by Sandra Kring
“Because Teddy said we had to give you and your ma time to visit. Plus, it was already raining by then.”
I shook my head. “Well, what happened? Did Teddy say anything about my ma?”
“Just that she was here.”
“How’d he say it?”
Charlie shrugged. “Just regular-like, I guess. Why you asking, Teaspoon? Miss Tuckle already sweared on a stack of Bibles that she wasn’t Teddy’s girlfriend.”
“Yeah, I know. And although I don’t think she’d lie to God, He’s the only one who’d know for sure. Plus, that isn’t the only reason I’m asking. I’m asking so I can find out if Teddy is happy Ma’s home, because he isn’t exactly acting like it. Did he sound happy when he said it?”
“No.” Charlie’s eyeballs hurried to the upper corner, like their conversation was hanging up there. Forever later, he said, “I think he just sounded worried.”
“Did Miss Tuckle say anything to him?”
“No. She just put her hand on Teddy’s arm, then she showed me how to work her phonograph so I could listen to music. Then she asked Teddy if he wanted coffee.”
“Let me guess… they went into the kitchen, and you couldn’t hear them with the record player on.”
“Yeah.”
“Boy. If you weren’t my friend, I’d fire you as my spy.” I shook my head and sighed. “See you later, Charlie. Come over after supper so we can put on our production for Ma.”
“Okay. If it’s done raining by then.”
I pulled open the door and looked back at Charlie. “Did Miss Tuckle or Teddy say anything as you guys were leaving?”
“Just thank you and you’re welcome.”
I was just about to close the door behind me because I thought that was it, but then Slow-Moe Charlie said, “Oh… then Miss Tuckle said to Teddy, ‘My offer still stands. Just know that.’”
I shoved the door back open and drilled Charlie like a dentist, but turned out, they were only talking about our leaning porch and her offer to give Teddy a loan. And didn’t that just figure.
When I got to the corner, only The Kenosha Kid was there. “Teaspoon!” she shouted as I got close. “Was it your ma?”
“It sure was!” I told her about Ma’s movie, how pretty she was, how glad she was to see me, and how we fell asleep on the couch together. “I wish Walking Doll was here so I could tell her, too, but you can fill her in, okay? I want to tell Brenda that Ma’s home, and get back before she wakes up. Tell Walking Doll I’ll bring the movie poster as soon as I get my hands on it.”
“You can tell her yourself. That’s her coming now.”
“Where?” I asked, checking out the sidewalk, both coming and going.
“In that green car right there,” she said.
Sure enough, there was a car at the corner, and Walking Doll was sitting behind the steering wheel. “What’s she doing in that car?” I asked, waving.
“She got it from Miller’s car lot. Just now.”
Walking Doll made a left turn and disappeared behind The Pop Shop.
“How’d she do that? She doesn’t even have a job!”
The Kenosha Kid didn’t say anything. She was too busy watching Walking Doll hop-run across the street toward us, shaking her new car keys like jingle bells.
“Hey, where’d you get money to buy a car? Even Teddy doesn’t have enough money for that, and he’s got a job.”
Walking Doll laughed. “Let’s just say that it was compensation collected on behalf of my ma.”
“Well, ain’t that something. All Teddy’s ma left him with was bills and a leaky, leaning house.”
“Well, Teaspoon! Was that your Ma?” Walking Doll asked as she hopped up on the curb.
“It sure was,” I told her. “The Kenosha Kid can catch you up. I’ve got to get over to the Starlight to tell Brenda that my ma’s home, too, but I got to hurry. Teddy’s making supper, and afterward me and Charlie are going to put on a live performance for Ma. Nice car, Walking Doll!”
“Have fun, kid!” they called, and off I went.
When I got to the Starlight, I zipped down the alley. The parking lot was empty, except for Brenda’s Thunderbird and the Perkins Charlie-thumping truck, which I decided meant Johnny brought over the moons. They had to be done, because him and Brenda hadn’t gone to work on them at night for days now.
I propped my scooter and slipped inside. Even though the day was gray and hazy, the raindrops so small they looked like fuzz, it still took a bit for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the theater.
I heard Johnny before I saw him. “That’s bullshit, Brenda, and you know it!” Wow, was his voice booming with projection, even though he was up by the concession stand, instead of under one of the domes where a person could get some good amplification. “You were going to kiss him off three weeks ago.”
Johnny was mad at Brenda for not kissing that creep Leonard? Had he gone berserk?
“You don’t understand, Johnny.” Brenda was crying. “I just can’t create that kind of upheaval right now. After the gala, Johnny. I told you. Give me until then,” Brenda said, loud enough that I heard every word.
I couldn’t see Brenda, but I had seen her cry enough times to know that she probably had one arm wrapped around her waist while the other dabbed under her eyes.
I didn’t know what to do, or what to think. Turning and going back outside would have been the respectable thing, I guess, but I wanted to know what was going on, because this wasn’t exactly making sense. So I just stood at the door, my hand on the knob.
“You’re not going to, either, are you?” Johnny shouted. “Despite everything, you’re going to marry that fucker anyway.” Johnny grunted, then said in a voice more sad than mad, “I was a fool to think you’d do anything else. Now I don’t know who to feel saddest for. You, I think.”
Whoa!
It got quiet for a second, so I slipped back out the door. I didn’t want Johnny to catch me being an ear-peeker, plus I had some figuring out to do. First Johnny was yelling at Brenda for not kissing Leonard, then he was upset because she wasn’t breaking up with him. Something wasn’t adding up here.
In the movies, they always kiss somebody when they’re saying good-bye. Maybe that’s what Johnny meant. He was telling Brenda to kiss Leonard good-bye, even though, if I was Brenda, I’d go for a handshake instead.
I grabbed my scooter, planning to be a good Sunshine Sister and wait my turn to talk to Brenda, maybe scooter around the parking lot while I did, when the door shoved open and Johnny came out. I don’t think he saw me standing there or he would have given me a sack-of-potatoes shake. But he just got in the Perkins truck and took off, his tires smoking behind him.
I went inside. Brenda wasn’t at the concession stand anymore. I figured she was probably in the restroom blowing her nose. But I was wrong. She was in the bathroom throwing up and crying hard at the same time.
I put my hands on the door and leaned my face up to it. “Brenda?” I said.
Brenda made a few gulping noises, like she was trying to stop puking and crying. “Teaspoon?” she said when she’d stopped enough to be able to speak.
“It’s me. I just came to tell you something quick. I have to show you something, too.”
“Can it wait, Teaspoon?”
“Yeah. I guess so. You okay, Brenda?”
“I will be,” she said. “We’ll talk later, okay?”
“Okay.”
I got to the bathroom door, then stopped and turned back to the stall. “Brenda?” I asked.
“Yes, Teaspoon?”
“I heard Johnny yell at you. I didn’t mean to ear-peek, but I did. Anyway, I just want you to know that Johnny gets a little hot under the collar sometimes. Like I said, all the Jacksons are like that. Well, except for Jennifer. But Johnny’s not mean. He was just trying to be a good friend.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When I reached my block, Ma’s car was gone, and suddenly I felt scared enough to puke, too. I pu
mped my leg like the dickens, then dropped my scooter in the grass and raced into the house. “Ma? Ma!” I called.
I checked every room, and didn’t stop yelling until I saw her suitcase opened on Teddy’s bed, clothes dripped over the side, the pink-and-green outfit she’d been wearing lying empty on the floor.
“Teaspoon?” Teddy called from the living room. “Where are you?”
“In your room,” I called back.
“I could hear you shouting all the way over at the Frys’,” Teddy said when he stepped into his room. “What’s the matter?”
“I saw Ma’s car gone,” I said, blinking away tears there was no reason to cry anymore.
Teddy sat down on the bed. He had an envelope thick enough to be holding every bad bill in all of Mill Town sticking out of his shirt pocket, but he didn’t have a gouge between his eyebrow. “She went over to The Dusty Rose to see if any of the old gang are still around.”
“Whew, Teddy. I thought she was gone for a minute there.” I could feel a gouge digging between my eyebrows then. “Did you tell her I was coming right back?”
“I gave her your message, yes,” Teddy said.
“You think she’ll come back by showtime? Me and Charlie were going to give our performance tonight.”
“I think that will have to wait until tomorrow night,” Teddy said.
“Did she dig her movie poster out of her car before she left?”
“I don’t think so. She can do that tomorrow, too. You come have your supper now, okay?”
I stood over the pans still on the stove. A pot of boiled potatoes, an empty fry pan with brown goo stuck to the bottom, and a little kettle swimming with sauerkraut and chunks of browned sausage. “Geez, Teddy,” I called, because he was still in his room. “Why’d you make sausage and kraut? Ma doesn’t even like sauerkraut, remember?”
“Well, you do,” Teddy said, “so eat up.”
Charlie was in the front yard on his knees when I got back outside, a stack of weeds with dirty roots sitting on the damp grass alongside a half-eaten chocolate cupcake. “We probably have to wait until tomorrow before we can put on Ma’s show,” I told him.
“That’s okay. Grandma G says I have to weed tonight anyway. Every time it rains a little, I got to stay inside. Then when it stops, I gotta weed. I’m starting to hate rain, Teaspoon.”
“Don’t blame you, Charlie.” I eyed his cupcake. “Grandma G made cupcakes, huh? There any left?”
“Yeah, there’s more. But Grandma G didn’t make them. Miss Tuckle did.”
“I didn’t see Miss Tuckle’s car.”
“I think she parked around the corner.”
“Weird. Not like any other cars were hogging up the street. She still here?”
“No,” Charlie said. “She just brought over the cupcakes, and visited a little with Grandma G and Teddy, then she left.”
Charlie picked up his cupcake and peeled back more paper so he could stuff the rest into his mouth.
I went inside and grabbed a cupcake from the table. Fast, so Mrs. Fry wouldn’t turn from the stove and see me. Not that she’d mind, it’s just that she’d start talking to me and I’d have to repeat my answers back to her about fifty times.
I was barely down the steps when the Jackson girls came outside, jump ropes in their hands. I watched them as I licked the chocolate frosting off my cupcake. I hadn’t played with the Jacksons since their ma chased me home. And although I didn’t miss playing with them, or even fighting with them, I sure did miss jumping rope.
I looked down at Charlie, who was leaned over on all fours, one hand pawing at the dirt like a dog trying to remember where he buried his bone. I knew a good friend would help Charlie weed, but I was wearing my gala shoes and I didn’t want to get them grubby. “Hey, can I come jump rope?” I yelled across the street.
Jennifer cupped her hand and whispered something to Jolene, then Jolene said, “Okay, but no fighting. Our ma’s right in the living room.”
I told Charlie to yell when he was done working, then headed across the street. “My ma’s at The Dusty Rose,” I told the Jackson girls as I hurried to their side of the street.
Jolene held out the plastic handle of my old jump rope, but I was busy peeling the liner from my cupcake. “What did you say about your ma?” she asked.
I gulped the last clump of chocolate cake down and stuffed the empty liner into my pocket. “I said my ma’s at The Dusty Rose.”
“For real?” Jolene said.
“Yep. She came back just today. She found her dream of becoming an actress, so she came home.”
“Is she really an actress?” Jennifer asked.
Jolene looked at Jennifer. “You dummy. She’s probably not even home, much less an actress.”
Man oh man, I thought. We hadn’t even twirled the rope once and already the Jacksons were picking a fight. “Yes she is. Her car was in front of my house all day, if you didn’t notice.”
“That old brown Hudson?” Jolene said.
“I don’t know what kind of car it is, but yeah, it’s brown. And it’s not old, either. Just dirty, from driving so many miles. It’s a long way from Hollywood to here, in case you didn’t know.”
Jolene wrinkled her nose. “Is she really an actress?”
“She sure is. She starred in two movies. Attack of the Atomic Lake Lizard and Revenge of the Atomic Lake Lizard. When she gets home, or in the morning if it’s too late tonight, she’s going to get the movie poster out of her car, and I’ll prove it to you.”
“Did she bring you those new shoes?” Jennifer asked.
I looked down at my patent leathers, which were pinching my heels. I wanted to fib and say yes, but I had that promise to Jesus not to tell fibs anymore (a promise I was starting to regret), so I didn’t.
“Then why you wearing them now, if they’re your shoes for the gala?”
“Because I want to.”
“You’re going to ruin them,” Jolene said, her voice every bit as bossy as Susie’s or Rebecca’s.
“No I won’t. I stopped tap dancing in them.”
We were jumping Double Dutch when Dumbo Doug’s car pulled up to the curb, Johnny in the passenger seat. My feet got tangled when I saw him, and Jolene called out, “I’m next!”
Johnny rolled down his window and yelled to Jolene to run up to his room and get his wallet. Jolene sighed and tossed down her end of the rope. I watched the car while she was gone, waiting to see what my stomach would do.
“I can’t find it!” Jolene screamed from an upstairs window.
“On my dresser!” Johnny yelled back.
Jolene disappeared again, coming back two seconds later. “It is not!”
“Want me to go help her look, Johnny?” Jennifer asked.
Johnny slipped out of the car. “I’ll get it,” he said.
The last time Charlie and me were in The Pop Shop, Pop was busy trying to find the cigars Mr. Miller ordered, so I flipped through a couple of movie magazines. I found one of James Dean, in living color. He was wearing blue jeans and a brown, short-sleeved button-up shirt. There was one little V cut in each sleeve, like somebody with bad eyes like Mrs. Fry was holding the sewing shears, and his shirt was unbuttoned almost to his belly, like maybe somebody forgot to sew on the buttons while they were at it. His hair was messy and poking up on his head, and his eyes were squintier than usual, like maybe the smoke from his cigarette was getting in them. I had never seen James Dean look so dreamy. And now here was Johnny, wearing a shirt almost exactly like James Dean’s, only blue, without the V’s, and with a couple more buttons fastened. He looked every bit as dreamy as James in it, too.
On his way back to Doug’s car, Johnny picked me up and tipped me sideways, sack-of-potatoes-style, and gave me a little shimmy. He smelled like beer and Old Spice. “See ya,” he said as he set me down. And I’m not kidding, it was like he had shook every bit of worry I had about Brenda, or Ma, or Teddy, right out of me, leaving nothing in me but happy giggles.
“You’d better, or we’re not gonna believe you,” Jolene called behind me, as I hobbled across the street without bending my knees or my feet.
I took off my gala shoes and paired them together in my bedroom, then pulled off my socks to find two puffy blisters the size of quarters on my heels. Teddy fixed them up with medicine and Band-Aids. I was just putting my socks back on when Charlie came to the door. He went straight to the piano, but I told him we had to make Ma an invitation first. So I got out my crayon tin and folded a piece of school paper. Charlie drew a star on the paper, because he drew better stars than me, then I printed, Teaspoon and Charlie inside it in my best handwriting. And on the inside, I wrote, Appearing live in our living room, 7:00 Sunday night. Then we practiced until Charlie had to go home because it was getting dark.
I was back on my knees on the couch, watching cars go by and hoping the next one would be Ma’s, when Teddy suggested we finish our Scrabble game. I don’t think he really wanted to play, but maybe he was thinking about how watched pots never boil.
Me and Teddy kept the Scrabble board over on the little metal table near the pantry so we wouldn’t bump it and mess up the letters when we moved around the kitchen. I dragged two chairs to the table and went to my room to turn the radio on—about the only way I could stay entertained when playing with Teddy, who always took so long to make a word that Charlie and Mrs. Fry could have run a ten-mile relay race and walked back before he had a word laid down.
I sang a little of “Begin the Bageen,” with the radio when I turned it on, while I shuffled tiles around, hoping a word would show up.
“Hey, Teddy? What’s a bageen, anyway?”
“A dance,” Teddy said. “Kind of like a slow rumba.”