by Niki Lenz
My sewing machine sat on an L-shaped table in one of the window alcoves. The space to spread out in the natural light had spurred me to sew all the curtains and pillows with bright funky fabrics. The dress form I’d found at a garage sale sat waiting for me to make it a costume. I thought I might be Dolley Madison for Halloween.
My bed was set up in the other window alcove. The crisp white bedspread was the perfect background to show off my colorful pillows. I could see the stars when I lay there at night. Low shelves lined one wall, filled with a rainbow of book spines.
Olivia let out a whistle. “Bravo! You guys did an amazing job up here!” She walked around, inspecting little details. Dad proudly explained how we ran the heating ducts and installed the pink insulation. “My assistant, Grace, should get a lot of the credit here. She hammers like lightning.”
“ ’Cause I’m so fast?” I asked.
“ ’Cause lightning never strikes the same place twice, is more like it.” Dad cracked up, and I stuck my tongue out at him.
Our wacky presidential bucket list map was proudly hung on the wall, with all the colorful pins marking the places we’ve already been. I couldn’t wait to add some more over the summer, once I was no longer grounded and I could start leaving the house again.
“There’s a familiar face,” Olivia said, pointing to the poster of Teddy Roosevelt.
“He’s practically part of the family,” I said, winking at my dad.
Olivia spied the last lonely cardboard box sitting in the corner. “What’s this?” she asked, nudging the box with her toe.
“My presidential bobbleheads. I have a ton of them, and I’m not really sure where to put them. I thought about on top of the bookshelves, but I want them to have their own kind of space.”
Olivia tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Your dad mentioned that. I think I might have the perfect thing. That is, if you like quirky, eclectic style?” She lifted one eyebrow.
Dad jumped in. “Have you met Grace? Olivia, may I introduce you to my very quirky, very eclectic daughter, Grace Martin.”
I curtsied, lifting the hem of my rainbow-printed skirt, and Olivia giggled. “Fair point. It’s out in the truck, maybe Davy can help me carry it in?”
I shrugged, but my curiosity was piqued. “Sounds interesting.” While Dad and Olivia hauled whatever it was out of Dad’s truck, I turned on some music and threw a ball for Potus.
I could hear them shuffling below the trapdoor long before I could see them. “You go through first, and I’ll pass it up to you,” Dad’s disembodied voice said. Olivia popped through the door, smiled at me, and yelled, “All right, give it a shove!” This was giving me major flashbacks from the day we tried to push the Christmas tree box up here.
Dad grunted and an object that looked strangely like an old-fashioned car burst through the floor. Olivia helped Dad guide it, and then he came through after, panting.
“Whew. They don’t make ’em like that anymore. That thing weighs about a million pounds.”
Olivia collapsed on the floor next to Dad. “I hope she likes it, ’cause I don’t think we can carry it back down.”
I cleared my throat. “Um…what is it?”
Olivia sat up, laughing. “You can’t tell?”
I inspected the pile of metal a little more closely. “It looks like scrap car parts.”
Olivia nodded enthusiastically. “It is! I got this old junker for parts to fix mine. And the rest of the shell was just lying around collecting dust. So I thought I might make something out of the scraps, you know?”
She had taken the two pink doors of the old Chevy and put them on the front of a cabinet cut in their exact shape.
“Here, let’s try putting it over in that corner,” she said, pointing to where the bobblehead box was. I helped scoot it out of the way as Dad and Olivia moved the cabinet into place. “Oh, can’t forget this,” she said, swinging an electrical cord around and then plugging it in. The headlights that were mounted inside the cabinet buzzed to life. It was a work of art. It was weird and fun and functional and creative. It was the perfect finishing touch to our Team Gravy project.
Olivia whispered to my dad through clenched teeth, “Does she hate it? I can’t tell if she hates it?”
I realized my chin was wobbling and my eyes were leaking. Before I could start ugly crying, I ran over and threw my arms around Olivia and then Dad. “I love it. It is absolutely perfect. Thank you so much!”
I spent the rest of the afternoon putting my presidential bobbleheads in order in their perfect new space, and I wondered how long they might have lived in a box if Olivia hadn’t joined the project.
“It was November 26, 1904, when Teddy Roosevelt visited the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis,” Dad said.
“Otherwise known as the World’s Fair,” I interjected. We walked through the throng of people crammed into Forest Park and tried to stay arm in arm. Olivia and I twirled lacy parasols and Dad smiled sideways as he rambled on. People pointed and stared and I nodded and smiled in return.
The festival buzzed around us. Both sides of the walkway were lined with white vendor tents. Smells of delicious foods wafted through the air. Wearing my Alice Roosevelt costume, walking in a chain with my dad, dressed as Teddy, and Olivia, who made an excellent Edith, every once in a while it all felt real. Like we’d stumbled back in time and we were experiencing the fair just like the Roosevelt family had. The morning had been spent with crowds surrounding us, asking for pictures. We were as popular as the real First Family when they visited the fair in 1904!
“You know, many of the things we see here today would have been modern wonders at the 1904 World’s Fair.” Olivia’s voice was smooth as velvet. “Hamburgers, hot dogs, iced tea…” She paused for dramatic effect. “Ice cream cones!”
I could listen to her talk about history all day. She had a way of telling stories that made me want to fall right in.
Dad continued, “One of the more interesting things you could see in the sculptures palace—”
Olivia interrupted. “A butter sculpture of Teddy Roosevelt!” It was cute the way they finished each other’s sentences.
We’d stopped in front of what was now the Saint Louis Art Museum. The fancy building had been built just to hold sculptures at St. Louis’s first World’s Fair. “Hey, is this the place?” I asked. Dad consulted the faded black-and-white photograph and then nodded. “I believe it is.”
My heart thudded in my chest. This was the moment we’d been waiting for.
The sun beat down on the top of my flat bonnet, and the wind tickled the stray hairs curving out around my ears, but I stood as straight and proper as I could and tried not to move a muscle.
“Shift your parasol just a little to the left,” Dad said, holding up the old photo we were trying to re-create.
I inched the shade to the left and blinked into the sun, smiling so hard my face felt like it might crack.
“Perfect,” Dad said after clicking the picture. “Come see.”
From the moment this picture had drifted out of the journal in the attic, I’d wanted to re-create it. Today we were doing it.
“You are just as pretty as she was,” Dad said, grinning.
“It looks perfect,” Olivia said, smiling at the back of the camera. She wore a frilly white dress with a high neckline, quite stylish for 1904. She had a flattish sort of bonnet tied to her head, too. When we’d asked her if she wanted to come with us while we reenacted Teddy and Alice’s visit, she’d agreed at once and started on her Edith costume in the next breath. We looked like the first family, minus Alice’s five younger brothers and sisters.
We laughed and talked and filled our bellies with the soft-serve Dad bought from a cart. I was sweating so much in my dress it felt like I’d jumped in the giant fountain we’d passed. In fact, I considered doing just that
, except then my Alice costume might get ruined, and it was my prized possession. It had taken us weeks to get it exactly right. We’d done it all ourselves, with Olivia’s help, of course, and it looked impeccable. It was the perfect dress for a fine young lady at the turn of the century, be it Alice Roosevelt or my four-times-great-grandma.
“Let’s stroll over to the antiques appraisal booth,” Dad said, smoothing his fake bushy mustache and adjusting his tie. Tiny round glasses perched on his nose, and his pocket watch chain glinted in the sunlight.
We were jostled among the crowd but managed to stay together until we found ourselves outside a white tent that said TRASH OR TREASURE? on its large blue sign.
A couple of people milled around the booth, squinting at the small signs accompanying the antiques. A very round man with a smile that turned his whole face pink sauntered over to us.
My dad straightened his spine. “Good day, sir. I wondered if you could appraise some historical documents for me?” The heavy wool suit made sweat bead on Dad’s forehead, but he looked more excited than I’d seen him in a long time.
The big pink guy introduced himself as Tom and looked eager to get his hands on whatever the guy in the Teddy Roosevelt costume was about to produce.
Dad took a pile of letters out of his pocket. He unfolded the first one, but instead of leaning over it with Tom, he looked only at Olivia as he read it. “This is a letter from Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan. He says, I more than love you, I’m not whole without you. You are life itself to me. When you are gone I’m waiting for you to return so I can start living again.”
Olivia clutched at the high neck of her dress.
Tom squinted at the paper. “Sir, that letter isn’t even handwritten. It’s just printed off the internet.”
Dad was almost as pink as Tom. “Okay, what about this one? This is a verifiable letter from Lyndon B. Johnson to Lady Bird Johnson. He writes, This morning I’m ambitious, proud, energetic and very madly in love with you.”
Dad and Olivia were in a serious eyeball lock and I bounced on my heels.
Tom broke the trance. “Um…Mr. Roosevelt, sir, that letter is also a fake, I’m sorry to tell you.”
“One more,” Dad said, never taking his eyes off Olivia. “This last one has got to be worth something. It is a letter from Harry Truman to Bess Truman. I suppose that I am too crazy about you anyway. Every time I see you I get more so if it is possible. I know I haven’t any right to but there are certain things that can’t be helped and that is one of them. I wouldn’t help it if I could you know.”
I handed a stunned-looking Tom a camera and whispered, “Get ready to take a picture.”
“Such romantic words,” Olivia murmured.
“A man, even a fake president, has to be romantic when he is about to put his heart on the line.” Dad dropped to one knee, and my hand flew to my mouth to cover up the giggles I felt bubbling out.
This was it. The plan we’d been working on for weeks. I felt my heart flutter in my chest. Olivia’s lips were wiggling, like she was trying hard to keep them in a straight line, and I imagined her knees were knocking together under her lacy skirt.
“Olivia Jane O’Connor, I have a question to ask you.”
I clapped my hands together and held my breath. Dad had been practicing what he would say to Olivia in the mirror for weeks, but it sounded much better with his voice all wobbly like it was.
She looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise, and waited for what he had to say.
“I wondered if you would do us the great honor of joining our family. Would you be my wife?”
He opened a small black box and held it out to her as an offering.
For a few seconds, which felt like a million years, everyone just froze. Then Tom looked over the top of the camera and asked, “Well, what do you say, ma’am?”
Olivia could barely get the words out, because she was laughing and crying at the same time. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
She pulled Dad off his knee and into her arms in one gentle tug. Snap. Tom grinned and clicked away on the camera.
I watched them with a silly smile on my face until both of them reached out and yanked me into the circle. We hugged and laughed and Olivia and Dad both wiped at their tears. She pulled away for a second and looked me in the eyes. “Is this what you want too, Grace?” I smiled and nodded because I couldn’t push any words out past the huge lump in my throat. “I know what you have with your dad is exceptionally special, and I would never want to get in the middle of you two….”
“You aren’t breaking up Team Gravy,” I choked out. “You’re joining Team Groovy. Grace plus Olivia O’Connor plus Davy.”
Olivia threw her head back and laughed. “I’ve never been happier to join a team,” she said. There was nothing I wanted more than for her to stay with us forever. She slid the ring on her finger and it was a perfect fit.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many hands helped shape this story, and I would like to take a moment to thank them.
To my lovely, gutsy, smart, and tough agent, Kate Testerman, thank you for setting this dream in motion.
To Caroline Abbey, my wonderful editor at Random House, thank you for seeing the direction that this story could take and helping me steer it there. You make things shinier.
To Polo Orozco and Barbara Bakowski, who read and contributed to this book, and to everyone else at Team Random House, thank you from the bottom of my gravy boat.
To Michelle Cunningham, thank you for creating the perfect invitation for kiddos to grab my book.
To the Woodneath Writers Group, the Woodneath Library Center, the Pitch Wars family, and the Twitter writing community, thank you for your continued support.
To Cassandra Miller, Malayna Evans, Stacy Hackney, Carrie Allen, Shelly Steig, Kristina Rinard, Nancy Banks, Karen Mahara, and Taylor Ford, thanks for all the stupendous thoughts and comments. You all make me better at this whole writing thing.
To all my friends and family, thanks for your amazing support of my debut. You guys have a way of completely inflating my ego and keeping me grounded at the same time. And a big thank-you to my mom, Sherry Brummett. Sorry that the mom in this book is dead. No offense.
To Carrie Chambers, who is by far my biggest cheerleader: You might even have bigger writing goals for me than I do, and I love that about you. Thank you for sharing my work with your students with so much enthusiasm that they can’t help but be superfans!
To Jennie Booth, I feel like your name should be on this book’s cover for the umpteen-million times you have read it! Thank you for always reading my roughest drafts and lying about how good they are. You are the bestest.
And to Caleb, Loralie, and Roman: Love you three with all my heart.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© Kate Testerman
Niki Lenz is an author living in Kansas City, Missouri. She is married to a handsome and brave police officer and has two adorable children. She studied elementary education at Southwest Baptist University and taught kindergarten for six years. She enjoys reading, travel, glamping, polka dots, red lipstick, and oldies music. She is also the author of Bernice Buttman, Model Citizen.
nikilenz.com
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