P.S. Send More Cookies

by Martha Freeman

  “Hi, KK.” Kendall smiled. “I’m Kendall. We’ve met before. We’re neighbors, and your Lucy watches the kids for me after school. Wasn’t that an exciting game? How about that daughter of yours?”

  “Oh, of course,” my mom said. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m kind of on the flustered side just now. My ex-husband had to leave abruptly and—”

  “My dad?” I said. “He was here?”

  Mom blinked. “Didn’t I just say that?”

  “Where did he go?” I asked, thinking back on the game. I had noticed my mother on the sidelines, but I didn’t remember anyone with her. If it had been a man, I might not have paid attention, though. My mom goes through boyfriends like soccer players through Gatorade.

  “He had a meeting. He says he’s moving back to LA. Something big, he says—huge. If it all pans out, there’re gonna be changes. That’s what he says.”

  “Did he see me kick the goal?” I asked.

  Mom shrugged. “Sure. Maybe.”

  “What kind of changes?” Kendall spoke to my mom, but she was looking at me.

  “Money changes,” my mom said in a hushed voice, like money was either secret or sacred.

  Kendall breathed. “Oh, good. Because if you mean Lucy might move away—”

  “No-o-o-o!” Levi wailed, which was the cue for Arlo and Mia to wail too. Then Piper in the sling joined the chorus.

  “Now I’ve done it.” Kendall bounced and patted Piper to soothe her. “Did somebody mention ice cream?”

  “Ice c’eam!” Arlo repeated.

  “I like a kid with his priorities straight,” my mom said.

  Kendall smiled. “My treat if you’d like to come along.”

  “Why not, if Lucy’s up for it?” my mother said. “We’ve got no place special to be.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Lucy

  I got in the car with Kendall and the kids to help her out. My mom followed in her car behind us. We went to that store on Santa Monica where they use frozen gas to make the ice cream right before your eyes. Arlo, Mia, and Levi were fascinated by all the blowing vapor. It was like a mad scientist’s lab in a movie.

  Mom chose blue velvet, which has cupcake chunks in it. I got papaya. Levi, who had strawberry, took two steps out the door, stumbled, and tipped it onto the concrete.

  “Uh-oh.” He looked up at his mom, chin quivering like he was going to cry.

  Kendall didn’t blink, just reversed course and steered him back inside.

  “Should we take something back to Nana?” I asked my mom while we waited. The sidewalk was busy, and the boulevard was clogged with cars as usual. Across the street was a massive billboard for a new pirate movie with a skull and crossbones and bodies and blood. It was creepy enough to bother me; I hoped the kids did not look up.

  “No,” my mom said. “If she wants ice cream, she can come and buy it herself.”

  “Am I going to get to see my father?” I asked. Then I noticed Levi had wandered off to inspect ants emerging from a crack in the sidewalk. People had to change course to get around his squatting body. “Levi! Come back here, please!”

  “Ants are hungry,” Levi called. He was feeding them drips of ice cream. Soon someone staring at their phone would walk right into him.

  Mia said, “I go get ’im” and took off, dodging around the grown-ups’ legs.

  “No, Mia, wait!” I called, but she didn’t.

  My mom, meanwhile, was laughing. “I’d forgotten how much work kids are.”

  “Unh-hunh,” I said as I chased the kids down, rounded them up, juggled their ice cream and mine—while at the same time my brain considered this whole thing with my father. It seemed weird he had come to my game and left and never even said hi.

  “Am I going to get to see my father?” I repeated, once Mia and Levi were corralled at an outside table.

  My mom licked her ice cream and bit her cone and chewed. “Probably,” she said. “He got a place nearby in the Hollywood Hills. He’s hoping you want to move there too.”

  I thought I hadn’t heard right, and anyway here came Kendall and Arlo back out of the store. When Levi and Mia saw them, they demanded their own new ice cream.

  “Not fair!” they insisted.

  “Like so many things,” Kendall told them. “Now eat up, and then we’ll move out. Nice to see you again, KK.”

  “Nice to see you, I’m sure, and thank you for the ice cream. It’s delish,” my mother said.

  I sucked in a breath and tried not to cringe. Who says “delish” anyway?

  I helped Kendall strap her kids in the car, promised the triplets I would see them soon, then climbed in our own car with my mom. I had lots of questions, but my mom was not much help.

  “You’ll have to talk to him,” she said three times in a row. (I counted.) And when I asked when that would be, she said (twice), “He said he’ll call.”

  “Are you getting back together?” I asked. “What about Nana?”

  “Nana has nothing to do with it,” Mom said. “And good golly, no. I am done with that part of my life.”

  I said, “Oh,” feeling stung. What did she mean by that? I had come from that part of her life.

  At home, Mom parked in the driveway, and we went in the front door. On the table in the hall with the mail was a package, which I almost didn’t see. That’s how gloomy our house is. Nana keeps the drapes closed so neighbors can’t look in and the lights off to save electricity.

  I grabbed the package, which was—yes!—just the right size and weight to be cookies. It was too soon for them to be from Olivia, so they must be from Hannah. Olivia’s letter had said Hannah sent her, Grace, and Emma cookies. Hooray—my turn at last!

  I got a knife in the kitchen, slit the tape, and opened the box. The smell was cinnamon-ginger spicy—yum! Sure, I had just eaten an ice cream cone, but I had also just played sixty minutes of soccer. I could definitely manage a cookie. Also, being from Hannah, they would be delicious.

  My mother came into the kitchen a few minutes later and sniffed. “What is that heavenly smell? Oh . . . cookies! Are they from your little friends at camp?”

  “They’re from my counselor, I think. Only—” I had taken a bite by this time, and the taste did not live up to the smell—“they’re way underbaked. Doughy instead of chewy, and a couple of days in the mail didn’t help. It’s weird, though.” I held the disappointing cookie up for inspection. “It’s not like Hannah to make a baking mistake.”

  “Does Hannah live in Pennsylvania?” My mom had picked up the box.

  “She lives someplace east,” I said. “New York?”

  “Well, these came from State College, Pennsylvania,” my mother said. “The return address says Vivek Sonti. Does that name ring a bell? Or should we call poison control?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Lucy

  Why had Vivek sent me rawish cookies?

  I couldn’t figure it out.

  “I guess I’ll throw them away,” I told my mother.

  “No, don’t. That’s wasteful,” Mom said. “How about freeze them, and I’ll ask the pastry chef at the restaurant if she has a suggestion. Speaking of which, I’d better get going.”

  My mom’s current job is waiting tables at a nice restaurant over on La Cienega. She gets good tips there, too. Nana and I cross our fingers it will work out. I pulled a Ziploc from a drawer, put the cookies inside, then put them in the freezer. It wasn’t any more trouble than throwing them away, but I suspected they would still be there at Christmas. Sometimes our freezer is the zone of no return.

  Next up: Nana’s and my dinner. On the menu that night was fried rice. How you do it is fry leftover rice with frozen vegetables, crack two eggs on top, scramble it all together, sprinkle generously with soy sauce, add one handful roasted peanuts, serve in bowls.

  For authenticity, you can eat this with chopsticks. My mother says chopsticks also make you eat slower so you keep your figure. My mother often says this kind of thing. W
hen Nana hears her, she rolls her eyes.

  “Did you win your soccer game?” Nana asked when we were settled at the kitchen counter.

  “They’re the best team in the league,” I said. “We lost four to one.”

  “Don’t make excuses,” Nana said.

  “I scored a goal,” I said.

  “Too bad no one else did,” Nana said.

  “What did you do today?” I asked.

  “Read some, wrote some,” Nana said.

  I already knew what she was reading. She likes old novels by Charles Dickens. We have talked about them so much I even know the plots. So I asked, “What did you write about?” not really expecting an answer. My nana is very private.

  “This and that,” she said. “You a little bit.”

  “Me?” I had never thought I might appear in Nana’s journal. I guessed I thought she wrote about what she was reading. “What did you say about me?” I asked, then added—because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know—“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  Nana laughed—a sound like a small dog barking. “Today I think I said something about how, against all genetic odds, you are turning into quite a wise and responsible person.”

  If I was surprised before, I was really surprised now. She had written something nice? “Oh! Uh . . . thank you.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head,” Nana said.

  For a few minutes after that we chased down rice grains and snow peas in silence. I grabbed the last peanut with my fingers, then asked, “Did Mom tell you she’s seen my father?”

  Nana didn’t answer directly. “I suppose it was inevitable. The rooster comes home to roost.”

  “He has some big plan,” I told her, “something to make money.”

  “I hope this time it’s legal,” Nana said.

  “Don’t you think he’s learned his lesson?” I imagined prison as one long time-out. Three years of thinking about what you’ve done would make anyone behave better, wouldn’t it?

  “He’s never apologized,” Nana said. “And the older I get, the more I wonder if any of us ever learns our lesson. What do you think, Lucy?”

  “What do I think?” I repeated because I hadn’t been listening. Instead, I had been picturing my dad in a small chair in a corner. He looked uncomfortable. Answering my grandmother’s question required a brain reset. “Uh, I hope so, I guess. Otherwise what’s the point of lessons?”

  Nana laughed again. Twice in one dinner—amazing! Then she said she was feeling a little peaked, one of her favorite words, and she thought she’d turn in early. “Thank you for dinner, Lucy. Maybe next time not quite so much soy sauce? It’s hard on blood pressure, you know.”

  “I’ll remember,” I said, but the truth is I can’t win with Nana and soy sauce. When I use less, she asks for the bottle and pours it on.

  While I cleared the dishes and washed up, the day’s news flashed in my brain: My dad’s new place in the hills. My nana writing about me. My mother done with that part of her life. Vivek sending cookies.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Lucy

  People say I’m absentminded, but the truth is more like the opposite: My mind is so present it distracts me from what’s going on outside of it.

  What happened with the note from Vivek is an example. My brain at once got very busy speculating about why Vivek had sent me cookies—so busy that it never thought to look for the letter in the package that would explain.

  And there was one!

  It was only luck I saw it. We had a lot of recycling that week, and the next morning the flattened cardboard box fell off the top of the bin as I was carrying it to the curb. I picked the cardboard up from the driveway, and out slipped an envelope labeled LUCY.

  I didn’t have time to open it then. Clarissa’s mom—my ride to school—had just pulled up. I zipped the envelope into a pocket of my backpack and resolved to remember it was there so I could read it during homeroom.

  Long story short, I forgot until that night at bedtime.

  Monday, May 8

  Dear Lucy,

  I hope this finds you well. I hope your family is also well.

  Thank you for sending the pictures the triplets drew to welcome Anaya to this world. They remain on display on the refrigerator door in our kitchen, and sometimes I point them out to her. I believe the triplet named Levi is an especially talented artist.

  I am sorry it has taken me so long to write to you, but it is very hard work being a big brother. (It is probably also hard work being a big sister, but I will never know this from personal experience.)

  It seems your babysitting has given you a special interest in children. I have a special interest in them myself now, which has come about from watching Anaya grow from helpless, drowsy infant into someone who can roll over, laugh, babble, and find her toes. As I look back, it happened very quickly. Soon, according to the baby books I have read, she will be creeping, then in short order crawling, walking, and talking.

  After that, she goes straight to university. (Hahaha!)

  You will have noticed that I also sent cookies. I suppose it is not allowed for boys to join your “secret cookie club,” but the idea of exchanging cookies with friends is sweet (hahaha! That is a play on words!), and so I thought you would not mind receiving some.

  Are you looking forward to camp? I will miss Anaya a lot, but it will be good to see my friends (like you?) again.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Vivek Sonti

  P.S. I have printed out a photograph of Anaya and enclosed it.

  The photo was still in the envelope. I took it out and studied it, glad I hadn’t recycled Vivek’s envelope after all. Anaya was a round-faced, round-eyed baby with lots of black hair. In the picture, she was lying on her tummy and staring directly at the camera with a half smile. She seemed sure of herself, as if brotherly attention gives a baby confidence.

  I skimmed the letter one more time and thought back to the day Arlo, Mia, and Levi drew the pictures for Baby Anaya. I didn’t remember it very well, but it looked like I had managed to mail them. Score one for Lucy! Not so absentminded after all, right? Had I asked Grace for the address? Probably.

  And speaking of Grace—did she tell Vivek about the cookie club? Everyone knew she had had a crush on him and then at camp last summer for about two days they were a couple. It made sense she might have told him then, but I felt a little annoyed. Secret, right?

  I tried to be fair and not mad, though. It’s possible I’ve told secrets before, too, since who can possibly keep track of what’s secret and what’s not? Also, each of us—Grace, Olivia, Emma, and me—sent Vivek anonymous cookies last year as a joke. For a boy, he is an okay kid, even if his cookies are bad.

  The next morning I used a magnet with the phone number for takeout pizza to stick the picture of Anaya on our refrigerator. My mother wouldn’t notice, but Nana probably would. It would give us something to talk about at dinner.

  It was 7:43—seven minutes till my ride came, plenty of time for breakfast. Also, for once, the milk wasn’t sour. I was pouring Special K into a bowl when my mom appeared in the doorway.

  “Good morning, honeybun,” she said, yawning. She was wearing the ratty red-and-gold USC T-shirt she sleeps in. Her blond hair was a tangle, and her eye makeup was smudged.

  “What are you doing up?” I asked. My mom works late and usually goes out afterward. She is never awake when I leave for school.

  “Your dad”—she yawned again—“is picking you up today.”

  “What? He can’t. I mean, Clarissa’s mom gives me a ride home from school. What are you talking about?”

  “Not today,” Mom said. “Your dad wants to talk to you. You can go out for an early dinner or something maybe.”

  “No, we can’t,” I said. “What will Nana do?”

  “Nana can heat up something,” Mom said. “Don’t you want to see your dad?”

  What I wanted was breakfast. So I didn’t answer, just wolfe
d cereal and then put the milk away. Now it was 7:49, and I had to go.

  “Dad’s not on the approved list at school.” I shouldered my backpack and headed for the door. “The office won’t let kids go with just anybody. As far as they know, Dad doesn’t exist. He can’t pick me up.”

  End of discussion, right? That’s what I thought, and a second later, I was in the driveway, but—OMG—Mom followed me out the door, ratty T-shirt, tangles, smudges, and all.

  “Wait, Lucy! I’ll call the school. You get out at three ten, right? Or three fifteen? Oh, hi, Clarissa—nice to see you. Hi, Clarissa’s mom. Thanks for driving!”

  I have been my mother’s daughter for my whole life, and it takes a lot to embarrass me—but this was embarrassing. Luckily, Clarissa’s mom seemed to understand. “Good morning, KK! Have a good day!” She waved to my mom and drove off as soon as the car door slammed. I did not look back.

  Clarissa likes to ride in the backseat and pretend her mom is a chauffeur. Now she looked over at me with wide eyes and blinked. “Lucy, is your mom okay? She seemed a little crazy!”

  “Clarissa!” Her mother glared at her in the rearview mirror.

  “Well, she did,” Clarissa said. “I’m just concerned is all, because I’m a caring human. Is she okay, Lucy?”

  This was a rare moment when my ditzy reputation came in handy. “Why wouldn’t she be?” I said, which is a tough question to answer—right?—tough enough to stump Clarissa.

  It’s a short ride to school, and Clarissa’s mom filled the silence with a stream of comments: “It’s pretty warm today,” “That math homework was hard,” and “The PTA raised a bundle with the produce sale.”

  When we pulled up by the main entrance, Clarissa climbed out—“Have a good day, honey!”—and her mom twisted around to look at me. “Lucy, you need a ride home, right? Seriously, is everything okay? I don’t want to leave you in the lurch.”

  “Yes. Kind of. What’s a lurch?” I said.

  “It means, uh . . . a pickle, I guess? Off-balance.”