Happily Ever Emma (8 page)

“Okay, but Mr. Engelman dropped his napkin again,” I announce to everyone at our table. All three of us.

See, Dennis Engelman’s dark pants are
also
kind of smooth, and whenever he leans forward to pass us something, his cloth napkin skids to the floor. He and I are sitting across from each other on the booth’s outside seats, so I notice these things.

“Oops,”
I add, truly surprised, because while noticing Dennis Engelman’s napkin
and
trying to hold both the very tall menu and my butter knife at the same time, I have accidentally spilled my glass of ice water all over the tablecloth. I just barely rescue my breadstick, which suddenly looks like a tiny canoe carrying a load of butter down the Amazon. Or
up
the Amazon, I can never remember which.

“Emma,”
Mom scolds gently—about the napkin comment, I am sure, and not the spilled water. Dennis Engelman actually blushes a little, then he scoops up his napkin from the restaurant’s carpet, which is decorated with crazy orange swirls—probably to hide the spaghetti sauce people have spilled. I bet you could eat down there for a week. He signals for the waiter.

So far, so bad,
I think, hiding a mean little smile. Our date with Dennis is going just perfectly! Except the edges of my sleeves are wet, which I hate.

Our waiter appears with a stack of clean napkins. He snaps one open and hands it to Dennis Engelman, then he layers the rest on the spilled water, sopping it up. “There you go, miss,” he says, winking at me. “It could happen to anyone. Are you ready to place your order?” he asks the three of us.

“Yes,”
my mother says, sounding as if she wants to get this dinner disaster over with as soon as possible. “I’ll have your manicotti special, please.”

“And you, Emma?” Dennis Engelman asks, putting me before him—even though I have been kind of mean to him.

Mom smiles, because she likes good manners.

“I’ll have your lobster,” I tell the waiter, copying the way my mom said it. “I mean I’ll have
two
lobsters,” I correct myself, feeling inspired—because lobster is the most expensive food on the menu.
This
will teach Dennis Engelman a lesson about inviting a kid out to dinner when she doesn’t want to go.

Real lobsters in the ocean are very interesting, by the way. They shed their shells a bunch of times before they start to look like themselves. But I think live lobsters in supermarket tanks just look
sad,
all stacked up on top of each other with rubber bands snapped tight around their poor little claws. That’s just
wrong.

People should not eat lobsters unless they catch them themselves

with their bare hands, with no rubber bands on the lobsters, so it’s a fair fight. That’s what I think.

Although tonight, I’m making an expensive exception.

Mom practically snorts, she is so annoyed with me. “Don’t be ridiculous, Emma—you’ve never tasted lobster before in your life,” she says, whisking my menu away from me. “She’ll have spaghetti and meatballs,” she tells our waiter. “The child’s portion.”

Dennis Engelman looks as though he’s about to say something, but then he seems to think twice, and he keeps his mouth shut—which is a smart thing for him to do, under the circumstances.

I guess he knows my mother better than I thought.

Mom and Dennis Engelman get soup and salad with their dinner and I don’t, but I don’t even care. The soup has weird-looking beans in it, and at the very top of their salads is that pale hairy lettuce that thinks it’s so great, but it’s not. It’s just bitter and scary.

I snag a fourth pat of butter and load up another breadstick.

After about a hundred hours, the waiter shows up with our dinners: two manicottis, which look like skinny burritos, and one spaghetti and meatballs. “Would you like cheese with that, miss?” the waiter asks me.

“Yes,
please,”
I say with actual enthusiasm, because cheese is my second-favorite food group—after chocolate. Anthony and I have that in common, I guess. So the waiter starts grating small golden pieces from a napkin-wrapped hunk of cheese he is holding, which is something I have never seen before. I watch the cheese pile up in a fluffy little mountain on my meatballs. It’s getting higher and higher.

And higher.

And
higher
.

“Say when,” the waiter murmurs, but I don’t say a word. I feel as though I have been hypnotized by that mountain of cheese.

Also, I want to see if he’ll cover my entire plate, if I don’t tell him not to.

My mom and Dennis Engelman have been gazing into each other’s eyes, which Annie Pat would just
love,
but suddenly Mom sees what is going on. “That’ll be fine, thanks,” she says to the waiter, then she gives me a look.

We pick up our forks. I start poking around in the cheese for my very first meatball. I can’t help it, but my mouth is watering like crazy.

And I don’t know how it happens, exactly—but the second my fork touches it, one of my meatballs goes flying out from under the cheese and hits my mom right on the chest.

And it slides down the front of her almost-new, silky-soft, pale-pink dress, leaving a bright orange spaghetti sauce trail behind it.

I cannot even catch my breath, this is so bad.

“Oh,” Mom says, stunned, and Dennis Engelman’s glasses shine with sympathy.

“It’s okay, Maggie,” he says softly. “It’s okay, Emma.”

He’s trying to make us
both
feel better!

What a crazy time to start liking him. A little bit, anyway.

“Acqua frizzante,”
the flustered waiter says, appearing out of nowhere with a bottle of bubble-water and a clean napkin. He soaks the napkin, then leans over me and starts dabbing at my mom. Dennis Engelman looks as though he wants to

say something to the guy about touching her, but he can’t figure out
what.
“Let’s just leave it,” Mom says to the waiter, taking the napkin away. “I’ll bring the dress in to the cleaner in the morning. Everything’s fine, just fine.” She even manages a smile.

But everything’s
not
fine, because like I said before, my mom hasn’t bought a new dress in a long, long time. And I ruined it.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, staring down at my blurry plate. “It was an accident.”

My mother reaches over and gives me a one-armed hug. “I know it was, sweetie,” she tells me. “And it’s just a dress. There’s no real harm done. Want me to cut up those noodles for you?” she asks, just to prove there are no hard feelings.

I nod, because I don’t know how to twirl yet.

“Well!” Mom says, looking up at Dennis Engelman while she cuts. “I’ll bet you haven’t ever had
this
much excitement on a dinner date before.”

“I was just thinking that myself,” Dennis Engelman says, matching her smile.

And he shares one with me, too.

“Guess what?” Mom asks me the next morning, Saturday, as I am spooning cereal into my sleepy mouth while watching cartoons on TV. I am eating fast so my cereal won’t get soggy, which I hate.

“What?” I mumble, trying not to dribble any milk.

“There’s a call for you,” she says, holding out her shiny and complicated new cell phone, which she bought because she gave up on finding the old one.

Annie Pat Masterson is the most likely person to call me on a Saturday morning, but how would she know my mom’s cell number? I swallow my bite of cereal, press Mute on the TV remote, and take mom’s very small new phone in my hand. I don’t know the buttons yet, so I hope I don’t accidentally cut off whoever it is on the other end.

My cereal is practically falling apart in the bowl, I notice gloomily. “Hello?” I say.

“Hi, Emma,” a man’s voice—not my dad’s—says, sounding cheerful. “It’s me, Dennis. Dennis Engelman. Your mom’s friend?” he adds, making it a question.

Like I don’t remember him! “Hello,” I say again. “And thank-you-for-the-very-nice-time-last-night,” I add, just in case my mom is eavesdropping. “How may I assist you?” I add politely.

This sounds just right, I think, pleased. It sounds official, but not overly friendly, like I’m some waggy-tailed dog.

Dennis Engelman laughs. “I thought we might have a do-over, Emma,” he says. “That’s how you may assist me.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, suspicious, because if he thinks I’m going through one more
Ordeal by Meatball
disguised as a fancy dinner, he’s got another think coming.

“‘Do-over’ means that we take another stab at having some fun together, and getting to know each other a little better,” he explains.

Okay. Now, in my opinion, I think “taking a stab” at
anything
sounds pretty violent, kind of like how a serial killer might talk. Think about it, Mom.

But she says he’s okay.

“You’d get to choose this time, Emma,” Dennis Engelman continues, like he’s coaxing me. “Some really fun place to have lunch today for you, me, and your mom—and maybe even a friend, if you’d like. My treat. Anywhere at all, Emma. And maybe a movie afterward?”