The Dragon’s E-Mail Order Menage

Maggie rolled her eyes up to the heavens, cursing silently  as she saw her chance of getting out of this lecture-free steadily slipping away. This was going to come back around to her relatively quickly, that was pretty much a fact. She could always slip away again, but it would only be delaying the inevitable. If her mother had to send for her yet again, she was going to get her ass kicked (figuratively; her parents had never been much for corporal punishment and she was too old for that sort of thing now, anyway) in a way she had never experienced before.

 And so she waited in her silent and temporary retreat, watching as her mother’s expression softened towards the brother that was still practically a baby and waiting for her “come to Jesus” moment.

“All right, Eddie, all right, I can see that you’re sorry. It’s just that I can’t have each and every one of you crashing through here that way. Can you imagine the destruction you would leave in your wake? Why, just thinking about what the wall must look like behind the door makes my insides cringe.”

“I’ll repaint it!” he shouted excitedly, only lowering his voice when he saw the reproachful look his mother gave him. “I’ll repaint it, no problem. I bet I’d do a good job with it. I bet I’d do a really, really good job with it. Don’t you think?”

“I do. I really do. And you’ll do that for me later on, tomorrow maybe, won’t you? You’ll do it for me because you’re a good little boy. My good little boy.”

“I am! Tomorrow will be painting day!”

“Good. That’s good. Now, little man, tell me why you were so excited when you walked through our front door. It was like you saw the pope or something! Although I highly doubt the pope was out wandering in our fields. Seems unlikely to me, but I guess you never know. He’s the pope, after all. He can do whatever he wants and who are we to tell him otherwise? Right?”

“Right! But it wasn’t the pope I was excited about. It was Maggie.”

“Maggie?”

“Yup, Maggie. I found her, just the way you told me to. She was out underneath her tree. That big tree she likes to sit under so well. She was exactly where I thought she would be. I didn’t have to look more than the one place! I did just what you told me to, right Mamma? I did good.”

“Well. You did well, not good. But yes, you did. You did exactly as I asked you to. So where is she? Where’s my wayward Maggie?”

“Here, Mamma,” Maggie sighed and came out from behind the door that had thus far been concealing her. “I’m here. Eddie brought me in like a proper cop. He’ll be one of the police any day now. He’s already halfway trained.”

“Thank you, Eddie,” their mother said without  taking her now flinty looking eyes off Maggie’s face. “You’re a sweet boy to do exactly as your mother asks. You can go now. Run on upstairs, wash up for supper. I have a feeling there’ll be an extra bit of dessert for you this evening. I have a feeling you’ve earned it.”

“I knew it!” the boy crowed again, pure jubilation gleaming on his face. “I knew I’d get a reward. Pirates always get their treasure.”

“So you’re a pirate now, are you?”

The look on her face was sharp and inquisitive, making it clear to Edward Wallace that speaking of himself as a pirate was probably not the way to go if he wanted to keep on the good side of his dear mother. He shrugged his shoulders sheepishly and made his way hastily up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He wanted get himself into the shower and wash away more dirt than any boy had the right to accumulate in  a day.

Maggie thought that dirt was something he must set out looking for every morning, rolling around in it every chance he got to make sure he got good and filthy, He  was so covered in mud  he was barely recognizable by the day’s end. He was still pretty adorable, though, and she smiled at his quickly disappearing back fondly as he went.

It was a look she shared with her mother. Their  unbridled love for the boy was something the two of them most definitely had in common. Once he was out of view, however, there was nothing to distract them. The attention was squarely on Maggie’s shoulders, which was exactly where she didn’t want it to be. Her mother looked at her for a moment that seemed to go on forever, making her so uncomfortable that by the end of it she actually hoped her mother would say something, anything to put an end to the ongoing and unbelievably uncomfortable situation she found herself in.

“Well.”

“Hello Mother,” Maggie said, looking down at the floor that still needed sweeping and wishing her voice didn’t sound quite so sheepish.

“Hello there, Maggie. I see that your little brother has brought you home.”

“He has, much to his delight. I assume you sent him for me.”

“No, actually I didn’t. I think he just loves you. He knew how aggravated I was, went and brought you back to help you out.”

“Well he seemed pretty thrilled by the idea of me getting a lecture if he was out there to help me.”

“He’s nine,” her mother shot back in a withering voice that made her feel like she was the one who was only nine years old, “so yes, I suppose the idea of being the victor was an appealing one. I would think you would understand a thing like that.”

“I do. I’m sorry.”

God, this was not the way she wanted this conversation to go. During the whole walk back to the house, a walk that seemed to last forever and not nearly long enough. She  had gone over and over in her head what it was she wanted to say; how she would talk to her mother as an adult, as an equal. Even while she watched Eddie’s interaction with her, Maggie honestly believed that they could have that kind of a conversation and that it would be different than  the conversations they had engaged in before.