Cassidy's Guide to Everyday Etiquette (and Obfuscation)

by Sue Stauffacher

  Dense as iridium.

  You can’t take a photo of your fourth-grade teacher being called down to the office and returning to give you a look. A look that said “Could she? Could they?” And then uncorking a brand-new bottle of extra-strength Excedrin.

  “So what’s our next one? We haven’t done a prank in ages.”

  Thinking about Delton made me remember the piece of paper in my pocket. I pulled it out and unfolded it. “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to make my fear of bugs disappear.”

  “Really?”

  Next thing I knew, Jack had swiped the paper. He’s the only boy I know who can swing around like Superman and read at the same time.

  “So…how does this work again?” he asked. “You say this stuff while tapping on your energy points?”

  “I guess.”

  As the piece of paper fluttered back down to me, I thought, for some reason, of that music Miss Melton-Mowry had been playing in her office. Paper drifting through the air was sort of like water dripping off your toes.

  Weird.

  I looked over the sheet. “It’s a script. And I’m supposed to say this stuff while tapping on my meri—what did you call ’em?—my energy points.”

  “Meridians. So…go ahead.” Jack struggled to get himself out of the harness while he was still swinging. In the end, he had to go upside down and wrap his legs around the rope so he could reach the clips to undo himself.

  Why couldn’t I have challenges like that? Why was I the one with the rotten karma and the weird fear of bugs? Jack must have been some rich banker in his former life—one who rescued people from losing their farms.

  I sat cross-legged, trying to read the script while tapping all the places on the diagram.

  “This fear I have of bugs…” Tap the top of my head. “It overtakes me…. ” Tap my eyebrow. “It feels like I’m threatened…” Tap beside my eye. “Like they’re going to bite me.” Tap under my nose.

  “Yuck!” I threw the paper down. “This is ridiculous. It’s like trying to pat your head and rub your belly at the same time. Besides, I’m not afraid they’ll bite me.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s more like…they’re…I don’t know if it’s me or them that’s…so scared. Like I’m their scared.”

  “Like you are the bug?”

  “I don’t know! And how am I supposed to feel the fear when I can’t stop thinking about where I’m supposed to poke myself next?”

  “Here.” Jack kneeled down beside me. “Put the paper on the floor and I’ll tap while you say it. Maybe picture a squirming worm on the dock. That oughta get you in the mood.”

  My stomach started to feel squeezy again. I don’t know if it was the vision of a struggling worm or the fact that Jack was in BO range.

  “Go.” Jack started rapping the top of my head with his knuckles. “Be the worm.”

  “This fear I have of squirmy worms…Ouch, Jack!”

  “Do the next one.”

  “It overtakes me. You’re not supposed to poke me in the eye.” I swatted his hand away.

  “Well, you’re feeling better, aren’t you? I mean, I can tell you’re not feeling afraid. In fact, I’m guessing you want to punch me right now.” Jack kept going, this time tapping under my chin—which wasn’t even on the picture.

  “Stop it.” Pushing him away, I scooted back a few feet.

  Jack looked at me, surprised. He was dangerously close to moping—which was my specialty, not his. “Just trying to help, Cassidy. You can’t keep quitting everything.”

  “Jack?” Bree pushed open the workshop door. “Oooh, you got the harness. Can I try?”

  “Sure.” Jack jumped up and ran over to unhook the rope and bring the harness down.

  “Not now,” Bree said. “I came to find Cassidy. Mama and I have a surprise for you.”

  I did a quick inventory of what a Benson surprise might look like. On the upside, it could be more of those sugar cookies with the electric-blue frosting. On the downside, it could be something to make me more like them—a manicure? Sweetness lessons?

  I got up and dusted off my clothes. I didn’t feel like hanging around Jack with duck-pond BO, but it might come in handy to drive the Bensons crazy. They were always scrubbed. Plus, as long as I was with Bree, Jack couldn’t be. “Lead on,” I said in my best robot voice.

  I figured we were headed to the Bensons’, but Bree walked up our back-porch steps. “It’s in here,” she said, yanking open the back door and bounding up the stairs to my bedroom.

  “Ta-da!” Bree had to stop to catch her breath. “A perfect re-creation of an elegant luncheon, complete with your own Miss Information.”

  I looked at the card table set up in my room and crammed with so much china that you couldn’t put your elbows down on it even if you wanted to. Mom had obviously loaned the Bensons her Bunco table, complete with folding chairs. Mrs. Benson sat in one and Pat the Bunny sat in another, his fat tummy squeezed into my favorite shirt.

  “Where did you get all this stuff?” I asked. Then added, “He’s going to pop the buttons!”

  “Don’t you like it?” Mrs. Benson unfolded her napkin. “This is my grandmother’s china. I thought before we put it in the china cabinet, we’d set it up so you could practice.”

  “You realize that Jack and I wrestle in here,” I said. “The china is not safe.”

  Mrs. Benson studied her napkin for a minute before she answered. “Well, we can certainly practice. I was…thinkin’ about keepin’ it out to have a tea, anyway. You know, invite the neighbor ladies. Except for your mama and Jack’s mama, I haven’t…well, I don’t seem to be…”

  “The neighbors aren’t comin’ over,” Bree said. “They always do that down South when someone moves in.”

  Talk about recalculating. I was about to be trapped into another etiquette lesson—in my private refuge, no less. As soon as I caught wind of what they were up to, I reviewed my drive-’em-crazy escape routines—zombie, blind tightrope walker, one-legged ballet dancer—but something was wrong with Mrs. Benson. She looked…sad.

  “If you really want to get to know the neighbor ladies,” I told her, “you need to serve wine and cheesy snacks and play Bunco. They’re crazy for it.”

  I wasn’t sure why the neighbor ladies loved Bunco so much. It was a toss-up between “No kids allowed—ever!” and the wine; there was always lots of shouting and, if you spied on them, red cheeks and slapping each other on the shoulder.

  “I don’t know how to play Bunco.” Mrs. Benson looked at Bree, who was sitting across from her with her napkin unfolded on her lap. “Is that a Yankee thing?”

  “Probably.” I flopped onto the empty folding chair. Very unladylike. “Look, let’s get through this tea game and I’ll show you how to do it. This is an etiquette lesson, right? I’m assuming there’s no real food involved since Mom never lets us have food in our rooms.”

  I unfolded my napkin, wondering if sucking on it would make my hunger pangs go away. Pat has no lap, so I had to tie his napkin around his neck.

  “Well, your mama said, and I quote: ‘I guess there could be special dispensation for practicing etiquette.’ So…I brought a cake.” Mrs. Benson leaned over and pulled up a dome-covered cake plate hidden beneath a kitchen towel. “I’m known for this cake back in Decatur.”

  Bree whipped off the towel. “It’s always the first picked at the December Decatur Cake Walk given by the Junior League.”

  There in front of me, in all its towering glory, was the biggest cake I’d ever seen. “It’s got three layers,” Bree continued. “Chocolate, vanilla and red velvet—and the frosting is whipped cream and sugar and toasted coconut.”

  One look at that cake could make a girl forget that cookie butter had ever been invented. This was serious business.

  “Ladies,” I said. “Teach me how to eat this cake like they do down South; then we’ll get out the dice and master Bunco.”

  It was the least I could do.<
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  “That’s the spirit.” Mrs. Benson patted my knee. “And while I’m dishing it out, we can practice our polite conversation.”

  “Can the bunny have a big piece?” I asked, wondering if I could get an extra piece of cake for my new friend, Livvy. If she really was the same as me—like Donna said—this cake would definitely help me rise in the ranks. “Can you send cake by mail? Just theoretically.”

  “Cassidy,” Bree said. “You’re jumping ahead.”

  “The first thing to remember,” Mrs. Benson began, “is to ask if each guest would like cake. Some people pass on the cake because they’re watching their figure or for health—”

  “You don’t have to worry about that here,” I said. “I’d like a big slice, please.”

  “It’s not considered polite to request a size,” Bree informed me.

  “What if I open my eyes really wide? Do you think the cutter will get the idea?” Stretching my eyebrows up to my hairline, I managed to get a laugh out of Mrs. Benson.

  “You’re a true original, Miss Corcoran,” Mrs. Benson said. “Would you like a piece of cake?”

  I thought we’d just covered that, but since this was etiquette practice, I knew it didn’t have to make sense. Nothing else had made sense today, come to think of it. Miss Melton-Mowry smiled, I said no to the harness and now here I was—in my bedroom!—having polite conversation with ladies who wore so much stuff on their face we could be in a play.

  “Yes, Mrs. Benson, I would love a piece of your special cake.”

  Patting my other knee, Bree whispered, “Nice compliment.”

  Mrs. Benson made a couple of deep slices with her knife, slid one of those wedgy things underneath the piece of cake and balanced it over my plate.

  I knew I was supposed to wait before digging in, and that licking the frosting that trailed on the plate was considered something close to a jailing offense, so I set my plate in front of me and folded my hands in my lap.

  “Actually…,” Bree said, handing me her empty plate, “it’s most polite to continue passing the cake until everyone has been served.”

  “But what if the next piece is smaller than mine?”

  “It could be bigger.” Mrs. Benson cut another hefty slice.

  “Okay.” I put the new piece in front of me. “I guess that makes sense.”

  “Knock, knock!”

  “Dad!” My dad never gets home early on Mondays. I almost jumped out of my chair, but since we were practicing our manners, I said, “If you ladies will excuse me, I’ll get the door.”

  Charging into the hall, I gave him a bear hug.

  “Word has reached me that there is an etiquette practice going on up here involving a cake that, well, I might have some special interest in.”

  Since there weren’t words in Corcoran language to describe what was being passed around the Bunco table, I pulled Dad into the room and pointed.

  “Olive Ann, Sabrina, what a nice surprise,” Dad said, though he couldn’t take his eyes off the cake. “I came to inform Mr. Bunny there is an urgent need for his services downstairs—the clover in the lawn has gotten out of control.” Dad picked up Pat by the ears and deposited him outside the door. “I will, however, be happy to assist in any way that I can.”

  It was so much more fun to play manners with a cake like this in front of me. Could it be a trick, I wondered. I waited for more instructions, but after Mrs. Benson had served us each a piece, we all picked up our forks and took a bite.

  Dad patted his lips with his napkin. “Olive Ann…truly. I have never tasted a cake so divine in all my life.”

  “Thank you, Brian. That is high praise coming from a man in the food business.”

  I could have told her that my dad thinks of graham crackers as dessert, given how one hundred percent against sugar my mom is; but honestly, even I knew this was the kind of cake you only get once in a hundred years. The frosting was creamy, the cake was moist and every layer melted in your mouth.

  “There’s nothing in all the world like Mama’s pound cake and biscuits…oooh, and her cheesecake brownies,” Bree said. “She even made special-order cakes for all the weddings they held at the Landis Valley Country Club.”

  “Trouble is, with everyone watching their weight and eating fat-free this and that, my cakes aren’t as popular as they used to be.”

  “These are special-occasion cakes, Olive Ann. They have a place in our diets. In fact, I’d like to feature this cake in our bakery department—special order only. You’d have to bake them in our kitchen, of course. Do you think you could do that?”

  “Well…I don’t know. It’s a lot to think about so soon after the move.”

  “It’s not really work, Mama, when you love to do it.”

  “I do have time on my hands these days.”

  I wished Mrs. Benson could spend some of her time subbing for Miss Melton-Mowry at etiquette class. We might not all be so half-starved by the end of class.

  Dad stopped talking then and concentrated on his cake. Since I knew more about etiquette, I decided to help him along with some polite conversation.

  “I was just telling Mrs. Benson that if she wants to meet the neighbor ladies, she should learn to play Bunco.”

  “Mama doesn’t drink alcohol,” Bree said. “Or swear or take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  I swallowed and looked at Dad. Was there a way to play Bunco without the wine and the colorful words?

  If he knew, he wasn’t telling, which brought that topic of conversation to a screeching halt.

  —

  Neither Dad or I or Magda had much appetite for dinner; of course, my sister managed to score a piece of cake without the china or polite conversation.

  “I think Olive Ann is having trouble adjusting to Michigan,” Dad told Mom as she tucked into her lentil loaf.

  “She might be the nicest person I’ve ever met,” Mom said. “I’m going to invite her to Bunco. She’ll meet a bunch of women there.”

  “As long as you don’t force her to drink wine,” I said.

  “Or swear,” Dad said.

  “Or take the Lord’s name in vain, whatever that means,” I added, pushing my peas and carrots into square-dance formation.

  “Does saying the Rosary before you throw the dice count?” Mom asked. “Maura Delaney’s been doing that since day one.”

  “You know what Olive Ann is…?” Dad stopped talking and contemplated his forkful of lentils. “With her sweetness and her encouraging manner? She’s a natural teacher. Maybe she could teach a cake class. That’d be one way to find her tribe.”

  “What a wonderful idea, Brian. She’s perfect for your new demonstration kitchen. Let’s try that first…and wait a bit on the Bunco.” Mom looked around at our plates. “Why isn’t anyone eating my lentil loaf?”

  “Today we will focus on the little inconveniences, such as spills, and how to handle them in a fine-dining situation.”

  I straightened my shoulders into coat-hanger order. I swore I was in that movie where you wake up and it’s the same day over and over again. It was our second class of the third week—but who was counting? Since the Fourth of July holiday fell on a Monday, we were having three classes this week to make up for missing next Monday! That meant, this week it was the same day over and over and over again on Friday, too.

  Miss Melton-Mowry didn’t seem to mind at all. “Let me demonstrate what I mean,” she said as we watched her haul Miss Information out of her seat and drag her over to the space between me and Delton. There was some trouble with getting her to stand. Even after our teacher finished setting her up, Miss I swayed a little, the same way my mom does after she’s had a classic margarita at the Tortilla Factory.

  We always went to the Tortilla Factory on the summer solstice. Now it was the last week in June—the sweetest time in summer. The days went on forever; you could lie on your back and watch the fireflies and the bats come out at dusk; the dirt smelled like perfume and playing kick the can could last until
your parents dragged you in to go to bed.

  Or…you could learn how to get a waiter’s attention.

  “All right, then. Let’s say you have spilled a bit of water. Simply drop your napkin over it like so and, when the waitstaff appears, indicate in a low, modulated voice that you would appreciate another napkin. Let’s begin with you, Miss Corcoran. Miss Corcoran?”

  I tried to pull myself out of my etiquette coma and focus on what Miss Melton-Mowry was saying.

  “Um, can you define ‘modulated’?”

  “Quiet and controlled. Like so.” Miss Melton-Mowry dropped her napkin on the table and looked up at Miss Information. She gestured at the napkin and pressed her lips together like the napkin was covering up something rotten. “ ‘When you have a moment, could you bring me another napkin?’ ” She waited a few seconds—we all did, as if Miss Information would finally open her mouth and say something. “ ‘Thank you,’ ” Miss Melton-Mowry said at last. “ ‘I would be most obliged.’ ”

  “But what if you need your napkin before she gets back?” I wanted to know. “What if she takes a powder in the kitchen?”

  “In polite society, Miss Corcoran, spills are rare. When we control our movements, we reduce the risk of an accident. The risk of having two accidents in a short space of time is very low.”

  I hated to disagree…but…Miss Melton-Mowry had obviously never read The Nine Lives of Magda’s Glasses. Putting a slipknot into the corner of my napkin, I stuck my butter knife in it.

  “What are you doing now? You need to stop playing with your napkin and return it to your lap.”

  “It’s not a napkin. It’s a white flag.” I waved it for demonstration purposes. “I’m surrendering. Geez, Miss Melton-Mowry, we’re not robots; we’re kids. And in case you haven’t heard, with kids—accidents most definitely do happen.” I glanced over at Officer Weston, who was clearly not a kid, and at Delton, who was sitting as stiff as, well, a zombie robot. “Present company excepted.”

  “Miss Corcoran, kids are baby goats. And yes, children have accidents, but you are not a child any longer. You are a young lady who will replace her cutlery and return to the subject at hand.”