“I can almost see it the way you describe it. But what kind of name is Charlemagne? I’ve always wondered about it.”
“Well, I guess it’s the French form of his name,” he said. “In Latin, it was Carolus Magnus, Charles the Great—the Great having been earned during his life. But magna in Latin can mean ‘big,’ ‘tall,’ ‘noble,’ ‘great,’ and so on. And apparently Charles was tall and he was certainly an exceptional warrior—leading dozens of campaigns while putting together his empire. But the Franks seemed to like adding a descriptive word to names. Some of Charlemagne’s descendants were Charles the Fat, Louis the Blind, and Charles the Bald.”
“Oh, the poor things. But, listen, I can add a few descriptions to your name—Sam the Handsome, Sam the Kind, and, especially, Sam the Sorely Missed. Hurry home, sweetheart.”
—
When the mail came, I took the stack of ads, bills, and flyers into the library to go through and discard three fourths. Have you noticed how pleas for Christmas donations seem to come earlier and earlier each year? And not just pleas, but strong suggestions of how much they think you should give them. I declare, they’d begun showing up in my mail before I’d even bought trick-or-treat candy. Now here it was barely past the first of November, and you’d think there was a race to be the first heartstring-plucking solicitation you received.
What they didn’t know was that I considered none of them until the last of the Thanksgiving turkey had been turned into hash.
But in the midst of the current stack, I came across a small, square pink envelope with my name and address written in cursive script—no return address, though. An invitation to something, I thought, and also thinking that it was a little early for Christmas parties. But some people liked to claim a date before the highly social people of Abbotsville filled their calendars.
So maybe I should start thinking of having something for Christmas, I thought, as I held the envelope and considered the possibilities. Maybe a dinner party or a reception of some kind or, well, who knew? I wasn’t presently in the mood to plan anything festive.
I opened the envelope and withdrew one of those fill-in-the-blanks invitations. This one had pictures of little kittens sipping from teacups. Who in the world would send such a cutesy thing? I soon found out.
You Are Invited!!
To a Housewarming Tea
ON
Sunday, November 26th
2:00–4:00 p.m.
AT
329 Jackson Street, Abbotsville, NC
Come help us celebrate the Opening of the first
Home 4 Teens (H4T)
RSVP
Mrs. T. Calvin Taylor
987-555-2239
I jumped to my feet, spilling the pile of unwanted mail onto the floor, and stomped to the kitchen.
“Lillian,” I said, waving the tacky pink missive in the air, “this is the most flagrant violation of good manners I’ve ever seen! Madge Taylor knows I don’t want to celebrate the opening of that house! And she knows I don’t want her celebrating it, either! She’s just rubbing my face in her lawbreaking victory over the neighbors and the zoning board. A tea! Have you ever heard of such a thing? It’s a deliberate affront to decent people who just want the laws obeyed and their neighborhoods protected!”
“Ma’am?” Lillian said, frowning at my agitation. “What you rantin’ an’ ravin’ about?”
“This!” I said, thrusting the card at her. “This . . . this invitation!” I patted my chest, trying to calm myself in the face of Madge’s outrageous assumption that we—I—would want to celebrate the opening of what we—I—so desperately wanted to shut down.
It took me fifteen minutes to get it all off my bursting chest to Lillian. She knew a little of it—how could she not with my outrage bubbling over every day?
“Well,” she said, “why don’t you jus’ not go?”
“I most certainly won’t. But there has to be something more I can do to register my extreme disapproval.” I finally sat down at the table, nearly overcome by my powerlessness.
“And look, Lillian, just look at it!” I waved the card in front of her. “Have you ever seen anything like this—Homes 4 Teens or H4T? How cute! How clever! How silly!”
Lillian set a cup of coffee on the table. “You better calm yourself down. You be havin’ a stroke ’fore Mr. Sam get back with all that carryin’ on.” She stood for a minute looking down at me. Then she said, “I ’spect Miss Hazel Marie won’t wanta go, neither.”
“You’re right, she won’t. And,” I went on, sitting up straight, “neither will the Pickerells or Ms. Osborne or Mildred or Helen or anybody else within blocks of that house. It’ll be a public shunning, that’s what it’ll be, and I hope they get the message.”
Lillian twisted her mouth as she thought about it. “They might be some folks that’ll wanta see what’s been done to that house. They might show up jus’ to see what they gonna have to put up with.”
“That is true,” I said, sadly conceding the possibility. “We’ve tried to keep everybody in opposition to it on the same page, but, you’re right, there’ll probably be some who’ll go out of curiosity. And there’ll certainly be a contingent of pastors and church members who’ve had the wool pulled over their eyes. They’ll want to see where the money wheedled out of them went. Well,” I said, rubbing my hand over my face, “we’ll just have to contact the neighbors and tell them not to let those Homes for Teens people have the satisfaction of crowing over us. Because we’re not through yet! I’m letting Binkie know, and I’m calling the city attorney and the zoning board and whoever else I can think of and telling them that those people are about to open for business and it’s time to evict them from Jackson Street.
“And,” I said, springing to my feet so fast that Lillian had to jump back, “I know what else I can do! Polish the silver, Lillian! I’m going to have a Christmas tea to beat all other teas on November the twenty-sixth
