Stanky leaned up against the Buick. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Stop twanging that aerial.”
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“You know what you ought to do, Georgie? You ought to get Mr. Smythe-Jones to call the guy up.”
“Smythe-Jones? Aw come on.” But the minute he’d said it a cold chill had gone up my spine. And I knew he was right. Mr. Smythe-Jones would love it. Afterward he would go around boasting about how he’d got one of his students on television, and what a great success he made out of everybody who studied with him, and how he had a lot of ins with television and so forth and so on. Oh, it was exactly the right idea. And it made me go cold and scared, because I knew that if I managed it right I could go on television for sure. Not just in my day dreams, but for real.
Being as real as that, it scared me. “Yeah, Smythe-Jones,” I said. “Let’s go over to your house and swipe something to eat.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I SPENT THE next three days thinking up excuses for not getting Mr. Smythe-Jones to call up Woodward, the television producer. Thinking up excuses is something I’ve always been pretty good at. The big thing in thinking up excuses is to make them a little bit unbelievable. That way, people think: He couldn’t have made that up, it’s too unbelievable. Nobody will believe an excuse that’s too believable. For example, if you tell the teacher that you didn’t do your math because you forgot your book, she’ll just give you a bawling out; but if you say you didn’t do it because it was your grandmother’s hundredth birthday and you all had to go up to Scarsdale for the party, she’ll start asking about your grandmother and forget about the math. Besides, if you make them a little unbelievable, you’ll get more variety into your excuses; they’ll have a professional ring you can be proud of.
Making up excuses to yourself is a whole lot harder than making up excuses for your teacher. I was having a lot of trouble getting myself to believe the ones I was making to get out of asking Mr. Smyth-Jones to call the television producer. The first one I made up was that I shouldn’t worry about it until I’d finished my science report, so as not to be distracted. The trouble was that my science report was almost finished, so that excuse didn’t work. Then I decided that I ought to wait until I’d had a couple of more lessons from Wiggsy; but I knew that a couple of more lessons weren’t going to make much difference one way or another. So that excuse wasn’t any good, either. Then I decided that the whole business was making me sick and nervous and was giving me a cold, and that it would be smarter to wait until I felt better; but, of course, the longer I waited the sicker I’d get, so that excuse flunked out, too.
I should have known better than to get started on my excuses so far in advance. By the time I got onto the Sixth Avenue Subway to go up to Mr. Smythe-Jones’ for my vocal lesson, I’d used up all the good ones, and was down to deciding that maybe Mr. Woodward was a Mars man and the whole thing was a plot to kidnap me. When I got off the subway at the Seventh Avenue stop, I’d used up all the lousy ones, too. The only excuse I had left was that I was just plain scared. For me, being scared isn’t much of an excuse: too believable.
Mr. Smythe-Jones’ studio is on Fifty-sixth Street facing the back of Carnegie Hall. Carnegie Hall is about the most famous concert hall in the United States, I guess, and Mr. Smythe-Jones liked to give everybody the idea that he used to sing there a lot. He went around saying things like, “When I was singing at Carnegie,” but the truth is that he only sang there once, as part of a hundred-voice choir. I know, because one day when he was busy buttering up the mother of some snotty kid who didn’t want to learn how to sing either, I went through his scrapbook and found the program.
Mr. Smythe-Jones had his studio in his apartment. There was the front room, which was really a regular living room with thousands of photographs of opera stars and conductors and dancers and actors hanging on the walls. And there was the back room, which had in it only a beat-up Steinway practice piano, a metronome, some shelves full of old music, a blackboard, a huge rubber plant almost as high as the ceiling, and a terrible smell of chalk and mint-flavored Life Savers mixed up together.
When I got there, Mr. Smythe-Jones was sitting in the studio drinking a cup of tea. He was never much more in favor of listening to me sing “The Donkey Serenade” fifty times over and over again than I was in singing it. He was always willing to waste some time talking something or other over, provided that he didn’t get the idea you were just stalling. If he thought you were stalling, he’d say something like, “George, your father isn’t paying me good money to listen to you chatter, don’t chew know.” Then he’d make you work twice as hard and keep you ten minutes over. Still, if you were smart about it, you could stall. For example, some kids would wait until they came to the hard part and then they’d start in with some line like, “Say, Mr. Smythe-Jones, who do you think was best, Mario Lanza or Ezio Pinza?” Of course Mr. Smythe-Jones would smell a rat and say, “We’ll discuss that after the lesson, don’t chew know.”
The smart thing to do was to start your stall during the easy part, so as not to arouse his suspicions. On this particular day he was teaching me some aria written by somebody whose name I couldn’t pronounce. It had a hard section just after the middle, and I knew that easy place after that was where I should stop and ask him for help on the television thing. But I didn’t. We kept going over the song and over it, and every time I’d finish up that hard part and come to a natural stopping place where I could have spoken up, my mouth froze and nothing came out. The chance would pass, and Smythe-Jones would start me up again, and off I’d go. So the time went along, and all of a sudden the lesson was over, and Mr. Smythe-Jones was saying, “Top hole, Georgie,” or some other lie. I knew that if I didn’t say something right then I never would, and I’d go home and commit suicide and hate myself all the rest of my life.
So I blurted out, “Mr. Smythe-Jones, I have to ask your advice on something.”
“Oh yes, Georgie?” He fished out a dirty, crumpled end of a Life Saver pack, sat down on the piano bench, crossed his legs, and got ready to listen. If there was anything Mr. Smythe-Jones liked, it was to have his advice asked about something. He worked a mint-flavored Life Saver out of the pack. “Yes, tell me about it, George.”
“The thing is this,” I said. “I happened to meet up with a television producer, and he wants me to call him up about some kind of show or something.”
First, Smythe-Jones pursed his lips, then he raised his eyes, and then he popped the Life Saver into his mouth, and I knew he was trying to decide whether he ought to get sore because he hadn’t been consulted in the beginning, or pleased because one of his students might do something he could boast about for a year afterward.
Finally he said, “I don’t like the sound of it, George. Who is this man?”
I had written the name and phone number down on a piece of scratch paper, and I took it out and handed it to him. “Mr. Woodward. Of Woodward and Hayes.”
Smythe-Jones shook his head slowly, and began turning the Life Saver over and over in his mouth with his tongue. “Cahn’t say that I know them, George,” he said in a slow, serious way that meant that they were probably liars and cheaters. Smythe-Jones thought that everybody in the world he didn’t know personally were liars and cheaters.
So I looked back at him very seriously and I said, “Well, that’s what Pop was wondering about. He doesn’t know anything about the television and all, and he thought maybe you might call them up and see if there was anything wrong with it.”
I figured I was on safe ground. Getting one of his students on television, or written up somewhere made him hum like a bee. If the thing worked out he could go around for months afterward saying, “Didn’t happen to see the Telephone Hour lahst night, by chance? Student of mine on it, don’t chew know. Virtually tone deaf when he came to me, don’t chew know. Hardly believe it myself, don’t chew know.” And then of course it would give him a great thing to say when he was trying to persuade m
others to send their snotty kids to him for lessons. “Get a little telly for my students from time to time. Cahn’t promise anything, but one cahn’t tell, don’t chew know.”
He stopped turning the Life Saver over and tucked it away in his cheek. “Well, George,” he said slowly.
“Pop would sure appreciate it.”
“Yes,” he said, “I can understand that. Life Saver, George?” He held out the pack, but the pack looked so crumpled and dirty I figured I might get ptomaine poisoning and said no thank you.
“I suppose I’d better do something about it,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to have one of my students mixed up in some tasteless little affair. Wouldn’t look right, don’t chew know. Bad show, that sort of thing.”
He got up and went out into his living room, where the telephone was, and I sat down on the piano bench and waited, feeling nervous. I could hear him dial, and after a bit I could hear him explaining to Mr. Woodward what it was all about. “Boys voice teacher. Father ahsked me to take commahnd, so to speak. Ha, ha. Don’t have the picture, quite . . . Righto . . . Right chew are . . . Quite. . . . Glad to help out, mind . . .”
For about five minutes he went dribbling on this way, don’t-chew-know-ing and righto-ing. Then he hung up and came out and told me that they were holding auditions at four o’clock on Friday, and he’d take me up. And naturally, right after he told me that my legs began to get weak and shaky, and my heart to go ripping along full speed, and my stomach to fill up with cold marbles. But there was nothing I could do about that.
That was Wednesday. I had only two days to get ready. In a way that was lucky. Between being nervous about the audition, and excited about the chance of becoming rich and famous, and scared about being caught by Pop, I could hardly eat anything during meals. If the audition had been a couple of weeks away, say, I’d have died of starvation before I got to it.
The first thing I did was to talk Wiggsy into lending me my guitar. He didn’t like the idea very much, but since he’d been pushing the thing he had to go along. Of course I couldn’t keep it at my place. Thursday afternoon I walked down with Stanky and got it, and we took it up to his place and hid it in his bedroom.
The Stankys are pretty rich. Well-to-do, I guess you’d call it. Mr. Stanky is some kind of a public relations man or something. He makes a pile of loot. They live in a private house on Eleventh Street, which has trees along the sidewalk and is very fancy. He likes to think he is very hip because he owns a couple of action paintings and is always listening to a lot of scratchy old jazz records that were made when Washington was president. The truth is that he isn’t any more hip than my Pop. Less, even: at least Pop isn’t well-to-do.
Anyway, it wasn’t likely that the Stankys would care if I left the guitar there, but just to be safe, we hid it up on Stanky’s closet shelf behind a box of old sweaters and stuff. So that took care of one problem.
The other problem Stanky couldn’t help me on, because even Stanky didn’t know that I had a teddy bear habit. I knew perfectly well that if I went up to the audition without the teddy I’d panic and start fainting all over the place and embarrass Mr. Smythe-Jones and feel ashamed and hate myself for about two weeks afterward. On the other hand, if I could manage to smuggle the teddy in I knew that at least I wouldn’t start fainting. That didn’t say that I’d win the audition; that’s something you could never figure on. But at least I wouldn’t do anything to make myself ashamed and embarrassed. And there was always the chance I’d win.
I thought of several plans. The first idea I had was to take the teddy to the audition in a shoe box. I figured I could explain that I’d just bought a brand·new pair of twelve-dollar shoes, and that I wanted them right where I could keep an eye on them because my old man would kill me if I lost them. But after I’d thought this idea over carefully, I realized that they might have some kind of cloak closet or check room, where they’d insist that I put my twelve-dollar shoes for safekeeping.
The second idea I had was to put the teddy in a little canvas bag of some kind. I’d say that I had diabetes or asthma or something, and had to carry this special medicine around with me wherever I went. Of course nobody would dare to take my medicine away from me. But then it came to me that maybe they wouldn’t want anybody on television who might keel over in the middle of the show. So that idea was no good.
All day Thursday, when I was supposed to be paying attention to my teachers, I was trying to think up a hiding place for the teddy. I couldn’t come up with anything. All I got for my work was a bawling out about every fifteen minutes for daydreaming. By bedtime I was getting worried. I sat down on the edge of my bed in my underwear and began to play an imaginary guitar, pretending I was at the audition to see if anything would come to me.
All at once I remembered that guitars are hollow. There’s plenty of room for a teddy inside, and there’s a big round hole in the middle to push him through.
I sat on the bed, thinking about it. If I loosened the strings up a good deal, I could surely push them aside far enough to squeeze the teddy through. I could push it back out of sight a little bit. I’d stick there. It was fat enough so that he wouldn’t slide around. It was a perfect plan. I’d have it right where I could get a peek at him or even reach in and touch him when I began to get nervous. Nobody would know; it’d be completely hidden.
The idea tickled me so much that when Pop started shouting at me to go brush my teeth I just giggled. And I dreamed all night of being rich and famous and standing in a spotlight on a stage, wearing a gold silk jacket, blue-and-white cowboy boots, playing a brand-new Gretsch guitar, and being hollered at by a lot of crazy girls.
But the next day I was nervous all over again. I could hardly eat breakfast, and I could hardly stand being in school. During lunch hour I thought of cutting out to go someplace and shoot baskets to get over my nervousness, but I was afraid I’d get into trouble, and I didn’t need trouble at that moment. So I spent the day sliding around in my seat and drumming on my desk with my pencil, until finally Miss Hornet told me to get the ants out of my pants, which made everybody laugh.
At three o’clock, Stanky and I peeled over to his place for the guitar. I was supposed to be at Woodward and Hayes at four o’clock. It didn’t leave me much time to get home, stow the teddy into the guitar, and get uptown.
Stanky got the guitar out of his closet and said, “Good luck,” and I said, “Yeah,” and peeled out of there and down Sixth Avenue as fast as I could go, jumping all the lights. I was all in a sweat that I might meet Pop walking around the Village someplace. That’s the trouble with having a father who doesn’t go to a regular job; you can’t count on him being out of the way when you’re getting into trouble.
I got to our building without running into him. Of course I still didn’t know whether he was up in the apartment, working, or had gone out someplace. I hid the guitar down behind the stairs, where they keep the baby carriages and bicycles, and charged upstairs.
Pop was working over his drawing board, smoking his pipe, and slopping cold coffee all over the place.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said, zooming past him, “I gotta go.”
“Whoa, boy, take it easy,” he said leaning back and fumbling around among his paint tubes for his pipe. “What’s the big rush? Life isn’t that short.”
Right away I knew I’d made a bad mistake. Parents are contradictory, and one who’s two parents in one is twice as contradictory. My mistake was to come belting into the apartment like that, for that kind of thing was bound to get him going on a big philosophical lecture about how nothing is that important; people should learn to relax more and enjoy each moment as it comes.
What I should have done was to come sauntering in and start telling him some long, dull complaint about how the math teacher was always yelling at me for no reason, and how I couldn’t get my science done on time because somebody stole my ballpoint pen, and so forth and so on. That would have got him to say, “You can’t blame
others for your own problems. You have to work some of these things out for yourself. Now don’t bother me. I’m working.”
But naturally I’d been stupid and come charging into the apartment full speed, and now I was in for it.
“What’s the big rush?” he said.
“Stanky’s waiting. We have to get up to the Hayden Planetarium before the four o’clock show.” I’d have said the Museum of Modern Art, but that wastoo unbelievable.
“It won’t hurt Stanky to wait.” He went on fumbling for his pipe among the paints, and at last he found it and could start fumbling for his tobacco pouch. There wasn’t anything I could do but stand there and wait for him to get finished. Finally, after a couple of hours he found the pouch and began filling the bowl of the pipe. “How’d school go today?” he asked.
“Okay,” I said.
“Just okay?”
“It went fine.”
He put the pipe in his mouth and began searching around among the paint tubes and the spilled coffee for some matches.
“I gotta go,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t help it; it just slipped out.
“Stanky can wait,” he said. He went on looking for the matches, and after about a month he found them.
“We’ll miss the show, Pop.”
He opened the matchbook, tore off a match, struck it, and began sucking the flame into the pipe and casting out big puffs of smoke. He went on doing this all through December and into March, and finally around the end of June he got the pipe going and he said, “Math going all right these days? No more Fs?”
“No, fine, I got a B.”
“Where’s my ashtray?” he said. He put the pipe down on the edge of his taboret, where it began to go out, and looked around for his ashtray. The year ran out, and then another year, and then a couple of decades, and along about the time we were getting into the twenty-first century he found the ashtray down on the floor, where he’d put it. I looked at the pipe. It was about out, and I knew I’d faint from the agony if I had to go through that lighting scene again. I was desperate to tell him to start smoking again quick, but I didn’t dare.
The Teddy Bear Habit Page 4