Chapter 12

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER. GUESS AGAIN.

It’s Thursday night, and Mrs. Morris is a little distracted. She’s watching Wheel of Fortune, but she just doesn’t seem into it. She usually guesses the phrases way before the contestants do—sometimes before a single letter has appeared on the board—but tonight she can’t even figure out K__P O_ TRU_KI_G. Her mind is clearly elsewhere.

I’m pulling the ground beef out of the fridge and wondering what’s up with her when I suddenly remember that tonight was the night Marjorie was supposed to come over, and I have a little Oprah-esque aha! moment.

Marjorie.

Is it fair that a complete cornflake like Marjorie got a sweet person like Mrs. Morris as a mother? I mean, is it? Even when Marjorie isn’t here, she makes her mother miserable. And when she is here, it’s worse.

I wish I could take Mrs. Morris’s mind off her daughter. Just roll her out of here and meet up with some of my friends, maybe bomb around town. Let’s see, who would be fun to hang out with? Laurence Darcy, of course. Probably not Holden Caulfield, though. He’s cool but not exactly fun. We’d want someone more like… Nicki Minaj, maybe?

I imagine us finding some nice restaurant. Parking right up front in the double-wide handicapped space, thanks to Mrs. Morris, then strolling up to the maître-d’. He’d take one look and give us a table right away.

There are only three flaws in this plan:

1. I have no car and no money.
2. I don’t actually know Nicki Minaj.
3. Mrs. M would never recite Puff Daddy lyrics.

So, since we clearly aren’t going to have dinner at an expensive restaurant with literary celebrities and rock stars, I decide to do the next best thing. I mix up some meat loaf and put it in the oven, then pull a tablecloth over the table and drag out the candlesticks. I get the wineglasses with the blue stems down from the top shelf and fill them with cranberry juice, which looks really pretty in the candlelight. By the time I call Mrs. Morris to the table, things are looking pretty festive.

Mrs. Morris gets into the spirit of our special meal by nearly chatting my ear off.

Okay, so she’s not really a super-chatty person. But I can tell she appreciates the trouble I took by the way her eyes shine as she eats the meat loaf. Neither one of us mentions Marjorie.

After a while, I tell Mrs. Morris a little bit about Ms. Kellerman. Mrs. Morris listens carefully and clucks her tongue now and then sympathetically. She shakes her head, listening hard, and doesn’t interrupt once, not even to say “really?” or “mmm.” Most people have no idea how to listen that well.

When I’ve finished describing my “session,” Mrs. Morris says, “Well, you were very patient with her, dear, and I think that’s all anyone can ask.”

Here’s the thing: Mrs. Morris is made of awesome. She never tells me to put a smile on my face or goes on about how things were when she was my age. We’re totally different, but she trusts me. And I trust her.

She rolls with my stuff.

No pun intended.