Emliy’s World: Slumber Party
Completed: 5/9/06
Rating: G with PG-13 insinuations
Summary: Emily negotiates her first slumber party
Author’s Notes: 13th in the Emily's World series. Read them in order.
“Can we paint fingertails?”
“Yes.”
“Can we watch Cinderella?”
“Yes.”
“Can we play make-up and hair?”
“Yes.”
“Can we…”
I look down at her biting her lower lip in concentration and trying to think of her next question, and take the opportunity to change the subject. “We need bowls for the M&Ms, grapes, and pretzels.”
Her big blue eyes light up, making her look exactly like her father. I know everyone says it’s me she looks like, but not when she’s got that face. “Can we… please can we use the bowls me and Aunt CJ painted at the Naked Clay Café? Please? Pretty, pretty, pretty please?”
“Aunt CJ and I, and yes. It’s your slumber party.” I smile at her and pull three cereal type bowls, hideously painted pink, purple, and green bowls with unreadable words, amoeba shaped happy faces, stars with seven arms, and something she claims is a fish out of the top shelf of the cabinet where they aren’t often seen.
She looks at them with pride. “We should use these every day.”
My eyes widen in horror. “Why don’t you put the pretzels and M&Ms in bowls and I’ll wash the grapes?”
“Ok,” she says happily, pulling a kitchen table chair over to the counter and climbing onto it. I open the M&Ms bag for her and tell her to pour slowly, then wash the grapes and pull them off their stems. When I look back at Emily, the bowl is empty and she’s suspiciously chewing on something.
“Emily, didn’t I ask you to put those into the bowl?”
“Yes,” she says around a full mouth before swallowing.
“Then why is your tongue blue?”
“I thought I should test them to make sure they’re yummy,” she says without skipping a beat.
“In case you forgot what M&Ms taste like?”
“I haven’t had any in a super duper long time, Mommy.” I don’t give her candy often, but any number of other adults in her life give it to her like it’s living water. Still, whether this statement is true or not isn’t clear. She hasn’t mastered lying yet, but her idea of a super duper long time differs greatly from mine.
“Well, I think you’ve had enough for now.”
“Ok,” Emily says cheerfully. She takes no very well. Neither Josh nor I know where that came from exactly.
I look up, and speaking of the devil, Josh has come home and is standing in the doorway that leads to the living room watching us with a small look of awe on his face. It’s nothing new, yet feels new every time. “Your daughter felt the need to sample the candy,” I tell him with a smile.
Emily turns around and sees him and her face lights up like he’s the most amazing thing in the world. It’s a look that doesn’t grow old to me or to him. She waves at him a whole five feet away and puts her arms up into the universal ‘pick me up’ position. He walks up and scoops her up, balancing her on his hip while grabbing a handful of M&Ms for himself. “She probably just wanted to make sure they taste good,” he says with a wink her way. I’m outnumbered.
“See Mommy,” Emily says with a giggle as she hugs his neck and he throws the M&Ms into his mouth. He kisses her cheek and then steps up to me and kisses me lightly and quickly, avoiding a groan from Emily.
I kiss him back and then slap his arm. “You’re not helping.”
He leans in and kisses me again, this time eliciting said groan from Emily. “Sorry.”
“Yes, I’m sure you are,” I say sarcastically, kissing him one more time. By now, Emily has her free hand over her eyes.
Once the allowable kissing in completed, he walks to the refrigerator and pokes his head inside. “What’s with the contraband food anyway?”
“You know very well what it’s for,” I tell him as I complete the M&M pouring.
“Daddy, can we play t-ball out back tonight?”
“Sure,” he says, kissing the tip of her nose before looking back at me. “I do?”
“Yes.” He’s in denial. Why does he think he got Emily’s sleeping bag out of the attic last night?
“And can we build a fort in the living room? A super duper big one like we did when Mommy was in
He looks back at Em with a smile. “Sure, if Mommy says it’s ok.” He looks back at me. “Seriously, I do?”
“And will you tell us a scary story? Super, duper, duper scary with monsters and republicans and dragons?”
He looks at Emily again but almost immediately snaps his head back to me. “No!”
“Yes,” I say calmly.
************
This can not be happening. I agreed to this? I can’t be held accountable for my actions last Sunday morning; I’d just had morning sex!
I immediately start reviewing this disaster in my mind, not that I can change the outcome now, but I still feel the need. CJ called at eight o’clock Sunday morning and asked if she could take Emily to Old Ebbitt Grill for breakfast, which is hardly child-friendly but makes Emily feel like a grown-up. They left around eight-thirty and I used my many manly charms to get the rare Sunday morning sex from Donna. CJ and Emily came back around ten thirty, and that’s when it happened.
“Mommy, Daddy, can you sit down please? I have a proposal for you,” she said after she’d walked in the door and screamed her arrival and Donna and I had quickly thrown on some clothes and come downstairs.
“Ok,” we said, sitting down on the couch while looking to CJ for some sort of clue. She gave us an evil smile.
“Mommy, Daddy. I’ve been very, very good at school rece…” she looked over at CJ.
“Recently,” CJ whispered.
She nodded and looked back at us. “Rescently. And I was a very good flower girl for Kelly.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Donna said with a smile. Not me though. I knew something was up. There’s always something up when CJ’s around. CJ’s trouble. Trouble, I tell you.
Then Emily started rambling. “And I didn’t get to go to Anna’s birthday party like all the other girls and spend the night and sleep in sleeping bags ‘cause of Kelly’s wedding. And I have a Barbie sleeping bag that Aunt CJ bought me and I never get to sleep in it because you always make me sleep in my bed and my birthday’s in the summer when school’s out so I can’t have a birthday slumber party like Anna and I’ve been really good and you love me.”
“Oh no,” Donna breathed out just loud enough for me to hear. I looked over at her in fear; she’d obviously figured out what Emily’s next sentence was going to be before me.
“So…” Emily took a deep breath and looked at CJ one more time. CJ nodded and Emily looked back at us. “I’d like to have a slumber party and invite ten girls and play games and have pizza and ice cream sundaes and sleep in sleeping bags in the living room.”
That might have been when I blacked out.
I look over at my wife, who’s pouring pretzels into one of Emily’s horrible bowls. “That’s tonight?”
She nods. “Yes.”
“What’s tonight?” Emily asks in near hysterics. “’Cause tonight’s my slumber party. We can’t have anything else tonight. Just my slumber party. You said I could have it!”
I look over at the little girl in my arms. I might be blacking out again.
“Nothing’s tonight, Munchkin,” Donna says. “Just your slumber party.”
“Ok,” Emily says relieved, looking back at me. “Will you tell us a scary story, Daddy?”
“Sure, Baby,” I say weakly.
**********
Fifteen minutes later, Emily’s sitting in Josh’s lap reading a Clifford the Big Red Dog book to him when the doorbell rings. “They’re here!” she screams loud enough to make him wince.
I head for the door, but Emily’s up and out of Josh’s lap in record time, running for the door. “Emily,” I say calmly.
She looks back at me, her hand on the door and a look of excitement in her eyes. “Yes?”
“Let’s remember our manners tonight, ok?”
She nods her head up and down quickly. “I will, Mommy.”
She uses both hands and all her strength to open the door as Josh and I stand a few feet back and watch. When she gets the door open, she takes one look at her friend, Anna, and squeals in a way I’ve never heard before. From anyone. Ever. Anna’s eyes widen and then she squeals too, and the two of them hug as though they haven’t seen each other in months, when it reality it was today at school.
Emily literally drags Anna inside, where they drop her duffel bag and Scooby Doo sleeping bag next to the door. Then they run upstairs and are out of sight before we’ve even introduced ourselves to her mother.
Within a half hour, everyone’s here and upstairs in Emily’s room. When I go upstairs to check on them, Emily’s introducing them to the important things in life. “This is my Bobo,” she says holding up her stuffed monkey. “My Uncle Toby bought him for me when I was borned, and he’s my favorite, so we have to be extra super careful with him.” What she really means is that he’s in horrible shape and one wrong pull will destroy him forever.
She leads them over to her closet next. “These are my purses. I have blue and pink and purple and flowers and… I don’t know what this is, but Daddy says it’s like straw.” Each girl chooses a purse for the evening, carefully matching it with the outfit she has on, and then Emily takes them to her dresser and starts pointing at pictures.
“This is my Grandma Lyman. She lives in the ocean. And this is my Grandma and Grandpa Bartlet. Grandpa Bartlet used to be the most famous person in the whole wide world and he lived in the White House, but now he lives on a farm in New Hamper with lots of animals. And when I go visit him, he lets me ride a horse. And Grandma Abbey taught me how to hear a heartbeat with a skelicoat. And this is my Grandma and Grandpa Moss. Grandpa Moss lets me drive his golf cart. It’s like a mini-car!”
She points to a picture on the wall next. “This is me and my Aunt CJ. She’s really cool and she’s on TV and this is her and me at her TV desk where she TV’s. And she told Mommy that she’s gonna buy me a car someday. I want a red one.”
I feel someone behind me and then Josh’s breath on my neck. “I thought you were hiding,” I say quietly.
He looks into the room. “Where are the rest of them?”
“The rest of them?”
“I thought there were going to be ten.”
“I negotiated down to five.”
He lets out a long breath and puts his arms around me, resting them on my stomach. “That’s why I married you.”
“I knew there had to be a reason,” I say with a smile as he kisses my shoulder.
“The pizza’s here.”
I nod. “Ladies?”
They look up at me. “Hi Mommy,” Emily says cheerfully.
“Hi, Baby. The pizza’s here.”
And then five little girls start shouting ‘yay’ as they run past Josh and me and down the steps towards the kitchen.
**********
As I sit at the table and watch them eat cheese pizza, carefully avoiding the green beans and salad Donna made to go with it, it’s like deja vu. Basically, they’re smaller versions of CJ, Donna, Margaret, Ginger, Bonnie and Carol talking over lunch in the Mess. It’s a little scary, but I pay no attention to it as I take a third slice of pizza from the box even though it earns me a look from Donna.
“Nuh huh. Jordon’s faster than Darren. He won in gym class.”
“Yeah, but Darren’s faster at recess.”
“But not as fast as
“Jessica said
“Cute?”
“Yuck!”
“Gross!”
“She wants to kiss him.”
“Kiss him?”
“On the lips?” You can guess who said that one.
“I don’t know, but I think he loves Emily.” This catches my attention and I look at them, my slice of pizza in mid-air.
“No he doesn’t!” she says with a scrunched up nose.
“He does too,” one of the girls says while nodding ferociously.
“He can’t even write his name!” I have to look down at the table to not laugh at this. Like mother, like daughter, going for the brain over the jock.
“But he drew you a heart.” Wait a minute! Wait a damn minute! A heart?
“So. I didn’t want his stupid heart. I threw it away and kicked him at recess!” That’s my girl!
“Emily Joan,” Donna says sternly.
Emily’s eyes widen and she looks over at Donna innocently. “I didn’t kick him hard, Mommy.”
“I don’t care. You don’t kick at all.”
“But he was bugging me while I was trying to swing! And he tried to hold my hand!”
“Then you kick him,” I say quickly.
“Josh!” Donna exclaims.
“What? If he tries to touch, she can kick. That’s the new rule.”
“That is absolutely not…” she takes a deep breath and looks at me in that way that tells me the subject will come back up later, then looks back at the girls with a smile. “Tell me about music class.”
“Oh,” another little girl says enthusiastically. “We sang ‘Shoes of John’ yesterday and everyone got to hold the shoe and then instead of ‘Shoes of John,’ it was ‘Shoes of whoever had the shoe.’ It was super duper fun!” And I thought the super duper thing was just Emily. Apparently not.
“And we played the rhythm game, and the girls won.”
“Of course they did,” Donna says with a smile. All the girls laugh.
**********
“Let’s put blue on one eye and brown on the other,” Erika says.
Don’t ask me how I got into this; I have no idea. One minute I’m doing dishes and trying to convince Josh that Emily doesn’t need to be taken out of her school and put into an all girls school, the next I’m sitting on the living room floor while the girls play Beauty Parlor with me as the client. Emily’s got all of her fingernail polish out, my old curlers and make-up are out, and there are at least four barrettes in my hair.
“Mrs. Lyman?”
“Yes?” I ask whoever it was who asked. My eyes are closed while Erika puts on my eye shadow, which puts me completely at their mercy.
“What color would you like your thumb nail?’
“Uhh…what color are my other nails?”
“Pink with sparkles, peach, red, and blue.”
“Hmmm… Do we have any yellow?”
She digs through the bottles of polish. “Yes.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Ok.”
Someone stabs me in the head with a bobby pin while trying to put a roller in my head and I wince. “Sorry.”
“That’s ok,” I say through gritted teeth. That hurt!
“Try to stay still, Mommy. Or your braid will be messy.” By ‘braid,’ Emily means two pieces of hair twisted around each other.
“Sorry, Princess.”
“That’s ok. Can we plug in your curling iron?”
“No.”
“Ok.”
I hear a gasp and then a male chuckle and I pull my head back and open my eyes as Josh grins at me around a mouthful of what I’m guessing is M&Ms. “Hi guys. Having fun?” he asks with laughter in his voice.
“Yeah!” they all shout at once in very loud voices.
“Daddy,” Emily says, jumping up and leaving me and my ‘braid’ in the lurch. “Does Mommy look brutiful?”
He looks at me with raised eyebrows before picking her up. “You guys are doing a very good job,” he says to her.
“Do you like her hair? That’s what I did.”
He nods, still smirking, the bastard. “That’s the prettiest part.”
“I know,” she says confidently.
“I like the blush too,” he says, cracking up a little bit.
“We put lots on her,” Erika says.
“I can tell.” He’s barely holding it together here.
“And lots of lipstick,” Anna says.
“Yes.”
“And I have lipstick on too,” Emily says. “Can you see it?”
He pretends to study her closely. “It’s perfect.”
She kisses him on the cheek, leaving a print, and all the girls giggle.
“Hey,” he says, lifting her high over his head so she’s parallel to the floor. “No lipstick for me!”
She laughs. “Spin me, Daddy. Spin me!”
He spins around a few times while she holds her hands out and yells ‘yay.’ When he puts her down, Morgan jumps up. “Will you spin me too, Mr. Lyman?”
His eyes widen a little and he looks at me and then at her. “Uhh… sure,” he says, reluctantly. He picks her up and does the same thing he did to Emily.
I look over at Emily just as her eyes widen and her mouth drops open. Then she closes her mouth and her bottom lip juts out, quivering just a little bit. Josh puts Morgan down a few seconds later and before anyone else gets a chance to use my husband as a toy, Emily stands in front of him, hugging onto his legs behind her. “No more spinning from Daddy.”
Josh looks at me with confusion in his eyes, but I just smile and pull myself up off the floor. “Who wants ice cream?”
“Me,” the six of them shout. Actually the seven of them. Josh shouts too. Which, in turn, makes the girls giggle. There’s a lot of giggling here tonight.
I, as usual, try not to feed his ego, and shake my head at him before looking back at the girls. “Why don’t you guys put on your pajamas and get out your sleeping bags, and I’ll get it ready.”
**********
“Ok, take this corner over there and hold it,” I say, handing a corner of a sheet to one of the girls. She does as told and I hand another corner to Emily. “And Baby, you take this one over there.”
She kisses my cheek and takes the sheet corner from me. I’m getting a lot of kisses and hugs from her tonight. I’m not sure why, but after the disturbing news of this Tyler gomer and Donna’s refusal to even consider changing Emily’s school, I’ll take as much attention as I can get.
I drape the corner I’m holding on top of the entertainment center and put an old law book of mine on top of it to hold it there. This should go a little better than it did when Emily and I did it a few weeks ago. After breaking that crystal vase of Donna’s, we learned that books are better used as weights than things made of glass.
I walk over to the girl holding one corner and turn to my other helpers. “I need another sheet and two safety pins.”
They rush to my side with the things and I pin the new sheet to the other one at that corner and then at Emily’s corner, then take the new, longer sheet and drape it over the fireplace. “Two more books.” By the time we’re done, the entire living room is a fort.
“Can we leave it up all night?” Emily asks.
“Sure.”
“And sleep under it?”
“Yep.”
“And you’ll tell us a scary story now?”
“Do you guys want to hear a scary story?”
“Yeah!” they all yell. There’s a lot of yelling here tonight.
“Ok, but you guys have to help me.” We turn off all the lights and crawl into the fort. This proves a little easier for them than it does for me, but we finally manage to get settled and we sit in a circle as I make up a scary story. “Once upon a time there were really, really, bad guys. They were ugly and scary looking. They had…” I look at one of the girls. “What?”
“They had… red eyes.”
I nod. “And long scraggly tangly hair and they spit when they talked.”
“Ooh!”
I smile. “And they had and swords and knives and pitchforks and they took all the little girls in the village and put them into dungeons and fed them…” I look at another little girl.
“Mouse guts?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say nodding. “Mouse guts. And snake heads. And…”
“
“Yes,
“Yuck!” all the girls yell.
“Who were the men, Daddy?”
“They were repu…” Crap. There might be one in the room. I should’ve vetted these kids. “They were called the Elephant Men.”
“Why?” another girl asks.
“Because… becuase they looked like men and spoke like men, but their faces were elephant faces.”
“Gross!”
**********
“Daddy.”
I sigh and tighten my grip on Donna, not quite coming out of my sleep.
“Daddy,” I hear quietly again.
I roll from my side to my back and open my eyes. Emily’s kneeling over me on the bed with her face very close to mine and it scares the crap out of me.
“Daddy, I think the Elephant Men are trying to get in.”
I close my eyes again for a second, then rub my eyes and look at the clock. “Sweetheart, it’s three o’clock in the morning.”
“It’s scary down there, Daddy,” she whispers. “We keep hearing noises.”
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“We’re too ascared to sleep.”
“Why don’t you go sleep in your room?”
“Cause Erika’s sleeping. We can’t leave her down there all alone or the Elephant Men will get her!”
“No they won’t.”
“Yes they will, Daddy. We need you to come sleep with us.”
“Em…”
“Please, Daddy?”
“What about your mo…” I trail off as I feel Donna’s elbow jab hard into my side.
“Please, Daddy? There’s noises down there. We need you to protect us.”
I close my eyes again for a few seconds and nod. “Ok, I’m coming.”
She climbs down off the bed and I roll back over to my side and kiss Donna’s shoulder. “You’re going down,” I whisper.
She chuckles and then Emily’s pulling at my hand and dragging me out of bed. “Come on, Daddy. Hurry.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I say, grabbing my pillow.
**********
I wake up early the next morning and pad down the steps. The sheet fort has given way and serves as an extra covering and Josh is asleep on the couch with Emily on top of him inside her sleeping bag. The other girls are sprawled out on the floor and the pretzel and M&M bowls are empty on the coffee table.
I kiss Emily’s head and Josh’s forehead, then make my way into the kitchen and start making pancakes and bacon. A few minutes later, Josh comes stumbling in and steals a piece of bacon, then holds me from behind with his chin on my shoulder.
“Sleep well?” he asks.
I nod and try to bite back my smile. “I did, and you?”
He groans and turns his head to kiss my neck. This distracts me from the cooking and the small sigh that emits from me encourages him to continue. Which he does until there’s a noise from the entrance way to the living room.
I look over and Emily’s standing there looking at us and shaking her head. Her hair and sleepy look resemble Josh, but the head shake is all me and reminds me that we made her together. Sometimes the magnitude of that scares me a little.
She walks over and hugs around Josh’s leg, resting her head on his thigh and using him as an upright sort of pillow. He reaches down and puts a hand on her head, leaving the other around my stomach and his chin on my shoulder, and we stand like that for a minute.
“Are your friends awake yet, Sweetheart.”
“No,” she says in a sleepy voice. “I’m tired, Mommy.”
I turn around and ease myself out of Josh’s embrace, and he bends down and picks her up, resting her on his hip between us. She lays her head on his chest and closes her eyes.
“Maybe you could take a nap after your friends leave,” I say softly.
She nods a little. “Kay.”
I look at Josh, who looks equally as tired. “You look like you could use an afternoon nap yourself.”
His eyes perk up and he smirks. He’s such a perv. “Absolutely.”
“Can I nap in your bed with you guys?” Emily asks in a pathetic voice.
Josh shakes his head back and forth while I put a hand on her back and rub lightly. “We’ll see, Honey.”
“You’ll probably want to sleep in your own bed with Bobo. I bet he missed you last night.”
I give my husband a pointed look. “We’ll talk about it later. For now, why don’t you go in and wake-up the others. Their parents will be here in a little bit and I’ve got pancakes and bacon.”
She opens her eyes wide and sits up a bit on Josh, suddenly wide awake. “I love bacon,” she says as though I’ve never noticed.
“I know,” I say with a small chuckle.
“Can I have four pieces?”
“No, but you may have one.”
Josh whispers something into her ear and she looks back at me.
“Why don’t we negotiate?” she asks with a smile on her face. “How about three.”
I cross my arms over my chest and ponder this. “Two.”
“Deal,” she says with a smile, kissing us both on the cheek, and then jumping down and running for the living room. “Thank you for letting me have a slumber party,” she yells as she runs.