Then, as suddenly as she had become a rat, she was a girl again.
“Like that,” Octavia told Julius.
Oh. Like that.
Julius tried once more, but it was Edison who really seemed to have taken Octavia’s demonstration to heart. Down on his hands and knees, with his diapered bottom twitching in the air, he looked more like a little rat than Julius ever could.
But Octavia was full of encouragement. “That’s it, Julius! Yes, Edison! Twitch those tails!”
Then Octavia turned to Ethan. By the time she was done with him, he sounded considerably more like a lovesick prince than he had before. However, the real test would come when he had to say his lines not to Octavia but to Lizzie Archer. It was easy, Julius thought, to act as if you were in love with Octavia. He felt almost jealous watching Octavia and Ethan rehearsing their scenes together.
Ethan didn’t join them for ice cream, though he flashed Julius a quick thumb’s-up sign of approval when Octavia’s back was turned. For once, Julius was eager to leave his friend behind.
Octavia showed her merry side at the ice cream parlor. She kept Edison amused the whole time by speaking in different accents, from a Southern drawl to upper-class English to the talk of a tough New Yorker.
But then Julius made his big mistake. “You’re a great actress, Octavia. You know you are. Just because you didn’t get one part in one play—”
Octavia cut him off. “Give up, Julius. I’m not a great actress, not that you would know a great actress if you saw one.”
Julius knew Octavia was so cutting because his clumsy words had opened her wound. He’d thought maybe she had healed by now. Apparently she hadn’t.
13
When Julius made his goals for the week of July 7–13, he had an easy time doing it. The only thing he wrote in his journal was:
Goals for the Week of July 7–13
See Goals for the Week of June 30–July 6.
Edison still hadn’t made pee-pee in the potty. Octavia still wasn’t cheered up. Maybe getting Octavia to help Ethan with the play counted as keeping up the good work in French class; in any case, Julius needed to keep it up some more. And he still hadn’t started A Tale of Two Cities. He just couldn’t make himself do it. Every time he opened the book, he felt overcome by the weight of his mother’s disappointment in him. The book lay on his bedside table, like a silent reproach, saying to him all the things his mother wasn’t letting herself say.
He picked up his pen and added a fifth goal:
5. Help my mom feel better about
About what? About having a son who was a mediocre student at best and who didn’t like to read and who got a two-line part in the Cendrillon play because his French accent was so bad? But he couldn’t write all of that in his goals list. So he wrote:
5. Help my mom feel better about things.
On Monday, after another afternoon in which Edison’s pee-pee came out in his diaper, but not in his potty, Julius was almost ready to give up on goal number 1.
Mrs. Blue seemed ready to give up, as well. As soon as she returned home and gave Edison his hug and kiss, she turned to Julius. “Any luck?”
He knew what the question meant. “No,” he told her.
Mrs. Blue put Edison down. He ran back to his potty, which now stood in the middle of the family room, still filled with erasers.
“Oh, Julius, I had such a feeling that it would happen today, while you were here. You know, another boy, an older boy, someone he looks up to.”
“It’ll happen,” Julius said, sounding more confident than he felt. “He won’t be going off to college wearing diapers.” He had heard this kind of remark made to other mothers about other things. He even remembered neighbor ladies telling his own mother, when she had worried about his thumb-sucking, “Well, he won’t be going off to college sucking his thumb.”
“It’s not college I’m worried about, it’s kindergarten,” Mrs. Blue said miserably.
“That’s still two years away. A lot can happen in two years.”
“Oh, Julius.” Mrs. Blue seemed close to tears. What was it about Julius that attracted crying females? “It’s so hard being a mother sometimes. I lie awake at night, wondering if Edison will ever use the potty, if he’ll ever stop being so negative, if he’ll ever outgrow biting.”
“He doesn’t bite me anymore,” Julius offered. “He hasn’t done it since the first week.” If it was hard to be a mother generally, how much harder it must be to be the mother of Edison Blue.
Or of Julius Zimmerman?
“Sometimes I think that if he would just make wee-wee in the potty, I’d never worry about anything else ever again.” She laughed. “Famous last words.”
“It’ll happen.” Julius hoped it would happen before Edison went off to kindergarten. What he really hoped was that it would happen that summer. While he was babysitting. So that there would be one shining moment of achievement in his sixth-grade summer.
“Listen,” Julius said awkwardly. “This French class I’m taking? We’re putting on this play on Friday, you know, to show our families and friends what we’ve learned about French language and culture. We’re doing Cinderella, in French, and I only speak two lines, but I’m the rat who turns into a coachman, and, anyway, if you think Edison might like it…”
“He’d love it!” Mrs. Blue said. “I can take off work that morning. Edison, honey, Julius is going to be in a play! He’s going to be the rat in Cinderella! Do you want to go see him? Mommy will take you on Friday.”
“No,” Edison said.
“You don’t want to see Julius being a rat?”
“Yes,” Edison said then.
“Yes, you don’t want to see the play, or yes, you do want to see the play?” Julius asked him.
“I want to see it,” Edison said.
* * *
On Tuesday, Julius debated with himself for the better part of the afternoon whether or not to leave an invitation to the play in Octavia’s mailbox. While Edison loaded up his potty with small plastic action figures, Julius took one of the flyers Madame Cowper had given the class and tentatively wrote Octavia’s name on the back of it. Then, at the bottom, hoping it didn’t sound too mushy, he wrote:
Thanks for all your help. Ethan is a great prince now. I am getting better with my tail, too.
He hesitated, then added:
You are a wonderful actress, whatever you say.
Sincerely,
Julius Zimmerman
Not that saying it would make her believe it. He could hear her mocking voice in reply: “Thank you, Julius. If you believe in me, then of course I should believe in myself.”
Before he could change his mind, he scooped up Edison, went next door, and slipped the flyer in Octavia’s mail slot, careful not to let Edison ring her doorbell even a single time.
Instantly he was sorry he had done it. But the worst thing that could happen was that she would tear up the invitation and not come to the play. She probably couldn’t come, anyway.
* * *
Ethan was a good prince now, if not a great one. Julius was an adequate rat now, if not a good one. Lizzie’s French lines tripped off her tongue as fluidly as if she had been born in Paris, helped no doubt by all the time she had spent selling flowers there in her dreams.
One thing still bothered Julius. At every class concert or play that he had ever seen, somebody came up to the microphone and made a speech thanking the teacher and giving her a present from the class. Somebody’s mother always made sure it happened. This time nobody seemed to be making sure it happened. Julius hoped it wasn’t up to him to do it. Or was that what his mother meant by learning about responsibility?
During the break on Tuesday, Julius tried broaching the subject with some of the others.
“Do you think…” Julius began, wishing that he had the kind of voice that would make people take seriously any idea that came from his lips. He didn’t. “Do you think we should get a present for Madame Cowper, you know, to give her at the
play?”
Ethan said right away, “Yeah. Like all chip in a dollar for it.”
Quickly Julius called the rest of the class over to join them. “Hey, guys? Do you want to chip in a dollar to buy Madame Cowper a thank-you present?”
“You’re kidding, aren’t you?” Alex asked. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“No,” Julius said. “I’m not kidding. Look, you don’t have to contribute if you don’t want to.”
Lizzie was the first to produce her dollar. Some kids told Julius they needed to get their money from home, but promised to bring it tomorrow. Alex ended up being the only kid to refuse. Fine! Julius figured they could get a pretty terrific present for twenty-two dollars, a dollar for every nez in the class except one.
That evening, after supper, Julius went up to his room and took A Tale of Two Cities off his bedside table. Read it or die!
He was pleasantly surprised to discover, when he actually made himself open the book, that the whole first chapter had only three pages. If he had known that, he would have forced himself through it weeks ago. He forced himself through it now, and found that not only was it much shorter than he had feared, it was also much more boring—something about a Woodman and a Farmer, and the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Why not just say “1775”? What was the point of writing in such a long-winded way?
Julius pushed on to Chapter 2. It was a little bit better, because at least there was some dialogue in it, between some people named Tom and Joe and Jerry. But he didn’t get the sense that they were main characters, and he still didn’t have the faintest idea what was supposed to be happening. Had Ethan really read this book and liked it? It was hard to believe.
At the end of Chapter 3, Julius gave up. What was the point? There were forty-five chapters in all, which meant that, with three down, there were still forty-two to go. Forty-two! Grimly, he opened his goals journal and crossed off goal number 4. But he felt no surge of satisfaction. A great classic of world literature, one of his mother’s all-time favorite books, and it was all he could do to get through three chapters of it.
* * *
On Wednesday Edison announced three different times that he needed to use the potty. Three different times Julius rushed to help Edison whip off his pull-on diaper and ready himself for the Big Moment. Three different times the Big Moment didn’t come.
Edison looked as downcast as Julius felt. “My wee-wee doesn’t like potties,” he said sorrowfully. “My wee-wee just likes diapers.”
“It has to learn to like potties,” Julius said. “That’s all. It takes time for it to learn. Give it time.”
But not too much time. Julius couldn’t take any more of watching Mrs. Blue’s face fall when she came home to discover, once again, that Edison’s diaper was wet and Edison’s potty was dry.
“Oh, Julius,” she said to him later that afternoon as he was getting ready to go home, “Jackie across the street told me that her little girl trained herself—trained herself completely—when she had just turned two.”
“Well, girls are different.” It was another line he remembered people telling his mother, when he’d had trouble learning to write in cursive back in third grade. They would tell her boys had more trouble learning cursive than girls did—conveniently ignoring that all the other boys in Julius’s class could write in cursive.
“I guess so,” Mrs. Blue said. “I asked Patty Winfield at Little Wonders, and she said this was normal, that some children don’t learn till they’re four. Four!”
Julius tried to put on a sympathetic face, but four didn’t sound so old to him. Four was nothing. Four was a million years ago, when life was simple and no one expected you to teach little kids to use the potty or to talk in French or to read four-hundred-page-long novels by Charles Dickens.
* * *
“Dad and I are both planning on coming to your program this Friday,” Julius’s mother told him that night at dinner.
“You don’t have to do that,” Julius said. “I only have two lines to speak in the play. ‘Cinderella, your coach is here.’ And ‘Off to the ball!’ You don’t have to miss work to hear me speak two lines.”
“But there’s more to the program than the play, isn’t there?” his mother asked.
“We sing some songs, and we…” He could hardly bring himself to say it. “We do the Hokey Pokey in French.”
A smothered guffaw came from his dad.
“So it’s really okay if you don’t come,” Julius concluded.
“I don’t often get the chance to see the Hokey Pokey done in French,” his dad said. “I’ll be there.”
“Do you realize,” his mother asked, “that when your class ends on Friday, summer vacation will be half over?” She hesitated. “Are you making any progress on your summer goals? Now that we’ve turned off the TV, you haven’t had as many distractions.”
Julius thought about the dry potty, about Octavia’s depression, about A Tale of Two Cities, which he knew now he would never finish.
“Not really,” he admitted. “I mean, I’ve been making lists every week in my journal, but…” He trailed off.
“This is your big chance, Julius,” his mother said, a note of desperation creeping into her voice. “A whole summer to work on those academic skills you’re going to need for seventh grade, to get ready to make a new start in school next year.” As if afraid she would say more, she got up to start clearing the table.
“Look, honey, he’s taking a class, working a job … And he’s only twelve,” his dad said gently.
“Twelve!” his mother said. She sounded like Mrs. Blue saying, “Four!” “When I was twelve…” This time she was the one who trailed off.
“When you were twelve, you were perfect.” Julius finished the sentence for her, surprised at the intensity of his own response. “When you were twelve, you read books all day long, and you won prizes, and your mother bragged to all her friends about how wonderful you were.”
He tried to stop himself, but the words, held in too long, came tumbling out: “Well, you want to know something? I’m not you.”
“Julius.” His mother reached out her hand to him, but he didn’t take it. Instead he left the table and went upstairs to his room, trying not to indulge in the childish satisfaction of slamming the door.
There, he opened his goals journal and ripped out the five pages he had written so far that summer. He crumpled them into five little balls and hurled them, one by one, at his wastepaper basket.
For the first time in his life, his aim was perfect.
* * *
Ten minutes later, he heard his mother’s soft knock at his door. He wanted to tell her to go away. Instead he mumbled, “Come in.”
“May I sit down?” she asked him. Her eyes were red and glistening, as if she had been crying. For answer, Julius sat up on his bed and moved over to make room for her.
“Julius.”
He stared down at his bare feet.
“Julius, I’m sorry if I’ve put too much pressure on you this summer. God knows, I’ve made mistakes over the years. But I’m your mother. It’s my job to try to help you grow and develop into all you can be.”
“I know,” Julius said. He hoped she wouldn’t start in on the speech about reading.
Sure enough, she did. “It’s just that reading—well, reading is so important, Julius, for whatever else you decide to do in your life. And reading is—if you love to read, then the whole world is open to you. It’s all there, everything is there, in books. I know you haven’t had a lot of time to read this summer. Maybe I shouldn’t have signed you up for a class and a job. Anyway, whatever I did, I did because I thought it was best for you.”
“I know,” Julius said again. She didn’t understand that it wasn’t the class or the job that he minded; it was thinking that whatever he did, it wasn’t enough to please her, could never be enough, because he wasn’t the person she wanted him to be.
“I won’t ask you about your
reading again,” his mother said. She gave a wry, wan smile. “Or at least I’ll try hard not to. Okay?”
“Okay,” Julius said. He made himself return her smile, over the lump in his throat.
After she left, he stared down again at his feet. He knew she was trying to be a good mother to him, the way Mrs. Blue was trying to be a good mother to Edison. He just wished she could see that, in his own way, he was trying, too.
14
On Friday morning Julius was more nervous than he had thought he’d be.
What if Octavia came? What if Octavia didn’t come?
Would Madame Cowper like her present? Julius had thought it was perfect when he found it at the mall yesterday afternoon, but what did he know about anything? And would he make a fool of himself giving it to her?
Would Madame Cowper tell his parents that he had run off with Octavia on the class trip? That would hardly be a story to gladden his mother’s heart. Would his mother be disappointed in him yet again when she heard him stammer his two pathetic lines in the play, with the worst French accent in the class?
When Ethan came to get Julius so they could ride to school together, Ethan looked as miserable as Julius felt. His face bore the set look of a soldier about to have his leg amputated without anesthesia.
“It’ll be over in three hours,” Julius told him, trying to sound encouraging.
“One hundred and eighty minutes,” Ethan said. “Ten thousand eight hundred seconds.”
Put that way, it didn’t sound encouraging at all.
In the classroom, all was chaos, as kids muttered their lines to themselves and scrambled into their makeshift costumes. Julius wore black sweatpants and a black sweatshirt to be the rat, with a rat mask he had made out of a paper bag. Once he became the coachman, he would quickly slip off his mask and slip on a fancy jacket that Madame Cowper said belonged to her husband. So there was a Monsieur Cowper. That was a strange thought.
Ethan wore a prince costume loaned by the middle-school drama teacher, with the pants pinned up because Ethan was shorter than the typical middle-school prince. Lizzie had brought in her own rags—maybe the ones she had worn in her garret in Paris?—but her ball gown was also a drama department loan. She actually looked pretty when she had it on, with her blue eyes blazingly bright and her red curls bouncing. Julius wondered if Ethan had noticed.
You're a Brave Man, Julius Zimmerman Page 9