Ready, Scrap, Shoot

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  That was good.

  Really good.

  I couldn’t take the chance of Mom getting involved in our scheme to trap Bill Ballard.

  Sheila and Anya pulled into the drive, so I raced out to meet them and to explain who Claudia was. I finished with, “It’s best that we don’t make a big production about the fact that this is Sheila’s house. At least for a while. I don’t want Claudia to feel uncomfortable. I think Mom likes having a friend around. Anya, can you play along?”

  “Sure,” said my daughter.

  My mother-in-law rolled her eyes. “Anything to keep your mother out of my hair.”

  “You okay, sweetheart?” I gave Anya a hug.

  “Yeah, whatever,” she said as she started walking toward the house.

  Sixty

  Friday, May 7

  “Just you and me, babe,” I rubbed Gracie’s ears, as we walked into the empty store. At nine o’clock, I phoned CALA and learned that Lane was still under the weather. That meant I had the entire weekend to finish up the Edwina Fitzgerald album. I spent the morning getting ready for our Friday night crop.

  At noon, Margit started her shift. “How you doing with the cash register?” I asked.

  “You are a good teacher, Kick-ee.” She rewarded me with a happy smile. “I cooked sauerbraten last night. I always make too much, so I brought enough to share.”

  I took one bite of the plate she offered me and my taste buds danced a happy jig. “Wow! This is great! And these potatoes, they’re just scrumptious. What’s this in the green beans?”

  “Spaetzle. German dumplings.” Margit’s face glowed. “I sprinkled it with dried parsley, too.” She made herself a plate and we sat happily, side by side, eating.

  “Why did you want to own part of a scrapbook store? I mean, you don’t scrapbook, do you? You’re obviously a great cook, but do you like crafts?”

  “Ja, I like knitting and crochet. I make cards. I’ll show you.” She reached into an oilcloth bag and extracted a plastic folder. From this, she withdrew colorful, magical cards, the likes of which I’d never seen before.

  “What do you call this?”

  “It is iris eye folding. You begin with an aperture, then you fill the space with pieces of paper that overlap in a pleasing pattern. It began in Holland, using the brightly colored lining of envelopes.”

  I turned the cards over and over in my hands. “These are fabulous, and I mean it. Could you teach a class in this?”

  We put our heads together and designed a project for that very evening. Clancy called a couple of times to report her sales at Faust Park and ask for more merchandise. I put together a box of products to take to our booth. “How’s your mother?” I asked.

  “Right now, she’s still in the hospital. It’s awful, Kiki, really bad.”

  “You mean her break? Was it her arm or her leg or both?”

  “The broken arm will heal. Luckily her ankle is only sprained.”

  “That’s not too bad, is it? I mean, it could have been a lot worse.”

  Clancy said nothing for a beat, then blurted, “The doctor says her equilibrium is compromised. So is her mobility. She can’t move back into her own home. And she’s insisting on living with me!”

  I felt Clancy’s pain. Her voice, usually so cultured and precise, was blurred with emotion. “I’m so upset that I can’t talk about it now. How’s it going for you? Dodie told me about Brenda trashing our booth.”

  “Yeah, that was pretty bad.”

  “Dodie thinks you should get a restraining order.”

  “Um, I’ll consider it.” But I wouldn’t. I didn’t want to make the situation worse than it was.

  After I hung up, I turned around to find Margit staring at me thoughtfully. I could tell by the look on her face that she’d been listening in. “If you don’t get back to trouble, trouble will have kittens,” she said.

  “Is that an old German saying?”

  “Nein. It’s something my husband used to say when he was in sales. Ja, some problems go away, but others, you have to escort them out of your life.”

  Margit’s iris eye folding project

  This is the perfect way to use up strips of paper or paper with patterns that are no longer appealing. Margit suggests you start with a negative space (a hole) shaped like a square or a diamond. When you add in the strips, place them in opposite corners and work to fill the center. By the way, real iris eye folding does involve folding paper, but layering strips is just as cute and as much fun.

  1. Punch or cut a simple shape out of the center of a piece of cardstock, leaving a border of at least two inches all around the hole. Tip: Use a die cut machine or an “anywhere” punch to make this aperture.

  2. Cut strips of paper no more than ½ inch wide and 12 inches long.

  3. Starting at the outside edges, layer strips of paper, overlapping each strip until you have filled in the space. As you lay down a strip, tape the edges down on the backside. Tip: Move from outside corners inward. You are building a pattern with the strips of paper.

  4. Tape all the strips down on the back. Trim as necessary.

  Sixty-one

  I planned to run home only long enough to light the Shabbas candles with Sheila and Anya. I also expected Mom to join us as we prayed. Despite the fact I’d been raised Episcopalian, my mother always showed a keen interest in other religions. She particularly felt reverence toward Judaism, in part because our family priest bragged about his own Jewish son-in-law, “He’s a better Christian than most who claim the title. The Jews are, after all, God’s Chosen people.”

  I left my car in the driveway and raced in through the front door. Sheila and Anya stood at the dining room table. The silver candlesticks glowed in the waning sunlight. As always, Sheila’s house was fragrant with the smell of baking challah. A still-hot loaf took pride of place on a special plate in the center. A decanter of merlot sat to one side, along with two glasses of wine and a glass of grape juice for Anya. Mom was nowhere in sight.

  “I’ll get Mom,” I offered.

  “Don’t bother,” said Sheila.

  “What?”

  “She’s not coming,” said Anya, in that sort of bored voice that teens do so well.

  “Is she not feeling well?”

  “She’s fine.” Sheila’s tightly crossed arms matched the tense expression on her face. “Except for dropping a bottle of pills all over the floor.”

  “What?”

  “Your mother’s hands shake. Claudia explained she couldn’t possibly get down on her hands and knees because she has a bad back. So I’ve been all over the floor chasing down pills.”

  “Yeah, Mom, Claudia wouldn’t even help!” said Anya in a stage whisper. “And you know that Gran’s knees bother her.”

  “I’m sorry, Sheila. Really I am.”

  “Not your fault. Let’s get on with our Sabbath,” said Sheila, handing a match to Anya.

  We thanked God for the light, for fruit of the vine, and for bread. Gracie sat obediently at Anya’s side, knowing that she, too, would receive a portion of the challah to ensure a blessed week. Anya gave a piece to the dog and promptly disappeared up the stairs, giving her bedroom door a mighty slam shut.

  “What’s going on?” I followed Sheila into the kitchen. At the counter there, my mother and Claudia helped themselves to the roast chicken and vegetables that were the usual Lowenstein Friday meal. In fact, they’d more than helped themselves. I noticed most of the chicken was gone, and only a few vegetables remained. Clearly, Claudia and Mom had started eating before we’d lit the candles.

  “Hey, why didn’t you join us?” I asked as I stabbed a fork in a slender slice of white meat and scraped around for the last of the carrots. I assumed that Sheila had another chicken in the oven. There certainly
wasn’t enough here for Robbie. “Mom, you always enjoy lighting the candles.”

  “Oh, that,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “Say what?”

  “What do you call your God?” asked Claudia.

  “Jehovah? God? Lord? Actually, many observant Jews don’t call him by name. He is too powerful, and his name is too holy.”

  “Pfff.” Claudia snorted. “Blasphemy.”

  I nearly hit the ceiling. Here she was, a guest in someone else’s home, and she was calling our religion blasphemy. I glanced quickly over my shoulder. Sheila stood in the doorway. Her eyes twin pools of icy blue anger.

  “Excuse me?” I stared at Claudia.

  “My pastor told us about people like you. You believe in—”

  I reached my limit. “Claudia, I don’t need you to tell me what I believe in. You don’t know what I believe in. Please remember, you are a guest in this home.”

  “Huh,” said Claudia. “I know exactly what you believe. I’ve seen how you treat your mother.”

  Sixty-two

  The Friday night croppers started arriving shortly before I finished our preparations. Usually, I would panic (a little) because it’s hard to finish readying the tables, greeting people, organizing the food, and waiting on customers. But Margit had printed up coupons, covered the work tables with fresh white butcher paper, set out all the chairs, and generally had everything ready to go.

  She’d assembled small kits with the paper for the iris eye folding project. I could tell she was both nervous and excited about sharing her talents with our scrapbookers.

  “You’ll be fine,” I told her. “They are lovely women, and they are always eager to try new techniques. This one is just fabulous.”

  “Thank you for your help with everything,” Margit said.

  “You are welcome. Hey, would you do me a favor? I’m glad to help you learn about scrapbooking, and I’m also happy to help you teach classes. Could you show me how our bookkeeping works? If I could learn more about our ordering systems, and our accounts payable, maybe I could do a better job of planning and promoting.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If we have paper or supplies that aren’t moving, I can take that into consideration as I come up with projects. I mean, I already do, in that I look around and see what’s on the shelves.”

  “But if you knew about our discounts and the promotions that the manufacturers offer, you could do more, ja?”

  “They offer promotions?”

  She nodded, her bowl-shaped hair swinging back and forth. “Sometimes if you buy this, you get another product at a discount. Or if you buy more of this before a certain date, they’ll send you a special bonus.”

  “Gosh, I definitely could help us hit those goals. Our page kits sell really well. If I knew we needed to move a certain type of paper,

  I could make up the page kits with that particular product.”

  For the next ten minutes, Margit and I brainstormed more efficient ways to create “turn,” which she explained means the number of times your inventory turns over. The faster your turn is, the more money you make. If merchandise sits on the shelf for six months, your capital is tied up for six months—and you can’t make as much profit as you would if your merchandise turned over every six weeks.

  Margit counseled me to “think of inventory turn as a payday. Would you rather get money for every week you work? Or for every month? Providing that you always make the same or an equal amount of money?”

  “Weekly. If I always get the same amount—in this case roughly the same percentage of sales profit—I’d rather be paid fifty-two times a year instead of twelve times.”

  “Ja. You understand it now, Kick-ee.” Her face was bright pink with pleasure. “It should be a good night?”

  I nodded. Crop nights didn’t bring in tons of money. We charged a nominal fee for our crops, and we gave away a lot in terms of coupons with discounts, supplies that accompanied the new techniques we taught, and so on. But every cropper bought more consumables: paper, adhesives, embellishments. Each new scrapbooker wound up trying at least one or two tools and that often resulted in a purchase. Best of all, over the years we had built a community. We kept this community, this group of scrapbookers, excited and interested in the hobby. In return, they not only spent money with us, they also reignited our passion for the industry.

  While I was out buying more napkins and colas for our crop night, Clancy had stopped by. She reported the sales figures from our Faust booth to Margit. She also shared email addresses of folks who wanted to take classes.

  I was sorry that I missed her.

  Margit was actually “off” at seven, but since she was demonstrating her craft, she was happy to stick around.

  I checked the schedule, hoping that Mert would be in. Although she had her own cleaning and dogsitting businesses, she worked a couple of hours each month, mostly to maintain her employee discount. Frequently, she chose to help at the crops. That way she and I could spend a little quality time together while getting paid for our presence.

  But Mert’s name had been scratched out on the schedule. I swallowed my disappointment.

  “Laurel Wilkins” had been written in. Laurel could charm Rush Limbaugh into making a six-figure donation to the Democratic Party. She’s also the most amazingly competent young woman I’ve ever met. And pretty? Shoot. We used to call her “Miss December” because she looks like a centerfold, but once we learned it hurt her feelings, we all apologized and stopped. As per usual, Laurel showed up looking stunning. She wore skinny jeans, a flowing gauzy top, and big earrings with the peace symbol on them. On her feet were ballerina flats. She helped put the colas on ice as our customers trickled in.

  Bonnie Gossage bounced little Fernando on her hip as she spread out the supplies for his baby book. Her older son, Felix, was home with his father, Fred. Now that Felix was a toddler, Fernando was our resident “pass-around baby.” Miriam Glickstein brought challah and a big pan of kugel. Rita Romano brought a cookbook she was making for her new daughter-in-law. She also made a big pot of Mexican rice. The scent of cumin made my mouth water. Kathy Berberich and Pat Davis were making memory albums to give to kids whose wishes had been fulfilled by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. I was delighted to learn that a wish is granted every 40 minutes. How cool is that?

  Since Friday night crops ran well past midnight, almost everyone brought food. That was helpful on this Friday because I’d had so little to eat. As it turned out, Sheila hadn’t baked another chicken. Or made more vegetables. I was mortified by my mother’s piggish conduct and ashamed of Claudia’s remarks.

  Sheila had shrugged. “Robbie told me why you need to stay here. About the plan. Honestly, men! They love all this running around like secret agents. What they need to do is grab a gun and go put Bill out of his misery.”

  “I’m not excited about their scheme. In fact, I hate it.”

  “I don’t see any other options. We need to get that monster out of our lives. I can keep Anya out of the way this weekend, but what can we do about your mother?”

  “That’s why I haven’t told Claudia to leave. While she’s around, Mom has a play buddy.”

  “If we’re lucky, this will be over soon. Until then, your mother and Claudia are welcome to stay at my house.”

  I’d never heard her so conciliatory and I said so.

  “Don’t fool yourself. I don’t care about your mother, and I’d love to plant my foot on Claudia’s big behind and kick her to the curb. I just want this hassle behind us so we can all go back to some semblance of normal.”

  I agreed. “Is something bothering Anya? She seemed down in the dumps last night.”

  “She’s been very quiet.”

  “She hasn’t told you what’s on her mind?”
>
  “No. Mostly she spends her evenings in her room with Seymour. She’s online a lot. I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “I hear you. At my house the computer is out in the open.”

  Sheila nodded. “I know it. But I don’t think we can take her laptop away from her right now. She needs it for school. So many of her assignments are online these days.”

  “Is there something at school that’s happening? Something I need to know about?”

  “I don’t think so. I was working on the invitations for the wedding yesterday. She picked up the list and wanted to know how many ‘Lowensteins’ are still around. Whether Harry had any brothers, and if they had any children or grandchildren.”

  Harry was Sheila’s husband, Anya’s paternal grandfather who died of cancer six weeks before she was born.

  “And the answer is?”

  “No. Both his brothers, Saul and Herschel, died at Auschwitz. As far as we know, so did all of his cousins.”

  “Is she still bothered about you changing your last name?”

  Sheila shrugged again and picked the crease of her slacks. “Or you changing yours.”

  A sharp pain zipped through my temples. I put my fingertips to my head and rubbed. “I need to get back to work. I can’t deal with this right now.”

  “I know you can’t. Unfortunately, I can’t either.”

  Sixty-three

  Jennifer Moore arrived at the shop late. I showed her the new May Day album. I only had a few pages to go. “Absolutely gorgeous. CALA definitely should sell these as kits. In fact, I’ll tell the bookstore manager that I’ll order a half dozen right off the bat.”

  “Thank you, Jennifer. That’s really kind of you.”

  “My pleasure. I saw the memorial album you made for Edwina Fitzgerald. You did a great job.”

  “Have you heard whether Deanna and Peter liked it?” I motioned Jennifer into the backroom where we could speak privately.