The Manny Files

by Christian Burch

  My ears tickled when he said the word divine.

  “Balthazar is also quite fancy, and the food is sublime.”

  The back of my neck tingled when he said the word sublime.

  Grandma told the concierge to make a reservation for four at Balthazar for seven thirty, and she slipped him five dollars with a handshake. India didn’t even notice.

  “Who else is coming to dinner?” I asked Grandma as we rode the elevator up to our room.

  “It’s a surprise,” she said back to me.

  Back in the hotel room I wore the complimentary shower cap and took a bath. I changed my clothes four times before India finally yelled, “Keats! We have to go!”

  We arrived at the restaurant five minutes before our seven thirty reservation. I had on my wedding suit and bow tie. India wore a red silky skirt and white collared shirt, the same kind Dad wears to work. She had it tied at the waist, with the knot on her hip. Around her neck she wore the little string of pearls that Grandma had given to her last Christmas. Grandma wore a black velvet shawl over white pants and a white turtleneck. She looked divine and sublime.

  I stood and watched the people having dinner at their tables. Everybody wore black. They looked like they were having a wonderful time. Clanking wineglasses. Laughing. Giving cheek kisses to one another when they said hello.

  I can’t wait to grow up.

  Whenever the front door opened, I would look over to see if it was our surprise dinner guest. I thought that it might be Andy Warhol or Liza Minnelli. They’re the two most famous people in New York City. Andy Warhol is a skinny artist who wears a white wig and paints portraits of movie stars. Liza Minnelli sings just like her mom, who was Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Whenever I read anything about New York City, Andy Warhol’s and Liza Minnelli’s names are mentioned. India told me that Andy Warhol wasn’t alive anymore and that Liza Minnelli probably had a personal chef and didn’t go out to eat. I still kept an eye on the door and hoped.

  When the door swung open, it was better than Andy Warhol and Liza Minnelli. It was Uncle Max, dressed from head to toe in black, except for a white scarf around his neck. He looked just like Halston, the clothing designer. Halston is always in the pictures with Andy Warhol and Liza Minnelli. Uncle Max gave India and me high fives and then hugged Grandma.

  Grandma asked the maître d’ if he could sit us by a table that was having an interesting conversation, because she wanted to eavesdrop.

  “I’ll do my best,” said the grinning maître d’, who winked at Uncle Max.

  We sat next to a table full of businessmen who were talking about the last stock reports and the effectiveness of casual Fridays.

  Grandma pretended to cover a yawn like she was bored.

  Dinner at Balthazar was fantastical. Sarah would be so jealous.

  I ordered lobster macaroni and cheese and a Roy Rogers. India ordered sea bass, wasabi mashed potatoes, and a ginger ale and cranberry juice. We shared our plates.

  Uncle Max ordered coq au vin, which he told me was chicken in wine sauce. He shared his plate with India and me.

  Grandma liked her meat loaf so much that she didn’t share with anybody.

  She did share her bottle of wine with Uncle Max. It was a fancy bottle. I could tell because there were Italian words on it. I took the cork home and put it on my windowsill.

  I wrote a note to Uncle Max on a little piece of paper: “Which wine do you like better, red or white? Circle one.”

  He circled red.

  He wrote back on the bottom of the note: “Which do you like better, Bert or Ernie? Circle one.

  I didn’t circle either. Instead I wrote, “Grover.”

  When the bill came, Uncle Max pulled out a silver money clip that had twenty-dollar bills folded neatly inside of it. I’m going to ask for a silver money clip for my next birthday. Grandma insisted that he put his money away. She paid for all of us with her American Express SkyMiles card. She said she needed a vacation anyway.

  After dinner we went to a play called Kiss Me, Kate. It was very funny. India said it was based on William Shakespeare’s play called The Tying of My Shoe. I looked at all of the actors’ feet, and nobody even had shoelaces.

  At the play I sat in between Grandma and Uncle Max. India sat on the other side of Grandma. Uncle Max and Grandma kept looking at each other and laughing. I kept watching them so that I knew when to laugh.

  After the play we said good-bye to Uncle Max, and Grandma took us back to the Waldorf-Astoria. The concierge was still behind his desk.

  I went over to him and said, “My lobster macaroni and cheese was sublime, and my Roy Rogers was divine. Thank you for the fabulous recommendation.”

  I shook his hand and slipped him a one-dollar bill just like Grandma had done.

  He smiled and said, “You’re too kind, sir.”

  Grandma grabbed my hand, and with India on the other side of her, we walked through the lobby to the elevator.

  I got an A on my “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up” paper.

  Ms. Grant wrote, “Interesting choice,” in red marker at the top of the paper.

  I smiled and remembered my coconut.

  BE INTERESTING.

  May 26

  I got an A on my writing assignment. Ms. Grant read it to the class. Scotty told me that it was very good and that my grandma sounded classic. Scotty says everything that he likes is “classic.” Sarah asked me for a copy for her mom to read. When I raised my hand to be excused to go to the bathroom, Craig raised his hand and asked if he could go get a drink of water. Ms. Grant let us both go. I tried walking fast in front of Craig, but he walked just as fast and kept kicking the back of my heel. He said, “You may be smart, but don’t forget you’re smelly. And nobody likes a smelly person.” I didn’t say anything. I just hoped that he would go to the water fountain when I went into the bathroom. He didn’t. He followed me into the bathroom, and I could feel him staring at the back of my head while I peed in the urinal. When I washed my hands, he turned on the sink next to me and splashed water on the front of my jeans. I ran out of the bathroom and down the hall to my classroom. Craig followed me. When we walked through the door, Craig pointed to the front of my pants and said, “Ms. Grant, I don’t think Keats made it to the bathroom.” I told Ms. Grant that I had accidentally spilled on myself when I was washing my hands. Craig looked at me like he couldn’t believe that I didn’t tell on him. He didn’t say anything else about it.

  At recess I went behind the Dumpster and cried. I guess Craig had seen me go behind there, because he followed me. He ran to Ms. Grant, yelling, “Ms. Grant, Ms. Grant, Keats is crying behind the Dumpster.” He didn’t care that I was crying, he just wanted all the other kids to know. I told Ms. Grant that I had a stomachache. She called my mom, and the manny came to pick me up. Ms. Grant told him how good she thought my essay was.

  I told the manny what Craig had done to me and that I couldn’t wait to be grown up. The manny told me that there were always going to be people in the world who acted like that, no matter how old I got. He said that the most important thing was to realize that those people might have unhappy things in their lives and their only way to handle them was to try to make other people unhappy too.

  I asked him what he would have done, and he said he would have laughed and told Ms. Grant that if there were more of a budget for the educational system, he wouldn’t have to use the front of his jeans to dry off his hands.

  I love the manny.

  Born on this day: Dr. Sally Ride, Stevie Nicks, John Wayne

  12

  Granny and the Manny

  Grandma likes the manny as much as I do. They play cards, tell each other stories, and listen to opera music together. Their favorite opera is called La Bohème, by someone named Puccini, who was born almost 150 years ago. Dad says that Puccini had the same birthday as Mom—December 23.

  La Bohème is about a girl named Mimi and a boy named Rodolfo who have no money but fall in love on Christmas Eve. Da
d says that in the end Mimi gets sick and dies, but that it’s okay because she spent her last days with someone who loved her.

  One night after dinner Uncle Max and Dad did the dishes so that the manny and Grandma could prepare for their after-dinner surprise performance. I can’t figure out if Uncle Max is visiting us more because of Grandma or because he’s friends with the manny. I don’t really care. I’m just glad that he comes over.

  Grandma and the manny’s surprise after-dinner performance was a lip sync to one of Puccini’s opera songs. India did a choreographed dance in front of them. Grandma charged us each a dollar to see the show. She put the money in the canasta-winnings jar that she keeps underneath her bed. Even though she’s living in our house, she still hosts canasta games on Tuesdays when she’s feeling well enough. The manny plays too. He always loses. Most of the money in the jar used to be his.

  India called us into the living room.

  We filed in from the dinner table and sat on the couch facing Grandma’s bed. I sat on Uncle Max’s lap. My red sheets were hanging from the ceiling like a theater curtain in front of Grandma’s big metal hospital bed.

  The curtain opened and we all clapped really loudly. Belly put one of her fists in the air and went, “Woof, woof, woof.” We don’t know where she learned that. Lulu said that the manny probably taught her. She quickly glanced at Mom, hoping that she would realize how inappropriate the manny was. Mom just smiled.

  Grandma was lying in her bed and had on a tall, gray-haired wig with white makeup and bloodred lipstick. There was a mole drawn above her lip, and her bed was draped with dark purple velvet.

  She looked like George Washington if he’d been Georgette Washington.

  India had on a black leotard and tights.

  The manny was wearing a tuxedo. The manny says that it’s important to have a tuxedo in your closet because you never know when you might be invited to tea with the queen or to the Oscars.

  (Note to self: Get tuxedo measurements.)

  When our applause died down, the manny spread out his arms and said, “Thank you, fine patrons of the arts. Please turn off your cellular telephones and refrain from using flash photography during the performance.”

  Dad pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and switched it off.

  Uncle Max had those little opera binoculars. He held them up to his face.

  The manny went on, “Singing the part of Mimi will be the unbearable diva Grandmaria Callas. Playing Rodolfo will be the stunningly handsome Luciano Mannyrotti, and providing movement in the form of dance will be, straight from Cirque du Fourth Grade, India Dalinger.”

  We clapped with the tips of our fingers. The kind of clap that doesn’t make any noise and requires good posture. Lulu leaned over to my ear and said that she was clapping for Grandma and not for the manny. She didn’t even whisper it. I looked up at the manny and could tell by his eyes that he had heard Lulu. When he saw that I was watching him, he smiled, but I think Lulu had hurt his feelings.

  India pushed Play on the CD player and the music began. Grandma started lip-syncing the opera. You could tell that she didn’t really know the words. She was just moving her mouth like this: Waaaaaa wa wa wa wa waaaa.

  Grandma sang the woman’s part. The manny sang the man’s part, and India danced tragically in front of them. She held her chest a lot and looked like she was in pain. The same way she did when I accidentally killed all of her sea monkeys by feeding them garlic. Lulu had told me that sea monkeys were really brine shrimp, and I love garlic shrimp at the fancy restaurant.

  At the end of the song Grandma and the manny had their arms stretched out as long as they would go and their mouths open wide like they were getting a dental checkup. India was a dead butterfly on the floor.

  We clapped again. Only this time we stood up.

  Uncle Max threw radishes on the stage. He said that radishes were the closest thing to roses that we had. Grandma started eating one.

  The manny opened and closed the curtain several times, and everybody gave a solo bow. Even Belly, who wasn’t even in the performance.

  Grandma and the manny are always doing things like this. Uncle Max says that they should go on the road or open up a show in Las Vegas and call themselves Granny and the Manny.

  When Grandma watches her soap operas, the manny dresses her up as a different character each day. She doesn’t care what soap opera she watches, because she thinks that they are all the same anyway. Grandma always pretends to be the character that she is dressed like. The evil stepsister, Tracy. The misunderstood doormat, Jan, who is now in a coma. The conniving Lisa, who has been married to everybody on the show and has already died twice.

  One time when we got home from school, Grandma was dressed in a dark red wig and had on a lot of eye makeup and lipstick. She had a big fake jewel necklace around her neck and was screaming at the manny with a fake accent.

  “I know that it was you who ran off to Bolivia with my daughter and brainwashed her. I had to bury seven husbands to get this rich, and I’m not about to hand it over to you without a fight.”

  The manny whispered back just loud enough for us to hear, “Ah, Lisa, you are right not to trust me, but you are too late. I put rat poison in your martini.”

  Grandma pretended to choke and clasped on to her throat.

  “You horrible, horrible manny.” She keeled over with her eyes open and hung her tongue out of the side of her mouth.

  Lulu rolled her eyes and huffed, “Don’t ever do that in front of my friends.”

  India and I cheered the performance, and Grandma lifted her head and nodded a bow to us. Then she pretended to die again.

  We ran over to give her a hug, and she said, “Always remember, kids, head and shoulders, knees and toes.”

  Then she drifted off to sleep with the red wig crooked on her head and her lipstick smeared across her face.

  Grandma says funny things after she takes her pills. One time when I was rubbing her feet, she said that she wanted me to pull her toes off because she would like to be a toe donor. She and the manny had watched a television program about organ donors. She told the manny that she had marked on her driver’s license that she wanted to donate her organs.

  She said, “Pull them off, Keats. There are all those unfortunate, toeless people who are waiting on donors for transplants. I don’t need mine anymore.”

  I pulled on her toes.

  The manny brought in a plastic cup full of baby carrots and shook them.

  “Okay, Keats pulled them all off. We’ll just be taking these to the hospital,” said the manny.

  “Thank you, Keats,” said Grandma. “I hope this makes lots of other families happy.” She drifted off to sleep like she always does after she says something silly.

  The manny and I looked at each other and giggled.

  May 29

  Mom told me that Grandma’s feet are cold because she doesn’t get enough blood circulated to them. She said that it’s important that Grandma moves her feet every once in a while, or her feet will get numb and it will hurt for her to walk.

  I stopped making eye contact with Craig at school because when I do, he makes the same throat-slicing hand sign that Lulu makes about the manny. The manny told me that next year he wants to be a trapeze artist for Cirque du Soleil, even though he’s never been on a trapeze. The manny thinks about next year a lot. I think Lulu is making him want to leave earlier than he planned. I told Mom that I hated Lulu because she was mean to the manny. Mom got mad at me. She told me that hate was too strong of a word, and I should never use it unless I was talking about lima beans. She told me that it was okay to say that Lulu bugged me. LULU BUGS ME.

  Born on this day: John F. Kennedy, Bob Hope, T. H. White

  13

  Trampled Babies

  My birthday is in June, the week after school is out for summer vacation. I usually have my school birthday party the week before my actual birthday. I like it that way because it makes my birthday a weeklong even
t. Uncle Max always calls that week Keatstock. He says that when he was about my age, there was a concert that lasted for three days. It was called Woodstock, and everybody listened to music, climbed scaffolds, and rolled in the mud.

  On my birthday last year Uncle Max and I rolled in the mud.

  This year my birthday is on the last day of school. Ms. Grant said that I could bring cupcakes or cookies to celebrate. Everybody brings cupcakes or cookies. I wanted to bring something original.

  Like wedding mints. Or mocha lattes. Or kebobs.

  I finally decided on Dutch babies, which are kind of like crepes but have more powdered sugar. We usually have Dutch babies for breakfast, but this year they would be the perfect birthday treat to set the standard for all of next year’s parties.

  The morning of the last day of school and, most important, of my party, the manny helped me mix flour, eggs, milk, and sugar into a bowl and then fry them in a pan like large pancakes. The manny sang, “Yes, sir, that’s Dutch baby. No, sir, don’t mean maybe,” while he collected the powdered sugar, lemons, and strawberries to take to school.

  The manny drove me to school because I had too much stuff to carry on the bus and Mom was afraid that I would drop the Dutch babies on the floor of the school bus and they would be trampled.

  I said, “Trampled babies would probably make the front page of the newspaper.”

  The manny laughed at my joke.

  Mom rolled her eyes the same way that Lulu does.

  I told Ms. Grant that my party treat would be appropriate for a first-thing-in-the-morning party. She smiled when I said the wordappropriate. I think that won her over, because she held up her hands and said, “Quiet, y’all, Keats is fixin’ to hand out a birthday surprise. Let’s sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him.”

  I think the manny won her over too. When we walked in, he said, “Wow, Keats, she’s even prettier than you said.” I looked over at Craig to make sure that he didn’t hear what the manny had said. Craig didn’t hear. He was searching through his messy desk for a pencil.