How High the Moon (21 page)

“I don’t know, Charlie,” I said. “Trying to figure out why big people fret so much is about as hard as trying to figure out why Poochie barks all the time. All that worrying, it’s nothing but a big waste of time.”

You’d think that
since I’d seen Leonard’s picture in the newspaper, I’d have recognized him right off the bat when he came into the Starlight. But I didn’t. At least not at first.

He came through the exit door near the screen that Johnny and the guys had propped open with a brick so they could carry boards and tools in and out without having to turn the doorknob when their hands were full. With the sun bright behind him, Leonard didn’t look like nothing but an exclamation mark standing in that doorway.

I was looking for a phone number Brenda had written on a piece of envelope that she was sure she’d left on the concession stand counter when he stepped inside. The guys glanced up and got back to work. Well, except for Johnny, who watched Leonard skip over the scraps of wood and tools on the floor like he was playing hopscotch.

In his fancy slacks and button-up shirt, I thought Leonard was a salesman. Even before he got close enough for me to see his pinched nose, though, you’d think I’d have recognized him by his hair. Platinum as a starlet’s, the top flat, like a miniature lawn that just got mowed.

Leonard didn’t ask the guys if Brenda was around. He waited until he reached the concession stand and he asked me. I pointed
up toward the projector room. “She’s up there. I’ll show you where in a minute.” I hurried and fanned through the papers again, thinking maybe I missed the corner of the envelope the number was on the first time, and wanting bad to find it because Brenda was not having a good day.

“Ah, here it is!” I said to Leonard. But Leonard was already up to the nosebleed seats.

When I got to the projector room, the phone number in my hand, the door was open, and so was the door to the meeting room. I could see Leonard and Brenda standing next to the long table. Brenda had a stack of papers in her hand. The edges were mismatched and messy and she was trying to straighten them by rapping the bottoms against the table. “I told you, Leonard. I can’t see you this afternoon. There’s an organizational meeting for the gala at four thirty and I’m in charge. Everything’s a mess and I feel like I’m drowning in details.”

I backed up a little, then dipped to the side of the room like a good Sunshine Sister who didn’t interrupt big people when they were talking.

“What? Your mother twists her ankle a little and she can’t do a thing now? I played the whole state tournament my senior year with a sprained ankle,” Leonard said.

“It’s not just her sprained ankle,” Brenda said, “though she does have to stay off it and keep it elevated and iced for a while. She’s working from home with her assistant, but most of the work concerns the drive-in. She wants it open as soon as possible since this place will be closed for some weeks. This means everything related to the Starlight is falling in my lap. The construction, chairing the committees for the gala, booking the acts, lining up… well, everything.”

I wanted to jump into the projector room and remind Brenda to delegate,
delegate
, but I was making progress with my afflictions and I didn’t want to blow it, so I slipped up against the wall and listened, peeking now and then, even if that probably wasn’t the respectable thing to do, either.

“Plus,” Brenda continued, “Mother doesn’t want me leaving while the workers are here.”

Leonard peered down at the Perkins crew. “Why? What are they going to do, steal Jujubes?” He laughed like he’d made a funny, then he huffed, “I don’t know why she clings so hard to this old relic. Or why she’s erecting another theater. It’s not like she needs the few bucks it’ll generate. But I suppose she needs something to keep her busy.”

“Leonard, please,” Brenda said.

“My poor little overworked pet,” Leonard said, in a voice every bit as creepy as the voice of a movie bad guy. “All the more reason to come play hooky with your big daddy for a while.”

Leonard must have grabbed Brenda then, because I heard the papers swish, and her groan. “Leonard, I had those all in order.” Brenda said this like she was saying it in fun, but she didn’t sound like she was having any fun to me.

Leonard sighed. “Well, I can see you’re going to be a drag today. Okay, then. I’ll let you get back to your little party plans. I’ll pick you up at five thirty.”

“Five thirty?”

“Thad and Trish are having a cookout. We’ll have a few beers… play a little tennis maybe. I told them we’d be there.”

“But I don’t know how long this meeting’s going to last. We have a lot of ground to cover. Probably more than I even know.”

Leonard’s sigh sounded more like a grunt. “I would have thought you’d clear your plate for your fiancé, since I only get home about one weekend out of the month. But suit yourself. Call me if you can be on time. If not, you know where Thad lives.”

Mrs. Fry never did say if it was okay for men to stomp when they walked, but it must be, because Leonard stomped like a giant across the projector room and headed down the stairs.

I was about to step into the projector room to give Brenda the phone number when she came barging out. “Leonard, wait!” Her voice echoed so that even the guys down by the half-made stage heard and looked up.

I could tell that Brenda was apologizing, the way she was holding out her hands like she was pleading, even if she was talking quiet and glancing down at the stage, then up to toward the nosebleed seats, like she was afraid we would hear her.

Leonard had his right hand in his pocket and the other straight at his side, but then his left hand came up like a stop sign for a bad dog, and Brenda stopped talking. She pinched the sides of her skirt and twisted the material with nervous fingers while Leonard said words I couldn’t hear. Before he could turn to walk away, Brenda got on tiptoes and gave his cheek a quick kiss. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she turned and saw me watching.

I helped Brenda pick up the papers that had fallen in the meeting room. Four pages of information for each committee we’d have, with the tasks for each listed, along with a calendar and what Brenda called a “time line.” We put the papers back in stacks, one stack for each page, one through five, then Brenda took one page off each pile, straightened them, and handed them to me so I could staple them together. While I waited for her to get me a new stack, I kept looking at that new ring on her finger. Boy, that diamond sure was a honker! So heavy that it kept slipping and leaning up against her pinkie, like it needed a rest from standing up by itself.

Good thing Brenda had me there to help her get ready for her meeting, because she was so busy on the phone that she didn’t have time to do anything else. Things like wiping out the coffee cups with napkins in case they had any dust or baby spiders in them that might float up to the top when the coffee got poured. And running to check both bathrooms to make sure there was toilet paper in every stall (there was, because that was Mr. Morgan’s job, and that man was on the ball). Important stuff like that, that could ruin a perfectly good meeting for fancy folk if they weren’t done.

Brenda started each phone call with, “Mother thought you might be able to tell me how to reach Les Paul’s agent…,” always jotting more numbers on scrap paper and getting more and more agitated. Finally fifteen minutes before the meeting, she made her last call for the day. And afterward, she sat staring for a while, then crumpled up her notes and tossed them in the trash can and stared at nothing.

Boy, I don’t care how lit the Starlight was, when you walked outside on a sunny day, that sun about blinded you. I squinted and blinked a few times, thinking it was just my eyes playing tricks on me when I saw nothing in front of me but white. That is, until my eyes adjusted and I saw the car, big as me and Teddy’s living room, parked sideways, so close to the doorway that had I not waited for my eyes to get used to the light, I would have ran smack-dab into it.

“Isabella?
Isabella!
”

For just one second there, I thought it was my Ma, coming back in a movie-star car—but she would never call me by my given name. Nope. That crabby voice could only belong to one lady. Mrs. Bloom. “Don’t shut that door!” Mrs. Bloom yelled. “Those idiotic construction workers must have locked it behind them, and I don’t have my keys on me.”

And there she was, stretched out in the backseat, her fat foot wrapped and propped on the seat, a lady wearing a nurse’s hat and a lot of chins squeezed behind the steering wheel. Boy, Mrs. Bloom sure didn’t look like a movie star that day. Her hair was flat in the back, and her eyes looked as pinched as Leonard’s nose.

“Get me Brenda, please!” Mrs. Bloom said, all grouchy.

I opened the door and kept my knee against it, leaning in and yelling Brenda’s name, loud as I could.

“
Go
inside and get her, for heaven’s sake,” Mrs. Bloom snapped.

I turned around. “You having a bad day, Mrs. Bloom? I think
you are. But like I learned from watching Teddy when his wrist was paining him, when grown-ups get hurt and can’t work, even the ones who are good as Jesus get a little owly.” I didn’t say the other part. That I knew that meant that grabby ones like her were going to be even worse.

“Go!” she said.

I shut the door tight behind me so it wouldn’t blow open and thump in the wind—something that always irritated the best of them, so it would probably double-irritate Mrs. Bloom—and so she wouldn’t hear me yell again, which is exactly what I did. Three times. And finally Brenda appeared on the steps in the nosebleed section. “Your ma’s here and wants to talk to you,” I yelled.

Brenda came down the stairs. “She’s got a nurse with her. I didn’t know regular people could have a nurse. I thought they had to stay in hospitals or doctor’s offices.”

Brenda kind of smiled. “That’s our maid. It’s a maid’s hat.” I ran to get the card I’d made for Mrs. Bloom and met Brenda outside.

“Mother, what are you doing here?” Brenda asked, squinting into the car. “You look like you’re in a lot of pain. Are you taking the pills the doctor gave you?”

“I can’t take those things. I told you that. They knock me out for hours. And I have too much to do.”

“Well, you should at least be home resting,” Brenda said.

“Which is exactly where I would be, if you would have answered the phone. How can I rest when I’m worrying about how things are going here? I tried calling several times, but the line was busy, busy, busy.”

“Yeah, that’s because Brenda was busy, busy, busy,” I said. Brenda used her hand to tell me to stay quiet, and Mrs. Bloom used her voice.

“Tell me you weren’t visiting with Julie or Tina,” Mrs. Bloom said. “Not with this much work to be done.”

“I’ve not talked to them since I started working on the gala,”
Brenda said. I looked up at her to see if there was any huff in her face, since there wasn’t in her voice. There wasn’t.

“Has Glen been stopping by regularly as he promised?”

Brenda nodded, and while I didn’t think she was lying, being the Sweetheart of Mill Town and all,
I
hadn’t seen Mr. Perkins since the guys started working.

“And did you get ahold of Les Paul and Mary Ford’s agent? We have to get them booked, Brenda. Mrs. Gaylor told me that it’s all over town that they’re our lead act. How, I don’t know, since I never breathed their names to anyone. Did you?” Brenda shook her head, and I slipped farther behind Brenda, and grumbled about Susie Miller in my head, because I had a sneaking suspicion she was the big mouth who repeated that bit of info I leaked.

“Well?” Mrs. Bloom said.

“I’m on top of things, Mother,” Brenda said.

“Don’t play games with me, Brenda. I’m in too much pain to be patient. Either you’ve booked them or you haven’t.”

Brenda looked down. “They’re booked,” she said.

“Thank God,” Mrs. Bloom said. She let out a big sigh. “That sure is a load off my mind.”

“You booked them?” I shouted. “Wow, Brenda! I didn’t know that!”

Brenda put her arm on my shoulder, “You have something for my mother, don’t you, Teaspoon?” she said.

“Oh, yeah.” I reached my arm through the window. “I made this for you at Sunday school, Mrs. Bloom. It’s a get-better card.”

Mrs. Bloom took it from my hand like she didn’t know what it was, even though I’d just told her.

I think she liked the picture of the Starlight Theater I drew on the front, because she looked at it for a long time before she opened the folded page to see what I’d put inside. And when she read,
Get well Mrs. Bloom because we miss you at the Starlight and thanks for letting me be Brenda’s Sunshine Sister so I can get respectable and sing in your show so I can get famous
, her eyes got blinky and teary.

“Why, thank you, Teaspoon,” she said, using my nickname for the first time.

I suppose I should have felt good about making Mrs. Bloom happy, and I guess I did a bit. But mostly I felt bad. I didn’t really mean it when I wrote that I missed her. I was just being well mannered like the code said I should be. I put my head down and wondered if being respectable made other people feel like fibber-faces, too.

Before Mrs. Bloom left, she apologized to Brenda, and to me. “I’m sorry for snipping. I should have known you’d come through, Brenda. You always do. And Teaspoon, well, thank you for the nice card.”

By the last week
of June, we had a string of days so hot and hair-frizzing humid that the grown-ups lost their zip. Poor Teddy couldn’t even get three blocks down the street before his shirts lost their respectability, sweat spots blooming under his armpits and between his shoulder blades. And the Taxi Stand Ladies (who ordinarily liked summer best) stood humped over the mailbox by noon, blowing breath up into their faces from jutted-out lower lips, or pulling out the necklines of their dresses to puff on their balloons. They weren’t taking all that many spins in Ralph’s taxi, either, probably because even with the windows open to stir a breeze, the black seats were heated like griddles.