empty chairs, at Claudia’s vacant spot, and at her watch. “It’s seven o’clock,” she said. “This special meeting of the Tarver Elementary PTA is now in session. Will the secretary call the roll?”
“Hale?” I asked.
“Here.”
“Jarvis?”
Randy stirred. “Present and accounted for.”
“Kennedy, here.” I looked at the door, listened, waited, then said, “Wolff?”
“Mark her absent,” Erica said. “If she’s not—”
A door shut and footsteps hurried down the hall toward us. All three of us waited expectantly for Claudia to come through the door, tossing off excuses in place of apologies.
Summer Lang rushed through the doorway. “Sorry I’m late. Oh!” She stopped short at the sight of the mostly empty room. “Where is everybody? Isn’t the dance committee supposed to give our report tonight?”
“Yes.” Erica clipped the
“Well, I guess so.” She lifted the end of the sentence into a question. “I have the report. Is it okay if I just, you know, read it?”
Erica lifted an eyebrow. “Unless you were planning to sing it.”
“To the tune of ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ then.” Summer dropped her bag onto a chair, flung off her coat, and started singing.
Erica burst into laughter. “Summer, you’re a natural for the stage.”
Summer blushed and sat in the second row. “Thanks. I tried, in high school.” She put her hand on her stomach. “But my tummy felt funny for days before a performance. It was just too hard.”
“I used to get that way before a court appearance,” Erica said. “Beth, please finish the roll call.”
The concept that Erica had ever been nervous—about anything—was going to take some getting used to. Could it be that she wasn’t as strong and stable and selfassured as I’d always believed? And if so, did it make me happy to know she was an actual human, or did it frighten me? Because if iron-willed Erica had fears, what chance did I have of ever growing out of mine? “Wolff is marked as absent.”
“Thank you,” Erica said. “Did anyone hear from Claudia?” Randy, Summer, and I all shook our heads. “Summer, did anyone on the dance committee contact you?”
“Just Marina on Sunday to work on the report,” she said. “Isn’t she here?” Summer looked around the audience, as if expecting to find Marina under a child’s desk. “Oh, she’s probably in the gym with the kids, isn’t she?”
“She’s home with a bad cold,” I said. A stuffed-up Marina had called me at work that afternoon, and I’d had to summon my emergency babysitter. And with the clock ticking at double pay for weeknight sitting, I hoped the meeting would be short.
“So where is everybody?” Summer asked.
“That’s what I’d like to know.” Erica looked like an attorney in the midst of an expensive courtroom battle. “Randy? Beth? Do you have any idea why all these chairs are empty?”
“Nope.” Randy pulled a stick of gum out of his shirt pocket and unwrapped it. He shrugged.
A very unpleasant possibility crossed my mind, and its taste must have shown on my face.
“Beth?” Erica asked. “Do you know?”
I shook my head, and didn’t say a word. Where were Debra and Glenn when I needed them?
“Why is she getting the good stuff?” Oliver pointed at Jenna’s plate.
“Don’t point,” I said automatically. “What good stuff?” I was using tongs to put some egg noodles on Oliver’s plate. Next to that was a piece of pot roast and next to that I’d put a tiny heap of peas. Oliver didn’t like his food to touch, so I was concentrating on making sure the meat juices didn’t leak over to the noodles.
“The clumpy ones.” Oliver pointed, then jerked his finger away. “Those over there on the side of her plate. The ones all stuck together are the best. How come she gets them all?”
It was true. I had given the clumped noodles to Jenna. That I hadn’t noticed any of the noodles were clumped, that I’d never known anyone wanted clumped noodles, and that I was slightly embarrassed that I’d cooked clumpy noodles wouldn’t matter at all to my son.
“If there are clumpy noodles next time,” I said, “I’ll make sure you get them.”
“I want them now.” In the wink of an eye, Oliver’s face, which had until now been sunny and cheerful, turned obstinate. He crossed his arms hard across his chest and slumped down in his chair.
Disciplining an eight-year-old was not in the evening’s plans, but most of the things I’d done so far tonight weren’t planned. Tonight’s list didn’t include cleaning up a Spot puddle or cleaning up after Oliver spilled red juice all over the kitchen counter, floor, and his formerly white shirt. I also hadn’t planned to help Jenna with her English homework (“But, Mom, I don’t know how to figure out what a theme is!”), and I hadn’t planned on trying to repair the vase in the living room that had mysteriously broken.
“Oliver,” I said patiently, “eat what’s on your plate. There’s nothing wrong with unclumped noodles.”
“The clumped ones are the best.”
“Why?” Jenna asked.
It was an excellent question. Jenna and I looked at the sole male in the room and waited for an answer.
“ ’Cause they’re special.” Oliver’s chin slid forward. “There aren’t hardly any of them.”
There also weren’t many peas on his plate, but that didn’t seem to be an issue.
“Why does Jenna get all of them? I should get some.”
“If you want them, take them.” Jenna picked up the clump, and in front of my horrified eyes tossed them across the table to her brother, where they landed half on his plate, half off.
“Jenna!”
“He wanted the stupid clumped noodles; I gave them to him.” She faced me with an overly innocent expression. “What’s wrong with that?”
There were so many answers to her question that it took me a moment to come up with a first response. “You know perfectly well that we don’t throw food at the table.”
“No, I don’t.”
The innocent look was fixed in place. I closed my eyes and willed that time reverse itself. Not long, just enough for me to start dinner over again, to pay a little more attention to the noodle cooking and de-clump every noodle in the pot. Three times I wished it, the magic number for wishes. Unfortunately, when I opened my eyes, there were still noodles hanging off the edge of Oliver’s plate.
“Jenna,” I said quietly, “how many times have we talked about appropriate behavior at the table?”
“You’ve never said ‘Don’t throw food.’ Ever.” She smiled triumphantly.
Anger is always an ugly emotion, and when directed at a child it is monumentally so. I waited for the small wave to pass before speaking. “I thought you were smart enough, mature enough, and thoughtful enough that telling you something so obvious wouldn’t be necessary.”
“You’ve never told us,” she said. “How can I be blamed for something I didn’t know?”
“That’s a good question,” I said. “Why don’t you go to your room and think about it? Make a list of five good
