"We could do it, Mrs. Nelson," Trissie Harris coaxed. "I know that you have the booklets for No, No, Nanette!"
"We are not," Iona Nelson said firmly to the class, "going to enliven the organizational meeting for the League of Women Voters with a Brillo skit. We are going to sing our entry for the national anthem contest, and that is all we are going to do." She was using her best schoolteacher voice.
"But," Trissie protested, "some of them are sooo cute. Grandpa made up the one about Charlie."
Against her better judgment, Iona found herself asking, "What one about Charlie?"
"Charlie was in the original." Trissie's grin made it plain that she was going to cherish this day for a long time. She rarely got to solo in the middle school chorus:
"Get Wild Root Cream Oil, Brillo!
It's full of lanolin.
Get Wild Root Cream Oil, Brillo!
It keeps your wool in trim.
Get Wild Root Cream Oil, Brillo!
Don't chase the ewes away.
Get Wild Root Cream Oil, Brillo!
It'll really make your day.
But wait just a minute, Brillo!
Wild Root just isn't in.
You don't need Wild Root, Brillo!
Your fleece has lanolin."
Trissie opened her mouth for another line; then looked around the classroom, said, "I don't think I'd better sing the last verse right now," and sat down with a plop. The rest of the class laughed loud enough that Iona suspected that they had already heard it.
She was saved from having to comment by the bell.
"Okay," Flo said to J.D. "I can believe that Dex Harris made a bawdy ballad to the tune of the Wild Root Cream Oil commercial. I really can. I can even believe that he taught it to Trissie. But no way do I believe that he wrote the rest of those. I know the guy, J.D. I've known him all my life. There's no way that he spends his spare time reading collections of American short stories."
"Look, Flo," J.D. said. "This could be like the story about the monster. The one that every time the guy chopped one head off, it grew a couple more. If people get the idea that the stories really upset you, they're likely to do more of them. Just to get your goat. Or your sheep."
He fled in mock terror. It was definitely mock, because he knew perfectly well that no matter how upset Flo was, she wasn't upset enough to dump a cup of rare and valuable hot coffee over his head.
Flo stared glumly at the table. No, there was no reason why any of the Harrises would be out to get her. Dex had just written that as a joke. But, "Local Woman Goes Buggy?"
That one had meanness to it.
The kind of meanness that only kids had. On the back of an old envelope, not bothering to sharpen the pencil first, she started making a list of everyone in Grantville who had gone to grade school and high school with her. Annotated.
"I don't think that you're really stopping to think about it, Mom," Amy said impatiently. "You were right the first time, when you said that the `Buggy' one isn't like the others. Even if you figure that one out, the person who wrote it won't be the person who wrote the rest of them."
"Get to the point," Kerry said.
"She will," commented Missy as she buttered another piece of rye bread. "It's just that by the time she gets there, the rest of us will have written the Great American Novel, built our own greenhouses to grow citrus fruit in our back yards, opened up home businesses, and sent off expeditions to start colonies back in America. Just thinking about all the stuff people think we ought to do since we came back in time makes me tired before I've even gotten breakfast."
Flo wondered when her daughters, who were rapidly approaching thirty, were going to start talking to one another like they weren't still squabbling about who got the bathroom first. I love them, I really do, she assured herself. I love them all. I love the grandkids that I have. I love, she paused and looked at Kerry, the grandkid that it looks like I'm going to have any minute now. I'll love the grandkids I'm almost certain to have next year or the year after, if somebody doesn't reinvent the pill.
Kerry's David was in school, which reduced the noise level somewhat. Amy's David and Missy's Mike were still small enough to corral in a playpen, but since it was the same playpen and Mike had recently bopped David on the head with a toy Brillo, both were squalling in the background. Amy's Kayla and Missy's Caitlin had both been in moods all morning that would have driven the author of "sugar and spice" to take it all back. Little girls appeared to be made of sour pickles and tabasco sauce.
But Amy was not distracted. "Look, except for the Buggy story, they're all Peter Rabbit stories."
"Amy," said Missy. "Get to the point."
Amy, sad to say, stuck her tongue out at her sisters.
Flo mentally gave herself one more black mark for Abysmal Failures in Maternal Training.
"The Peter Rabbit stories aren't about the guy who had the garden, Whatzisname. Mr. Whatzisname is just there in the background, for scenery. That's where Mom is in all the others. They're about the animal. So he's a stupid ram, so what? She's only there in the background trying to keep him in his pen, or away from the ewes, or not appreciating how brave and clever he is, or something. The stories are about him. Some of them don't even mention Mom at all. Except the `Buggy' one. That's about Mom."
Kerry thought a minute. "You're right. I hate to say it, but you're right. And some of them do have to be guys. It must have been a guy who wrote `Bad, Baaad, Brillo!' But `Buggy' was written by a female. It's just nasty."
Amy wasn't finished. She just ignored Kerry and kept going. "So live with the rest of them. You think that Beatrix Potter didn't laugh all the way to the bank. He isn't what you wanted out of this sheep project, but he's what you got. So make the most of it, Mom."
Flo sighed. "All right. But I still want to find out who wrote that one."
"Who are your candidates?" Kerry asked.
"I thought there had to be two things. First, she didn't like me. I had a bunch in that column. Second, she has to be here—not off in the oil field with her husband like Lelah Johnson—Kidwell that was. And willing to do it—that lets out Charmaine Dwyer—Elkins that was—because she's actually turned into a nice person, much as I sort of hate to say so."
"Someday," Missy said, glancing at the envelope Flo had brought along to the Richards girls' brunch and kaffeeklatsch, "I think that I really want to hear the stories about what went on in Grantville when you were in grade school and high school, that you ended up with so many people in your `enemies' column."
Flo glared at her.
"The candidates left are Stella Pilcher—Burroughs that was. But she doesn't have the gumption. She just whines."
Flo realized that her daughters were looking shocked. "Well, she does. Always did. I didn't like her. Still don't. And it showed, back then. Now I just avoid her."
Flo looked down into her cup of coffee before she went on. "And Idalee Jackson—Mitchell that was. And I think that it's Idalee. She's the scheduler for the Grange meetings. Most people would have had to show up at the paper and leave that thing and someone would have remembered it. She drops stuff off all the time, meeting notices and the like. If it was just on the bottom of things she left in their `incoming' box, on a different kind of paper, nobody would ever know."
"Mom," Kerry asked rather cautiously, "what did you do to her?"
"Before the final game at the state basketball tournament, I carefully glued lots of little pieces of straw inside her flippy cheerleader skirt. Just with little bitty dots of library paste. First, they pricked her bottom and itched her. Then, when the cheerleaders really got going, they started to fall out, right in front of the crowd."
"Mom!" The horror was unanimous.
"That was junior year. I had caught her trying to put the moves on your father. I had him staked out, already. And, face it, as a husband, he's been a lot better deal than Butler Jackson. But she didn't have to marry him."
"Mom!"
"Well, she didn't. Everybody assumed that she did when they got married, because they couldn't imagine why else she took him, but it was twenty-two months before Wade was born. I guess she was just starting to be afraid of being an old maid." Flo paused. "I'm not saying for sure that she did it, and I'm not going out and accuse her. But just sort of pinning it down makes me feel better inside. Idalee does hold grudges—and she's smart enough."
Flo came to a decision. "As for the rest of them—Amy's right. I think I'll just laugh along with everybody else."
"We can do it," Trissie insisted. "We only need to snitch one copy of the booklet. So Michelle can play."
Ashley Walsh and Liz Russo looked at her doubtfully.
"The only other person who'll need to know at all will be Michelle. Grownups think that kids can't do anything without someone to tell them how. We can do this ourselves. Honestly we can."
"And with Michelle Matowski at the piano." Mrs. Nelson finished the introduction and moved to the director's post.
The girls' chorus finished their presentation to polite applause from the League of Women Voters. (Iona had been quite right in saying that the tune was almost impossible to sing, even if it was very popular.) The girls filed out of the front of the room.
Except . . . three of them didn't. Liz Russo slipped off in the other direction and hid behind the piano. Trissie Harris and Ashley Walsh stayed on the little stage, reached into their pockets, and each brought out a pair of fuzzy white earmuffs.
Flo's heart sank.
At the piano, Michelle segued into, "Tea for Two." Brillo and the ewe started to sing, "A ram for me, an ewe for you." Between every verse, Michelle switched tunes and from behind the piano came Liz Russo's high soprano admonishing, "No, No, Brillo!"
Flo laughed.