Dying to Decorate

by Cyndy Salzmann

  Unfortunately, The Book worked much more effectively in Mrs. Stevens’s classroom. The first time I threatened The Book, Katie eyed me quizzically and my husband started laughing. It wasn’t long before we began to use The Book as a notepad for phone messages.

  Consequently, as I waited in the hall, holding a slippery dog, it dawned on me that I would probably hear about this breach of self-control from my children the next time I brought up the indoor-voice subject. But at that point, with cinnamon toothpaste smeared on the front of my nightgown, I didn’t care. I suspected that even the serene, pearl-wearing June Cleaver would employ her outdoor voice in this situation.

  Katie was the first to poke her head out of the bedroom in response to my call. “What’s the problem, Mom? I’m already late.”

  I was not surprised. Katie, a typical seventeen-year-old girl, was always running late for school. After all, it takes time to choose and discard a minimum of four complete outfits before finding that “perfect” T-shirt and pair of sweatpants in which to roam the halls of her high school. And this doesn’t include the lengthy process of straightening her already sleek blond tresses with a flatiron to erase even the slightest hint of a “lump.” Every time I got irritated with her habits, I tried to remind myself that, yes, I, too, was once a teenage girl. But was I really that annoying, that self-focused? Or had the years simply wiped away my memory, along with my high-school figure?

  Taking a deep cleansing breath to compose myself, I held up our gooey, red-spotted pet. “Explain this, please.”

  “What?” asked my oldest child as she emerged from her room to cautiously examine the dog. “Oh, that. Josh stepped on the toothpaste last night and—of course—didn’t clean it up. Daisy must have gotten into it.”

  “Don’t even try to blame this on me!” hollered my fifteen-year-old son from the staircase.

  At six-foot-one and still growing, Josh is like a puppy who hasn’t grown into his paws yet. Big and unwieldy, he tumbles headfirst into a situation.

  “I only stepped on the toothpaste because she knocked it on the floor with the cord to the blow-dryer,” Josh countered, shaking his red head vehemently. “You gotta talk to her, Mom. Her stuff is all over the bathroom and—”

  “It is not! And I didn’t even know it fell off the counter, bratface!”

  “All right, stop with the name-calling,” I interjected. “Josh, let me get this straight. You saw the toothpaste on the floor without a cap and decided to just leave it there?”

  “No, I already told you. I told Katie to pick it up.”

  Katie’s cobalt eyes narrowed to slits. “Not before I told you to clean it up after you stomped on the tube with your big feet and squirted toothpaste all over!”

  “Back off, Barbie doll! There wouldn’t have been anything to clean up if you hadn’t—”

  A horn blared from outside the house.

  “Gotta go, Mom! There’s my ride!” Josh bounded down the stairs and out the door before I could utter a sound.

  “Mommy, the tile was all pink and sticky when I went to bed,” said our younger daughter, appearing magically from around the corner. Confident she wasn’t in trouble, she added sweetly, “That’s why I used your bathroom.”

  At ten years old, Hannah has mastered the fine art of sucking up. With her deep blue eyes, pudgy cheeks, and cap of strawberry blond curls, she looks like a cherub. Hovering on the sidelines, she listens for an opportune time to jump in with a helpful suggestion or juicy piece of information gathered through surreptitious surveillance of her older siblings. Unfortunately, in this instance, she had misinterpreted the situation.

  I took another cleansing breath. “Hannah, why didn’t you tell me last night that toothpaste was all over the bathroom floor?”

  The startled look on her face showed that she quickly realized her miscalculation. “I don’t know,” she said and disappeared behind her swiftly closing bedroom door.

  I sighed. “OK, Kate.” I swiveled to face my older daughter again and held the dog out to her. “I need you to clean up the bathroom floor and give the dog a bath. I’ll follow the paw prints and assess the rest of the damage.”

  “Now? You’re asking me to do this now? Right now? This morning? Before school? Without giving me any warning? Mom, you know that’s not fair!” she wailed, backing away from me and a squirming Daisy. “This was not my fault, and you know it! Besides, I’m already dressed! I won’t have time to change before the first bell!”

  “Then you’ll be late,” I responded, proud of my indoor voice.

  “Mom! I can’t be late! We have a math test first hour,” she continued to wail.

  “You’ll have to make it up.”

  “Ms. Murray gives us a zero unless we have a valid excuse.”

  “I’ll write you a note.”

  “Yeah, like cleaning the bathroom is a ‘valid’ excuse.”

  I paused. A chink in my armor.

  It must have showed.

  “You’d have to say I was sick or something,” Katie continued. “Do you really feel it’s right to lie to my teacher, Mom?”

  “Fine. Just go to school.” I sighed again, accepting my defeat—and headed to the shower with the dog under my arm.

  Let’s just say that a bath of any kind is never in Daisy’s plans . . . much less a shower.

  And all this was at 7:30 a.m. Before things really started to go downhill.

  By ten o’clock I had discovered a mistake in the checkbook register. Our account was in overdraft mode, making it likely that our tithe to the church would bounce. I tried unsuccessfully for ninety minutes to make an online transfer from our savings account to cover the discrepancy. No matter what I did, a warning code popped up on the screen to inform me that I had “entered an unauthorized access number. Please try again.”

  “You’re wrong!” I shouted at the computer monitor. “This is the right access code, you useless box of megabytes! Who else would know the combination of my current dress size and the size I’m planning to be by summer vacation?”

  I despise computers when they won’t do what I want. I also despise admitting that I can’t get the blasted machines to do what I want. But what I truly despise the most is letting my husband know that I can’t get the computer to do what I want. I suspect this could be traced to some unresolved “I am woman! Hear me roar!” female consciousness-raising course from my college days.

  Thus it took several more minutes of yelling at the computer and pounding on the table before I swallowed my pride and called my husband at his office.

  “Oh, by the way, John,” I casually mentioned after a few minutes of trumped-up small talk to hide my real reason for the call. “I was trying to make a transfer online, and the bank won’t accept our access code.”

  “What are you trying to do?”

  “I told you. I’m trying to make a transfer.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone line, then the puzzled question, “Why do you need to make a transfer?”

  “Sweetheart, we don’t have time to get into all this now,” I said, trying desperately to keep the word overdraft out of our conversation. “Did you change the access code recently?”

  “Umm . . . I don’t think so. But, Liz, why do you need—”

  “Wait! I might be getting another call,” I chirped before he had a chance to realize I was trying to avoid his question. “Better go—it could be the kids. Don’t worry, honey. I’ll figure it out. See you at dinner!”

  Once again, saved by the specter of call waiting. Meanwhile our account was still in overdraft and the hag was pulling at her leash.

  I wasted another precious thirty minutes attempting to navigate our bank’s “timesaving” voice-mail system in an effort to explain my problem to a real person. I finally gave up and drove to the bank to make the deposit. Because it was ten minutes after noon, the cheery teller behind the bulletproof glass in the drive-through reminded me that the transfer would not be credited to our account until the ne
xt business day. Monday.

  “But what if a check goes through today or on Saturday?” I asked.

  “No problem,” she reassured me. “You have overdraft protection.”

  “Wonderful.” Relieved, I extracted the deposit receipt from the mechanical tray.

  But then the teller continued, “The overdraft fee of thirty-five dollars per check will be automatically charged to your account. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  Before the hag could crane her wrinkled neck out the window and inform the teller (in an outdoor voice) how she felt about the bank’s overdraft-protection plan, I stepped on the gas.

  It was now 12:30, and any resolve to stay on my low-carb diet was running dangerously low. By 1:15, I’d pulled out of Krispy Kreme, brushing the glistening remains of two glazed “hot and ready” donuts from my sweater.

  “Oh no! Today is Hannah’s parent lunch!” I exclaim, slapping my forehead and causing the driver in the next car to roll up his window. I’m now convinced my daughter will someday reveal this—and other lapses of maternal care—on national television before a gray-haired Oprah.

  Little did I know that Oprah was the least of my worries.

  Armed with a double mocha frappuccino, I arrived to pick up Hannah from school promptly at 2:15.

  “Hi, sweetheart! How was your day?” I said in that high, overly cheerful voice used by guilt-ridden mothers.

  Stony silence.

  Undaunted, I pushed on. “I picked this up for you,” I continued to chirp, handing her the whipped-cream-topped bribe. “It’s a double mocha—and I even had them put chocolate shavings on top for you.”

  “Katie says chocolate will give me zits,” she fired back.

  “Hannah, sweetheart, you have gorgeous skin!” I gushed. “You don’t have to worry about blemishes. Besides, my dermatologist told me that whole chocolate thing is just a myth.”

  “Maybe for OLD skin,” she said with a pointed look as she climbed into the backseat of the van and put on her headphones—a definite signal that a double mocha frappuccino was not even close to the penance she was planning for me. I’d probably end up making her a whole batch of her favorite cookies, which I have come to call I’m-So-Sorry Snickerdoodles.

  After dropping a ticked-off Hannah at dance lessons, I returned home to find that cinnamon toothpaste does not agree with Daisy. I spent the next thirty minutes and half a tub of OxyBooster trying to remove pink vomit from our beige carpeting. The attempt was unsuccessful, so I gave up and covered the spot with a rug. I cringe just thinking about what fans of my column would think if they could see their domestic diva now.

  By the time I had put away my cleaning supplies, the hag was seething and more than ready to pounce on the first person through the door. I picked up Jessie’s voice mail inviting me to Friday Afternoon Club just in time.

  JESSIE’S RASPBERRY TEA

  1 quart strong brewed tea

  1 (10 oz.) package frozen raspberries

  1 (12 oz.) can frozen lemonade

  Instructions

  1. Stir frozen raspberries and lemonade into warm tea until thawed.

  2. Fill a two-quart pitcher with ice. Strain mixture over ice and add water to fill pitcher.

  3. Enjoy in tall glasses, garnished with a sprig of mint.

  MARINA’S TABBOULEH

  1/2 cup bulgur (also known as cracked wheat)

  1 bunch of fresh mint, chopped

  2 bunches of flat-leafed parsley, chopped

  1 small onion, finely chopped

  2 medium Roma tomatoes, diced

  Juice of one lemon

  3 tablespoons olive oil

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Optional: Seven Spices seasoning (sometimes called Syrian Spices)

  Instructions

  1. Soak bulgur in warm water for 30 minutes. Drain.

  2. Add all ingredients together. Season to taste.

  I walk into Jessie’s chaotic kitchen about 3:30. Jess homeschools her four kids, so there is always some project drying, growing, or festering on her counters. She’s one of the few women who has a valid excuse for “science projects” in her refrigerator.

  We can’t help but tease Jessie about being born in the wrong generation. She’s the quintessential ’70s earth mother—complete with waist-length hair, huge organic garden, golden retriever, and clogs. She may be a misplaced flower child, but when it comes to needing an anchor in the midst of a storm, we all flock to Jessie.

  One look at my face and Jess says, “Tell me.”

  She sets two glasses of raspberry tea on her long, oak kitchen table and slides into the chair next to me.

  “Really, it’s nothing. Just a rotten day. It sounds silly now.”

  “Tell me.”

  “All right, I’ll give you the short version. Red goo. Sticky dog. Uncooperative kids. Bank overdrafts. Computer problems. All shaken up with maternal guilt, chocolate, zits, and pink vomit.”

  Jess smiles. “Sounds like the perfect day.”

  “I just needed a break. I’m so glad you called.”

  “Me too. Cheers!”

  We clink glasses. I’m feeling better already.

  “Hey! Don’t you two dare start without me!” roars Marina, bursting through the back door. She’s still in uniform and clutching what looks like a bouquet of weeds.

  Marina is a single mom who works the day shift as a cop for the Omaha Police Department. With her wild black hair and fiery red acrylic fingernails, she definitely breaks the “Joe Friday” mold.

  I once asked if she thought her flamboyant image might affect her credibility on the job.

  “Of course it does,” she had replied. “Most men don’t take me seriously. It’s my advantage.” That’s Marina.

  “What’d you do, Rina? Hop the fence?” asks Jess.

  As a lieutenant on the force, Marina spends less time on the street and more time, as she says, “pushing paper and listening to whiny cops.” But with her wiry, athletic body, I have little doubt she could easily sail over the picket fence between her and Jess’s yards.

  “Are you kidding?” She laughs. “Those days are over, girlfriend. By the way, I hope it was OK to steal some of the mint from your backyard, Jess.”

  “Please, pick all you want. It’s taking over the garden,” laments Jessie.

  “What are you going to do with all that mint?” I ask, as Marina tosses the spray of greenery on the already-cluttered counter.

  “I thought I’d mix up some tabbouleh for the OPD spring picnic this weekend. Those cops need to expand their palates beyond burgers and macaroni salad.”

  Jess’s golden retriever, Max, jumps at the sound of the bell. Before she can grab his collar, he bounds toward the front door.

  “That must be Mary Alice.” Jess rises from her chair. “I’ve told her for years to just come on in, but she’s too polite.”

  “Not when she’s with me! I’ll wrench her out of that comfort zone yet,” says Kelly, the youngest member of our group, as she strides into the kitchen. She plops a platter loaded with cheese cubes and fresh vegetables in the center of the table. “I come bearing treats, ladies.”

  At five-foot-two, Kelly may be tiny, but her presence fills a room as soon as she walks through the door. Her quick smile, deep auburn hair, and smattering of freckles belie a will of iron.

  As Kelly removes the plastic wrap from the tray, Mary Alice walks into the room. “Good boy, Max.” She rubs the old dog’s neck. “Is Kelly taking credit for my cooking again?”

  “What cooking?” Kelly insists. “It’s veggies and cheese. Since when does filling up a platter with store-bought crudités constitute cooking?”

  “It’s all in the presentation, you peasant!” Jess laughs, throwing her arm around Mary Alice’s shoulder and giving her a reassuring hug.

  “Thank you, Jess,” says Mary Alice. “And for your information, Kel, I made the dip.”

  This fact does not surprise me at all. Mary Alice most likely i
nspired the phrase “busy hands—peaceful heart.” I marvel at how, with three active kids, she has time to do it all—cook, keep a spotless house, and always look “put together.” She wouldn’t think about leaving the house without applying her characteristic rose-colored lipstick and making sure her sleek brown hair is in place. Much like the TV commercial, when something “absolutely, positively” needs to get done, call Mary Alice. She is an organizational wizard without a procrastinating bone in her body. Naturally, we all hate her.

  “This green stuff is supposed to be a dip?” Kelly jokes. “Seriously, this looks great, M.A., and it’s low carb.”

  Marina wrinkles her nose. “Yada, yada, yada . . . I am sick to death of hearing the carbohydrate count of every food worth eating. In my opinion, life without pasta is just not worth living.”

  After a few minutes of debate about the pros and cons of various popular diets, I decide to change the subject before my trip to Krispy Kreme comes up. I ask about the sixth member of our little group. “Jess, is Lucy coming? I was really hoping she’d be here. I haven’t seen her for weeks.”

  “I don’t know. I called and left a message. I even sent her an e-mail. It’s not like Lucy not to respond.”

  “She’s been keeping to herself since her mom died last spring,” says Mary Alice. “I’m starting to worry about her.”

  Kelly frowns. “That’s been six months. She needs to get out—be around people.”

  “Then let’s go get her,” says Marina. “She can’t stand us up three weeks in a row. Don’t we have something against that in our bylaws?”

  “FAC doesn’t have bylaws, Marina,” Kelly reminds her.

  “Then I guess we’ll have to do an unofficial FAC intervention.”

  “What’s an ‘intervention’?” asks Mary Alice.

  “I don’t know yet. We’ll figure it out on the way. In the car, ladies . . . I’m driving.” Clearly a woman used to giving orders.

  “Are you sure, Rina? Maybe she still wants some time alone,” persists Mary Alice.

  “That’s the point. She doesn’t need time alone—she needs FAC. Let’s go!”