Sugar and Spice Chapter Nineteen

 

Chapter Nineteen

October 20 Monday Morning

The Girl's Home

Beacon Hill

Boston, Massachusetts

 

 

EMMA, GLORIA, JULIANA and Amanda were talking back and forth when they could Over the weekend when their parents were around it had been impossible. All their parents had forbidden any contact until “the issue” was solved.

The girls wondered why their cell phones hadn’t been confiscated or, at the very least, checked.

Amanda told, not suggested, to her friends, that they delete all their messages immediately after they hung up.

Amanda’s parents, the Landers, were at work leaving her with the housekeeper who doubled as an almost babysitter.

Olga had been with the family for 10 years, three months and a week. When Amanda was a baby, the family had an Irish nanny, but once Amanda started first grade, they thought Olga, who was more of a housekeeper, could take care of the child. Since Olga loved Amanda and the nanny wanted to go back to Ireland everyone was happy.

When her parents couldn’t drive Amanda to school or pick her up, it was Olga who saw that the child mounted the HJPS van chauffeuring Amanda back and forth.

Before her parents had left that day, a list of dos and don’ts had been given to Olga and Amanda. It was far more extensive than normal.

Amanda had cemented Olga around her little finger. Today was no exception. Although her mobile phone time was limited to an hour, Olga never timed her.

Amanda knew where the phone was placed when she wasn’t supposed to use it. When her parents were away, Amanda would remove it, making sure that it was replaced before their return. She was amazed that they hadn’t looked at her messages.

Often Olga warned Amanda that her parents were on the way and, more than once, Olga had snuck the phone back in the drawer.

“I’m going to my room to study. I don’t want to miss any work because I’m at home.”

“Aren’t you the good little student.” Olga started making the waffles that Amanda had requested for lunch in place of the multi-vegetable quiche and fruit cup her mother had decreed.

Amanda sat on her bed looking around her room. Per her mother’s instructions it looked ready for a House Beautiful or Interior Design photographer to come in and shoot a four-page spread for their next issue. She didn’t mind that everything needed to look perfect all the time. It made her feel good.

Amanda had two rooms, really. The other was next door and had belonged to her brother Brice. He died in his crib at three months. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the doctors had said. Her parents were upset, but Amanda was relieved. There had been no more talk about adding another child to the family, which suited her fine.

She made sure that she messaged Gloria, Emma and Juliana to keep to the story about writing a play. Their responses made her happy.

Taking a notebook from her desk, she added play bits in between journal entries, being careful to use different pens. Some she wrote in pencil.

***

Emma curled up on the corner of the Petersons’ couch, her schoolbooks on the scarred coffee table in front of her. She was reading Future Author Extraordinaire. Like Cillia she loved to read. Unlike Cillia, she was only white, but she knew kids at school that had parents of different races and different nationalities. She found that exotic.

Her parents called themselves WASPs. When she was little, she thought they might have insects in their backgrounds even if all her aunts, uncles and grandparents resembled normal humans.

Emma was upstairs with the Petersons, the retired couple who watched her when her mother and father were at work like today. The retired couple’s children lived in Ohio, California and Connecticut and Emma filled in for the grandchildren they seldom saw. The extra money didn’t hurt, but they would have done it for nothing.

Sandra Peterson brought Emma hot chocolate around ten along with the cookies she’d made Saturday. “Homework, even if you aren’t in school?”

“Just reading. I need to go get a schoolbook downstairs.” What she really wanted to do was to contact her three friends, but she had to do it when no grownup would hear. “May I stay down there to do it? Everything is there. It would be easier.”

It would also be easier getting the phone from her mother’s dresser while she was down there, noting exactly how it had been placed.

“I suppose, IF, IF you leave the doors open, so I can hear if you need anything.”

***

Juliana Beaudoin had never seen her mother so mad. Her mother seldom lost her temper. When she was upset, her voice would get softer and softer and she would force words through her closed teeth.

As soon as they returned from the Police Station Friday and closed the front door, her mother screamed at her as she hung up her coat on the hooks. “How could you be so stupid?”

“We weren’t going to kill Clay.” Juliana’s best pout had not stopped her mother’s tirade.

Her mother had taken away Juliana’s phone “Go to your room.” Juliana saw where her mother put the phone in the kitchen drawer under where she kept the family tableware. She would get it once she was alone.

No television. Not a big a thing. Juliana dropped her coat on the floor and headed for the kitchen.

“You can keep your laptop, but you aren’t getting your phone.”

Juliana turned and shrugged.

“And no suspensions. Yet.” Anne-Marie Beaudoin said. “You’ll be lucky to keep your scholarship. And I’ve already paid my $7,000. I doubt if I’ll get that back.”

“All you ever think about is money.”

Anne-Marie had followed her daughter into the kitchen. “Yes, because you like having a roof over your head and eating regularly. I said go to your room.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Tough shit.”

Juliana had never heard her mother use any bad language. She needed to talk to her friends. Once in her room, with the door open a crack, she could hear her mother cooking for some client tonight. She could hear because her mother was slamming pots and pans.

The weekend had not improved the tension between mother and daughter, although the slamming of the pots was softer. Juliana closed the door. In less than a minute she was in contact with Emma, Gloria and Amanda.