Viola in the Spotlight

by Adriana Trigiani

  Grand, like all actresses, is that mix of eternally grateful at having a job on Broadway, which makes her humble, and confident that she will do a good job, which makes her seem a little stuck-up. It takes humility and guts to be an artist, as she and my parents are quick to remind me. You have to believe in yourself just enough, not too much, and then push until you get what you want.

  Mom is already planning what she is going to wear to opening night, which is only six weeks away. Grand always throws a big opening-night party in her apartment after the official party thrown by the producers. She makes casseroles from her Arlene Francis cookbook (Arlene Francis was famous in the 1950s, and Grand was in a play with her once) and sangria from an old recipe she’s had for years. People sing, laugh, and smoke at her parties, and leave never having had a better time. Sometimes I think Grand loves her opening-night party more than being in the play.

  “Viola, come down. Our guest has arrived,” Mom hollers from the bottom of the stairs. I turn off my laptop and slip into Mom’s welcome home gift to me: laceless red Converse sneakers. I look in the mirror on my way out, smoothing down my hair, which has gotten awful pouffy in the summer humidity.

  “Viola, I’d like you to meet Maurice,” Mom says.

  I size him up politely without staring or acting too interested, a technique that Suzanne taught me. Basically, you just look away a lot, as if you’re aware of everything going on around the boy instead of the boy himself. Using Suzanne’s focus and glance technique, it appears that Maurice is a little taller than me, with blond hair that’s cut super short. He has green eyes and a good face—definitely not as handsome as Tag Nachmanoff (king of LaGuardia High School and the best-looking boy in the coastal U.S.) but pretty cute for a boy from another country.

  “Doesn’t Maurice look like Jude Law?” Mom says.

  I glare at my mother while Maurice’s face turns the color of my sneakers. I can’t believe my mother is bringing up way older actors. If anything, Maurice looks a lot like Sterling Knight, but Mom wouldn’t know him.

  “Welcome to Brooklyn,” I tell him.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says politely, which is not a shock, because, let’s face it, the British are known for their excellent manners.

  “I’m going to take Maurice down to the apartment. He came here straight from the airport, and he’s very tired.”

  “Okay.”

  I race back up to my room two steps at a time and call Caitlin. “He’s here,” I tell her.

  “What’s he like?”

  “Proper and British. And my mother, I almost died, said he looked like Jude Law.”

  “Does he?” Caitlin wants to know.

  “It wasn’t the first thing I thought when I looked at him. I mean, he sounds like Jude Law, but so does every British guy.”

  “I wish he looked like Robert Pattinson,” Caitlin says dreamily.

  “You are so obsessed with movie stars.”

  “I know. They seem so perfect to me,” Caitlin admits. “I saw Twilight seven times,” she says proudly.

  “Maybe you like movie stars because your mom won’t let you go out with real-life boys.”

  “Probably. I can’t believe you have an actual stranger living in your house. A guy. My parents would never allow it.”

  “He’s down in the rental, like, two floors away from my room. It’s no different from having neighbors in an apartment building. And your mom allows that.”

  “I guess. But you know my mother. It’s all in the interpretation.”

  “Well, suck up to her and get her permission to come over for dinner on the roof.”

  “Are we ordering in?”

  “Yep. Andrew is coming.”

  “I’ll ask.”

  I get a tired feeling whenever Caitlin has to ask her mom for permission to do anything, because I’m absolutely sure it’s going to be a Big No, and that’s depressing. Then I hear the bell on my laptop. I’m relieved when Andrew’s name pops up.

  AB: What’s happening?

  Me: Incoming.

  AB: Your boarder?

  Me: Yep. He’s here.

  AB: I can’t come over tonight.

  Now I’m totally annoyed. What happened to my friend who couldn’t wait for me to get back from boarding school? Was it something I said? Did I grow out my bangs and therefore lose a friend? I’m going to go right out on a limb and ask him why.

  Me: Are you serious?

  AB: Have to go to Long Island. My cousin’s house.

  Me: You’re leaving me here with a stranger?

  AB: Can Caitlin come over?

  Me: Not until her mom checks with Homeland Security.

  AB: You’ll be okay.

  Me: Clear the weekend?

  AB: Can do.

  One thing is for sure about Andrew—if he says he’s going to show up, he shows up. But what’s bothering me is that he never needed an invitation before, and now it seems like he does. I hope he hasn’t become that kind of boy, and therefore I have to be a different kind of girl. I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment.

  Me: We have things to do before you go to camp. Mermaid Day.

  AB: Would not miss it.

  Me: Have fun on Long Island.

  I had this crazy dream when I was in boarding school. New York City was frozen over in my absence under a clear glass shell, like a snow globe. The skyline was just a bunch of tall, empty buildings with no light coming out of the windows.

  Drifts of snow covered the streets; all was silent: no cars and no people. The rivers were solid sheets of silver ice, and you could walk across them. It was only when I became frustrated and hacked a hole in the dome of the snow globe with the needle I had snapped from atop the Empire State Building that the city came back to life.

  The sun came out, the snow melted, and people began to appear in the streets. Life as I remembered it resumed in full. I had finally made it back home. The world as I knew it was the same. I woke up relieved.

  In real life, the city did not freeze, no one waited for my return, and in general, things went on just fine in Brooklyn without me. Our house was the same. Sal’s Pizzeria had the same specials nine months later: one calzone with your choice of two fillings and a soda, five bucks. My friends had a good year. They missed me, and I missed them, but that didn’t stop anything; life went on just like normal.

  So much for frozen dreams.

  “I can come over! And you won’t believe it! Mom and Dad gave me permission to spend the night!” Caitlin shouts into the phone. Then she whispers, “I think Mom realizes how much I missed you, and she’s being lenient.”

  “Great,” I tell her. “Andrew can’t make it.”

  “Just us?” she says.

  “I’m going to invite Maurice up for dinner. Mom is, like, totally making me responsible for him.”

  “No problem,” Caitlin says.

  “There won’t be if you don’t say anything to your parents. Do not tell your mother there will be a foreign guy here. If you do, she’ll have him frisked and bodyguards sent over, or even worse, she’ll keep you at home.”

  “Got it.”

  Here’s what I love about cold sesame noodles from Sung Chu Mei. First of all, they feature two of my favorite foods: pasta and peanuts. Dad says there aren’t actual peanuts in the sauce—that it’s sesame I’m tasting—but to me, cold sesame noodles taste like creamy, but spicy, peanut butter on spaghetti. If that sounds gross to you, all I can say is you need to come to Brooklyn and try them—and then, like me, you will dream of them whenever you leave home and can’t have them. I hope to someday personally go to China and thank the people there for the best food import, ever.

  Our roof is not fancy. The floor is basic loose gravel covered by tar paper and a layer of green-friendly eco-tarp. There is a four-foot safety fence all the way around the perimeter. We have three chaise lounges and a wooden coffee table painted sky blue. Mom hides the roof vents with a trellis of beach roses. She comes up here to r
ead, Dad to think, and I come up with my friends to hang out.

  “Be careful up there,” Mom says as she hands me the brown bag from Sung Chu Mei.

  “Ma, I’m fifteen,” I remind her, as if she doesn’t know, and as if my birthday is not seared on her brain.

  “That’s why I won’t come up to check on you,” Mom says, getting those creases between her eyes that tell me she’s going to worry no matter how much I reassure her. “Because I trust you.” She gathers paper plates, napkins, and chopsticks from the kitchen cabinet. “I think it’s nice that you’re including Maurice.”

  “It would be rude not to.”

  “Still. I’m proud of you.”

  “I just spent a year at an all-girl school. A little testosterone is nice, if just for observational purposes.”

  Mom throws her head back and laughs. “I’ll tell your father you said that. He will like the idea of observation.”

  “I live to serve.”

  Mom goes to the sink to clean up some dishes, and for a second, I want to tell her all about Jared Spencer, not just the little bits she knows, but absolutely everything. I want to tell her about how I met him at Grabeel Sharpe Academy, and how he kissed me and gave me Sidney Lumet’s book, and how we went together to Wendy Luck’s one-woman show on the Saint Mary’s College campus, and how when we were in competition with each other at the film festival, he dumped me because my movie was better. But I don’t. If I tell my mother all this, she will worry that I’m way into boys and might end up like Esme Amberg, who fell in love with a boy and ran away from Prefect, never to return. I’m not boy crazy like Esme, I’m just hopeful that someday I will have what I once did with Jared Spencer—when he was a good egg and before he went rotten on me.

  “You need something?” Mom turns to face me, wondering what I’m still doing there.

  “Nope. Send Caitlin up when she gets here.”

  I climb the steps to the third floor and then through my parents’ bedroom to the roof. I could never do anything against the rules in this house, because everything is connected. All you have to do is stand on the landing and you know everything that’s happening on a particular floor. I figure Mrs. Pullapilly knows that or she wouldn’t let Caitlin come over ever. And nobody wants to hang out at Caitlin’s, because it’s just too uncomfortable. They serve suspicion over there for snacks.

  The roof is truly a sanctuary. I set the take-out bag down on the table, along with the plates and utensils. I go to the street side of the roof and look out over the fence. The streets below are summer busy, lots of visitors and neighbors out to shop. I can hear thumps of bass lines coming from cars, and the occasional cacophony of horns, and more than one “Yo.”

  I look out over the neighborhood and see other rooftop gardens. Some are flat and plain, with only an air-conditioning unit and some old pots as decoration, and others are way too fancy, as if they were inspired by terraces on a palace overlooking a kingdom other than Bay Ridge.

  The Melfis have an awning with tassels, while the Hounsells have a fountain next to a picnic table. There are all sorts of ways to “roof it.” The Chesterton roof is serviceable and plain, just like we like it.

  “Hal-lo,” Maurice says from the porthole to the roof.

  “Come on up,” I tell him.

  He climbs up onto the roof and walks over to the fence. “This is an amazing view. So many buildings.”

  “By the end of the summer, you will know them all, and who’s living in them,” I tell him.

  “I doubt that. I’m not very good with names.”

  “I’m Viola.”

  He laughs. “I can remember that.”

  “And…,” I continue, “we say More-reece in the states, but in the UK, you are Morris.”

  “Brilliant,” Maurice says, meaning the opposite of brilliant.

  I’m boring our tenant to death already. And let’s face it, anything he says with that British accent sounds way smarter than anything I say with my American one. “Now, don’t make fun of your host. Sarcastic doesn’t play on the roof in Brooklyn.”

  Maurice sort of exhales, like I’m all right after all.

  Suzanne taught me that boys are very simple to understand when it comes to girls. If a boy talks to you at all, he probably likes you. Girls are not that way, in my experience. We’ll talk to anybody, and it doesn’t have to wind up as a date.

  I take a good long look at Maurice as he surveys my neighborhood, and decide, right now, in this moment, that he could be a friend, but not a boyfriend. I am not compelled by him as I was by Jared Spencer, and I’m not instantly comfortable with him as I was with Andrew when we were little in Mommy, Music, & Me classes at Chelsea Day School, and then every day since. I exhale in relief. I let go of that uncomfortable tension that comes with unmet expectations. Instead, I will demonstrate a genuine interest in him and his opinions. “So, what do you think of New York so far?”

  “I rather like it.”

  “You’ve only seen the airport and Brooklyn.”

  “Everyone has seen Manhattan, whether they have ever set foot on the island or not. Think about it. So many movies made with New York as a backdrop. It’s almost as if there’s no need to visit, because you know it already.”

  “Good point.” I’m impressed that he thinks things through so thoroughly. That has not been my experience with boys in general. Even Jared Spencer needed the occasional reminder that he wasn’t the only person on the planet. “Well, you know, the same is true of London. There’s Big Ben and the Thames, and Buckingham Palace. I’ve never been to London, and I feel like I have.”

  “There’s so much more to it. Places like Brick Lane….” Maurice’s voice trails off. I think the excitement of landing has worn off and now he’s homesick.

  “What’s so special about Brick Lane?” I ask.

  “My friends.”

  “Hi!” Caitlin says as she climbs through the porthole onto the roof. “Your mom sent me with the drinks.” She hauls our mini-cooler up. Maurice turns at the sound of her voice. “I put my duffel in your room.”

  As Caitlin emerges from the landing, she appears like a goddess in a myth, coming out of the earth. Her long hair is ruffled by the wind like shiny strands of black licorice. Her baby blue T-shirt is piped in white ribbon, while her jeans have rhinestone studs on the pockets. Caitlin, though she is Indian, is a lot like the Italian girls in my neighborhood. Exotic brunettes like a little dazzle in their wardrobe.

  Maurice, who was perfectly normal ten seconds ago, suddenly goes all shy as Caitlin approaches.

  “Caitlin, say hello to Maurice from England.” I turn to Maurice.

  “Nice to meet you.” Caitlin smiles.

  I swear, it’s like Maurice can’t handle her smile. He’s turning ten shades of red.

  “Are you hungry?” I ask Caitlin.

  “Starving.”

  “How about you?” I ask Maurice.

  “I am.”

  “Well, make yourselves at home. We’ve got sesame noodles, vegetable dumplings, and sautéed green beans.”

  “Sounds delish,” Caitlin says.

  “You guys have no idea. Well, Maurice, we’ve just met, but I had to spend last school year in a boarding school, and of course, I missed my friends, but second on the list of things I learned I could not live without was…cold sesame noodles.”

  “I understand.” He smiles and sits on one of the chaise lounges. “I miss my mother’s shortbread.”

  Caitlin helps me unload the take-out from the bag.

  “What’s your favorite food, Maurice?” Caitlin asks. “Besides your mom’s baking.”

  “Indian.”

  She laughs. “You’re just saying that to be polite.”

  “No, I’m not. My favorite food is kuttu ki puri,” he says.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “My mom makes them.” Caitlin beams. “They’re puffy potato balls fried in oil.”

  “In London, they are filled with different things,”
Maurice explains, scooting the edge of his chaise closer to Caitlin’s.

  “Little bundles of savories—like vegetables, or sometimes mixtures of meat and spices,” Caitlin says.

  “I like the vegetables best,” he says.

  “Me too,” she agrees.

  Then the craziest thing happens. It’s as if I, the host of the evening, have evaporated like a bubble into thin air and am floating above the roof and over Bay Ridge into the harbor. Maurice is over his shyness, and Caitlin revels in his knowledge of her Indian culture. They like each other.

  I can’t wait to IM Suzanne and tell her that her theories about boys need a redo, because Maurice was totally comfortable with me from the start, while he was shy/nervous/longing with Caitlin. He has, in fact, already totally fallen for Caitlin, who made his throat close with nerves, and not for me, whom he could talk easily with.

  Cupid dropped a love bomb over Bay Ridge, and these two are sucking fumes. Even Jared Spencer and I had a slight warm-up period, where I wasn’t sure if it was me or my camera he was interested in. But these two? They found common ground over Indian cuisine with the fried potato puffs, whatever they are, and they haven’t stopped talking since.

  A sliver of a periwinkle moon appears through a dusting of clouds. It lingers over us like a shard of pretty ribbon. I don’t think Caitlin and Maurice notice that the sun has set, that they haven’t eaten, or that I’m here. I turn on the old string of bulbs that light the roof. They don’t even notice the twinkle. This is how it goes, I’m thinking, when you meet The One.

  “Is it too hot in here?” I ask Caitlin.

  “Not at all.” She lies back on the pillow inside her sleeping bag, while I, feeling the heat, lie on the outside of mine.

  “So what did you think of Maurice?” I ask her.

  There’s a long pause, and then we both start laughing so hard, I’m afraid it might wake my parents.