by
Aimee
(aimeed@earthlink.net)
C.C. deftly twirled a lock of golden hair around her finger and slid a pin through it, finishing the artlessly elegant cluster of ringlets at the crown of her head. Just as she reached for a small gold-handled brush to touch up her lipstick, a tiny voice piped in her ear:
"Mommy, you’re beautiful."
C.C. turned to find that her six-year-old daughter had slid from the little stool where she’d been kicking her feet in silence for ten minutes or so, and was now standing beside the dressing table. "Well I must be, sweetheart, I look just like you. Are your hands clean?" Morgan nodded. "Then come here." Morgan stretched out her arms and C.C. gathered her onto her lap. "See? But I think you’re just a little bit prettier."
"No, you are," Morgan answered, looking shyly into the mirror.
"No, you are." C.C. squeezed Morgan.
"Mommy, don’t, you’ll wrinkle your dress!" C.C. looked surprised. Where did Morgan pick these things up? Then she remembered. The other day, Morgan had been dressed for a party and had wanted to play tag with Jonah and Eve. C.C. had substituted a quiet game of Candyland so that the little girls wouldn’t wrinkle their party dresses. C.C. began to wonder if she wasn’t just a little too strict. Morgan was entirely too fastidious and proper for a child.
C.C. debated how to answer her. Finally, she replied, "Well, a little hugging won’t kill me."
Morgan wrapped her arms around C.C.’s neck. "Mommy, I was just watching Fran get ready for the party."
"Oh? And what is Fran wearing?"
"Blue sparkles. Max said it’s too low cut and Fran got mad."
C.C. laughed. "What do you think of mine?"
Morgan slid off C.C.’s lap and surveyed C.C.’s floor length white satin evening gown. "It’s pretty. When do I get it?" Morgan had a trunk full of C.C.’s discarded gowns.
"Not for a while, darling, Mummy likes this dress."
Niles came in from the bathroom clad in a tuxedo. "Daddy likes this dress, too." He put his arms around C.C. from behind. She turned her face up for him to kiss her.
As he moved to swing Morgan up in his arms C.C. asked, "What do you think, Morgan? Would Daddy look good in my dress?" Morgan giggled. "Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time."
Morgan’s eyes widened. "Daddy never wore a dress!"
"Oh, yes, he did! Mommy had to fix it so Daddy stood on a chair in the kitchen and modeled it. He looked so cute."
"Not as cute as Mommy did with a mustache and a beard made of shoe polish."
"Still not as good as Daddy doing the Risky Business dance – " C.C. cut herself off before mentioning that Niles had been in his boxers at the time.
"Morgan, did you know that Mommy can cluck just like a chicken?"
"Oh, yes! Mommy can do all kinds of animal noises when she reads me stories."
"Oh, she can, can she? I’ll have to stop in and have a listen." Niles quirked his eyebrow at C.C.. "Maybe I’ll bring the video camera and send the tape to Grandma BB."
"Niles, why don’t you go and ask Max when they’ll be ready to leave?"
"No, I like this conversation."
"Morgan, go find Daddy’s feather duster and hold it for ransom until he does as I ask."
"Oh, no, princess, no need. Daddy’s going."
Niles left, and as he did, C.C. admired the tailored fit of his tuxedo. "Daddy’s the handsomest man in the world," she sighed. Morgan nodded. After six years of marriage, C.C. was more smart-mouthed, more of a prankster, and more madly in love with her incorrigible husband than ever. "Listen, sweetheart, Mommy’s got a few minutes. Want me to do your hair?"
Morgan frowned. She disliked being fussed with, and C.C. had been known to change her hair and dress three times a day just for fun. "Will you do it like yours?" That was grown-up stuff, so it was different.
"Deal."
Morgan stood before C.C., looking into the mirror. As C.C. ran the brush through her hair, Morgan squirmed uncomfortably. "Mommy, can I ask a question?"
"You can always ask a question."
"Are you going to have another baby?"
C.C. froze for a moment, then returned to brushing Morgan’s hair. "No, why do you ask?"
"I kind of want a baby."
"Well – " C.C. hesitated before answering. Swallowing her pride, she admitted, "I think maybe I’m a little too old to have another baby, sweetheart. Would you like another doll?" Morgan flinched as a hairpin jabbed her in the head.
Now that was a loaded question. Morgan cleverly replied, "I’ve got lots, but there’s always room for more."
"Yes, you’ve still got almost an inch of the bed left to yourself," her father commented as he returned. He squeezed C.C.’s shoulder gently, aware of how difficult it must have been to admit that she was getting older. They all still saw her as the young dynamo who helped put Sheffield Productions, now Sheffield Babcock Productions, on the map. "Max is ready. Fran said she’d be ready in five minutes."
"Good, I’ve got at least fifteen then." C.C. stuck another pin into Morgan’s hair. Niles watched them together. "My little porcelain dolls," he said fondly. The resemblance between mother and daughter was unbelievable. Morgan was a flawless reproduction of C.C., the patrician features translated into a softer, rounder miniature clad in pink silk. She did, however, have a slightly reddish tint to her blonde hair and a merry look in her eyes that came from Niles.
"Mommy, why can’t you have another baby? How do they happen?"
Niles’ eyes met C.C.’s in the mirror, and she saw the devilish grin. "Well, Mommy, I know you’re impatient to get going, so I’ll just run along and see what’s keeping Fran."
"You get back here now! Your daughter just asked a question, and – " It was too late. Niles was gone, off to tell Fran and Max about C.C.’s latest predicament.
C.C. continued to pin Morgan’s hair as she wrestled with a suitable reply. She thought seriously about fobbing this one off on Fran. She was the former nanny, after all. But one of C.C.’s most deep-seated fears of motherhood circled around the idea that Fran, with her natural way with kids, would be a better mother to Morgan than C.C.. C.C., therefore, always tried to be the one who was there for Morgan even when it was difficult for her to know what to do. And to her surprise, over the years the bond between the two "porcelain dolls" had become so strong that C.C., who hadn’t a maternal bone in her body, had become Morgan’s favorite confidant.
Morgan was still waiting for an answer. C.C. sighed. "Well, you know what Max and I do for a living, right?"
"You put on plays and TV shows together."
"Right. It’s a joint effort, where I do the things I do best, Max does what he does best, and we both work together. A show is like a baby, only I make shows with Max and I made you with Daddy." C.C. heaved a sigh, relieved at her clever escape.
Morgan thought a moment. "But babies come out of mommies. Eve told me so."
C.C. grimaced. Evidently Morgan knew a little more than she was telling, and God only knew what crazy ideas two six-year-old girls could come up with if left to their own devices. She was going to have to explain in detail. And then she was going to strangle that coward Niles.
Fran was scowling at the coward at that very moment. "You get back up there right now and help her!"
"Not I. Morgan asked Mommy, and Mommy can deal with it. Anyway, this is C.C. we’re talking about. Just think about the C.C. we know and try to imagine her explaining the birds and the bees to a six-year-old."
Max, Fran, and Niles just looked at each other. This was the C.C. who had once fended off a room full of child actors with a chair, the C.C. to whom "low-cut" was synonymous with "low class," the C.C. who had taken to drink when Fran went into labor and fainted when she learned of her own pregnancy. They burst out laughing.
They were still chortling when C.C. joined then a couple of minutes later. "I’m going to kill you," she informed Niles. "I had to promise to take her to the library tomorrow and find some books on it."
"You should know where those are."
"Then I have to read them to her."
"I don’t know if that’s a good idea," her husband replied. "You’re way too good with sound effects." He bent double laughing. C.C. gave him a shove that toppled him onto the sofa.
Fran and Max pulled him to his feet and the four of them started toward the front door. "I’m sorry," Niles told C.C. as he took her arm. "I trust you. You’re a wonderful mother. Just remember that the high school football team is not actually part of the biological process."
"I’m going to tell her she mustn’t do it until she meets the person she’ll marry."
"Good."
"Just like Daddy."
"Lying wench!"
"Gigolo!"
"Easy woman!"
"Easy-off!"
"Slut!"
"Servant!"
"Yuck! You and Daddy did that?" Identical shades of red colored the cheeks of C.C. and her daughter late the next afternoon. C.C. had taken a couple of hours from work to take Morgan to the library as promised, and now they both sat in the nursery, lesson finished. Or so C.C. thought.
"Well, it’s a grown-up thing. A married-people thing." Wow, she didn't feel like a hypocrite or anything, nooooooooo.
Morgan was playing with the remains of a lipstick, and she had a sparkly silver evening gown on over her powder-blue school dress. "A grown-up thing like makeup and party dresses?" she asked with interest.
C.C. thought fast. "No, more like, umm, you know, dinner parties and going to work."
"Oh. It’s no fun."
"Well, it is to grown-ups, but children don’t get it because they aren’t old enough. When you’re grown up you’ll understand."
"Well, I’m never going to do that."
"Works for me."
"Mommy, how did you learn about this?"
"In school."
"Not from Grandma BB?"
"Definitely not." Although she’s quite the expert, C.C. thought sarcastically.
Morgan hopped off her chair, blonde curls bouncing. "Well, thanks for explaining, but next time I have a question, just tell me I’m not old enough to know."
My pleasure, thought C.C.
"And don’t worry about having another baby. I don’t blame you for not wanting one if that’s how it happens." Morgan picked up a baby doll in a white lace dress and hurried to the door, leaving C.C. sitting alone surrounded by open books and diagrams.
On her way out Morgan met Niles. "Hi, princess. Did Mommy get all your questions answered?"
"Yes, and that’s icky!" Morgan hurried past him, her evening gown hiked up, her doll baby tucked under her arm. "I need an ice cream." She was too embarrassed even to look at Niles as she ran down the stairs.
"That was the most traumatic two hours of my life," C.C. informed him. "I think Morgan's scarred for life."
"Oh, a little mint chocolate chip will cheer her up."
"On the bright side, she says she's never going to do that icky thing."
"C.C., you are a genius!"
"If only I had her common sense, I wouldn't be married to the butler," C.C. teased, rising and tossing her book aside to wrap her arms around his waist. She lay her head on his shoulder.
Niles kissed the top of her head and let his hands drift down her back to her derriere. "Thank God you don't have the common sense that God gave all the other goats."
"Thank God you don't have the back hair God gave all the other bulls."
"Bulls?" he questioned.
"Mmmm. Well, you always call me a cow, so what does that make you?"
"Come to think of it, a bull. Want me to prove it?"
"Niles! In the middle of the afternoon? Okay."
The End
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