Her smile grew wide as she reached for the bell, ringing it aggressively loudly while maintaining eye contact the whole time. “Huzzah to the generous tipper!”
“Jesus Christ.” I covered my eyes with one hand while the volunteers chorused, “Huzzah!” and Lulu’s laugh pealed behind me. She’d obviously shaken off her ennui, and all it had cost me was a little embarrassment.
We finished our ciders at the tavern before moving on, and halfway to the joust I introduced her to the frozen lemonade stand—the icy sweetness was perfect for this late-July day. Since I wasn’t wearing my volunteer shirt anymore, I felt incognito, which was nice. I was just out for an afternoon with a friend. Whose friendship was entirely based on a sham. Hmm. Maybe that wasn’t the best way to think about it.
“Ooh, flower crowns!” Lulu darted ahead to a table set up on the right side of the lane, and I followed in her wake. Wreaths of flowers hung from hooks, their ribbons floating in the slight breeze like lazy live things. I reached out and let the ribbons trail between my fingers. I’d gotten one of these the first time Emily and I had come to this Faire. So much had changed since that day, three years ago now. That day had been a bit of a sham too, come to think of it; all I knew at the time was that Caitlin had told me that I had to help her talk Emily into going to the Faire with me that particular day and then get her over near the jousting field. It had been an elaborate scheme planned by Simon to get her back into his life, and it had ended perfectly for the both of them. Something about these flower crowns, these ribbons, reminded me of that day.
I had no idea where that flower crown I’d bought that day had ended up. Caitlin had borrowed it at one point, and I hadn’t thought about it since then. So what the hell; I could use a new one.
Lulu took off her hat, shaking out her ponytail and resecuring it low on her neck. “What do you think?” She held up two different crowns, raising and lowering each in turn like Lady Justice with her scales.
I pointed to the one in her right hand. “With your hair? Green. Definitely green.” I chose a crown made mostly of daisies with yellow ribbons, which stood out well against my dark hair. We both looked very wood nymphy now, but that was the point of flower crowns, wasn’t it? We paid the vendor and secured our new headgear. I hazarded a glance into a mirror set up at the table, adjusting the way it sat on my head. My cheeks were pink from the heat of the day, and my hair had frizzed a little, but the thing that took me aback was how happy I looked. I practically glowed, which wasn’t a look I was used to seeing in the mirror. But I was having fun, and my expression certainly matched.
At the other end of the table, the flower crown vendor had struck up a conversation with an older gentleman. There was a whole display of crowns between us, so I had to bend around the flowers and ribbons to see him clearly. He had to be part of the Faire circuit, with his long beard and weatherworn face. He was dressed in a longer kilt and high leather boots with large buttons down the side. His outfit didn’t look like a costume, like the clothes that Simon and Mitch wore. More like Stacey’s getup: everyday clothes that were lived in, just from a different century.
“Going well?” His voice was a low rasp, and the flower crown seller nodded vigorously.
“It’s a good souvenir, you know? They always sell well. How about you, are you moving any of the leather?”
He gave a harrumph. “Not a lot, but that’s to be expected. Small place like this. Don’t exactly see anyone around here shelling out for anything big.”
She snickered. “Hey, they could surprise you. Maybe there’s a mundane just waiting to buy a new vest.”
He laughed along with her joke, but I was missing something. What was funny? “Yeah, no shit. Or boots, right? Nah, I bring a lot of the smaller stuff to this show. Journals, little bags. Goes over a lot better with the mundanes.”
“Sure, makes sense.” They kept talking, but Lulu appeared at my left elbow.
“You ready? What time is that joust thing?”
“Oh.” I turned away from the table, and as I did I saw the two vendors looking over at me, startled. They hadn’t seen me. “Joust is this way,” I said. “Toward the back.” As I led her away the leatherworker’s startled face was burned in my brain. I couldn’t help but feel like I’d overheard something I wasn’t supposed to hear.
* * *
? ? ?
That conversation with the leatherworker echoed in my head the whole next week. Mundane. I’d never heard the word before, and certainly not in that context. It reminded me of when Caitlin had been in her Harry Potter phase, calling people muggles when she didn’t like them. The word had been dismissive, derisive. I didn’t like it.
The worst thing about it was that it put into words—well, word—that vague sense of dissatisfaction I’d been feeling this whole time, hanging out with Emily and Stacey at Faire. The sense that I didn’t belong, because I didn’t wear a costume or pretend to be someone else. Did they look at me and think “mundane” too?
I tried to put it out of my mind and focus on the positive. I’d had such a good time on that Saturday afternoon with Mitch’s family. Lulu had given me her number, and I’d plugged it into my phone a little guiltily, knowing that my relationship with Mitch wasn’t going to lead to long-term friendship with his cousin. Sunday at Faire had been uneventful; a few volunteers had teased me about “dating” Mitch, but it had mostly been of the “how on earth did you keep it quiet and not brag to the whole county about that” variety. If there’d been any real gossip about a middle-aged volunteer robbing a kilted cradle, I didn’t hear anything about it.
So I was feeling pretty good about things for the most part when I got up the next Saturday morning, except for that one word, like a black spot on my psyche.
Mundane.
Great. It wasn’t even eight a.m. on Saturday and I was already getting a headache.
“Hey, Mom?” Caitlin’s voice floated down the hall from her room.
“Yeah?” I called back, turning to look at myself sideways in the mirror. I’d gotten some new knee-length shorts that weren’t doing a damn thing to make me not look like a middle-aged mom, but they were long enough that they covered the worst of my scar, so I could live with that. Because no matter what, I was a middle-aged mom. No point in trying to hide that.
Mundane.
Shut up. “Yeah, Cait?” I said again, going out into the hallway, where my daughter met me. She was wearing her long underdress and her boots, which was all she wore on the ride over to the Faire site. Her hair was already braided into two plaits on either side of her head. Once on the grounds she would lace into the long yellow overdress, put on a little lip gloss, and she’d be ready to go.
“I forgot to ask, but Nina invited me to her house tonight, is that okay?”
“Oh.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. Caitlin and Nina had been friends since they were in elementary school. They even volunteered for this Faire together. And in a few short weeks they’d be off to different colleges, meeting entirely new people. That had to be scary. It was tough to face the future without your best friend by your side.