My Mother Got Married (3 page)

He began with my pencils. Carefully he touched each of them, one by one, on their erasers. Then he moved on to my digital clock, my scissors, my high-intensity lamp, and some baseball cards that were scattered across my desktop. When he got to my globe, he held it up in the air and spun it around.

“Can I have this?” he asked nicely.

I shook my head no. He put down the globe and headed for the closet. On the way he touched three race cars on my wallpaper—a red one, a blue one, and a green one. I’m not kidding. It was spooky.

Once he disappeared into the closet, I figured that was the end of him. It’s really a mess in there. My friend Martin Oates thinks there’s a hand living underneath my clothes pile. He says that someday it will reach out and grab my ankles, and no one will ever see me again.

I wondered if I should mention it to Thomas. But after only a few seconds he popped out on his own. He was holding his nose.

Next he moved his touching tour to my dresser. I have a couple of stuffed animals up there, and he tried to squeak their noses. When nothing happened, he picked them up and squeezed harder. You could tell he was getting frustrated. Finally I said, “They don’t squeak,” and he put them back.

This whole thing took about ten minutes. When he had finished, he walked over to the window screen and hollered, “
I’m done
!” Then he sat down in my chair and patiently waited for someone to come get him.

It was Ben. I heard his boots coming up the stairs. It made me feel funny. My mother must have told him where my room was. I wondered if she had told him my middle name was Walter.

The door was wide open, but Ben knocked on the door frame. Thomas ran to him and held up his arms. He was too big to be picked up, but Ben picked him up anyway. He dangled there for a second and his dad put him down again.

Ben smiled self-consciously.

“Sorry we caught you off guard this morning.”

I would have said, “That’s okay,” but I didn’t want to lie.

After a second he turned to Thomas. “Well, can you thank Charlie for watching you?”

Thomas frowned. “He didn’t watch me. I watched my own self.”

Ben took Thomas’s hand, but he didn’t leave. I could tell by the look on his face that there was something else on his mind. Something more important than just taking Thomas back downstairs.

It made me uncomfortable. I started to squirm. It was awkward having Ben in my room without my mother along. Until then, the two of us hadn’t really had a conversation. Mostly we’d just said hi, see you later, and how’d you like the movie.

“Uh … Charlie,” he began at last. “Your mother and I were talking, and we thought that maybe next Saturday morning we could all go out for breakfast together. You know … the five of us.”

I wiggled around restlessly on the bed. Don’t say “the five of us,” I thought. There are two of
us
and three of
you
, but that doesn’t add up to “the five of us.”

Ben cleared his throat and forced another awkward smile.

“It’s just that … uh, we thought that it was time for all of us to get to know each other better.”

Suddenly I felt sick. I bent my head and nervously started picking lint off my bedspread. I couldn’t look up. I just couldn’t.

He paused a second. “Um, well … what d’you say?”

I knew I should answer. But I couldn’t. The words he had just used kept echoing around in my head.

It’s time for all of us to get to know each other. It’s time.
…

I guess it was pretty clear from my reaction that I didn’t want to go to breakfast—or anyplace else for that matter.

Finally Ben mumbled, “Think it over,” and left the room.

On the way out, Thomas touched all the knobs on my dresser drawers.

(three)

W

E WENT to breakfast. Ben picked us up. When I got in the back seat I was very nervous. Lydia said hi. I waved. Sometimes when I’m tense, I act like a nerd.

I hadn’t really paid much attention to Lydia before, but she was sitting on the very edge of the seat, so I had the chance to study her. She had the same freckles as Thomas, but her hair was too long to tell if her ears stuck out.

I wondered if they both looked like their mom. My mother told me that Mrs. Russo had died when Thomas was just a baby. I didn’t know a lot of the details, but still it got to me. Having your mom die must be just about the hardest thing in the world. Harder than divorce, even.

Lydia seemed pretty normal, though. “How far away is this restaurant, anyway?” she asked as soon as we pulled out of the driveway. “I told Emily I’d be at her house at ten thirty and if we don’t eat fast I’m going to be totally late.”

“I’m not gonna eat fast,” Thomas stated loudly. “I’m gonna eat really slow. Right, Dad? Eating slow is better for you, right?”

Lydia looked at Thomas and stuck out her tongue. I didn’t want to, but it made me smile. You don’t usually think of girls her age still doing stuff like that.

Thomas sat between the two of us. I tried to ignore him, but he kept staring at me like I was a freak. Halfway there, he reached out and touched me with his pointer finger.

It seemed like forever before Ben finally pulled the car into the restaurant parking lot.

“Oh, boy, World of Waffles!” squealed my mother, sounding like a little kid. “Charlie loves it here, don’t you, Charlie?”

I mumbled, “It’s okay,” and hurried out of the car. The sooner we got this over with, the better.

The hostess spotted me coming through the door and grabbed a handful of menus.

“Good morning, sir,” she said cheerfully, knowing perfectly well that I wasn’t a sir yet. “How many in your party this morning?”

“This isn’t a party,” I informed her bluntly.

Mom held up five fingers. “Five! We’re five!” she shouted so loudly that the entire restaurant turned around to stare.

“Hey!” blared Thomas. “Guess what? I’m five, too!”

Lydia stared down at him. “We’re all thrilled for you, Thomas,” she said dryly.

Finally the hostess led us to a large booth in the corner. Mom slid in first. Then Lydia. I was planning to sit on my mother’s other side, but Thomas beat me to it.

“Beep-beep! Beep-beep!” he honked as he plowed through Ben and me to get into the booth.

“Thomas!” said Ben. But that’s all he did about it. He didn’t take him out in the parking lot and punch him or anything.

The waitress brought a booster seat. As soon as Thomas climbed in, he started measuring how high his head was.

“Hey! Look how tall I am. I’m the biggest one at the table!”

Then he tapped me on the shoulder. “Hello, shorty,” he said.

The kiddie menu could be folded into a pirate hat. Thomas handed it to my mother and she fixed it for him. He put it on his head.

“Aye-aye, matey!” he sang out.

Embarrassed, Lydia slumped down in the seat. “Could someone
puhleez
do something about him?” she begged.

No one did, though, and things didn’t get any better. Thomas and I both ordered waffles with whipped cream and strawberries. As soon as mine came he reached out with his finger and stole a big gob of whipped cream off the top of mine.

“Hey! Knock it off!” I blurted. “You’ve got your own!”

My mother turned her head and looked at me. Then she shook her head—like I shouldn’t have yelled at him; like having some germy little mitt in your whipped cream was a privilege or something.

Fortunately Ben came to my rescue. “Keep your hands to yourself, Thomas,” he said sternly.

After I was finished, I excused myself and waited outside on the curb. I know it wasn’t polite just to leave like that, but Thomas was playing with the food on his plate and it was making me sick.

A
S USUAL
, on the way home all anyone talked about was how stuffed they were. Anytime you go to a restaurant, the conversation on the way home is always the same.

“I ate too much,” said Ben predictably.

“Me too,” said my mother. “One more bite and I would have burst.”

Just then Thomas made a loud exploding noise. “I did! I bursted! Did you hear me?”

As soon as we pulled into my driveway I opened the car door. We were still moving, but I didn’t care.

“Thanks for the breakfast, Mr. Russo,” I mumbled. I didn’t mean it, but whenever I don’t mumble thank you, I get a lecture.

I hurried up the sidewalk. The front door was locked, so I sat on the step and watched as my mother said her good-byes.

A few minutes later she came waltzing up the walk. “That was nice,” she chirped. “Wasn’t that nice? That was really nice.”

In the next hour or two she must have said how nice it was a million times. Usually when you say a million, it means you’re exaggerating. But I’m not. I swear it was a million.

Every time she said it I felt sicker and sicker. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Just when my life had finally started to settle down, my stupid mother had to mess things up all over again! I know you’re not supposed to call your mother stupid, but it’s how I felt.

We did a lot more stuff with the Russos after that first breakfast. Picnics, a few movies and barbecues, junk like that. And even though I got to know them better—and Thomas finally stopped touching me—every time we were together the sick feeling came right back.

Just like with the divorce, I was being swept along to places that I didn’t want to go. And even though my mother promised—
promised
—that she wouldn’t make any decision about Ben without talking to me first, I was beginning to get nervous. Very, very nervous.

S
EVEN
months. That’s how long it took before the announcement finally came. It was a Saturday night in February. My mother had made a big pot of spaghetti and asked Ben and Thomas and Lydia over to eat with us. After they said they’d come, she asked me if it was okay. I just shrugged. Why did she always ask
after
they were already invited?

We sat down to eat at six. Since spaghetti is my favorite meal, I was the first one finished. Thomas was last. Spaghetti takes longer to eat when you suck up each noodle like a vacuum cleaner.

Lydia shook her head. “You’re such a toad, Thomas,” she told him. Then she looked at me.

“He’s a toad. Am I right?”

Happily I nodded.

“Use your napkin, Thomas,” Lydia commanded then. “Come on, you’ve got sauce all over your face. Daaaad, do something. He’s so gross.”

Ben hardly seemed to be listening at all. He just kept fidgeting with his napkin and drinking a lot of water.

Finally, when I was just about to leave the table, he cleared his throat like he had something to say. It surprised me. Normally Ben isn’t much of a talker. Ben’s more a listener and a nodder.

He stood up. His face was slightly red. He seemed embarrassed and excited and nervous all at the same time. “Er … Janet? Could you come over here a second?”

Mom had started clearing the dishes. She put down the plates and joined him at the head of the table.

Ben smiled sheepishly. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled something out.

“It’s just that … well, I thought it would be nice if we were all here when I put this on your finger, that’s all,” he said softly. “All right?”

He held it up for us to see. It was a ring. A gold ring with a small sparkly diamond.

Gently Ben took my mother’s left hand and slipped the ring onto her fourth finger. Her engagement one.

Mom sort of gasped. You could tell she hadn’t been expecting it. I guess most people don’t get engaged while they’re scraping food into the sink. Then her face lit up and she looked at me and at Lydia and at Thomas. And then she hugged Ben so hard I thought I heard a little whoosh of air go out of him.

“Oh wow!” screeched Lydia, making this tiny high-pitched squeal that only girls and dolphins can make. “Oh, Janet, let me see! Let me see!”

Thomas wasn’t as excited as his sister. When my mother and Ben hugged, he wrinkled up his nose and said, “Mushy.” Then he looked back at his plate and tried to score a goal with his meatball.

It rolled onto the floor and landed near my foot. I picked it up, put it in the sink, and quietly left the room.

I went upstairs and called my father.

“Come get me” was all I said.

I walked outside and waited on the porch. First I sat, then I stood, then I started pacing up and down. I didn’t cry, though. It surprised me, but I didn’t.

By the time my mother spotted me, I was shivering like crazy. She brought me my jacket. As she helped me with the sleeves she stopped and gave me a long, warm hug.

“I’m really sorry, honey. Ben’s sorry, too,” she said gently. “He didn’t know about the promise.”

I shrugged. It seemed shrugging was becoming my major method of communication lately.

“Dad coming?”

I nodded.

She held me a minute longer. “We’ll talk when you get home.”

Just then my father pulled into the driveway. He and Mom waved. They didn’t end up as best friends, but at least they’ve been able to maintain a waving relationship.

We drove to the apartment in silence. I know it was hard for Dad not to bombard me with a million questions. Unlike Ben, my father is not a nodder and a listener. My father is an insurance salesman.

As soon as we got there he pulled out the sleeper sofa and got some pillows. It was only seven thirty, but if you’re acting weird, parents like to put you to bed anyway. I gave him a funny look.

“You don’t have to go to sleep. Just thought you might want to get comfortable while you’re watching TV,” he explained.

I plopped down and covered my head with a pillow. Then Dad brought out some popcorn and turned on the television. I stared blankly at the screen. I still don’t know what was on that night.

Finally he just couldn’t stand it anymore. He turned down the volume on the set.

“Is this about Ben? Did something happen over there tonight?”

I took a deep breath and nodded. There was no sense keeping it inside. It didn’t feel good in there.