Man With A Mission

With a wistful wish for a different life—any other life, at least for tonight—Jackie dropped her coat and purse on the nearest chair and hurried toward the kitchen, where the melee was taking place.

“I can’t believe you did that!” Erica was shrieking at Rachel, who faced her down stubbornly, bony arms folded atop a flowered dress Jackie had never seen before. The fabric looked familiar, though. “It was mine!” she said, her voice high and shrill and almost hysterical.

Ricky had been a casual father at best, sometimes attentive but more often unaware of his children, caught up with the pressures of his work and his own needs. But the children, of course, had grieved his loss. Erica had turned from a happy, cheerful child to a moody one. Rachel seemed less affected personally, except that she wanted details about death and heaven and didn’t seem to be satisfied with Jackie’s explanation. “Mom bought it for me! You’re such a selfish little brat! I hate you, hate you!” With that Erica flung herself at Rachel.

Jackie ran to intercept her just as Glory Anselmo caught Erica from behind and held her away. Glory was in her second year at Maple Hill Community College’s computer classroom program. She played volleyball in her spare time and was built like a rock. A very pretty brunette rock.

“Erica Isabel!” Jackie said, pushing Rachel aside with one hand while catching one of Erica’s flailing fists with the other. Erica was dark-featured, tall and slender, built like her father’s side of the family. Rachel was petite like Jackie, and blond. Both seemed to have inherited personality traits from some long-lost connection to the Mongol hordes. “Take it back.”

“I won’t! Look at what she did to my pillowcase!”

“I made it beautiful!” Rachel extended her arms and did an end-of-the-runway turn. That was when Jackie realized she’d cut a hole for her head and two armholes in Erica’s pillowcase, the one patterned with cabbage roses and violets, and was wearing it like a dress. She’d added a white silk cord that also looked familiar.

Jackie groaned. Glory, she could see, was having a little difficulty keeping a straight face. It was funny, Jackie had to admit to herself, if you weren’t the one required to make peace.

Glory caught Jackie’s expression and sobered, still holding on to Erica. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bourgeois,” she said. “I should have checked on Rachel. She was being really quiet.”

Rachel, who had brains beyond her years and an almost scary sense of style in everything she did, said, “I was quiet ’cause I was…what’s that word for when you get a really good idea and you just have to do it?”

“Inspired?” Jackie guessed.

Rachel smiled widely, delighted that she understood. “That’s it!”

“Well, I think you should be inspired to give Erica your pillowcase,” Jackie ruled. “It’s fine to be inspired, but you don’t try out your designs using someone else’s things.”

“Please.” Erica clearly loathed the idea. “It has pigs and ducks on it. I think she should clean my room for a year!”

“No way!” Rachel shouted.

“Then she’ll pay you the amount of the pillowcase out of her savings,” Jackie arbitrated, “so you can buy a new one.”

Rachel pouted. She was also frugal.

The tension eased somewhat, Glory freed Erica’s arms.

“Now take back the ‘I hate you,’” Jackie insisted.

Erica looked her mother in the eye. “But I do hate her.”

That cold-blooded admission might have chilled someone who hadn’t seen Erica defend Rachel from the neighborhood bully who’d tried to take Rachel’s candy bar just two days ago. The fact that Erica had demanded half the candy bar in payment for her protection didn’t really figure into it. Rachel understood commerce.

“No, you don’t.” Jackie touched Erica’s hot cheeks. She was a very physical child and touch usually soothed her. “You’re just too young to understand the difference between frustration and hatred. What’s our rule about hate?”

Erica gave her a dark look but repeated dutifully, “We can hate things, but not people.”

“So?”

“So, I take it back,” Erica conceded ungraciously, “but if she messes with my stuff again, even if I don’t hate her, I’ll…” She hesitated. Jackie also had rules against violence or threats of violence. “I’ll let Frankie Morton take all her candy!” Frankie Morton was the bully.

Rachel ran upstairs in tears.

Jackie grinned over Erica’s head at Glory. “Want to stay for dinner? Promises to be eventful.”

Glory acknowledged the joke with a nod. “Thanks, but I’m meeting a friend.”

“It’s a guy friend,” Erica informed Jackie. “They met at the library. But tonight he’s taking her to dinner.”

Jackie was happy to hear that. Glory worked so hard that she seldom had time for dating. “Anyone we know?”

“I don’t think so,” Glory replied, gathering up her things off one of the kitchen chairs. “His name’s Jimmy Elliott. He works for Mr. Whitcomb. He’s a fireman and fixes furnaces when he’s off.”

“Oh.” The mention of Hank’s name darkened her already precarious mood.

Glory, purse over her shoulder and books in her arms, asked worriedly, “Is that bad?”

“Of course not.” Jackie walked her to the door. “He and I just don’t get along very well.”

“You and Jimmy Elliott?”

“Hank Whitcomb and I. He’s just moved his office into City Hall.”

“Oh. That’s a relief. I really like Jimmy.”

“Well, have a wonderful time.”

Glory stopped in the doorway. “One more thing,” she said, handing Jackie a folded piece of paper, her tone sympathetic. “This is from Erica’s teacher. I didn’t read it, but Erica says Mrs. Powell picks on her because she’s having trouble paying attention.”

A note from school completed the destruction of Jackie’s flimsy attempt at a good mood.

She went back into the kitchen to ask Erica about it, but Rachel had just returned with her ceramic savings bank shaped like a castle with a blond princess in the tower. She knelt on a chair at the table, her eyes and the tip of her nose red from crying. “How much was the pillowcase, Mom?” she asked.

Jackie sat down opposite her, trying to remember. It had been part of the package with two sheets and the bedcover. Erica had been feeling blue, she remembered, and objecting to the childish decor of her room, done when she’d been about five. New bedclothes had seemed the simplest and quickest solution.

“It was on sale,” Erica said, pulling silverware out of the drawer to set the table, her nightly chore. “The whole set was eighty dollars. I remember ’cause I thought it would be too much. But the lady said it was half price.”

Encouraged by Erica’s assistance, Jackie asked, “Then how much would you say one pillowcase would be?”

Erica came to the table and sat, the silverware in hand. “The bedspread would probably be half, don’t you think?” she asked, her mood lightening fractionally.

“That sounds reasonable.”

“So…” Erica closed her eyes, concentrating. “That leaves twenty dollars, and the sheets would probably be three-fourths of that. So…that leaves five dollars for the pillowcases.”

Rachel pulled the rubber stopper out of the bottom of her bank and reached in with little fingers to withdraw bills. Change tinkled to the tabletop. She counted four singles, then asked Erica, “Four quarters in a dollar, right?”

“It was two pillowcases for five dollars.” Erica fell against the back of her chair in disgust. “You only wrecked one.”

The disgust with her sister was a habit, Jackie knew. But this burgeoning willingness to be fair gave her hope after all.