Starring Jules (third grade debut)

by Beth Ain

  We pass by Charlotte, who has Mrs. Noone helping her wipe her nose, so while she’s with the sunshiny librarian I’m with Captain Cuckoo.

  I go out into the cool air and this is the first time in two weeks I’m trying not to squint — squinting will squeeze out the tears that are burning in my eyes. “Let’s try and figure this one out without jumping jacks,” Mr. Santorini says. I am relieved at this news and suck in some air.

  “I have a question,” he says.

  “You do?” I ask. I keep thinking he’s just going to tell me to race him or something, so it is confusing me that he’s acting like a regular teacher.

  “Why would you bring up tubers at a time like that?”

  I snort at this. I forgot all about the tubers. I can’t believe he’s asking me about tubers at a time like this. I think for a second. “I thought it was interesting, and I thought it was something Sylvie, my character, might do that would get a lot of laughs.”

  “I understand you’re an actress,” he says. I nod a little because it always sounds funny when people say I’m an actress since I still don’t feel like an actress. “So, I would have thought an actress would have a big, loud voice and lots to say about everything. And here you’ve been quiet as a mouse since the first day of school.”

  “Am I allowed to answer?”

  “Of course!” he says. “My classroom is a place for lots of questions. Lots of everything.” It is?

  “I’m afraid of the behavior chart.” I close my eyes tight as soon as I say it.

  “It’s nothing to be afraid of,” he says. “It’s just there to make sure we’re all checking ourselves.”

  “But I never know what’s going to get me in trouble, so I’m afraid of doing anything.”

  “Something tells me that if you just act like yourself, you’re not going to have any trouble with the behavior chart. I think it’s probably the NOT acting like yourself that has gotten you into trouble today. And what’s the trouble with Charlotte?” he asks.

  I tell him how she was making fun of me for wanting to be Elvis and how I didn’t even want to be Elvis and then it felt like everyone was laughing at me and how it feels weird that everyone but me has the perfect person for the wax museum. I also tell him that I was jealous of her glasses, and I haven’t even told my mom that. And then I tell him how I don’t know how to be a dummy and that Big Henry is probably the physical comedian they are looking for on Look at Us Now! Now I’ve told him two things I’ve never told anyone else!

  “And John McCarthy says on sitcom TV everything can be solved in twenty-two minutes and I just really want this to be like sitcom TV, I guess. I’m frustrated,” I say.

  “That’s because it’s frustrating stuff. But I’m going to think about this one and you’re going to apologize to Charlotte because I think you hurt her feelings and that is something Jules Bloom being herself would not do.”

  I nod. “Am I getting a yellow flag?”

  He looks at me for a good, long time. “Not today.”

  I let out all the breath I think I’ve been holding in since the first day of school. And then we get on with the day.

  After school, I tell my mom to wait before we get in the car to go to rehearsal. I see Charlotte and I walk over to say sorry.

  “I wasn’t laughing at you,” she says.

  “You were,” I say, and now I wish I hadn’t come over. This is what happens when I am Jules as myself. I get mad and frustrated and I don’t know the right things to say.

  “Well, you have everyone calling me Stinkytown,” she says.

  “Not everyone,” I say. “Just Teddy. And I’m sorry about that.”

  “You’d be a good Elvis,” she says. “You’re an actress. A good actress.” I can’t believe she just said that.

  “You’d be a good Julie Andrews,” I say.

  “No,” she says. “I won’t. I can’t be a good anyone.”

  “What?” Who is this Charlotte and what has she done with the other Charlotte?

  “It’s the glasses. No world-famous people have glasses! Except maybe the Queen of England and even Elinor doesn’t want to be the Queen of England. And I can’t believe you’re having any trouble at all.” Her voice is getting loud. “You get to not wear glasses, Jules. You get to be Elvis if you want — you get to be ANYONE you want, but not me. I have to wear glasses all the time and Shirley Temple did NOT wear glasses, and Julie Andrews did NOT wear glasses, so no matter what, I won’t look like them, and you know you’re just so LUCKY.”

  She is yelling and for the first time I realize that Charlotte did not get glasses just so she could make an entrance.

  “You don’t like the glasses?” I ask.

  “I hate them!”

  I start to laugh. “Why are you always laughing at me?” she asks, still yelling.

  “Because all I’ve ever wanted is glasses and you got them and they have polka dots and I even went to the doctor to try and get glasses and I even asked the show writers to give Sylvie glasses and you hate them!”

  “Really?” she asks.

  “Really,” I say, and I see my mom waving at me from the car. “I have to go. I’ll come up with a solution. There’s a sitcom solution to everything.”

  “Who says?”

  “My big brother,” I say. “And big brothers know everything.”

  We were supposed to tape the show tomorrow and I was supposed to miss a whole afternoon of school, but all because of me, we are not taping the show tomorrow. And all because of me, we are having another rehearsal tomorrow so I can get the dummy just right. And all because of me, we have to tape the show on a weekend! This weekend — the same weekend as the Look at Us Now! premiere party.

  When we get home, my mom stops me and tells me to knock. I am in a very frustrated mood and just want her to open the door already.

  “Do it,” she says.

  I knock.

  Someone knocks back.

  I knock again and look at my mom. She shrugs.

  Someone knocks back. I am about to knock back when I hear, “Say ‘Who’s there?’ already!” from the other side of the door.

  “Who’s there already?!” I say loud. And I hear Big Henry crack up on the other side.

  The door opens, and Grandma Gilda is standing there like a present with a big bow on her.

  “You said the next time I had a prank I should do it in person!” We hug and hug and I am so happy. And so hungry!

  We have breakfast for dinner and Big Henry is sitting next to me gobbling up his scrambled eggs and toast and he is chewing too loud and it’s making me nauseous. I growl at him.

  “AAAAAAH!” he yells. “I hate Jules!”

  “What?” my mom asks, looking at Grandma Gilda and me and not at him. “Calm down, Hank,” she says, trying to go near him for a hug. But he flails at her and screams some more. “I don’t want to go to kindergarten and I don’t want to go to sitcom practice and I don’t want to do homework and my tooth is WIGGLY!”

  I feel my eyes get very wide and I feel a little bit like I want to laugh. But I just don’t do anything. I watch as my little brother throws himself on the floor and kicks and screams at the top of his lungs, and then he just starts crying and then the front door opens and my dad walks in and all of a sudden I feel like crying, too.

  My dad walks over and sits down on the floor next to where Big Henry is lying flat on his back and we all just stay on the floor for a while. “What’s going on?” he asks.

  “I think that kindergarten is a bigger adjustment for Hank than we realized,” my mom says.

  “But he makes it look so easy,” I say.

  “That’s his thing,” my dad says, rubbing Big Henry’s lying-on-the-floor head. Then we sit there for a long time until my mom says, “Well, maybe we should paint something on the wall.”

  At this, Big Henry finally sits up. I try not to be grossed out by the snot coming out of his nose and his sweaty head. I take his hand. Big Henry is not known for his tantrums.
He is known for saying funny things and wearing rain boots when it isn’t raining. This makes me feel lost all over again so I hold on to him tightly.

  “Paint something like what?” I ask. “Are we naming something?”

  “Let’s write what we want instead of what we don’t want,” she says, coming out of her pantry/studio with a can of paint. It’s a light blue, since the last time we did this the paint was red and it was very hard to paint over it. “Positive affirmations,” she says, smiling at George.

  “I want to go back to nursery school,” Big Henry says.

  “I want to go back to second grade,” I say.

  “I want to go back to Florida,” Grandma Gilda says. Then Big Henry just cracks right up like he does — the crying-and-laughing-at-the-same-time kind of crying.

  After a while I put him to bed myself, and I read to him and I don’t make him try to read even one word. I pretend like he’s in nursery school.

  The next morning when I get to school, two things are different:

  There is a brown paper package on my desk (tied up with string!) just like the song in The Sound of Music. Written right on the on the package, it says: Inspiration. Please stay behind at recess. Those two things do not go together in my head.

  There is a new name on the behavior chart and it is not a new student. It says Mr. Santorini, and he has a yellow flag already!

  We all can’t wait for him to start class so we can find out why he gave himself a yellow flag. When he does, he says, “I realized that it wasn’t fair for all of you to be accountable for your behavior if I am not accountable.” I have no idea what accountable means, but it sounds like it means if we have to be afraid of the chart, he should be afraid of it, too, which means I love the word accountable.

  I raise my hand for the first time this year and he calls on me right away. “Why did you give yourself a yellow flag?”

  “Great question, Jules. Because the other day, I was a little too quick with a decision to give out a yellow flag. Some things need explaining. I should have taken a minute to find out the facts.”

  I look over at Elinor, who is smiling ear to ear, and then I look at Teddy, who looks now like he might throw up from relief! I tap my pencil and bounce my knee all morning, waiting to open that package, and then I race through lunch — salad bar! — to get to recess.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Elinor asks when we line up.

  “I don’t think so,” I say, looking around. Then the assistant teacher tells me to go back to the classroom, and Elinor looks worried. “It’s a good thing,” I say, and then I hurry off toward my brown paper package.

  When I get to the classroom, Mr. Santorini has a laptop computer all set up. I open up my package then and it’s a DVD called The Best of I Love Lucy. “May I?” he asks. I give him the DVD and together we watch just about the funniest show I have ever seen. Whoever this Lucy is, she’s what people are talking about when they say talented.

  I watch her get into trouble in a chocolate factory, and she’s busy stuffing chocolates in her mouth to keep up with a conveyor belt and I start to laugh so hard my shoulders are shaking and Mr. Santorini is laughing right next to me.

  “Who is this?” I ask. “Why are we watching this?”

  “She’s Lucille Ball, and she was one of the great comic actresses of all time and she’s extremely interesting.”

  “I love her!” I say. “I love Lucy!” I look at my teacher. My new favorite teacher. “For the wax museum?” I ask.

  He nods. Then he kind of squints at me. “And for your show?” he asks. “It sounds like you have a case of the what-ifs.”

  I wrinkle my nose at him.

  “Like what if you really go for it and be the dummy the way you know you can and then it isn’t good enough?” he says.

  “Or what if it isn’t as funny as I mean it to be?” I add.

  “So, yes, what if that happens? And what if I had given you that yellow card after all?”

  I shrug and I realize that I don’t even know what would have happened and that’s what scares me.

  “I think you’re afraid of not knowing how things will turn out, and I think the reason Lucy is a good one for you is that I think she was the kind of person who threw her fear right into her work and that’s why her work was so good. She didn’t just pop those chocolates into her mouth and hope we all laugh at her, she made her eyes pop out, she stuffed them into her shirt, she went for it. Really went for it. And generally speaking, in life, when you go for it — all in — you almost always get a lot out of it.”

  I’ve been nodding ever since he started talking and all of a sudden I can’t wait for rehearsal. “I think you solved my problem,” I say.

  “I’m good at solving problems when you talk to me.”

  I walk over to the behavior chart. “May I?” I ask. He nods.

  Then I turn his yellow flag back to green, where it belongs.

  “Do you want to come to our premiere party on Sunday night? Ms. Kaplan will be there,” I say.

  “I would love to, sailor,” he says. “You know, you’ve missed recess.”

  “I know,” I say. And I know what’s coming.

  “Ten-hut!” he yells. We do jumping jacks together until the class comes back and I have all kinds of energy for the rest of the day.

  The energy lasts all the way to rehearsal, which Grandma Gilda takes me to. When I tell her all about Lucille Ball, she goes crazy!

  “Of course, Lucille Ball,” she says. “This Mr. Santorini knows a thing or two.”

  “You’re kind of like Lucille Ball, you know,” I say.

  “I know, I’ve been told that before,” she says. “But so are you. People either have comedy or they don’t. You can’t teach it to them.”

  This time, I decide to get that dummy just right. I get it. I picture Lucy’s big old eyes and her worried expression and I know I’m about to go all in, like Mr. Santorini said. Something in me just clicks, and as the scene goes on, I can hear Grandma Gilda laughing all the way from the fake stage they have set up for Spencer and Sylvie’s performance. Her laugh gives me that same kind of energy those jumping jacks gave me, and I decide to take a chance toward the end of the scene when Spencer says “Knock-knock” to Sylvie as the dummy. I knock on his head. He clears his throat and tries again. “Knock-knock.” I knock on his head again. Spencer looks at the director. I think he wants to stick with the script. But the director gives the rolling sign and we continue. “You’re supposed to say ‘Who’s there?’, Dummy,” he says.

  “Who’s there, Dummy?” I say. And then I bet they could hear Grandma Gilda all the way on the Upper West Side when she laughed. Thank you, Lucille Ball; thank you, Mr. Santorini; and thank you, George.

  My mom comes with me to tape the ventriloquist episode, and then I change for the party and give big hugs to my sitcom siblings. Everyone has their own party to go to.

  “This is kind of it, isn’t it?” I ask my mom in the car.

  “Kind of what?” she says.

  “Either people are going to like the show or they aren’t,” I say.

  “Yep,” she says. “And some will like it and some won’t. And some will like The Spy in the Attic and some won’t,” she says.

  “Mmm-hmm,” I say.

  “And you will get to decide if you like acting enough to go through all of that.”

  “I do,” I say. “I love it.”

  “I love you,” she says. It’s like she has that mom script again. The perfect mom script.

  We pull up to BLOOM and it looks beautiful, like it always does, and my dad has put a CLOSED FOR A PRIVATE PARTY sign in the window. All of my friends are there and all of my parents’ friends and Ms. Kaplan and Mr. Santorini and Uncle Michael and the whole rest of my family from everywhere. And there is a big buffet of Mother’s-Day-brunch-type items.

  The show’s about to start. Everything is perfect except Elinor is sitting alone in the corner. “Are you mad at me because I told Mr. Santorini ab
out the jinx?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “I’m mad that my dad’s not coming to the wax museum.”

  “Did your mom tell him about the yellow? Is that why?”

  “No,” she says. “She liked the invisible-lie idea.”

  I smile.

  “He just has to work and it’s a long way to come for a silly school project and he’ll try to come soon.” She says this with a final big breath in and out, and I think this means she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  I realize that this is one of those things that cannot be solved in twenty-two minutes.

  “Will you sit next to me to watch?”

  “Yes!” she says.

  “And will you tell me the honest truth, even if you hate it?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Pinkie swear?” I say.

  And we do.

  Then the lights dim and we turn on the TV and then I can’t believe I’m sitting there watching a TV show that I’m in. I really can’t believe it. And everyone is laughing a lot, and giving me pushes during the commercials — not the kind of pushing you do when you need someone to release a jinx, the kind of pushing you do when you can’t believe something. You just really can’t believe it.

  Afterward, I grab Teddy and Elinor and we march over to Charlotte the way Jordana and John McCarthy and I marched over to the writers: as a team.

  “I can solve your problem in twenty-two minutes,” I say to Charlotte.

  “How?” she says.

  “Just don’t wear the glasses for the wax museum. You made it all the way to third grade without them. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

  “She could run into a wall,” Elinor says.

  “It’ll be a scientific experiment. Very da Vinci.”

  “Or very Lucille Ball,” I say, and we laugh.

  “Really?” Charlotte says. “You think I could do that?”

  “Yes! It’ll be fun,” I say.

  “Like a sitcom,” Charlotte says.