The Moon and More(38)
Author: Sarah Dessen

“What did you just say?” she asked.

I closed my eyes, silently cursing myself. There were probably worse places for me to announce this than right in front of my mom, my nosiest sister, and Rebecca, who spent most of her time at work gossiping with her friends. But right then, I was hard-pressed to think of any of them.

“Nothing,” I said, reaching over to grab the catalog from Margo, as if looking at the available options of button-down shirts was the most crucial thing at that second. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Wow,” Margo said, her eyes wide. “I figured you’d probably break up in the fall, at school, but—”

“Hush,” my mom told her, then turned to me. “When did this happen?”

I shook my head, knowing I couldn’t even begin to talk about it. Just saying this out loud had made it more real than I was ready to acknowledge.

“Oh, my goodness. Is it Friday already?”

I looked up to see my grandmother in the conference room doorway, car keys in one hand, her purse in the other. Once again, she was saving me.

“It is,” Margo replied. “We’ve only just started, though.”

“What a relief,” my grandmother said, in her classic way that made it impossible to tell if she was being gracious or sarcastic. “I’ll be right back, just let me put this stuff away.”

She disappeared down the hallway, where we could hear her turning on lights in her office and pushing her creaking chair back from the desk before going into the kitchen for something. Meanwhile, we all just sat there, with everyone looking at me while I pretended they weren’t. Finally, my grandmother bustled back in.

“Okay, I’m here.” She sat down at the other end of the table, her regular spot, then plunked a bottled water in front of her and twisted off the cap. “What did I miss?”

“The short version?” I said. “People are stealing food and we have to buy our own uniforms.”

“The talking points are in detail here,” Margo added, shooting me a look as she pushed an agenda to Rebecca to pass down to her. My grandmother squinted at it over her reading glasses.

“Uniforms,” she said, taking a sip of her water. “Didn’t we already decide against this?”

“We tabled it for further discussion,” Margo said slowly. “Is that . . . are you drinking a coconut water?”

My grandmother glanced down at the bottle’s label. “I don’t know, it was in the fridge. They’re pretty good. Would you like a taste?”

Rebecca bit her lip, then looked down at the table. My mother said, “Margo is of the mind that the subcontractors should also be in company-chosen attire.”

“You want the pool guys in uniform?” my grandmother said. “We’re lucky to get them to wear shirts.”

“They wear shirts,” I said, a bit too defensively.

“Not usually,” she replied. “And who’s paying for all this?”

“Employees will be asked to purchase their own work ensembles,” Margo told her. She sounded uncommonly flustered, although whether by the water issue or this one was hard to say. “It’s standard business practice.”

“Maybe so, but it’s a bad one,” my grandmother told her. “We’ll be breeding resentment among the people who have the closest contact with the clients during their vacations.”

“Those same clients need to know who they are dealing with when someone shows up at their rental house,” Margo said, rallying a bit.

“Then we order T-shirts with our company logo and make them the uniform. Cheaper and easier.”

“This is a professional environment,” Margo argued. “We can’t be wearing T-shirts.”

“But maybe we wouldn’t have to,” my mom pointed out. “I mean, we’re here at the office. There’s no question who we work for. Margo’s right, there should be no confusion who is at the properties. So we do T-shirts for everyone who is making house calls, and we just continue as we are.”

This, in a nutshell, was how every Friday meeting went. Margo came in swinging with some Big Idea and she and I got into it. Then my grandmother shot her down, and my mom worked out a compromise. You’d think we would have figured out a shortcut, but for whatever reason, we still had to do it like this, every single time.

“So it’s decided,” my grandmother said, downing a bit more of Margo’s water. “Let’s get a quote from that T-shirt place we like. You know the one that we used for those giveaways last year.”

“Threadbare,” my mother said. “Over on Plexton.”

“Right. Margo, you’ll get some logos together for them?”

Margo nodded, but she didn’t look happy, the expression on her face the same one as when we were kids and me and Amber picked on her. Which was pretty often, if I was totally honest. Then, like now, she just made it too easy.

My mom and grandmother had already moved on, discussing some plumbing issue with one of the properties. I leaned over to Margo. “You know,” I said, as she sulkily crossed something off her agenda, “personally, I’d like having a required T-shirt. Then in the morning I wouldn’t even have to think about what to wear.”

She eyed my tank top. “Are you saying you do that now?”

And there you had it. No good deed—or kind word—goes unpunished. “Forget it,” I said, moving back again.

“Hey, I’m kidding.” She smiled at me, barely, then added, “I’m sorry about you and Luke.”

I nodded. “Me, too.”

“You think it’s really over, or just a fight?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “It’s just really weird.”

She gave me a sympathetic look, then reached over and squeezed my hand. Say what you would about Margo—and I said more than anyone—she was still my sister.

“Margo,” my grandmother said now, “can we go ahead and move through the rest of these items? I’ve got to be at the building department at nine thirty to make nice with that inspector about walkway setbacks.”

“Right.” Margo shuffled her papers, back in charge. “Next item: the new additional linen inventory system. If you’ll flip over your agenda, you’ll see that I’ve incorporated a new process for managing and documenting client towel requests. If we can all look at diagram A, I’ll . . .”