Talia Talk

by Christine Hurley Deriso

  “Honey, kids your age don’t watch my show,” she said absently, grabbing a bottle of catsup. “You have nothing to worry about.”

  “Then why did I get a get-well-soon card from my Girl Scout troop when you blabbed about my rash?”

  Mom stopped again and squeezed my hand, smiling sweetly. “Honey, I know it isn’t always easy having our life on display for the whole city. But it’s my job. It’s what I do. Tell ya what: if you’ll stop doing funny things, I’ll stop talking about them.”

  “Excellent point!” I said. “What’s funny about throwing up on a piano teacher? That’s an unfunny thing. A sad thing. An intestinal-disorder kind of thing that most people would consider, oh, I don’t know, unfortunate. So it doesn’t matter what I do!”

  “Talia,” Mom said, “every job entails sacrifices. If I worked in a hospital, I’d have to leave you home alone during night shifts. If I drove a truck, I’d be on the road for days at a time. Doesn’t my show seem like a pretty small sacrifice in the big scheme of things?”

  By this point, I was trying to imagine my mother driving an eighteen-wheeler. And contemplating that being left alone for days at a time might just be the coolest thing in the world. “I wonder what the job market is like for truck drivers…,” I mused.

  “Cheerios,” my mom responded. “The big box.”

  3

  “Mom!”

  My screech practically shook the walls.

  “Hi, honey,” Mom said breezily as she walked in the door.

  Mom knew this screech all too well. It was my “How could you possibly embarrass me that way?” screech when she got home from work. The one that began deep in the pit of my stomach, welled its way up my chest and spewed out of my throat like lava every time I saw her show.

  Just look away, I’d tell myself when Up and At ’Em came on. Pretend Mom’s TV show is a documentary about protozoa. Just look away.

  But I never could. I’d have the remote control in my hand, ready to change the channel in an instant, but then I’d see a blip of Mom’s show and know I was trapped. How could I look away? It would be like trying to ignore the jury when you’re on trial for murder and they read your verdict. Your Honor, we, the jury, find the defendant… Just try blocking out the next word.

  Anyhow, this show was particularly mortifying. Mom was talking to her cohost, Chad, about my starting sixth grade the following Monday. Here’s a snippet:

  CHAD: So Talia’s finally back from camp, huh, Chels?

  MOM: Finally. I missed her so much.

  CHAD: Us, too, Chelsea. A whole week without any Talia stories? It was like going through withdrawal. You’ll make up for lost time, I trust?

  MOM: Oh, yeah. She starts middle school next week. It didn’t really hit me until we picked up school supplies yesterday. Protractors! Can you believe that? Protractors are on her list.

  CHAD: You have issues with protractors, do you?

  MOM: As a matter of fact, I do. Considering that I’d completely forgotten what one looked like until Talia tossed it in the cart yesterday, I’m thinking she’s outgrown the days when I could help her with her math homework. That’s just wrong. It subverts the natural order for a kid to outpace her mother intellectually. It’s like a baby chimp teaching her mom how to climb a tree.

  CHAD: So multiplication tables are more your speed.

  MOM: Speed being the definitive word, Chad. Why is Talia’s childhood flying by so fast? Why am I filling my cart with protractors instead of crayons?

  CHAD: Are you partial to any particular colors?

  MOM: Talia always liked the scented ones. The only problem is she’d get a little overexuberant sniffing them. We actually ended up in the emergency room once to have them dug out of her nostrils. Blueberry Blast, as I recall.

  CHAD: I’m guessing Talia won’t be stuffing a protractor up her nose.

  MOM: Hope not, Chad, but darned if I know what she will be doing with it. I don’t know about Talia, but I’m just not ready for middle school.

  “Crayons up my nose?”

  “Now, honey…”

  “The whole world needs to know I stuffed crayons up my nose?” I crumpled into a defeated heap on the sofa. “I’m ruined. And one week before school starts!”

  “Talia, I told you, kids your age don’t watch my show.”

  The phone rang, and without lifting my head from the sofa cushion, I reached to the end table, picked up the receiver and put it against my ear. “Hello?” I muttered miserably.

  “Did you really shove crayons up your nose?” Bridget asked.

  My scream was primal, the way cavemen screamed when they realized they couldn’t outrun a mountain lion.

  “Geez!” Bridget said. “Break my eardrum, why don’t ya.”

  “Push me off a cliff, why don’t ya,” I responded.

  Mom grabbed the phone from me. “Bridget, honey, it’s really not a good time,” she said. “Talia will call you later, okay? Okay.”

  She hung the phone up and smoothed my hair. “Honey, a lot of the stuff I talk about on the show, it’s metaphorical, like when people tell you you’re growing like a weed, which you are, incidentally.”

  “Well, I’m not a metaphor!” I snapped, jerking myself up to a sitting position. “I’m a real person who has to go to a real school and try to make friends with real kids who are imagining what color the inside of my nostrils is!”

  Mom laughed into her hand.

  “It’s not funny!”

  “Don’t be mad,” she pleaded. “Every parent can relate to what I said. Don’t you get it, honey? What I said was about you, but it wasn’t really about you. It was about Everykid.”

  “Well, send Everykid to school next Monday, because I’m not going.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “No, I’m not, Mother,” I said. “You have sealed my fate. I’m never going to school again. And because of you, I won’t even be able to get a job in a crayon factory. So maybe your dream of keeping me a baby forever is coming true. I’m never getting off this couch. I hope you kept the receipt for the protractor.”

  Mom did a fake pout. “I’ll get referred to social services if I don’t send you to school,” she said.

  “Maybe you should get referred to social services for letting your kid shove crayons up her nose.”

  “No, they give you a pass on that one.”

  I buried my face under a pillow. “The whole world knows I’m a geek,” I moaned.

  “Honey, ‘the whole world’ is definitely an overstatement. True, the show is number one in its time slot, but the average viewer age is thirty-six-point-two, and…”

  I buried my face deeper in the pillow. “You’re a real laugh riot, Mom,” I muttered. “Just tell me why I have to be the butt of the jokes.”

  Mom’s eyes softened. She pulled the pillow away and put the palm of her hand against my cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said in barely a whisper. “I really am. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  I sighed. “I know.” It was easy to get mad at my mom. It was hard to stay mad at her. “But if you insist on keeping your job, could you at least homeschool me?”

  “Sorry, honey,” Mom said with a shrug. “I don’t know how to use a protractor.”

  4

  “Wow. They look so old.”

  Bridget and I had just loaded the dishwasher with our spaghetti-stained plates and were now plopped on her bed, thumbing through her brother’s Crossroads Middle School yearbook. I gazed intently at the faces.

  “You’ll notice that not a single sixth grader has crayons stuffed up her nose, so you definitely need to move past that, Talia.”

  I playfully swatted Bridget’s honey-colored ponytail. “If you don’t quit watching my mother’s show, I’m going to tell everyone in school your middle name.”

  Bridget’s jaw dropped. “You wouldn’t!”

  “Bridget Luna Scott! Bridget Luna Scott!”

  Bridget slapped her hand over my mouth. “Never utter those words
again.”

  I laughed at her mock-stern expression. “We could call you Lunatic. Hey, by the way, what was your mother thinking when she named you that?”

  “Something about a full moon on the night I was born,” Bridget responded, flipping to another page. “At least, that’s the long answer. The short answer is that she’s certifiable.”

  “I heard that!” her mother called from the hall, making us giggle.

  “No offense, Mom,” Bridget called out cheerfully. “All mothers are certifiable.”

  “At least yours doesn’t have her own TV show,” I muttered. I pulled a lock of light brown hair behind my ear. “No way will I survive middle school if my mom keeps reminding the world what a loser I am.”

  Bridget turned to the clubs and activities section of the yearbook. “Speaking of TV shows”—she tapped a fingernail against the page she’d opened—“here’s our ticket to fabulosity.”

  My eyebrows knitted together as I looked closer. “The Oddcast staff? No thanks.”

  The Crossroads Oddcast was a five-minute show of school announcements broadcast live on closed-circuit TV during homeroom each morning. The staff was small—about six to eight kids—and the staff rotated every three months: sixth graders the first three months, seventh graders the next three and eighth graders the last. The broadcasts could now be downloaded on computers as podcasts, so the name, the Crossroads Broadcast, had recently morphed into the Crossroads Oddcast.

  “What’s the big deal about making a few announcements on TV?” I asked. “And who in their right mind would want to do a TV show in the first place?”

  Bridget raised her hand. “I plan to be the sixth-grade director,” she said in her done-deal tone of voice, “and you’ll be one of the Oddcasters.”

  “Or not,” I said, closing the book, but Bridget tsked and hastily reopened it to the same page.

  “Isn’t one celebrity in the family enough?” I asked.

  “Now you’re catching on,” Bridget said, raising an eyebrow. “Your mom. Her experience will give us such an incredible edge. We’ll be the most awesome Oddcast staff ever.”

  I gazed at her quizzically. “What do you care about directing, anyhow? I thought you wanted to be a lawyer.”

  “I’m keeping my options open.”

  “I’m opting out,” I said, rising from the bed and mugging playfully in front of Bridget’s mirror.

  “See? You’re a ham at heart,” Bridget said. “Besides, what’ll we do if we don’t join the Oddcast?”

  “There’s always the pep squad,” I said, piling my hair on top of my head and grinning exuberantly at my reflection. “Pom-poms are my favorite accessory, and I’m really good at mindless shrieking. Or I could join the math team. I do know my integers.”

  “Think about it, Talia,” Bridget said, getting up from the bed and talking to my reflection in the mirror. “It drives you crazy when your mom talks about you on TV, right?”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Well, if you were an Oddcaster, the shoe would be on the other foot. You’d be the one with a microphone.”

  She had that silly, satisfied grin on her face, the one I pictured her having in the courtroom twenty years from now when she was outsmarting somebody on the witness stand.

  “Don’t Oddcasters just give school announcements?” I asked. “You know, ice cream’s on sale in the cafeteria? Don’t forget to wear your school ID? That kinda thing? I can’t exactly picture my mother freaking out about that.”

  “You’re thinking too small, Talia,” Bridget said. “The Oddcast doesn’t have to be only school announcements just because that’s the way it’s always been done before. My brother was on the staff last year, and he said if I come to the auditions with a lot of great ideas, there’s a good chance I’ll be named the director. And with a new director at the helm”—she tapped her chest—“things could be very different this year. You could do your own little commentary. We’ll call it ‘Talia Talk.’”

  My eyebrows knitted together.

  “Not a bad idea,” I murmured. “If my mom gets to tell the whole world what a nutcase I am, why shouldn’t I have a chance to undo the damage?”

  “Now you’re talking, girlfriend.”

  “Still,” I said, “what makes you think we’ll get permission to do a commentary?”

  Bridget put her hands on her hips. “Leave that,” she said, “to the director.”

  5

  Cough.

  Chalky-white powder filled my nostrils as Grandma sprinkled flour on her hands.

  “Grab me that rolling pin, will you, honey?” she said. I waved away the flour cloud, handed her the rolling pin and watched as she pressed it against the cookie dough she’d plopped on the counter. She hummed as she rolled, the corners of her mouth pressed into a little smile.

  “You’re always in a good mood,” I told her, smiling back.

  She glanced at me with twinkly brown eyes. “I’m in a good mood anytime you’re around, and that’s the only time you ever see me,” she teased.

  “She’s right,” said Grandpa, picking up an apple and taking a bite as he walked into the kitchen. “When you’re not around, she growls like a bear.”

  Grandma growled at him, and we all laughed.

  I studied Grandma’s face as she pressed the dough.

  “Did Dad look like you?” I asked casually.

  She looked up, startled. “You remember what your father looked like, Talia,” she said, but I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. “And heaven knows we have plenty of pictures around.”

  “He looked like me, the handsome devil,” Grandpa said, making me shriek in surprise when he kissed the back of my neck.

  “He looked like your grandpa when he was a baby,” Grandma said. “Both bald.”

  Grandpa growled at her and took another bite of his apple.

  “I wonder if Dad would have turned bald if he’d lived long enough,” I said, then wished I could snatch back the words. My grandparents sucked in their breath and looked at each other for just a second before Grandma’s eyes turned misty. She stared down at her dough and pursed her lips.

  “Sorry, Grandma,” I mumbled. It always caught me off guard when she turned sad thinking about my dad. Most of the time these days, talking about him only made her laugh, and I loved to see her laugh. But sometimes, like the time we planted pansies and she remembered doing the same thing with him years earlier, her face would crinkle like an autumn leaf, and out would come the tears.

  Grandma swallowed hard. “Don’t be silly, sweetie,” she said in a fake-cheery voice. “You can always ask me anything about your dad.”

  Grandpa put an arm around each of our waists. “Why are we talking about baldies?” he asked, giving a little squeeze. “I’d much rather talk about you, missy. Are you excited about your first day of school tomorrow?”

  “I’m thinking about joining the Crossroads Oddcast,” I said as Grandma and I began pressing star-shaped cookie cutters into the dough.

  “What in the world is that?” Grandma asked.

  “It’s a broadcast and a podcast. A podcast is like…it’s like watching TV on your computer.”

  “My,” Grandma said, which was what she said anytime the subject of computers came up.

  “It’s basically just a few students giving announcements on TV during homeroom each morning,” I continued. “The sixth graders do it the first part of the year, then the seventh graders, then the eighth graders. I thought maybe I’d audition for the sixth-grade staff.”

  “Oh!” Grandma said, her face brightening. “Just like your mom.”

  “Kinda,” I said, pressing the cookie cutter into another section of dough. “Bridget wants to be the director.”

  Grandma and Grandpa exchanged glances. They’d known Bridget a long time.

  “What about Meredith and Brynne?” Grandma asked. “Are they going to audition, too?”

  I shrugged. No use going into the whole “that’s so over�
� explanation about our friendship. Grandma would look all devastated and talk about what lovely girls they were.

  Grandpa walked by and snipped off a piece of cookie dough, popping it into his mouth.

  Grandma slapped his hand playfully. “Howard, please! Just finish your apple and leave our cookies alone, at least until they’re baked.”

  “Raw cookie dough can make you sick,” I told him earnestly. “Uncooked eggs. Salmonella. We learned about it in health class.”

  He coughed and sputtered. “Thanks. You really know how to whet a fella’s appetite. Is that the kind of wisdom you’re going to dispense on your modcast?”

  “Oddcast,” I corrected him, giggling. “And I don’t even know if I’ll make the staff.”

  “You can do anything you set your mind to,” Grandma said, nodding smartly and putting a cookie sheet in the oven.

  I spontaneously kissed her on the cheek. If only she knew I’d be lucky to make the B list at school, maybe even the C list since Mom’s crayon announcement, she wouldn’t be nearly so confident. Or on the other hand, maybe she would. That was the thing about grandmothers.

  6

  “Pssssst.”

  I turned around in my desk. “What?” I whispered to Bridget.

  Bridget cupped her hand around her mouth. “I think Meredith must have gotten some awful disease at camp.” She tossed her head in Meredith’s direction, and I looked two rows over. “It’s like the veins around her eyes are about to pop out of her head.”

  I giggled. “That’s blue eye shadow,” I said.

  As soon as Bridget and I had settled into our homeroom for the first day of school, our eyes were wandering up and down the rows, checking people out. Lots of the faces were unfamiliar…kids from different elementary schools who somehow seemed much more pulled together than I felt. Of the ones I knew, some hadn’t changed much over the summer. Bobbi Kay Banks still had crooked bangs. Aubrey Merrill still wore a matching hair bow, blouse and shoelaces. Savannah Callahan still wore T-shirts with pictures of kittens. Trey Hayes still had wadded-up tissues in his pants pocket. (Allergies.)