Glitter and Glue Read Free

untucked. Her lips are pressed together, her hands tucked under her thighs. If she could make herself disappear into the crease of the chair, she would. She has a round face, a dozen freckles sprinkled across each cheek, blue eyes, and thick sandy hair gilded with highlights that a middle-aged woman would pay a lot for.
    “Hello,” I say.
    “Hi,” she says, barely moving her lips.
    “So, you’re coming up on eight, right? Wow!” She looks at me like,
Really? Is it really so “wow”?
Her fingernail polish is chipped. I have a bottle of polish in my bag. I could fix her, too. “What grade are you in again?”
    She doesn’t answer.
    “Amelia Tanner, Kelly is asking you a question,” John prods from the kitchen.
    “Second.”
    “What are you watching?”
    “Television.”
Little Miss Smart-mouth
, I hear my mom say.
    “Do you like hard candy?” I hold out a lemon drop.
    “No. Thank you.” Her accent brings to mind the British Royals, as do her robotic manners. She doesn’t want a nanny. She knows how it is that her family has come to need the help of Some Lady. She knows I’m here to help everyone Transition. Even if no one else cares that a stranger will soon be making her sandwiches, zipping her jacket, and signing her permission slips on the line clearly marked
Parent’s Signature
, her loyalty is with her mother, wherever she is.
    “What’s your name?” Martin says, appearing behind me holding a big encyclopedic book called
Marsupials
.
    “You know my name, silly. Kelly.”
    “What’s your mum’s name?” he asks innocently. I glance over at Milly, who doesn’t seem to be disturbed by his question.
    “Um, Mary.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Kelly.”
    “What’s your mum’s name?” he says again, in the very same cheery tone that, mercifully, undercuts what otherwise would be an unbearably sad call-and-response.
    “Mary.”
    I look to Milly for help, but she’s busy transmitting her distrust using only her eyes:
Don’t think you can come in here and take over just because you’re all buddy-buddy with my chump brother
. She will not be diverted by my cheer and candy. She will not throw open the gates to the territory and stand by while I tromp all over their sacred ground.
    Well guess what, Milly Tanner? I don’t want to be here, either. I didn’t save for a year and fly halfway across the world to stir-fry kangaroo meat and pick up your “skivvies” off the bathroom floor. This was supposed to be my trip of a lifetime, my Technicolor dream.
    Things happen when you leave the house
. That’s my motto. I made it up on an Outward Bound trip after college. During the Solo—three days and three nights alone on a stretch of beach in the Florida Everglades with a tent, five gallons of water, an apple, an orange, and a first-aid kit—I made the most of what my hairy vegan counselor, Jane, called “a singular opportunity to plan your life.”
    After deciding where to put my tent, dragging my water into a patch of shade, floating naked and singing “I Will Survive”by Gloria Gaynor, I pulled out my journal and mapped out my life in yearly, sometimes monthly, increments. No way was I going to be just another apple rotting at the base of my mother’s tree. I was going to roll. I was going to Do Things Worth Doing and Know Things Worth Knowing. Seventy-two hours later, when Jane pulled up in the motorboat, all major decisions were settled: work, grad school, relationships, moves, marriage, childbearing. I went all the way up to my death, a peaceful event that I scheduled for 2057.
    But for all my zealous imagining, a year later I looked up from my life and was deeply unimpressed. I worked at the bottom rung of a nonprofit in downtown Baltimore, and thanks to the understandably pitiful pay, I lived with Libby, my grandmother on my mom’s side, which meant that except for Tuesdays, when I had Weight Watchers, I spent every weeknight eating roasted meats and Pillsbury dinner rolls with