Double Take

by Laura Kennedy

  “Laura de France. Never heard of her,” my mother said. “Whoever she is, it was kind of her to rescue you. But you really shouldn’t be going into a stranger’s home, even if the person is old.”

  “I know. But it was incredible. She went to school with some people named Elizabeth, Roddy, and Margaret at MGM.”

  “My God. She probably meant Elizabeth Taylor!”

  “She did. It must have been really cool going to school with movie stars. I wonder if they had to take gym?”

  “Well, if you want to know more about the mysterious Laura de France, ask Grandma Donnie. She’s a real movie buff.”

  Saturday, my day off from Surf’s Up, arrived deliciously overcast. And since overcast is majorly conducive to sleep, I didn’t get up until the egregious (old Vocabulary Bee word) time of nine. Awaking to the annoying sound of my cat Erskine scratching under the bedroom door, I remembered the night before and my abandoned convertible.

  “Yikes!” I yelled and tore down the stairs to the kitchen where my mother sat at the breakfast bar drinking her usual morning high protein smoothie.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked.

  “No hello for the woman who bore you?” she said, licking a bit of blueberry drink from her lip.

  “I need him desperately.”

  “If you mean you want him to retrieve the Green Lady, he and Benji left to charge the battery half an hour ago.”

  “Thank God.”

  “And speaking of charging—”

  “I have not put a thing on Dad’s MasterCard for weeks.”

  “I’m talking about your cell phone, Brooke. If you’d stop and think about what you need to do, you wouldn’t get yourself into these situations.”

  “I charged it last night when I got home.”

  Ignoring me, she went on. “Making lists might help. I do it all the time since I am borderline ADD.”

  “Mom, please. I know too much about your personal life already.”

  She laughed and trotted out of the kitchen at the same moment my dad and little brother, Benji, walked in. My dad was wearing his smug this family couldn’t survive without me look.

  “Well, Brooke, I’ve come through again.”

  I peeked through a plantation shutter to see the Green Lady in the driveway.

  “Dad, you are the best ever!” I leapt up to give him a hug. “How did you get it here?”

  “I drove,” Benji answered.

  My heart did a back flip. “You didn’t, Dad. You didn’t let a twelve year old drive my car!”

  Benji looked indignant. “I’ll be thirteen in April!”

  “The guy who owns the station drove. Said the Green Lady might need a new alternator.”

  I sighed. I was saved again. But my mother was right for a change. I needed to get my act together and get more organized. From this moment on I’d concentrate on the mundane details in life—checking car batteries, charging phones, remembering where I put my car keys, handing in my homework on time. My new mantra would be focus! I’d be careful to stop short of becoming OCD, which is way more than an acronym (another old vocab word) for pretend Clique novel person Massie Block’s snotty private school.

  Tossing raspberries, blueberries, milk and high pro into the Vita-Mix, I whipped up a smoothie and sat down at the breakfast bar with a Snoopy notebook and a totally new attitude. I was ready to schedule the rest of my life, but first I had to Google Laura de France.

  In the den, I fired up our laptop computer and typed in Laura de France’s name. Hmm, nothing. I tried a couple more times changing the spelling, then gave up. Well, I guess Google didn’t have to put everyone in, did they?

  I shut off the computer and loped back into the kitchen where I grabbed the Snoopy notebook into which I wrote Brooke’s Schedule in flowery letters on top of the page. When finished, I glanced at my schedule for the day. Number One: rendezvous with the love of my life, blonde, pug-nosed darling, Tyler Jensen. Number Two: rendezvous with my pretend grandmother, Grandma Donnie. Number Three: rendezvous with the Gap and Forever 21 at the mall; and Number Four: bond with my three BFFs, Tamara, Sudsy, and Maria, after they got off work from Surf’s Up.

  I jumped into action, texting Tyler and telling him to meet me at the Tastee Freeze at eleven. Dressing carefully in my killer pink Zara jeans, I moussed my hair, applied foundation, eyeliner and mascara for the natural look for which I am famous, and was ready.

  Tyler was waiting at our table, wrapped in a hoodie to ward off the unusually frigid temperature of fifty-nine degrees that registered on the huge Pepsi thermometer on the side of the Tastee Freeze. Next to it rested his beat-up red bike. The kickstand was missing, and the basket hung rakishly from the handlebars with duct tape. I plopped down beside him.

  “You look like the Unabomber,” I said. I planted a kiss on what I could find of his forehead.

  “Who’s the Unabomber?”

  “Some guy who went around blowing up stuff about a million years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess he was upset about what was happening to the environment.”

  “I’m upset about what’s happening to the environment, too, but I don’t see how blowing stuff up would help anything.”

  “You know what I like about you, Tyler?”

  Turtle-like, he poked his head out from his hoodie. “What?”

  “You’re so sane.”

  There was silence while Tyler inhaled the rest of his French fries.

  “So, what’s the bad news for the day?” he asked, a suspicious look in his eyes.

  “What do you mean, bad news?”

  “Brooke, every time you tell me to meet you at the Tastee Freeze, there’s something crummy you want me to do.”

  “Oh, Tyler, stop being so negative!”

  “I’m not negative!”

  “Yes you are. Actually, the only thing I have to tell you is we’re going to another Valentine party before we go to Paige Barton’s.”

  He scowled. “Whose party?”

  “A very interesting person by the name of Laura de France.”

  “Where does she go to school?”

  “MGM.”

  Tyler scowled again.

  “She’s older Tyler and well, out of school.”

  “How old?”

  “Seventy-five or eighty.”

  “Eighty?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Why do we have to go?”

  I reached for his hand across the table. “Because I promised, Tyler. I don’t think she has a lot of friends.”

  “They’re probably all dead.”

  “You’re probably right. So, if you could just do this one teeny little thing for me, I’ll make it up to you.”

  Tyler pushed back the hood of his sweatshirt to reveal a major scowl. “The only reason you want to go to this old lady’s Valentine party is so we don’t have to go to Paige’s, because you’re still mad that I went with her for a couple of days last fall.”

  “It was a couple of weeks, and no, I’m not still mad,” I said, getting mad. “Actually, I totally understand why you went with Paige. You felt cuckolded when I stood you up on Homecoming in order to impersonate Maria so she could go to the dance with Anthony.”

  “Cuckold?”

  “It’s on your vocab list, Tyler. You are studying it, aren’t you?”

  “So now I’m a stupid vocabulary word!”

  He leaped to his feet and sprinted to his bike for a quick getaway that was unfortunately slow motion because of his reluctance to abandon his chocolate malt. I chased after him as he weaved away.

  “Tyler, please come back. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You are much more than a vocabulary word.”

  Pigheadedly he ignored me, pedaling off, a soon-to-be grey and red speck in the distance.

  Tears stung my eyes, Tyler’s words burrowing into my heart. Why was it so hard to communicate with Tyler? I was over him breaking up with me to go with Paige, so why couldn’t he cut me some slac
k? The only reason I had to go to Laura de France’s party was so I could wear Elizabeth Taylor’s dress and look really hot for him at Paige’s party. Okay, so maybe the real reason I wanted to look hot was to get even with Paige.

  Chapter Four

  At Omega Point Condominiums I nodded at the guard, a really old guy who looked about seventy. He smiled and waved me through the gate. Gad, there really seemed to be a lot of old people around. And from what I read in the newspaper, I was probably going to have to work until I was seventy to pay for their social security. But I wasn’t going to worry about it today. Today I was going to find out about Laura de France.

  I knocked on the front door of Grandma Donnie’s condo. She appeared looking très chic in a pair of leopard print, African safari/hooker lounging pajamas. She pushed a rebellious hot tamale red curl out of her eyes and smiled.

  “Hey, Hot Shot. Come on in! What brings you to Donnie’s digs?”

  “Just lonesome for my favorite grandmother.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I stepped into her African motif living room. Grass cloth wallpaper, bamboo furniture with yellow, red, and green print cushions, and wood carved animals. The only thing missing was a pup tent.

  “Come on into the kitchen. I’m having brunch.”

  I glanced through the swinging door to be sure there wasn’t a charging rhino, then walked in. The kitchen was the same early Serengeti Planes I remembered, except for a new zebra striped cloth on the table. On it was a bright, red plate filled with melon slices and croissants.

  “Hungry?”

  I shook my head.

  “Cup of tea?”

  “No thanks. I’ve been drinking a lot of tea lately.”

  “Then what’s up? Don’t tell me you have an urgent desire to shop?”

  “I always have an urgent desire to shop, but that’s not why I came over. I was just wondering if you’ve ever heard of an old movie star by the name of Laura de France.”

  “Hmm. Sounds familiar. Did you try Googling her?”

  “Yeah, but nothing.”

  “Why don’t you run into the living room and find that book about movie stars?”

  Within a minute, I was back with a huge book with the title Icons plastered on the front. I rifled through the alphabetized pages. Hmm, would Ms. de France be under D or F?

  “I don’t see anything,” I said after a minute.

  Donnie took the book from me and began thumbing through it. “Well, maybe we can find something somewhere else. How come you’re interested?”

  “The Green Lady conked out last night in the rain at Spring Bayou. My cell was dead too, so I sloshed up to the first house I saw and asked to use the phone.”

  “And?”

  “I met Laura de France. We had Earl Grey tea and she told me my hair was fabulous. She also invited me to her Valentine party, and said maybe we’d watch one of her old movies with a guy named R.J,” I told her, purposely omitting the part about the killer Cleopatra dress.

  Donnie did a double take. “You mean Robert Wagner? My, God! He’s a really big star. Did she mention the name of the film?”

  “Something about a reef.”

  “Beneath the 12-Mile Reef! Unbelievable! It was filmed right here in Coral Cove, you know.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Uh huh. It was during the fifties and it was a huge deal in town.”

  “God, how exciting!”

  “I remember seeing the movie with my mother and falling in love with Robert Wagner. Even at four I knew he was hot. Does Laura de France have dark hair? Maybe she played his sister.”

  “She said she was his co-star.”

  Donnie jumped up and ran to the cupboard. Soon she was tearing the wrapper off a Tootsie Pop she pushed into her mouth.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I feel an anxiety attack coming on and have an urgent need for nicotine,” she said around the sucker. “But, since I gave up smoking twenty years ago, sugar will have to do.”

  “Any particular reason you’re stressed?”

  “I’m stressed because I’m a positive person who doesn’t like to say mean things about anyone, including your new movie star friend.”

  I cocked my head like a dog waiting for its next command. “But, if you couldn’t stop yourself from saying something mean about my new friend, what would it be?”

  “I would say that she couldn’t have possibly been the female lead in Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, because the part was played by an actress named Terry Moore.”

  I could feel Donnie’s cloud of anxiety drifting my way. I grabbed for the bag of Tootsie Pops, frantically unwrapping a red sucker I then stuck in my mouth.

  How humiliating! My new friend was a liar! Mumbling something around my sucker about Surf’s Up and work, I ran out of the kitchen like a rhino really was chasing me.

  “Brooke, don’t run with that stick in your mouth!” Donnie’s warning followed me out the door.

  Safely inside the Green Lady, I put my head down on the steering wheel. Laura de France had lied to me about being a movie star! I felt just like I had the day I was five and found out there was no Santa Claus. Then did that mean she’d lied about the dress, too?

  With the push of a button I put down my convertible top and peeled out of the parking lot, wind blowing through my marcel. Maybe a good breeze would blow away the sadness accumulating in my brain.

  But why had Miss de France lied about starring with Robert Wagner (aka RJ) in Beneath the 12-Mile Reef? To feel important, I guess. Wasn’t that why everyone lies?

  I sighed. Life was really sad. Being old and lonely and making stuff up about being in a movie from a million years ago just to get people to like you. Maybe that’s how I’ll end up. I swung down Orange Street toward Surf’s Up. A lonely old lady lying about who I never was.

  Chapter Five

  Surf’s Up sat on the corner of Beach Front, its egg-yolk colored block walls reassuringly ugly, one of the few constants in my tsunami life. Dave, my boss, stood in the window next to a gorgeous sea foam green Honey surfboard on which he was attempting to stick a huge red valentine. I waved as I rounded the corner into the parking lot.

  “Hey, what are you doing here on your day off?” Dave asked when I walked into the shop.

  “Glutton for punishment, I guess.”

  “What do you think of my new Valentine’s Day promotion?” he asked.

  “Killer.”

  “Just wait until you see the outfits you’re going to wear. The girls are in the back trying them on.”

  I turned to catch my three BFFs, Sudsy, Tamara and Maria, appear from the bathroom. Dressed in long sleeved T-shirts and matching tights, they wore large red bows on their rears. Voluptuous, dark-haired Maria, looking like a Hispanic Playboy centerfold, was the first to open her yap.

  “Do you like our outfits, Brooke? There’s one for you, too.”

  “Awesome.”

  Dave grinned. “Thought it would be great for business. Get people in the mood to buy.”

  “You mean, get the men in the mood to buy while they check out our asses,” Tamara said, adjusting the bow on her rock hard derriere. As school track star, future lawyer, and possibly the first African-American woman president, she took no prisoners.

  “Well, I don’t really mind being a sex object,” Maria said, showing her Grand Canyon dimples.

  Dave and I chortled.

  “I wouldn’t mind being a sex object either if my ass weren’t a mile wide,” Sudsy said, a scowl on her chubby Greek face.

  “Oh, it’s not a mile wide,” Maria objected. She patted Sudsy’s shoulder.

  “Okay, half a mile,” Sudsy answered.

  “Can you even sit with that bow?” I asked.

  “Who said anything about sitting?” Dave said. “This is a job, remember? I don’t pay rent on this box just so the Surf Shop Sisters can have a clubhouse.”

  “Dave, I just need to tell them one little thing and I’ll be o
ut of here.” I herded the Sisters into the corner near a display of Panama hats.

  “So, what’s up?” Sudsy said.

  “I’ve been invited to another Valentine party and I want you guys to come, too.”

  “You mean we’re not going to Paige’s party?” Maria asked.

  “Of course, we are, but we have to go to this party first.”

  Two minutes later I was through filling them in on Laura de France and our fateful meeting the previous night. The only thing I skipped was the Cleopatra dress and the possibility that my new friend might not really be a movie star.

  “So, will you guys go?” I asked.

  “I will if we don’t have to stay too long,” Maria said, “because I really want to meet those guys from Bayview High, so I can scope out a new boyfriend.”

  Sudsy scowled. “Maria, why are you even worried? You could find a new boyfriend in the middle of a bank holdup.”

  “I could?”

  “Or in the middle of a funeral,” Tamara added.

  Sudsy brightened. “Actually, I recently met a very charming older guy at my Great Uncle Zino’s funeral.”

  Tamara laughed. “He was probably one of the undertakers, Sudsy. They pay them to be charming.”

  Sudsy stuck out her tongue.

  “All right, let’s not bicker,” I said, slipping between them. “Then, it’s agreed you’re all coming. Tyler and I will pick Sudsy and Maria up around seven, a week from Saturday. Tamara, you and Jamal drive over to Miss de France’s by yourselves.”

  “So where does this silent screen star live?” Tamara asked.

  “She isn’t old enough to be a silent screen star, Tamara, and she lives right across from Spring Bayou in that row of Victorians. Just look for my car.”

  I drove to the mall feeling a teeny bit better. With the Sisters by my side, it wouldn’t be too hard making it through Laura de France’s party. I liked her, but I have a major problem with people who lie.

  A wave of worry washed over me. So what was I going to do if Miss de France started bragging she was Terry Moore again? Now don’t panic, my saner self kicked in. None of the Sisters will even know who Terry Moore is.