Mother's Tea Time

Robin changed her outfit three times before deciding to wear the bias cut skirt and jean jacket to the Forest Club’s Mother’s Tea Party. Beads of sweat bubbled up under a medium-beige Revlon foundation and her armpits produced half moons creasing her gauzy top. She would have to tie the jacket around her waist to cover the tear in the floral sheath. Wiping her brow with the back of her hand she thought about how she needed to make a good impression on the high school moms. Her daughter would soon attend a private academy, the first in the family.

Robin was not a fan of her daughter attending the posh high school or this new neighborhood in which she found herself. The community of Sweetwater and the school were her ex-husband’s idea of a great place to live, a step up for the family. But, when he packed a suitcase a few Christmases ago and skipped town, she was stuck with no line of credit for keeping up with the Joneses. She thought all was lost until a member of the board of trustees, her ex’s cousin pushed the paperwork and the school was able to wrangle a scholarship for her daughter Amanda.  That meant her dear daughter Amanda would get a blue ribbon academic education. It also held true that Amanda would come to understand the pitfalls of being penniless. She would not be going to Paris for summer vacations, nor would daddy tie a ribbon on a Mercedes in the school parking lot for her sixteenth birthday.

At first Robin was excited for the opportunity for her daughter to have the best education, but now she was afraid she had made a mistake. She had no clue how her daughter would survive amongst the privileged students. The private tennis lessons and yachts stationed on the French Riviera were beyond reach.  Robin couldn’t fathom how she would fit as a parent. Where were the lessons she needed to learn how to rub noses with the well heeled and newly schnozzled? Where was the encyclopedia on how to navigate the community of Sweetwater? Robin lived, breathed and spoke the heartbeat of New York City subways and apartments.  She did not understand the nuances of a big house, green lawns and ten o’clock siren for curfew. 

Robin revved up Old Betsy, her metallic blue Mazda Sedan. She noticed the needle hovered right above empty as she glided down the hill. She stuffed another holy card into the dash.  Saint Christopher would join Saint Michael and Saint Joan of Arc. Blocks before she arrived at the club, smoke curled from under the hood and the St Christopher card lit up. Why, she thought, was St. Christopher, patron saint of travellers letting her down. Flicking the card with her chipped nail she saw her tank was empty. The car jolted to a stop right as she rolled into a handicapped spot at the local pharmacy.  She would have to walk.

The ladies were already seated. Manicured pinkies pointed to the cream colored ceiling beams while the ladies pinched delicate teacups.  Robin strode in, her hair a tangled mess. She found a seat next to Mrs Permed and Bleached.  She nodded to Ms. Boobs and Ms. Lips as they turned away. She wondered if it was because she was late. 

“Ladies,”  Cordelia tinkled a glass bell. She was the parent-teacher coordinator.  “Ice breaker time. Please tell us something nobody knows about you.”

Cordelia Spencer was known for her organization skills. She was the head of the parent- teacher association and she coached soccer for three of her six children. She baked the cookies, perked the coffee and brought in more money than any other parent with her fundraising ideas. She personally interviewed the incoming teachers. She was so involved that no decision was made without her say so.

Robin thought of some possible answers under the heading ‘things no one knows about you,’ as she took in the ladies seated at the round table. She noticed Ms. Boobs, tanned and bejeweled popping out of her sausage skin top. Ms. Boobs had returned from her yearly trip to the Caribbean and sat beside her best friend, Ms. Lips.  Ms. Lips had a terrible habit of smirking and now her lips were a weapon.  Ms. Lips was a doctor’s wife and her only goal was for her son, Charlie to attend Harvard and Harvard only.  To her left  Mrs. Rose stared at her hands in her lap, the back of her neck a permanent “L” the result of a lifetime spent caring for so many babies and constant worry.

Robin reached for a cucumber sandwich, crustless of course, and a tiny triangle of carrot cake. A waiter poured hot water for tea. 

After downing several cups of Jasmine Tea, spliced with a hit of Vodka from her purse, Robin decided these ladies did not need to know about her. Why would she share her faults now? She thought about how just last week she ran over her neighbor’s Persian cat, hid it in a recycling bin then buried it in the backyard. She recalled how she made a pie configured with stolen rhubarb and she remembered a terrible garden accident where she poisoned a bank of thirty year old peonies draping her circular driveway. 

Share? A calamity? She thought not. She listened as some of the ladies stood up. 

“I have a law degree,” one stay at home mother confessed, her head hung low as if confessing.

“I used to be an assistant for President George H. W. Bush,” a woman said.

Ms. Boobs and Ms. Lips squirmed in their seats. 

“What’re you gonna say?”

“ I burned a frozen dinner last night.” Lips threw her head back and guffawed.

“I dyed all our clothes purple from Addison’s crayon in her pocket.” Ms Boobs said.

“Well,” she corrected, “I didn’t really do that, my housekeeper did.”

Robin stood smoothing her wrinkled skirt. 

“I fill my water bottle with vodka everyday. I’m an alcoholic.”

The room went dead. All the oxygen sucked into the dark shadows and would not release. She stared at every face. Frozen. Every mouth was a black hole.  

“Just kidding,” Robin said.

Then, a communal exhale as the whole room erupted into a laugh.

Ms. Lips and Ms. Boobs threw Robin an icy glare. Ms. Cordelia gathered her appointment book and colorful manila folders and made a point of saying she worked for weeks arranging this tea and she would not soon forget this day. 

Robin waited to leave the tea room, so no one would know her car was not in the parking lot. She toured the elegant space, staring at the portraits of old men in waistcoats. The subjects seemed to point crooked fingers at her and if she leaned in just right she could swear they ‘tsk tsked.’  She watched as the staff collected the dainty gold rimmed cups on trays.  Many nodded and chortled recalling Robin’s confession.  Robin turned away, not really sure where she stood.  She was not interested in being the entertainment, not for anyone. 

When Robin returned to her car she noticed a metal boot clamped to the back tire of Old Betsy. The Mazda stood in the handicapped spot and just like Robin, Old Betsy was stuck.

Robin called her only friend, Pauline, the mother of many and a collector of hearts. She knew Pauline would be a healing balm.

Soon Robin was sipping tea loaded with crystal sugar cubes in Pauline’s kitchen.  An antique enamel stove dominated the center of the room and Robin sat on the adjoining bench for warmth watching Pauline stir a pot of Wedding Soup. Robin likened the feel to a New York apartment, the bellow of heat and the counters piled high with National Geographics as the kids laughed and screamed with delight. If Robin closed her eyes she could imagine herself back in her New York apartment, until she was startled by the sound of an ambulance. Real New York she thought. But this sound was not a real emergency vehicle, instead it was a facsimile sound made by Pauline’s daughters.

“WE -OO, WE-OO, WE-OO.”

Two little girls in Black Watch Plaid wove their arms into a chair and carried their injured friend from her spill on the driveway. Pauline swept the sugar cubes from the table with her forearm as the two girls laid the patient on the melamine kitchen table. Pauline picked through her weather worn black medical bag for gauze, tape and astringent.  All eyes in the room were focused as their mother and friend-mom who morphed from soup chef to doctor, swabbing a saturated cotton ball and taping the bloody knee.

Robin watched from across the room, nursing her mug of tea.  A bystander to a medical emergency, just like days gone by in New York City. She had found her home away from home.