I took her coat (which was black) and smiled. Because she hadn’t said anything and so probably wouldn’t say anything, either she had forgotten my appearance in her kitchen three nights ago or we were both going to pretend it had never happened.
Either way, I was still terrified.
“Well, I’ll go hang this up,” I mumbled, and hightailed it to the coat closet. There, in the relative safety of a wall of outerwear, I put the coat on a hook and allowed myself the luxury of a few seconds’ recombobulation. (Coat closets are good for that.)
Of all the possible War and Cheese disaster contingencies, the arrival of Tate’s mom was the worst because it wasn’t even a contingency I had planned for (which I guess meant it wasn’t a contingency at all). Worse, no one in my family could know it was a disaster, because alerting them would require an explanation of the whole Tate situation, and the last thing that I needed was my mom—or worse, Ginny—teasing me about a boy. (Of course, this was not at all a typical boy-girl situation—more like a series of encounters with escalating levels of personal discomfort—but try explaining that to your older sister.)
With a deep breath, I stepped out of the coat closet and smack into Ginny.
“Dude, Plummy, this is a nightmare,” she said under her breath. “These two ladies were whispering about us when they thought Mom wasn’t looking. All this stuff about how we got the tiny plastic house of shame because we didn’t want to share our inside bathrooms with contractors.”
“What?”
“I know, right? We’re so not that snooty. Mom even made the meter reader a sandwich that one time.” Ginny blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Also, I look like an idiot trying to guard the door.”
“You’re not guarding it right now,” I pointed out.
“I left up a sign. I had to pee.” She flashed me a smile. “Can you take over for a second?”
I told her that signs never keep anyone out of anywhere but that yes, I would.
As people chatted and ate cheese chunks in the Potemkin village, I stood by the library door in what I hoped was a pose of casual intimidation. Because, as I realized, the only thing worse than trying to talk normally with Tate’s mom would be trying to explain to Tate’s mom why the crazy Blatchley family had an entirely empty ghost room on their first floor. Therefore, I mentally rewrote my marching orders thusly:
Plum: Ensure that, no matter what, Alicia Feingold formerly Kurokawa née Tate leaves the War and Cheese with no knowledge of the showering incident or the Potemkin village
“There you are.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Tate’s mom had somehow snuck out of the living room with a tiny plate of cheese and was smiling at me.
“Alicia,” she said. “I believe we met the other night.”
Cripes. “Yup,” I said. “I mean, Plum. My name is Plum.”
“Plum.” She nodded. “So you and Tate are classmates?”
“Um, we’re . . . in the same grade?”
“Oh.” (This being the literal definition of classmate, I can’t imagine Tate’s mom was impressed.) She gave a little glance over my shoulder. “Is that sign serious?”
I wheeled around to where Ginny had left a sticky note that read, DANGER: DO NOT ENTER: RADIOACTIVE. (You see what I mean about her signs not working.)
“Oh, that’s just my sister,” I said, smiling in what I hoped was an affable manner while crumpling the sticky note into a tiny ball. “Just a joke.”
“I see,” said Tate’s mom. “And . . . is there a reason you’re standing in the doorway?”
Tate’s mom was clearly a seasoned interrogator. (I guess raising Tate and half raising Benji Feingold would do that to a person.)
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Well,” Tate’s mom said. “I just wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“You don’t know how long I’ve been telling Tate to get someone to help him with his essays. College is coming up—well, I know you know that. And having someone like you . . .”
I must have looked confused, because Alicia’s smile widened sympathetically.
“Well, I’ve read that you’re quite bright,” she said. “Your father’s essay was . . . well, is, quite wonderful. He clearly thought very highly of you.”
My gaze flew to the ground. “Not me,” I said. “My sister.”
“Oh,” she said, untroubled, probably not even noticing, because, honestly, who cared? “Well, anyway, thanks for agreeing to tutor Tate.” She held up a big leather clutch, which she’d held on to after I took her coat. “How much do I owe you?”
“Oh, I . . .”
I was not one to accept money from classmates’ mothers without due cause. However, it did seem like we had a ruse to maintain. And, to be honest, I didn’t want to get Tate in trouble.
“We paid Benji’s math tutor forty dollars an hour,” Tate’s mom said helpfully. She fished in a big leather wallet. “I only have a fifty, I’m sorry. We can consider it an advance on your next session, how about?”
I almost wanted to ask if she thought I was still worth full price, not being the sister she’d assumed I was.
“Okay,” I said, and took the folded-up bill, completely unsure of what to say next. Fortunately, Ginny was clomping down the front stairs from the bathroom at that very moment.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to Tate’s mom, “but I really need to get the trash.”
“You live here?” Tate’s mom looked up around the front hall. “This is a beautiful house.”
I thought she might have been joking, considering the front hall was sea green and decorated with folk art from our parents’ honeymoon, not to mention the fact that the Potemkin-village living room was a hodgepodge of competing styles of furniture. But Tate’s mom seemed serious.
“Oh,” I said. “Yes. But my mom was the one who decorated it. She said it was her mission to make sure none of the walls were boring white.”
Too late, I realized that pretty much every room in Tate’s house was boring white. But Tate’s mom smiled.
“I love it.”
“Oh, um, thank you,” I said, just as Ginny popped up at my side to take her post again. “This is my sister, Ginny.”
“Hello.” Ginny gave a polite smile while inching back into position in front of the door. “Wonderful party, isn’t it?”
“Ah,” Tate’s mom said, smiling. “So you’re the one with the astrolabe. Pleasure to meet you.”
Ginny looked at me, arms half spread in her door-defending position.
“That essay Dad wrote,” I said. “‘A Treatise on the Astrolabe.’”
“Oh,” Ginny said blithely. “I haven’t read it, I’m afraid.”
Before Tate’s mom could answer, Mom slipped out of the living room, and I practically leaped to her side. Another mom, I figured, would be way better at schmoozing with Tate’s mom, and way less likely to say something embarrassing.
“Mom,” I said pointedly. “You remember Mrs., um . . .” I had no idea which last name to use. “. . . Tate’s mom.”
“Of course!” Mom beamed. “Jennifer!”
There was a long, time-standing-still kind of silence, during which our oblivious mother stood hovering, smiling faintly, and unaware that her laissez-faire attitude toward remembering things had just kneecapped her burgeoning success as a society hostess.
“Well, I . . . think I’ll go mingle,” Tate’s mom said cheerfully. “I’ll see you around, Plum.”
She slipped back into the living room with a little nod.
“See you around?” Ginny said, but I ignored her.
“Mom!” I cried. “How could you?”
Mom frowned. “How could I what?”
“Jennifer’s another one,” Ginny explained loudly.
“Shh!” I put a hand on Ginny’s mouth. “Keep your voice down!”
Mom went ghost-pale. “Oh my God. I just—” She swiveled her head back to the living room. “Shit. Shit! And I bet she’s a
donor, too.”
Ginny pushed me away. “Well, as long she doesn’t sign Jennifer on the check out of spite, I guess. Right, Mother darling?”
Mom’s kohl-rimmed eyes had gone very narrow.
“Don’t worry about it,” I rushed in. “She won’t be spiteful.” Probably. “Just tell her you made a mistake.”
Ginny squinched her face at me. “What’s your problem? Who cares if we get all the snobby ladies’ names wrong?”
“She’s not snobby,” I said. Because she wasn’t, it turned out.
“You’re kidding.” Ginny cocked her head at me. “You do know that’s Benji and Tate’s mom, right?”
Obviously, I could say nothing.
“Sorry.”
Ginny gave her head a little shake. “Is this party over yet?”
I glanced at my phone. “Twenty more minutes.”
Ginny sighed. “Fine.”
She went back to her post, and Mom went to the kitchen, and I listlessly picked up the candle-lighter thing and relit a dead tea light. Our mother, I hated to admit, had just committed the worst kind of faux pas, i.e., a faux pas that points out that yes, most of the women at these events were fairly interchangeable and did just need to get their names right on the checks. But what was worse, and what I hated even more to admit was worse, is that of all the names to screw up, it had to be Tate’s mom’s. She’d embarrassed our whole family, and she hadn’t even needed the ghost room or our shameful shower situation to do it. I wished, very hard, that somehow my brain would be hit with a selective memory wipe that would make me forget everything after Mom had showed up. That way I could maybe eventually go back over to Tate’s house and act like things were fine.
In retrospect, though, my powers of forgetting may have worked a little too well.
It started slowly at first. A little buzzy something around my head as I choked down my free-from-the-backyard eggs. A few loopy black dots bobbing in the air above Gizmo’s and Doug’s doggie beds. And then, the following Saturday, I woke up to the distinct sound of my sister shrieking.
“Aieeee!”
Two seconds later, my bedroom door flung open and a Ginny-shaped blur dove into bed with me.
“What?” I sat up so fast I almost hit my head on the eaves. “What? Is it the dogs?”
“No,” Ginny said, quivering in her pajamas. “There’s flies.”
“Ugh.” I tried to roll over. “So what? Just ignore them.”
“I can’t, Plum.” Ginny thrust a pointy elbow into my ribs as she repositioned herself onto my pillow. “There’s literally thousands.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” I said.
“Seriously, Plummy. Go look.”
With Ginny at my heels, making retching noises, I reluctantly descended the back stairs. The kitchen was, for lack of a better word, swarming. Fat black clumps of flies were clustering on every surface: the blades of the ceiling fan, the corners of the cabinets, even the antlers of the fake moose head. Kit Marlowe, unusually agitated, was scurrying back and forth in front of the Franklin stove, seemingly caught between swatting down the insects and not wanting to expend any effort on anything.
“Goddamn it,” Mom said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Mom,” I said. “Calm down.”
“I will calm down when I know why our house is full of all these freaking flies.”
“She’s trying to quit smoking,” Ginny said. “Aren’t you? Isn’t that why you’re irritable?”
Mom shot Ginny a withering look. “Yes. I am. If that’s all right with you.”
“Fine,” Ginny said sweetly.
A fly zoomed buzzingly across my field of vision. I shrieked.
“Cripes!”
“I didn’t do it.” Ginny folded her arms. “Just so we’re clear.”
“No one’s blaming you,” I said.
“Well, someone should be blamed,” Ginny said, swatting futilely in front of her face. “This many flies don’t just show up. They have to come from somewhere.”
She looked at Mom for backup, but Mom was too busy tugging up the bottom of the window behind the sink.
“Ginny,” she said, panting a little. “Relax.”
“You’re straining,” Ginny said. “The cigarettes have already diminished your VO2 max.”
“She’s straining because the window’s painted shut, Ginny,” I said.
Mom drummed her fingers along her jaw. “Has everyone been cleaning up their food?” she asked.
“I’ve been putting eggs in the basket,” I said, because there wasn’t really space in the fridge for all the eggs our chickens produced, and because Aunt Linda had given us the chicken-shaped countertop basket expressly for that purpose. “Does that count?”
“Eggs don’t leave crumbs,” Mom said. “I’m worried about crumbs.”
“You’re thinking of ants,” Ginny said, only to yelp and jump out of her chair as a particularly fat one swooped near her head.
“Taking out the trash?”
We all sat there, contemplative in the horrific buzzing silence of a Saturday morning. And a terrible realization crept into my consciousness.
“Um,” I said. “I think . . . maybe . . . I know where they came from?”
I led my horrified family to the top of the basement steps. Below, just visible in light of the bare light bulb that burned by all the coats, was a squishy, rotten pile of trash.
Ginny retched, and it probably wasn’t even a fake retch.
“Oh Lord,” Mom said. “The basement leaked. All the rain got on the trash.”
“Why is there trash in the basement?” Ginny asked.
“It was from the War and Cheese,” I said quietly. “Last week. I just forgot.”
“Forgot?!” Ginny yelled. I shrunk back and requested softly that they please not murder me.
“No one’s going to murder anyone, Plum,” Mom said. She had grabbed the previous day’s New York Times off the kitchen table and had started to wave it around her face. “Except maybe this herd of flies. Or whatever you’re supposed to call a bunch of flies.”
“Disgusting is what,” Ginny said, and retched again.
“We could put up flypaper,” I suggested meekly. “And I’ll go get the trash and throw it away, right now. I’m really, really sorry. I’m terrible.”
I didn’t realize my sniffling had turned into crying until Mom wrapped her arms around my head. (Mom gives weird hugs.)
“Shh, Plummy, it’s fine,” she said. “We’re not mad.”
“Speak for yourself,” Ginny said. “I’m mad, because this is gross.”
Ginny stomped over to the back door, flung it open, and started windmilling her arms toward the yard.
“Shoo! Get out! Go away, you disgusting bugs!”
Whether any flies actually followed her orders was hard to tell. But Kit Marlowe did.
“Kit!” I cried. “Mom!”
Mom was trying another window. Ginny was busy swatting.
“The gate, the gate!” I cried. “It’s not closed!”
There was a scramble for everyone to pull on shoes and outerwear. Kit Marlowe was an avowedly indoor cat. Whatever predatory survival instincts he possessed in his feline DNA were either deeply recessive or overpowered by his desire to avoid any and all aspects of the outside world. He’d gotten out only twice before in his long kitty life, once to the edge of the backyard and once for a terrifying overnight stay in the baseball dugout ten blocks away. The only feasible retrieval strategies were (1) gradually encroaching on him from all sides, or (2) a running tackle.
“Kit!” I yelled down the street, having been the quickest to get my clogs on. “Kitty cat!”
“C’mere, Kit!” Ginny was hot on my trail, sliding through mud and leaf muck in a pair of Mom’s loafers. “Here, boy!”
Somewhere, in the direction of Evergreen Lane, I heard the tiny jingling of cat tags.
“This way!” I yelled. “I think!”
We ran down the block, Ginny slidi
ng on the slate sidewalks and me terrified that I was going to turn an ankle in my dumb clogs, until we arrived at the big house at the corner of Evergreen. My heart sank. But sure enough, as fate would stupidly, unfairly have it, Kit was stalking around in the giant mountain laurel bush behind Tate’s house.
“What is he doing here?” Ginny scooped her hair out of her eyes, panting a little.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said quickly. “Let’s just catch him.”
“Isn’t that trespassing?” Ginny said. The mountain laurel bush was actually inside the yard, which meant that we would technically have to cross the threshold of the property to get Kit back.
“It’s fine. No one will see us.” I very much hoped this would be the case, not only because I was still wearing my pajamas but also because Ginny was there, which multiplied the potential for embarrassment by about 10,000 percent, should anyone come out of the house.
Ginny spread her arms wide, like she was trying to frighten off a mountain lion, and started slowly stalking toward Kit with giant steps. I held my arms out at a much more normal-person angle and followed suit, but from the opposite side. Kit Marlowe, unperturbed, rolled onto his back.
Ginny took a step. I took a step. Kit’s tags jingled. We were barely two feet away on each side when someone yelled from the porch.
“Peach?”
Tate was hanging out the back door.
“Kind of early, aren’t you?” he said. “I figured you’d come by in the afternoon, or something.”
“Grab him!” I yelled, not bothering to explain. Ginny did, and gave me a very peculiar look, which I chose to ignore.
“Get the cat,” I told her. “I’m so sorry,” I told Tate. “Our cat is . . . he doesn’t get out. Kit Marlowe, like the playwright? Um, he hates people. And the outdoors. He is really an indoor cat. He just likes the house. But he ran out the door because . . . well, I guess because he had to escape?”
I was babbling. Tate smiled.
“A break for freedom or something?”
“Something like that.” I swiveled my head to the mountain laurel, where Ginny was inches away from an unsuspecting Kit.
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