Worst than the inconvenience and the noise, was knowing how easily they could expose me. If they started digging into my life, even just a little, they'd soon find out that only five months ago I was a boy named Mark. And they wouldn't just know it, they'd make it national news.

---

 

1. The Patron Saint Of Tea
 

The sun was setting on the last day of 2007, and I was feeling a whole lot better.

For one thing, I was hungry, and that meant that I was done being sick from food poisoning. I'd gone from sucking ice cubes to drinking only water to eating plain, unbuttered toast... and now my stomach was growling for real food. Thank goodness!

The second bit of good news was that all the reporters had disappeared from my front lawn. They had descended on us like a swarm of locusts. Dad couldn't go outside without them crowding all around him, jostling him, and shouting questions at him. One morning one of them accidentally hit him in the head with a camera, but he kept his anger and slowly eased his car through the crowd.

"You don't know what it took to not just plow them all down," he told my mother that night.

You couldn't peek out a window without every light and camera swivelling directly at you. Just knowing they were outside was nerve-wracking. Even with the windows closed, we could hear the buzz of their vans and their talking. They never stopped. All night long their intensely bright lights shone through our curtains.

Worst than the inconvenience and the noise, was knowing how easily they could expose me. If they started digging into my life, even just a little, they'd soon find out that only five months ago I was a boy named Mark. And they wouldn't just know it, they'd make it national news.

But yesterday brought a sea change. Just as suddenly as the reporters had appeared, they were gone. They all got on their cell phones and turned their backs to my house, and group by group they packed up their tripods, cameras and lights and drove off. The swarm had moved, and the silence was stunning.

I breathed a contented sigh and looked out the front window. It was so nice to have the curtains open again.

But were they all gone? I thought I saw some movement down past the slope of our front lawn, on the sidewalk, near the street.

I got up on my knees on the couch to see better, and yes, there was one reporter left. She looked kind of familiar... probably from a New Jersey cable station. She held a microphone in one hand and a clipboard in the other. The light was dimming, but I could see her lips moving as she read.

My stomach growled again.

"Hey, Mom," I called. "Can I have a mug of hot chocolate?"

"Hot chocolate?" she repeated, wiping her hands on a towel as she emerged from the kitchen. "Are you sure, honey? Do you know how much fat hot chocolate has?"

"I'm not worried about my weight," I replied, laughing.

"It's not your weight, it's your digestion," she countered. "You haven't eaten anything for days but toast. I'm not sure your stomach is ready for something that rich."

"It's what I want, though," I said.

"Mmm. Well! I understand cravings," Mom replied with a smile. "Alright, one mug of hot chocolate coming up."

An idea hit me. After a quick glance over my shoulder, I said, "Mom, can you make it two mugs?"

Her eyebrows went up as she followed my gaze outside. "Now, Marcie, I'm sure that's a bad idea. Talk about walking into a lion's den!"

 

---

 

In the end we compromised. Mom made me two steaming mugs of hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream, but I had to bundle up as if we lived at the South Pole.

Down the walk I went, in my slippery-soled fur-trimmed boots, Mom's extremely puffy down-filled coat, and her day-glo magenta scarf. Of course it all was topped off with an idiotic patchwork knit hat.

Maybe Mom's idea was that if I dressed like a clown, I'd be sure not to let myself get caught on camera.

The worst part of the hat was the top: it didn't have a pom-pom; that would have been bad enough. Instead, it had a weird flappy thing that looked like a knitted fish tail.

And the gloves made it hard to hold the mugs upright. The mugs kept wanting to tip forward, so I had to hold my hands at a precarious backward angle.

I swear, sometimes it seems that mothers live to make life difficult.

When I got to the top of the stairs, the reporter looked up in surprise.

"Hey! Are you Marcie Donner?" she called.

"Yes, I'm in here somewhere," I replied. "Uh, you want a mug of hot chocolate?"

"Oooh, I'd love one!" she cried. "I'm freezing out here!"

I stopped and looked down at her. "Would you mind coming up here to get it? The mugs keep slipping and I'm afraid I'll drop them both."

She set down her clipboard and mike and ran up the stairs. She took both mugs from me so I could sit down, and the two of us perched side by side at the top of the stairs. Before taking the mug back from her, I said, "Wait a minute... don't tell my mother this, but..." and pulled off both my gloves.

I was surprised by how strikingly beautiful the newswoman was. And her hair and makeup were perfect. Even more striking was seeing how tiny she was! She had to be at least four inches shorter than me. You wouldn't have known when you saw her on TV... and I saw why: she had a box to stand on while on camera!

I pretended to not notice it.

After I took a few sips and licked the whipped cream from my lips, I said to her, "Can I ask you something? Where did all the other reporters go?"

She laughed and said, "Do you miss them? Do you want me to call them back?"

"No! No way! No offense, but I'm glad they're gone. Look what they did to our front yard!" In fact, our yard was the only one on our street that wasn't covered in snow. Our yard had been trampled into mud, with an occasional tuft of grass showing here and there. I wondered whether the grass would come back in the spring.

"No," I continued, "I don't miss them. It's just so weird that they all disappeared like that."

"Welcome to the world of short news cycles," she laughed. "You've been bumped by bigger stories. Do you watch the news? Don't you know what's happening?" When I shrugged she told me, "Gerald Ford died; his funeral was yesterday. And Saddam Hussein was hanged yesterday."

"Yuck!" I reacted with distaste. "But they aren't all running off to cover those stories, are they?"

"No," she said, "but when a big story hits, it kind of clears the deck. All the smaller stories get swept away."

"When those big stories are over, will the reporters come back?"

"No," she smiled. "You've had your moment. You'll be old news... unless you shoot another bad guy."

"I don't plan on doing that again soon," I replied. "Or ever!"

We slurped some more chocolate. "So how come you're still here?"

"Oh," she replied with a sigh, "I managed to convince my boss that you're still a story. But I can only post one more piece and then I'm gone, too. In fact, I was just setting up to do it. Hey— would you mind, um..."

And so we clinked our chocolate mugs for the camera, pretending it was midnight. She asked me about my New Years resolutions. Without a moment's thought, with all my heart, I immediately replied, "I'm going to keep a low profile this year."

She laughed and said, "Good luck with that!"

Then she turned off the camera and the light. She packed up her gear, gave me a hug, and drove away.

Now the street was perfectly quiet and clear.

 

---

 

That night, New Years Eve, I slept through the fireworks and the horns and the cheering, but at 7:30 the next morning, the first morning of 2008, my eyes snapped open and I was wide awake. The house was quiet, but I heard a soft sound from somewhere downstairs. It sounded like someone crying.

I sat up and wiped the sleep from my eyes. I wrapped myself in my robe, stepped into my slippers, and padded down the stairs.

Even though I walked as quietly as I could, whoever was crying must have heard me, because they abruptly stopped sobbing and quickly began sniffing, blowing their nose, and clearing their throat.

Mom and Ida were sitting at the kitchen table. Neither was saying a word — which was very unusual — and both of them were smiling at me. Ida's smile was the brave smile that says I wasn't crying, but her red nose and eyes told me that she had.

Mom was smiling, too: the kind of smile that tells a child that everything's fine when it clearly isn't.

"Ida, what's wrong?" I asked.

She sniffed and opened her eyes wide, trying to keep the tears in. "Maisie's dad..." she began to say, then abruptly stopped. She swallowed hard and started blinking. Whatever it was, it was just too hard to say.

Mom stepped in and quietly told me, "Maisie's father won't let her come home. He's keeping her in California. Indefinitely."

I frowned. "Why not?"

Mom continued to speak in an undertone, as if Ida couldn't hear. "He says it's too dangerous."

"What!?"

"The kidnapping," Mom explained. "Maisie was the target. So he says she's safer out there. He lives in a gated community, remember?"

"But he can't do that!" I blurted out angrily. "Can he?"

"Not legally," Mom admitted. "Ida's taken it to family court, but..."

Ida took my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed back and tried to give her an encouraging smile.

"But the kidnapper is in jail," I protested.

"I know," Mom said. "It's just a matter of time before Maisie comes back, but she might not be here when school starts."

Ida me asked in a croaking voice if I could call Maisie and to see how she's doing, "... and if you could get any news."

"I'll call her later," I promised. "It's still early out there. It's like 4:30 in the morning for them."

Ida nodded mutely and sighed. Then she looked at my mother, then looked at me, and smiling shyly asked, "Does Marcie know the news yet?"

"What news?" I asked.

Mom grinned and replied, "I want to get some breakfast in her first." She stood up. "Do you want anything, Ida?"

"Just more tea."

After cooking some bacon, Mom cracked an egg into the pan and exclaimed in surprise. "Will you look at that! It's a double yolk!"

She showed it to Ida first, and the two women got this goofy Mommish isn't that significant! look on their faces. Then Mom turned the pan my way, to show me. They looked expectantly, as if it was a divine revelation.

"What?" I said, utterly bewildered. "Is that bad? Is it safe to eat?"

They both laughed. "Of course it's safe to eat!" Mom replied. "It's just... interesting."

"Does this have something to do with the news you have to tell me?" I asked. It was too early in the morning for guessing games.

"Maybe it does... and maybe it doesn't," Mom said in a mysterious tone, and the two women burst into laughter.

"Oh, just tell me!"

"After you eat, honey."

Ida smiled, and looking to change the subject asked, "When *does* school start? I don't remember offhand."

"It's next Monday," I told her.

"Why so late?"

"They can't start until after the Epiphany."

"Mmm," Mom said, licking some butter off her finger, "And what is the Epiphany?"

"Who the hell knows?" I joked.

"Marcie!" Mom scolded.

"Oh, it's some religious holiday."

"And what exactly does it celebrate?"

"Um..."

"Sounds like you should look it up today."

I didn't want to do that, so I told her, "Oh, I just remembered: it's for Saint Epiphany. It's her day."

Mom looked skeptical. "And what is she famous for?"

"Oh," I said, and casting around the kitchen for an answer. "She's the patron saint of tea."

"Hmmph," Mom replied, as she set my plate in front of me. "Well, I don't know what the right answer is, but I'm sure that what you said is wrong."

I shrugged and popped some bacon in my mouth. Bacon! It never tasted so good.

"So what will you do this week?" Ida asked me.

"I dunno," I sighed. "Maybe I'll get a job."

Ida brightened at that. "Oh, you know what? Tea! The Tea Shop on the Corner is looking for help. It's a cute place, you could go there. It's in the town center; you can walk from here."

"And what is it called?"

"The Tea Shop on the Corner."

"Yes, but what is its name?"

Ida laughed. "That *is* the name, Marcie: The Tea Shop on the Corner."

I set my fork down and wiped my plate with my toast. "Okay, Mom: *now* can you tell me the news? We're not moving again, are we? I'm not changing schools?"

"No, no, nothing like that. This is good news, happy news." She and Ida beamed at me. It made me pretty nervous.

"So?" I prompted her.

"I'm pregnant, Marcie."

My jaw fell open and hit the table.

"And I'm going to have twins."

My jaw hit the floor.

I sat there staring and didn't say a word. I couldn't comprehend it. At last, I managed to say, "But you can't! You're... you're not supposed to!"

She smiled and said, "What do you mean, I'm not supposed to? How old do you think I am, Marcie?"

"It's not that... it's just that..." I was at a loss for words. It didn't compute. "I mean... there's you, and me, and Dad. We're the Donner family. We're a family already. We don't need more."

"Well, now there will be two more." Mom was still smiling. It seemed like my shock and disbelief amused her a little.

"And when are you due?" Ida asked.

"June 3rd," Mom said. "They're going to be summer babies."

"Where will they go?" I asked. "Where are you going to put them?"

Mom laughed as if I'd said the funniest thing. "The room across from yours will be the nursery."

"Just think, Marcie," Ida said, giving my hand another squeeze, "You can have so much fun babysitting!"

I was speechless. What did we need a pair of babies for? Who ordered twins? For sure it wasn't me!

© 2011 by Kaleigh Way

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