by Mary Amato
The girls went wild. The mom ran out, laughing, and tackled him to the ground. All the girls piled on top.
I looked down at my green-sequined, slippered feet.
Cheers outside. Another goal.
Somewhere, a clock was ticking. A homemade happy-birthday banner was strung on the wall above a trio of framed photographs. The center photo, a serious portrait of the little girl and her parents in front of the lake at sunset, had been altered for the occasion: Someone — the dad? — had taped funny black paper mustaches under their noses and added comic captions. It was silly and cute, and I started to laugh and then some tiny dam inside me broke, and a sudden wave of tears threatened to engulf me. Horrified, I stared at the cupcakes and the cake and tried to push my emotions down.
The mermaid’s face looked serene. The lines of chocolate had been applied with a zenlike calm. The strawberries making up her outfit, neatly arranged on that pure white icing, were impossibly red and beautiful and silent.
The dad walked in and must have seen the panic in my face, because he poured me a glass of water and handed it to me. “Are you … okay?”
I stood up, pain from last night’s workout shooting through my thighs and abs, and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I should really get this party started — ”
“Is there something wrong?”
Outside, the girls were shaking their booties in the cutest victory dance of all time. I wanted to run the other way, but I yanked the sliding door open and started marching out as fast as my fins would allow.
“We thought we’d do this part inside — ” he called.
“It’s fine,” I said, and the girls saw me. As I went through the motions right there on the grass, with my aching muscles and my ill-fitting mermaid suit, the mom and dad kept exchanging What’s going on? glances. Genuinely nice, the girls played the game even though they could tell I wasn’t into it, and I handed out the necklaces and said happy birthday and goodbye, the worst entertainer in the history of Get Happy, Incorporated. Their condo was the last unit in the building, and hoping to make my exit, I walked to the gate on the side of the house.
The dad followed me. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Fine. I’m supposed to wait out front until the van comes.” I struggled with the latch.
“That doesn’t open,” he said. “You have to come through the house.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous,” I snapped. “Who would have a gate that doesn’t work?”
Awkwardly, with all the girls watching, I followed him in, and he insisted on handing me a seashell cupcake to go, still trying to be courteous in the face of every rude thing I was throwing his way. Embarrassed, I found myself trying to think of one positive thing to say on my way out, and all I could think of was “You have nice window treatments.”
He must have thought I was insane.
Outside, I pulled off the stupid red wig and sat — with considerable difficulty — on the curb in front of their condo, hiking my mermaid skirt up and tucking the chiffon flounces of my tail between my legs to hide my crotch. I guess real mermaids don’t have to worry about hiding crotches. On top of the muscle ache, my feet were also killing me: The elastic straps of the green sequined ballet slippers were digging into my skin.
To keep from crying, I started digging into the cupcake. A tiny battalion of ants helped distract me by marching in and out of a hill of dirt assembled over a crack in the cement to the right of my feet. The girls had resumed playing outside in the back, their voices rising and falling, no doubt happy that I had left — the foul mermaid who had threatened to darken the day.
“Hey!”
I looked in the other direction to see Hayes walking toward me, a delicious-looking sub in one hand, his button-up Western shirt too short in the sleeves, his bag stuffed with the parts of his costume that he could actually take off: his vest, his gun belt, his hat.
“Is that a mythological sea creature sitting in front of my own two eyes?” he asked, the cheap cowboy boots scuffing in the street. “I didn’t know you could breathe out here,” he said. “And … son of a biscuit, are those feet? What kind of mermaid are you?”
“A washed-up one,” I said. “I’m dying. I can’t breathe. You finished already, too?”
He dropped his bag and sat down next to me. “The birthday boy hurled chunks.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Dead serious. They cut the whole party short and gave me a sub. Want a bite? It’s germ free. They were individually wrapped.”
I showed him my cupcake.
“Seriously, you don’t look so good,” he said. “Are you okay?”
Everybody was worried about Minerva Watson. I smiled, trying to tell my face not to betray me. His presence was so pure I had to bite my lip to keep from warning him to run as far from me as he could. “I’m peachy.”
“Bratty kid?”
I smiled and shrugged. “I’m just a birthday Grinch. I hate birthdays. I always have. My mom always wanted my birthday parties to go a certain way, and they never turned out right.”
He stretched out his legs into the street, the toes of his cowboy boots pointing up. “I had great parties.”
“Not me. I remember being really little and there was a pile of presents in front of me and every time I opened one, I got a little disappointed because it wasn’t what I wanted or it was cheap instead of cool like the ads promised, or something.”
He laughed.
I winced. “What I just said sounds really sick, like I’m some kind of selfish person.”
“No. You just saw the truth. You were a little truth detector.”
It was such a nice thing for him to say.
I pointed down at my friends. “I’m observing a tiny ant city. They are on the move, swarming over this piece of … I don’t know what it is.… Maybe a dead worm? It looks like they’re trying to eat it or bring pieces of it back to their lair.”
He took a bite of his sandwich and we watched the ants marching. Then he rested a twig near the anthill, and after one ant climbed onto the stick, he moved it over to where the others were swarming. “I’m providing free ant transportation,” he said.
“Antportation,” I suggested.
He glanced up at me and smiled and then pinched a large crumb from his bread and plopped it near the anthill. Within a few seconds, the ants began to swarm. “That’s all it takes for an ant to be happy,” he said. “Live it up, little guys.”
The scene was kind of disgusting and thrilling at the same time. The crumb was soon completely covered.
Somebody drove by and slowed down to look at us, and Hayes waved.
“We must look extremely strange,” I said. “A cowboy and a mermaid sitting on the side of the road.”
“What we do is strange,” he said. “But it’s kind of fun.” He pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his front pocket.
“A tip?”
He grinned. “Cassie was right.”
“You flirted?”
“I just complimented the mom on all the party decorations.”
I gave the ants a crumb of my cupcake.
Another car drove by and slowed to look.
“It’s better than flipping burgers,” he said.
“Or Krabby Patties,” I said.
He smiled at that, and I couldn’t help smiling back. “You almost didn’t audition, am I right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Fin talked me into it.”
“He’s enthusiastic.”
I laughed. “If I recall, you missed some appointment to audition. Dimple doctor?”
He smiled, and his dimples did their cute little thing. “Good memory,” he said.
“I was surprised you said yes.”
“I wanted a job, but I had no idea I was going to get one that day,” he said.
“Yeah, I remember you said getting a job was on your list of things to do.”
He handed his sandwich to me and pulled an index card out of his walle
t. It was worn, as if he had folded and unfolded it five hundred times. “My list,” he said.
“A real list? I thought it was a metaphorical one.” I laughed.
He looked a little embarrassed and put it back in his wallet. I felt terrible, because I wasn’t laughing at him at all. “I love that idea,” I said quickly. “What’s on it?”
He just smiled, put his wallet away, and took back his sandwich.
“I will give you the last bite of my cupcake if you tell me the first thing on it,” I begged.
His eyes widened and he shook his head. Mouth half full, he managed to say, “Way too embarrassing.”
“Okay. Then tell me number two.”
He looked up at the sky, considering. His hair, which was slightly curly, had a dent in it from wearing the cowboy hat. He swallowed and wiped his mouth and said: “Number three: Get a job.”
“And you got one!”
“Yep.”
“What was number two?”
He shook his head, not telling.
I stole what was left of his sandwich and said he had to tell me at least one more thing.
“You’re holding my sub hostage?” he asked.
I took a bite out of it.
He laughed. “They’ll sound stupid if I say them out loud.”
“No, they won’t.” I took another bite.
“Okay. One more thing and that’s it.”
I tried to do a drumroll with my feet, but it hurt too much.
He laughed. “Number two: Record some songs.”
“That’s not stupid. That’s cool.” I gave him back his sandwich. “So it’s a to-do list of positive things, like resolutions?”
He nodded, finishing his sandwich. “I made it on New Year’s Eve and gave myself a deadline. I have to do everything on the list before my birthday.”
“Which is on …?”
He stretched out his legs and brushed off the crumbs. “May twelfth.”
“How many things are on your list?”
“Ten.”
“How many things have you done?”
“Three.” He laughed.
“Are they all things you can do or are they things like climb Mount Everest or swim across the ocean or star in a major motion picture?”
“They’re all things I can do. I just have to get up the nerve.”
The van pulled up with Cassie in the front seat. Joy unrolled the window, a foul look on her face. “Minerva, get up off that curb. Why the halo are you sitting in the dirt? And, Hayes, you should be wearing the rest of your costume. You should be in character!”
Why the halo. Almost as good as son of a biscuit. Fin was going to love it.
Hayes pulled me to my feet, and we got in the van. Joy huffed and drove to the next house in silence.
Fin was waiting outside, standing on the curb in full pirate regalia with ketchup all over his frilly shirt.
“Well, I think we’ve all arrived at a very special place,” he said with his Jack Sparrow voice, tumbling into the van. “Spiritually, musically, and — ”
“What happened?” Joy’s voice snapped.
“Just a wee food fight.”
Joy slammed her hands against the steering wheel. “I do not want to hear that! Why the halo can’t — ”
“We all be like Cassie?” I blurted out.
“Yes!” Joy said, obviously lacking the sarcasm gene. “She follows the script and she keeps her costume clean and gets consistent referrals from her parents.”
Cassie didn’t say a word, and Fin, Hayes, and I traded guilty smiles.
Joy held up a business card. “Another mom was at Cassie’s party and she wants to book her for next month. That’s what I need. Thank the Lord!” She turned to us and gave us a triumphant harrumph.
18
SOMETHING GOOD
FIN, HAYES, AND I started hanging out together. Hayes even helped with the script writing and filming of our annual Fin and Min Show, something we’d been doing since we were seven. In honor of our employment at Get Happy, we decided this year’s show would be an original stop-action musical. It is called Get Unhappy: Billy’s Birthday Party Goes Bad, starring a hapless marshmallow bunny and his marsh mallow-chick friends, which quickly turns violent when the Get Happy entertainer — an evil-looking ceramic rabbit wearing a paper pirate hat — goes off script. Peeps without heads, peeps cut in half, peeps hanging by their necks. We had no problem finding lots of pastel props and scenery because my mother had decorated every inch of our house for Easter, and I “borrowed” a number of choice items while she was at work. The filming took two weeks, because we got ridiculously elaborate, and Hayes added a score and all these cool sound effects. The screening party was awesome — at Fin’s house, of course, since we do everything at Fin’s house because my mom wouldn’t be able to tolerate the mess — and Fin served vim and vigor juice.
Eventually, spring break rolled around. My vacation began with a text from Fin on my phone when I woke up. He had sent it at something like 6 A.M.
Have been on the road an hour already.
I will never make my children get up this early.
He was driving to Minnesota to visit his grandparents. Cassie was in Aruba. Hayes and I were both spending the break at home. Hayes had a brother in college who was coming home for the week, and it sounded like he was looking forward to seeing him.
My mom wasn’t taking time off work, so I was giddy at the thought of having a week to sit around in my jammies, playing my uke and drawing little diagrams of the chords I made up so that I could remember what I liked.
Maybe some people need to go to Aruba, I thought, but this is enough for me.
Business was slow at Get Happy, but Hayes and I did have gigs that first Sunday of the break. It was odd being the only ones in the dressing rooms and in the van.
“So what are you two doing with your days off?” Joy asked as we drove to the first gig. I was sitting in the front with her, and Hayes was in the back.
“Minerva’s coming over tomorrow,” Hayes said. “I’m going to help her record one of her songs.” I turned around and looked at him, and he smiled and tipped his hat.
“On that little mandolin you play?” Joy asked me.
Hayes leaned forward. “It’s a ukulele. She writes her own songs. I’m going to record her doing uke and vocals, and I’ll add bass and maybe some percussion — ”
“That sounds productive,” Joy said.
“Yep,” he said. “She’s coming over at noon and bringing her uke.”
I flipped down the visor and looked at Hayes in the mirror.
“And Hayes is cooking lunch,” I said. “A special gourmet lunch. With a really delicious chocolate dessert.”
“He is?” Joy exclaimed. “That is wonderful. Most boys don’t even know how to boil water.”
“Belgian chocolate fondue, I believe is what he said was for dessert, right, Hayes?” I turned around.
Hayes laughed. “Yep.”
I hardly remember anything about those gigs. I kept wondering if he was serious about me coming on Monday, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to be or not because it sounded fun and also scary. When the day was over and we were driving back to headquarters, I was too chicken to say anything about it, and he didn’t say a word. After we had changed out of our costumes and were walking to the elevator, he told me about something that had happened at his last party, none of which I heard because I was trying to work up the courage to just ask him.
The elevator doors opened and he pulled out his cell phone. He started texting someone, which I thought was kind of rude, and I pushed the button for the lobby.
A moment later, he put his phone away, and my phone buzzed.
A text from Hayes.
“I thought you might need my address,” he said.
The doors opened.
“See you at noon,” he said, and held the building door for me. “Don’t forget your uke.”
“Okay,” I heard myself say. I must
have walked out because I did arrive home that day.
WHEN I AM A parent, no matter how freaked out I am about stuff, I am never going to show it so my kid won’t know that I’m worried and won’t hide everything from me. My mom would have freaked out if I had told her I was going over to a boy’s basement during spring break to play music while she was at work; she would have wanted a background check on Hayes and would have wanted to install surveillance cameras. So I didn’t tell her.
The next day, I woke up early and made cupcakes because I was anxious and needed something to do. Then I ceremoniously ripped the ruler off the cookie tin of my fake uke — you served me well, O Makeshift Plaything — and put a dozen cupcakes in the tin. I tried on six outfits, finally decided on one, and rode over to Hayes’s house on my bike, the cupcakes and uke in my backpack.
Knock. Knock.
He smiled.
I was nervous, so I pretended to trip on my way in, and he laughed.
“Cupcakes,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said, taking the tin. “But I’m crushed. You didn’t trust me to provide a special gourmet lunch?”
He brought me into the kitchen. On the table were — this was adorable — peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white bread, cut in triangles, and those little chocolate Easter eggs wrapped in foil.
He put some chocolate eggs in my hand. “If we hold them long enough, they’ll melt and then we’ll have …”
“Fondue?”
He smiled.
We sat and ate and talked. He told me that his dad was a librarian, brainy and hilarious, and that his brother was home from college, but hanging out with his old high school friends. No mention of where his mother was, and I didn’t ask.
Every house has a different vibe. The only word I can think of to describe the Martinelli house: male. Very brown and plain and comfortable. No knickknacks, but piles of books everywhere. No tablecloths. No scented candles. There were cartoons taped to the bathroom mirror, and funny photos of him and his brother on the fridge. After lunch, he led me through the living room and down the stairs into the basement, where there was a pool table and a desk with a bunch of recording equipment.