“Guess what I did after school?” Halle blurts out the minute Mom’s out of sight. She puts on her seat belt and makes me do the same.
“Your homework?” I say, clicking the buckle into place.
“No, silly. I Skyped with Michael for twenty-five minutes! I got to see his room and everything.”
“Cool,” I say.
“Michael’s got a gerbil, two turtles, and a goldfish named Sylvia.”
“Michael’s sure got a lot of animals,” I say, wishing I could have a pet. “But Sylvia? That’s a strange name for a fish.”
“It was his grandmother’s name,” Halle says, scowling. “I think it’s cute.”
Suddenly I feel my stomach lurch. To keep from getting carsick, I close my eyes and take in the familiar sounds of New York City at rush hour: the brum-brum of jackhammers, the screech of police sirens, voices everywhere. When the car reaches Dad’s building thirty-five minutes later, my stomach and I are grateful to get out. I send Mom a quick text to let her know we’re here and take the elevator with Halle up to the twelfth floor.
Barbara is waiting for us at the door. She and Dad are only going downstairs to the Morgensterns’ apartment for dinner, but my stepmom looks ready to walk the red carpet. She’s wearing a short sequined dress, a matching jacket, and sparkly gold jewelry. She’s even got a rhinestone clip in her hair.
“Kat! Halle!” Barbara pulls us into a group hug. Her clinking bangles feel cold against the back of my neck. “I’m so glad you girls could watch Henry tonight. I was going to arrange for a sitter, but Dennis wouldn’t hear of it. He said you were old enough, but—”
“But nothing,” Dad says, joining us in the entrance hall. “Kat and Halle are up to the task. Right, girls? And we’ll just be downstairs.”
Halle offers my dad a wide grin. “That’s right, Mr. Greene. You can count on us.”
“Where is Henry anyway?” I ask. My brother is usually out like a shot when the doorbell rings.
“Watching TV,” Dad says. “Go say hi.”
I wave a quick good-bye to Dad and Barbara, grab a juice box from the fridge, and head for the family room to find Henry.
My brother is already in his pajamas, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He’s surrounded by loose socks. “What are you doing?” I ask, pointing to Henry’s mess. “Where did those socks come from?”
“My dwesser dwawer.”
That’s another thing about my brother. It takes an interpreter to figure out what he’s saying. “Okay, Henry,” I say slowly. “Let’s put the socks away and get ready for bed.”
“No!” Henry balls his chubby hands into fists. “I don’t wanna go to bed. I’m not tiyood!”
A tantrum will erupt if I don’t do something quick. I run into Henry’s room, grab The Little Engine That Could, and race back to the family room. My brother plucks the book out of my hand and presents it to Halle, Cinderella-slipper style. “Wead,” he tells her.
“What do you say, Henry?” I remind him.
“Pwease.”
—
Three read-alouds later, I’m able to peel Henry off Halle’s lap and drag him to his room. After he hops into bed, I flick on his night-light and hand him Bruno, his stuffed pig. I remember when Henry first got Bruno, a gift from my mom. He was bright blue then, with big black eyes and a cute piggy snout. Now Bruno is gray and ratty and smells like feet. “Good night, bud,” I say, kissing my brother’s nose. Henry grabs Bruno by a raggedy ear and rolls over. I tiptoe out of the room and close the door softly behind me.
Halle wasted no time getting comfy in the family room. She’s eating pizza and watching a TV cooking show. It’s the one where contestants race against the clock to make meals out of bizarre ingredients like ox tongue and animal crackers. This reminds me of Clean Sweep and the possibility that Mom could get picked. I decide to tell Halle after she passes me the pizza box. “You won’t believe this,” I say, “but—”
“You talked to Michael for me!” Halle jumps up and smothers me in a bone-crushing hug. “I knew you’d come through!”
“I said I’d think about it,” I say, untangling myself. “But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.”
“Oh.” Halle wipes a blob of grease off her chin. “That’s okay,” she says, brightening. “There’s no need to rush it. These things take time.”
Finally my best friend may be coming to her senses. I get back to telling her about Clean Sweep—and my email to Olympia.
“I’m glad you emailed her,” Halle says, reaching for another slice, “but what did she tell you to do about your mom?”
“Do?”
Halle frowns. “You did tell her how bad it’s gotten, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did.” The lie tastes bitter in my mouth, worse than ox tongue and animal crackers combined. How can I admit to Halle that I didn’t tell Olympia the whole story? That I mentioned Clean Sweep and not much else? She’ll think I’m a big chicken. Maybe I am.
“Well, whatever Olympia said, I hope you’ll tell your dad,” Halle says. “He should know what’s going on, Kat.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But once he knows the truth, he’ll drag me uptown quicker than Mom can check my sheets for bedbugs.”
“Then we’d never walk to school together,” Halle says, “or hang out at each other’s apartments whenever we feel like it.”
“True,” I say. “But I guess living with Dad wouldn’t be the worst thing either. I mean, I like his place, and he and Barbara always make me feel at home.”
“Sure, but if you actually lived here, they’d start using you as a built-in babysitter.”
“I could order pizza all the time,” I remind her. “That’s a plus.”
“But what about the babysitting part?” Halle asks.
I smile. We both know that a little Henry goes a long way. We drop it and get back to the cooking show.
As the winning chef is being announced, I hear a key in the lock. It’s Barbara, carrying her high heels. She collapses onto the sofa and starts rubbing her feet.
“Where’s my dad?” I ask.
“At the piano. He and Mindy Morgenstern were in the middle of a duet when I left.”
“ ‘Summer Nights,’ from Grease?”
Barbara stops rubbing. “How’d you know?”
“Just a wild guess.” I grin at Halle. For a middle-aged tax accountant, my dad’s got a silly streak a mile wide. Combine “silly” with his “singing” and you’re in for a bumpy ride.
Barbara removes her earrings and tucks her feet underneath her. “Dennis insisted on taking the Sandy part, but after a while I couldn’t take it anymore. I made my excuses and came upstairs.” She motions toward Henry’s room. “Did you have any trouble with the little guy? He can be a real handful.”
“No, Mrs. Greene,” Halle says sweetly. “He was an angel.”
Barbara makes a face. “That’s nice of you to say, Halle, but I don’t believe you for a minute. The only time Henry is an angel is when he’s asleep! I’ll go check on him.” Barbara gets up from the couch and disappears down the hall.
At that moment Dad makes his big entrance. He’s taken off his blazer and draped it over his shoulders. He reminds me of a prep-school kid in a bad eighties movie. He sings, “Summer lovin’, had me a blast. / Summer lovin’ happened so fast. / Met a girl crazy for me. / Met a boy cute as can be…”
Despite the look of it, Dad has not been drinking. As he likes to say, he gets “high on life.” This is his way of embarrassing me without using alcohol as an excuse. He flings his blazer on the couch and takes a seat next to Halle. “So, what’s the four-one-one, girls?”
I roll my eyes. “No one says that, Dad.”
My father clutches his heart, stricken. “Is this true, Halle? Am I woefully behind on tween lingo?”
Halle offers an apologetic smile. “Yeah, Mr. Greene. Sorry.”
I try to ignore the fact that my father has taken off his tie and looped it around his head. “Barbara
told us you were singing with Mrs. Morgenstern,” I say. “The Sandy part.”
Dad grins, his tie flopping against his ear. “Guilty as charged.” He puffs out his chest and pretends to fluff out his nonexistent hair. Dad is as bald as Mom’s hero, Mr. Clean, and he looks like him too—minus the brawny forearms and shiny gold earring.
“So,” he asks, “what did you girls do while I was impressing the Morgensterns with my musical stylings? Inquiring minds want to know.”
Halle giggles. “Nothing much, Mr. Greene. We read to Henry, watched TV, ate pizza. You know…”
“But it was fun, right?” Dad gives us a look I can’t quite decipher.
“What are you getting at, Dad?” I ask.
“Okay, busted.” Dad unloops the tie from his head and places it next to him on the couch. “I was hoping you girls could babysit again next weekend—or every weekend, actually. You could make it a regular gig. Like the Baby-Sitters Club.”
The Baby-Sitters Club? Is Dad for real?
“I don’t know, Dad,” I say, looking over at Halle. “It’s a big commitment.”
Dad shrugs. “What can I say? I like having you here.”
Or does he just like having someone here for Henry? Sometimes I’m not so sure.
Three things happen the following week: Liberty gets her nose pierced, Wilson says he’s found a cure for cancer, and Mom is offered a spot on Clean Sweep. I almost choke on my toaster waffle when she tells me at breakfast Friday morning.
“Why are you so surprised?” Mom asks, passing me the syrup. “You look stunned!”
I am stunned. I knew there was a chance she could get picked, but I never thought it would happen this soon. One of the contestants dropped out at the last minute, it seems, and Mom was at the top of the list. The fact that she’s a New Yorker didn’t hurt either. Transporting contestants to and from the city isn’t cheap.
“Should we tell Dad?” I ask, drowning my waffle in maple syrup. “He’ll want to know.”
“You’re right,” Mom says. She hands me a napkin. “We should definitely tell him. Just not yet.”
“Why not?”
Mom adjusts her bandanna. “No specific reason. Let’s just say he won’t be as enthusiastic as we are.”
I suppose Mom’s right. Dad won’t mind the twenty-five-thousand-dollar cash prize, but seeing his ex-wife scrubbing a dirty toilet on television? Not so much. Or maybe Dad knows more about Mom’s recent obsession with cleaning than she’s letting on. I wish I knew.
Before I leave for school, I get my laptop to write back to Olympia. I never answered her last email, and I feel kind of bad.
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: News
DATE: October 6 7:47:19 AM EDT
FROM: [email protected]
Dear Olympia,
Guess what? My mom got picked for Clean Sweep. She told me at breakfast this morning. I want to tell my dad, but Mom thinks we should wait. She’s probably right. Still, I wish I could tell him.
See you in school,
Kat
—
I try to share my big news with Halle on the walk to school, but I don’t get a chance: Michael has started using Axe body spray. In Halle’s world, this is more important than the discoveries of gravity and electricity combined.
Now, in art, she’s giving me the latest update—proof that Michael likes her. “I can see it in his eyes,” Halle says, pulling a smock over her head. “He’s always, well, blinking at me, and you know what that means.”
Yeah, I think. He probably has an eye infection.
I try to concentrate on the still life in front of me—three rotting clementines in a cracked turquoise bowl—but it’s hard. The sickly-sweet fruit smell is so disgusting, I’m worried my toaster waffle will come in for a landing on the art-room floor.
“He’s going to ask me out,” Halle says, squinting at the clementines. “If not this week, definitely next. No thanks to you, by the way.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said.”
I put down my paintbrush. “I never agreed to talk to him, Hal, and you know it. Why can’t you get it through your head? If you’d only listen, you’d see that—”
“Shhhh! Quiet back there!” It’s our art teacher, Remy, yelling at us from behind her easel. Remy is a Village Calamity celebrity. She’s been at the school forever (she taught my mom), and it’s common knowledge that she poses nude for a drawing class at the Art Students League. I feel sorry for the poor, unsuspecting art students who have to see Remy naked. She’s not exactly the Mona Lisa.
Remy steps away from her easel and starts circling the room. “Representational accuracy is meaningless in the creation of art,” she tells the class, spitting out each word like a lemon seed. “It’s the emotional intensity that counts!” She strides over to Liberty. “This,” she declares, holding up Liberty’s painting, “emits true feeling. Passion!”
I wish I could say the same about my work of art. Despite my best efforts, my clementines look like rotten tomatoes, all squished and lumpy. “Where’s the emotion, Katrina?” Remy asks when she gets to my table. “I don’t see it anywhere! I expect more from you.” She tsks-tsks and moves on to Wilson, who’s wiping blue paint off his lab coat.
I’m so mad, I could scream. Not because Remy insulted my painting, or even that she called me by my given name, Katrina. I’m annoyed that my teacher probably expects me to be as talented as my mom, Class Artist of 1989. If only Remy knew the truth: that the only brush my mom uses now is to clean the toilet.
Later that day Jane makes us sit in our Harriet the Spy pairs. I’m squeezed in a corner with Sam, praying for the hands of the clock to spring to 2:45 p.m., dismissal time. Sam interrupts my wishful thinking. “We should work on the Harriet project this weekend, Kat. We’ve only got seven weeks until the Thanksgiving assembly.”
“Seven weeks is a long time,” I say. “Besides, I’ve been doing a lot of work on my own. That’s got to count for something.”
Sam cracks his knuckles. “I’m glad you’re on top of things, Kat, but there’s no need to fly solo. We’re a team.”
“Yeah, but—” I scramble for an excuse. “I have to babysit my little brother this weekend. I promised my stepmom.”
This is not exactly true. I did tell Barbara I might be free to watch Henry on Saturday afternoon for a couple of hours while she and Dad go to the movies. But I never made any cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die promises. Now I wish I had.
“Wait!” Sam holds up his hand like a traffic cop. “I could babysit with you. I know a lot about kids. My sister, Chloe, is almost five and I watch her all the time.”
“Well, I—”
“Or better yet, I could bring Chloe with me. She can play with your brother while we work on the project. It’ll be perfect.” Sam offers me a face-cracking grin. “Let’s do this thing!”
“I don’t know,” I say, picturing Henry and Sam’s little sister destroying Dad and Barbara’s apartment faster than a wrecking ball. “How would we get any work done? You can’t leave two little kids alone. They need to be supervised.”
“Elmo,” Sam says simply. “I don’t know about your little brother, but Chloe can watch Sesame Street all day.”
“Henry’s mom might not like that,” I say, thinking fast. “She prefers him to play games or read books. You know, educational stuff.”
“I doubt a couple of hours of Sesame Street will do any harm, Kat. Come on. We don’t want to bomb the Harriet project. It’s important.”
Sam’s got a point. “Okay, Saturday afternoon,” I say. “But only for a couple of hours.”
“Sweet!” Sam leans over to give me a high five.
Yeah, I think, high-fiving him back.
Sweet.
Mom is sterilizing the silverware when I walk into the kitchen the next morning. “I need to work on my cleaning speed for the show,” she says, dropping a handful of spoons i
nto a large pot of boiling water. “I’m not fast enough. I’m thinking of using a timer, but that may be overkill. What do you think?”
“Good morning to you too.”
“Sorry, Kit-Kat.” Mom blows me a kiss as she heads for the sink. She turns on the water and starts lathering up. “I’m just nervous about the show,” she says, reaching for more hand soap, “and meeting some of the other local Sweepers at dinner tonight.”
Oh, yeah. Tonight’s the night Mom is getting together with the other Clean Sweep contestants, or “Sweepers,” to prepare for the show. Before the show tapes at the end of October, the producers wanted everybody to meet for dinner at a fancy French restaurant on the Upper East Side. I hope a fight doesn’t break out over who gets to do the dishes.
I grab some OJ from the fridge and sit down at the breakfast bar. “How do you know you’re not fast enough?” I ask, waiting for Mom to get me a glass. “You haven’t seen the other contestants yet.”
“True.” Mom says. “But if I want to win, I have to be the best.”
“You are the best, Mom. I mean, look at this place. The floor’s so clean, you can lick it!”
Mom laughs as she leans over to pour my juice. When she’s done, she puts on her rubber gloves and reaches for a bottle of Fantastik. “Aren’t you supposed to go to your dad’s later?” she says, aiming the nozzle at the countertop. “To work on the Harriet project with Sam?”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“Oh, come on. What’s the problem—the project or Sam?”
“Both,” I say. “I didn’t get picked for Harriet, and Sam is kind of annoying. He’s also obsessed with”—I make air quotes with my fingers—“ ‘getting ahead of the competition.’ It’s so dumb.”
Mom rips off a paper-towel square and starts mopping up the cleanser. “You won’t always get the lead in plays, honey. But I think you already know that.”
I do. Olympia said pretty much the same thing in her email—how losing is always a possibility, on game shows and in life in general. But that doesn’t make it any easier.
Kat Greene Comes Clean Page 5