“Thank you all,” Christy said. “I’m honored to be here. It was so generous of Brownie to offer her home for this event. And for her to convince the mayor to let us come out today. Well, that’s power, let me tell you.”
Brownie stuck her chest out and nodded her head a few times like Queen Elizabeth.
“Anyway, I want to thank you all for volunteering to help with the fifth-grade-graduation extravaganza. This year’s event promises to be better than any ever given. Just yesterday, tennis-great LaShaun Mason agreed to speak at the commencement exercises. Ah…ahh…choo! Excuse me, but does anyone have any Benadryl or Claritin?”
“Oh, I do,” Bunny Pratt’s mother offered.
“Can I have one?” Jada Shiff’s mom asked, walking over to her table.
“Me, too,” said a woman wearing dark glasses and a chin girdle. Christy didn’t know her name.
“I have nondrowsy Allegra if…ha-choo…anyone wants it,” Andrea offered.
“I have some Flonase,” one of the minions said. Brownie gave her a searing stare. The luncheon was disintegrating into an antihistamine swap meet.
Yanna Sevigny’s mother pulled out her asthma inhaler and pumped vigorously. Then she left the room with a friend helping her walk. Dear God, don’t let me kill anyone, Christy thought.
“Ladies, ladies,” Christy said, getting everyone’s attention. “I’m so sorry about all these flowers. Ahh-CHOO! All the florists said they couldn’t deliver because of the weather. So, I ordered extra arrangements thinking that maybe one of them would get through. And wouldn’t you know it, they all showed up. Anyway, I promise, the fifth-grade graduation will be more organized than this. And I apologize to anyone who’s having an allergy attack. The good news is, there is at least one bouquet for each of you to take home. Thank you.”
Christy started back to the dais and then remembered one more thing. “Oh, for those of you who tipped deliverymen for me, I appreciate it. If you’ll give me your name and address, I’ll send you your money back along with Knicks tickets as a token of my thanks.”
The mothers clapped enthusiastically. Every mom at the event took home a basket of flowers and gave Christy her engraved personal card for the return of her tip and the thank-you Knicks tickets. Christy knew that most of these ladies hadn’t tipped anyone, but what the hell.
“You just couldn’t get it right, could you?” Brownie said.
“Excuse me?”
“I gave you one simple job, and you with your big career and your Olympic gold medals—you couldn’t even get the colors right. And your delphiniums, they weren’t even fresh!” Brownie accused.
Christy stiffened. Well, maybe if you’d stick them up your airtight butt, they would be. She didn’t think she said that out loud. Christy was determined to find the reasonable person who had to be hiding somewhere beneath that unbearable exterior. “Wait a minute, Brownie,” she said. “I’m sorry about the flowers. We’ll probably laugh about it next year…”
Brownie appeared to have been struck dumb by the audacity of the remark. “Christy,” she said evenly, “this is no laughing matter.” Then she executed a perfect pivot and made her exit, minions in tow, leaving Christy to find her own way out.
Christy immediately dictated her thank-you notes in the car on the way home. Leaving instructions for Eve to handwrite the notes and include a twenty-dollar bill plus four Knicks tickets with each letter, she tried to think of something personal and complimentary to say to each woman who had come. That seemed to be the protocol, based on the thank-you letters Christy herself had received. The problem was, she barely remembered anything other than Brownie’s steely gaze.
Cupcake Catastrophe…(Continued)
After the bulletin-board meeting broke up, Andrea and Christy walked out together. “Can you believe that? Eight meetings for one bulletin board,” Andrea said, rolling her eyes and laughing. “I’m sorry I got you into this. Say, why don’t you come over for lunch?”
“Sure,” Christy said. “I’m starved.” As they walked toward the front door, Christy heard someone calling her name. It was Mrs. Smart, Renata’s teacher. She ran after the two mothers.
“Mrs. Drummond, I’m so glad I caught you. We need to speak about the cupcakes Renata brought in today.” Mrs. Smart was winded from running in her half-inch heels.
“There weren’t any nuts in them,” Christy said.
“No, nuts weren’t the problem,” she said. “The thing is, the cupcakes were entirely too much. First, chocolate cake. Then green icing, at least twice as much as was necessary. Topped with all those M&M’s, plus that envelope stuck in the center. You went way too far, Mrs. Drummond,” Mrs. Smart said in a grave tone.
“You mean, they were gaudy or there was too much sugar?” Christy asked.
“Both. You have to understand, Mrs. Drummond. This is Colby. We’re all about understatement.”
“I see. But Renata decorated them herself. If they were overdone, it was out of a little girl’s enthusiasm. She wanted to surprise everyone.”
“That’s another thing: Cupcakes should never be a surprise. We must plaaaaaan for them. I talked to Renata about it this morning. She’ll be taking them home.”
“You didn’t let her serve them?” Christy asked, her heart aching for the little girl who just wanted her classmates to give her a second chance.
“How could I?” Mrs. Smart said.
“Right, how could you?” Christy said, her annoyance breaking through, as Andrea signaled “cut” behind Mrs. Smart’s back.
“She obviously couldn’t,” Andrea piped in, to give Christy time to calm down.
“Did
