Dear Dr. Maude,
I just want you to know that all the hours I’ve spent watching your show have really paid off.
Today I was able to get Mom and Alan to stop fighting and make up. In fact, things went so well that it ended in a group hug! (I’ve noticed that those don’t happen that often on your show anymore.) Not only is Mom no longer freaking out about the wedding—she’s actually excited about it. To the point where we’re even allowed to call it a wedding, which is good because the other stuff was a real mouthful.
I’d like to think that if you had seen me in action you would’ve been proud. And thanks to Blair’s suggestion, I ended up being the bigger person and making up with Laurel so now we’re back to being fristers. I mean, we never really stopped being fristers during that whole sort-of fight, but we weren’t exactly being fristerly to each other, if that makes sense.
Anyway, I don’t really have time to be chatting at the moment, because now that I’m positive there’s going to be a wedding I need to get my video toast finished. I just thought you’d want to know I put your advice to good use. Not, you know, any sort of advice that you came up with for me personally because you never write me back, but the advice that any stranger could get for free by watching your show.
yours truly,
Lucy B. Parker
“OMIGOD, I CAN’T BELIEVE THE WEDDING IS THIS WEEKEND!” Marissa shrieked into the computer during our weekly Triple S.
I leaned back. “You mentioned that already, Marissa,” I said. “Four times.” Just then Dr. Maude jumped on my lap and started hissing at the screen.
“HI, DR. MAUDE!” she shouted. “IT’S ME, MARISSA, YOUR AUNT!”
At that, Dr. Maude tried to bite the screen.
“So now that your mom’s done being weird do you think I can come to the wedding?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Nope. She still wants to keep it small.”
Just then, Mom walked in with my clean laundry and started placing it on my bed. “Who are you Skyping with?”
“You don’t really want to—” I started to say.
“HI, MRS. PARKER! IT’S ME, MARISSA!” she yelled.
“Hi, Marissa. How are you, honey?”
Wow. Mom was really in a good mood. I wasn’t sure Marissa’s own mother had ever called her “honey.”
“Oh, I’m fine I guess,” Marissa said. She gave a long, hard sigh. “Other than not being invited to the wedding, even though I know from Beatrice’s Twitter feed that she gets to go.”
Uh-oh. I did not like where this was going. Not one single bit.
“I mean, I could understand if it were just family,” Marissa went on. “Even though I’m kind of family. Because I’m Ziggy’s babysitter and all. But now that friends are being invited…”
I slunk down in my chair. I know Mom was in a much better mood lately, but she wasn’t in such a good mood that she’d—
“Well, you know, now that we’ve decided not to make it just family, why don’t you join us, Marissa?” Mom asked.
I put my face in my hands. Apparently, yes. She was in such a good mood she was going to invite Marissa to the wedding.
The shriek that came out of Marissa’s mouth was so loud it could have woken up dead people. “OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD!” she yelled. “THAT WOULD BE THE COOLEST THING EVER!”
I turned to Mom. “You know, that would be cool, but I don’t think Marissa’s mom would let her take the bus by herself,” I said. “Plus, this place is in the middle of nowhere. They might not even have buses that go there.”
“She can ride with either Dad or Deanna,” Mom replied. Now that the wedding wasn’t just limited to family, Deanna was also coming. My grandmother, however, was going to be on a cruise, so she wouldn’t make it.
“Ziggy and I are going to have soooo much fun together in the car!” Marissa yelled.
That poor kid. I really hoped that he wouldn’t hold this against me when he got older.
“I should go,” she went on. “I have, like, nine million things I need to do before Saturday! See ya!” she yelled as she disconnected from Skype.
Mom and I looked at each other. “She is a little like family,” she said.
I sighed. I guess she was. For better or for worse.
“Are you sure we didn’t make a wrong turn?” Alan asked anxiously that Wednesday as we drove up to the Black Horse Inn. Everyone else was coming on Friday, but Alan thought it would be nice for us to have some private bonding time as a family beforehand. Well, as private as could be when a camera crew was following you around.
For the last two hours, all we had seen were miles and miles of empty fields. Empty except for when there were horses. And cows. And, at one point, a three-legged dog that I begged Mom and Alan to stop and let me take a picture of so I could send it in to the MostInspirationalPets.com website and maybe win a years’ worth of Purina Puppy Chow, even though we didn’t have a puppy and couldn’t get one because of Mom’s allergies. (They said no.)
“Nope. This is the right way. You heard Queen Elizabeth: ‘Continue on Route 2 for 75.4 miles,’” Mom said in a fake English accent.
“Yes, but sometimes Queen Elizabeth is wrong,” Alan replied. That was the name that Laurel and I had given the woman on the GPS who called out directions, because of her English accent.
“Honey, we’re going the right way,” Mom said. She dug out a brochure from her bag that had a picture of an old farmhouse and a smiling couple standing next to a big basket of apples. “I told you the place was a little out of way. It says right here:—With its rural charm and hospitality, the Black Horse Inn provides an oasis of tranquility away from the pressures of the modern world.”
“Tranquility’s great, but what if there’s an emergency? I haven’t seen a sign for a hospital for the last hour,” he said. “What if someone gets stung by something?”
Central Park was as far into nature as Alan liked to go and that was only just across the street from our apartment.
“Sweetheart, I keep telling you. It’s winter. There are no bugs. So no one is going to get stung by anything and no one is going to need to go to the hospital,” Mom said firmly. “Just relax and enjoy the beauty.”
“But there is cable, right?” asked Laurel anxiously. MTV was airing a special that night called Inside the Mind (and Crib) of Austin Mackenzie that Laurel was dying to see. She had DVRed it (and then checked it five times to make sure it was set correctly), but didn’t want to wait three whole days until we got back home to watch it, even though she’d be seeing him in the flesh in two days.
“I’m sure there’s cable,” Mom said. “Though I’d love to see if anyone in this family can go more than five hours without it.”
“And there’s Internet, right?” I asked. I wouldn’t want Dr. Maude to finally e-mail me back and then get her feelings hurt that I didn’t e-mail her back for days. Although maybe then she’d know how I felt.
“Yes, it has Internet,” Mom sighed. “But this is our wedding. A time for us to spend quality time together and talk about how much we all mean to each other.”
Or go stir-crazy from too much together time.
Two hours and many fields later we were standing on the porch of a sweet-looking farmhouse.
“Are you sure this is it?” Alan asked.
Mom pointed to the sign. “It does say the Black Horse Inn.”
“I know, but it’s just so…in the middle of nowhere,” he replied.
Laurel began walking around the house.
“Laurel, honey, watch out for plants—you don’t want to get poison ivy.”
“I don’t see a satellite dish,” Laurel said.
I looked down at my iTouch. “And there’s no signal up here.”
Before Alan could go nuts like I knew he would (he got antsy when he was in an elevator and his BlackBerry wasn’t working), Wendi and her crew pulled up in their SUV. As the passenger door opened, she stumbled out, looking like she had walked through a wind tunnel. “Nikko, as soon as we get back to the city, I’m signing you up for a driving course,” she announced.
“What?” he asked. “So I was going a few miles above the speed limit.”
“Ninety-five in a sixty-five mile zone is not a few miles,” she snapped.
The front door opened and out came an old couple wearing matching Black Horse Inn sweatshirts. “Welcome! Welcome!” the man boomed. “I’m Bill Wilson.”
“And I’m Lois,” the woman said. “We were starting to wonder if all this fresh country air had scared you off and sent you right back home.”
“Not yet,” Alan said under his breath.
“Excuse me, but you do have a TV, right?” Laurel asked politely.
“Oh sure,” Bill said. “Lois loves those English mystery shows on the public television station.”
“And Bill’s a big fan of Bowling for Beer,” Lois said.
“Cable?” I asked.
Bill shook his head. “Nope. Got rid of that a little while back,” he said. He turned to Lois. “When was that, honey?”
She thought about it. “1987, I think.”
I thought about pointing out the fact that maybe they should’ve thought about updating their website so that it was more in line with this particular century, but decided against it.
Bill came bounding down the steps. For an old person, he moved really fast and carried our two heaviest bags in one hand right up the stairs without saying, “Oh, my back!” like most old people I knew said. Maybe it was all the farm work that I had a feeling people in Vermont did on a daily basis. Lois grabbed the other two bags like they weighed nothing. “Come along—lucky for you the afternoon snacks are still sitting out,” she said.
“Oh, you don’t want to miss Lois’s snacks,” Bill chuckled. “They’re dee-lish!”
My stomach growled as images of brownies and Toll House chocolate chip cookies and Red Velvet cupcakes started bubbling to the surface. Between being so old and living in the middle of nowhere without cable, I bet Lois had spent lots of time perfecting all her recipes.
Or not. In my book, slices of apple with little squares of Vermont cheddar cheese were not considered dee-lish snacks. In fact, they weren’t even considered snacks unless you were stuck on a desert island with your only other food options being leaves or berries that may or may not have been poisonous.
“This apple is very delicious,” I said politely as I nibbled away, anxious to get to our room so I could break out some real snacks. Luckily, I had smuggled a bag of Uncle Eddie’s vegan chocolate-chip cookies, some chocolate-covered banana chips, and some chocolate-covered apricots in my bag in case of emergency. (I was proud of myself for bringing so much fruit.)
“Glad you like it,” Bill said, “’cause you’re going to be eating a lot of them over the next few days.” He chuckled. “When you’ve got an apple orchard, you can’t let the fruit go to waste. Good thing they freeze so well. Lois is somewhat of a gourmet when it comes to apples.”
“Oh, Bill,” she said, swatting him on the arm. “You know how I feel when you boast like that.”
“Well, now, it’s the truth,” he replied. He turned to us. “I keep telling her she could fill a cookbook with all the different ways she knows how to use them. You’ll see.”
And we sure did. Dinner that night was baked chicken with braised apples, broccoli with applesauce (“First time Lois brought it to the table I thought to myself, ‘What the hay?’ but then I realized my bride knew what she was doing!”), and apple fritters dusted with powdered sugar.
“Well, this sure is a lot of fiber,” Mom said, holding her stomach after dinner. Mine let out a very long, angry gurgle. We had learned about fiber in health class recently. Apparently, too much of it could make you really gassy. I was jealous that Wendi and her crew were at the local Pizza Hut near the Holiday Inn they were staying at. In Vermont, apparently “local” meant forty-five minutes away.
“Anyone want seconds on the fritters?” Lois asked.
We all patted our stomachs at the same time and politely said no.
“Best to take the time to digest,” Lois agreed, “so you’re good and ready for the apple cider apple French toast in the morning.”
Even for someone like me who loved French toast, the idea of more apples made me wish for something boring like eggs.
Without cable, our TV-viewing options were limited to some boring show on the PBS channel about maids in an English manor or a show about quilting, which is why Laurel and I decided to go to bed. At seven thirty. Which I hadn’t done since I was like five.
“What’s that noise?” I whispered after we pushed the twin beds together and were huddled under the blankets. The room was really cute. That is, if you liked lace doilies and framed pictures of people made out of what else but…apples.
“What noise?” Laurel whispered back. “I don’t hear anything.”
“That’s what I mean. It’s so…quiet.” I had gotten so used to falling asleep with the sound of honking and sirens that all this stillness was creepy. It was like any minute the closet door was going to open up and a killer wearing an Elmo mask (like the guy in a horror script I had once read for Laurel) was going to jump out.
“I think lots of quiet when you sleep is good for you, though,” Laurel said, yawning.
“Okay,” I said. “Well, good night.”
“Good night.”
A half hour later I was still awake. Part of it was making sure that if the killer jumped out of the closet I could protect myself, but part of it was thinking about The Change. Sure, things seemed like they were okay again, but what if it was just an illusion and once the ceremony happened, The Change really happened?
“Laurel? Are you sleeping?” I said in a voice that was so loud that even if she was sleeping, she sure wouldn’t be for long.
“Hmpf?” she muttered.
“I said…Are? You? Sleeping ?”
She sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Now I’m not.”
“Me, neither,” I sighed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Nothing.”
She slid back down and snuggled back under the covers, shutting her eyes.
I sighed. “It’s just…well…are you worried about what’s going to happen after Saturday?” I blurted out. “After they get married?”
She opened her eyes. “You mean am I worried that The Change might happen?”
I sat up and turned on the light. “You know about the Change, too?”
“Everyone knows about blended families and The Change,” she replied.
Um, everyone but me.
She sat up, too. “Lucy, this wedding—all it’s doing is making it legal,” she said. “Plus, The Change already did happen.”
“It did?”
“Yeah. back in April when we moved in together.”
“Because that’s when we all got to know each other,” she explained. “And see each other when we were in bad moods. And fight. And make up. You know, like all families do.” She yawned. “So the wedding part, it’s really just an excuse to eat cake. That’s all.”
I looked over at her. There she was—the most popular girl in the world, with zit cream on her face and a mouth guard over her teeth to stop her from grinding them. “You know, for someone who spends most of her time pretending, you know a lot about this real-life stuff,” I said.
She shrugged. “I learned it from you.” She yawned again. “Now can I go back to sleep?”
“Okay,” I replied. “Good night…sis.”
It felt kind of cool rolling off my tongue like that. Like a whistle or something. It was so cool that I kept whispering it over and over. At least until Laurel told me that if I didn’t be quiet she’d have to hurt me.
Which felt like a very sister-like thing to say.