How High the Moon

by Sandra Kring

  “Well, Mother… I don’t know. They’re huge. I’m not so sure we could get them…”

  “Of course we can,” Mrs. Bloom said. “Les grew up in Waukesha. He’s practically homegrown. He’ll feel some obligation to return to his roots.”

  “And Teaspoon?” Brenda asked. “I still have goose pimples, hearing her sing.” Brenda held out her arm to show her ma.

  Mrs. Bloom tapped her chin as she thought for a second, then she said, “We’ll bring in the whole Sunshine Sisters crew. Nancy Gaylor will think it’s a fabulous idea!” She put her lips together and cocked her eyes up toward the ceiling. “We’ll have the girls sing something snappy, exciting…,” she said. “Maybe ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’—a whole medley of Irving Berlin songs. We’ll have Jay choreograph dance steps… put you girls in matching dresses—”

  “No… wait, wait!” I yelled. “I got it! How about that song Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen sang in White Christmas? ‘Sisters’! You know, because we’re Sunshine Sisters!” I sang the chorus so she’d know which song I meant, and Mrs. Bloom got so excited at my idea, she almost hugged me twice. Almost. “Oh, what a wonderful idea!”

  “Yeah, and oh, oh, I know! We could get dresses just like the ones they wore in the movie. You know those blue ones, with the lace? And those blue feather fans they had. We could get those, too!”

  Mrs. Bloom turned to Brenda, “Tulle, weren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Brenda said. “With lace on the bodice—a sash around the waist.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right,” Mrs. Bloom said.

  “I have a picture of Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen wearing them in one of my old magazines. I’m sure I do,” Brenda said.

  “Perfect! Dig it up and get the picture to Mrs. Campbell and her daughter immediately. They can sew the dresses.”

  “The sisters can come out in pairs. You and Isabella first, of course,” Mrs. Bloom said to Brenda. “And we’ll keep the two of you center-stage. I’m sure that’s exactly where Mrs. Gaylor would want her future daughter-in-law to stand.”

  I went jumping-bean nuts when Mrs. Bloom said that. On stage. Me and Brenda. Dead-center in the Starlight Theater. The idea was enough to give me the vapors! Okay, I didn’t really know what the vapors were. Just that they made olden-day ladies keel over for a bit if they had a shock, and a shock sure was what I was having.

  Mrs. Bloom paced in little circles, “Okay. Paul and Ford. Who else? Someone either on their way down or on their way up because Lord knows, Paul and Ford will cost a fortune.”

  “We’ll figure it out later, Ma,” Brenda said. “You’ve got your town meeting.”

  Mrs. Bloom checked her watch quickly, frowned, then picked up her purse and the First National bag. “Yes, I’ve got to run. Brenda, listen for Perkins. And get on the phone and see if you can locate Les Paul’s agent.”

  “How?” Brenda asked, suddenly looking as noodley as Jennifer Jackson. Mrs. Bloom rattled off a list of names of people who might know how to find the agent’s name, but I was too excited to hear them or care.

  “I gotta go tell Teddy!” I shouted. I started running down the aisle, the carpet soft under my feet so that even if I was going fast, all you could hear was dull thumps. I got halfway to the side doors, then stopped. “Oh! Brenda? Is our Sunshine meeting over now?”

  “Yes. Go!” she called with a laugh. “See you Wednesday.”

  I took two steps, then stopped again. “I didn’t put the rest of the candy away.”

  “I’ll do it,” Brenda said.

  “Okay, thanks! Bye! And bye, Mrs. Bloom. Thank you!”

  Teddy never sat down until after the supper dishes were done and it was time for Scrabble, so I whizzed through the living room to get to the kitchen, thinking I’d find him there, then did a quick zip through the rest of the rooms where he might be cleaning or fixing something. When I didn’t find him in the kitchen or the bedrooms or the pantry, I headed back through the living room, thinking maybe he was at Mrs. Fry’s. I got halfway through the living room again before I realized that he was in there. Sitting in the black chair with silver threads that were frayed here and there, envelopes lined up on his leg, a bill and envelope in his hand. His eyes were staring at nothing, even though I’d shouted his name through the whole house.

  Yelling my fool head off or not, Teddy didn’t seem to notice I was there until I was standing right next to his chair, tapping his arm. I startled him, and he got up so fast that the mail on his lap zoomed to the floor like paper airplanes. “Teddy! Teddy! You’re never gonna guess what just happened!” I was bouncing so hard that my voiced bounced right with me.

  Teddy looked down at the mail in his hand, like he didn’t know what to do with it, so he shoved it in his pocket. “Something good, I’ll bet,” he said.

  I was sure that Teddy didn’t have something good just happen to him, because he didn’t look happy. But then he always sank a bit when he opened his bills. And plenty of times he got downright rattled, the skin above his eyebrows staying puckered until payday, even when he was smiling. It’s just the way Teddy was about money worries.

  Quickly, I told Teddy what just happened, hoping it would make him feel better. “I was auditioning and I didn’t even know it. But I must have did a good job, because now I’m going to sing on the live stage at the Starlight with the Sunshine Sisters. The same stage that Les Paul and Mary Ford are going to sing on. Can you believe it, Teddy? Can you? And me and Brenda are going to be pairs and stand dead-center.”

  “That’s fantastic, honey,” Teddy said, the bunched skin above his eyebrows not budging when he smiled.

  “Oh, Teddy, just think. My debut! I didn’t think that would happen until I was at least fourteen. I wish I could tell Ma. She’d be real proud of me, wouldn’t she, Teddy?” Teddy sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and grabbed me, hugging me so tight that I had to wiggle free so I could tell him the rest.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It’s weird how when you get a song in your head, you can’t get it out. I must have sang “How High the Moon” a hundred times over the next five days, and when I woke up Sunday, it was the first song that popped out of my mouth. I was still singing it, too, when Charlie and me got to Sunday school.

  Susie twisted in her chair and looked at us when we got downstairs—probably because she heard me singing, though I was keeping it soft because I was in the holy house of Jesus. “Miss Tuckle, Teaspoon brought a scooter inside,” Susie said.

  “Well, I’m not going to leave it out there for some thief to steal,” I said as I propped it up against the wall out of the way.

  Susie groaned so big she could have hurt herself. “You’re afraid somebody’s going to steal it in a churchyard?”

  “Are you kidding me?” I said to Susie. “This place is crawling with sinners.”

  Miss Tuckle said she guessed it was okay that I brought it in, but that I should push it away from the door so nobody would trip on it. Then we got down to Sunday school business.

  “I don’t think Teaspoon listened to the lesson at all,” Susie Miller said to Miss Tuckle as we colored our pictures. “How could she? She sang all the way through it.”

  “You are treating us with more songs than usual,” Miss Tuckle said.

  “I suppose I am,” I said. “But I can’t help it. You see…” And I told my news, right there at the Sunday school table. Robert and the boys didn’t care, but I could tell that Susie and the other girls did. Especially when Miss Tuckle clapped her hands together and told me what wonderful news it was. “It sure is,” I said. “Imagine, I’m going to go down in history as one of the performers at the Starlight Theater’s first live show. Right along with Les Paul and Mary Ford.

  “Did you see them on Ed Sullivan, Miss Tuckle? It was a long time ago, but I remember it. Boy, were they good! That Mr. Paul made a machine so that Mary can sing harmony with herself ten times over if she wants to. Teddy explained it to me, because I couldn’t figure out
how they found so many backup singers who sounded exactly like her. Anyway, it was my idea that they be the leading act.” I looked up and saw Jesus staring down at me from the picture hanging over the Kool-Aid table, and added, “Well, it wasn’t like I said, Hey, how about we call it How High the Moon, and have Paul and Ford come perform the song for the big act, but I’m the one they can thank for the whole idea.”

  Susie turned to Wanda, the quiet girl sitting next to her, and said, “See, told you so. She wasn’t listening.” She turned back to me. “The lesson was about being humble, Teaspoon, which is not what you’re being.” I stuck my tongue out of my mouth, pretending like I was licking the Kool-Aid off my bottom lip since Miss Tuckle was standing right there, but Susie knew what I was really doing.

  Before we left Sunday school, Miss Tuckle congratulated me again, and said something I didn’t catch, but that Charlie did and mentioned as we made our way across the parking lot. “She did say it,” Charlie insisted. “She looked right at us before we went out the door and said, ‘and I’ll see you two at supper tonight.’”

  “Well, that’s about the craziest thing I ever heard!” I said. “You and me aren’t even having supper together, much less with Miss Tuckle.”

  “Well, that’s what she said,” Charlie insisted.

  Soon as we got back home, I followed Charlie into his house so I could get the scoop. Mrs. Fry was standing at the sink scrubbing potatoes and rapping on the window to get Poochie to stop barking, which wasn’t gonna happen.

  “Hello, Mrs. Fry,” I said, loud enough so she could hear me, since she didn’t even hear us come in, even though Charlie had slammed the door.

  “Oh, hello there, children,” she said when she saw me beside her.

  I picked up a wrinkly brown potato that smelled like basement and had more eyes on it than the three of us combined, and twirled it around in my hand. “This sure is a lot of potatoes you’re cleaning. Probably way more than even Charlie could eat.” That was what you called trying to pump somebody for information, which is what Walking Doll said you should do when you want to know something but don’t want to look like a snoop. Something Mrs. Fry already accused me of being on more than one occasion.

  “Well,” she said, “I ran into somebody from church yesterday, and I invited her over for a meal. I always liked April Tuckle, and I never get to see her now that I can’t get to church. So I decided that you and Teddy should come over, too.”

  It was a good thing Mrs. Fry was almost as blind as she was deaf, or she would have seen me and Charlie exchange horrification-faces at the news. Because really, what kid except a do-gooder would want to have to behave for their Sunday school teacher through a whole meal?

  Mrs. Fry told Charlie he had to help her, so I got out of there before she put me to work, too.

  Later that day, me and Charlie sat Humpty-Dumpty on the steps in our church clothes while Miss Tuckle and Teddy helped Mrs. Fry set the dining room table. “Boy, this stinks, don’t it, Charlie? I still don’t see why she went and invited Miss Tuckle. Probably just to torture us.”

  “No,” Charlie said. “She invited her so that she could get to be Mr. Favors’s girlfriend.”

  “What?” I yelled so loud that for a second, the voices inside the house stopped. I leaned close enough to Charlie that I could see the dried soap caked in front of his ears. “How do you know that?”

  “Because Grandma G told me. She said, ‘Teddy is too good of a man to spend his life alone. April Tuckle would be perfect for him.’”

  I suppose I should have seen that coming, the way that Mrs. Fry was always gushing every time Teddy mowed her lawn or shoveled her walk, or lugged heavy stuff out to her garage, saying how Teddy’d make some girl a wonderful husband one day. Mrs. Fry, old as God as she might be, admitted that she loved nothing better than a good love story with a happy ending. That’s why every afternoon, day after day, she glued her old eyes to her television set when Guiding Light came on, waiting for the happy ending that never came, as far as I could see.

  I stood up, my hands on my hips. “Teddy isn’t spending his life alone, he’s got me. And he’s got a girlfriend already, too. My ma! They even slept in the same bed, doing the Juicy Jitterbug. If that don’t make Ma his girlfriend, then I don’t know what does.”

  I must have been shouting, because Teddy was on the steps in two seconds flat, his face red as the pinstripes on his shirt. He clamped his hand on my shoulder and steered me clear over to our yard, where he lectured me about not saying things to make others feel uncomfortable, and to never talk about that “Juicy Jitterbug thing” again… and where on earth had I heard such an expression in the first place, anyway?

  “From the Jackson kids,” I spouted, because anytime I got a chance to rat on those tattletales, I was going to use it. “But so what, Teddy? What I said was true, and you know it!”

  “Lower your voice, Teaspoon,” Teddy half warned, half begged.

  “Well, I don’t see why Mrs. Fry is sticking her nose into other people’s business like she is. She warned me about not being a busybody before, and now she’s doing it herself.”

  “Teaspoon, please. Mrs. Fry means well. And Miss Tuckle seems uncomfortable as it is, now that it’s obvious what Mrs. Fry’s intentions are, so let’s not make her more so. Come on now. Let’s go back and be cordial and enjoy our supper, okay? It’s just a meal. That’s all.”

  I huffed, but let Teddy drag me back to the Frys’ yard, though I refused to go inside until the food was on the table and I had to.

  It was pure torture, sitting there and eating those wrinkly potatoes that tasted like musty basement, too, even if the beef roast was good, all smothered in onions and garlic, while Mrs. Fry did everything she could to make Miss Tuckle brag about herself, when it was obvious that she didn’t have anything to brag about.

  Charlie didn’t help matters, either, sitting there with his hair slapped down over his scabs with some oily-looking gunk, so afraid of saying anything for fear that he’d say something wrong in front of his Sunday school teacher. Like what? She was going to tell God if he did? Wasn’t like God couldn’t hear it for Himself. I tried to make eye contact with Charlie plenty of times so I had an audience when I rolled them, but he wouldn’t even look up at me.

  Mrs. Fry was so busy trying to get Miss Tuckle to tell Teddy about her job as a courtroom stenographer (whatever that was), she didn’t even notice that her bread pudding had been in the oven too long. I noticed, because when I went into the kitchen to grab the napkins like Mrs. Fry asked me to, that bread pudding smelled ready to blow up. I didn’t say anything, though. I just carried the napkins back to the dining room table and sat down, hoping dessert would burn so we could go home.

  After a while, Miss Tuckle sniffed the air a couple of times, then leaned back on her chair so she could see into the kitchen. I guess that’s when she spotted the smoke curling out of the oven door and Mrs. Fry realized that dessert was burnt toast. Teddy leapt to his feet, Mrs. Fry right behind him, and me watching from the kitchen doorway.

  Okay, so maybe I felt a little bad when Teddy pulled the bread pudding out of the oven and Mrs. Fry looked ready to cry when she saw the top, black and smoking like just-spread asphalt. “It’s ruined,” Mrs. Fry said as she waved her white dishtowel like an I-give-up flag.

  Miss Tuckle, a whole head taller than Teddy or Mrs. Fry, leaned over their shoulders. “Maybe the middle isn’t so bad?” she said as she choked on the smoke. They were practically the first words Miss Tuckle said the whole time (though she giggled a lot), which had me thinking that fancy ladies aren’t the only ones who acted different in public than they did at other times, because Miss Tuckle sure didn’t have any trouble flapping her gums at Sunday school.

  Teddy hurried to open the kitchen windows, then turned to me and asked if there was any pineapple upside-down cake left (which was a polite way of asking if Charlie had polished it off when we came back from Sunday school). “I think there’s a piece or two
left. Not much,” I said, even though there was at least half of a pan last time I looked.

  “We could cut the pieces small,” Miss Tuckle said with a giggle. Teddy laughed like that was Jack-Benny-funny and invited everyone to our house for cake, even though I offered to go get it.

  So there she was, Miss Tuckle, sitting at my kitchen table, the three grown-ups laughing about how none of us noticed that bread pudding burning because we were all having such a good time, while Teddy put the cake in the oven to get the syrup warm and gooey again. Charlie, who was supposed to be on my side, didn’t even give me a glance when I knocked my knee against his every time the grown-ups said something dumb. All because he was too busy dabbing his fat finger at the drips of sugary syrup and few cake crumbs left on his plate.

  Teddy noticed what Charlie was doing and said, “There’s one more piece left, Charlie. I think it has your name on it.”

  Charlie stood up and leaned over the table to take a look. “Geez, Charlie,” I said. “It doesn’t really have your name on it. It’s not like it’s your birthday or something.” Charlie turned to look back at me while reaching for the pan, and knocked over the milk pitcher. Down to the table it clunked, glugging milk right onto my lap.

  Teddy jumped up to get me a dishtowel, and although I dabbed until I stopped dripping, my dress was sticking to my legs like wet Band-Aids. So I had to go to my room to change.

  I shut my door and decided I was going to take my own sweet time getting back out there. I stripped off my wet dress and dropped it on the floor, then sat on my bed in my undershirt and undies, humming a little of “How High the Moon” to kill time.

  Humming or not, I could still hear them in the kitchen, Miss Tuckle giggling like she wasn’t even a Sunday school teacher, and Mrs. Fry yapping about how pretty she was when she smiled, even if her face was still the same plain-Jane homely then, only with more pink gums showing. Teddy was doing his share of laughing, too, even though he hadn’t laughed since he got that bad bill. Not even when I gave him my good news.