Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? (22 page)

“Save it,” Mikey advised.

Esther had been admiring Mikey for years, so she knew when to give up. “Are you coming over tomorrow morning? You can meet Georgie. I'll get Aurora.”

Mikey was beginning to wish she'd made this phone call after she'd eaten dinner. But Aurora was efficient on the phone. She almost never chattered, and when she did she preferred to chatter with her children or her husband, not somebody on the phone. “I'll make pancakes,” Mikey told her.

“We like pancakes.” Not only did Aurora not chatter on the phone, she also didn't cook. Her usual breakfasts consisted of cold cereal and frozen juice. “But not with things in them. No berries. No chocolate chips.”

“Do you have flour and milk?”

“Hang on, I'll—Yes, we do.”

“Sugar?” With Aurora's kitchen, you had to make sure.

“I think so—Yes.”

“Good,” Mikey said.

“That's it?” Mikey could hear that Aurora was smiling. For some reason Mikey had always amused Aurora, which Mikey didn't get, but she didn't mind it either.

“I'm bringing syrup,” Mikey told her, “and butter, and eggs.”

“See you in the morning then,” Aurora said, still smiling away.

“Early,” Mikey said, and hung up.

When Mikey Elsinger said early, she meant early. It was seven o'clock on a clear, cold morning when she walked her bike down the narrow cement path to Margalo's back door, carrying a knapsack filled with eggs, butter and syrup.

In the kitchen she found Stevie about to serve himself and his little sister bowls of cold cereal. Lily sat in her bumper seat at the table, waiting for the meal to be set in front of her. Lily was the youngest child and she knew how to get herself taken care of.

Stevie had climbed up on a chair to reach into the cupboard. He turned around when Mikey knocked, climbed down to let her in, and then—intent on his breakfast—climbed back up onto the chair.

“Stop!” Mikey cried.

Both of their faces turned to her. Their hair was sleep-rumpled and they had big trusting eyes, like some dogs do. Stevie had furry slippers on his small feet, Lily wore a faded blue cotton nightgown with yellow chickens printed on it and her feet were bare—When they turned and stared at her, not afraid, not even alarmed, made curious, not cross and confused, by unexpected events, Mikey could see why people liked having little children around.

“Hi Mikey.”

“Hey Mikey.”

“Pancakes,” Mikey announced.

“Only me and her are up,” Stevie reported.

“Then you'll have to set the table,” Mikey told him. She began preparing the batter, meanwhile heating the heavy iron frying pan that was the nearest thing Aurora had to a griddle and putting the tin of maple syrup into a pan of water over a low flame. When everything was ready to go, Mikey sent Lily off to wake up Margalo. Then she sat down at the table across from Stevie. They stared at each other, until he announced, “I like pancakes.”

“I know.”

“I like our syrup better than yours.”

“No you don't.”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don't. Mine's better.”

Actually, Mikey enjoyed the kind of stupid conversation
you could have with little kids, especially boys. She was getting a lot of practice in with Katherine's sons.

“Nunnh-unnh.”

“Then I guess you don't want any of it today,” Mikey said. She watched him work his way through that, trying to find a way to have his family pride and eat real maple syrup on his pancakes at the same time.

“I have to have what you brought. Because you brought it,” he explained.

Esther, of course, burst out of bed and down the stairs to the kitchen when she heard that Mikey was there. “You didn't let me help,” she complained. “You keep saying you'll teach me how to cook and you keep not letting me help.” A small, pale girl in checked red-and-blue pajamas trailed in, Georgie, it had to be. “This is Mikey,” Esther told her. “She's my sister's friend, not yours.”

Mikey turned to the stove and started dropping pancake batter into the pan. She knew that Margalo would be the last one down.

But Margalo wasn't the last one down when she entered, her hair still a little wet and definitely stringy from a shower. Aurora and Steven were the last to come to the table, and they didn't come in talking the way they usually did. Aurora had a book in her hand, her finger marking her place, and Steven had his chin stuck out. When they entered, everybody at the table got quiet. The silent parents took seats side by side.

Mikey set a second platter of pancakes on the table and exchanged a look with Margalo. As far back as Mikey could remember, Aurora had never fought with anyone, never sulked at anyone, and, though she sometimes raised her voice, never yelled. And as far as she'd seen, Steven had never taken advantage of that. In fact, he always looked at Aurora as if she was more fun than anybody else—except maybe the children. As if he'd rather look at her than anybody, even some movie star. Mikey didn't think she could stand it if Margalo's parents started having what they called marital difficulties. She counted on Aurora and Steven.

“I have a big test on Monday,” Aurora said, to nobody in particular.

Mikey refilled the jug with warm syrup and put it beside Aurora. She moved the butter plate from where it had come to a halt between Esther and Georgie, setting it down between Aurora and Steven.

“History,” Aurora added. This was not good news.

“Tests are hard,” Esther announced to no one in particular, and Stevie added, “I hate spelling tests.” Margalo offered, “Can I help you study?” but Steven stepped in quickly, “I want to do that.” Lily took advantage of the lack of attention to start feeding herself chunks of sticky, syrupy, buttery pancake with her fingers. Then things got back to normal, with everybody talking about nobody needing forks and spoons in olden days, and nobody thanking Mikey for cooking breakfast. Mikey didn't care about that. She cared
about going off with Margalo while other people washed dishes, to get Margalo thinking again so Mikey could get to work on this theft problem. “Let's go for a walk,” Mikey suggested.

Once they had left the house and were out on the sidewalk, they wasted no time deciding where to go—it was always the same place, the playground of their old elementary school, a mile and a half away—and they wasted no time talking about schoolwork, or gossiping. They walked along, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, and got started.

First they checked in. “My father is proposing to her,” Mikey reported. “She'll say yes, I'm pretty sure.”

“Good. But what if they have another baby?”

Mikey tried to imagine that. She couldn't. She tried to think of a worst-case scenario—triplets? All-boy triplets? All-girl triplets?—and she realized, “There probably wouldn't more than one pregnancy before I'll have graduated from high school, so it won't make much difference to me. But what about Steven and Aurora? Is something wrong? Because they were weird this morning.”

“Steven is worried that if Aurora gets her GED she'll go on and take college courses,” Margalo reported. “At least, I think that's what's wrong, because he only has a high school diploma. But if Aurora wants to work with children, she'll have to have at least some college training. I think he's afraid she'll get too educated for him. And then she won't . . . admire him anymore.”

“Do you think that will happen?”

“I don't know what I think exactly, but I hope she gets the high school diploma. And she'd be really good working with children, so I guess I'm hoping for college, too. Mostly,” Margalo admitted, “I hope Steven is the kind of man who can still love someone who has more education than he does. Howard and Esther's father had a master's degree, so Aurora knows what she's missing. She knew it when she married Steven. Aurora's pretty smart,” Margalo said, and stared right at Mikey.

“I know that,” Mikey said. “She always liked me, didn't she?”

“You aren't going to start trying to make jokes, are you?”

“Probably not,” Mikey said.

“Although it
was
funny,” Margalo admitted.

“Do you think I
should
start?” Mikey asked.

“Is that another one?” Margalo asked back.

They were walking fast.

Mikey had waited as long as she could. “What about Drama? What about being robbed? What are you going to do now?”

They had walked past the houses and were now walking around the outside of the high fence that protected the school playground. That was their walk, down to the elementary school and back again. It was already half over.

Margalo shook her head. “The only thing that I didn't try was one of those reconstructions, reenactments, you know? But by now—”

“I can help,” Mikey said. “We'll gather everybody together in the Drama room and have them all do and say the exact things they did at the time.
Now
what's so funny?”

“You think the thief will reenact robbing me?” Margalo asked.

Well, that
was
pretty funny. But, “Maybe,” Mikey said. “It would make things a lot easier if they did. Or forgot and gave themselves away. Richard and Sally aren't all that smart, are they?”

“Forget Richard and Sally. Forget the whole thing, in fact. That's what I'm going to have to do and it won't help me if you keep on . . . not forgetting it.”

“But that's not right.”

“Nothing about the whole thing is right.” Margalo upped her walking pace, in a hurry to have this conversation over with.

And that also wasn't right. It wasn't like Margalo and it was all wrong. Maybe Mikey would keep quiet for now, to Margalo, but she wasn't going to keep quiet in her head. But now she changed the subject. “I have a plan. For our lives, I mean. I think we should go into business together. After school. After college, I mean, and I may go for an MBA, although maybe not right away. I mean,” she clarified it, in case Margalo missed her point, “I plan for us to stick together even after high school.”

Margalo had an idea of what was worrying Mikey. It had to do with all the things that made friendships fade away, like
boyfriends and differing activities in school, like differences in families and different interests, and wishing the other person had made different choices from the choices she had made, and didn't play tennis or didn't have a job. It worried her, too. “That would be all right by me,” she said, trying to imagine being an adult in business with a grown-up Mikey, remembering having been a kid in business with her. “I might want to have an MBA too, though. Because I'd want to be an equal partner, not with you as my boss.”

They stopped walking, turned to face each other.

“Deal,” Mikey said, and held out her hand.

“Deal,” Margalo said, and they shook on it, like doubles partners at the end of a good match, or like two pirates about to set off together after riches on the high seas.

“So I'll be at rehearsal on Monday,” Mikey announced. She had no plan, but any plan she decided on was going to require her to hang out with the Drama group, and rehearsal was where she was going to find them all, these days.

“Why?” Margalo asked.

Mikey had to tell the truth because she couldn't think fast enough to think up a good-enough lie. “I don't know.” Then she thought to say, “Solidarity.”

On Monday, Mikey had a little trouble tracking down Drama Club. It was almost as if someone didn't want her to find it. The Drama classroom was empty and dark, its door locked. Mikey had to go to the office and ask the secretary to hear
that rehearsals had moved to the auditorium. “But it's rather late for someone to be in the building. Do you have a hall pass? Are you going home with someone in the play? Do you have a note from your mother? Are you one of the lighting crew?” the secretary asked, the questions coming too fast for Mikey to even start thinking of how she wanted to answer them. “Could you tell Ms. Hendriks to
please
be more organized about hall passes?” the secretary asked, and Mikey got in a quick “Sure.”