Split Just Right (8 page)

“If she has time, though. Doesn’t she work a lot now, like, I know she has that new waitressing job?” Lacy doesn’t wait for me to answer; she just plows ahead and I recognize a script when I hear it. “Hey, I might have an idea. My mom has credit over at Pagniti Marcello, since she returned all her birthday gifts. I know!” Lacy squeals and seizes my wrist. “We’ll all go pick out something together: you, me, Mom, and Wilder.” She smiles at Hannah. “And we’ll get lunch at the club after. It’ll be fun!”

My mind is reeling, planning my next move. If I get up from this table and walk out the door, I think, that gives them more than ten seconds of looking at my stupid zip boots and runny stockings. But if I keep sitting here, my face will just get redder, and worse, I might cry.

“You guys are really nice,” I say carefully. “But my mom would be kind of disappointed if she thought I’d rather wear someone’s hand-me-down than something new she wants to buy me.”

“Oh my god, Danny, we are totally not saying that it’s charity.” Hannah’s pretend worried face is enough to make me want to slap her.

“I’m going shopping with my mom, okay?”

“Did she help you pick out those boots?” Hannah says it light enough so that maybe, if you paid a fancy lawyer enough money he could argue that it was meant only as kidding, but that’s when I feel the tears behind my eyes.

“Oh, uh, no,” I say with a laugh. “I actually got these at a thrift shop up in New York, in Manhattan.” I stand up and look down at them, like I just at that moment noticed how awful they were. “Anyhow, I’m late for my math tutorial. I’ll see you guys later.”

I walk out of the library, my huge boot zippers jangling with every step, but I’m careful not to slam the door so they don’t know how much they’ve upset me.

Once I’m safely in the faculty bathroom (which you can lock), splashing water on my face and rubbing my hands over my chest splotches to calm them down, I let the tears come. The crying feels good, as if all of my doubts and problems, like these stupid boots, and Mom’s job, and whether I’m going to find the right dress to wear to Fling, and wondering if Ty’s going to call me tonight, and my crummy math grades, are all just rolling out of me, collecting into a big river of sludge.

I try for a smile, to reassure myself. The person in the mirror smiles back at me, but not with the carefree Rick Finzimer smile or the dead-on, ready-to-fight eyes of my mom. The girl in the mirror doesn’t seem to be much of anyone, except a gigantic mess with a blotchy chest and puffy eyes and a pair of hideous boots on her feet.

S
HE HAD TO DESTROY something, anything. She thought of scissors, but a search through the house turned up only a tarnished silver butter knife. Nothing would stop her; she gripped handfuls of her shiny, waist-length hair and sawed at it until raggedy shanks of cerise lay in a heap on the bathroom floor, and jagged wisps fluffed out just above her ear. Her cats, Raison and Sprite, watched in fear, but her madness didn’t end there. She ran to her mother’s room and in a few minutes had shredded all her clothes to tatters, including her ugly cordovan zip skirt.

“Finally, I’m free,” she whispered, clutching the knife in the air. Yet she could not quench this unbidden longing to slice, slash, and destroy. Suddenly the doorknob turned. Her father had come home! The knife sweat in her hand.

The Lilac
contest rules had been to write “a dynamic first page to anything: novel, short story, fantasy, or science fiction text—you be the judge. Let your creative juices flow!” I didn’t like the sound of the phrase “creative juices”; it made me think of my brain like a grapefruit, painstakingly squeezing out a sour trickle of pulp and seeds. But first place was a thousand dollars, then a five-hundred-dollar second place, and three more prizes of a hundred dollars apiece. And best of all—no entry fee.

“Hey, Danny, you want to come with me to rehearsal?” Mom calls.

“Why would I do that?” I shout, proofreading through my paragraph. I’m wondering about that word
cerise.
I don’t think I know exactly what that word means.

“To run lines in the car? We could pick up Chinese, and you could see the dress rehearsal.”

There’s only an open can of tuna, an empty pizza box, and some of Gary’s leftover Caesar salad in the fridge. It figures I’d have to be roped into watching Mom’s stupid rehearsal just to get some dinner.

“Okay, hang on a minute while I get my jacket.”

I close up my laptop and unfurl my cramped bones from the wobbling tortoiseshell, stepping out of it carefully.

Mom’s on the phone, placing our order with Hunan Garden and snapping a raincoat over her Rosalind costume, which trails behind her in yards of worn brown velvet. A faded coronet of flowers is perched on top of her head.

“You look crazy,” I tell her, frowning.

“Shakespeare would have appreciated raincoats. Stratford-upon-Avon probably got its share of downpours, don’t you think?” She looks up at me and smiles.

“No comment,” I say.

Neither of us takes umbrellas, and Mom’s laughing as we dash out to the car. Her good mood makes my bad one worse. Old Yeller hacks and heaves a while before he hits his warming-up stage.

“Old Yeller’s going in for inspection next week.” Mom pats the dashboard. “Come on, baby. There’s a boy. There’s a boy. Ten minutes, buddy, you can do it.”

“It’s too dark to read this script.” I squint at the chains of words.

“Never mind, lord help me if I’m not off-book by now … Danny, does this car smell funny to you? Like gas?”

I sniff. “I can’t tell.” We drive in silence a while, sniffing and frowning at each other. I jump out at Hunan Garden while Mom drives the car around the block because she doesn’t know how to parallel park. Usually I don’t care about Mom’s bad driving but tonight, standing in the rain with soggy Chinese food bags and watching Old Yeller stalled at the red light across the street, I feel a burst of annoyance at her.

“Is the defroster on?” I ask when I get in.

The windshield wipers are chasing each other back and forth and don’t do much to rub away the fog that films the glass.

“Broken.” Mom sighs. “Okay, I smell something for real.”

“All I smell is your gross cabbage cashew whatever-it-is that you ordered. You should really get this stupid car into the shop tomorrow.”

“Why are being you such a sulky teenager lately?” Mom hunches over the steering wheel and squints out at the black road. “By the way—huge turnout for Tom Sawyer auditions. I think the girls really see this as a chance for fun for a change. People can let theater get so pretentious and affected, such a draw for world-class jackasses like Lemmon. Now this show—oh my gosh, Danny, did you feel that?”

“I didn’t feel any—”

Old Yeller suddenly gives a shudder and a sad-sounding
brrrummmph.
I grip the sides of my seat as we reel forward.

“This is the end!” Mom shouts with the kind of expression that would make Louis proud. With a final hacking cough and a violent tremble, Old Yeller’s tired old engine dies, right in the middle of Route 29.

“Please don’t do this, you creep,” Mom whispers, and for a second I think she’s talking to me. She turns the key and presses her boot to the gas, then stomps on the gas, and the turning and stomping find a desperate rhythm. The angry bleat of car horns begins to sound all around us.

“I’ll get out,” I offer, opening the car door, “and I’ll push.” I saw that once in the movies, only it was a big brawny guy who did the pushing. But Mom looks at me with eyes full of thanks and hope, and I relent slightly in my bad mood toward her.

Being out in the middle of a highway on a rainy March night is something I’ve never experienced until tonight. Cars spin past me in a hiss of tires on water. Drizzly yellow highway lights send up oily reflections from the water-slicked road. I just hope the color of Old Canned Peas is bright enough to keep a car from hitting me.

I crouch and shove my body against the back of Old Yeller, pushing with each muscle that lets itself be pushed. Mom signals for me to hold on and then she gets out, too. She pushes the car from the driver side, reaching one of her hands inside to turn the steering wheel left. Slowly, painstakingly, we roll Old Yeller onto the shoulder of the road, to safety.

“We did it.” Mom huffs and smiles at me through the dark downpour.

“Yeah, but now what?”

“I need to find a pay phone.” Mom stands on tiptoe and peers ineffectively through the dark. “But it’s a hike to that Aamco station. Almost a mile.”

The car seems to have cruised straight out of nowhere; all at once a rain-glittering white Saab has pulled up right at our side.

“You need help?” A sheet of wet window glass rolls down and then I’m peering into the perfectly made-up face of Mrs. Finn. Mr. Finn is driving and, thankfully, there’s no one in the back.

“Elizabeth, it’s good to see you. Our car broke down.” The words in Mom’s mouth shake out a little too brightly She sounds like she’s acting at being someone else. I shoot her a warning look;
Masterpiece Theater
isn’t the best idea right now.

“Get in, both of you. Hurry.” There’s a
cha-kunk
sound of the automatic locks releasing and then Mom opens the passenger-side door. We slide inside the velvety leather of the Saab’s tan interior and roll away from Old Yeller’s broken body.

“Lucky thing we came along,” Mrs. Finn says, waiting for us to thank her and agree.

“Thank you so much; it sure is lucky,” Mom answers.

“Yeah, this is great,” I add, although there are about a million names I would have put ahead of the Finns on my list of people I’d most like to be rescued by.

“I’ll call the tow service.” Mr. Finn nods, more to his wife than Mom, although his eyes dart at us from the rearview mirror. He picks up the car phone from the twinkling lights of his high-tech dashboard and starts punching up numbers.

“Now, where can we take you?” Mrs. Finn peers around at us from the front. Mom’s coronet is half sliding over her eye.

“Oh, Bellmont People’s Theater,” Mom says happily “I can’t think what could have happened to that silly old car. I was planning to get it serviced last week, but one thing and another, you know how it goes!” She clasps her hands over her knees and laughs.

Mrs. Finn laughs, too, but there’s a mean snicker wrapped inside it. Mom just laughs harder, and with one hand I reach over and snatch off her flower wreath.

“You in another play, Susan? Bob and I just loved you in
The Little Foxes.
Susan’s just adorable, I remember us saying. And we get such a kick out of those Kahani’s commercials—‘Right off Route 29.’ And that’s where we found you! Ha-ha-ha!” Mrs. Finn’s laugh grates in my ears.

“It surely is nice of you, I must say.” Mom smiles. I think I detect a southern accent.

I’m flashing to half an hour ahead in time, my mind’s eye picturing Mrs. Finn bursting into the front door of her house, shouting, “Eeek, Lacy! You will never in a million years guess what we picked up on the side of the road!” I make myself squash away the image for now, and I turn to fix a permanent deadeye on Mom, as a hex to keep away her southern accent. After we listen to Mr. Finn deal with the car-towing people, the ten-minute drive passes in awkward silence.

“You all’ve been so terribly kind, rescuing Danny and me,” Mom says, sweet as a mint julep, as we’re getting out of the car in front of the Bellmont theater. I give her a little shove to keep her going.

“No problem.” Mr. Finn hands her a card with the names and numbers of the tow place and garage that are handling Old Yeller. “Just let me know if there’s anything else we can do for you.”

“That was way beyond terrible,” I say, stomping toward the front lobby of theater.

“You think?” Mom looks puzzled. “I’d call it a splash of Irish luck.”

Mom always claims the nationality that suits her mood. I splash through every puddle. Mom dashes in front of me and yanks open the heavy glass doors of the theater. She unpeels her raincoat in a rush and makes a half-attempt to hold the door for me. She doesn’t look back, and the door handle slips from my fingers, tearing my pinkie nail.

My anger has been brewing, and now it’s at a full boil. I really want to start yelling. I want to ask Mom why she hasn’t told me about the Greenhouse. I want to ask about why Rick Finzimer never calls and why she never let me toss those boots. I even want to yell at her about that time she decided it would be interesting to be Jewish and celebrate Passover with Louis and his wife, instead of having Easter. Even though it happened more than eight years ago, I still remember that the switch completely baffled me. I searched for jelly beans and eggs for days afterward.

Angry questions wiggle in my throat, caught against the smooth, strong current of Mom’s lies. But I’m ready to fight.

The Bellmont People’s Theater is an old stone building that used to be some founding Bellmont person’s home. The lobby still has the look of a grand front entrance hall, with blown-up photos of past plays arranged like portraits on the walls. Mom’s in a lot of them, wearing an array of costumes and wigs and different expressions.

There’s even a Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan photo where I look kind of dazed (
a shockingly wooden performance
…) and a really great picture of Gary from the time Mom got him to be the butler in
The Importance of Being Earnest.
He looks sort of baffled, too, and I wonder if I can get a copy of the photo for him as a joke birthday gift.

Sometimes when I stand in the doorway and stare into the darkened empty theater, I understand why Mom loves being a Bellmont Player. All those rows of empty seats facing the stage are like hundreds of people silently holding their breath, waiting to listen to your elegant, perfectly prethought words, to watch your preplanned gestures, and to applaud your well-timed entrances and departures. It’s a place where your story never goes wrong and always ends with people clapping.

You can get to the dressing rooms half a dozen different ways. I run, pretending I’m on the court, dribbling an imaginary ball down the middle aisle, leaping up onto the stage, which is set up for act 1, men faking out an imaginary Perry dork as I dance her up the apron, around the cardboard trees and behind the scrim until—slam dunk!—I soar high and smack my fingers on the top of the stage-right exit door, which leads to a long hall. The dressing rooms, bathrooms, and the green room, which is where the actors hang out and smoke cigarettes, all lead off from this hall, which I’ve seen painted two colors before its current shade of mushroom.