“I know. I’m sorry. You do know exactly how I feel. Grrrrrr…”
Growling like a bear meant…bear hug!
“I think I’m ready to go to bed now, Dad.”
“Me too.” He flipped off the switch between my shoulder blades, and I don’t know how, but I fell asleep.
“Miss Corcoran, are you in there? I know it’s early, but…duty calls.”
“If you call me Miss Corcoran one more time, Magda…” I opened the door and swatted her with her Scientific American.
“How can you be mad at me when I am responsible for saving you from department-store-dress disaster?”
Magda advanced. I threw myself on the floor and grabbed the bedpost. “Exactly how are you going to do that?”
Pulling me by the leg, she said, “I’m friends with Bree and Bree likes to shop. She found a better dress for you.”
“Oh, no. I’m not wearing one of her dresses. It wouldn’t fit, for one thing.” I flipped over and pointed to my upper regions, which, if they were a relief map, would fall somewhere in the middle of the Gobi Desert.
Magda pulled open my closet and dug in the back. It didn’t matter that the pink dress had spent time in the laundry chute and, more recently, fallen off its hanger. It was standing up anyway. My baseball bat and my box of vintage Tigers cards—Dad’s box, actually—had fallen on it, so when my sister held it up in front of her, it bent in crazy new directions.
It was like a dress having a bad hair day.
“A picture’s worth a thousand words,” Miss Know-It-All-Corcoran-the-Second said. “Just look at what Bree got, okay?”
“I’ll look, but first I have to take a shower.” I had a feeling old Mrs. Glennon would have a bloodhound’s sniffer.
“Good point.” Magda nodded. “Between the amount of covers you sleep under and the naturally moist environment in your arm—”
“I can’t hear you!” My fingers plugging my ears, I ran toward the bathroom.
After showering and blow-drying my hair (and underneath my arms, just in case), I put on my hoodie and a pair of shorts and we walked over to the Bensons’. In the kitchen, Mrs. Benson looked up from stirring her coffee. “Cassidy. It’s your big day!”
“Can I ask you a question, Mrs. Benson?”
“Shoot.”
“How come you’re always so cheerful?”
Cupping her hands around her mug, Mrs. Benson took a big gulp. “Well, one, I’ve had a decent amount of coffee. And, two, given a choice between happiness and sadness, it seems logical which one to choose, don’t you think?”
“Is Magda here, Mom?” Bree called from upstairs. “Have you got Cassidy with you? She’s going to love this.”
“There’s a cinnamon roll in the oven with your name on it if you try it on.” Mrs. Benson pushed back my hood and said, “This will be a day to remember, Miss Cassidy.”
I swallowed. That’s what I was afraid of.
Glancing up the stairs, I told myself there wasn’t much to lose. The only good thing about the dress in my closet was that it was so stiff, my elbows wouldn’t bend to reach the table.
“Cover her eyes, Magda. I don’t want Cassidy to see this until it’s on.” Bree stood guard in front of her bedroom door, holding out one of her stretchy headbands.
As Magda pulled it over my eyes, I pretended I was being abducted by pygmies who couldn’t decide if they should eat me now or fatten me up for later.
Magda yanked off my hoodie. “You can leave your shorts on until I get this dress over your head.”
I would have fought back, but the pygmies had their poison darts aimed at me. I held my arms up; it felt like Magda was putting my hoodie back on, only heavier.
“Now slip off your shorts.”
“Has she changed? Can I come in?” Bree called out.
“Yep.” I felt Magda’s hands on my shoulders, turning me. Then she pulled off the headband and I was temporarily blinded by a lighted mirror, like the kind you see in a star’s dressing room. Still, there I was, in a sky-blue sleeveless dress that felt as comfortable as my favorite pajamas. It went straight down, just like a nightshirt, until you got to the knees.
“Look at this.” Bree put her hands on my hips and turned me to the left and right. The bottom of the dress flared out in a circle.
“It’s a little flounce. Adorable.”
“Well, if this is legal, I’ll wear it. But I have my doubts.”
“Of course it’s legal. It’s a dress, isn’t it? Look how it brings out the color of your beautiful blue eyes.”
“But it’s not ugly and uncomfortable.”
“That was the brilliant thing about Coco Chanel. She believed in comfort. Still…” Twirling a piece of my hair around her finger, Bree went on, “You need shoes, and we’re going to have to do something with this hair.”
“Yes, we are,” I agreed. “It’s called a ponytail.”
“Nope. A ponytail won’t work. The dress is simple and angular, which means the hair has to be feminine.”
“But I don’t have feminine hair!”
Bree walked over to her dressing table and pulled a curling iron off a hook. “But you could.”
Magda grabbed me from behind in a cross-armed surfboard. Curling irons excited my flight response. “She’ll barely sit still for pumpkin pancakes, Bree. I’m afraid if you do that, Cassidy will wear burn marks on her forehead.”
Bree didn’t seem concerned. “Maybe. But I have a secret weapon. Mom! You’re on!”
Mrs. Benson was obviously waiting for her cue. One quick knock on the door and she was in.
“Sit here, Cassidy,” Bree said, patting a star-covered rolling stool. “Mom’s got a story to tell you.”
“I’d love to, but…” I started clawing my way out of Magda’s hold. She was surprisingly strong for an egghead, but I was primed for takeoff. Mrs. Benson’s stories could put me in a trance; I did not need any firing up about assassination attempts using cutlery when I was going to a luncheon where all I was allowed to do was pat my mouth with a napkin, take sips of water and pretend I found the weather fascinating.
“Oh, I think you need to hear this one, Miss Cassidy,” Mrs. Benson said just as I’d reached the door. “It’s about Titanic karma.”
I used the intensity of my gaze to stare daggers at Magda. “Can’t you keep even one family secret?”
“Don’t look at me! I didn’t say anything.”
Jack!
Don’t ask me why it took all the fight out of me that Jack had spilled the fact I had Titanic karma to the Bensons. I went over and sat on the stool with dismal posture, looking even more like the back-of-the-milk-carton girl than I had at Stetler’s. Even in this dress that felt like a stretched-out T-shirt.
“Now, Cassidy, cheer up. This is a whopper of a tale. Swivel her around, Sabrina, so she doesn’t have to look at herself while you work your magic.”
“Turn me into a young lady, you mean?”
“That will require magic.” Magda pushed in my stomach and pulled back on my shoulders. “Dining posture, Miss Corcoran.”
I resolved to spend this time coming up with a baker’s dozen plots to get revenge on my sister, but I didn’t even get to one before Mrs. Benson launched into her story.
“This is the saga of Charles Joughin, chief baker on the Titanic. Charles was off-duty, sleeping in his bunk, when the fateful moment occurred and the Titanic ran smack into an iceberg. He jumped out of bed and reported to the kitchen, where he was told to take loaves of bread up to the lifeboats. After that, he helped other men load the lifeboats with women and children. As you know, Cassidy, the tragedy of the sinking was that there weren’t enough lifeboats; the men held back as the women and children got on. Some of the women were frightened and had to be put on forcibly. Charles wrestled a couple of feisty girls in, too.”
“Maybe they weren’t afraid,” I said. “Maybe they were willing to go down with the ship like the men.” There’s something about having people mess with your hair. I tried
to fight the hypnotizing feeling of Bree’s comb and the heat of her curling iron by blowing holes in Mrs. Benson’s story.
She ignored me. “Even though he was assigned to lifeboat number ten, Charles held back when he saw that three other men had boarded at the direction of the ship’s captain. That’s when he went back to his cabin and had a drink. A stiff one.”
“Was it whiskey? That’s what pirates do when the ship’s going down,” I said. “They drink the captain’s whiskey.”
“I can’t confirm it was whiskey, but it was most certainly alcohol. Once he’d got himself liquored up, he went back above deck and started throwing chairs over the side. He thought this might help the men who would soon be in the water…they could use them as flotation devices. While he was at it, Charles heard a terrible crash; he watched in horror as hundreds of people were flung into a heap on the deck below him.”
Mrs. Benson took a sip from her water bottle. “The hull had cracked. The time was near. Charles tightened his life jacket and rode the ship down like he was taking an elevator to Neptune’s basement.”
Turning the stool in a one-eighty, Bree started pulling a comb through my hair on the other side.
“The water temperature was thirty-one degrees, just below freezing. Most people who died in the Titanic did not die from drowning. Every body that was recovered had a life jacket on and the water was as still as a pond.
“Charles didn’t try to swim anywhere. He floated and treaded water. According to interviews he gave later, he said he barely felt the cold.”
“Must have been the alcohol,” I said. “Saint Bernards wear it around their neck, you know, when they’re looking for people buried under the snow.”
“Actually—” Magda started, but Mrs. Benson held up her hand.
“This is my story, Magda.”
“Who wants a Tootsie Pop?” Bree asked, holding up the bag.
Not knowing when I’d have my next real meal, I raised my hand. “I’ll take grape.”
“Sorry. All I have is cherry.”
“Fine. Cherry, then.”
I unwrapped the Tootsie Pop and started sucking. “Go on,” I said. I hate it when a good story gets interrupted—even for a Tootsie Pop.
“I’m not sure Charles is a good source for how long he floated, but once all the accounts were reconstructed, they figured he was in the water for nearly two hours.”
“Tell the truth, Mama. Two hours? In freezing water?”
“At one point, he saw an overturned lifeboat in the distance with maybe twenty-five men huddled on top of it. He made his way slowly to the lifeboat, but there was no room for him to climb on. He was recognized by the cook, however, who took hold of his hand and held on to it so he didn’t float away.
“About a half hour later, another lifeboat appeared out of the mist. They called out that they had room for more, but only ten. Since Charles was in the water, he began swimming over immediately and was hauled into the boat.”
Mrs. Benson paused, tilting her head as she looked at me. “How much longer?” she asked Bree.
“Almost done.”
“Soon the lifeboat was able to reach the RMS Carpathia, which had sailed over to rescue the survivors. When Charles Joughin was taken aboard, he was treated for swollen feet, but that’s all.”
“I don’t understand why he didn’t freeze to death,” Magda said. “All things being equal, a body shouldn’t be able to survive freezing temperatures more than fifteen or twenty minutes. The alcohol reason doesn’t cut it.”
My sister could be such a know-it-all pain! “You’re telling me hundreds of Saint Bernards are running around the Swiss Alps with kegs of whiskey tied to their collars for no reason, Magda?”
“It makes you feel warm when you first drink it, but it doesn’t keep your body warm. It dilates your blood vessels, moving blood closer to the surface of your skin. If you want to keep from freezing to death, you need blood flowing in the opposite direction.”
Bree was brushing out my hair. She kept pushing my chin back and forth and looking at me, frowning, and then brushing some more. I had just reached the chocolate part of my Tootsie Pop when she grabbed it out of my hands.
“All done,” she said.
“Hey!”
“There is one explanation,” Mrs. Benson said, leaning forward and tucking my hair behind my ears. She frowned, too, and put the hair back the way it was. “I can read your mind, Sabrina. Yes, we’re going to need a headband.”
Bree threw open her closet door. On the back, there were a bunch of plastic pockets with more colored headbands than you see in the hair-care aisle at the pharmacy. She yanked one out and came toward me.
“No saying no until you see the final result.”
“Bree’s right,” Magda said. “With your hair in a headband, it won’t fall in your soup, thus preventing at least one etiquette faux pas.”
“Well, what’s the explanation, then?” I asked as Bree scraped the headband over my temples.
“Against all odds, Charles Joughin survived two-plus hours with his body submerged in freezing water. The alcohol he drank did not protect him. The only explanation is that he had…Titanic karma.”
Bree reached over my shoulder with something that looked like a pencil eraser and smeared it across my lips; then she turned the stool around.
“So…you’re saying Titanic karma is not bad?”
“I’m saying it’s all in the way you look at it. It wasn’t bad for Charles Joughin.”
Spinning the stool around so that I faced the mirror, Bree pinched my cheeks. “I knew you’d say no to lip gloss,” she said. “I call this Cherry Toots.”
“My tongue’s red, too.” I stuck it out to prove my point.
“We can brush that.”
“Cassidy.” Magda touched one of my many curls. “Just look at yourself.”
I looked in the mirror at the girl with the long curly hair. In a headband. With red stain on her lips. She might have been my cousin.
“That is definitely not me.”
“Yes it is,” Mrs. Benson said. “Allow me to introduce you to Cassidy Corcoran at eleven-teen.”
Mrs. Bean dropped us off at the Egypt Valley Country Club, and we found Miss Melton-Mowry sitting in a chair on the patio.
Delton was already flustered. “How long have you been here, Miss Melton-Mowry? According to my iPhone, we are twenty minutes early.”
“Whenever we have a major event like this, I like to come early to…strategize.”
You’d think we were declaring war on China instead of eating lunch!
“You look very nice, Miss Corcoran. And you, Mr. Bean.” Miss Melton-Mowry straightened Delton’s bow tie. She was dressed in another skirt and blazer, only this outfit was yellow. It looked hot and stiff.
“I am thinking they will seat us at the table over there…under the oak tree.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because this is the only terrace with handicap access, and—”
“Do not tell me the old lady’s in a wheelchair.”
“She’s not paralyzed, but her emphysema makes mobility an issue. And because of her breathing difficulties and the equipment, they’ll want her in a less trafficked location.”
I gripped Delton’s elbow. “The equipment would include?”
“She needs oxygen. To help her breathe.”
All of a sudden, I needed oxygen. I tried to find some in my belly, sticking it out as far as I could while looking over the golf course beyond the terrace. It was so green and smooth. It looked like a park, like one of those places you wouldn’t mind sleeping rough.
Was it blistering hot already or was it just me? I hoped this jersey stuff could soak up the sweat.
“What is the matter, Cassidy? You’re giving me a bruise! You’re not afraid of oxygen, are you?”
Somewhere, I heard splashing. Possibly they had a pool here, and kids were doing what came natural on a hot day, something called swimming.
As we walked toward the building, I pulled Delton aside. “I can’t sit next to Mrs. Glennon,” I whispered to him. “Because that’s how I got myself into this mess, by cutting off my great-grandma’s oxygen.”
“You…tried to kill your great-grandmother?”
“No! It was an accident. Just like Miss Information was an accident.” I took hold of Delton’s lapels. “I have to graduate, Delton. Do whatever it takes. I’ll…I’ll owe you one.”
“Does that mean we’ll be friends? Next year? That you and Jack will let me sit with you at lunch? That the three of us will do a prank together?”
“Pinky-swear that your mother won’t be in on it?”
“Pinky-swear.”
We linked pinkies. “I’ll consider it. Now, let’s go get cleaned up.”
“I am cleaned up.”
“Well, clean your clean! I need private time.”
I walked into the ladies’ room and looked at myself in the mirror. Everybody kept saying how pretty I looked today, but I didn’t look anything like Bree. I didn’t even look like myself. I tried staring at myself until I could see double. That’s when I realized that Janae was right. All these years I thought nobody could tell; I looked like a goofball.
Some fancy ladies came into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, fixing their hair. “Oh, you have to tell me where you got that dress. It’s so retro. Perfect for summer.”
“This old thing,” I said, waving my hand in the direction of…me. Time to practice my la-di-da. “I picked it up last year in the south of France. It’s a Coco Chanel.”
“Beautiful craftsmanship,” said Lady Number One. “You don’t see that anymore,” added Lady Number Two, touching my sleeve. “I love the way the French finish their seams, don’t you?”
“Hands off the goods, ladies. I’m trying to stay fresh here.”
They laughed like I hadn’t just warned them away from me. I watched Lady Number One pick up a bottle off the counter. “I love this fragrance,” she said. “It reminds me of jasmine.” She spritzed a little on her wrist and Lady Number Two held out hers for some spray. I waited until they’d left and sniffed it myself. Not too bad. I sprayed a little in my palms and patted my face.
Cassidy's Guide to Everyday Etiquette (and Obfuscation) Page 21