by Sandra Kring
Charlie shrugged, then said, “Probably.”
“I was throwing a hissy fit because I was hungry, so Ma brought me here.” I leaned close to the glass and peered inside. “Yep, I remember those seats. Green. Teddy was sitting right over there in the corner, having coffee and apple pie. I remember that.
“Teddy said that Ma looked like a brunette version of Greta Garbo, standing next to the window—right here, Charlie. Right on the other side of this glass—a spotlight of sun coming through the window to light up the red in her hair. And he said that even with my nose and eyes running like Niagara Falls, he thought I was the cutest little thing he’d ever seen, with a head full of Shirley Temple curls, only dark, and a nose like a button. That’s what he said. He bought us each a hamburger and fries, then took us back to his place.”
I dug in my pocket. It was empty, but for three pennies. “Too bad we spent my payday on soda pop and Pez, or we could have bought a plate of fries to share. It would have been like a celebration party, held in an anniversary place.” Charlie was disappointed, even if it wouldn’t have been like an anniversary party for him.
“Are we lost, Teaspoon?” Charlie asked, but I was only half listening when I straddled my scooter and looked up and down the street.
“No, I kinda know where we are. I was just watching somebody. Look, Charlie. Doesn’t that lady way down the street look like Walking Doll? She’s got the same bird-black hair and dancer legs like her, anyway.”
Charlie looked down the street where I was pointing. “Yeah,” he said. “But Walking Doll don’t wear hats.”
“Or her hair in one of those French twists. I think only fancy ladies do that. Plus, far as I know, Walking Doll and The Kenosha Kid never leave their corner except to take a spin with Ralph. She doesn’t wear those Mrs. Bloom suits, either. Still, that lady does look like her and walk like her, doesn’t she? Let’s catch up to her and get a look from the front. If it’s her, she’ll borrow us money for fries.”
I gave Charlie my scooter and I ran, because I knew we’d make better time that way.
We got a block away and I was more sure than ever that the lady was Walking Doll. “Hey, Walking Doll!” I shouted.
The lady turned her head and looked back so fast that I couldn’t get a good look at her face. Especially with that little veil coming down from her hat to hang over her eyes.
“Can’t be her,” I said as she reached the crosswalk and trotted across the road. “Walking Doll wouldn’t ignore us like that.” Further proof came when a Lincoln Continental came along, swerving to the wrong side of the street, right where the lady was walking, and she got in. She didn’t even have her door closed before the car did one of those U-turns and zipped back down the street in the same direction it had come from.
“Was that Mr. Miller’s car?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t know,” I told Charlie. “With the sun setting and the sky all orangey and pink, nothing looks the right color. It was a Lincoln Continental, though. If that was his car, and was Walking Doll, then that would sure be a shocker, because Walking Doll hates Mr. Miller.”
“Sure did look like her, though,” Charlie said.
“Yep,” I said. “But it’s like I told you plenty of times, Charlie. You can’t always believe your eyes.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next evening, I got to tell Brenda about my ma coming home.
We were having a night meeting with all the girls, plus moms, so Brenda could tell them what was expected of them as far as rehearsals and costumes went.
The whole theater was packed when I got there, and I had to look hard to spot Brenda. She was standing next to her friends Tina and Julie.
“Brenda!” I said when I found her. “I’ve got to talk to you. You aren’t going to believe this one!”
The Starlight was filled with so much talking that a girl could hardly hear herself think. So I grabbed Brenda’s hand and dragged her to the second concession stand, heading for the little room behind it, where the phone was. “Teaspoon,” Brenda said with a laugh. “I have to start the meeting. Mother’s already heading for the stage.”
“This will only take a second. Promise!” I shut the door behind us. “Guess who’s coming by the end of next month? In time for the gala, even. Go on, guess!”
Brenda laughed. “Teaspoon,” she said, like I was tickling her. “How on earth am I supposed to guess?”
“Try!”
“Um… the Andrews Sisters?”
“Brenda!” I said, laughing a little myself. “Stop that. Guess for real.”
I couldn’t wait for Brenda to make the right guess, so I shouted it out. “My ma! Can you believe it? She’s coming back to me and Teddy!”
Brenda’s smile softened like her eyes. “Ohhhh, Teaspoon,” she said. And she grabbed me and lifted me right off the ground and twirled me in a circle.
“It’s a dream-come-true summer,” I told her when she put me down. “My ma’s going to be so proud when she sees me on stage, Brenda. She loves the Starlight as much as I do.”
“Awww, honey,” Brenda said. “Of course she’ll be proud.” She pulled me to her again, her hand soft against the side of my head, her fingers tangled in my curls. She smelled like lilacs and love.
Brenda was still hugging me when there was a rap on the door and Miss Gaylor, Leonard’s sister, older than Leonard by a year, poked her head in and looked down at us with a nose every bit as pinched as her brother’s. “Your mother is waiting. She sent me to find you. Everyone’s here and seated.”
But everyone wasn’t already there and seated. Because as I found a seat and Brenda headed up to the steps to the stage, the door next to it opened and in walked Teddy, his clothes looking spiffy, even if there was no spiff on his face.
I jumped up and crisscrossed my arms above my head, then ran down the aisle to meet him when he still didn’t see me. “What are you doing here, Teddy?” I asked.
And he said, “Well, I have to know about rehearsals and those costumes, don’t I?”
I led Teddy to a seat next to mine, and I was glad he was there so he could tell me later what Brenda and Mrs. Bloom and Jay said, because I couldn’t hear a thing but the music playing inside me because Ma was coming home. And outside of me, too, I guess, because Teddy had to nudge me a few times and make the shhh sign.
After our meeting, I dragged Teddy to meet Brenda because he hadn’t met her yet, and they shared compliments the way me and Charlie shared penny candy. And while Brenda introduced Teddy to Mrs. Bloom, I ran off to tell Mindy about my ma coming home, even if she probably didn’t know that my ma was gone.
And on the way home, while Teddy pushed my scooter down the dark streets and I ran ahead, racing from one streetlight beam to the next, singing a verse or a chorus of all my favorite songs, while the crowds in my mind cheered like crazy, sad-sack Teddy shuffled behind me like a tired roadie.
Teddy didn’t lose that sad-sacked, worrywart face no matter how many days passed. And each time I saw it, I was reminded of the only story Teddy ever told me about when he was a kid. How once an old geezer blew into Mill Town on a hot-air balloon, right where the feed mill on the edge of town is now, but back when it was just a field. Teddy didn’t see that part, but he saw him leave.
Teddy was about six years old, and even though his ma was tugging on his jacket because everyone else was gone, Teddy wouldn’t budge. He said, “It was one of those times you want to freeze in your eyes forever. I knew when that balloon was gone, I’d never see it again, so I wasn’t about to leave until all I could see was its memory. It was the first and only time I refused to listen to my ma, and even if she’d whipped me—which she didn’t—it would have been worth every blister.”
That’s what Teddy told me. And I thought of that story every time I saw him watching me out of the corner of his eye, like I was something he wanted to freeze in his eyes.
Miss Tuckle looked like a sad-sack, too. At Sunday school she didn’t talk except to
help Charlie and a couple others pronounce some Bibley words and to ask us the questions at the end of the lesson. It made me feel kind of sorry for her, because like I told Charlie, Teddy was her Moby-Dick. Her last chance to save herself from being a flunky.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In some ways, I was sorry that Teddy told me about my ma coming when he did, because it was like getting excited about Christmas while the leaves were still on the trees. I tried to just think about the gala so time would go faster, but that didn’t work so well. Not with everything at the Starlight one big mess, with people coming and going and everybody yakking at once.
I at least tried to be a good helper to Brenda, and keep her set straight on things the best I could. Like when Mrs. Bloom would limp into the Starlight and ask Brenda if she’d gotten this done, or that done, or a committee member asked the same, and Brenda said yes. I’d give her hand a tug then and say, “No, Brenda, remember? You were going to call her after you met with Jay, but then the director lady came in.” Or, “You couldn’t reach him, remember, Brenda?” And Brenda would blink at me with stretched eyes, like she couldn’t believe she’d gotten mixed up enough to think that she’d done something she hadn’t.
But who could blame her, with that to-do list growing longer every day instead of shorter? Just looking at it was enough to make a girl take up biting her fingernails, which is exactly what Brenda started doing. A few times, she tried to cut in when her ma was talking about how exciting our acts were and stuff, to tell her that there was a problem they really needed to talk about, but Mrs. Bloom just snapped at her, “I don’t want to hear about problems, Brenda. I want to hear about solutions.” And Brenda would shut her yap. I asked Brenda what the problem was more than once, thinking I could help her find the solution, but she told me I was doing enough work already.
Considering how much work there was to do, you’d have thought Brenda wouldn’t have wanted to give me a week’s vacation from work and Sunshine meetings. But she did. “You’ve earned it, Teaspoon,” she said. “Plus, once rehearsals begin, you’ll have to be here almost every evening for six weeks straight. Your mother is coming home, and I know you’re excited. This will give you time to concentrate on her homecoming.”
I argued with Brenda at first, reminding her that she needed my help more than ever now. “Plus,” I said, “I need the bucks. Trust me, Brenda. I don’t make enough to pay for my shoes and costume, and Mrs. Fry is going to be stuffing me in her old-lady shoes and sewing me a crooked dress.”
“Don’t worry about it, Teaspoon,” she said. “You have some overtime coming. Enough to cover your costume.”
“Really? You mean time and a half, like Teddy gets when he works on Saturdays?”
“Yep.”
“Hot dog!”
Brenda assured me that she would get things done while I was on vacation, but I was worried because there was still so much that needed to be done. Like the moons. Not just one moon, like we first planned, but three of them, each painted silver and sprinkled with glitter. One a sliver, one a half-moon, and one a full moon. The sliver was going to hang at the beginning of the show, while a local act, Mrs. Derby, sang “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” (which Brenda and I agreed was a poor song choice, her having a voice like Ethel Merman). That sliver moon would hang there while Beulah and Morris Farthing danced like Fred and Ginger to a tune the Mill Town orchestra played, and while the wonderful Mimi Hines and Phil Ford did their performance. Then Johnny would bring that moon up with a pulley during intermission and drop the half-moon for Louie Prima’s rip-roaring, leg-slapping routine. Then, right before us Sunshine Sisters came on, Johnny would pull up the half-moon and drop the full one, so it would be in place for us and the ace act of Les Paul and Mary Ford.
That night after our meeting—my first evening of vacation—Brenda tossed my scooter into her trunk and insisted on driving me home because it was close to dark and she was afraid I’d get splat like a Charlie. Just as we pulled up in front of my house, Johnny climbed into his car and backed it out on the street, and when I got out of the Thunderbird, so did Brenda. She got into Johnny’s car.
“Hey, where you guys going?” I shouted from the sidewalk. Brenda glanced at me and didn’t say anything, probably because she couldn’t hear me over the blaring radio. Her and Johnny leaned toward each other, like maybe they were talking over what I might have asked, so I shouted my question again. Then Johnny leaned over so I could see him around Brenda, and he shouted back, “We’re going over to Perkins to work on those moons for the stage.” I sure was happy to hear that, because it meant that our stage decorations would get done.
They worked on those moons until late that night, and the next, and the… well, they worked like dogs every night after that. Which had me wondering, why didn’t Brenda just delegate the job of making the moons to Johnny instead of helping herself? But that was Brenda for you. She was just too softhearted for her own good.
One night when they went to work on the moons, I waited for Brenda to come back for her car because I wanted to ask her why Jay was making the Big and Little Sisters walk off the stage at the end of our number divided up, Little Sisters to the right and Big Sisters to the left, when I thought we should walk out in Sister-pairs. I told Jay this, but he only tapped his pencil-thin mustache until I finished my bellyaching, then said, “Ah… no.” And when I started to argue, he said, “Subject closed, Pip Squeak,” and walked away like he was dancing.
I had to wait until long after Teddy was sawing logs before I heard Johnny’s car come down the street. Time I spent trying not to think about whether Ma really looked like Glinda or sang like Teresa Brewer.
When I heard Johnny’s car, I got out of bed and peeked out my window. The Frys’ house was dark so at least I didn’t have their TV blinking Morse code in my eyes, and could see the Jacksons’ driveway good.
I didn’t slip on my shoes, and I didn’t turn on the lights because I didn’t want to wake Teddy. I just walked lady-like quiet to the front door and opened it slowly, then stood looking through the rusty screen, waiting for Brenda to get out of Johnny’s car and come across the street. They must have been talking moon-making because it was taking forever.
I had to squint good to see if there was really somebody moving around the side of the Jackson house where the streetlight couldn’t reach, but then I saw them, Jack and Joey—or maybe James—creeping across the front lawn snake-belly-style, then jumping up fast and yelling, “Boo!” against the passenger-side window.
Brenda screamed bloody murder, and Johnny’s door flew open. Jack and Joey ran like jackrabbits back around the house, while Johnny shouted threats at them.
I stepped on the porch as Johnny and Brenda headed over to my side of the street, Johnny’s arm around Brenda’s waist, probably because she was still shaking from being spooked.
“Boy, Johnny,” I said when they got to Brenda’s car. “Your brothers sure do have a lot of afflictions.”
“Teaspoon!” Brenda said, like I’d scared her all over again. “What are you doing up at this hour?”
The cement steps were rough against my bare feet, and the grass damp and chilly as I hurried to Brenda’s car. “I wanted to talk to you about how Jay’s making us come on and get off the stage. I don’t know why we can’t come out in pairs.” Then I hurried to Brenda, took her arm and moved her farther into the street. “We could walk out like this. Then each pair could do a twirl, like this, so the Big Sisters would be behind us when the song starts. Then maybe twirl again before we walked off.”
“How about we talk about it at rehearsal tomorrow night?” Brenda said, looking up and down the street like she was expecting company she didn’t want, even if the streets were empty, with not even a Taxi Stand Lady in sight.
“Oh, and would you tell Jay to stop calling me Pip Squeak, too? I hate that nickname, and no matter how many times I tell him to stop it, he keeps saying it. He keeps it up and I’m going to kick him in the shins. Just see if
I don’t. Then he’s going to hate me and probably not let me stand center-stage.
“Hey, Johnny, did Brenda tell you that her and me are going to be center-stage? That’s where the best singers get to stand because everybody looks in the middle most. That’s what Jay said. And this is what we have to do when the orchestra starts our song.” And I put my hands up over my face, like they were a blue fan, and hummed the intro, then pulled them down to start the song.
“Teaspoon?” Brenda said, while smiling.
I stopped my demonstration, even if I was to the good place where we do something special with our fans. “What?”
“Tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay. Anyway, Johnny. It’s going to be a swell gala. You’re coming, aren’t you? I get free tickets, so I’ll give you one.”
Johnny put his arm around Brenda and gave her a little tug toward him, while he laughed and said, “It’s a deal, Teaspoon.” Brenda smiled.
“Okay,” I said. “Night then.” I opened the screen door to go inside, then turned around. Johnny and Brenda were standing face-to-face talking quietly, Brenda’s hand on Johnny’s arm. “Oh, and one more thing. Could somebody besides me yell at Rebecca Lang to stop sticking her top teeth out when Mindy’s singing? It’s mean, and it makes Mindy feel afflicted all over again. Jay doesn’t see her because Ivy’s Little Sister, Betsy Franks, who has a head the size of a melon, is probably blocking Rebecca. But boy, if somebody doesn’t make her stop it, I’m going to be kicking her in the shin, too.”
Johnny put his head down, but I heard him laugh. “Enough thinking for one night, Teaspoon. Go to bed.” Brenda was laughing, too. But just then, a car too fancy to belong in me and Johnny’s neighborhood came down the street. Brenda must have thought that car was going to smack her, because she jumped out of the way and hurried to her car, leaving Johnny standing there alone. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, Teaspoon. I need to get home,” she said as she unlocked her door, her head down. Then she got in her car before me or Johnny could even say good night.