Chapter 35

Sandy and Madeline Jarecki strode through the Buffalo International Airport like they owned the building. They were decked out in matching brightly colored tropical print sundresses, neon pink sandals, Minnie Mouse sunglasses, straw hats, straw purses emblazoned with “Florida,” and each carried a stuffed sailfish under their arm. Heads turned as they walked through the terminal and a photograph was taken here or there, but the twins carried on like genuine celebrities, their heads turning neither left nor right. They were focused on one mission, and nothing was going to deter them.

Their parents had to rush to keep up, struggling under the load of carryon baggage, car seats, and the girl’s snacks, along with jackets and boots that the twins refused to wear. They were followed by Macy and Yi, who were watching the parade with great enjoyment.

Paul went to get the Ranger out of long-term parking while the girls collected the luggage and wrestled the twins into winter clothing. To keep the girls occupied while she collected the bags, Andi dialed up her mom, set up a face time call and handed the phone to the twins, then turned to Yi. “Ok, you’re on the clock. They tend to wander around when they talk on the phone, try to keep them corralled.” Then Andi and Macy headed off looking for the luggage, leaving the first-time governess Yi alone in a strange town, with two precocious children who weren’t interested in paying attention to her.

“Grandma Heather!” they cried as Heather’s face appeared on the screen.

“Grandma Heather? Like you have another grandma?” Heather knew Mama Giardino, occasionally called “Grandma Busketti” by the twins, and her insisting that she was going to be a grandmother to the girls. In fact, she and Mrs. Giardino spoke at length about Paul and John at the wedding reception and the Christmas dinner. However, being called Grandma Heather came as a bit of a surprise because she was used to being called simply Grandma.

“We do! We just got her before we went on the boat,” said Madeline.

“Yeah! Grandma Mama!” said Sandi, “she gives us busketti.”

“And ravolini!”

“And crams!” Heather smiled as she remembered the “crams” that Mama Giardini brought to the wedding reception, a huge plate of Clams Casino, and some of them were clam free for those with shellfish allergies and for the small children that were there. The twins turned up their noses at them until someone dropped one and Wonka gobbled it up. It was only then that they tried one and loved them.

“Where did you go on your vacation?”

The twins thought hard for a moment. There had to be something that happened in the past two or three weeks. “Mmmm ... oh yeah! We saw Micky, and Minnie, and Ella, and Snow White, and the Pirates, and a haunted house, and a train that went zoom! Zoom! Zoom!” The descriptions came fast and furious and it appeared to Heather that the rest of the vacation couldn’t hold a candle to Disney World for these two imps.

“What about the boat? Didn’t your mommy get a boat?”

“Yeah, that was pretty cool, but we got a boat too!” said Sandy. The twins considered the Zodiac theirs.

“It’s bouncy and you can touch the water and it has a motor and you can put it on top of mommy’s boat, and it takes us swimming and shopping...” Madeline was bubbling about the Zodiac. She then took a deep breath and continued, “ ... and I got a stuffy that looks like a unicorn fish and a ... oh wait, mommy wants to talk to you, bye Grandma!”

“Wuv yoo!” cried Sandy and Madeline in unison as Andi retrieved her phone. She killed the video feed and put her ear buds on.

“Hi mommy!” she said, and her cheery demeanor surprised even herself. She looked out the glass doors and saw that it was slushy and wet outside. A miserable gray day, cold and nasty and wet, her tropical vacation just a fading memory, and she has her “mother monster” on the phone. And through all that, she feels happy, almost elated to be talking to her mom cheerfully for the first time since that horrible news came back from Iraq.

“My goodness little one, you haven’t called me mommy in decades!” And Heather was right. Since Andi’s father died, so did a special piece of Andi. It was always “mother” or “ma”, rarely mom and never mommy.

“I know, mom, and I want to talk about it, just you and me. Together, with nothing going on to distract us and not over the phone, face to face, ok?”

Heather had waited so long to hear those words! Sadly, their mother-daughter relationship had cooled that horrible day, and Heather thought it had died in the years since her Danny died. She wanted to scream Yes! as loudly as possible, but she held back her excitement. “That sounds wonderful, dear, but...”

“No buts,” said Andi and she continued, “Fourth of July weekend. Trust me, it’s going to be great. We’ll fly you out then Paul and Harold and Yi can watch the twins while you and I have some girl time together ... ok? ... please say yes!”

“Of course, dear, Harold and I will love to be there.”

“Ok, gotta go. Paul just pulled up with the car. I’ll send more pictures later,” then in a softer tone, “I love you, mommy.”

Heather’s heart leaped into her throat; she hadn’t heard those words in almost 30 years. “I love you too, darling.”

Andi and Paul were still loading the luggage into the Ranger when John pulled up and after a long passionate kiss with Macy, he loaded up Macy and Yi’s luggage and drove off before Paul and Andi had the twins strapped into their car seats. “Awww, no fair!” cried Sandy.

“We didn’t have to wear these on the boat!” added Madeline as she tugged at the child seat restraints.

“You’re not on the boat anymore,” explained Andi. “There are crazy drivers here.”

“It’s yucky and cold and wet here!”

“Yeah, we want to go back to the Obamas!”

“That’s BAA-hamas,” corrected Andi for what felt like the one hundredth time.

She and Paul finally finished when Paul noticed Madeline was on the wrong side. She was seated on the right, and she always insisted on sitting on Sandy’s left. Right now, they were not saying anything, but experience has shown Andi and Paul that in about 20 minutes, the twins will notice and start complaining about everything as they got cranky over the seating arrangement. Keeping Sandy on the right side prevented arguments, so the exhausted parents switched out the girls and were soon on the road.

As they headed south on US 90, the sloppy, rainy weather soon turned to spring like weather, the snow was gone from the sides of the roads and was only seen in slowly melting drifts and piles at the ends of driveways, but as they merged on to “da two nineteen” and headed south towards “the snow belt”, winter returned. As they passed Orchard Park, snow gently fell from the sky. That is when the twins started sniffling.

Andi turned around and saw the pouting faces. “Hey, what’s wrong, you two?”

Sandy pouted. “It’s snowing. Bitty said she never seen snow before.” Huge tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I miss Bitty!” wailed Madeline and suddenly both were crying softly.

“Aww, come on you guys! Bitty had to go back to school.” Andi turned around to settle down the girls. “But she’ll be coming up to visit us this summer, and you can take her swimming in Poppa Paul’s pond!”

“I thought they would have missed Wonka,” said Paul softly.

“WONKA!” shrieked Sandy, “We forgot about Wonka!”

“NO ONE WAS THERE TO FEED HIM!” shrieked Madeline at the top of her lungs.

“AND THE CHICKENS!” cried Sandy.

As the twins wept in horror over the suspected deaths of their animal friends, Andi glared at Paul. The entire time they were gone, Wonka was never mentioned, and they agreed to keep it that way to prevent a scene like this. “I didn’t think they’d hear me over their crying,” pleaded Paul.

“Little five-year-old ears work a lot better than your jet engine deafened ears,” Andi reminded him. She loosened her seat belt and turned around. “Wonka is ok, Veronica, and Mister Ayato and Miss Julissa and Miss Veronica and Uncle John have been taking care of him, and the nice people with the piggies, Mr. and Mrs. Clemmons, have watched the chickens.”

“You sure they’re ok?” sniffed Sandy.

“They’re fine,” Andi assured them. “They would have called us if there was a problem.”

Madeline shuddered on the edge of crying again. “What if Wonka forgot us?”

“You’ll see, he remembers you,” said Paul. “He’ll be so happy to see you he may even piddle!”

Andi thought that Paul’s statement was to make the girls laugh, which it did, but it also turned out to be prophetic. Twenty minutes later, as the twins burst through the kitchen door, snow swirling about them, Wonka came up to everyone whining in excitement, his tail whirring like a fan, licking the girls’ hands and faces as they hugged him, adding to his excitement. They tried to tell him about their trip to Florida and to the “Obamas”, but he didn’t seem to care about their stories. He was just happy to have his girls back.

Just as the girls were ready to dash out of the kitchen, Gus appeared in the doorway, and with a grin said, “Are you ready to take a look?”

“Are you ready to start?” Andi’s eyes opened in anticipation of the project that first came to mind in the library on Christmas night.

“Start? I had my guys start before I got on the plane to go to Florida,” Gus exclaimed with a laugh. “Grab your coats. The best way to see this is from the main entrance.”

They put on their coats and, exiting the kitchen door, they walked around to the front and went in the front door. Previously, when you stepped in the front door, you were immediately taken by the grandeur of the main staircase and the crystal chandelier, the fancy parlor on the right, the 1950s style living room to the left. Now there was a bit of a hall to funnel you into the house. There was a dressing bench on each side of the hall with coat hooks, a bench to sit when you pulled on/off your boots, and a mirror to do that final check to your suit or dress when entering or exiting the building. The little entryway, only four feet long, matched the Victorian decor of the house perfectly. Even though it was newly constructed, it looks like it has always been there.

At the top of the grand staircase, they could see the twins running with Wonka barking and chasing them merrily, but they weren’t running back and forth. They were going in one direction, running laps. Andi had to climb the stairs partially to see that the balcony had been completed all the way around. The new handrail perfectly matched the handrail that had been serving this house for the past century. The grandeur of the beautiful staircase was not diminished by the addition of the “mudroom” whose primary function was to provide support for the new balcony extension.

As Andi and Paul inspected the woodwork where the new flooring met the original flooring, the twins and Wonka roared past them, all giggles and barks. “Do you wonder if this is the reason why the original owners didn’t extend the balcony all the way around?” Andi asked no one in particular.

“It seems likely,” smiled Gus.

“That was John,” said Paul as he hung up his phone, “they’re on their way over with...” he gave the twins a sideways glance, “our new employee. I told John to bring her in the front door.”

“And not the servant’s entrance?” asked Gus with mock surprise.

“Well, just this once,” answered Paul in a snobbish, mock tone.

“Come on girls, we have company coming!” called Andi, as she corralled the twins and headed them down the stairs. The twins can race up the staircase, but coming down they take slow measured steps. Paul wasn’t certain if it was because of their not being familiar with stairs or because their legs were so short. They made it to the bottom just in time to hear the stately doorbell ringing.

When Paul opened the door, the twin’s eyes shot wide open. “YI!” they shouted and threw themselves at their governess like they hadn’t seen her in months, and not the two hours it has been since they parted at the airport. For her part, Yi looked like a survivor of an Antarctic expedition. Clearly, the jacket she purchased in Florida couldn’t withstand a Buffalo winter.

Andi tried to greet Yi, but no one could get a word in sideways over the chattering of the twins and Wonka’s excited barking. While John, Gus, Macy, and Paul headed to the kitchen for coffee, Andi and Yi followed the twins up the stairs to show Yi her room. For her part, Yi was astounded by what little she has seen. “My God! This is a palace! How long does it take to clean this place?”

“I don’t know,” said Andi, “we have a service.”

Yi gave Andi a lecherous grin. “I love it when you talk dirty like that.”

“I said the same thing to Paul on my first day here.”

As they reached the top of the stairs, Sandy said, “Come on! You have to go this way!” and the twins took off running to their left. Yi turned to follow but Andi held her back and they watched the twins run a full lap of the balcony ending up at Yi’s new room, only feet from where Yi and Andi were standing at the head of the stairs.

Andi pointed out the new section of the balcony, “They’re excited because they can run laps up here now. Come on, let’s seen your new room.”

Yi was in shock over the size of the room. “Oh my God! Honestly, I’ve had smaller apartments!” And when she found the twins hiding in the bathtub, she kicked off her shoes and joined them in the tub, as did Andi. “This is incredible! Would you mind if I, uh ... entertained company?”

“We would appreciate it if you kept it down to one at a time.”

“Can we take baths with Yi?” asked Madeline.

Before Yi could answer, Andi chimed in, “That’s up to Miss Yi. This is her room. You can only come in here if she invites you. You have your own bathtub.”

“It’s not as cool as this one,” moaned Sandy.

“This is the same tub that Poppa and I have, and you bathe in it all the time. Poppa still has to show Miss Yi how to work the shower.”

“Work the shower?” asked Yi.