Dear George Clooney: Please Marry My Mom (11 page)

“See, I told you they missed us, Violet,” Rosie said smugly.

“Get off the phone, Rosie.”

“No! Do you really want us to come, Jenny?”

“Of course.”

“Even after what Violet did?”

“Well, that’s partly why I’m calling. We still very much want you girls to visit us. But, Violet, I need two things from you first: I need you to promise you will never do something like that to your sisters again, and I need you to apologize.”

I was quiet for a long time. Rosie was not. “Please, Violet, please please please say you’re sorry. Mom won’t let me fly on the plane without you.”

“Rosie. Get. Off. The. Phone.” She must have heard the tone in my voice because I heard a
click
.

“Why are you calling, and not Dad?” I asked.

“Because Ian says you won’t talk to him when he calls. I told him I’d give it a try.”

There was another long pause.

“So. What do you say, Violet?”

I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath. Then, very quietly, I hung up.

I climbed the stairs to our room. Rosie was on the floor, playing with her Playmobil grocery set.

“Are we going? Are we going for March Break?”

I picked the Magic 8 Ball up from the shelf and gave it a good shake.
“Outlook not so good.”

“Uh-huh. Yes … yes, I think we can both agree that it’s not okay to bite. But it’s also not okay to dump all the blame on Rosie every single time there’s an incident with this girl….” My mom was heating up a jar of spaghetti sauce on the stove while she spoke on the phone. I could tell she was agitated because she was stirring really hard. Sauce kept spraying out of the pot and landing on the stove top and on her shirt. Rosie and I busied ourselves setting the table while we listened in.

“Clearly this girl is provoking her. You need to talk to her, too…. Well, according to Rosie, she told her that her dad didn’t count because he doesn’t live with us. For heaven’s sake, half the kids at the daycare must have divorced or single parents, this isn’t the 1950s….” Mom picked up the pot of noodles from the stove, turned off the heat, and drained it in the colander that Rosie liked to wear on her head.

“Okay. Thank you. And if you want me to come in for a meeting with the other girl’s parents, I’m happy to
do it … bye.” She hit the
off
button on the phone. I could tell she was angry by the way she pursed her lips.

“Are you mad at me, Mommy?” Rosie asked as Mom dished spaghetti and sauce onto our plates.

Mom knelt down beside her. “I’m not happy that you keep biting this girl, Rosie. But I also understand that they’re not getting both sides of the story. Honestly, these people are supposed to be trained in early childhood education.”

We started to eat. I had suggested to Rosie that if she told Mom about the call from Jennica, one of her dolls might mysteriously lose its head. So I was rather impressed by her courage when she announced, “Daddy’s new wife called today.”

Mom dropped her fork. It clattered onto her plate. “Did she?” Mom asked, in an eerily calm voice.

“She says we’re still invited to their house for March Break. But she wanted Violet to say sorry for the poop first. Please please, I wanna go; they got a pool.”

Mom looked at me. “Did you apologize?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?”

“I kind of hung up.”

“Oh, Violet.” She picked up her fork again.

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to go, anyway.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“How so?”

“You have to maintain a relationship with your father.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s your
father.
”

“So? You were his wife, and you don’t have to ‘maintain a relationship.’”

“That’s different and you know it. Besides, those girls are your sisters.”

“Half sisters –”

“
Please,
Violet!” Rosie begged.

“No!” I shouted. “I hate going down there! I hate having to act like everything’s okay. It’s not okay! Jennica ruined our lives. Everything was perfect before she came along.”

Mom put her fork down again. “Everything wasn’t perfect, Violet. Your dad and I had been drifting apart for a while –”

I clamped my hands to my ears.
“La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!”
I chanted, standing up so fast, I tipped over my chair. I couldn’t pick it up without taking my hands away from my ears, so I left it there and took the stairs two at a time to my room. Okay, it was not the most mature reaction in the world, but, really, I wasn’t going to listen to my mom as she tried to reinvent history.

I picked up Rosie’s doll Roxanna from her bed, popped her head off, left her decapitated body lying on
Rosie’s pillow, and hid the head in a shoe box at the back of the closet. Then I rearranged all of our clothes in order of the color spectrum, thoughts racing through my head.

They did not have problems. They had been perfectly, utterly happy.

Hadn’t they?

M
y bad mood flowed right into Friday. Jean-Paul still wasn’t at school. I got a
C
on my math test. It was raining cats and dogs on the way home, and I ruined my brown suede Converse shoes when I accidentally stepped into a giant puddle.

Once we were inside, I picked the mail up from the floor and had a quick look. There were two bills and one brown eight-by-ten envelope.

From Los Angeles. With a sticker in the top left corner that read
From the Office of George Clooney.
My heart started to race.

“I’m hungry,” said Rosie. “Can you make me a snack?”

“Get your own snack,” I snapped. “I’m not your servant.”

“You’re a poop-head,” Rosie said matter-of-factly before she tore off into the kitchen.

I could hardly breathe. Carefully I tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter inside.

“A form letter?” Phoebe said when I called her. “Violet, I’m so sorry.”

“Rmph,”
I muttered. I was sprawled out on the red couch, beyond depressed.

“You know what I think? I think George never even saw your letter. I think his manager just handed it off to an assistant or something.”

“You’re probably right.” I heard the key in the lock. “Mom’s home. I’d better go.”

“Right. The official Gustafson Girls’ Night. Maybe that’ll cheer you up,” said Phoebe. “We’ll strategize tomorrow.”

I put down the phone, dragged myself off the couch, and shuffled into the foyer. “I hope you got a comedy,” I said to my mom. “I could use some laughs –”

I stopped midsentence. Mom wasn’t alone.

“Violet, I told Dudley he could join us for movie night. I hope you don’t mind,” she said. The Wiener shifted nervously from foot to foot beside her, clutching a bag of take-out food from Zipang.

“It’s not called Movie Night. It’s called
Girls’
Night,” I said.

“Maybe I should just go –” Dudley began.

“No, stay!” shouted Rosie as she ran in from the kitchen with what looked like chocolate ice cream smeared all over her face. “I want you to stay. So does Mom.” She looked at me hopefully. “So does Violet. Right, Violet?”

I just rolled my eyes.

“I brought you girls a box of Purdy’s Chocolates,” he said, holding it out to us. “Vanilla creams and caramels.” Purdy’s vanilla creams were my favorite. Purdy’s caramels were Rosie’s favorite. Obviously Mom had fed him this piece of intel. It was a blatant and pathetic attempt to win us over, and I refused to reach for the box. Not that it mattered since Rosie grabbed it out of his hands faster than you could say
pushover.

“You can sit beside me for the movie,” Rosie said to him.

“Speaking of movies,” Dudley said as we went into
the living room with the food, “did you see the one about the cannibal who ate his mother-in-law? It was called
Gladiator.
Get it? Glad I ate her?”

Mom laughed. I gazed at him stonily. “Let me guess. Another yard-sale find?” I asked him, pointing at his hideous sweater. This one featured a mallard on the front.

“No. Someone made it for me. I like this sweater.” He actually sounded hurt.

“It’s a lovely sweater,” Mom said, patting his arm. Then she turned to me. “I saw your math test on the hall table. You got a
C
.”

I shrugged. “It was geometry. I hate geometry.”

“Now, Violet,” Dudley said, “without geometry, there’d be no point.” He laughed at his own feeble pun. I did not. “Sorry, I forgot. You don’t like puns. But that’s okay. A good pun is its own
reword.
”

It was going to be a long night.

Mom had rented
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
. Mr. Fox was voiced by George Clooney, which I knew Phoebe would find interesting from a psychological perspective.

“Mom met George Clooney once,” I announced, when we heard his distinct voice for the first time.

“Really? You met George Clooney?” asked Dudley, clearly impressed.

“I met a lot of actors when I worked in production,” my mom said. “But George was by far the sweetest. And the hottest.”

“He said he hoped their paths would cross again,” I added.

“George Clooney has good taste,” Dudley replied, then he actually gave my mom a kiss on the lips, right in front of us. I had to force myself not to gag. “Actually, I get told quite often that I could be his twin,” he joked, sticking out his nonexistent chin and giving us a cheesy smile. Mom laughed too hard, and Rosie laughed too, even though she had no idea what was funny.

“In your dreams,” I said under my breath.

Throughout the movie, Dudley sat on the red couch, with my mom on one side and Rosie on the other. I sat as far away from them as possible on the gold couch, even though I could barely see the TV screen. It was a good movie, but I couldn’t concentrate because, out of the corner of my eye, I could see both my mom
and
my sister leaning in to Dudley. He held my mom’s hand throughout practically the whole film, like a lovesick teenager. Honestly, it was all very
ick
.

After the movie Mom brought out Pictionary, but I didn’t want to play. I felt sick. Mom said it was the eight vanilla creams I’d eaten. I knew better.

So I went upstairs while the three of them played the game. I read one of the Cherub books, envying James
and his sister Lauren, who were not only kid spies, but orphans too. After a while, Mom brought Rosie up to bed. I helped get her into a pair of pull-ups, and she fell asleep almost instantly. I got into my pajamas and lay awake for as long as I could, waiting to hear Dudley leave. I thought I heard the door open and shut around midnight, just before I fell into a deep sleep.

I woke around 3:00 a.m. with serious stomach cramps. I burped and it tasted like acid and vanilla, a truly nasty combination.

I stumbled out of bed and hurried down the hall to the bathroom. My eyes were only half-open, so I didn’t see him till the last second. He was coming from the other direction, also heading to the bathroom.

Dudley.

Naked
Dudley.

Well, almost naked – he was wearing underpants,
thank you, God.

I screamed.

He screamed.

And I tried not to look, I really did, but his blinding white flesh was right there in front of me, and I couldn’t help but notice his moobs, his flabby stomach, and his hairy legs, which were too skinny for the rest of his body.

Mom came running out of her bedroom, a robe wrapped around her.

“Omigod, Violet, I’m sorry. I should have told you Dudley might stay over.”

“Violet, I – I –” Dudley stuttered.

I didn’t wait to hear any more. I pushed past the two of them and went into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.

Then I proceeded to barf up every single one of those vanilla cream chocolates.

T
hanks to the severe trauma I’d suffered, I didn’t manage to fall back to sleep until 5:00 a.m. It was eleven the next morning when I finally woke up.

I got out of my pajamas and slipped on yesterday’s clothes. I didn’t want to go downstairs. Even though I was pretty sure The Wiener would be long gone by now, I knew I was destined for one of Mom’s talks.

I was half-right. When I got downstairs, I found Rosie in the living room, snuggled up to Dudley while he read her
Stanley’s Party,
one of her favorite books. I couldn’t even look at him.

“Where’s Mom?”

“She’s having a shower,” Dudley replied, and he blushed.

Good,
I thought.
You should be embarrassed! You should also buy some new underpants and a gym membership!

“Rosie, where’s Mom?” I asked, ignoring Dudley.

“Dudley just said. She’s having a shower.” Then she looked up at Dudley with big adoring eyes. “Keep reading.”

“You can read later, Rosie. Let’s go to Liberty Bakery and get some treats.”

“Too late. Me and Dudley already went,” she replied.

My insides felt sour. “But I always go with you.”

“You was sleeping,” she said simply.

“We brought you back a monster-sized scone. And Ingrid made a big fruit salad. I’ll get a plate ready for you,” said Dudley, starting to get up.

“I’m not hungry,” I said, even though my stomach was growling loud enough for them to hear.

“I wanted to mention …” Dudley continued, and for one horrified moment, I thought he was going to bring up the traumatizing events of last night, “… if you ever need help with your math homework, I’m a bit of a whiz….”

I gave him the hairy eyeball, which shut him up. Mom entered the living room a moment later, dressed for the day, her hair freshly washed.

“Good. You’re up. Why don’t you come into the kitchen with me for a moment?”