Edith's Diary Home Life Magazine October 2005 issue
As the days grow shorter and the air carries the crisp
bite of autumn, my thoughts turn to cool red apples, amber
sunlight and ghosts and goblins with flashlights wandering
the narrow country lane of our home in the Virginia hills.
Steve has picked a pumpkin from the sunny patch on the
hill and is in the kitchen right now sketching out an
elaborate jack-o'-lantern using the stencil pattern on
page twenty-two. Little Johnny is standing by, watching
with fascination. Soon he'll come in to help me make his
pirate costume. That's right, we're making it. No more hot
plastic masks that smell like glue, no nylon costumes that
fall apart halfway through your little one's candy
pilgrimage. Everything you need to make a wonderful and
memorable Halloween costume is probably already in your
house.
"Mommy!"
"Just a minute."
For the pirate costume, gather a red bandanna, black
sweatpants, long white sweat socks, aluminum foil, a
woman's long-sleeved blouse, some gold craft paint and a
plastic shower curtain ring for the pirate's earring —
"Mommy!"
Kit Macy stopped typing and pushed her laptop back on the
ancient Formica kitchen table with exaggerated patience.
Then she turned to the four-year-old who was still tugging
on her sleeve. "Are you on fire?"
"No —"
"Are you bleeding?"
"No, but —"
She lowered her chin. "Are you supposed to interrupt me
when I'm working?"
Johnny pressed his lips together and glanced at the
kitchen doorway behind him before saying, "No."
Big, guilty kid eyes. They got to her every time. Kit
smiled and ruffled his hair. "Look, I know you're hot and
bored. Just let me finish and we can go to the pool, okay?
Maybe Mr. Finnegan can fix the air conditioner while we're
gone." It was July, and the mugginess of the New Jersey
summer had already hit them full force. The fan Kit had
propped in the corner of the small apartment kitchen
sputtered ominously, and she glanced at it. "Before that
thing dies, too, and we melt." One more month and she
would be closing on her own house. A house with central
air-conditioning and a community pool.
Sometimes it was the only thought that kept her going.
Johnny gave a distracted nod. "Okay, but Mommy?"
She sighed. "Yes?"
"Um, Mommy? "Johnny, what?"
"Steve has something stuck on his nose."
It took a moment for her to rewind and replay the mental
tape. "What is it?"
He squirmed visibly around the question. "He wouldn't come
with me to show you."
Two nights ago Johnny had smeared peanut butter on Steve's
nose because it was "so funny to watch him try and lick it
off." A quick calculation told Kit that if Steve wasn't in
the kitchen — and he wasn't — it was likely that he was in
the TV room with her new sofa. Her new twelve-hundred-
dollar Open Space sofa with the custom vine-patterned
upholstery. That and peanut butter would make for an ugly
combination. Actually anything and peanut butter made for
an ugly combination.
She jumped up. "Where is he?"
"In my room," Johnny admitted, his voice small behind her
as she dashed out of the kitchen.
She rounded the corner to the small, dark hallway and
heard repeated sneezes behind Johnny's closed bedroom
door. "You're not supposed to lock him in there, baby, you
know that."
"I know," Johnny answered, drawing each syllable out
guiltily.
Kit pushed the door open and saw Steve, the black Labrador
mutt, lying on the floor, sneezing and growling and trying
to wrestle something off his nose. "Damn." She dropped to
the floor and tried to calm the squirming dog down enough
to remove the shower curtain ring she'd gotten out of the
bathroom to make an earring for the stupid pirate
costume. "Damn, damn, damn."
"You said a bad thing!"
"You're right." She pried the ring open and pulled it off
the dog's nose, trying to resist saying another stream
of "bad things."
"You know you're not supposed to put people things on
Steve. I've told you that like a hundred times already."
"That's not a people thing," Johnny said, his voice stern
with four-year-old condescension. "It's a bathroom thing."
"Today it's a people thing." Arguing with him was like
arguing with a slick Jersey lawyer. He always came up with
some loophole she hadn't previously covered. Last week, in
the late-night emergency pediatric clinic, it was that
she'd never actually said not to put the wheels from his
Matchbox cars into his ears. Now she looked at him
pointedly. "But, for the record, keep bathroom things away
from Steve, too." She examined the plastic ring. If it had
managed to squeeze that tightly on Steve's nose, it
probably wouldn't be all that good for a toddler's ear.
Frankly it had struck her as a stupid idea when the woman
from the local playgroup had mentioned it in the first
place. Now she'd have to come up with an alternative
before her deadline.
"What's it for anyway?" Johnny asked, taking the ring from
her and immediately getting it stuck on his fingertip. He
barely had time to whip up a good whine before Kit reached
over and pulled it off with a snap.
"It's supposed to be for your costume."
He looked skeptical. No, afraid. "I don't like it."
"Neither does Steve." Upon hearing his name, the dog
pushed his wet nose against her hand and she patted his
head.
"I don't like pirates."
"You don't have to."
"I don't like boats," Johnny went on, clearly covering all
pirate bases so that she wouldn't try to convince him to
be, say, a superhero pirate. "And I don't like earrings. I
don't like them at all."
Sometimes it felt as if he was plucking at her nerves as
though they were strings on an out-of-tune ukulele. "Look,
buddy, you don't need to like pirates. You don't need to
wear the costume on Halloween. All you need to do is be a
kid long enough for me to make sure these homemade
costumes work so I can print them in my column."
Though he was only four, Johnny had long since understood
that all the quirky domestic things his mother worked on
were part of her job as "Edith Chamberlain," Home Life
magazine's monthly "Edith's Diary" columnist. She'd been
the managing editor of the magazine for five years now,
but she'd taken over writing the column two and a half
years ago when the real Edith Chamberlain — who had
established the column forty years ago — had passed away.
"I don't want to be a princess, either," Johnny said in a
small, husky voice. He'd been saying it ever since she'd
taken him to the craft store to get the glitter for the
princess costume she was also detailing in her article.
Kit gave the dog one last pat, then stood up. "Yeah, well,
you're just trying the costume on for me, then we'll take
it off really fast, okay?"
His voice went glum. "Okay."
She looked at her watch. "In fact, we should do it now
because your dad's gonna come pick you up when he gets off
work in an hour."
"You said we could go to the pool!"
"We will. We'll try the costume on really quick, then
we'll go to the pool and watch for him from there. Deal?"
"Okay." He was already busy peeling off his sweaty Batman
T-shirt and the pull-up diapers her mother kept telling
her he was too old for. "Just put him in regular
underpants," Kit's mother would say. "If he messes them
up, he'll get uncomfortable in a hurry."