Tru Confessions

by Janet Tashjian

  SNORE!

  (I’m getting tired of waiting …)

  A Sicko Way to Spend a Rainy Sunday Afternoon—Playing “What If?”

  • What if I called Rhode Island Information? (Area code 401—I really did check.)

  • And what if there was a listing for Edward Walker, Sr.?

  • And what if I dialed the phone and my father answered, and I hung up really fast?

  • Then what if he dialed 69 and called me back not knowing it was me and started yelling at me for making crank phone calls?

  • Then what if I told him I was his daughter and he asked me how Mom and Eddie were, and whether we got his box of African souvenirs nine years ago?

  • And what if he remarried and has two pretty daughters with nice normal names like Jenny and Patti.

  • And what if these two new stepsisters started torturing me for the rest of my life like I was poor Cinderella?

  • And what if I asked my father if he had any information that would help me cure Eddie and he told me Eddie was never going to change and I said, “How do you know?” and he told me I had to move on and I said, “Like you?”

  • What if he hung up in a hurry and left me holding the phone, listening to the dial tone?

  • And what if I took the bag of jelly beans I’m eating and hurled them up to the ceiling one by one until it looks like the ceiling’s been stained with permanent confetti? What then?

  (It has got to stop raining soon …)

  Abandoned Children

  —Eddie Walker

  A Patched Bot Wever Noils

  It has been three weeks since I mailed my proposal and demo tape. I’ve called the cable company’s office fourteen times—a few times using fake voices—trying to find out when they’ll be finished reviewing applications. I think the receptionist recognized my voice the last time because he told me nothing had changed since the beginning of the week. I told him that was wrong, that lots of things had changed, including the President’s policy on China and my substitute math teacher. (Hopefully, they don’t have 69 at the cable station …)

  My mother keeps telling me, “A watched pot never boils.” I hate it when she tries to reduce life to handy clichés like “Don’t cry over spilled milk” or “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.” An old housewife must have made up all of these clichés a long time ago, because they all have to do with kitchens and food.

  (Don’t you like how my computer puts the correct accent on the e in cliché? Pretty cool, huh?)

  I check my e-mail and there’s a message from deedee, answering my last inquiry. “Your brother is very lucky to have a sister who cares so much about him,” she/he says. “But I’d hate to see you wait for a cure that may not be coming. I’ll let you know if I hear of anything that might make his life easier, but maybe you should concentrate on yourself for a while.”

  I write back and say thanks for the advice but that I’ll never be happy until Eddie is cured. I go back to sitting by the phone, waiting for the cable company to call.

  Eddie makes matters worse by bugging me—at least twenty times—asking me when I’ll get my own show. “When do you find out, Tru? Huh? When? When, Tru? What day? When?”

  “I DON’T KNOW!” I yell so loud, he blocks his ears. Why can’t he be a little more patient, like me?

  When I go to bed, I draw a skull and crossbones on today’s date on the calendar. Stupid cable company. I don’t even want a show anymore.

  When I get home from school the next day, my mother hands me a piece of mail from the cable company.

  The envelope, please:

  Yes!

  Did I say I hated them? I love that cable company.

  What the Letter Said (My Version)

  Dear Ms. Walker (may we call you Tru?):

  Congratulations!!!!!!!!! Your tape was the best tape we have ever seen. We sat through more than 200,547 tapes and yours was the only one that wasn’t boring. We loved it! We can’t wait to meet you and your lovely brother, Eddie. We also want you to begin taping immediately—we need a new show every week for the next five years. We know this will be a lot of work for you, but we have complete faith in your talent.

  Your new best friends,

  The cable company

  P.S. Did we mention that we loved the tape?

  What the Letter Said (The Real Version)

  Dear Ms. Walker:

  Congratulations! We are proud to announce that your tape, Real Life with Eddie, was the winner of our community cable contest. We will contact you this week with a specific time and date to broadcast your show.

  Sincerely,

  Christy Morelli

  Community Liaison

  (Both letters kind of say the same thing …)

  (In case you want to keep this for when I’m famous.)

  What, Me? Nervous?

  Just because Mr. Manning made an announcement over the P.A. system for everyone to watch the show Thursday night at seven … And just because there was an article in the town newspaper … And just because everyone is going to tell me how stupid the show was as soon as I walk into class Friday morning … And just because my mother invited my grandfather and Mrs. Hannah over to our house to watch the show … And just because I’ve been feeling nauseous for two days … And just because my face has broken out in so many zits that it looks like a Braille copy of War and Peace …

  No, I’m not nervous.

  I’m terrified …

  LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!

  (I’m just practicing …)

  Unhappy Birthday to You

  Paula Ferrone invited Denise, Eddie, and me to her birthday party. Last year Denise was invited but not me or Eddie. We heard about it afterward, how her parents rented all these pinball machines and twenty kids played for free all afternoon while her mother passed out Cokes and popcorn. I think the only reason we’re invited now is because of the TV show. I don’t really care why; I just want to go.

  I was wondering how they’d top last year’s party, but when we arrive it’s obvious: The entire house is covered in aluminum foil like a giant spaceship. A six-foot alien is taped to the front door.

  Eddie runs up the steps and into the house. “Beam me up, Scotty?”

  “I didn’t know this was a space theme,” Denise said, “or I would’ve gotten her meteor earrings.”

  “That’s okay. I got her a Ouija board. She can talk to space aliens and they can answer her.” I hold up the box, but all Denise is interested in is the wrapping paper. Eddie designed a wavy pattern on the computer, then my mother printed it out on the oversize printer at work. The paper is almost more interesting than the present.

  Paula’s mother bought all these dryer vents from Sears and hung them around the house so it looks like the guts of a spaceship. The television plays a video of the men walking on the moon, and the door to the family room is covered with dials and buttons like a giant control panel. Everyone who’s been invited is running around the house going crazy with the ray guns Mrs. Ferrone handed out as party favors.

  After we play Comet Escape and Star Tunnel, Paula opens her presents. She rips our present open without even looking at the paper. But Eddie doesn’t notice. When she is finished with the presents, she cuts the cake (which is in the shape of Saturn, with licorice for the rings). Just as she hands me my piece, Miggs Macrides pops the balloon tied to the back of his chair. Eddie yells and I get a flashback of the mall incident.

  “He’s afraid,” I tell Miggs. “Stop it, okay?”

  Miggs looks to make sure Mrs. Ferrone is still in the living room passing out cake. “Oh, the TV star is scared?” He holds his plastic fork next to another balloon.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I say.

  When he smiles, the piece of frosting wedged between his front teeth attaches itself to his top lip. “Sorry, Falsie,” he says. “I can’t control myself.” He calls over two boys behind him. “We’re losing pressure!” he yells, then pops the balloon. Soon everyone is grabbing
balloons and popping them. Mrs. Ferrone runs in to see what is going on, but by then Eddie is covering his ears and screaming.

  I grab Eddie by the arm and force him past the breaking balloons into the backyard. We run through the Ferrones’ yard and into the neighbor’s. I hold on to Eddie until he stops, then sit him down in the red wagon near the swing set. Mrs. Ferrone, Paula, and Denise follow us, all apologetic, but I tell them we’re fine. They go back to the party for the grand finale.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  He covers his ears. “So loud!”

  I hug him again. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  He runs his hand across the side of the wagon. “Pull me?”

  “Eddie, you’re too old for that.”

  “Please?”

  As I pull him around the neighbor’s backyard, I wonder if anyone is home and will come running outside to stop us. Then I start getting mad—at Miggs, of course, but also because I’m missing the best part of the party. Mr. Ferrone is probably going to light the house on fire and sail it into the sky. When I turn around to look at Eddie, he is rocking back and forth in the wagon, trying to comfort himself. It’s kind of hard to feel sorry for myself when I look at him.

  I am still pulling him after the party guests leave. Denise gets a ride home with Sara, and my mother finally finds us in the neighbor’s yard. She takes over pulling, and I sit in the wagon with Eddie, the three of us circling the yard like settlers on some new frontier.

  Paranoid Fortune Cookies

  Headline in the Boston Globe Tomorrow:

  TRU OR FALSE? LOCAL SHOW IS A

  TRU!

  One Special Tulip

  My mother asks me to hang Eddie’s sheets on the line outside. (A few times a year he still wets the bed.) I dig the clothespins out of the bag, just happy to be outside, away from the phone and the TV. On the way back in the house, I pick some weeds from the garden. My mother’s done a good job—the tulips, zinnias, and marigolds surround the tree like those floral necklaces they wear in Hawaii. Just as I turn to go, I notice one purple tulip in the midst of all the deep red ones. It’s a little smaller than the others, but the color is magnificent—deep indigo, like the color of my bike. I go into the kitchen and smile at my mother. She smiles back, not knowing why I’m smiling. From the kitchen window, the purple flower shines—brighter than the quartz on Mr. Taylor’s desk—while Eddie’s Mickey Mouse sheets wave in the breeze.

  Gulp!

  The day before the show, I log onto the Net while my mother is at work. There are no messages in her mailbox, so I stare at the blank screen for several minutes. My fingers start typing way ahead of my mind. The screen continues to scroll down as I talk about the show, how nervous I am, how Eddie isn’t getting any better. On the Net, I am anonymous and that gives me the freedom to really speak my mind. At the end of my spiel, my finger hovers over the keyboard. Send or delete? I do an invisible “eenie, meenie, minie, mo,” but stop halfway and hit Send. People can ignore it if they want to; I’m not forcing anyone to read it.

  When I check the e-mail later that afternoon, there are three messages. Billybob says he’ll have to upgrade his hard drive if I leave any more really long messages. Kato 2 says the Net is no substitute for a psychiatrist’s couch. When I spot the message from deedee, I pour myself a glass of juice and sit down.

  Deedee says it sounds like I have a lot on my plate—a cliché as stupid as any of Mom’s. She says it’s normal to be nervous, with my friends and family making such a fuss about the show. She asks if I can enjoy my success without worrying about my brother. She wishes me luck and suggests something I haven’t thought of before. She says she’ll be on the Net Saturday morning at nine if I want to chat with her live. I’ve gone interactive lots of times in the Trivia rooms (no one knows more about the Brady Bunch than me), but I’ve never really had a private conversation with someone. I leave deedee a message saying I’ll be there.

  Funny, sometimes it’s something a stranger says, or something you overhear, that gets you thinking about your life. I log off the computer, wondering if my fascination with Eddie’s condition has more to do with me than with him. I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to do my homework. Because Ms. Ramone got a bad haircut, she gave us seventeen problems to do. In math, the answers are either right or wrong, never in between. Maybe that’s why I don’t like it; nothing else in life works that way.

  The Big Night

  I begged the woman at the cable company all week to let me watch the show at the studio so I wouldn’t have to watch it at home. She said no. So I’m up in my room, hiding, until seven o’clock. My mother wants me to come down and be sociable with Mrs. Hannah and my grandfather, but I can’t. All I want to do is crawl under my bed and cover myself in dust balls.

  Mom calls me at ten of seven. I have memorized a list of excuses to use if people start saying how much the show stinks. I’ll say the idea was experimental, or Eddie didn’t take direction well, or the battery kept running out of the camera. Or maybe I’ll just admit that I do stink and will never end up on television. Ten years from now, I’ll be on the other side of the school lunch line, tossing mashed potatoes onto your plate with an ice-cream scooper. AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGG-GGHHHHHHHHH! (And I’m not even playing Monkey Man.)

  Mrs. Hannah gives my hand a squeeze, and my grandfather is smiling so wide, you’d think they just called his number for the lottery. Mom has me take a few deep breaths—o-n-e, t-w-o, t-h-r-e-e—and we settle in front of the TV. When I see Eddie, I realize I’m being a complete jerk. He’s in cousin Kevin’s tuxedo, holding one of my grandfather’s unlit cigars, as cool and graceful as a movie star. Well, he is kind of a star. I decide I’ve been acting like a moron and try to enjoy the rest of the evening.

  Ms. Morelli, the woman from the cable station, begins by talking about all the great applications they had for show ideas. A pet-trick show, a how-to-fix-your-car show, even a mime show. She says my show was chosen because it was “reality based.” Mom says anyone who wants a dose of our reality is welcome to come help out anytime. When Ms. Morelli finishes, the screen goes blank. I think they might be having technical difficulties—kind of like Eddie, I guess—but a few seconds later, my image fills the screen. My mother tells me to stop complaining about how I look so she can listen. I seem pretty serious, talking about Eddie—how great he is and how I wanted to share our lives with others in the community. Then my director’s chalkboard fills the screen. DAILY LIFE WITH EDDIE—TAKE ONE. (I only do one take, but I like clicking the chalkboard and yelling “Take One.”) On the screen, when I yell, “Action,” Eddie starts running around the kitchen. He finally winds down and starts going through the cupboards. He eats a graham cracker and the crumbs are flying out of his mouth faster than spray out of a garden hose.

  “Tru, really,” my mother says. “What’s next, picking his nose?”

  “No, just some burping and farting,” I say to annoy her.

  Eddie keeps repeating, “I’m on TV, aren’t I, Tru? That’s me, right, Tru? I’m on TV. Like Gilligan.”

  The comparison isn’t a bad one. I tell him to keep quiet while we watch.

  It’s strange to see the chairs you sit on every day, the curtains, the kitchen table, on TV like the set of some sitcom. When the Monkey Man episode is on, Mrs. Hannah seems a little embarrassed.

  “I look so heavy,” she says over and over. No one responds.

  “Mrs. Bell is on TV. Look, it’s Mrs. Bell,” Eddie says when his teacher appears.

  The show follows Eddie on a typical day—some highlights, but also some boring stuff, too—until we get to the last shot. Eddie is sitting on the front steps of our house, wearing sunglasses and his leopard-print robe, playing a harmonica. (A nice unplanned moment, if I do say so myself.) The scene fades to black, followed by the cable news.

  I don’t realize till after the show is over that I have twirled my hair into several little pieces that are now sticking up like a porcupine. Mom and Eddie are jumping
up and screaming, and Mrs. Hannah is holding out her shirt and examining her waistline, and Grandpa is nodding back and forth, back and forth, kind of like Eddie does. I’m in a daze. Excited—yes—but also experiencing the same anticlimactic feeling I have when I stay up till midnight on New Year’s Eve.

  “You did it!” My mother picks me up and twirls me the way she used to when I was little. “You did exactly what you wanted to do—made an interesting show that informs people about others with special needs.” It seems as if her heart is about to explode with pride. “Good for you, Tru.”

  Eddie tackles me and Mom doesn’t say anything when we jump from the couch to the chair and back again. She still doesn’t say anything when my grandfather lights Eddie’s cigar and he pretends to smoke it.

  The phone starts ringing immediately. Denise calls first, still angry that her mother had to work and she had to watch her little sister at home instead of being here with me. She’s screaming with excitement, but the call-waiting keeps going off, so I tell her I’ll call her later. I am completely shocked when I click the phone to the next caller and it’s Mr. Manning.

  “Trudy, I just wanted to tell you how much Mrs. Manning and I enjoyed your show.”