License to Shop (8 page)

Her face lit up and she
went off to check out the five dollars and under
possibilities.

“
That’s impossible,”
Bianca’s voice cut through the hubbub in the tiny museum
shop.

I looked up and saw that
she stood there, four credit cards fanned out in her hand. “None of
these are good? Your machine must be broken.”

The sales clerk glanced
over to the other clerk, who was successfully ringing up credit
card sales at her station, and looked apologetic. “I can call your
bank if you like.”

“
Yes. Immediately.” Bianca
nodded. “Speak to my husband,” she added sharply, “The
president.”

The sales clerk looked at
her for a moment, as if she thought she might be joking. And then
she saw she wasn’t.

Bianca snapped into the
phone, “John, all my credit cards are being denied. What’s going
on?”

A mother behind me
murmured, “Maybe he decided to divorce her, and he sent her the
message by turning off the cards?”

Another mom snickered
softly. As much as Bianca annoyed me, I hoped that wasn’t
true.

“
What? That’s impossible.
When?” Bianca turned white and wordlessly handed the phone back to
the clerk, and I wondered if her husband really had cut her off in
preparation for a nasty divorce.

Taking a shaky breath,
Bianca pulled out her wallet and peeled off four twenty dollar
bills to pay for her daughter’s souveniers.

She waited silently as the
clerk bagged the gifts, thanked her, handed the bag to her
daughter, and then turned and headed straight toward
Deb.

“
I have been
robbed.”

“
Souvenirs are always
expensive,” I joked lamely.

“
Someone has not only run
my credit cards up to the limit, but they’ve opened ten new cards
at other banks.” She was shaking with fury. “As if I’d have a
credit card at any bank but ours.”

Deb said, “That’s
terrible. I assume your husband is reporting the identity
theft?”

“
Yes, he is. I want you to
arrest someone immediately.”

“
Identity theft is usually
handled by the FBI, not the local police,” Deb said. “But if you
come down to the station tomorrow, I’ll take a report. If the
person turns out to be local, we can probably arrest him or her for
something.”

“
Never mind. I’ll call the
FBI directly.” Bianca took out her phone, “Do you have the
number?”

Deb blinked.

Before she could answer, I
said, “I do.” I took out my phone, hoping it would still have
enough charge for me to retrieve James Connery’s number.

“
You have the number of
the FBI?” Bianca sounded incredulous.

“
Well, the number of an
agent I know. He could tell you who to contact.”

“
And how did you get this
number?” Bianca clearly thought I was being investigated by the
FBI.

I couldn’t tell her the
truth — that I’d helped the FBI catch the serial killer who’d been
operating at our local mall. So I told her the safe part of the
truth. “I met him at the university job fair. He was recruiting at
the FBI booth.”

“
Oh.” She looked
skeptical, but desperate. “What’s the number?”

I read it off, and she
called him as Deb and I stood there, looking on.

Deb gave me a look that
very clearly said I’d probably regret giving Bianca James Connery’s
number.

CHAPTER SIX

In the Blink of an Eye

When the buses pulled back into the schoolyard, I
realized I couldn’t put finding afterschool care off any longer.
Anna was not old enough to take care of herself at home, no matter
how much she thought she and the new puppy would keep each other
company.

I kept my voice low, “Hey,
Deb. Would you mind watching the girls on the playground for a few
minutes, while I go get the after school application? I don’t want
Anna to get anxious about it.”

Deb nodded. Bianca butted
in: “Traitor. I thought you were one of us.”

One of us. Stay-at-home
moms. Not working moms. Although stay-at-home moms worked, of
course. I felt like a traitor for a moment, until I remembered a
fact of life. There is only one rule in mom club: no one ever —
ever — wins.

I ventured inside the
school to the area where they corralled the after school program
staff and children.

It was a zoo of first and
second graders, with a few third, fourth and fifth-graders trailing
in from the field trip bus.

I asked the harried
looking woman for an application. She found the pile of
applications under a stack of confiscated toys on her cluttered
desk. I almost felt at home. Was it hypocritical of me to mark her
down for the same disorganization I suffered from? Of course it
was, but I did it anyway.

“
What grade is your
child?” she asked.

“
Second.”

“
So you want to mark third
on the application,” she said helpfully, “Since she will be in
third grade next year.”

“
I wanted her to go this
year.”

The woman blinked. “This
year?” Her expression conveyed that there wasn’t much more of this
school year, since summer was fast approaching. But she gamely
said, “Oh. Well, then go ahead and put second grade on there, and
we’ll put you on the waiting list.”

“
How long is the waiting
list?” My heart sunk.

She shrugged. “I think
we’re down to forty-five. Two of our kids moved to California last
week.”

“
Great.” Forty-five kids
ahead of Anna. I wondered how likely it was that forty-six kids
would be moving to different states in the next few
weeks?

I didn’t even take the
application home, like I’d planned. Instead, I filled it out as
hastily as possible and handed it in.

The woman smiled, and
stuck my application in a folder that had at least four more
completed applications in it. Okay, so fifty kids had to move. It
could happen. In a movie.

I went back out to stand
next to Deb and admire our children’s gymnastic abilities. I
checked my watch. Almost 4:30. I had to pick up Ryan at his friend
Stephen’s house, and I had a donut shop to do on the way home. Time
to go.

I tried not
to think what my mother would think as I walked into the donut shop
and placed my order, as specified: one donut, one medium cup of
coffee. The kid behind the counter did as his employer hoped he
would. “If you want to order two donuts with that cup of coffee, we
have a deal that will only cost you five more cents.”

“
Great.” I ordered the
second donut, the one that Anna liked, to go with the first one —
Ryan’s favorite.

I was tired and feeling
distinctly unmaternal when I got back into the car, so I handed
them their separately-bagged donuts, instructed, “Don’t eat these
until we get home,” and added the bad news. “Your grandmother’s
coming for a visit.”

They groaned, and clutched
at their donut bags like life preservers.

There was still an hour
before I had to make dinner, so I started on the pre-cleaning
cleaning. In less than fifteen minutes, I had found the fancy
china, in the basement. It wasn’t just dusty, but the box had begun
to grow some interesting red-green mold and the bottom was so damp
rotted, I was afraid to pick it up. Instead, I opened it in the
basement and transported the pieces upstairs in small, careful
loads. Fortunately our dishwasher has a sanitary mode—boiling hot
water that will, supposedly, kill anything living. And — I hoped —
a few things that are already presumed dead.

“
I don’t have to give up
my room again, do I?” Ryan asked, ever the generous one.

“
You have the double bed,
you know you’re the designated guest room.”

He crossed his arms and
huffed. “I’m not cleaning it.”

“
Fine, you vacuum, dust,
and pick up the living room, kitchen and bathroom, and I’ll tackle
your room.” To someone who had never been to my house, it sounded
like I would get the better deal. But we both knew better—Ryan’s
room was a bastion of discarded food wrappers, books, magazines,
Pokemon and Magic cards, and—even worse than the discarded food
wrappers—clothes that had been worn too long and then wadded up to
serve as chemistry and/or biology experiments. I made him muck it
out every month, but I had to count on my mother’s infrequent
visits to keep it from becoming condemned by the board of
health.

Ryan, despite his loathing
for cleanliness, could be bought for a crisp ten dollar bill. And
my mother was well aware of the fact. In fact, I think she was
secretly pleased, because I had not been so easy. At least, not
after I twigged to the fact that she’d make me do twenty dollars
worth of work for that ten dollar bill.

Anna offered, with a
mouthful of jelly donut and a shower of confectioner’s sugar, “She
can stay in my room.” My daughter has a great heart. She also has a
powder pink room with lace frills and round-eyed pink-haired
little-girl dolls on her Dora the Explorer bedspread. My mother
would not be pleased. Of course, in the mood I was in, maybe that
would be fitting…

My mother’s visits always
brought on carb cravings. Suddenly, I wanted to grab the donut from
Anna’s hands, white powder showers be darned, and take a big bite.
“Grandma will stay in your brother’s room, sweetie, she can hear
the highway from your room and it keeps her up all night.” I tried
not to stare at the donut. I deserved to be awarded mega brownie
points for my forbearance one day. Avoiding temptation is a virtue
I don’t always possess.

“
We’ll have to clean
anyway, for a party Dad and I are having.”

Thankfully, eating donuts
and whining didn’t seem to go together. I listened somewhat warily
to the sound of donuts being devoured by children who apparently
hadn’t eaten in a week. Memo to self—don’t serve children donuts
while Mom is visiting.

Seth arrived home on time, puppy in tow. I
relaxed a little when I saw her. Part of me had wondered if she’d
have run away, been kidnapped. Or worse, sat lonely and forgotten
in his office because Seth had an unexpected meeting. She seemed
happy, as puppies go.

Seth kissed me,
complimented us on our cleaning progress — which, to be fair, was
not at all evident, since we’d moved all the furniture away from
the walls to get at the worst of the dust bunnies and spiderwebs —
and escaped out the back door with the puppy in tow.

I’m not sure whether he
was avoiding my traditional house-cleaning induced temper tantrum,
or any suggestion that he participate in the mega-housecleaning in
progress.

Anna brought me my phone.
“You have a text message.”

“
Thanks, honey.” It was
Seth. Want me to order a pizza? I had my answer. He didn’t want to
help clean.

I opened the back door and
used the old-fashioned face-to-face method of communication. “I
have a better idea. You three go out and I’ll finish up by
myself.”

The kids, who had been
working fairly steadily for an hour-and-a-half were more than ready
to put down their dustrags, brooms and furniture polish. Especially
if they got to play with the puppy.

Seth smiled and agreed. I
didn’t let him escape quite so easily. “Eat hearty, I’ll need you
to help me put all the furniture back where it belongs while the
kids do their homework.”

He didn’t commit one way
or the other before he slipped out the door with the kids, headed
for our favorite pizza joint.

I surveyed the chaos with
some satisfaction. I don’t know why, but I like to clean a room by
moving out as much furniture as possible. I liked nothing between
me and the dust and stray cookies, crackers, and cereal that needed
to be eradicated.

As my mother often says,
“I taught you how to clean, you just don’t do it enough.” The
floors that had grown dustbunnies in the privacy afforded by the
couch were swept clean and mopped. Even the baseboards were shiny
and dust-free. The back of the couch had been vacuumed for the
first time this year. Not that my mother will look at the back of
my couch. Although she’ll probably find some excuse to look under
the couch cushions.

She wouldn’t find
anything, because I told Ryan he could keep all the change he found
as long as he threw away all the smashed candy, tissues, crayons,
pens, crumbs and leavings he found. His favorite find (because it
was the grossest) was the wad of gum that had been chewed, wrapped
back up in its wrapper, and then flattened to a gooey pancake
between the arm cushion and the side of the couch. He’d wanted to
keep it, but I’d made him throw it away. It may have looked like
some of the art projects he brought home from school, but it had
sugar and saliva and would no doubt grow into some alien monster
about to take over the world if I let it go up to his room and
breed with whatever experiment was taking place under his bed this
week.

I left the furniture where
it was. Seth was going to help me move it back. The dishwasher had
completed its sanitary cycle and I opened it, releasing the steam
into the room. The steam rushed up and smacked me in the face,
giving me a working mother’s facial. Free and quick, two other
things that endeared the steam to supermoms who couldn’t afford
regular trips to the spa.