by Ann Hood
The Wall Street Journal dipped slightly and the top of Dad’s face appeared.
“Now there’s a good idea, Trudy,” he said. “Beatles music in the grocery store.”
I thought I might burst. Dad had paid attention! To me! I had a good idea!
“Dad, did you know Paul wrote that song for Jane Asher?” I said, hearing how hard I was trying. “‘I Saw Her Standing There’?”
Mom cleared her throat. “Now who’s Jane Asher? The actress in that movie I liked? With the red hair?”
“She’s only Paul McCartney’s girlfriend,” I muttered.
“Charles, what was that movie?” she said brightly.
Dad speared a chunk of meat loaf and brought it to his mouth.
“How can you eat meat loaf without ketchup?” I asked him.
Nothing.
“Hello? Dad? Remember me? Trudy?”
He peeked from around the paper, his eyes soft. “Of course I do. You’re that girl who loves the Beatles.” Then he was gone again. I smiled.
Mom cocked her head. “I think it has the word masque in the title,” she said.
I sighed. “The Masque of the Red Death,” I told her.
“Right! With Vincent Price and this Jane Asher person you’re talking about.” Mom nodded. “It was very good. Scary.”
Dad folded up the Wall Street Journal, not all messy, like when Mom folds a newspaper, but right on the creases. He got up and looked around like he was trying to remember where he was. Then he said, “Great meat loaf, Kay,” and wandered off. We heard the door of his study close and we knew we wouldn’t be seeing him again tonight.
“Today was the worst day I’ve ever had in school in my entire life,” I said.
Mom had started to clear the table, but she stopped, the bowl of peas in one hand and the platter of meat loaf in the other.
“Worse than the day you broke your tooth on the water fountain?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Worse than the day you threw up on Kenny Prescott?”
“Mom. Today was the worst day ever,” I said.
She sat back down. “What happened, sweetie?”
I looked at her mom face, pretty but not perfect, surrounded by a cloud of ash-blond hair stiff as meringue. She always wore pale pink lipstick and Arpège perfume and matching sweater sets. In other words, she looked like a mom from a TV show. She was sitting there, waiting with her Worried Mom face, but I couldn’t explain why the day had been so awful.
“Well, we got a new social studies teacher,” I began slowly. “Mr. Flora had to have emergency surgery.”
“Oh dear,” she said.
“I hate the new teacher,” I said. “Mrs. Peabody.”
Everything that happened started to roil around in my stomach. Ger-trude and Michelle with Becky and Kim at lunch and getting the worst French name and then only three kids—three! And the worst three in the whole grade—coming to the Beatles Fan Club meeting, all of it mixed up inside me with the taste of meat loaf and ketchup.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.
And just like that, Mom put down the peas and the meat loaf and appeared with a big pot for me to throw up in.
But I didn’t throw up.
Instead I had that thought again: I need to do something big.
Then I had another thought: I need to meet Paul McCartney.
I looked at Mom and smiled.
“You’re not going to throw up?” she said.
“Nope.”
She placed the back of her hand on my forehead. “You’re cool as a cucumber,” she announced. “Come on, let’s clean up so we can watch The Beverly Hillbillies.”
That was her way of helping me feel better. She hated The Beverly Hillbillies, which was a show about the Clampett family who were hillbillies from Kentucky who discovered oil and got rich and moved to Beverly Hills where they embarrassed themselves in silly ways. “No one is that dumb,” she’d say when Jethro or Jed did something stupid. She liked a show called The Monroes, which was a western about five orphans trying to survive as a family on the frontier. “That Barbara Hershey is so pretty,” Mom always said whenever Barbara Hershey appeared on the screen.
“That’s okay, Mom,” I said. “I have a project to work on.”
She looked at me, surprised. “You’re going to pass up The Beverly Hillbillies? And possibly some popcorn?”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I need to get started on an idea I have.”
I tried to help her clean up, but she shooed me away.
“I can do it in no time,” she said.
She put on the radio to her station, the one that played singers like Vic Damone and Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. The worst radio station of all the radio stations. Then she filled the sink with hot water and dish detergent. Some song came on that I didn’t recognize, but Mom started singing along with it right away. All summer long we sang a song and then we strolled that golden sand, Two sweethearts and the summer wind . . .
I groaned. So sappy.
I went in my room and closed the door. I could still hear Mom, but only a little. My bedroom was all white—bed, bureau, night table, desk—with gold trim and mint-green-and-white dotted swiss curtains and bedspread. I hated it. I wanted mod furniture and the Marimekko sheets with the giant red and orange flowers on them like I saw in Seventeen magazine. But Mom refused, because classics last forever and trends do not. She did get me a director’s chair with my name on it, but I had to practically beg for it.
I sat in that chair at the white desk and opened my favorite notebook. On the cover were silhouettes of a boy and girl walking on the beach and the paper inside was purple. I turned to a blank page and wrote:
Ways to Meet Paul McCartney:
Go to his house in St. John’s Wood in London and wait for him to come out.
Write to the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, and request a meeting with Paul.
Um . . .
There was no number three. I either had to go all the way to London or hope that Brian Epstein would understand how vital meeting Paul McCartney was to my survival and set up a meeting, preferably here in Rhode Island. These options seemed grim. Futile. Hopeless even.
It was at times like this that Michelle could make me laugh. She could say just one thing, like Mary Land, because in third grade I thought that was how you said the name of the state Maryland. Or mi-sled, because in fourth grade when Michelle had to read out loud she pronounced the word misled as mi-sled. We had about a million things like that, and I decided that Michelle was just the thing I needed, even though I was mad at her.
I went into the living room to get the telephone and there was Mom watching The Monroes.
She pointed to the screen. “Isn’t that Barbara Hershey the prettiest thing?” she said.
“Yup,” I said, and carried the telephone into the hallway, stretching its cord as far as it would go. Then I dialed Michelle’s number by heart.
“Hello?” she answered, sounding eager.
“Hi,” I said. “It’s me. Trudy.”
“I know it’s you,” she said.
“Well, I didn’t want you to be mi-sled.”
She didn’t actually laugh. She more like snorted.
“I hate Mrs. Peabody,” I said.
“She’s all right, I guess.”
“What kind of emergency surgery do you think Mr. Flora had?”
“I don’t know. Becky thinks it was a heart thing,” Michelle said.
I frowned. Becky.
“But Kim heard it was a hip replacement.”
Kim.
“Oh!” I said. “You forgot to come to the Beatles Fan Club meeting today.” For some reason, my throat felt like I had something stuck in it.
“I didn’t forget,”
Michelle said softly. “I dropped out.”
“Of the fan club?” I asked her stupidly, because it was just impossible to believe.
“I joined Future Cheerleaders,” Michelle said. “It was so cool. We’re going to learn how to do cartwheels and splits and everything.”
“But we think cheerleading is dumb,” I reminded her.
“Well, I don’t think that. Not anymore. It’s really fun.” Then she added, “Becky can already do a split.”
“That’s not so hard,” I said, even though I had no idea how a person could do a split without breaking something, like a leg.
For the first time maybe ever, Michelle and I sat in silence. Almost silence anyway; I could hear her breathing.
“Well,” she said after a million years went by, “I have to go. I’m expecting a call.”
“Oh,” I said, and then we didn’t say anything for another million years.
“We’re getting uniforms,” Michelle said finally. “Pleated skirts and sweaters with a big Q on them.”
“I’m going to meet Paul McCartney.”
“Trudy,” she said, and I knew if I could see through the phone all the way to her house I would see her rolling her big blue eyes.
“I am.”
“No you’re not, Trudy,” she said.
“I’m serious,” I said, maybe trying to keep her on the phone.
“How in the world can a kid from Rhode Island meet one of the most famous people in the whole world, Trudy? I mean, he’s a Beatle. Kids don’t meet Beatles.”
“You can come with me,” I said.
“Oh Trudy,” Michelle said, and she hung up.
Just then the door to my father’s study opened and he came out, holding his briefcase.
He walked down the hall, right toward me, and as he approached I said, “Guess what, Dad?”
“Not now, Trudy. I have to call Peterson.”
Dad always had to call Peterson, some guy in his office who did the same mysterious stuff Dad did.
I watched him walk all the way to the living room and then back.
“I need the telephone,” he said, holding out his hand.
Once he had the phone, he dialed standing right there in the hall.
“Peterson,” he said into it, “Mixer.”
He shot me his Give Me Some Privacy look.
“I’m going to meet Paul McCartney,” I said.
But he wasn’t paying attention.
* * *
* * *
Things I love about Dad:
Piggyback rides
How he taught me to tie my shoes with a poem: Bunny ears, Bunny ears, playing by a tree. Crisscrossed the tree, trying to catch me. Bunny ears, Bunny ears, jumped into the hole. Popped out the other side, beautiful and bold! And even though that was back when I was five, sometimes when I’m tying my shoes even now I can hear him reciting that poem to me.
Before he got his big promotion and he didn’t have to work all the time, he used to make me pancakes that looked like Mickey Mouse—one big pancake for the face and then two little ones for the mouse ears. Sometimes he still does it, just not a lot, because he always has to be on the phone with Peterson or read up on technology things or write memos and letters and reports.
I used to think he turned the lights on and off by magic. When I got older and realized he was bumping the switch up and down with his shoulder, I didn’t even care. It still felt like magic.
Facts. A lot of facts. He knows almost everything. In a good way.
He knows how to sail and on warm summer nights sometimes he takes me with him to the East Greenwich Yacht Club, which sounds fancy but is not fancy at all, and takes me out sailing on a Sunfish.
And sometimes he tips us over on purpose, which is almost more fun than the sailing part.
When he dances in the kitchen with my mother, he sings along with Frank Sinatra, right in Mom’s ear, and she closes her eyes and smiles.
Also when he dances with me in the kitchen, I stand on his size 12 feet and he moves me across the floor like that.
The Beatles, obviously.
CHAPTER FOUR
From Me to You
Fab Four Fun Fact of the Day:
Or should I say Fab Five??? Stuart Sutcliffe has been called the “Fifth Beatle.” He was the original bassist of the five-member band. Instead of replacing him when he died of a brain hemorrhage, Paul McCartney changed from rhythm guitar to bass. While Sutcliffe was mainly in the band because he was friends with Lennon, he was the first to wear the Beatles’ famous “mop top” hairstyle.
I stepped back and admired my Fun Fact. It was a good one—historical, complex, informative.
“Seriously?” Jessica said when she walked in to the Fan Club meeting. “Everyone on the planet knows about Stuart Sutcliffe.”
“Maybe everyone on the planet knows about Stuart, but there’s a lot of information here.”
Jessica shrugged and sat down.
If I didn’t have a big white envelope from London, England, waiting in my bag, I might have gotten angry. But today was going to be the best day of my life, so I wasn’t going to let Jessica ruin it.
She was actually wearing a Girl Scout uniform. In sixth grade. That was maybe the most embarrassing, least cool thing a person could do. But there she sat in her too-long green dress and bright yellow bow around her neck and a sash filled with merit badges. I glanced down. Yup. She had on green knee socks, too. I groaned inwardly. Who would have ever thought that I, Trudy Mixer, would be stuck with Jessica Mancini, one-quarter of the Beatles Fan Club?
Since our very first meeting, our membership had stayed at exactly twenty-four, counting me, the president. But now we were the after-school club with the fewest members, one less than the newly formed Sixth-Graders Against the Vietnam War. All they did was wear black armbands and make posters with pop letters that said things like MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR. At least we actually did things.
Nora came in, looking all worried. I sighed. Nora and Jessica, two of the least popular girls in the entire school. Nora always looked unkempt. Her hems were raggedy, her hair was tangled, and she smelled sour, like her clothes hadn’t been washed. Today she had on a poor boy shirt that was at least one size too small, but it had in fact been washed—with something red, because that white shirt was now an uneven pink.
Nora was frowning at the Fun Fact, too. “I wish this club did something,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I said. “We do lots of things.”
“All we do is play records and write fan letters. It’s getting kind of boring,” Nora said. “My mother says that if I don’t spend my after-school time more wisely then I have to come right home.”
By now Peter had come in, too, his cowlicks sticking up and his shirt untucked. Last year this room had been packed for every meeting. Packed with the best kids in fifth grade. Sure, Jessica and Nora and Peter had been there, too, but I’d hardly noticed them in the crowd. Now all I could do was notice them.
“Last week we analyzed the words to ‘Nowhere Man’!” I reminded Nora. “That was complicated. And important.”
I was desperate. If Nora dropped out of the club, we wouldn’t be a club anymore. School rules said that a club needs at least four people to be approved.
“I don’t know,” Jessica said. Even though it was almost May, it was still cold, and she had on a short-sleeve shirt. No jacket.
“I think analyzing the words to ‘Nowhere Man’ will help us prepare for our poetry section in English,” Peter said.
Jessica chewed on her bottom lip.
“The song is about loneliness,” Peter continued. “He’s a real nowhere man, Sitting in his nowhere land, Making all his nowhere plans for nobody . . .”
“Isn’t he a bit
like you and me?” I said, and I grinned at Peter, who immediately blushed.
“It’s just that my mother is so strict. And she likes me to be home. With her,” Nora said, and I almost thought she was going to cry.
I cleared my throat.
“Well, I wanted to close the meeting with this, but I guess I should do it now instead.” I opened my macramé bag and pulled out a big envelope. It had an airmail stamp on it, and the return address said London, England. The envelope had arrived yesterday, and it took all my willpower not to open it. But I decided that the Beatles Fan Club should share the excitement.
“Is that from England?” Nora said, her eyes wide.
I nodded.
“Three weeks ago I wrote a letter to Brian Epstein—”
“The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein?” Nora said, her eyes even wider.
“The one and only,” I said. “I wrote to him and asked him if he could arrange a meeting with me and Paul McCartney.”
“Oh, Trudy,” Jessica said, sounding very much like Michelle had on the phone.
“Jessica,” I said, “do you think a letter saying that was impossible would come in such a big envelope?”
“I don’t know,” Jessica said.
“Letters that say no come in regular legal envelopes,” I said. My father had told me that once, and I believed him because he knew stuff like that. “Letters that say yes come in envelopes like this.”
“Do you think Brian Epstein is going to fly you somewhere to meet Paul?” Peter asked.
That was exactly what I thought. Even though I hadn’t opened the envelope, I’d examined it and I could tell there was something besides a letter inside.
“I just read their tour schedule in Tiger Beat,” Nora said. “They’re playing Germany and Japan! You might be going to Tokyo!”
“Personally,” I said, “I think it’s for their May first concert in London.”