Before I could pull the cooler in, though, Julia tapped me on the shoulder. “You sure you want to get behind that old horse? She’s a born loser. And this party is going to suck all the wind out of two hundred and fifty old windbags, which is a lot of wind. Why don’t you join me, huh? I have some great ideas for activities that could involve young people. Recycling. Synchronized dancing in lines. That sort of thing. You’ll think about it, won’t you?”
I looked at her and at the grapes bouncing on her head. I shook my head. “Sorry.”
She didn’t know it yet, because she hadn’t met the new, fired-up-to-be-alive Grandma Van, but she was about to go down.
The line behind her was on the verge of getting rowdy, and I realized that I had an excellent solution to the rowdiness. “Em? Um…I’m going to unblindfold you now.”
“SERIOUSLY?” she asked from her spot on the cooler. “We go to a bar and all sorts of cool stuff happens and then you take off the goggles when the old people arrive?”
“Yeah…” I carefully pulled the goggles off her head and then, while she blinked a bunch, I started to unwind the vegetables. “It’s a pretty impressive amount of old people, though, right?”
“I guess,” she said, looking down the line.
“So, I have to go inside for a minute,” I said. “Will you make sure they don’t break anything?”
“Like, break a window or break a hip?”
“Um, either. And in exchange—I’ll let you go into the lab without the goggles on.”
“You promise?”
Oh boy. “I promise.”
She nodded. As I slipped inside and locked the door behind me, I wondered how I was ever going to make this whole thing happen.
Moments later, the rest of us stood (or were placed) in the middle of the wet lab and stared down at the pathetic pile of streamers I’d brought. The three blue rolls were left over from a science fair project I did in third grade about deoxygenated blood. A few hours ago, they’d just looked old; after spending hours at the bottom of my backpack, they were old and smushed.
Howe unzipped his fanny pack and pulled out a can of bean dip. He set it on the operating table next to the streamers. This party was not going to impress the mature people.
Grandma Van clearly agreed. “Well, this isn’t what I was thinking at all. When I overheard you talking about throwing a party in a cadaver lab, I assumed the point of the party would be looking at cadavers,” she said. “This is sort of a letdown.”
“We are NOT showing them cadavers,” I said firmly.
“They’ll be so disappointed.”
“That’s not my problem. I wasn’t the one who invited the whole Swan Song. That was your idea.”
“Fine. I guess streamers and bean dip is fine. That dip isn’t going to last too long, though. They love soft foods.”
“I’ve been known to do wonders with streamers,” said Lake. “Just so everyone knows.”
Howe’s hand went up in the air and Grandma Van called on him. “Yes, young man?”
He reached in the fanny pack again. “Here’s the drive with everything we recorded tonight. We’ve got music—so it could be a dance party.”
“Not a bad idea,” she said.
I poked one of the crepe-paper rolls. Two hundred old people hanging out in a cadaver lab. There was a joke in there somewhere, but before I could think of it, an idea hit me. “Or you could sing live.”
“What?” said Andy.
“Whoa,” said McMullen.
“Brilliant!” said Lake.
“No way,” said Howe.
“What’s the problem?” Grandma Van asked, smiling big. “That is a great idea.”
“Some, er…logistics issues,” said Andy.
“I am ON IT,” said Lake with enthusiasm. “This is going to be my masterpiece!”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be the whole quartet?” Howe said, shifting uncomfortably. “I, uh, should probably be going home soon.”
Lake snorted. “There’s no such thing as a barbershop trio.”
Howe shot me a worried look. “Can we chat in the hallway?”
“Don’t worry about us!” said Lake. “We’ll be the decoration committee!”
I wasn’t sure how much decorating the three guys and Grandma Van could accomplish, but we left them to brainstorm and ducked into the Hall of Innards.
“I don’t really have to do this, do I?” He was getting sweaty. “It’s—it wasn’t in the contract.”
“This is what you have a problem with? Because pretty much everything we’ve done tonight wasn’t in the contract.”
“But you promised there wouldn’t be an audience.”
“I did?” I could barely remember what we’d said. It seemed like lifetimes ago.
“I’d just really rather do anything else.”
“Than perform? You don’t like performing?”
He twisted himself up for a second and then, letting out a giant breath, said, “I have massive stage fright.”
“You’re a singer and you don’t like performing?” I needed him to sing. “But I saw you perform, in school. In that chorus assembly.”
“I had to. It was for a grade. It was the worst day of my life.”
“The worst day of your life?”
“Um, yeah.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth.
“What?” he said. “It’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing at you,” I said. “That’s not it. It was the worst day of my life, too.”
“Because of the assembly? We were that bad?”
“No,” I couldn’t believe he didn’t know. “Howe, haven’t you heard people at school calling me Igor? Like Frankenstein’s Igor?”
“That’s you?”
I nodded.
“I guess it does make sense,” he said after a second.
“Way too much sense after tonight,” I agreed. “So we both had a bad day. But you’ve performed before. It’s not like that was your first time. All those assemblies over the years. And what about the puppet show?” The moment it was out of my mouth I regretted it. Things had been going so well.
“What puppet show?” he asked, glancing at the ceiling, like he was trying to remember. “Actually maybe I should just—”
“Do you seriously not remember it? Who What When Where You?”
“Oh. That puppet show. Yeah, um, I remember it.”
“It’s the only puppet show you ever did.”
“Yeah. That’s true.”
We looked at each other for a minute.
He cleared his throat a little. “Yeah, um, that’s sort of maybe where my stage fright started.”
“I didn’t remember that you had any stage fright.”
“Well, it didn’t really start until after. Um. After you.”
I finally realized what he meant. “Me? I made you have stage fright? Because of my question? Even though it was the question-and-answer section?”
“Yeah, um, there wasn’t a question-and-answer section.”
“Sure there was. It was right after the—”
“Nope.”
“But—”
“Nope.”
“Really?”
“Nope. You did ask a question, though. Right before my big finale. And it kind of threw me off my game.”
“Wow. I am so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I mean, it was five years ago.”
I stared at one of my dad’s surgery drawings. I was suddenly afraid that this was going to lead back to Howe and me not talking. “Still. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“That was so dumb of me. I don’t even remember the question. Whatever it was that was so important, I have no idea.”
He smiled a little. “That’s funny. I don’t remember it either. Just the feeling of being onstage and not knowing what to do next. It was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me. And every time I go onstage in front of people, I’m a little afraid, I gue
ss, that it’s going to happen again, you know. That something won’t go according to plan.”
“I definitely get that,” I said.
We stood for a moment in silence and then he shifted, knocking down another picture behind him. This one he didn’t catch in time, and it hit the floor, cracking the frame.
“Sorry,” he said as he tried to fit the two cracked pieces back together.
I looked at the drawing in his hands. It was a close-up of something being surgically removed. Funny how you could just pop out an appendix. But there was so much stuff in us that couldn’t be removed. So much stuff you had to live with, like stage fright and heartbreak. I was trying to get Em back, but even if she changed her mind, even if she decided I wasn’t boring after all, I was going to have to live with the fact that she dumped me in the first place. I couldn’t remove the things she’d said. Like Howe couldn’t just remove his stage fright. Even more than our hearts and kidneys, we are made of imaginary things, I thought dizzily.
“But…” I said. “But I’m thinking—look how many brave things, totally off-plan things you’ve already done tonight. You’ve been hanging out with the undead for hours. Maybe this concert is worth trying. And you’ve already sung in front of my Grandma Van. Can it get much scarier than that?”
He hung the drawing back on the wall. It was still cracked, but if you didn’t look hard, you couldn’t tell. Howe bit his lip for a minute. “Most of the…mature people are probably semideaf or semiblind anyway, right?”
“Probably,” I said. “I mean, definitely. And I promise I won’t ask you any questions.”
He shook his head, but it was a yes.
Then, feeling a little bit like actual friends, we went back down the hallway and stepped into the lab. Where we stopped, mouths hanging open. Grandma Van was standing on top of one of the tables, reaching up to the ceiling, where she was taping some of the blue streamers over the harsh white lights.
Just to be clear. SHE WAS STANDING. ON HER TOES. ON A TABLE.
Over to the side, her scooter sat empty, plugged into the wall.
“A little to the left,” Lake was saying.
“AAAAAAAARRRRRHHHHHHHH,” I said.
She turned a bit and spotted us.
“Well, come on! It’s time to decorate!”
Howe, Grandma Van, and I decorated, following Lake’s instructions. The absolutely infuriating fact that I’d been tricked by my very own grandmother was making it hard to focus. “You. Can. Walk. And you just let Howe push you all the way back here?”
“I didn’t mind,” he said quickly.
“That’s not the point!” I said.
Grandma Van grabbed a roll of blue streamers. “I guess I don’t need the chair as much as I thought I did.”
“And that’s just it? What are you going to tell my mom, who thinks you have to use that thing?”
“Don’t you think she’ll be happy about it?”
She was right, and that made me even madder.
“Why use the chair in the first place?” asked Howe.
“That cushion fits my behind,” she said. “It’s like taking my own armchair with me wherever I go. And, frankly, I’d been pretty sure I was on the verge of checking out, so it seemed appropriate.”
“And, what—poof!—you’ve changed your mind?” I asked. “You can’t just do that.”
“It’s been a big night,” she said with a shrug.
I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Give me back those scissors.”
While Howe and I had been in the hall, Grandma Van had searched the lab and made a pile of anything that might be helpful, which included surgical tape, big sheets of gauze, a lot of suture, and a stack of paper. Under Lake’s direction, she and Howe were taping the streamers up, adding a little gauze here and there. Slowly, the lab was getting dimmer, bluer. There was latex in the surgical tape, so in the interest of me not having a major allergic reaction, Lake had me on paper duty, cutting stars out of paper and threading through them with the longest pieces of suture we could find. The needles on the suture were really sharp and curved, and though they went through the paper easily, I had to be careful not to keep stabbing myself in the finger.
Grandma Van made an announcement to the line outside that the party would open for business in fifteen minutes, so we were all going as fast as possible. As soon as somebody finished a job, Lake was right there with a new one. “Those shelves, there, by you, Howe—no, to your left—empty them out. Fovea, hang those stands of stars from the ceiling. You can use the emergency sprinklers and those surgical-looking things. Van, you roll the other tables over to the side and throw some of the big sheets of gauze on them. Howe, take the rest of the gauze and drape it from those shelves you just cleared. Fovea, is there a switch for those adjustable lights?”
I tried every light switch in the room until I found the one he wanted—it turned on a bunch of tiny lights attached to the ceiling by adjustable rods. Special surgical lights. Lake gave me instructions for positioning them, at one point sighing and saying, “It would be so much easier if I got to use my own hands. I think they might be in Tupelo, though.”
We were like a machine. A total decorating machine.
“That’s it, then,” said Grandma Van when the supplies were used up. “Are we ready?” She looked around.
“Places!” said Lake. “Places, everyone! Andy, Mac, and I need to get up onto those shelves. Fovea, would you do the honors?”
After situating the guys, I walked down the Hall of Innards and pushed through the blue door into the lobby, switching on the light. On the other side of the glass, Em was distracting the crowd with a game of charades. When I opened the door, the game fizzled and Julia yelled, “We’re not getting any younger out here!”
“Obviously!” yelled a voice from the back.
“Took you long enough,” Em said under her breath. “They’re all maniacs.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Ready to get them inside?”
She nodded.
“We are opening our doors for business,” I announced.
“What?” Julia asked, pointing toward her hearing aid. “There’s no place in the activities business for the weak-voiced.”
I took a breath and spoke as loud as possible. “We’re opening the doors! We will let you in ten at a time! The band has a strict hands-off policy! Anyone caught touching the band will be kicked out! Got it?”
There was a murmur from the crowd. I had no idea whether they understood me. I turned to Julia, hoping she’d calm down. “All right, you come in and wait right in front of that door over there. Don’t let anybody go past you.” She agreed, eyebrows raised skeptically. I let in the first group and shut the door behind me.
“This way,” I said to the first ten, plus Em, bringing them down the Hall of Innards. They seemed to appreciate the artwork.
“Ooooh, I had that appendix surgery when I was a girl.”
“Is that a spleen? Looks exactly like what my Ricky had taken out of him.”
“I declare, I’ve never seen such a lovely small intestines.”
I stopped them in front of the lab door. “What were the rules again?” I asked. They looked confused, and so I gave them a hint. “No touching…”
“No touching the band,” they all said in unison.
“Okay,” I said, starting to open the door.
“Halt!” cried Julia. “I’m wearing thongs!”
I froze, horrified. I tried to push the image of her underpants out of my head. “I don’t need to…”
“Ladies! Who else is wearing thongs?” Of the ten, eight were women. Nine people raised their hands. “Oh, you, too, Ronald?” All the way toward the back of the group, Em had the same terrified look on her face that I felt on mine. Julia turned to me, the grapes on her hat bouncing. “So? What are we going to do about this?”
“Pretend it never happened, I think….”
“You won’t throw us out?”
“Why would I throw
you out?”
Julia pointed impatiently at the door. At a sign, actually, the one that read, NO OPEN-TOED SHOES. Then she lifted her sequined skirt, stuck out a foot, and wiggled five wrinkled toes at me.
“Have you been talking about your shoes?”
“Of course I have!” Behind her, all eight women and one of the men stuck out a foot and wiggled five wrinkled toes each at me. They were all wearing fancy flip-flops.
I breathed a giant sigh of relief. “For tonight only, no dress code.”
The cry went up. “No dress code!” Then, while they hooted and hollered, I opened the door and let them file in.
The last one in was Em. As she passed me and stepped into the starry lagoonlike lab, I heard her say, just under her breath, “Wow.”
Yeah, I thought happily.
Then, slowly but surely, I ushered in the rest of the line. With each group, I stopped at the entrance to the lab and had them recite the number one rule, No Touching the Band. There were a few more concerns about thongs, but now that I knew what we were talking about, I could handle it.
When they were all inside, packed shoulder to shoulder, I stepped in myself. We’d done a good job. The lab was completely transformed. All the cold metal surfaces were gone, and the room had become a gauzy underwater nightclub with paper stars overhead. The dim blue light made it feel cozy, even. Flowery old-lady perfumes drifted through the air, obliterating the antiseptic smell of cleaning solution. On the far wall, the sheets of gauze hung from the higher shelves, draped to look surprisingly fancy in the blue light. The lights over there were turned off altogether, so that everything above the gauze was in shadow, and the shadow was black-hole dark. Impenetrable.
The residents of the Swan Song seemed to be having fun so far; the sound of them talking was almost deafening, probably partly because so many of them were semideaf, and so there was quite a lot of yelling. Now that everybody was jammed inside, I looked across the room and found Grandma Van. Em stood next to her. I gave them a thumbs up.
The three of us started clapping, and the clapping spread, so that soon, every person who wasn’t holding on to a walker was clapping, and the ones with walkers were cheering, and it was even louder than it had been before. I watched Grandma Van for the signal, at which point I turned to the wall behind me and flipped the light switch.
The Mortification of Fovea Munson Page 15