A Crooked Kind of Perfect

by Linda Urban

  "A-iiiiiiiiiiiiiii!" screeches Mabelline Person, grabbing the ginger ale from my hands before I can set it on the Perfectone D-60's luxuriously realistic walnut veneer. "You must have more respect for your instrument. Or your instrument will have no respect for you," she says.

  Then you have to drag a big heavy armchair from across the room so that she can sit in it and watch your fingering on the keys and keep track of the notes in your music book and sigh. Not a satisfied, what-a-prodigy sigh. A what-have-I-gotten-myself-into sigh. I know this sigh. It is the one my mother makes every time Hugh the UPS man shows up at our door with a new Living Room University package for my dad.

  Mabelline Person pulls a yellow sheet of paper from her purse. It has been folded a few times and curls up at the edges. She tries to smooth it out on her lap with one hand while digging through her purse with the other. Finally, she finds a fat purple pen.

  Zoe Elias, she writes. Age 10.

  "Eleven in May," I say.

  "It's January," she says. "You've had lessons before?"

  I start to tell her about More with Les and the More with Les philosophy, but she holds up a many-ringed hand. "That's a yes," she says. "And for how long?"

  "The More with Les method requires three clusters of lessons—each spanning a six-week period. When properly practiced, the More with Les method can produce a proficient player in a matter of—

  "For how long?" she asks again.

  "Four weeks," I say. "My dad..." I want to explain that I am not a quitter. That it is not my fault that I did not get to the More part of More with Les. My dad couldn't take it. He quit me from class. On Mondays, he 'd start worrying about driving me to the Eastside Senior Center on Thursday. He'd check every weather forecast, monitor the Eastside website for road construction information, peek in his wallet over and over to make sure his Auto Club card was in its spot. "What if there are no parking places?" he'd ask me. "What if we 're halfway there and a storm sets in? What if the building is closed for repairs?"

  Mabelline Person does not care to hear about my dad. She does not seem to care if I am a quitter. "Play your last lesson, please," she says.

  I have to go upstairs to my room to get the More with Les songbook. When I return, Mabelline Person is reading a romance novel with half the cover torn off.

  I loosen up my fingers, giving each one a pull and a wiggle, and then unfold my keyboard while Miss Person tucks her novel into her purse. " 'Monkey Waltz' by Lester Rennet," I say. And then I begin. I give it my all, eager to impress upon Mabelline Person that I am a gifted musician. Even if I am only playing "Monkey Waltz," I know my innate talent will shine, showing her that I, unlike the other dull and uninspired children she is forced to teach, am a star, a chosen one, a perfect prodigy worthy of a shiny black baby grand piano.

  "Great mother of Mozart," says Mabelline Person. "That was really something." She is wiping a tear from her eye—apparently, "Monkey Waltz" has touched her deeply. "Perhaps you could try again—on an instrument that produces sound?"

  I fold up my paper keyboard and turn on the Perfectone D-60, which heaves a sigh just like the one Mabelline Person makes. As my fingers trip and tangle through "Monkey Waltz" I see Mabelline Person scribbling away with her purple pen. She is not writing Prodigy.

  Float Like a Butterfly

  My dad is learning to be a boxing coach. He is taking another course from Living Room University, where you can learn any trade without leaving the comfort and privacy of your own home.

  Already my dad has learned to Make Friends and Profit While Scrapbooking, Earn Bucks Driving Trucks, and Party Smarty: Turn Social Events into Cash Money. My dad has passed every class—even Scuba-Dooba-Do, which required him to stay underwater for a half an hour. He took the test in our bathtub breathing through a bendy straw. I timed him.

  Right now, Dad is taking Golden Gloves: Make a Mint Coaching Boxing. He is on Lesson Five: Encouraging Words. He is practicing on me, even though I don't want to be a boxer. He says that the beauty of Golden Gloves is that most of the lessons are as applicable to the boardroom as they are to the boxing ring. Except for the ones about punching people.

  I tell Dad I don't know what a boardroom is, but he says that doesn't matter, either. He says he can practice coaching me in anything. Which is why he is rubbing my shoulders and saying "Float like a butterfly!" while I play "Monkey Waltz" on the Perfectone D-60.

  At first, this is distracting. Then it is annoying. I tell my dad to cut it out and he says, "That's right. Get mad. Get tough. Fight through the pain."

  The only pain in the room is my dad.

  I try to focus on the music, which is supposed to sound like dancing monkeys gracefully gliding around a sparkling monkey ballroom. Really, though, it sounds more like regular old monkeys jumping up and down on the keys.

  It wouldn't sound this way on a piano, I bet. On a piano, every note would be delicate and lovely.

  But I don't play the piano.

  "Sting like a bee!" yells Dad.

  I flip the power switch off and the Perfectone D-60 lets out an enormous sigh. "I'm taking a break."

  "S'okay, champ," says Dad, rubbing my shoulders again. "You'll get 'em in round two."

  Telling Emma Dent

  My best friend at school is Emma Dent. I say she's my best friend at school because we don't see each other outside of school. Emma Dent lives in East Eastside. She says that all the houses there are ginormous and have great rooms and cathedral ceilings and either beige carpet or floors that look like marble. Emma Dent has three sisters and they each have their own bedroom, plus her parents have a master suite with a bathtub so big that all four Dent sisters could take a bath in it at the same time, which they would never do because that would be unsanitary.

  I live in plain old Eastside, in a two-bedroom ranch house with regular ceilings. I take showers mostly.

  Emma Dent says I can't come over to her house after school because her parents aren't home. Just Rosa is there, and she has enough to do watching all four Dent sisters and making sure that nobody stains up the beige carpeting and the marble-looking tile.

  I tell Emma Dent that it is okay with me. And it is okay. Because even if I got invited over to Emma Dent 's house in East Eastside, I probably wouldn't be able to go, because my dad would have to take me and he always gets lost and sometimes we just keep driving around and around, looking for landmarks, which there aren't any of in East Eastside, because the houses all look the same, and so sometimes we have to pull over so Dad can breathe for a while. And sometimes he has to get out his phone and call the Auto Club. Then the Auto Club calls Marty's Eastside Wreck and Tow and Marty calls Dad and tells him how to get home. Marty's a whiz at getting us back home. He says it's fun, like doing a crossword puzzle.

  Anyway, all school year I've been telling Emma Dent that my parents are going to buy me a piano. I've been telling her how I am going to get private lessons and how I am going to be a prodigy and that I am going to play Carnegie Hall.

  "Who is Carnegie Hall?" Emma asked.

  "Carnegie Hall is not a person. It is a place," I told her. "In New York City. It's the most glamorous, most important, most famous concert hall in the world."

  "My mom met Monty Hall once. In Lansing." I don't know who Monty Hall is, but Emma said his name like I was supposed to. Kind of like she said Lansing, like it was as glamorous and important and famous as New York City. Which it is not.

  Today, our first day back from Christmas break, I was going to tell Emma about the Perfectone D-60. How my dad had cast my dreams upon a rocky shore. How my genius might never blossom. How my life as a prodigy was over.

  I was going to tell her about ball gowns that would never be worn, ovations that would never be heard, fan mail that would never be read.

  I was going to bare my soul to my dear best friend Emma Dent and, through tragedy, we would forge an unbreakable sisterly bond.

  But Emma is not sitting at our regular lunch table. She is two tables away
, sharing a bag of SnackyDoodles with Joella Tinstella.

  "Me and Joella are best friends now," Emma says. "We hung out all Christmas vacation. She lives right in East Eastside, just a block away. You can sit with us until you find a new best friend if you want."

  If I had my paper keyboard, I could unfold it now and start practicing. It really wouldn't make any difference.

  I have gone over to the dork side.

  Here's the Story

  Most of the time after school, I do Dad's Living Room University lessons with him. Last week we finished Golden Gloves. Now we're doing Roger, Wilco, Over, and Cash! Learn to Fly Like the Pros. We're up to Lesson Four: Take Off!

  "Okay, Dad." I read from the instruction manual. "Press the ignition button."

  Dad stares at the table. He is holding a frying pan lid in his left hand and waving his right hand over the household items we have set up according to the Roger, Wilco mock cockpit instructions. "The saltshaker, Dad. Press the saltshaker."

  I reach over to point it out, knocking over the Cheez Whiz and a couple of containers of dried herbs.

  "Maybe I need to fly solo for a while, honey." Dad puts the oregano back on the altimeter spot. "Why don't you practice your organ lesson?"

  The Perfectone D-60 looks a little bit like the real cockpit photo in the Roger, Wilco manual. There are lots of buttons and switches and flashing lights that go on and off depending on which of the twenty-four rhythm styles you choose. Miss Person says I'm not supposed to be playing with the rhythm styles yet. She says that for three whole months I'm not to use anything but metronome, which just goes tock tock tock and is boring, and so even though I've only been playing for one month and one week, I keep testing out my lessons with different rhythm styles so I don't fall asleep at the keyboard.

  Which I wouldn't have to do if I was practicing the piano.

  Practicing the piano is never boring.

  There are whole movies about people practicing the piano.

  I saw one movie about this curly-haired kid who heard a piano recital on the radio and the next day her parents got her lessons and a real piano. And a teacher came and told her to play scales, which she hated. Everybody in piano movies has to play scales. They all say they hate playing scales, but they do it anyway and then the movie shows you lots of close-ups of hands playing scales. The hands start out small like that curly-haired girl's and then they change into teenager hands and then grown-up hands and then the next time you see her she 's not a kid, she 's a grown-up in a ball gown playing Beethoven at Carnegie Hall.

  When you play the organ, you don't play scales. And you don't play Beethoven, either. Mostly, you play old television theme songs from the Perfectone D-60 lesson book.

  Already I can play "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" and "The Scooby-Doo Theme." This week's lesson is The Brady Bunch song. It's kind of easy. I play it a bunch of times with the Perfectone D-60's Metronome switch on, and then I flip a switch labeled Western Swing.

  "That's pretty good, honey," says Dad.

  "It sounds okay," I say. For an organ, I think. "Want to hear it on Cha-Cha?"

  "Lay it on me," says Dad.

  I press a button and a peppy beat kicks in. Until we got the Perfectone D-60, I had never heard a cha-cha. It's like two shoes dropping on the floor and then a dog scratching himself. Whump whump cha-cha-cha, whump whump cha-cha-cha. Like that.

  Dad is dancing around the living room. I push Steel Drum and Marimba on the Perfectone D-60.

  "Olé!" says Dad. Then he starts singing—cha-cha-cha—about a lovely lady—cha-cha-cha.

  By the time he gets to the "three boys of his own" part, I have flipped the rhythm switch to Polka and the keyboard is pumping out accordion sounds. Dad keeps singing, but now he 's bouncing and spinning around the room and using some kind of accent, saying "vun day" and "dis vellow."

  He does a hoppy kind of twirl. "Dis is a vonderful polka, Zoe," he says. "Just vonderful."

  "Thank you," I say.

  "But I am getting voozy from de spinning."

  I flip a couple of switches, swapping Tuba for Accordion and changing the rhythm to March.

  Dad grins and dashes out of the living room to grab two pot lids he's been using for his DC-10 course. He marches back and forth across the carpet with his knees high in the air, singing and crashing his cymbals together after every "bunch." Crash-crash!

  "Big finish!" I yell, and Dad tosses a pot lid up in the air, spinning to catch it behind his back. He misses. The lid rolls into the hallway and clatters on the linoleum.

  I peek around the Perfectone D-60 to see where it has landed. It's at Mom's feet. She's home from work. With all our playing and singing, we didn't hear her come in.

  "Let me guess, Living Room University has added a drum major course?" she says. She tosses Dad his runaway cymbal. "Where's dinner? I'm starving."

  "Couldn't cook," says Dad. "All the measuring cups are in the mock cockpit."

  Mom sighs.

  "Wing Ping Linguini?" asks Dad. That's his favorite BBQ-Chinese-Italian restaurant. The food isn't good, but they deliver.

  "Not in the budget. We're still crawling out of the financial hole created by this marching band of yours." Mom tilts her head toward the Perfectone D-60.

  Dad sits. His pot lids clang together in his lap.

  "It's okay, honey," says Mom. "We'll have frozen pizza."

  Dad nods and heads to the kitchen.

  Mom turns to me. "Shouldn't you be playing scales or something?"

  You Are Invited

  Right before Valentine's Day a pink envelope comes in the mail, which I think maybe could be a valentine from a secret admirer or something but it is not. It is an invitation: pink, in the shape of a sneaker, with a big silver bow where the laces should be.

  We're having a Birthday Party!

  And this invitation's for you!

  We want you to come and have lots of cool fun!

  It will sure be a Really Big Shoe!

  WHO: Emma Dent

  WHAT: An 11th Birthday Party—

  Bring Your Dancing Shoes!!

  WHERE: 31 Superior Drive, East Eastside

  WHEN: Saturday, March 6, 4 P.M.

  WHY: Because You Are One of Emma's Best Pals!!!

  Emma Dent has invited me to her birthday party. Me. Her former best friend. But the invitation says I am one of her best friends. Am. Like, right now. Actually, it says "best pals," but that's really the same thing.

  Maybe she and Joella had a fight. Maybe Emma was always talking about me and how much fun we used to have at lunch talking about whatever it was we used to talk about. And then maybe Joella got jealous and told Emma that if she liked me so much why didn't she just marry me, which is all babyish and stupid, but exactly the kind of thing that a stupid babyish person like Joella would say. And then Emma said, "Fine!" and Joella said, "Fine!" And then maybe Emma felt all rotten about how she treated me and she didn't know what to say. So she invited me to her birthday party and prayed that I would come and forgive her. Which, of course, I will.

  I look at the invitation again and see something written behind the silver shoelace bow.

  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Don't tell Emma!

  This is a surprise party!

  Emma Dent did not invite me to her Really Big Shoe birthday party.

  Her mother did.

  For the Girl Who Has Everything

  I tell my dad that I need dancing shoes for Emma Dent 's birthday party.

  And he tells my mom.

  And she says that my regular shoes will be fine and what kind of parent throws a party where kids have to go out and buy special shoes, isn't it enough that we have to spend twenty dollars on a birthday present?

  We don't spend twenty dollars, though. We spend $14.98. Plus shipping.

  "What kind of birthday present do you bring to a Really Big Shoe party?" I ask Dad.

  "Odor-Eaters?"

  "Dad!"

  "How about socks?"

  Sock
s might be okay. The first time me and Emma talked was in third-grade square dancing. We were changing into our gym shoes and Emma noticed we were both wearing toe socks. And when we had to pick partners, she picked me and that was it. Best friends.

  "Socks sound good," I say.

  Me and Dad spend the whole afternoon shopping online for socks. We order a bunch from this website called Sock-It-to-Me. We get pink ones with sparkly pigs, and some turquoise ones with crocodiles in sunglasses, and two pairs of stripy toe socks: one for me and one for Emma. Like old times.

  Emma Dent's Really Big Shoe

  Emma Dent's party is on a Saturday afternoon, which means that even though my mom goes in to work most Saturdays, she can come home in time to drive me to Emma's. Which is good, because Eastside Wreck and Tow closes early on Saturdays and if Dad got lost we might have to sit in the car until Monday when Marty opens up so we could call him and he could tell us how to get back home.

  I've got my feet up on the dashboard. I stare at my regular shoes, which are not made for dancing.

  "New socks," says Mom.

  I can't tell if she says it like it's a good thing, like "Cool, new socks!" or if it's a bad thing, like "Where did you get the money for new socks?"

  I like these socks. They have all my favorite colors striping through them. Turquoise. Sea green. Teal. Navy. Turquoise. Sea green. Teal. Navy. You can't tell with my regular shoes on, but the toes are pink.

  Maybe I'll take my shoes off to dance.

  "Thirty-one Superior Drive, right? Is this the house?" asks Mom.

  There is a huge, inflatable, high-heeled shoe hovering above the patches of snow in the front yard.

  "I think so."

  "I'll be back at six, Zoe. Can you be ready, so I don't have to get out of the car?"

  "Okay," I say.

  "If you need me, call the office," Mom says.

  I grab Emma's present and dash up the walk.

  Mrs. Dent opens the door for me. "It's Zoe Elias!" she yells.