Wendy got another surge of uneasiness, as she had ever since Sam had been dropped off by her ex after Parents’ Night, and nine-year-old Sam had peered up with his earnest, innocent face behind those thick glasses as he said, “And Pater said to tell you he signed you up for the classroom fundraiser.”
With Bill Champlain, her ex, anything could go wrong. At least when he got petty, he aimed it at her.
Wendy had taken a deep breath and said as encouragingly as humanly possible, “That was very nice of ... your father.” Wendy did her best, but there were limits, she had discovered. One of which was the Champlains’ pretentious insistence on Sam using the outdated term “Pater” for Bill, as if they had all tripped and fallen into some snobbish British boarding school novel of a hundred years ago. But then Bill’s mother—who wasn’t even British—was a pretentious snob. Wendy had noticed over the years that not once was she as Sam’s mother ever referred to as “Mater.” If the Champlains had to refer to her at all, when talking to Sam, it was always “your mother,” in the tone usually reserved for “your lice problem.”
Wendy had cupped Sam’s little face in her hands as she said, “I will always be happy to help with your class’s fundraisers. Did he sign up, too?” Despite their marriage having been a radioactive dumpster fire, Wendy never gave up hoping that Bill would take an interest in his son’s life.
Sam’s eyes had blinked behind the thick glasses. “He said he couldn’t, ‘cause he had important meetings. But you could. Because the fundraiser is at night. And your work ends before it begins.” Sam blinked in puzzlement. “What does that mean, ends before it begins?”
Wendy had become an expert at translating Bill’s petty sniping into neutral words for Sam’s sake. “It just means I get home from the bakery early, so I can be there when you get off the school bus.”
Bill’s signing her up for anything having to do with Sam’s classroom was highly suspicious—until now he had shown little concern for Sam’s schooling once it became plain that their myopic little son was never going to take any interest in competitive sports, or any subject Bill considered properly “manly.”
In the last year or two, Bill seemed to be having more frequent ‘work crises’ on the weekends of his parental visits. Which had suited Wendy just fine. She’d thought Sam was all right with it, too, as most of his visits to Pater seemed to be boring, but one day Sam had come home from school and confided, “The other kids don’t believe I have a dad.” Wendy had nerved herself to confront Bill, pointing out that he hadn’t had Sam over for almost three months, and it was important to Sam that Bill be there for Parents’ Night.
Another glance at Flossie in her bag was a reminder that the very rare times Wendy prevailed, Bill would get back at her. Flossie might be the latest torpedo.
She pulled into the parking lot behind Playa del Encanto’s most popular bakery, and glanced at her cell phone. Ten minutes till opening time. She’d just have to wait before introducing herself to Flossie.
As always, the smell of Linette’s pastries coming fresh from the oven began to drain the tension that anything having to do with Bill always caused. She did her relaxation breathing, telling herself that she would have signed up for the fundraiser, offering to bake, if she’d attended Parents’ Night. But if she’d gone, Bill would not have. They obviously had called for volunteers, and Bill had signed her up for a different role. That was all.
She put on her apron, hat, and gloves, and settled into work mode. The doors opened two minutes later, a stream of regulars flowing in, and that was the tenor of the day until closing time.
Wendy’s shift ended half an hour before the fourth graders were dismissed from school. She couldn’t afford to pay for the school bus twice a day, so she’d opted for dismissal time. Assuming her old clunker of a car started—iffy—she’d get back right ahead of Sam.
As always when Wendy left the bakery, she held her breath when she turned the key in the ignition. The engine whined as it chugged once. Twice. Then it caught, popped and kicked fretfully, then decided to work. One good thing about living in a small town—she didn’t have far to drive.
Maybe by next month—assuming no expensive disaster arrived on top of the debt she was already paying off—she could afford to have the car overhauled yet again, though her mechanic’s face fell every time she drove it in. The car was older than he was.
The school bus delivered Sam to Godiva’s place, where they had been staying ever since discovering that Wendy’s house now had a leaky roof in addition to all its other problems. Godiva Hidalgo was a very popular mystery writer—it was she who had encouraged Wendy in her writing when Wendy was young, living on the beach below Godiva’s large palisade property. Godiva was old, but still a firecracker, fiercely loyal and just as fiercely protective. Her rambling ranch house served primarily as a haven for women who found themselves in trouble and had nowhere to go. Currently, Wendy was acting as caretaker for Godiva’s house, while Godiva and her husband Rigo paid an extended visit to his horse ranch in Kentucky.
Wendy parked off to the side of the house in her usual spot. Then she carried in the Flossie bag, dumped her purse, and started the electric kettle.
She had just finished pouring a cup of tea when the front door banged open and Sam shot through. He saw her, smiled, pushed his heavy glasses back up his nose, tossed down his school backpack, and jetted out the back way. As usual, leaving the front door and the sliding glass doors wide open.
The breeze coming in off the ocean below the garden actually felt good. Wendy was severely temped to open her computer and put in some time on her pilot screenplay. The story was fighting her, but at that last screenwriting workshop she had attended up in LA, the agents talking to the class had assured the writers that everybody was looking for smart and sophisticated series.
The problem was, she had trouble making the dialoguesophisticated. Stilted, yes. She glared at her screen, then slammed the lid of her laptop down, looked away—and her gaze fell on Flossie’s bag.
Though her feet hurt from standing behind the counter all day, maybe it was better to determine Flossie’s barnyard presence before Sam came back in. She went to the service porch to change in case Sam appeared. He’d reached the age when the very idea of seeing a parent in underwear was horrifying.
She threw her sweaty, sugar-stained bakery outfit into the washer, and pulled out her cleaning clothes, consisting of a ratty pair of cheap jeans that were much too tight, and a shapeless old T-shirt with a giant owl on it that she’d had since college. The big round eyes of the owl rested right over her breasts, an unfortunate design flaw, so she had never worn the thing in public. It had done its time as her work-at-home shirt for years.
Thus equipped, she padded barefoot to the living room, where Flossie’s bag still sat. Okay then. Moment of truth.
Muttering, “Please don’t be a cow, please don’t be a cow, please don’t be a cow,” she pulled the red thing out. It was stiffened felt in triangles, attached to a hood. With eyeholes. And a ... beak?
She pulled the rest out. Oh-h-h-h-kay, then.
Flossie was a chicken.
A huge, traffic-cone-orange chicken, but instead of a puffy chest, the stuffing had sagged so that it looked like Flossie was 18 months pregnant and about to deliver herself of a couple dozen dinosaur-sized eggs at one go.
Now Wendy understood the tremor in Ms. Nelson’s voice as valiantly suppressed snickers. “Okay, that’s fair,” Wendy muttered, eyeing the horrible costume. Poulet, her dad had been fond of saying proudly, was a respected name in the north of France, where his ancestors had come from. But there was no getting around the fact that in French, poulet meant chicken. She could even make a joke as she handed back the bag the next day before school, “Ha ha, I’ve ‘chickened’ out ... I’d rather bake treats for the class, or do something backstage.”
Then she remembered those moms slinking away, and who could blame them? There wasn’t going to be any way to trade Flossie for some other fundraiser activity. She thought of Sam’s trusting eyes, and sighed in defeat. There was no getting out of this, not without putting Sam in the middle. Once again, Bill was going win a battle in his one-sided war.
All right, she could handle an evening of being Flossie the Chicken. For Sam.
