Tanya Michaels - Dating The Mrs. Smiths

She’d recently rediscovered her inner entrepreneur but lacked a good-sized living room for cramming in a semicircle of attendees. So, we’d invited the little old ladies of the neighborhood to my house for chips and dip and the chance to watch us model jewelry manufactured by Mrs. Winslow’s parent company, ZirStone. She and I would each get a cut from any sales. It just so happened she’d mentioned the business deal to me on the same day I’d been getting cost estimates from moving companies, catching me in a weak moment when I’d been contemplating hocking the television and VCR for cash.

Today was the party. I’d bribed Sara with a rented video I was allowing the kids to watch in my room. Ben was viewing the movie from inside the comfort of his playpen, accompanied by a few of his favorite toys. Now, if I could just get someone from the neighborhood interested in some of the quality synthetic gemstones we had available, perhaps I could justify losing half a Saturday of potential packing. But fifteen minutes into my sales pitch, a real-estate agent called wanting to show the house.

“I wanted to know if this afternoon would be good,” he said.

I peeked around the corner of the kitchen, where Mrs. Winslow was opening a gray box of earrings with a flourish Vanna White would have envied. “Approximately what time were you thinking?”

“We’re looking at a place the next subdivision over, so about ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes?” I could barely get both children properly strapped into their respective car seat and booster in that amount of time, much less empty the living room of guests.

Following my shrieked question, the buzz of conversation in the next room stopped abruptly.

There was also silence on the other end of the phone, but the man recovered quickly, sounding a tad defensive. “Look, if you don’t want prospective buyers to come see your house—”

“No, it’s not that.” I couldn’t afford to turn them away. How could I possibly make two monthly house payments? The mere thought prompted me to plead, “Please bring them by. But you have to understand that I wasn’t expecting to show the house today.”

“Oh, so there haven’t been many visitors?” Oh, so there’s not much interest and we can whittle down the asking price?

“Plenty! Just none scheduled for today,” I clarified. “I have a few people over, and you didn’t give us much notice—”

“We don’t want to disturb anyone,” he interrupted, back to the smoothly polished salesman’s voice with which he’d started the conversation. “We’ll have a quiet look around, and you and your guests will hardly notice we’re there.”

I got off the phone wondering how much of his estimated ten minutes were left and whether or not I should try to shoo the ladies out of the house. But they weren’t exactly in an age demographic known for speed and agility. Besides, it would look odder for people to view the house with empty folding chairs in the living room and a sideboard of half-eaten snacks than for them to just walk through while we concluded the jewelry show. Heck, if the potential buyers didn’t want the house, maybe I could still talk them into a faux black pearl bracelet.

I quickly updated the ladies, letting them know visitors would be walking through but that we should carry on as scheduled. I didn’t have to worry about wrangling the dog outside because I’d already let her into the sunroom before the jewelry shindig, but I did rush back to my room to check on the kids. God bless ’em, they were behaving perfectly. Ben was sitting in his play area flipping through a board book about fire trucks, while Sara was cuddled with Ellie on my bed, focused on her movie.

She barely glanced in my direction. “Is your party over, Mommy?”

“Not yet, but there are some people coming to see the house.”

“Do we have to leave again?” She did look at me then, annoyance clear on her young features. “I haven’t watched my favorite song yet.”

Though she’d stopped viewing potential buyers as The Enemy, she resented her life being disrupted for the convenience of others.

“Nope, just stay back here in Mommy’s room. Don’t even get off the bed, okay?”

Her brown eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “What if I have to use the bathroom?” The way she was always looking for loopholes, I figured she had a brilliant future as an attorney.

“Why not go use it now?” I suggested. “Hurry, because they’ll be here soon.”

I went back to the living room, suspecting Mrs. Winslow would try to cut me out of my half of the profits if I didn’t actually spend a few minutes helping her. I was explaining, as per the instructional brochure, why jewelry should be the last thing you put on before you go out when our doorbell rang. The Realtor let himself in before I got there, however. Either he’d only rung the bell to prevent startling anyone or he’d remembered after doing so that I had guests and didn’t want to interrupt.

Behind the agent, there was a harried-looking couple who wore matching we-stopped-being-able-to-tell-floor-plans-apart-twelve-houses-ago expressions. They had three kids in tow. I wasn’t sure this house had enough space for a family of five, but the youngest child was a girl who appeared to be about four, and I suspected she’d appreciate the girlish decor in Sara’s room, hopefully causing her to remember this as a house she liked. In case they gave the four-year-old a vote.

Yeesh, I really was desperate.

“Hi. Come on in, and please look around,” I invited. “Don’t feel like you’re imposing, just take your time.”

I barely resisted the urge to tack on, And we have some lovely blue topaz earrings that would match your eyes, ma’am.

The four-year-old made a beeline for the refreshment table, only to be scolded by her father, at which point she burst into tears. The middle child, a boy wearing a black T-shirt and a scowl that made me recall every time my dad had ever teased, “Your face is gonna freeze like that,” declared, “I don’t like this house. It smells funny.”

I chose to believe that any odor came from the combined eight or nine perfumes and numerous arthritis relief creams of my guests.

The Realtor cleared his throat, meeting my gaze. “Um, kitchen’s this way, is it?”

I nodded, but they hadn’t yet turned the corner when there was a cry from the back of the house. The realty party froze in place as I strode toward the hallway.

Sara catapulted out of my room, screaming, “Snake!” She was moving with astounding speed for someone who had Dora the Explorer panties down around her knees beneath her denim skirt.

I met her halfway, scooping her up and probably giving her a wedgie as I hurriedly tugged her undies into proper place. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “But there’s a snake, Mommy!”

In all the time we’d lived in this house, we had never once had a snake in the house—if we did, Tom was smart enough not to tell me about it—so why now? Why today? This was way beyond simple Murphy’s Law. This was more like Murphy’s Magna Carta. I instinctively muttered a phrase under my breath that I sincerely hoped Sara hadn’t heard.

With Ben still at the back of the house, I jogged down the hall, not acknowledging the buzz of alarmed comments behind me. “Where was it?”

“In the bathroom.” Her voice was shaking. “I was sitting on the potty, singing ‘Catalina Madalina,’ and I looked down and seen it. Saw it.”

“Okay. I’ll take care of it.” How?

Maybe it was just a little bitty garden snake, the harmless kind that could be tossed outside. Not that I particularly wanted to get close enough for tossing, but as the only adult in the family, these things fell to me. And if it isn’t harmless?