The Class Menagerie

knowing the secrets, but they won't like you for telling them. And you'll never really, really like yourself again.'

Katie fidgeted with her hair and looked out the window. 'How do you know?'

'Because I'm a grown-up and I'm smarter than you,' Jane said, uttering the one phrase she had sworn she would never use. She'd never succumbed to it before today, but she was rattled by the events at the bed and breakfast.

'Look Katie, I'm sorry I said that, but it is true. I've had experience in all kinds of things that you haven't yet. And I want to keep you from making big mistakes. It's my job as a mother to make sure you don't harm your opinion of yourself. Do you understand?'

To her astonishment, Katie hugged her hard and ran upstairs without a word.

Jane sat down at the kitchen table, shaking her head.

All those years she'd spent trying to explain, cajole, and gently urge Katie along, and this time a firm order had not only worked, but elicited a rare expression of affection. Why didn't they issue a handbook in the delivery room that explained which approach would work when? And why was it so hard for mothers and daughters to get along? Her boys were easy. They seemed genuinely to like her most of the time and if they disagreed with her rules, they criticized the rules, not her character. It must have to do with hormones, she concluded unhappily.

She threw together a quick dinner for the kids, gave last warnings about house rules while she was gone, and dashed back to the bed and breakfast to help Edgar. He was planning an elaborate dinner that night of glazed ham steaks with raisin/ginger sauce, julienned potatoes fried into tiny baskets with an artichoke heart filling, and a salad with a thousand finely diced ingredients. This was in addition to a raspberry souffle' for dessert and rolls that had to be watched carefully. He and Jane were so busy with the dinner itself that there was little time for chat about anything else. The only reference to murder was when Edgar said, 'Would you prepare a tray for what's his name to eat in the library?'

'Which what's his name?'

'The officer they've left here to keep an eye on things.' Edgar said this so bitterly that Jane didn't ask any other questions.

When everything was nearly ready to serve, Edgar said, 'Gordon will help me take everything in. You run along to your meeting.'

Jane glanced at her watch with horror. The Back-To-School night was starting in five minutes and she had to be there on time or she'd be assigned all kinds

of responsibilities she didn't want. It was highly dangerous to miss this night because the nonattendees, as a punishment, were given hideous jobs in their absence.

Jane got off lucky. No driving on field trips, no fund-raising carnival jobs, no baking for PTA meetings. Only assistant room mother for the Christmas — to be politically correct, Winter Break — party. It would be unspeakably horrible, of course, but it was still a couple of months away and the head room mother under whom she would work was a bossy woman who always ran the whole thing herself anyway. Jane even managed to protect Shelley from being voted PTA secretary, for which Shelley would owe her at least another permanent.

When she returned to the bed and breakfast very early the next morning, she discovered that Shelley's personality had come back up to full force the evening Jjefore and she had compelled the other women to tend to the business of having their fund-raising meeting. God only knew how she had done it. Jane suspected it would be generations before the meeting faded from the collective minds of Ewe Lamb history. She told Shelley so.,

Shelley was tidying up the last of her paperwork in the kitchen, packing it away into file folders. 'I got a call a while ago about buying the rights to do a Movie of the Week about it. They've run out of diseases and are going into severe personality disorders,' she said, collapsing into a chair. 'I've never been so tired in my life, Jane.'

'This might perk you up. That vicious Elaine person you fell out with over the carnival budget tried to nominate you for secretary of the PTA.'

'The bitch!' Shelley said, horrified.

'Don't worry. I put a stick in her spokes. But I couldn't save you from directing the 'Brownies Around the World' program for the Spring Fling.'

Shelley waved that away. 'Piece of cake. They're all children. It's the adults I can't stand working with. Secretary. The nerve. She'll regret this.' She levered herself out of the chair. 'I'm through hostessing. I'm going home and take a bath in my own bathroom and a long nap. After beating up someone.'

'Anyone in particular?'

'My sister-in-law Constanza.'

'The unmarried one who's watching your kids?'

'The unmarried, snoopy one. I locked all our personal papers and my jewelry in that safe I had put in the linen closet last month. She's probably had in locksmiths by now. She loves pawing through our stuff and then making inventories for the rest of Paul's brothers and sisters. She's probably made a list of how many bras I — Oh! How could I forget? Go take a look at the living room.'

'The Joker again?'

'And how!'

Jane opened the door cautiously and didn't know whether to be shocked or to laugh at the sight. The room was festooned with underwear. Bras draped over lampshades, panties suspended from television knobs and drawer handles, slips hanging over the coffee table, pantyhose spread-eagled on the sofa.

Jane closed the door and came back into the kitchen. 'Crispy's?'

'Probably. Part of it anyway. You'll have to take a closer look later. Some of the stuff is real raunchy. Crotchless panties with obscene sayings, bras with the nipples cut out. The embroidered phrase 'Tuesday's

Tits' sticks in my mind. If she really brought that stuff along, she was expecting this reunion to be a lot more fun that most of us were anticipating.'

'Where was the cop they left here while this was being done?'

'Probably asleep on the sofa in the library. He'll probably be in big trouble for not apprehending somebody, even though it's not a crime to redecorate with lingerie.'

'Does Edgar know? Poor Edgar.'

'No, but I think he's beyond caring. I believe Gordon's really worried about his state of mind. He stayed home today, too.'

A shriek of laughter came from the other room as someone else discovered the underwear. 'This trick's odd, Shelley,' Jane said. 'It seems more elaborate. More personal. It seems to actually 'mean' something.'

Shelley picked up her purse. 'I'm too tired to analyze the fine points. I'll be back later. Or maybe I'll just go to the airport and ask them to put me on the next plane leaving the country.'

As Shelley left, Edgar came into the kitchen. If Gordon was worried about him, he shouldn't have been. Edgar looked rested and relaxed. 'Jane! You're bright and early,' he said, opening the door to the mammoth refrigerator.

'Edgar, you're so perky!'

'I think I'll do the creamed eggs and asparagus this morning,' he said. 'Yes. Over toast points. Maybe a breath of curry…'

He was back on form. As Jane made the basic white sauce for him and was inordinately pleased when he complimented her on it, Crispy came in the kitchen, her eyes red and her voice trembling. 'Where is the

wastebasket?' she said, holding out a wad of flamboyantly colored underwear as if it were soiled.

'Over there,' Edgar gestured. 'What's that?'

'Disgusting underwear,' Crispy said. 'A nasty, filthy little trick.'

She was genuinely upset, which surprised Jane. In the back of her mind, Jane had been assuming that Crispy herself was the Joker. She hadn't even consciously realized this before now. But obviously this wasn't a joke Crispy had played on herself to avoid suspicion. This joke had really bothered her. Jane kept stirring the sauce, turning the heat down slightly. It was possible, though, that Crispy had played the other tricks, and someone else — suspecting her — had engineered this one. It was difficult enough to imagine that this group contained one practical joker, let alone two.

Jane had a desperate craving to just sit down and think for a long time. These last two days had dumped so much information and so many impressions into her, that her subconscious seemed to have sunk under the weight