The Great Easter Egg Hunt

Blindly, I staggered through the grass, led by the hand of my best friend, Marilyn. He’d blindfolded me so that I couldn’t see whatever the big surprise was that he and the rest of our band had set up for me. My foot caught in a small gopher hole, nearly wiping me out.
“Easy,” Marilyn said gently, taking a firmer hold on me so as to keep me from getting hurt.
I normally liked being blindfolded, but this was a different story. Our back yard was lumpy, and we had a swimming pool. I did not want to end up thrashing in the water in my pretty Easter dress.
“Okay, Twigs. You ready?”
“Yes.”
Gently, Marilyn pulled the dark cloth away from my eyes.
I looked around, but I couldn’t see anything to be looking at. I frowned, looking down at my combat boots.
“Twiggy? What’s wrong?”
“What is this all about, Marilyn? I don’t see anything!”
“That’s because you have to look.”
“I am!”
“No, you’re not. Go. Take a look around.”
“Is this some sort of trick? Are you going to push me into the pool?”
“Why would I do that? It would ruin your dress. And that one took me ages to find.”
I sighed. The dress I was wearing was pale yellow with little white polka dots. It was a silky material with soft netting over the skirt. Water would not do it any good.
“Do you want me to show you?”
“Fine.” I crossed my arms over my chest, already bored.
“Come on, then.”
Marilyn led me to one of the bigger trees in the yard. He pointed to a relatively large gold plastic egg hidden in a low branch.
“What’s that doing there?”
Marilyn rolled his eyes. “We put it there, silly. They’re all over the yard. We thought you’d like having an Easter egg hunt. Last year, you went on about how you wished you could have one, that you hadn’t since you were a child. This year, we have the house, and I thought this would be fun for you.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
“I get the feeling that you don’t really like your surprise.”
“No, I do. I just didn’t understand, at first.”
“All right. You want to do this on your own, or do you want me to stay with you? I won’t tell you where the eggs are, but I will carry the basket.”
“Basket?”
Marilyn pointed to a large wicker basket propped up in the v of the tree. How had I not noticed that?
He picked it up, and offered it to me.
“You can carry it.”
He nodded, and watched me looking around the yard.
“Are all of the eggs gold?”
“No. They’re all different colors. And they’re filled with candy and money.”
“Money?”
“Well…we ran out of candy, and John had a lot of change from the Laundromat.”
“Oh. Do I get to keep the money I find?”
At this, Marilyn snickered. “Sure. But don’t expect to find all that much.”
“Sure.”
We walked along slowly, me poking through, on, and under everything we passed. I found a pink egg in a small bush, a purple one in the knothole of my favorite tree, a green one in the flower bed, and two silver ones in my little vegetable garden.
“That’s six. Is that all of them?”
“Not hardly.”
“How many are there?”
“Twenty four.”
My eyes widened. This was going to take all day.
“Don’t look so bewildered. You can find them, if you look.”
“Did you pick the hiding places?”
“Not all of them. But only one is very tricky, and that was Pogo’s idea.”
I spotted another egg, an orange one, resting at the base of the little concrete fountain. I scooped it up, and dropped it into the basket.
“Having fun?”
I nodded. I felt kind of silly, but I was having a good time. Marilyn obviously cared a lot about me, to have gone to all of this trouble just to entertain me.
“Good.”
I leaned over, picking a turquoise egg out of an empty flower pot. “Marilyn?”
“Hmm?”
“Are we going to celebrate Easter this year?” It seemed like an odd question, given the fact that I was in the middle of an Easter egg hunt, but in the years I’d known him, I couldn’t remember that he’d ever celebrated the religious holiday. He wasn’t exactly an atheist, but he wasn’t exactly religious, either.
“Aren’t we doing that now?”
“No…you know what I mean.” I skipped a few feet ahead, finding another egg beneath our wooden bench.
“You mean, are we going to church? Twigs, I don’t think any denomination is ready for the two of us to join the congregation.”
I laughed. He was probably right. A guy with clown red hair and red contact lenses partnered with a guy in a dress would be the laughingstocks and outcasts of any religious outlet. “I didn’t mean church. I meant, Easter dinner or something. You know.”
“What? You want leg of lamb?”
I reached over and gently slapped the side of his head. Marilyn had a knack for being able to say the funniest things, completely deadpan.
“Not funny?”
I shook my head, spotting another egg on the porch swing.
“Seriously, yes, we’re going to have Easter dinner.”
“Are we cooking?”
“No. We’re going to John’s.”
“John’s?” I was sure the disappointment was thick in my voice.
“Yes, John’s. Do you suddenly have a problem with him?”
“No.” Well, that wasn’t exactly true. I liked John, but I was also jealous of him. Before he joined the band, Marilyn only ever played affectionately with me on stage. Now, he was affectionate with him, too.
“Good. Now, find the rest of the eggs.”
We walked around the yard for probably close to an hour before I’d found twenty two eggs.
“Are you sure that there are two more?”
“Yes, Twiggy.”
“Give me a hint?”
He frowned. “The point is that you’re supposed to find them.”
I stuck out my tongue.
“That’s not going to get you anywhere,” he warned.
I skipped off, clear to the back of the yard. I started looking in gopher holes, under rocks, wherever I hadn’t investigated earlier.
Slowly, Marilyn caught up, still dragging along the now nearly full basket.
Triumphantly, I pulled a peach egg from a low little shrub. Twenty three down, one to go.
“One more,” Marilyn told me, as I put the egg into the basket. “All that’s left is Pogo’s little treat.”
I sighed. Pogo was always a master of tricks. There was no telling where he might’ve hidden the last egg.
I searched high and low, for another thirty minutes. Finally, an impatient Marilyn lured me over towards the patio. He wasn’t going to tell me to look there, but I could tell that it was what he wanted me to do.
Ten minutes later, I had checked just about everywhere, except for the inside of the barbeque. Wait…the inside of the barbeque! I lifted the lid, and…egg number twenty four!
“Ta-da!” I squealed, picking up the opaque white egg.
“That’s twenty four. Ready to go inside?”
I nodded.
Together, we went in through the back door, Marilyn putting the heavy basket down on the living room floor. “You can have your candy now.”
“I don’t want the candy.”
“Oh, you might.”
Curiously, I opened an egg. Inside was a nickel. “Hey, I can buy five pennies with this!”
Marilyn laughed. “Yes, I suppose you can.”
I carefully sat down on the floor, not wanting to wrinkle my pretty dress. I began opening the eggs, leaving them split into halves, dumping candy and change out all over the carpet. I saved the egg from the barbeque for last. When I popped it open, there was a fifty dollar bill inside. My eyes widened.
From the couch, Marilyn laughed. “That was all Pogo. You can thank him at dinner.”
I nodded. I may have been a rock star, but fifty dollars was still a lot of money to me. I really didn’t spend much money, with the exception of my dresses and makeup, and Marilyn often paid for my clothes. Well, my stage things and my recreational habits, I suppose.
I gathered up all of the money, and put it into an empty olive jar. Who ate olives in this house, anyway? It was a mystery to me. Then, I put all of the candy into a plastic bag. I was putting the eggs back together when Marilyn told me that it was time to leave. Deciding to finish cleaning up later, I stood up, hooked my elbow into his, and we headed for the door.
It may have been silly, but this was the best Easter I could ever remember having.