Just Like a Musical (2 page)

“Did you work with Audrey Hepburn, Mrs. Wheeler?”

“No, my dear, I have to disappoint you. I got that photograph from a friend who worked as a cameraman at Paramount. You see, Audrey is my favorite actress, too.  We have more in common than I would expect with a seventeen-year-old girl.”

“But isn’t this photograph too valuable? Don’t you want to keep it for yourself?” I asked, my conscience boring its way through the thick fog of my selfishness. I felt that parting from that precious photograph would be unbearable. Luckily, Mrs. Wheeler assured me that she really wanted me to have it, and I accepted it with grateful relief.

I kept seeing Mrs. Wheeler almost every day. I was spending a great deal of my spare time with her, helping her mend her dresses and listening to her old vinyl records. At times we would just sit in her backyard, immersed in the soft smell of tangerine blossoms and our thoughts. By the end of March, she had officially become my best friend.

The first day of April started with a phone call from my father, who apologized for not being able to stop by and spend an afternoon with me on his way to San Francisco. I wasn’t surprised; it was a Fool’s Day after all, and I was a fool for feeling so hopeful when I heard his voice.

My father left us two months after I was born. He just couldn't deal with my mother's betrayal, and the silvery scar on my chest was a constant reminder of all the hypocritical, deceitful promises that she had proved she could not keep. Some people say that you can't miss something you never had, but I feel that there's a tiny part of me just under my ribs and an inch from my heart that keeps on producing sensations of my father perceived by my brain as brittle, fanciful, and sweet as jelly beans. He has a new family now – an honest wife and two amazing children. Keyla is thirteen and Brian is nine years old. I visit them once a year, since they live far away – in Chicago. I'm not sure I would visit them more often if they were
closer, though. My little sister and brother look a lot like me, but we always talk like strangers, which, in fact, we are. As for my father, he does his best to appear thoughtful and caring, but there is an invisible, colossal, impermeable wall between us that makes both of us act as though we were emotionally handicapped.

Sometimes at night I lie in my bed rewinding.
I rewind the movie of my family to the moment when my parents first met at Brooklyn Flea, both eyeing that antique coffee grinder that still stands on my bookshelf between
The Wizard of Oz
and
Ham on Rye
.  Then I edit, repaint, and rearrange. I make my father a little more sensitive and just a bit taller, and my mother less self-oriented and more jolly. I watch them making snow angels or eating junk food in their pajamas. Then I remove the mysterious man – the “other
” man
– from my mother's path with a magic eraser. I can see myself being born healthy and wrapped in good fortune. That's what I do sometimes. But on other occasions, like when my father, whom I haven't seen for almost a year, calls to tell me that he won't be able to make time for me in his busy schedule, I can't even think. I just go numb.

***

The sight of a beautiful gray cloud interrupted my inner lament. Gray clouds in April are rare in Southern California, and that’s why I love them. I decided to go outside to clear my thoughts and take some photographs with my old Polaroid camera, my most precious gift before Mrs. Wheeler gave me that Audrey Hepburn photograph. It belonged to my grandfather; when he had passed away three years ago, my grandmother Julie, a sweet and quiet person, gave it to me.

I was at the front gate when Mrs. Wheeler appeared at her kitchen window reminding me not to forget our agreement. We were supposed to try out some new tea later that afternoon. She had also persuaded me to pick one of her dresses for Tanya’s party. I wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea to wear something so glamorous at a teenage party, but I didn’t want to make her feel bad by turning down her offer.

I went to White Oak Park and took a couple of photographs before I sat on the bench. It was one of those quiet afternoons when everything seems to be indolent and all the colors are kind of melted. I closed my eyes, enjoying the warm air and pushing away all the bitterness that I was feeling after the one-and-a-half-minute conversation with my father. I was trying to find comfort in my great SAT scores that I’d gotten earlier that week, and for a moment, it really worked. I was dancing my way through the University of Los Angeles’ door when I heard someone giggling. I can’t stand those people who accost you in the park, always trying to make you talk about the weather, or shoelaces, or cheese, or trumpets, or just anything. Not that I’ve met many of them, but I’ve been interrogated by a few, and I try to avoid them when I can. So I ignored the giggling and drifted back to my sweet reverie. When I finally opened my eyes, after my dreamy ears caught a strange sound from the outside world, I saw a guy sitting on the bench opposite mine. There was no one else around.

“Uh… I’m sorry
,” he mumbled.

I looked at him, stretching my shoulders.

“Sorry for waking you up.”

“Oh,
never mind. I wasn’t sleeping anyway,” I said, jumping up from the bench and pretending that I was going to take some more photos.

I have never been good at casual talk with strangers, especially with quite good-looking, tall strangers in black chucks and hand-painted T-shirts with laughing skulls and poppy flowers. That’s why I decided to take a particular interest in two pigeons that were waddling around. Sure, pigeons can be quite interesting. Way more interesting than good-looking boys who have just tried to strike up a conversation with you. I carefully approached the pigeon couple and took a photograph, when the guy in the quirky T-shirt popped right beside me.

“Hi again!” he said cheerfully.

I looked into his eyes for a moment. They were midnight blue
and they were smiling and I was ready to fall in love. But then he did something really strange – he pulled his left ear very hard. So hard that it turned red.  

Then he blinked and said, “May I see them?”

“See them?”

He pulled his ear again. I was confused, embarrassed, and ready to turn around and run. But there was a tiny, giddy part of me that had tied my ankles to the ground and didn’t want to let them budge.

“See the photos, of course. What did you think?” he said, laughing.

“Oh, sure” I said, still not knowing whether I should go or stay.  But his smile melted away the foolish stiffness of my limbs, and I handed him the photos.

“I don’t often see people with Polaroid cameras these days,” he said, looking at the pigeon picture.

“Yeah, me neither. But I actually like them. I like cameras in general... but Polaroid is my farovite… I mean, favorite.”

I heard my voice quiver on vowels and trip over consonants, and I could feel my face turn red – redder than his left ear.

“That’s why I’m using one, obviously,” I added sadly.

Of course you don’t know how to talk to handsome boys! Goddamned cameras and pigeons and consonants!

“It’s somehow romantic in an old-fashioned way, isn’t it?” he said. Then he winked at me twice. I stepped back. But he smiled and very politely asked, “Can I take one, please? I’ve never used a Polaroid camera before.”

I opened my mouth to say “yes” when he winked at me again. And then… then he growled at me in the most horrible voice that I had ever heard, “Moron!”

That’s right
–
he said I was a moron. A thousand little frightened voices in my head screamed to me, “Run!” And did I listen to them? No, I didn’t. I stood in front of that odd, odd guy with my mouth agape, my knees wobbling, and my limbs hanging ungainly beside my body.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” he said, raising his eyebrows and scratching his forehead.

That was all he had to say – that he was sorry.

“You’re sorry for calling me a moron?” I asked, frowning at my own silliness for not letting me turn around and walk away like any normal person would do.

“No,” he said hesitantly.

“You’re not
?” I nearly screamed. “What’s wrong with you?” I swear that I was about to slap him in the face once or twice, but he looked far stronger than me.

“No, I am sorry.
I really am. I didn’t want to call you a moron,” he said. “I have this condition… I have Tourette’s syndrome, you see.”

“No, you don’t,
” I said resolutely. I think I even put my finger up in the air, that’s how angry I was. My index finger often goes up when I’m angry and I want to prove that I’m right. It always makes my mother laugh.

But then his eyes found mine, and in a heartbeat, I was disarmed. His dark eyes radiated honesty and silent apologies.

“Oh, you do have it!” I said. “Well, that’s good.”

“Good?” he laughed, now standing one step closer to me.

Sometimes, very rarely, life endows you with a moment of sheer flawlessness when everything is just like it is supposed to be – the smell of the air, the softness of the light, the sound of birds perching in the treetops, and someone’s smiling eyes. You don’t even try to make that moment last longer, you just exist inside its depths, while everything outside becomes invisible. Then something cracks almost inaudibly; a sunbeam starts to shine a little brighter, or a dust particle changes direction, and it’s over. You can feel the pulse of the outside world again. And you don’t want to go back inside. You just feel grateful.

A woman who was passing by pushed my shoulder slightly.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

That was it – we were back.

“I’m not sure it’s that good,” the guy with Tourette’s said, sighing.

“It's certainly better than being some kind of a weirdo,” I answered, “and that’s what I thought you were. So the winking was also…?”

He nodded.

“And that ear thing? Do you have any more delightful symptoms?”

“I clear my throat loudly. Very loudly. Like this.” Then he demonstrated his magnificent ability to clear his throat. I was impressed.

“Sometimes
I get hiccups when I’m upset,” I said.

“Lame! I win!”

And there we were, walking around the park on a cloudy April afternoon, taking photographs, me – a clumsy girl with ginger hair – and a guy with
Tourette’s syndrome
. The former was staggering around while the latter was winking at the passers-by. Quite a couple. He told me why he loved instant cameras – it was because of their stark sincerity. A Polaroid photograph can’t lie – that’s what he said. I wasn’t sure I understood, but I was too reluctant to ask for an explanation.

“Hey, how come you’re not at school right now?” he suddenly said.

“I’m homeschooled,” I said, inwardly answering his next question before he even opened his mouth.

“Really? I’ve never met a homeschooler before,” he said. “Why did your parents decide to homeschool you?”

I told him it was a long story that had something to do with my knee. As soon as I said it, I started becoming more and more aware of how idiotic that could have sounded. My pulse quickened and I could feel the dark blush sweeping over my ears and gliding down my face for the umpteenth time that day. But he didn't seem to notice the stupidity of my statements or my blush or the tiny stream of sweat running down my neck.

“
That's kind of cool. I hated high school,” he said.

He told me that he had graduated from high school a year earlier and had recently started working in an upholstery workshop, but he hoped to make a living writing screenplays one day.

A large raindrop hit the top of my head, followed by the sound of thunder.

“Hey, let’s go to the movies!” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me away.

How could I confront him? He was tall. He was wearing black chucks and a badass T-shirt. He used “romantic” and “old-fashioned” in the same sentence. And his eyes were midnight blue.

I wish I could say that we watched a good, meaningful, heartfelt movie with some quality dialogue and quiet dying, but no – we watched a B-horror movie with vampires and zombies. It’s the curse of a small town – you don’t really have many choices when it comes to anything
. But in the middle of the slaughtering scene, he accidentally brushed my elbow, and I felt something warm besiege my poor heart, something I had never encountered before. It was a jolt of bliss amalgamated with sweet anticipation. Suddenly, I could totally understand and approve of the zombies’ behavior and vampires were the coolest creatures ever. Well… not quite, but I certainly didn’t want that movie to end anytime soon.

When we stepped outside, I was feeling too overwhelmed to even look at his face. He cleared his throat. A couple of middle school kids gawked at us as they passed by. I tried to figure out what to say, but nothing came to mind. It was doubtless one of the freakiest moments in my life, and there were no signs that he was feeling more relaxed.
My brain kept asking me questions – how did you get here, who is that guy beside you, what will you do next, but I was just shrugging my shoulders, speechless and muddled.

We walked in silence for more than two minutes when he finally opened up and said, “It was a true masterpiece, no doubt about it.”

The sound of his voice was soothing. I decide to be funny for a change.

“I certainly hope your screenplays are better than that one,” I said, chuckling.

He looked up at the sky.

“It stopped raining,” he said quietly. “There’s something so sad about the moments after the rain. It’s like the beginning of the end.”

“I’m not sure I get it,” I said. “What do you mean?”

“Just look.”

He pointed at the sky. My eyes followed his finger. The dark shade of the evening sky reminded me of something, and I had no idea what it was until an elderly woman brushed the back of my calf with her umbrella.

“Oh, no!” I said, “What time is it? I have to go!”

I’d completely forgotten about the promise I had given to Mrs. Wheeler. I should have been at her house two hours earlier.