Cassidy's Guide to Everyday Etiquette (and Obfuscation)

by Sue Stauffacher

  “But it’s not fair, Cassidy. That’d be like swiping the spider’s dinner.”

  “I know! I just…I can’t watch it struggle. Ugh.” I jumped off the bench and wrapped my arms around my head. There was nothing wrong with it, I told myself. Flies are supposed to be spider food. “Please, Jack. Do something.”

  Jack grabbed needle-nose pliers and snagged one of the dead flies on the windowsill. “Here, I’ll give him a couple, in case they’re a little dry.” After he finished with the dead ones, he took the one that was still alive and pulled it off by nipping the web strings with his pliers. It wiggled around on its back.

  I stood on the workbench and traced my finger around some routers and a hacksaw, something Mr. Taylor taught me to do after he saw me freak out over a desperate earwig.

  “By the time you finish tracing, you’ll be back to your old self. It’s what I do after work when the interns we hire at the plant mess up the machinery.”

  Now that the fly was safe, I felt better.

  “You okay, Cass?”

  “I gotta get a handle on this.”

  “You will. Don’t worry.” Jack patted me on the shoulder.

  “Seriously, Jack.”

  “I am serious. Why don’t you start over? Trace the drill bits this time.”

  Saturday morning, I woke up clawing my way out from under the covers. I dreamed I jumped off a speeding train car to avoid the Pinkerton detectives and landed in Magda’s compost pile. It’s a mystery how Magda’s compost pile got in the Western territories, where I’d been searching for new poisonous plants for a rich and eccentric Chicago collector—but that’s a dream for you. Since it was Magda’s compost, which she prides herself on being the healthiest environment for decomposition anywhere, it was teeming with slimy bugs!

  I sat up in bed only to find her—my evil sister—sitting at the end of it.

  “Will you go with me, Cass? Over to the Bensons’? You know how bad I am at this stuff.”

  “Sorry, Mag. I have plans.”

  “Really? You can’t spare fifteen minutes?”

  “Don’t give me that.” Swishing my arm under the covers, I found my hoodie. My sweats were down there, too. “These visits never wind up in less than four hours.”

  “Come downstairs. You’ll be in a better mood after you have some pumpkin pancakes.”

  I looked out the window. It was a perfect Saturday in May. Mother Nature was practically dumping buckets of green paint over everything. I was not going to sit at some beauty queen’s house making small talk—no matter how many ancient Indian artifacts Magda promised to buy me on eBay.

  I had goals. Jack and I were searching for a big flat rock that we could chisel hieroglyphs in and plant in the new housing development. Then we’d “discover” it and pretend it was a valuable artifact. It’s something we saw on the History channel.

  “So,” Mom said as she slid a couple of steaming cakes onto my plate. “Magda tells me you can’t spare a half hour to go meet our new neighbors.”

  Dousing my pancakes with maple syrup, I whispered to Magda, “See? Now it’s a half hour.”

  “Sorry, Mom.” I filled my mouth with pancakes. “Big plans today.”

  “Big plans. And those would include…”

  Didn’t Mom know it was impolite to talk with your mouth full? I pointed to my chipmunk cheeks. Who besides me could use some etiquette lessons?

  She pinched my fork and held it hostage until I swallowed.

  “Mom! Didn’t anybody ever teach you not to touch other people’s stuff?”

  “This fork happens to be my stuff, young lady. I’d like you to elaborate on your plans, please.”

  “But my pancakes will get cold!”

  She waited. I hated it when she had me over a barrel. “Okay. Me and Jack are going for a bike ride.”

  “Jack and I are going for a bike ride.”

  “No you’re not, because he’s busy going on a bike ride with me.”

  Mom didn’t find this funny. “And what is your final destination?”

  “Um…the gravel pit.”

  “The gravel pit? The one down by the recycling facility? That has to be five miles.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’ve never given you permission to ride your bike that far.”

  I looked at Mom and blinked slowly. Once. After which I became as dense as iridium. My look was saying “Your point is…,” but it wasn’t any fun because my pancakes were getting cold. Pretty soon, they’d be decomposing.

  “The recycling facility is a regular stop for homeless people, Cass. You and Jack are not going down there by yourselves.”

  Magda reached over me to snag the butter. “ ‘Homeless people’ is such a pejorative term, Mom. It’s better to call them itinerant wanderers.” She spread some butter on her plate, which she is sure is the correct way to get butter on every inch of pancake; then she reached over me again for the serving plate of pancakes.

  I slapped her arm. Who could use some etiquette lessons?

  I was about to suggest the term “hobos,” but remembered I was being dense, so all I did was assume my zombie stare while Magda made sure the steam from her very hot pancakes wafted in my direction.

  “They’re not going by themselves, Mom. I’m going with them. Right after Cassie and I meet our new neighbors.” She put another pat of butter on top of her stack. “Isn’t that right, Cassidy?”

  I’m melting, I thought.

  “Right,” I said, before tearing off a piece of pancake the size of a slice of pizza and stuffing it into my mouth.

  After Mom had pulled my hair with a comb and made me brush my teeth, I said to my sister, “All right. You got me, but I’m holding you to that bike ride.”

  “I know.” Magda never did any exercise unless she absolutely had to. When Dad pulled our bikes out of the garage last year, hers had a mouse nest in the seat.

  “Just don’t go on and on about something disgusting,” I warned her as she held my arm with one hand and rang the doorbell with the other. “Like slime.”

  “I won’t if you won’t.”

  I didn’t have time to think about any nondisgusting subjects of conversation because the door was flung open almost immediately by a lady in long curly hair and a polka-dot headband who looked like she was expecting good news.

  “Sabrina, come and see,” she said. “I’m guessin’ these are our new neighbors.”

  Sabrina’s head appeared over her mother’s shoulder. Same hair, same headband, same smile slapped on her face.

  My first thought was Jack got his wish—these two are from the circus. I waited for Magda to take control of the situation, but all she could do was push her glasses up her nose and study her shoes.

  “Well, howdy, neighbors,” I said in my best Southern accent. “This here’s Magda and I’d be Calamity Cassidy.” I shook the mother’s hand powerful-like.

  Magda yanked on my other arm.

  “What?” Turning to my sister, I whispered, “It’s polite to speak to people in their native tongue.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, Magda.” Sabrina’s mom reached out and took Magda’s hand, pulling her inside. “Everyone practices their Southern accent on us. We don’t mind, do we, Sabrina?” The polka-dot headbands bobbed in unison.

  “But I should tell you, Miss Calamity, we speak proper English in this house.”

  “That is a disappointment, Mrs…. ”

  “Benson. Sabrina and Olive Ann Benson.”

  “I was hoping to learn a new language.”

  “Oh, there are some differences, region to region. In the South, all we have is coke. Even Pepsi is coke. And the other day, I asked the lady at the grocery store where they kept the buggies and she looked at me cross-eyed. I guess what I wanted was a shopping cart, but they’re buggies in Decatur.”

  The Bensons found this funny enough to laugh out loud. Even Magda managed a smile.

  “Magda, do you want to see my room?” Sabrina asked her. “I lo
ve those glasses, by the way.”

  “You do?” Magda pinched the stems and repositioned them. “I wanted to try the rimless kind.”

  Sabrina waited for Magda to say something more, but my sister had exhausted that topic of conversation and was now at a loss for words.

  “I’ve still got some sugar cookies from the best bakery in Atlanta, Miss Calamity. I could make some sweet tea and we could chat here in the kitchen. Do you know what sweet tea is?”

  Magda was throwing me desperate “don’t you dare desert me” looks over her shoulder, but I wasn’t much in the mood to rescue her.

  Taking Magda’s arm, Sabrina persuaded her toward the stairs. “My friends call me Bree. Do you like decorating, Magda? Jack might be finished hanging my curtains by now.”

  I froze. “Jack?” And speak of the devil, there he came, clanking down the stairs with an old leather tool belt strapped around his waist. It looked ancient, worn and scratched, with loops for all the old-timey-looking tools. It was sweeter than all the sugar cookies and sweet tea in Atlanta.

  Normally, my first question would be “What in the Billy blue blazes are you doing here, Jack Taylor?” But that tool belt cast a spell on me.

  “Where’d you get that?” was all I managed.

  “Hey there, Cass. Magda.” I think it’s fair to say Jack swaggered a little as he came into the kitchen, clanking his old-timey tools for my benefit. It made me feel the same way that that darn Percy did, right before he gobbled down my pepperoni-cheese jerky.

  “These tools belonged to my daddy. Funny thing. Everything else in the world has changed, but tools don’t change that much. Glenn—he’s my husband—can’t cinch this belt around his waist anymore, so there’s no harm in lettin’ Jack use them. Especially since we’re employing him to help us out around the house until Glenn gets back from Switzerland.” She patted Jack on the shoulder. “Mr. Fenster told us all about Jack’s talents at the closing.”

  “He’s learning about security techniques over there,” Jack piped in. “Mr. Benson is.”

  “Is he a spy?” Maybe things were finally looking up for me.

  “No. Nothing like that,” Mrs. Benson said. “He’s been hired by a law firm here. File security is his specialty.”

  While we’d been discussing this fascinating subject, Sabrina had whisked Magda upstairs. I felt bad for a flea’s breath, then decided she’d have to learn to fend for herself someday. Might as well start now.

  “Can I see them?” I held out my hand for the tool belt, but all Jack did was jut out one hip. He wasn’t taking that belt off.

  Mrs. Benson held up a box that read VOTED BEST SUGAR COOKIES IN ATLANTA SINCE 2006. “I need a scissors to cut the tape on this box. I think I left them on the dining-room table. If you two will excuse me for just a minute.”

  After she disappeared through the doorway, I moved closer to Jack. “What are you doing here?” I whispered. “We’re supposed to go to the gravel pit.”

  Jack shrugged. “They needed a strong man to help out with things.” He was wearing his plaid shirt; it was, hands down, his favorite.

  “Why do you smell funny?”

  Clearing his throat, Jack said, “It’s aftershave. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

  “Now, there’s a puzzle. I thought you put on aftershave after you shave.”

  “Jack?” Sabrina’s voice came from above us somewhere. “I need you to hang one more album. Magda’s convinced me that symmetrical is the way to go.”

  Jack bounded up the stairs, losing screws at every step. You had to run differently with an old tool belt on. The way Jack lifted his knees did make him look a little like a circus clown. If we were at my house, I might have run up behind and tackled him just to see how it sounded to have a hundred or so screws ping down the stairs at one time.

  But there was Sabrina at the top of the steps, smiling, waiting for him.

  “Here we go.” Mrs. Benson ruffled my hair as she passed by me. “And lookin’ for the scissors, I found my cookie tray.”

  “Well, saints be praised,” I said.

  “Mr. Fenster was mum about your talents, Cass—do you prefer Calamity or Cassidy?” Mrs. Benson asked as she piled cookies on the tray.

  “It’s Cassidy. Calamity is my road name.”

  “Road name. Is that like…a trucker’s handle? Where is the box with the tea glasses?” Mrs. Benson held out her arms as if she could make the glasses jump out of one of the dozens of boxes stacked in the kitchen.

  “Sort of.” I wasn’t sure what a trucker’s handle was and I didn’t want Mrs. Benson to know. “But not exactly.”

  She gave up on the glasses and handed me a coffee mug full of cold tea.

  “Well, park yourself on this stool, Miss Cassidy, and have a cookie. It’ll sweeten up that pretty face of yours.”

  It was a rare occurrence for someone to remark on my face. Wipe that smile off your face was as close as I could remember. I bit into a cookie that had a snowdrift of frosting on it. All that sugar would power my legs to the gravel pit and back.

  “Your mama tells me you’re signed up for etiquette lessons. I believe I was about your age when I had my first course.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much fun to me.”

  “I can see that by the way your shoulders are sagging. Well…” Mrs. Benson licked blue frosting off her fingers, something I’m pretty sure you face a firing squad for in etiquette class. “Maybe if you think of it as a story…the unfolding story of your life. You like spies, don’t you, Cassidy?”

  I nodded. I did like spies.

  “Well, say you were hunting a spy in Buckingham Palace—that’s where the queen of England lives. Better than that, let’s make it an assassination plot on the queen herself. It’s your job to protect her, but you have to be undercover and follow her everywhere. What do queens do but go to big fancy dinners and such? If you didn’t know which glass to drink from or where the crease of your napkin goes, they’d see right off you were an imposter. You’d be out on your tush, and later on that night they’d be mopping the queen of England off the floor.”

  Mrs. Benson’s face came closer and closer as she told her story; I even forgot to eat my cookie thinking about the poor queen of England.

  She had a point.

  “You’re not eating all the cookies, are you? Magda and I want to take some upstairs.” Sabrina had arrived, breathless, back in the kitchen, followed by my sister and clackety-clack Jack. I looked carefully at Magda to study the effects of spending time in a beauty queen’s bedroom. She didn’t look ill or anything.

  “Magda has a way to clean those old album covers of Daddy’s…the ones I want on the wall.” Sabrina turned to me to explain. “I love the pictures, but they’re so nasty and Daddy won’t let me wash them.”

  “You need to clean off that mold,” Magda said. “Or it will digest the paper. I observed some other forms of fungi, too.”

  Sabrina put her arm around my sister. “I’m taking the whole pile over to Magda’s laboratory. Can I bring the record player, too, Mama, so we can listen?”

  “Of course you can. But not for a few hours. I’ve got a whole list of pictures I want Jack to hang and I need your help. He won’t be able to do it on a school day.”

  “Jack?” I stared at him.

  Jack blinked.

  I couldn’t believe it. He was doing osmium. On me!

  Shrugging, he said, “It’s real money, Cass.”

  “Yes it is. Now, you have another sugar cookie, Cassidy. I need them out of this house or I will eat every single one.”

  Magda unwrapped the sandwich Mom had packed for the bike-ride-that-never-happened and took a bite. “They’re really nice…the Bensons.”

  I flicked my finger at the wax paper. “Not hungry.” I was going to tell Mom that Mrs. Benson fed me a bunch of junk food, but I didn’t have the energy to say something mean about her. If Jack hadn’t paraded down the stairs, clanking tool belt and all, I might even have agreed wit
h Magda. About Mrs. Benson, anyway. She had a good imagination.

  Instead, I pout-slouched—something I’m pretty sure they put you in the penalty box for in etiquette class.

  “Cassidy, what’s wrong?” Mom asked me.

  “She’s mad because Jack took the handyman job at the Bensons’ instead of going with her to the gravel pit,” Magda said, picking olives out of her cream-cheese spread and wiping them on her plate. Definitely a penalty-box offense.

  “I offered to take her myself, but we have to make it quick. Sabrina’s coming over at two.” Magda set her sandwich down and got that dreamy chemistry look she’s so famous for. “Album covers aren’t like regular paperboard, you know. They’re covered with a veneer. If you try to clean them with soap or—even worse—vinyl-record cleaner, it removes the ink and makes them bubble. So the challenge is how to keep mold from eating the paper. And if there’s paste glue in the seam, there might be silverfish, too. Silverfish love starch…” She stopped talking and sat there with her mouth open, hypnotized.

  If Sabrina hadn’t been trying to hang those old album covers, she would have thought Magda was a total zero. But Magda had better karma than me!

  “Does your karma make you a boy or a girl?” I asked Mom.

  “What a strange question, Cassidy. I don’t know. I’m not as informed about karma as Janae. I always thought the boy-girl thing was about chromosomes, and karma was more like…what goes around comes around.”

  “I agree. I couldn’t have done anything that bad before I was even born!”

  “I’m not following you, honey.”

  “If I was a boy, Great-Grandma Reed wouldn’t have left me etiquette lessons, and Mrs. Benson would have asked me to hang her pictures and wear her husband’s tool be—”

  “Pretty sure karma takes into account your previous lifetimes,” Magda said, reaching for an apple from the bowl in the middle of the table.

  “Well, how am I supposed to do anything about those?”

  “You call yourself Calamity. You love hobos and you dream of outrunning railroad cops. Maybe you have outlaw karma.” Magda rubbed the apple on her shirt and took a bite. On another day, it might be exciting to think about the possibility of having outlaw karma. But not today.