My Life

by Maryrose Wood

  “Emily, early this afternoon a New Jersey state trooper picked up your grandmother at a truck stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. She was driving a, one of those, what do you call them—”

  “A Winnebago!” yelled Mr. Pearl from the kitchen. “And she wasn’t driving! Her blind boyfriend was driving!”

  Emily’s heart began to sink. “Stan was driving the Winnebago?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Pearl. “He drove it right into a parked tractor trailer. And the trooper came over to see what was wrong. And—well, they gave him a hard time, apparently.”

  “They tried to flee!” cried Mr. Pearl, fuming. “My crazy mother and her boyfriend in a high-speed chase on the New Jersey Turnpike! In a damn Winnebago!”

  “Don’t exaggerate, dear. They never made it out of the parking lot.” Emily could see that her mother was struggling to remain calm. “But they both got arrested, and then they took Grandma Rose to the ER because she was having trouble breathing.”

  “Grandma called the police officer a Cossack,” added Mr. Pearl.

  “Whoa,” said Emily. “Wow.” Somehow this is going to end up being about me, she thought. I can feel it coming. . . .

  “Stan was carrying a fake ID,” Mr. Pearl said ominously. “He’s not supposed to drive because of his vision, but he had a counterfeit license on him. Any idea where he might have gotten that?”

  “A fake ID!” exclaimed Emily. “No, not really, no.”

  “Emily,” said Mrs. Pearl, in an equally dire tone of voice. “When we got the call from the hospital, they told us to bring all of Grandma’s prescription medication. I had to go through her dresser drawers looking for the bottles.”

  Uh-oh, thought Emily. Is that what this is about? Surely they don’t think all those black lace nighties belong to me?

  Mr. Pearl had tossed his overcoat across the back of the sofa when he’d come in. Now he walked over to it, reached for the inside chest pocket, and took out a piece of paper.

  “Emily,” he repeated, as if there remained any doubt about who was the real criminal in the family. “Your mother found this with Grandma Rose’s, uh, things. It’s a note from you.” He held the note out to her, but of course she knew what it said. “Something about a loan, and your college fund?”

  21

  “CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN”

  The Sound of Music

  1959. Music by Richard Rodgers,

  lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II,

  book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse

  The interrogation had been pointed and businesslike, with both Mr. and Mrs. Pearl maintaining the most terrifying poker faces throughout.

  In contrast, Emily’s confession was teary and nearly incoherent with remorse, but only semitruthful. She explained about the Aurora tickets and about the money she’d borrowed from Grandma Rose to pay for them. She came clean about all the lies she’d told about where she spent her Saturday afternoons. Then she stopped.

  “That’s it?” said Mr. Pearl.

  Emily shrugged.

  “We’d hoped you might know where Stan got hold of the fake ID,” said Mrs. Pearl. “Grandma was a little vague about that.”

  It was Emily’s opinion that Mark and Stan must have struck a deal while Stan was over at Birchwood Gardens preparing the Winnebago. However, thanks to Mr. Henderson’s obsession with the persuasive essay, Emily knew the difference between opinion and proof. Without proof, she thought it best to say nothing. Getting Mark in trouble would undoubtedly lead to getting Philip in trouble, and she was not going to let that happen.

  “Mmmmph.” She yawned. “Tired. I have a math test tomorrow.”

  Her parents took the hint. The trial was far from over, but the verdict had already been decided. Emily was ultragrounded—there would be no nonemergency phone use, no computer except for homework, no outings except for school, no unescorted trips to the bathroom, if Mr. Pearl had his way.

  Emily was sent her to her room, to bed, but she knew from the murmuring and occasional footsteps downstairs that Mr. and Mrs. Pearl stayed up talking for a long, long time.

  When Philip got back to D-West, his mother was home but asleep, and Mark was out. He put the five thousand dollars in cash under Mark’s pillow, clipped together with a note: “Frankie Frankenfart says to join the drama club. Have you considered investing in a mutual fund?”

  Then he checked his e-mail. He and Emily both used AOL e-mail addresses, precisely because it made it possible for each of them to see when the other had read the e-mails they exchanged. He checked the status of the note he’d sent to Emily from Kinko’s.

  Unread.

  Huh. Odd. She always checks e-mail before going to bed.

  It was too late to call, but it didn’t matter. He’d see her at school in the morning. There was something fated-feeling about his inability to avoid telling her about the Aurora ticket in person. Maybe he was meant to witness the look on her face when he handed her the ticket. Maybe he was meant to receive, with open arms, whatever outpouring of gratitude and emotion overcame her when she found out what he’d done.

  Maybe it will be such an overwhelming moment we’ll forget we’re just friends and kiss each other on the lips, he thought. I wonder what that would be like.

  Friday morning. Three performances left.

  “I know Grandma Rose is somewhat at fault here. She encouraged you. But that does not make what you did acceptable.” Mr. Pearl was driving the way people do when they’re angry—too fast in the turns, too heavy on the brake, too speedy with the gas. “You’re still responsible for your own actions. Understood?”

  “Yes,” said Emily, slouched in the backseat. She fingered her seat belt to make sure it was still buckled. Math test be damned: her parents had both called in sick and Emily was being kept out of school to visit her grandmother in the hospital. The Pearls were not quite ready to let their wayward, fib-prone daughter out of their sight.

  They all lurched sideways as Mr. Pearl palmed the wheel and skidded around the curved hospital driveway to the main entrance. The irony of Grandma Rose’s being admitted to St. Francis’s Catholic Hospital of Perpetual Mercy was something Emily’s parents would normally joke about, if this were a joking time.

  “Is Grandma coming home today?” Emily asked as she and her mother got out of the car.

  “That depends,” said Mrs. Pearl curtly. “Come with me, please, Emily. Your father is going to go park. Stuart, don’t forget to pick up a visitor’s pass at the front desk.”

  It wasn’t until the two of them were riding up in the elevator that Mrs. Pearl spoke again.

  “So all those Saturdays—the test prep, the babysitting, the laser tag birthday parties, the volunteer work at the soup kitchen—you were at the show? All those times?”

  “Not all of them.” Emily was getting tired of explaining this. “Most of them, though. I did play laser tag once.”

  She waited for some sort of explosion, but Mrs. Pearl just nodded. “I had a feeling something was up,” her mother said quietly. “But I thought it was something else. I thought you might be”—there was a little pause as Mrs. Pearl searched for the right euphemism—“involved with that boy. Philip.”

  “Oh my God!” Emily almost started to laugh. “Is that why you bought me all those books?” Mrs Pearl was a great one for leaving books with titles like Young Woman’s Body: An Operational Guide around where Emily could find them.

  Mrs. Pearl looked embarrassed. “Yes, in fact.”

  “You must be kind of relieved, then,” Emily said.

  The elevator doors opened, and Emily could swear she saw her mother trying not to smile. “That still doesn’t make it okay, Emily.”

  BwayPhil: hey!

  BwayPhil: halllooooo

  BwayPhil: Em, if you’re out there speak up.

  BwayPhil: How come you’re not in school today?

  BwayPhil: Are you sick?

  BwayPhil: Did you get my e-mail? About the “present”?

  BwayPhil: Okay
, gotta run,

  BwayPhil: Guess I’ll call you later

  Emily and her mother had barely set foot on the cardiac floor when they heard the PA system crackling.

  “Laurey Pearl, please go to the nurses’ station. Mrs. Laurey Pearl, there is a call for you at the nurses’ station.”

  Mrs. Pearl almost knocked down an old man taking a shuffling walk with his IV stand as she sprinted to the central desk, with Emily chasing along behind. “I’m Laurey Pearl!” she yelled, like a character in a medical drama on TV. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

  The nurse looked down at a slip of paper by her phone. “I have a message here. It seems your husband got into a fender-bender in the parking lot. Would you mind going downstairs? He doesn’t seem to be handling it too well.”

  Mrs. Pearl covered her mouth with her hand for a moment before she spoke; this was one of her signature I-must-calm-down gestures.

  “Emily,” she said, her voice robotically steady. “You go see Grandma. I’ll take care of Daddy.”

  Emily watched her mother sprint back to the elevator. She fervently hoped Grandma Rose was wearing a hospital nightgown and not something from her collection of lingerie. It was too early in the day to cope with that.

  “What do you mean, why didn’t I throw away the note?”

  Grandma Rose was sitting up in bed, in a modest flannel gown from the hospital gift shop, wearing lipstick and playing solitaire on her meal tray. She seemed offended by Emily’s question. “But darling! I have every card you ever gave me! Every birthday, every Hanukkah, every little crayon stick-figure drawing that hung on the refrigerator when you were in preschool! You think I’d throw away such a nice note?”

  Grandma Rose was fine. She seemed pretty cheerful, in fact. Emily knew that Grandma Rose and her friends often worried about having to go into the hospital for one malady or other; now that she was already here, it was probably a big weight off her mind.

  Emily sighed. “How’s Stan?”

  “I guess I shouldn’t have let him drive,” Grandma Rose said sheepishly. “But you should have seen the looks on his kids’ faces when they got to the police station! I wish I could have stayed, but I was having a little trouble.” She pointed to her chest. “Did you notice all the nuns here?” Grandma Rose added, in a loud stage whisper. “They’re very nice, I have to say. But every time I see one I want to sing. ‘Climb ev’ry mountain!’ ” She warbled it in her fragile soprano. “The Sound of Music. That’s a good show, you know why?”

  “Julie Andrews?” Emily ventured.

  “You should have seen Mary Martin! But I’ll tell you why.” Grandma Rose gestured and knocked her meal tray askew, scattering the cards. “Because they weren’t even Jewish and the Nazis came for them anyway. You see? Everybody’s got problems.”

  “Just like in Fiddler, when the Cossacks come to Tevye’s village,” said Emily, trying to put the cards back the way they had been. “But they’re only musicals, Grandma. They sing a song and they get away and everything’s fine.” If only my life were like that, Emily thought. If only. “Guess what?” she added. “They’re doing Fiddler at my school. I’m one of the understudies.”

  “For which part?” said Grandma, suddenly interested.

  “Hodel. But the girl who got cast twisted her ankle, so I’ll probably be doing it.”

  “No, you won’t.” Grandma Rose closed her eyes. “Not if she’s a pro. Unless she’s in a coma, the show must go on.”

  “She’s not a pro, Grandma. She’s a cheerleader. It’s high school. It’s the drama club.” Grandma Rose didn’t answer, and Emily thought she might have fallen asleep.

  “Zero Mostel,” Grandma Rose murmured at last. “Now, that was a Tevye. Never again, though. No one will see Mostel’s Tevye, ever, ever again. . . .” Her eyes flew open and she looked hard at Emily. “But I saw it!” she said. “Dozens of times, I saw it! And I will never forget it. It lives forever—in here.” Grandma Rose tapped her forehead.

  But how can you bear it when it’s over? That was the question Emily desperately wanted to ask. Before she could say anything her cell phone rang—

  Never be enough,

  My love for you could never be enough

  Philip! For her birthday Philip had hacked the first four bars of “Never Be Enough” into a ring tone for her, and now it was his special ring.

  Her parents had been clear: she was not allowed to use the phone unless it was an emergency. A life-threatening, 911 kind of emergency.

  She glanced quickly at the “No Cell Phone Use in Hospital” sign and flipped open her phone.

  “Hi,” she said. “I can’t talk now.”

  “Hey,” said Philip. He was nervous—imagine, being nervous talking to Emily. “You know how hard it is to find a pay phone these days?”

  “I’m not supposed to use my cell,” she said, trying to keep her voice down so as not to attract the attention of the nurses.

  “Go ahead and talk on your phone, darling, I’ll just take a nap!” Grandma Rose called out. There was a loud whirr as she lowered the bed into a lying-down position.

  “Mr. Henderson’s been looking for you, he wants to know if you’ll be at rehearsal later—what’s that noise?” Philip asked. “Are you at the airport?”

  “I’m at the hospital,” said Emily.

  “The hospital!” Was that why he hadn’t heard from her about the ticket? “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” said Emily. She glanced back at Grandma Rose, who had closed her eyes. “How are you?”

  “I don’t know. Fine, I guess.” Philip’s head was starting to hurt. “I sent you kind of an important e-mail but it sounds like you didn’t get it yet.”

  “No.” Emily remembered the draconian terms of her punishment and sighed. “And I might not be able to for a while.

  Philip, listen—a lot of stuff has happened—”Philip hated to interrupt, but time was of the essence. “For me, too. Em, I have a present for you, but I need to give it to you right away. Can I come by your house later?”

  “No!” Emily cried. “Please, do not come to my house.” No way could she let her parents talk to Philip until she’d had a chance to coach him on his alibi. A fake student ID was one thing, a fake driver’s license was entirely another—what had she been thinking, letting Philip get Mark involved?

  Emily lowered her voice to a tiny whisper. “Grandma and Stan got arrested,” she breathed into the phone. “My parents found out about us borrowing the money.”

  “What? I can’t hear you. Emily, listen,” Philip said. “I wanted this to be a surprise but it sounds like I better just tell you. You won’t believe this! Yesterday, at the Drama Book Shop—”

  “There is absolutely no cell phone use inside the hospital, miss!” The nurse looked like she was about to bite. “It interferes with the cardiac equipment. There are signs everywhere, didn’t you notice?”

  Emily put up both her hands, the way caught criminals do to show they’re not carrying any weapons. “I have to hang up, bye,” she said quickly, in the direction of the phone, without taking her eyes off the nurse. She prayed Philip could hear her.

  The nurse snatched the phone and shut it off. “I’ll hold that at the nurses’ station until your parents get here,” she said. As she walked away, her white shoes squeaked on the linoleum. Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, fading away as she turned the corner.

  If my life were a musical, thought Emily, that wouldn’t be the beginning of a song at all. Just the stupid squeaky sound of a nurse’s shoes as she walks away with my cell phone.

  22

  “WHO AM I?”

  Les Misérables

  1987. Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg,

  French lyrics by Alain Boublil,

  English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer,

  book by Alain Boublil

  The humiliation! Philip had offered up his first great act of love, or tried to, and Emily had basically hung up on him.

 
; Did she hate him now? Had he ruined their friendship for good? And—insane problem to have!—what should he do with this single, priceless, impossible-to-get ticket for tonight’s third-to-last performance of Aurora?

  After he got off the phone with Emily he’d skipped the rest of school and taken a walk, up and down all the streets of Rockville Centre, until he got too cold and came home. It was after six o’clock. He had to decide.

  Should he use the ticket himself? It was tempting. He missed the show dreadfully. It would be so wonderful to sit there, nestled in the comfort of a red velvet seat, safe in the dark as the familiar music played.

  Unfortunately, during at least two numbers in Aurora the houselights came up to half and the cast interacted directly with the audience, so Marlena would be bound to see him sitting there. Eighth-row orchestra, right next to the head of RCA.

  She’d think he’d lied about Emily just to con the ticket out of her. Would she stop the show and berate him for his deceit?

  She’d often interrupted the opening number to yell at latecomers; Marlena was unpredictable that way. Better she see the seat empty than him sitting there.

  But come on. To not use the ticket? That would be unbearable.

  He took out the ticket and looked at it.

  “What’s that?” said Mark, yanking off his headphones. Ever since he’d started dating Stephanie, Mark had been spending less time in front of the PlayStation and more time lying in bed listening to Philip’s cast albums. At the moment he was hooked on Les Misérables, which he couldn’t remember how to pronounce no matter how many times Philip told him.

  “A ticket,” Philip mumbled.

  “Lemme see that,” said Mark, jumping up and snatching the ticket out of Philip’s hands. “Dude, this is for Aurora! I thought these were impossible to get. Aurora, Aurora!” He sang and pranced around Philip. “Can I come? Seeing Stephanie on stage, that would turn me on so much!”

  Philip couldn’t believe his brother would carry on like this with their mother typing up her depositions in the next room. “There’s only one,” he said, grabbing the ticket back. “It’s Emily’s, anyway. I gave it to her. I’m just not sure she can use it.”