What Mr. Mattero Did

by Priscilla Cummings

“Everything. All this crap that’s going down.”

  I felt uncomfortable and looked away. I checked out my finger, which had a new Band-Aid on it—SpongeBob blowing bubbles. I didn’t want a boyfriend! Well, not right then I didn’t. I was glad when the bell rang. I walked off fast. So did Suzanne.

  “I’m serious!” Jenna called after us.

  But her words were lost in the crowd.

  That same morning in earth science, when we had to pick partners for the weather project, Jenna slid her chair next to Danielle and Winston. I mean, what the heck? Jenna can’t stand Danielle, and she wouldn’t give the time of day to someone like Winston, who is sort of a nerd and, like, way too smart for her. So I don’t know what Jenna was thinking, unless maybe she figured she could get a better mark working with those two geeks. The thing that really annoyed me is how she didn’t even look at us.

  See? We had just risked everything for our friendship with Jenna and she treated us like dirt. It annoyed me. Big time.

  So Jenna was getting weird. But the real killer that week was the letter that came in the mail. It was addressed to my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bradford Montague, in really nice handwriting. It wasn’t signed though, so we never knew who sent it, only that it was an adult, someone with kids at school.

  That letter made me sick.

  “It’s that friend of yours! It’s Jenna!” Mom exploded. “It’s her influence!” Mom was really on the warpath, walking back and forth in the kitchen. It must’ve been like the twentieth time she read that stupid letter. “Jenna’s been bad for you since day one!”

  “It’s not her fault!” I cried.

  “But you didn’t dress this way in sixth grade, at your other school!” Mom accused. “It’s all since you started hanging out with that girl. I mean, look at the trouble you’re in, Claire!”

  “Well, since when do you care?” I hollered back at her. “All you do is worry about Corky! Your whole life revolves around him!”

  That shut her up. Although instantly, I felt bad about what I blurted out. Sure, Mom worried about Corky. We all worried about Corky.

  “What’s going on?” Dad asked, coming into the kitchen after taking the kids upstairs to get into pajamas.

  “It’s that letter. I’m still upset,” my mother complained.

  “Well, don’t take it out on Claire like that,” my dad defended me. “She didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “But she’s involved in this whole mess! And it’s all because of Jenna. You know as well as I do Claire was never like this before. The clothes, the eye makeup, her grades! I mean, look at Claire’s grades since she changed schools and met that girl!”

  “That’s not fair,” I muttered. I felt bad about my grades going down. And so what if it was partly because of the time I spent with my friends? It was nice to have good friends like Suzanne and Jenna. And we didn’t cause trouble. Well, what I mean is, we could do a lot of worse things! Like go to parties where they drink beer and smoke pot. We knew kids who did that stuff! And if only my mom knew how Suzanne and I had put our feet down on the shoplifting, too. I flashed her a dirty look because I knew she could never understand. Not in a million years. I could not talk to my mother.

  “Oh! And remember how Jenna wanted you and Suzanne to get your ear cartilage pierced? So you could be alike?”

  True. It was true. We wanted to do that.

  “You would have looked like a freak!” My mom was really losing it. “Next thing you know you’ll want to pierce your tongue or something!”

  “That’s crazy,” I argued. Jenna talked about that once, and I laughed at her because no way was someone punching a hole in my tongue. Although I did wonder if it would stop me from eating.

  “You need to wake up, Claire!” Mom yelled at me.

  Dad stepped in between us. “Carlena, take it easy,” he said.

  And just then Corky and Izzy came into the doorway, looking scared.

  “Take a deep breath and calm down,” Dad said to my mother, trying to put his arm around her.

  But she shook him off and stormed out of the room. “You deal with it!” she shouted at Dad. A familiar phrase. We hear it a lot, only usually it’s on account of a bad day with Corky, and believe me, there are a lot of bad days with Corky.

  “Why Mommy’s mad?” Izzy asked, her eyes wide and worried. Trailing her pink blankie, she started following my mother, but Dad scooped her up. “Come on, pumpkin,” he said. “Let’s go upstairs and look at a book.”

  It was a relief to have my mother out of the room. While Dad put Izzy back to bed, I took on my little brother. It was one of those weeks when Corky didn’t want to sleep, so we snuggled up under the afghan on the couch. I must have read him ten different stories—plus did a little play thing with his whale puppet. He likes that. I pretend I’m a seagull friend of his whale. Finally, he let me take him up to bed.

  When I saw Dad again, he was standing in the kitchen rereading that disgusting letter. “Those cowards—they didn’t even have the guts to sign their names,” he grumbled, tossing the paper on the table. “Who do they think they are?”

  I agreed with Dad. Who did those people think they were? Because I am here to tell you that Jenna, Suzanne, and I did not dress different from most girls at school. Tight jeans, bare midriffs —that’s the kind of clothes we all wore! Seriously, I was not dressing different. I mean, I would kill myself before I was different!

  It was reaching a point. Every day, I thought, I just wanted to start over. I wanted to go to school and have friends and stick to my diet so I could lose more weight and maybe get a new dress and go to the spring dance. I just wanted all this stuff about Mr. Mattero to go away!

  But it didn’t.

  The next week, Monday morning, I was hoping to make a fresh start again when Sara Martindale, the eighth-grade class president, came on the intercom with morning announcements:

  “Good morning, Oakdale Middle School. Today the sixth grade will have their eye exams in the health room during second and third class periods . . . Chess Club and Movie Club meet after school today . . . Lunch today is a cheese sandwich or a steak sub . . .”

  I moaned silently, feeling for the box of Tic Tacs in my pocket.

  “The quote for the day is from Bertrand Russell. ‘To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.’ ”

  I examined my torn thumbnail and wondered if I had to go without food in order to get skinny in order to be happy.

  Next thing you know our principal’s voice boomed over the intercom. “This is directed to members of the band and the chorus. The trip to Virginia for the competition has been canceled this year due to Mr. Mattero’s absence.”

  A low groan went up in my homeroom.

  I slid down in my seat.

  “A partial refund may be possible,” Mrs. Fernandez went on. “We are looking into it. That’s it for now. Students, have a great day.”

  Have a great day, my foot. I knew there would be trouble now.

  I just didn’t know it could happen so quickly.

  When the last bell rang, I went to my locker and discovered someone had busted the combination dial right off. Consequently, my locker door hung open, and you could see how, inside, all my things were gone—my books, my new pink windbreaker, my gym clothes I was taking home to get washed—even the little purple framed mirror that stuck on with magnets.

  The only thing left in my locker was some trash and a bunch of nasty graffiti written with a permanent marker—the words “jerk” and “liar.”

  I looked around, but everyone was rushing for their buses.

  Suzanne came up to me with tears in her eyes.

  “You, too?” I asked her.

  She nodded and wiped her eyes.

  The same had been done to Jenna. But she didn’t think we should tell anyone. “Don’t show them we’re weak,” she tried to tell us.

  “Who cares what they think?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, who cares?” Suz
anne echoed harshly.

  “What am I going to tell my mother about my new jacket?” I asked Jenna.

  “And how are we going to do our homework without our books?” Suzanne wailed.

  Jenna grimaced.

  We knew we had to report it.

  In the office, we waited a long time to talk to Mrs. Fernandez. Each of us was allowed to use the telephone to call our parents. My mother and Suzanne’s stormed in at the same time—I wondered if they came together—and went into the principal’s office, closing the door behind them.

  When they came out, they seemed only slightly calmer.

  “This was the last straw,” Suzanne’s mother said as she took her daughter’s hand. “I’m taking you out of this school.”

  My mother raised her eyebrows at me. “You, too, Claire. I asked for a transfer. You’ll be going to a different school starting next Monday.”

  Astonished, I turned to Suzanne. We were both pretty shocked. But what could we do?

  Mrs. Fernandez came up to Jenna. “Were you able to get hold of your parents?” she asked.

  Jenna shook her head. “No. My dad’s working construction, and sometimes he can’t hear his cell phone.”

  “What about your mother?” Mrs. Fernandez asked.

  Jenna hesitated.

  “Jenna?”

  “My mother doesn’t live with us anymore,” she said. “I don’t know where she is.”

  Right away, it got her some sympathy from Mrs. Fernandez, who put an arm around Jenna’s shoulders and took her into her office.

  But I wasn’t exactly weeping for Jenna just then. Not even if she did say her mother had left. Because really, like, who knew if that was true?

  16

  Melody

  NOT HAVING ANNIE FOR MY FRIEND WAS AWFUL. It left a huge, gaping hole in my life. But no way was I going to forgive her. My mother kept saying it wasn’t Annie’s fault, that her parents were to blame. But I think Annie could have stood up to them, and she didn’t.

  All weekend it kept going through my mind, over and over, how I had spun away from her. How I didn’t even look back after I got in the car. My mother was horrified and my father absolutely outraged when I told them Annie couldn’t come over to our house, but it was okay if I went to hers.

  “Don’t, Dad!” I had begged him as he angrily opened the car door.

  Even Mom grabbed his arm to stop him, but he shook it off.

  Together, we watched Dad stomp up the sidewalk through the pouring rain. He didn’t take the umbrella or have a jacket on, so we knew he was getting soaked. Peering through the dark, trying to see, we’d held our breath while he rang the doorbell, then knocked loudly with his fist.

  But no one ever returned to answer the door at Annie’s house.

  How could they do that to my dad?

  When he returned to the car dripping wet, Dad simply started up the engine and drove away.

  Didn’t they know how humiliating that was?

  The smell of Dad’s wet wool sweater filled the car. He didn’t say anything. He was so quiet it was scary. None of us spoke. And it hit me, riding home in that dark car, shivering and watching the back of my parents’ heads, that my life was never going to be the same again. Not ever.

  The next week, Mom went to work and Cade returned to school, but I refused. Dad didn’t care, and Mom didn’t argue. She said it would be okay for a few days and even went to school to gather books and deliver my homework. Most of my teachers were sympathetic. They sent back encouraging notes and long, detailed assignments so I wouldn’t fall behind.

  For a while, Dad kept himself busy with chores around the house. A couple times I tried talking to him while he worked: “Do you need some help? Do you want to go get an ice cream later?” But he was never interested. “I’m okay, Mellie. Just do your homework. I’ll be fine.” It was as though he had crawled inside himself. We all had, I guess. We had all crawled inside ourselves while we waited to see what would happen.

  I think Mom was glad that I was home. “Call me if you get worried,” she whispered urgently after pausing at the door on her way out one morning. She was fresh from her shower, her hair still a little damp, but her brows knit together with concern, and her eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, pulling on the end of my braid.

  Mom pressed her lips together, thinking. “Just keep an eye on him,” she said, “and call me if you think he’s getting too sad.”

  We were all sad. Sad and angry and confused.

  How would I know if my dad got too sad?

  The schoolwork gave me something to do on the days home, but there was still a lot of time to fill. I didn’t watch television because I knew how much it annoyed my father. Somehow he would know if the TV was on, even if he was outside, raking up leaves and sticks from winter and doing yard work. He must have filled fifteen black leaf bags for the garbagemen to pick up.

  By about the third day we were home, there wasn’t anything left to rake, so Dad started painting. He painted the downstairs bathroom. He painted an old set of bookshelves. He even repainted the chipped windowsill over the kitchen sink. I hoped he had another project lined up when the sill was done, because as long as he was busy, I didn’t think he could get too sad.

  One day I tried to cheer him up by fixing us a nice lunch. I set two places at the kitchen counter, where we have three stools. I even picked a daffodil from the front yard and settled it in a thin, silver vase between our two place mats. When the grilled cheese sandwiches were done, I put them on plates beside thick slices of dill pickle and a few potato chips.

  “Dad!” I called cheerfully, leaning inside the door to the garage, where he was closing up paint cans. “I made lunch!”

  My father seemed pleased. He looked up. “Thanks. I’ll be right there.”

  After he came in and washed up, we sat down together. I noticed the bruise on his face was turning yellow and moving into a different stage, but I didn’t say anything about it. Probably I shouldn’t have said anything period. I certainly didn’t mean to spoil it all by asking if he and Mom were going to rehearsal that night.

  Dad looked startled. “Rehearsal?”

  “Orchestra,” I reminded him. Both my parents played in the community orchestra: Dad, second clarinet, and Mom, the flute. Wednesday nights, every week, they went to rehearsal. They were preparing for a Beethoven program in May.

  Dad covered his eyes and moaned. “Oh, boy. And I wasn’t there last Wednesday either.” Exactly one week ago the girls had accused Dad. Only seven days, yet in some ways it seemed like an eternity.

  “Can you call Mrs. Branch for me, Melody? Tell her I can’t make it tonight?”

  I didn’t want to call Mrs. Branch, the conductor. And I was disappointed in Dad for not going again, for just dropping out on them. I started to protest. “But it might be good—”

  “I don’t need a lecture,” Dad cut me off. “I just need you to call Mrs. Branch for me.”

  He set his napkin down and pushed his stool back. “Thanks for the sandwich,” he said in a gentler voice. Then he left, leaving the last bite.

  Music had always been my father’s passion—not just his job—and that gave me an idea. After reluctantly leaving a message for Mrs. Branch (I told her Dad wasn’t feeling well) I dug out my viola.

  “Dad,” I said, after finding him on the back deck, where he was sanding the edges of the patio table, getting ready to spray paint. “Would you practice with me?”

  My father played several instruments, and often, he would play the violin while I practiced my viola. He went back to sanding for a few seconds, then stopped.

  “Just for twenty minutes?” I added quickly, during his pause. I thought surely some music would make him feel better.

  He sanded some more, then straightened up and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “Go ahead,” he said. “Get started.”

  Feeling hopeful, I quickly retreated to the mu
sic room before he could change his mind. The music room in our house isn’t very fancy. It’s just a room next to the laundry that is half an office for my parents, who share a desk, and half a place to practice. But I like the room. A thick Oriental carpet covers the floor, and lots of green plants thrive in the two windows. One wall is taken up by an upright piano, while the opposite wall has built-in shelves full of music books, CDs, and old record albums.

  Despite my mother’s unending efforts, the music room is always a mess. I stepped carefully between the various instrument cases and pieces of music until I stood before one of the two metal music stands, rosined up the bow, and made sure the viola was in tune.

  The music from when we last practiced just over a week ago was still up on the stand. I hadn’t been very good that night. I was glad when Dad had finally said, “Enough.” I remembered how we put away our instruments, and then how my father had opened his clarinet case. Whatever prompted it I don’t recall, but I’d asked him why he had chosen the clarinet. Always having to put the instrument together, always having to change the reeds—he goes through dozens and dozens of them a year—it seemed like so much work.

  “Love at first sound,” he’d told me as he settled yet another new reed inside the mouthpiece. “I must have been five years old.” Smoothly, expertly, he attached the mouthpiece to the barrel, the upper barrel to the lower barrel and then screwed on the bell. “It was when I first heard Peter and the Wolf. You know the part, where the clarinet is the cat, and there is that wonderful cadenza where the cat is trying to get the bird . . .”

  Dad had lifted the instrument to his mouth, licked his lips, and played it for me. I smiled.

  When he finished, he said, “See? I thought, what a great instrument. So much range and drama! Of course, I had to wait for my permanent teeth to come in, which wasn’t for another three years.”

  I blinked, and the memory faded. I glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes had passed since I asked Dad to practice with me. I turned toward the empty doorway and could hear him outside, sanding. He wasn’t coming after all, I realized. I sighed and sat heavily in the chair at his desk, laying the viola across my lap. There was a new box of reeds in the pile on Dad’s desk. An empty can of Diet Coke. A note to call the lawyer who represented the teachers’ union. And a new, full bottle of sleeping pills. I didn’t realize Dad was having a hard time sleeping, too.