Hello! Apologies for the delay in this week's update; this chapter needed a little editing, and life is crazy as I'm sure you all know. Enjoy! :)
Chapter 5: Spilling Tea with Mrs. Valerius
It was clear which children were leaders, which ones preferred to watch quietly from the sidelines, and which ones were only here because their parents forced them out of the house.
Erik never paid attention unless he needed to boss someone around or have the final say on an argument. He'd already scribbled on all the blank sides of the pages in his notepad, so he turned the lined pages into music staves. The skittish masked man jumped in surprise when Christine angrily tapped the page with her pencil.
"We're writing a play, not composing an opera," she chided.
Erik rolled his eyes. He turned his attention back to the camp, but Erik's attention span was worse than a child's. Within minutes, he was back to his notepad.
Christine already had to watch over thirty-six children. She didn't need a thirty-seventh. Erik's notebook was confiscated, and he stared glumly at the ground until lunch when Christine returned it to him with a warning.
It made things easier on the counselors, or counselor, that a large chunk of the children had no interest in contributing to the script-writing process. There was enough input from the few campers who wanted to help, and by the end of the first week, a rough draft was finished. It was much too messy for Christine's taste, but it was a very good start. She shut her laptop where she'd been typing up the draft.
"Do you have an email address?" Christine asked Erik before they left for the weekend. "I'm going to finish the script and I can send you a final draft."
"Yeah, I'll write it down for you." Erik ripped one of his drawings from his precious notepad and wrote his email address in between music notes.
"Thanks. Have a good weekend." Christine tore the paper from Erik's hand and breezed out of the theatre without another word.
She was annoyed that Erik didn't offer to help her finish the draft, but when she arrived at her car, Christine realized her good fortune. Erik would be no help; he'd take control and ruin everything, if he bothered to open the document that is. Erik either ran the show or did no work at all. There was no in between.
When Christine sat in her car, she looked at the email address. It was just 'erik' followed by a bunch of numbers that probably meant something to him, but were numerical gibberish to her. She snorted at the domain name. Who even used AOL anymore? There was a good chance any email she sent Erik would remain unopened.
Christine pulled into the driveway of her house, the same house she grew up in. No matter how long she stayed away from Gothenburg, Christine had enjoyed returning home and staying with her father, but now the house was too quiet without his booming laughter and ubiquitous violin music. Sometimes, however, the peace and quiet of the house was preferable. Before the exhausted Christine could unlock her front door, a voice called out to her.
"Hello, Christine! Come over for tea!" Mrs. Valerius waved from a rocking chair on her front porch two doors down.
"Alright. I'll be right over. I just need to drop my things inside." Christine slipped through her front door, ignoring the old woman's insistence that Christine was perfectly welcome to bring her things over for tea.
The tea kettle was already whistling when Christine knocked on her neighbor's door. Mrs. Valerius led Christine into the living room and disappeared into the kitchen to fetch the tea tray.
"I'm so glad you came, Christine. It's been much too long since you visited me."
"Oh, I suppose it's been a week or two." Christine thanked the old woman for the steaming cup of tea being shoved into her hands.
"Exactly as I said. Much too long," Mrs. Valerius said briskly. "Here. I baked kanelbullar for you. Remind me I have an extra plate for you to take home."
Mrs. Valerius was the grandmother Christine never had. Kanelbullar had been Christine's favorite treat since she was a girl, so the old woman baked it frequently for her. Mrs. Valerius shoved the platter into Christine's face, encouraging her to take as many as she wanted, and Christine loaded her plate.
"You know, Christine, I've been feeling under the weather lately," Mrs. Valerius said as she settled down in her armchair and picked up her knitting.
"I'm very sorry to hear that. Nothing bad, I hope?" Christine said through a mouthful of kanelbulle. Come to think of it, it had been a while since Mrs. Valerius lovingly pestered her over for tea.
"Oh, it's absolutely terrible!" Mrs. Valerius wailed dramatically. Christine's heart stopped, but the old woman continued knitting as if nothing was ailing her. "It's just awful! I'm normally such a healthy woman, you know, but of course I come down with something at the same time as the most interesting thing to happen in this town in my entire eighty-six years!"
"What do you mean?" Christine looked at her hostess with a mixture of confusion and concern.
"Oh, don't pretend you don't know, Christine. Everyone knows. I'm talking about the masked man! The one who moved into the old Leroux place!" Mrs. Valerius clarified as if there were multiple masked men prowling around Gothenburg.
"Oh..." Christine groaned. Yes, of course she knew about the masked man. She knew more than she needed or wanted to know about the masked man.
"He's helping you with the summer camp, isn't he?" Mrs. Valerius asked. Christine nodded.
So, that's why Mrs. Valerius was so anxious to see her. The old woman wanted information. People were prone to gossip in a small town, especially the elderly generation, but it was no secret Mrs. Valerius was the nosiest woman in all of Gothenburg. It'd been killing her that she hadn't been able to hobble across town and introduce herself to the masked man who'd moved into the local haunted house.
"His name's Erik," Christine shared. There was no use beating around the bush. Mrs. Valerius would get the information she wanted if she had to forcibly extract it from Christine's lips.
"Erik? That's a Scandinavian name, Christine! Do you think he's Swedish?"
Mrs. Valerius' ancestors hailed from Sweden, and she was proud of it. Their shared ethnic heritage was likely the only reason Christine was a favorite of the kindly old woman.
"I'm afraid I'm not sure," Christine replied. Erik wasn't a stereotypical blond-hair-blue-eyed Scandinavian like herself, and she didn't even know his last name, which would be a more surefire way of guessing his ethnicity than merely examining his appearance.
"Well, you must remember to ask him when you see him, because if he is Swedish, I'll have the two of you over for dinner and I'll make kroppkakor," said Mrs. Valerius coyly.
Christine closed her eyes and sighed at the old woman's attempt to play matchmaker.
"Alright, Mrs. Valerius. I'll try to remember to ask," Christine lied. She didn't care to know the answer, and she refused to have dinner with Erik, no matter how decadent and delicious the dinner would be.
"Do you like him, Christine?" Mrs. Valerius asked slyly without looking up from her knitting.
"No. I don't like him. I'm afraid I've never hated anyone more in my entire life."
"Hmph. Well then he can't possibly be Swedish then. He's probably Norwegian," said the old woman prejudicially.
Christine let out a long exasperated sigh as her face fell into her hands.
"Mrs. Valerius, you really can't go about saying those sorts of things."
"Hmph."
There'd apparently been an ancient rivalry between the Swedes and Norwegians. Christine never found it troublesome during her lifetime, and it likely hadn't been problematic during Mrs. Valerius' lifetime either, but every once in a while the patriotic old woman acted as though it were a very prominent issue.
"Besides," continued Christine, "I don't think Erik is Norwegian, or Scandinavian at all for that matter." Like she had a clue. For all she knew, Erik was Danish.
"Why don't you like him, Christine?"
"I just find him to be very rude. He thinks he is better than everyone just because he comes from a big city."
Mrs. Valerius gasped. She had some unsavory opinions of city people.
"What does he say?" the old woman asked sharply. Her knitting speed picked up intensity.
"Oh...well...I don't remember exactly," Christine said cautiously. What Mrs. Valerius didn't wouldn't hurt her. "He just looks down on us 'small town folk' I guess."
"Oh, he better be very careful what he says around these parts."
Mrs. Valerius squinted her eyes in anger. Christine had never seen anyone knit so rapidly before. The old woman must be livid. If there was one place Mrs. Valerius loved more than her ancestral homeland, it was her hometown of Gothenburg, which of course was named after the great Swedish city.
Mrs. Valerius stopped knitting and looked up, a sign for Christine to keep talking.
"And he's always bossing me around!" Christine continued. "As if I don't have a degree in opera! I think I know a thing or two about the stage." She crossed her arms in frustration.
Mrs. Valerius shook her head sadly and imparted her wisdom on the young woman:
"It's a man's world, Christine. That poor fellow never had the privilege of working with an intelligent young woman such as yourself, but you must put him in his place!"
"Alright, I'll try my best," said Christine with a sheepish smile.
"No. You will not try. You will do." Mrs. Valerius shook her finger at Christine. The tone of her voice was firm and definite. It was a death sentence to defy the old woman.
"Yes, Mrs. Valerius," Christine answered obediently.
Mrs. Valerius nodded and settled back into her armchair to continue knitting.
"You know, Christine, I was going to stop by his house to drop off some kanelbullar, but I've changed my mind. He won't be getting any of my hospitality," Mrs. Valerius said proudly.
Christine chuckled at the old woman's pettiness, but it was Erik's loss. Mrs. Valerius' hospitality was very delicious and did not deserve to be shared with the likes of him.
Mrs. Valerius had heard all she needed to know about Erik, and the conversation switched to more pleasant subjects for the remainder of the tea. It was easy to lose track of time on summer evenings when the sun set late, but faint streaks of pink were peeking between silhouettes of the trees.
"You're welcome to stay for dinner if you'd like, Christine," Mrs. Valerius offered.
"Thank you, but I really should be getting home. It's been a long week," Christine replied.
Mrs. Valerius nodded in understanding. Working with Erik must be exhausting for a sweet girl like Christine.
"Alright, but wait one minute. I have your plate of kanelbullar." The old woman hobbled to the kitchen and returned with not one plate of kanelbullar, but two plates. "You can have Erik's plate as well," she said.
"Thank you, but I don't know how I will eat all of these."
"Don't worry. I'm sure you'll find a way," Mrs. Valerius assured her young friend. "Take one for the road, and save the other for later."
Christine didn't need much convincing to take both plates home. As soon as she stepped on Mrs. Valerius' front porch, she took a kanelbulle off one of the platters to munch for the road, which, of course, consisted of only two houses. It was barely enough time to finish one kanelbulle, let alone an entire plate of them. Christine smiled as she chewed her desert. Having too much of Mrs. Valerius' kanelbullar was not a bad problem to have, and knowing Erik had none gave her great satisfaction.