One Man Show

by John J. Bonk

Jeremy stabbed a meatball and shoved the whole thing into his mouth.

  “Omigod!”

  At least, that’s what I think he said.

  “Incredible, right?” I said, and stuffed my face with a meatball too. It was burning hot, so I immediately let it drop back onto my plate. “Man, I killed my tongue!”

  Jeremy was laughing and speed-chewing at the same time.

  “I didn’t know those candle-warmer thingies worked so well,” I said, wiping sauce off my mouth.

  We both took giant gulps of Coke to wash down the meatballs, and without any warning a burp slipped right out of me. Jeremy let one fly too, and we laughed some more. Total connection. I leaned against the railing, gnawing on the turkey drumstick and watching a bug brigade swarm the porch light. Nobody said anything for a while; there was just the sound of distant-distant-relatives chattering and the two of us slurping. But it didn’t feel at all uncomfortable.

  “You know what?” Jeremy finally said, flicking something off a slice of garlic bread. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a party like this before.”

  “A big family get-together?”

  “Yeah - well, no. Just a laid-back, come-as-you-are, pick-your-teeth type thing.”

  Come-as-you-are? Great-Aunt Iris wore a fox stole.

  “Or pick-your-teeth-off-the-cake type thing,” he said, cracking up. “I thought I’d bust a gut.”

  “Sorry you had to see that,” I said, smiling. “Sometimes my gran forgets to use her denture adhesive.”

  “Don’t worry about it. All old farts start going wacko; they can’t help it,” he said, scooping up a forkful of potato salad. “But your aunt with the camera - what’s her story?”

  “Aunt Birdie? What do you mean?”

  “She just seems like - I don’t know. Is she a little soft in the head or something?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Another long silence. This one wasn’t so comfortable.

  “Whatever, I’m cool with it,” Jeremy said, chewing. “You should see all the weirdos in L.A.”

  Anyone else you want to take a stab at while you’re at it? Aunt Olive and her off-key singing? Great-Uncle Hoyt and his lazy eye?

  “Plastic forks, homemade potato salad - culture shock! This is just a lot different from the Hollywood parties I’m used to,” he said, studying my expression. “That’s all I was gettin’ at.”

  He should’ve quit while he was ahead. I stared down at my plate and squashed the yellow guts out of a deviled egg with my fork.

  “You mean in a trailer-trashy kind of way, right?”

  He didn’t say a word after that, and that said it all. The hope that had been building up inside of me - that we’d become friends - suddenly came crashing down. I actually thought I’d heard the thud, but it was the screen door’s slamming.

  “Come on, boys!” Aunt Birdie was bouncing in the doorway in a pointy paper hat, waving us inside. “We’re about to do the presents in the living room.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t supposed to bring a present, was I?” Jeremy whispered to me.

  “Shucks, no,” I said in my best hick voice. I finished the rest of it in my head. This ain’t one of dem fancy-shmancy Hollywood birthday shindigs, where people bring gifts and wear shoes and everythang.

  We left our plates on the porch step and followed Aunt Birdie into the living room. Granny was surrounded by packages and was sitting in the middle of the couch on her “sweet spot” - the sunken-in part where she always sat.

  “Well, where’ve you two been hiding?” Granny said, ripping a sticky-bow off a present and slapping it onto her dress. “I never did get my birthday hug from the TV boy.”

  She held out her arms and Jeremy was forced into giving her a lingering hug. He drifted to the other side of the room after that, and I plopped down on the couch next to Granny. She had her usual rubbing-alcohol smell, but with the added aroma of old mothballs. Yep, Jeremy’ll be taking that scent home with him as a little souvenir.

  “What am I going to do with another pair of slippers?” Granny said, tossing aside one of her gifts. “Wool sweaters give me hives.” “Never could stand pink.” She’d definitely lost the knack of faking delight about a rotten present. But when she opened mine, she snorted and said, “Oh, now that is cute!” It was a T-shirt that read, “I’m not over the hill, I’m still climbing it. That’s why I’m so tired all the time.” She kissed me on the cheek and held the T-shirt up for everyone to see. Aunt Birdie, who’d been taking flash pictures of Granny opening each gift, went snap-happy.

  “Birdie, will you put that darn thing away?” Granny said, pulling a long, flimsy scarf out of a box. “I’m already half-blind in my right eye. Now I’m seeing spots.”

  “Those are polka dots, Ma,” Birdie said. Snap. “And you’ll thank me later.”

  “I’ll thank you to go throw that thing in the lake!”

  “Well, that’s everything,” Aunt Olive said, gathering Granny’s gifts. “You got a lot of nice things, Ma.”

  “Wait, here’s another card, Mother Grubbs,” Mr. Ortega said, picking up a pink envelope off the floor and handing it to Granny. “It must’ve fallen.”

  Mother Grubbs?

  “Oh, that came in the mail for you today,” Aunt Birdie said. “No return address.”

  “Who sent it?” Granny asked, putting on her glasses.

  “Open it and see,” I said.

  Granny tore through the envelope, pulled out the card, and opened it. She read it to herself, glaring as if it were written in Swahili, then slowly slid it back into the envelope.

  “Well, who’s it from?” Aunt Birdie asked. “Tammy’s House of Beauty?”

  “No,” Granny mumbled.

  “Well, who?” Aunt Olive asked.

  “It’s from your brother.”

  “Teddy?” my aunts both said, looking at each other.

  That’s “Teddy” as in “Theodore,” as in “Dad.”

  My heart just about froze in my chest. Mom’s hand flew up to cover her mouth and Aunt Birdie collapsed into a chair. I thought this wasn’t supposed to be a surprise party! Everyone stopped chattering, stopped chewing, and stared at the card as if it were about to explode.

  “You can just throw that in the lake too,” Granny said, and flung the card onto the pile of scrunched-up wrapping paper.

  The front door flew open and a green-haired Gordy bolted into the room, dragging his new orange-haired girlfriend, Edith. This one came complete with a dog collar, a thorn tattoo, and so many piercings that her head looked like a miniature-golf course.

  “Cool,” Gordy said, heading for the dining-room table. “There’s still cake.”

  He hacked out a piece of cake and shoved half into his mouth and the other half into Edith’s. The whole room cringed.

  “What?” Gordy grunted.

  That was pretty much the cherry on the trailer-trash sundae. Jeremy was the first to cut out after that. I couldn’t resist asking him if he wanted a piece of cake to go. Naturally, he passed. I snuck out of the party early too and went up to bed - funnily enough, before my gran. But not before I could snatch Dad’s card out of the garbage pile.

  Chapter 10

  “It”

  “Dustin! Garbage! Now!”

  I could tell from Mom’s voice that she had finally reached her breaking point. I think that birthday card from Dad really launched her into one of her moods. I could relate. How come he never sent me a birthday card? Or a letter? A postcard, even? Maybe he did and it ended up in the trash.

  “And I mean now!” Mom yelled.

  “Okay, okay.”

  There was a ton of cleaning up to do the day after the party, but I’d spent most of Sunday in my room, pretending I had a science project I was working on - but really just seeing how long I could lie totally still in bed without thinking a single thought. (Hey, that is a science project, kinda-sorta.) Anyway, it was definitely time to get up and face the garbage.

  I slid into my flip-flops and
plopped my way down the back stairs and into the yard with three bags of trash in tow. The sun was nuzzling the garage and fading fast. And there was a flimsy moon out already, like a smudged, white thumbprint on the turquoise sky. The clanking of the garbage-can lids cut through the quiet in the neighborhood, and I hoped no one would catch me in my cowboys-on-horseback-with-lassos pajamas.

  “Hi, neighbor!”

  Busted! Of course LMNOP would be in her yard next door. Digging again. Was she searching for dinosaur bones? Tunneling her way out of Buttermilk Falls, maybe? Wishful thinking.

  “How’d you like the brownies?” she asked.

  Oh, you mean the ones that you probably made out of dirt?

  “They were okay.”

  “Glad ya liked ‘em, Dustin Grubbs.”

  She always called every kid by his or her full name. She didn’t get that we were calling her LMNOP - not Ellen Mennopi.

  “Cute pj’s! I have a pair just like them.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Well, later.”

  I’m burning these pajamas as soon as I get inside.

  “Cinnamon says hi,” she lisped.

  “Uh-huh. Well, give my regards to your cat.”

  “We just got this great new kitty litter!” LMNOP said quickly. I was holding the screen door open with my foot, stuck listening to the human mole. “It’s biodegradable. Made from all-natural whole-kernel corn.”

  “I’m happy for you.”

  “My mom won’t let me take Cinnamon outside anymore,” she said, screwing the lid on a dirt-filled pickle jar. “Ever since that day you had to rescue her from the roof of our garage. Remember?”

  “Yeah. Gotta go.”

  “I thought you were great in the play, by the way. I think you’ve -”

  “Shhh!” I said, pulling the door closed behind me. I sprinted over to the chain-link fence that separated our yards. “My mom doesn’t know anything about the play.”

  “Why not?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Okay, whatever.” She brushed her bangs out of her eyes, leaving a track of dirt across her forehead. “I was just gonna say, I think you’ve got ‘it,’ Dustin Grubbs,” she whispered.

  “I do not!” I snapped. “Why? Have you been talking to Nurse Opal? What’ve you heard?”

  “No, no. ‘It’ - that unexplainable certain something that comes out of you when you’re onstage.” Her lisp was working overtime. “Not everybody has ‘it,’ you know.”

  “And what makes you such an expert? Why do you think I’ve got ‘it’?”

  “I can just tell.”

  “How?”

  “Dunno.”

  I leaned on the fence, waiting for her to say more. She plucked a plump worm from the ground and watched it wriggle from one hand to the other and then back again. It seemed gigantic in her bony hands. There was skinny, and then there was skeletal, and then there was LMNOP. She probably had to dance around in the shower to get wet.

  “So, this ‘it’ thing,” I said, flicking a ladybug off my arm. “What exactly are you seeing?”

  “Something jumps out of you, like electricity. It’s a gift.”

  How could someone sprawled out in the dirt, playing worm hockey, be capable of such fascinating conversation?

  “Too bad about the play again,” she said. “You’ve had the worst luck. First, with the fire drill, and then the set falling -that’s two false starts, and nobody ever got to see the whole play.”

  “Okay, stop saying play so loud, will you? Say - I don’t know - say crab apple instead.”

  “Too bad about the crab apple. I can’t wait to see it from beginning to end.” A smile spread across her face. “So I could really sink my teeth into it.”

  “Well, that’s gonna be a long wait,” I said. “Futterman gave it the ax.”

  “No way!”

  “Way. After the piano got wrecked he was fuming. He said he’s holding me and Miss Honeywell responsible for the damage - and he’s not gonna let us ‘out of the dugout’ until we raise money for the repairs.”

  Why was I spilling my guts to LMNOP? I had always thought of her as a kind of nonperson. A nosy little gnat with ice-cube glasses.

  “Hmm, I guess that sort of explains the thing with Miss Honeywell,” she said, jumping to her feet and disappearing around the garage.

  “What thing with Miss Honeywell? LMNOP, get back here and talk to me!”

  Did I just say that?

  “Nothing, really,” she called.

  A few seconds later, she rounded the side of the garage, carrying more glass jars and dragging a rusty shovel that was bigger than she was. After leaning the shovel against the fence, she set the jars down carefully and collapsed back into the dirt.

  “I saw Mr. Futterman and Mrs. Sternhagen yelling at Miss Honeywell outside of the teachers’ lounge the other day,” LMNOP said, “and she looked totally stressed out. Did you know stress robs the body of nutrients? It can even make your hair fall out.”

  “Oh, great!” I yelled, kicking the fence. “Now we’ll never get to perform the whole - crab apple. Miss Honeywell was our only hope!”

  “Unless…”

  “There is no unless,” I said.

  “Unless,” she repeated, “you guys can sell tickets and perform it for the general public. That’d raise money.”

  “Didn’t you just hear what I said?” I tapped on my fist as if it were a dead microphone. “Hello? Is this thing on? Futterman said the whole thing was a big mistake. Actually, fiasco is the word he used. Disaster, bomb, and nightmare were some others. He’s not going to charge people money to see it. Get real.”

  “Hmm. What you need is a strategic plan.”

  “Like?”

  “Don’t rush me.”

  LMNOP was tracing circles around the word It, which she had written in the dirt with a doll’s arm. She looked like a wood nymph casting some sort of spell.

  “Maybe… maybe if you got your friend Jeremy Jason Wilder to join the cast, then tons of people from miles around would want to come see it. Just like our Buttermilk Falls Pickle Festival - only with a crab apple instead.” She looked pleased with herself and tossed the doll’s arm over her shoulder and into the empty plastic swimming pool. “Problem solved.”

  “You’ve completely lost it! Jeremy’s a professional. He’d never sink to being in a stupid school play.”

  “Crab apple,” LMNOP said, springing up. She brushed some dirt off her knees. “Well, you never know till you ask.”

  “I do know. Besides, I think our friendship is pretty much down the toilet.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It just is, okay?”

  A loud sigh came from behind the screen door. Aunt Birdie was standing there with a dreamy look on her face, holding a small, fluffy rug.

  “It’s gonna be good sleeping weather tonight,” she said. “Really warm for April.”

  She stepped into the backyard, letting the screen door slam behind her.

  “Well, what have we got here? Romeo and Juliet, spooning under the moonlight?”

  “Ugh! Aunt Birdie!”

  She turned her head and shook the filth out of the rug.

  “Oh, I’m just playing with you.”

  “Gross!” I said. “LMNOP is, like, eight.”

  “I’m almost ten,” she said. “Romeo and Juliet weren’t too much older than that, you know.”

  Just one year younger than me? I thought she was a baby.

  “Okay, I’m outta here,” I said, ‘cause things were getting too creepy.

  “Don’t go,” Aunt Birdie said, coughing from the rug’s dust. “I didn’t mean to break anything up.”

  “You didn’t,” I said. “Believe me.”

  “But you have to admit, it is the perfect setting. Weeping willows swaying in a lilac-scented breeze. And the moon is so big, you could take a bite out of it. Like a blessing in the skies.”

  “Good one!” LMNOP said.

  Aunt Birdie gave
the rug a big shake and swatted the dust cloud as if it were a swarm of killer bees. Obnoxious kissing noises started coming from the house. When I looked up, I saw Gordy’s face pressed into the window screen on the second floor.

  “Freakshow and weird girl, sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”

  “R-e-b-u-1,” I shouted.

  “You die!” he yelled back, smacking his head on the window frame. Ha!

  “You two wait right here,” Aunt Birdie said. She was still hacking up a lung. “I’m gonna run inside and get my camera.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “I want to use up my last roll of film so I can get the party pictures developed,” she said, hustling toward the door. “Ellen, wipe that mud off your face and come pose with Dustin in front of our lilac bushes.”

  “No!” I hollered, but my aunt was already inside the house.

  I could tell from the expression on LMNOP’s face that she liked the idea. No - loved the idea. I zoomed past Aunt Birdie and up the hall steps, shot into my room, slammed the door, and took a nosedive under the covers.

  Chapter 11

  Bankrupt

  An hour later, I woke up soaked in sweat. I’d dozed off and dreamt that a baby-grand piano was swallowing me whole. When I stuck my head out from under the covers, I saw my piggy bank sneering down at me from a shelf. There was no use popping its plug. After buying Granny’s present and that basketball to bribe Felix into being in the play, I already knew for a fact that it was one hungry pig.

  I could try to sell Jeremy Jason Wild-Man’s baseball cap on the Internet. I don’t really want it anymore. He made it pretty clear that he was slumming it by being at the party - and that he thinks my family belongs in one big padded room.

  “You went from hero to zero in my book, buddy,” I said, reaching up and ripping the Double Take poster off my wall. I wadded it up and flung it at the Yankees-cap shrine on my desk across the room.

  That cap would raise some money, but probably not enough to repair a piano. There’s no real proof that it was his, anyway. I should’ve gotten it autographed while I had the chance.

  I flopped over on my stomach and started thinking about poor Miss Honeywell, racking her brain trying to think up ways to raise the money - and losing clumps of hair from the stress of it. I wondered if the play was more trouble than it was worth, as Jeremy had turned out to be - and I wondered about my life.