my voice cracking.

  “Giblet, I would’ve camped out here all night. I would’ve crossed mountains and oceans. I would’ve done that entire impossible jigsaw puzzle again. All I wanted was for you to forgive me and to come home. As far as I could remember, that was the last time you were ever truly angry at me. So, tonight, after I sat there and drank that disgusting coffee like a nincompoop while my girlfriend scrolled Twitter, I hoped you’d be camped out here, waiting for me.”

  “What about Gretchen? She seemed to have some plans today that did not involve me.” I launched an acorn.

  Dad rubbed the back of his neck. “I told her I needed to be with my daughter tonight, the other half of my team. And I told her that we had plans, just me and you.”

  “What kind of plans?” I asked, finally looking up into my dad’s face.

  “I was thinking we should get a completely white jigsaw puzzle and attempt to put it together!” We laughed and Dad put his arm around me. “I don’t care what we do, as long as I’m with you.”

  * * *

  It was finally beginning to feel like spring, and nobody was happier about this than Potus. Anytime Dad or I walked past his leash, hanging by the door, he ran in circles, begging for a walk.

  “All right, Potus. I’ll take you. Just hold on.” I left Dad a note and put on a jacket, and then the two of us headed out into the sunshine.

  Potus liked to stop and smell every leaf and blade of grass and that was fine with me because my mind was racing, even if my feet weren’t.

  My dad.

  Team Gravy.

  Miss O’Connor.

  Gretchen.

  What was the right thing to do here? Was I supposed to just sit back and let Dad continue to date Gretchen, when I knew (even if he didn’t) that Miss O’Connor was the right lady for him?

  I kicked a rock and followed Potus down the street. The sky was a brilliant blue, and spring flowers were popping up in garden beds and around mailboxes. Potus cocked his head at every bird that called to its buddies, and we passed several neighbors who were all out trying to soak up the sunshine.

  I kept thinking about that White House puzzle. I had assumed me and Dad were gonna finish that thing together. It was our special project, and I had thought we were a team. But then, BAM, he went and finished it without me. And somehow the picture didn’t look exactly like I had thought it would.

  And now Dad was doing it again. I had a good idea what the last piece of our family’s puzzle should be, and what the final picture should look like, but he’d gone and crammed in a wrong last piece!

  Potus lifted his head and let the warm breeze ruffle his ears. “Dad should be with Miss O’Connor. She’s the last piece of our puzzle.” Potus looked at me solemnly and I took that as a Yes, Grace. I agree with you completely. Then he spotted a butterfly and practically yanked me off my feet chasing it. We slowed back down to a normal walking pace after a few steps, though, ’cause Potus wasn’t exactly a puppy anymore and he was out of shape. His tongue hung out and he panted, watching the butterfly make a clean getaway.

  “Well, I’m not going to give up as easily as you, Potus. I’m going to keep trying. It’s too important to both of us to just quit.” There had to be something I could do to get Dad and Miss O’Connor to see eye to eye.

  The biggest problem was Gretchen. She was a distraction, for sure. She was beautiful and smart and stylish, but she didn’t have that certain something that Team Gravy needed. She didn’t make Dad belly-laugh. She thought cosplay was silly. She didn’t get his puns, even the ones that were pretty funny. She didn’t know how to fix a broken carburetor.

  If only Miss O’Connor hadn’t gotten sick! They’d been so close! You could practically feel the electricity buzzing between them. If only they had sat down and started to chat. If only they had burned some marshmallows and laughed as they blew out the flames. If only they had looked at each other, really looked at each other! If only, if only, if only…

  I sighed as Potus lifted his leg on the neighbor’s mailbox and then trotted toward our front door. I led him up the front steps, but I stopped at the top and sat down, and the fur monster curled up in a ball at my feet. I patted his head and rubbed his ears and tried to figure out how I was feeling.

  Scared. I was feeling scared. What if Dad chose to be with someone who didn’t want to be with me? What if he made a new team with someone else?

  Dad probably wanted me to pack up my tent and head home—to give up the fight like I’d done when I was five. But I just couldn’t. Not this time. I had to give it at least one more try. Miss O’Connor fit with us. She made the whole picture make sense. Dad deserved a beautifully completed puzzle. And so did I.

  I made Bea volunteer to help haul my stuff up to my new room as soon as the carpet was installed. She showed up wearing bib overalls and a bandana covering her hair, like she’d looked up “What to wear when doing chores” in a book. I was wearing a sparkly llama sweatshirt and jeans. I didn’t think you needed to dress down to move boxes.

  I huffed up the ladder, a box blocking my view of Bea. “It was terrible. Pretty much the worst possible ending to that scenario…” I’d promised Bea a sleepover after we were finished dragging boxes up the wobbly ladder. But all I could think about was last week’s puke-tastic incident with Miss O’Connor and my dad and the marshmallows that remained untoasted.

  “He really likes her. And she likes him. They just need to talk about it.” I was slightly out of breath from my millionth trip up to the attic, so I flopped down on the one item Dad had helped with, my bed, which was unmade in one of the window alcoves.

  Bea decided it was time for a break too. She pulled a bag of Skittles out of her overnight bag and started to divide them up. I popped a can of Pringles and handed her a Dr Pepper from the mini-fridge.

  Bea chose one purple Skittle and chewed it carefully. “I think you’re right. When he saw her in the candlelight…I mean, before the barf…they both had heart eyeballs.”

  “But now it’s like none of it even happened. Miss O’Connor went home, and Dad hung out with Gretchen. The barfing completely broke the spell.”

  I took a presidential bobblehead doll out of its box and stared into our first president’s face. My old room had had a ledge that went all the way around and it had been full of these guys. They would need a new home. I set George Washington’s big noggin bobbing before placing him lovingly back in the box.

  “They just need to spend more time together. Alone.” Bea flipped through the playlist on her iPad until she found a song that she liked and then started to bob her head, not unlike George.

  “Yeah, except how am I supposed to get them to do that?”

  We chewed in silence for a few minutes. Bea made my bed for me, tucking the sheets in military-style, while I flipped through a magazine
on the floor.

  When the next song came on, Bea said, “I got it. They need, like, to get stuck in an elevator. That always works in movies.”

  “I don’t know how to break an elevator,” I said. “But otherwise, it’s not a bad plan.”

  “They’d have to talk because they’d be so bored and hungry and mad.” Bea tossed one of my throw pillows onto the bed and then straightened it by half a millimeter.

  “I’m not sure bored, hungry, and mad are the feelings that help people fall in love. What they need is to be locked on a date. Like the lock-in the youth group just had…” My brain started to speed up, flipping through ideas as fast as I could relay them to Bea. “We could lure them to the church basement under false pretenses and then set up a romantic candlelit dinner. With food and music and everything. Therefore, no hunger. So at least we’d be eliminating one of the bad elevator feelings.”

  Bea frowned. “Luring under false pretenses reminds me of, like…abduction.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her, but I was on a roll. “And we could tie them together! So they’d have to talk!” I added.

  “What? No! Now you are seriously describing abduction. We’re not tying anyone together!” she said, shaking her head.

  “Fine. Locking them in should do the trick. They’ll talk and eat and look into each other’s eyes and then…magic.”

  Bea sighed. “It does usually work in the movies. I’ll help you with the setup and stuff, but the luring is all on you. That’s where I draw the line. I won’t be an accomplice in the kidnapping of two adults.”

  “They’ll be so grateful to us once they find each other that it won’t even matter,” I assured her, shoveling a stack of chips in my mouth.

  * * *

  We decided that the next Wednesday night would be the best time to catch both Dad and Miss O’Connor at church. We cleaned the church basement with the fervor of a criminal cleaning a crime scene, which Bea kept reminding me was basically true.