Purrycat Sims

“Hello? Mummy? It’s Margaret…” <click>

Jane-5 had come through on her promise to get Margaret her mother’s phone number, but so far it hadn’t helped Margaret at all. She’d been trying to call Tamara for days and each time she called she’d been hung up on. At first Tamara had babbled something about grilled cheese before hanging up, but 12 calls later she’d skipped directly to the hanging up part.

Margaret hung up the receiver, vowing not to call again. So far she’d made and broken that vow several times already, but this time she was adamant that she wouldn’t try to contact her mother again.

 

“Maybe in the morning I’ll wake up and I’ll have a whole new wardrobe, a room of my own, and friends at school,” she sighed. Poor Margaret, so happy and with heaps of friends as a child, wasn’t doing so well as a teenager. The kids in high school made fun of the way she dressed, her weird little brother, and now they’d started passing on gossip about her mother. Apparently she’d been seen wearing a cow outfit while selling grilled cheese sandwiches and trying to convince people to convert to the worship of Grilled Cheese.

 

Margaret walked back into her room, determined to just go to sleep and forget about everything for a while, but there was Anthony asleep in her bed. And he was snoring!

“Get out of my bed, you little freak!” she yelled. Anthony kept on sleeping and snoring, blissfully ignorant. She thought of going to her father about it, but then she remembered that he’d locked himself in the study to work. He’d just tell me to sleep in Anthony’s bed anyway, she thought angrily.

 

She thought of calling Alex, but decided against it. She knew it was silly, but she felt a bit weird complaining to him about her family now that she knew he was also her brother. Besides, Alex was still pretty sad about Grandpa and Grandma dying and his way of dealing with it was spending all his time studying to get college scholarships. He’d be too busy. Besides, he was a boy and Margaret really needed a woman to talk to.

Aunt Katherine was too busy learning to be a mother, and Aunty Amanda never talked about anything other than aliens or medicine. There was always… Margaret stopped the thought. She was supposed to be mad at her. Wasn’t she…?

 

The more Margaret thought about it though, the more she realised she wasn’t mad at her, not really. She’d always been really nice to Margaret, answering her countless questions, helping her pick out pretty clothes, and all the babyish furniture in her room that she hated now, she’d once really loved and she had picked those out for her. Suddenly Margaret realised that the woman she wanted to turn to wasn’t the woman she called Mummy, but the one who’d actually done all that stuff mothers were supposed to do.

 

She’d need the car. Margaret sneaked carefully under the window so her Daddy wouldn’t see her. He’d probably let her drive the car, but she’d have to tell him where she was going and she didn’t want to talk to him right now.

 

Luckily it was late night shopping, so Katie was only just starting to close up Girly Chic up for the night. Margaret flew up the stairs and into the shop. “Katie?” she called breathlessly.

 

“Margaret! What are you doing here? Is everything okay?” Katie ran over and enveloped Margaret in a big hug. She hadn’t seen the girl since Timothy had told her about them and about Alex, and she’d worried that Margaret blamed her for her mother leaving. Which she should, she reminded herself.

“I wasn’t but everything’s going to be okay now. You see, I was trying to call Mum…” she hesitated and tried again. “I mean, Tamara because Jane-5 has contacts, but she kept hanging up, and then Anthony was sleeping in my bed because I don’t have a room, and then I realised I didn’t need to talk to Tamara at all because you’re my mother!”

Katie blinked, opened her mouth to say something, the closed it again, with a puzzled frown on her face. “I need coffee,” she said. “Come up to the staff room. I think we both need coffee and to sit down. Then you can tell me all that again. Slowly,” she added.

 

Over cups of coffee, Margaret poured everything out to Katie about how her mother had left, what the kids at school were saying, how much she hated her clothes and not having her own room, and especially about how she’d figured out that Katie was more of a mother to her than Tamara ever had been. Katie got tears in her eyes while Margaret talked, but tried to hide it as best she could. It was too soon to tell her how happy she’d been when Alex and Margaret had become friends, and how much she’d like having her over and feeling like they were both her kids.

Instead she said, “I’ll talk to Timothy tomorrow about him moving you into a room of your own. A friend of Dad’s once told him that a girl needs a room of her own and a say in how it looks, and she was right. In the meantime, let’s go downstairs and talk to Marissa about getting you a new hairstyle. Then I’ll help you pick out some new clothes. We just had a new shipment come in, so I can guarantee you’ll have cooler clothes than any of the other kids at school.” She smiled as Margaret jumped up, so excited she nearly spilt the remains of her coffee everywhere.

“There’s one thing you have to promise me first though,” she warned.

“What?” asked Margaret.

“Go easy on your mother,” Katie said, ignoring the pout on Margaret’s face. “I mean it. She’s not well, Margaret, and I’m sure she doesn’t mean to hang up on you. She probably just needs to be alone for a while to get better.”

“Fine – I wasn’t going to call her again anyway,” Margaret said sulkily.

“Good enough, kiddo.” Katie knew that was the best she could do for now. “Come on, let’s catch Marissa before she leaves for the night.”

 

Marissa was happy to stay back a bit to help out. She loved giving people new looks and seeing their faces when they saw how pretty they could be with a different hairstyle and the right makeup.

“Okay, Margaret, get ready. Once I’m done with you, you won’t recognise yourself!”

“Uhh… is that a good thing?” asked Margaret nervously.

“Trust me,” beamed Marissa.

 

Some streaks and layers, and a crash course in how to use makeup more subtly, and Margaret was ready to try on some new clothes.

 

They picked out a whole wardrobe of cool new outfits, but this was Margaret’s favourite. Marie, Uncle Thomas’ fiancé, told her that she used to have an outfit just like that and loved it as well. That worked great for Margaret who’d always thought Marie was almost as pretty and cool as Katie herself.

 

That night, before going to bed, Margaret snuck upstairs and pretended to play guitar for a bit, practising the faces that rock stars make. She felt cooler already.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 21st, 2007 at 10:08 am and is filed under Lonely River. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.