IRISH BLUE B1_Chapter 06

Book Series:      IRISH BLUE
Author:                Sheila Willar
Copyright:         2021 Sheila Willar
ISBN #:                978-0-9867101-4-8

Book Title:         THE CHAPEL
Chapter #:          06 - MS. STATTON

Back at work, Erin asked her supervisor what to do about Mrs. Mancinni’s chapel.

“We don’t do personal projects here. Everything for Mrs. Mancinni goes through her office.”

Erin winced at the thought of asking Ms. Statton for help, and braced herself as she waited for the elevator doors to open.

“Hi. I’m Erin McBride. I called earlier about the note from Mrs. Mancinni,” began Erin. “I need to order some stone for her and I don’t know exactly what channels to go through. I was wondering if you could help?”

“What stone? What is it for?” she asked coldly.

“I need one-hundred and fifty square feet of Irish Blue stone as soon as possible,” she explained enthusiastically.

Jane Statton was not about to take orders from Erin or make her life easier. “Fill out this requisition!”

Erin looked at the form and tried her best to check the appropriate boxes and handed it back to Ms. Statton who barely acknowledged her presence.

“I’ll leave it here then,” said Erin as she laid the paper on the desk. “How will I know when the stone is available? Who should I call to check on delivery?” Erin asked cautiously.

“I’ll get back to you,” said Jane curtly, expecting Erin to retreat and walk away.

“I have to have it now,” insisted Erin. “The stone is far too important and I need it right away.”

“Fine,” replied Jane with a shake of her head. “I’ll email you the details when I get them but it will be a few days. I have an enormous amount of work to do for Mrs. Mancinni!” she exclaimed with both pride and anger in her voice.

“It has to be THEE Irish Blue,” asserted Erin as she looked for a hint of acknowledgment on Ms. Statton’s face. There’s only a few quarry’s in the world that have it.”

“I will make sure you get what you ask for,” confirmed the secretary.

Erin had heard that tone of voice before and it wasn’t good. Office politics were trouble, so she offered a gentle ‘thank you’ as consolation and returned to the elevator.

As Erin walked away Ms. Statton looked at the requisition, and with a very sharp pen, crossed out the word ’stone’ and replaced it with the word ’hydrangeas’. She also crossed out ‘square feet’ that was next to the quantity of 150, and wrote the word “RUSH” at the top of the order. Ms. Statton had reworded the requisition to order one hundred and fifty pots of Irish Blue hydrangeas instead of one hundred and fifty square feet of THEE Irish Blue stone.

“I’ll make sure she gets her Irish Blue,” thought Ms. Statton who sent Erin’s requisition to a flower shop named Arthur’s Blooms.

Arthur sighed when he saw the order for the potted plants. He was accustomed to filling large orders for Mrs. Mancinni but he had no idea where he would find one-hundred and fifty matching frosted glass pots, dozens of bags of white stone, hundreds of feet of matching lavender ribbon and one-hundred and fifty healthy blooming Irish Blue hydrangeas. He rubbed his forehead and said to himself, “There goes another weekend”.

Erin couldn’t stop worrying about the stone and wondered if it would arrive on time. She was busy at work and busy at home trying to help Maggy with her wedding and to make matters more complicated, she and Kelly had to sleep in the living room because Kelly and Maggy’s mother had arrived from Ireland with two of Kelly’s aunts in tow. Suddenly the apartment was buzzing with six women who had to march to the drum of Maggy’s mother who had taken control of the home and the wedding.

It was hard for Erin and Kelly to get a full nights sleep because the three new arrivals who were still on Ireland time, sat at the kitchen table at 4 am, plotting their days with shopping and fittings.

Erin lay on a piece of foam on the living room floor and sighed as she listened to their conversations. They began by talking about Maggy’s father who had “taken the best years” of Maggy’s mother’s life and yet demanded nothing of his new girl friend.

They also weighed in on Maggy’s fiancé Peter, who through a fate worse than death, was Mrs. Mancinni’s grandson, and wanted nothing of the family business and had instead become a chef.

“What a waste,” said one sister.

“A lot of nonsense,” said the other.

Then they turned their attention to Kelly who they wanted to go back to Ireland after the wedding, but Kelly had rejected the idea saying she was happier in New York even if she had to live on her own.

“God help us!” exclaimed Kelly’s mother.

Finally they talked about Erin, the “poor” niece who was practically raised by a priest.

“How did she manage to get a job with the Mancinni’s?” gasped one sister.

“The poor always chase money,” sighed the other.

Erin endured the insults. She knew that they would never understand her passion for architecture or how much work and dedication it required.

At dawn, Erin waited in line for the washroom and as she left for work, she said that she would not be back until late in the evening. She shivered at the thought of spending the next two weeks in the cramped apartment.

At work, Erin still had no reply about the stone, so she decided to once again meet Ms. Statton in person. However, when she stepped off the elevator, there was a different secretary at the reception desk who knew nothing about the requisition for Irish Blue.

Erin realized that whether it was purposeful or not, she was not going to hear about the status of the order any time soon, so she contacted another supervisor named Lila and asked for help. Lila had been with the company for years and smiled when Erin explained the Irish Blue project, first, because she saw a little of herself in Erin, and second, not many people were fortunate to enough to work with “thee” Irish Blue stone. It was a very rare form of rock, and the Mancinni’s were one of only a handful of companies in the world who owned any of it.

Lila immediately made arrangements to have workers, tools, bags of sand and crushed stone sent to Mrs. Mancinni’s chapel, and together they made arrangements to visit the estate.

“Finally. Things seem to be coming together,” thought Erin.

                                          .................