Page 125 of Worst Nanny Ever
Oh crap, mayday, mayday…
“Uh, yeah, well, why go for a gym teacher, when you could aspire to have a principal, am I right? Anyway, my friend Eugene Peebles made this for you.”
She gasps and takes the bag from me, and I’m so blown away by her very encouraging reaction that I actually forget that I’m giving her yet another broken pencil cup until she reaches inside and picks up one of the halves.
Giving me a puzzled look, she says, “Is this some kind of joke?”
I very nearly swear in front of her before getting a handle on myself.
I’m about to explain what happened when a quavering little voice behind me says, “No, Mrs. Applebaum. It’s no joke.”
I glance over to see Ollie has walked up to us. He looks nervous, but there’s a sweet determination flowing from him as he says, “I broke it. I’m sorry. I wanted to look at it in the auditorium, and Hannah let me, and it fell down and cracked. I felt so bad, but it was too late to take it back.”
“Oh,” she says softly, then reaches inside the bag and picks up the note, reading it in front of us, which surprises me.
I’m even more surprised when her eyes well up.
Hot damn, this is a day of turbulent emotions. I’ll have to ask Dottie if Mercury is in retrograde or something.
“You’re friendly with Eugene?” she asks, glancing up, the note fluttering in her hand.
“I am. He replaced me at Big Catch Brewing. I started hanging out with him to help with his transition, but we’ve become friends.”
I’m surprised by the truth of that.
“He had nothing but good things to say about you,” I say, wanting to make his case. “We’re sorry we screwed up his present, but I have to tell you, I was with him when he painted it, and I’ve never seen anyone take so much care with a gift.”
She sniffles a little, then nods. “Yes. Tell him I’ll be there.”
I reach out to take the bag with the hedgehog pieces, but she tightens her grip. “I’ll keep it. My daughter is good at fixing things. I’ll see if there’s something she can do.”
“You have a daughter?” Ollie asks in disbelief.
To my utter shock, Mrs. Applebaum laughs. “Yes, but she’s not a young child anymore. She’s thirty.”
“I didn’t know you were that old,” he says with the complete innocence of youth. Then he tugs the bottom of my shirt with all the subtlety of Travis when he wants to lodge a complaint. “Well, can we go, Hannah? I want to watch theTurtles.”
“My condolences,” Mrs. Applebaum says to me, letting her mask drop again. “But I admire your devotion.”
It’s as if I became a real person the moment I brought Eugene’s gift to her. It hits me that she’s probably dealt with hundreds if not thousands of parents and guardians making demands of her over the course of her career. She’d probably have to be good with boundaries to survive as a teacher.
I nod in acknowledgement. “I’ll tell Eugene you’ll be there.” I start to steer Ollie toward the door, but then stop and turn back. “By the way…you’re going to see a few changes in him.”
Better to warn her now, in case she was super attached to his awful mustache.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, his mustache is gone, and I helped him with some wardrobe updates.”
She smiles. “You remind me of my daughter. She’s always trying to help me the way she sees best. If she had her say, I’d be on every dating site on the internet. Of course, she’s had a hard time with dating too,” Mrs. Applebaum says, suddenly chatty. “But that’s to be expected. I don’t mind telling you, because Eugene knows, of course, but my ex-husband was a philanderer.”
“You deserve better,” I tell her.
“Perhaps I do.” She smiles at me and actually ruffles Ollie’s hair before we leave the classroom.
“That was weird,” Ollie says in the hall as we make our way toward the building’s main entrance.
“Adults are weird,” I agree.
