The Chronicles of Marr-nia (Short Stories Starring Barbara Marr) (6 page)

Howard rolled his eyes and started pulling me away.

“Barb . . .”

Callie was covering her face.

“Mom . . .”

“Sorry,” Howard said to Stone-face.

“Sorry!?”
 
I shouted loud enough for the Space Shuttle to hear.
“Sorry?!
 
Don’t tell him you’re sorry!
 
That man has a bathroom and he’s not sharing!”

Callie took off ahead to distance herself from her raving lunatic of a mother, and Bethany wasn’t far behind.
 
Howard was pulling me away toward the exit with poor little Amber in tow, bravely bearing the embarrassment I had just caused her.

So the Metro station wasn’t Shangri-La.
 
It was the anti-Shangri-La.

Outside, with fresh air to help calm my frazzled nerves, I set myself to solving our new problem.
 
I scanned up one side of the street and down the other.
 
Nothing but cars in parking lots as far as the eye could see on our side, and an endless line of townhouses on the other.
 
No gas station.
 
No flashing red sign that said, “Restrooms HERE!”

“Let’s go.”
 
I grabbed Amber’s hand and started walking.

Everyone else followed.

“Where?”
Bethany
whined.

“Back to the car.
 
If we find a bathroom on the way, great.
 
Heck, I might stop at one of those townhouses and knock on the door if it gets really bad.” I looked at Amber.
 
“You okay, sweetie?
 
Can you hold it?”

Her eyes were rimmed in red, and she was biting her lip.
 
All she could do was nod.
 
My poor baby.
 
When this was all over, I’d make them pay.
 
I’d go to every news station and newspaper in the DC metropolitan area, exposing them for their intolerant practices.
 
Headlines would read: “Metro Turns Its Back on the Incontinent.
 
Mother Fights for Justice.”
 
The story would go national and soon I’d be sitting on a couch talking to Matt Lauer, who would feel my pain.
 
Metro would be screaming for mercy, apologizing publicly while simultaneously installing state-of-the-art public restrooms in all of its stations.
 
A Metro spokesperson would thank me, Barbara Marr, on the Oprah show for bringing this horrid lack of sensitivity on Metro’s part to the public eye.

We had all been walking as fast as little Amber’s feet could go and I was lost in my Metro Revenge reverie when
Bethany
pointed and hollered out at the top of her lungs.
 
“Look!
 
Look at the playground!”

Nearly at the end of my rope, I lashed out.
 
“
Bethany
.
 
Does it look like we have the luxury of time to be wasting at a playground so you can have a little fun?”

Bethany
’s face blanched at my fury and she shrunk back.

“Mom,” whispered Callie.
 
“I think she means to point out the building NEXT to the playground.”

Howard nodded.
 
“Looks like bathrooms to me.”

It was my turn to shrink.
 
Slowly, I turned my head, and there, to my wondrous eyes did appear a little playground at the base of a grassy hill, and next to that playground was a building made of brick that had the familiar appearance of a public restroom. I sent Amber running toward it.

“Go, Sweetie – we’ll catch up.”

Callie explored while
Bethany
sat morosely on a swing.
 
I looked at my watch for the first time since we’d left the station.
 
The groan was automatic.
 
“Nine forty-five,” I said to Howard.

“It will be ten thirty before we get on a train.
 
If we’re lucky.”

“After eleven before we get off that train.”

“Another twenty minutes to walk to the tidal basin to see the blossoms.”

“We’ll be tired and hungry and cranky.”

“And we won’t miss the crowds.”

I felt defeated.
 
As if the God of Family Fun had spit on us.
 
My dream of Shangri-La, dashed.

Amber skipped from the little brick building with a smile on her face.
 
She was ready to go again.

“Hey!” Callie was calling from the top of the little hill behind the building.
 
“Come here!”
 
There was a playfulness in her tone that I hadn’t heard since she’d hit puberty.
 
I gave Howard a shrug and the two of us headed her way, with Amber and Bethany passing by, leaving us in the dust.
 
By the time we reached the three girls, I was huffing and he was puffing.

“Look!
 
We don’t have to take the Metro after all,” Callie said with the happiest grin I’d seen on her face in years.

Amber and Bethany were jumping up and down, shrieking in glee.

It was a miracle.

I smiled.

Howard smiled.

I felt like Peter Finch in the movie
Lost Horizon,
standing at the rim of the mountain looking down into paradise.
 
We’d found our cherry blossoms.
 
I had my Shangri-La.
   

And it appeared to be our own little secret, save for a few others who dotted the landscape.

As it turned out the playground and adjoining public restroom were only a very small part of the larger, grassy park that lay on the other side of the hill.
 
And what encircled that grassy park?
 
Pink and white blossoms.
 
In what must have been a mimic of the
Washington
, DC Tidal Basin landscaping, easily a hundred cherry trees grew around the circumference of the park.

The girls tore happily down the hill.

Howard and I exchanged glances.

“I think I’m going to like it here,” I said.

“No crowds on the Metro?”

I sighed in relief.
 
“No crowds on the Metro.”

The air was warming nicely as we made our way down to the center of the grassy dell, and a gentle breeze kissed my face.
  
Howard and I pulled a thin blanket from one of the backpacks and sat while the girls danced under blossoms that floated to the ground like pink rain.

We stayed all day, eating our yummy sandwiches and frozen bananas, soaking in the sun and throwing a Frisbee.
 
The little hidden gem of a park even attracted a funny juggler and a couple of musicians.
 
And there was kite flying, just like the happy foot cream commercial.
 
For that moment in time, our life was perfect.

“I told you it would be fun,” I said to Howard as we packed up to leave.

He squinted at me.
 
“You only remember the good things.”

I nodded.
 
“The good things.
 
Shangri-La.”

“Missing Impossible”

A Barbara Marr Mystery Short

By Karen Cantwell

!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!

Haven’t read
Take the Monkeys and Run
?

Mysteries revealed in that laugh-out-loud novel

become
integral components in this action-packed short story.

Proceed at your own risk!

Or, purchase your Kindle version of
Take the Monkeys and Run
today!

“Missing Impossible”

We were on a stakeout.
 
The very air around us was electric with the excitement of potential danger.
 
On the edge of my seat with anticipation, my mind was ablaze with rich and vivid imaginings of what wild adventure might lay ahead.

Right.
 
In the movies maybe.

Here, not so much.

We were on a stakeout alright, but it wasn’t exciting.
 
It wasn’t even mildly interesting.
 
I had hoped for more.
 
I had hoped for sparking electric air.
 
I had dreamed of anticipation and the need to calculate some necessary mission-oriented action at a moment’s notice.
 
Instead, what I got was a cold cup of coffee in a stinky Buick while I sat shivering as the thermostat on the bank across the street read thirty-eight degrees.
 
That was in the sun.
 
We were in the shade.
 
Damn!

“What’s that awful smell?”

“
Dunno
,” answered Colt.
 
“Something in the trash, I guess.”

“Trash?”

“In the trunk,” he said matter-of-factly, as if I would understand.

I didn’t understand. This required further inquiry.
 

“Why is there trash in the trunk of your car?” I asked, trying to disguise my disgust.

“Part of the routine, Curly,” Colt mumbled while simultaneously chewing a
Boston
cream donut.
 
“Always check their trash.
 
Once they put it on the street,
it’s
public property.
 
I grabbed hers on the way over to pick you up – put it in the trunk.
 
We’ll go through it later.”
 
He sipped from his cup and swallowed down the last of his donut.
 
I wondered if his coffee had turned to slushy ice like mine had.

Colt Baron.
 
He’s a private investigator. To know him is to love him.
 
All women do.
 
My daughters love him, my friends love him, my mother loves him – although that wasn’t always the case – and of course, I love him.
 
Problem is
,
I have a husband.
 
If that weren’t complicated enough, Colt and my husband, Howard, were currently roommates in a two-bedroom condo across town.
 
Long story.
 
I could write a book on that one.

My name is Barbara Marr.
 
Most people just call me Barb, except for Colt, who calls me Curly.
 
To state the obvious – because I have curly hair.
 
The hair was once a sad mousy brown, but now belies my age as more and more dismal gray strands creep their evil way into the fray.
 
On a good hair day with some wash-in color, I can look a tad like Sarah Jessica Parker.
 
On a bad hair day I look like Don King’s long lost white sister.
 
But I’m forty-five years old and have birthed three children.
 
Who cares about a little messy hair?
 
Let’s face it – after a woman has presented herself panting and prostrate on a table with her legs in stirrups, with half the hospital staff viewing her wares every five minutes, a bad hair day is a walk in the park.

Back to the stinky Buick.

So there we were, Colt looking as handsome as ever with his yellow, wispy, want-to-run-your-fingers-through-it hair (nary a gray strand in sight), and me – old, cold, and grumpy –
 
contemplating the idea of rifling through putrid bags of trash.
 
So much for excitement.
 
Unless we found an unclaimed winning twenty-million dollar lotto ticket stuck to that messy (ahem) feminine product, the prospect seemed way less than attractive.

“We’re going to go digging through someone’s trash?”
 
I moaned, unable to hide the disgust any longer.
 
“This isn’t exactly what I thought investigating would be like.
 
Why did you drag me into this?”

“Drag you?”
 
Colt glared me down.
 
“You begged me, remember?”

“Well, ‘beg’ is a strong word.”
 
Pouting now, I slumped further down in my seat, working my coat around me as closely as I could to stave off the inevitable hypothermia.

“
Wanna
donut?”
 
Colt said, shoving a Donut King bag in front of my
frowny
face.
 
I was too cold to eat – the act itself would require me to expose my hands to the frigid air and possible frost bite.
 
I shook my head and shoved the bag away with my elbow.