Speechless

Scrambling out of the car, I fling open the back door for Her Nervousness. A cloud of powder blue sweeps by and I trot along in her perfumed wake. In the lobby, I scan the crowd for a glimpse of Tim. Fortunately, he stands a little taller than the rest of humanity, so he’s not too hard to locate. Of course, the same applies to me, and when he sees me a second later, he smiles and raises his arm to wave. My heart does a little leap. More affirmations…. I am poised and confident…. I am skilled and centered….

The Governor General is introducing Mrs. Cleary. I should be paying attention, but I’ve just realized that my arm is still in the air, waving at Tim. How long has it been up there? I’m yanking it down when— WHACK!—a bulky Michael Kors shoulder bag hits me square in the chest so hard I stagger backward.

Mrs. Cleary is at the podium now and beginning to speak. I’m trying to focus on what she’s saying but my eyes slide toward Tim to see if he noticed the handbag debacle. Judging from his grin, he saw it all right. I turn back to the stage, muttering aloud, “I am poised and confident. I will not be a fool….”

“Ssshhh,” Margo hisses.

Slow, deep breaths…. Keep eyes averted…. Recovery of dignity is still possible.

The Minister is several minutes into her speech before I can fully concentrate. She’s waxing on about the glacial landforms in the eastern townships. Have I missed a connection to culture? Maybe this is part of her new effort to inspire today’s youth. Oh, there it is—she’s claiming the landscape inspires our artists. That’s original.

“As I traverse the highways and byways of this great province, I am astounded by the beauty of the landscape. Yesterday we passed through Prince Edward County and never in my life have I beheld such a spectacular penis….”

She stops cold, turns the page, freezes. Laughter ripples across the room. Even the teachers are grinning. The Minister, poor thing, is totally nonplussed, nervously shuffling pages of the speech, wondering how to back out of this corner. It seems like hours before she finally speaks.

“That would be peninsula. ‘Never in my life have I beheld such a spectacular peninsula.’ Of course, I’ve never beheld a— But never mind. Excuse me.”

The laughter turns to hysteria and the kids start high-fiving each other with delight. This is an event they will remember for a long, long time. Suddenly, the room erupts with a chant: “Pee-nis, pee-nis, PEE-NIS.” The teachers are working furiously to calm them and just as they’re making headway, a shrill voice rings out over the crowd:

“SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!”

The audience falls silent. I turn to see Margo standing on a chair, chest heaving in rage. The kids are still laughing, but uncertainly now. The teachers and the Governor General look grim. Finally, the Minister begins speaking again and stumbles through the rest of the speech. At the end, she hurries off the stage, grabs her bag from my arms and makes a beeline to the ladies’ room. I collect the speech from the lectern and scan it anxiously, knowing I could end up wearing this. To my horror, I discover that it is partly my fault. When I formatted the text of Wiggy’s speech two weeks ago into the 40-point font, I split a word between two pages: penin-sula. She read the first half as penis. Shit, shit, shit. She’ll be in dire need of a scapegoat right now and I expect I’ll be the one baaa-ing.

I’m barely through the bathroom door when the refined, elegant little woman turns on me.

“What were you thinking, Lily?” she says, tapping a polished finger against her own frontal lobe. “Did you even read the speech? You’ve humiliated me and I can assure you, speechwriters have lost their jobs for less!”

She’s practically screaming and the reverberation propels a teacher out the door. Yanking her perfume out of her purse, Mrs. Clearly squirts it savagely into the air and steps through it. Then she fiercely dusts her face with powder as I stand by, trying to look contrite. I consider mentioning that this wouldn’t have happened if she’d wear her glasses, but chicken out. At the moment, she’s quite capable of drowning me in a toilet bowl. Finally, she clicks her purse shut and shoves it at me with a parting blow: “Maybe if you weren’t so busy flirting, you could concentrate on what we pay you to do.”

Ouch. She’s gone before my burning face confirms my guilt. Smiling at Tim didn’t cause this screw-up, but I’m ashamed that she knows I was thinking about boys on company time. Besides, I should have paid more attention to the formatting.

When I emerge a few minutes later, the Minister is chatting with Tim and his expression when he sees me confirms I’ve been named the villain of the piece. Maybe he even overheard her tirade. Now she’s clinging to his arm for support, so I slink by to join Laurie and Bill in the audience. The Minister doesn’t have the pleasure of Tim’s company for long, however, because the Governor General soon introduces his orchestra.

Now that my opportunity to impress him has vaporized, I shift my focus to counting the ways he’s all wrong for me, anyway. He’s a teacher, for example. Teachers get no respect and they’re grossly underpaid. What’s more, they’re expected to be role models and their wives probably have to be role models, too. I have enough trouble getting myself through the day without trying to inspire anyone else. Tim is obviously not my prince. My prince is a wealthy man, a man who hangs out with high flyers. A man who is comfortable in Armani. A man who…knows better than to wear athletic socks with a suit. Tim, it appears, does not. His arms are raised to summon the woodwinds when I see the telltale flash of white.

My eyes happen to be in the sock region because they’ve drifted down from his butt. It’s a pretty great butt and it’s too bad I’ll miss out on it, but happily, I’ll also miss out on a lifetime of wardrobe monitoring. The man is in the presence of royalty, or at least a vice regal. Socks matter. As if orchestra conductors don’t have enough strikes against them already! Look at him waving that silly baton around. And what’s with the jutting of his rib cage in the general direction of the horns? The grimace at a squawking bassoon? The blissful radiance over a perfect chord? It’s too much—and it cancels out the great butt, which is a shame, because they aren’t that common.