Car Trouble

by Robert Rorke

She didn’t say anything, but I knew she agreed with me.

  “I mean, you have your friends. I need to go get some of my own.”

  Maureen had been hanging out more and more with Kathy Fitzgerald, this tough girl she met at St. Edmund’s who lived on Linden Boulevard. She knew all these Puerto Rican boys and now my sister knew them. Guys who weren’t from around here. I swear they were all named Richie, but there was also some guy named Angel and one called Boppo. Boppo: that’s all Himself had to hear. It would be the end of her.

  “You know, I bet I sound okay,” I said. She was grinning at me, mocking me. “It’s just a school play. It’s not Broadway.”

  Then she grilled me: which part was I going to try out for? I didn’t want to jinx it, in case I really did end up backstage building scenery.

  “I’m not saying. We all have to audition.”

  “They’re having auditions!” Maureen exclaimed. “Wow. Wait till Mommy hears this.”

  I gave her the Flynn Look of Death, a slack-jawed, stony stare reserved for behavior displaying astonishing stupidity. “Do you think you could keep your big mouth shut?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said, miffed. “But are you going to tell them how you did the minuet in the sixth-grade play and you couldn’t keep time?”

  I groaned. “No, I am not. I blame that on the costume. I hated wearing Mom’s dusting powder and talcum powder in my hair. Besides, I was too jealous of Thomas Monjardo to concentrate.” I leaned my head against the bed. “He spray-painted his hair silver. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Well, if you get a part in this, we’ll have to make up for that,” Maureen said.

  I put the needle back down on the beginning of the song. “Let me listen to this one more time before supper. No talking.”

  * * *

  The auditions were held in the gym. I had class there twice a week, with this former marine named Mr. Spanko, a scowling brute who ran everybody ragged on the outdoor track. The room was big, about forty feet wide and seventy feet deep, with a large stage that was mainly used for the annual school play. Rickety old bleachers, pizza-grease orange, flanked the walls on either side, folding up under each other for the school’s basketball games. I could see the back of Brian’s head at the front of the auditorium.

  Larry was already holding court under one of the basketball hoops with a group of girls from Bishop McDonnell. You could tell which school a girl went to by her uniform. Bishop’s girls wore a green-and-red plaid skirt with a green weskit or blazer. I recognized the white blouse with blue-and-gray plaid skirt and navy vest ensemble from Maureen’s school, St. Edmund’s. Catherine McAuley was the yellow blouse with maroon skirt and blazer. St. Brendan’s was the white blouse with green-and-blue plaid skirt.

  He waved me over to a group of folding chairs. He hadn’t bothered to tuck in his shirttail, and he was speaking with his hands, his brown eyes magnified by his Clark Kent glasses.

  “Nicky, allow me to introduce you to today’s bevy of ingénues,” he said.

  I wished I had Larry’s panache. Sometimes I clammed up when I walked into a group of girls. At first I thought I didn’t know any of them, but then Gina stepped forward and grabbed my arm. “Nicky, what are you doing here?”

  I didn’t know Gina could be so theatrical. “Cahill is railroading me into doing this.”

  Gina turned to her friends, olive-skinned Italian girls like herself, all with dark curly hair, and said, “This guy lives across the street from me.” I said hello. There was a Joanne, a Theresa, and a Rosalie. Brooklyn was crawling with Rosalies in those days. We had two on our block alone. Rosalie Provenzano next door and Rosalie Confuso down the block.

  Gina had her hair tied in a ponytail. My brain clicked: she was here to try out for Kim MacAfee, the girl who sings to Birdie on The Ed Sullivan Show before he goes into the army. The only singing I’d seen Gina do was on the altar at St. Maria Goretti’s. If she was Ann-Margret, I was Mick Jagger.

  She held out the casting notice that had been distributed to the girls’ high schools. “Who’s Mr. Ventresca?” she asked.

  “He’s my English teacher. He likes people to call him by his first name.”

  Gina looked at the blue sheet again. “Brian?” She winked and nudged my shoulder. “First-name basis, wow. He’ll probably give you a part.”

  “I don’t know about that.” I tapped my foot and looked around the room. “You know, there are like a zillion girls here.”

  Gina rolled her eyes and said, “And I bet they all want my part.”

  It was as good a time as any to ask. “You want to play Kim?”

  “Of course,” Gina said. “You can’t show up at one of these things and not want to play the lead. Last year, I auditioned here for Oliver! but I didn’t get it—the lead—although I did a great version of ‘As Long as He Needs Me.’”

  “Actually, I think Nicky here is going to be one of the stagehands,” Larry said. “The guy is completely tone-deaf.”

  He liked to joke around and the bantering broke up my day. He could have been a stand-up comic. “You don’t have to be worried about competing with me, Larry. It’s not like we’re gonna be up for the same parts. I hear you’re trying out for Hugo.”

  Corniest part in the show. At least Birdie had some attitude. “I thought I’d try out for Kim,” Larry said. “Don’t you just see me in a ruffled blouse and culottes?”

  I took a seat next to the girl named Joanne. She wore her Maybelline in a Sophia Loren style, curling off her eyelid. “Do you sing?” she asked.

  “Not in years,” I said, looking at Brian going over some sheet music on stage with Mr. Steiner, one of the music teachers. “So I may really bomb out. Brian told us all to come down and try out. He said it was no big deal.”

  “No big deal?” Gina asked, incredulous. She was only a year older than I was but right now she made me feel much younger, like she’d been around and knew the score. I watched her sizing up the other girls, now milling around the room. Many had that fresh-scrubbed look of Kim MacAfee, the long hair, clear complexion, and cheerleader build—not what I was expecting. “There are two real female singing parts in the show, if you don’t count Albert’s mother, which I would never play.” She turned to me and asked, “Do you know the show?”

  Her keen sense of the competition made me more nervous. No doubt there was some guy here who was cuter than me who was going to try out for Birdie, but I hoped he didn’t audition before I did. “I’ve seen the movie a couple of times. I took the album out of the library.”

  “Oh, was that you? I can’t believe you beat me to it,” Gina said. “I bought the album at Discount City.”

  Our little neighborhood department store, currently on the skids.

  “Well, if you don’t get to play Kim, you can always play Rosie,” Joanne said. “That’s my plan.”

  Gina shrugged. “That’s why I have both parts of ‘One Boy’ memorized.” She stopped studying her competition for a moment and looked at me. “Which part are you gonna try out for?”

  “Birdie.”

  Gina gave me a very doubtful once-over. Then she did this insane pirouette and said, “Nicky Flynn, you are a pisser. I should’ve known.”

  A lone microphone stood on the stage next to an upright piano for the afternoon’s vocal tryouts. Two flags—one for America and the gold-and-white banner of the Vatican—flanked the stage at either end. Brian looked out at the crowd. “Wow, what a turnout. Thanks for coming down when I know you’d rather be home doing your homework.”

  There was a smattering of mild nervous laughter.

  His voice sounded deeper than ever with the microphone. “This afternoon, we’re just gonna try to get a sense of what parts you might be right for, what kind of vocal range you have, that sort of thing,” he said. “If you don’t have the greatest voice in the world, don’t worry. And there are choruses of guys and girls who appear as best friends of our principals, Kim and Hugo. There are lots of character parts, so if yo
u can’t carry a tune but you’re a pretty good actor, you may have a shot. Your accompanist is Mr. Steiner of the music department.”

  Mr. Steiner, bald as a 60-watt bulb, sat at the piano with sheet music spread out on the stand, ready to get this show on the road.

  “And that guy walking around and listening in is Mr. Testagrose, the music department’s band leader,” Brian said.

  Mr. Testagrose took a ceremonious bow. He was a penguin with a pear-shaped face. Always had a five o’clock shadow, and these squinty black eyes. Most unfortunate, his lips were always wet, like raw liver. In my freshman year, he taught us to play the flutophone, a red-and-white, very distant plastic cousin of the recorder. He tried to connect with us by playing brassy groups like Blood, Sweat & Tears or Chicago. When you walked past the band practicing in their room in St. Mike’s basement, they were usually playing “Spinning Wheel.” For classroom humor, he told Mafia jokes.

  Brian began calling names from the sign-up sheet. A girl from St. Brendan’s went up to the stage, tall and stoop-shouldered with long, tangled dark hair that hid her face. She whispered something to Mr. Steiner, who turned to the piano and played the opening bars of “One Boy.” The girl was a baritone. I smiled. She could sing, but Brian only let her sing a few bars before he thanked her for coming and called the next person to the stage: Larry Cahill.

  I turned and said, “You never told me what song you were going to do.”

  “Prepare to be wowed,” he said, running up on stage.

  Larry whispered something to Steiner and broke into a note-perfect version of “Kids,” dragging out that word with grating Mermanesque aplomb. I stared at the stage, little firecrackers going off in my brain. Larry had taken piano lessons and he played organ at Sunday mass in his parish church, but I didn’t know he could also sing. He was ready for opening night. Larry acted out the song, gripping his skull as he exaggerated Harry MacAfee’s predicament. After two stanzas, Brian stood up, laughing, and thanked him. Everybody broke into applause. I stood and whistled.

  “Geez, Larry, where did that come from?” Brian asked.

  “From the heart,” he said and trotted back to his seat. I thought he would linger, to rake in the compliments from the girls, but he put on his coat and picked up his books.

  “Gotta roll,” he said, punching me on the arm. “Just remember, I’m not doing this show without you.”

  “No pressure,” I said. I would have to be as good as Larry to get cast. I seriously doubted I could get up there and do it the way he just did, but I would have to.

  The auditions went on past five o’clock, with people trying out for every part, from Albert and his eternally patient girlfriend Rosie to Albert’s looney tunes mother. Some people were clearly wrong, singing off-key and having the wrong physical traits for the roles, but others were really good, as if they’d had musical training for years. I had no idea some of the guys I passed in the hallways at St. Mike’s—and only knew by face—could get up there and sing. It was like they were from another, more accomplished world and it made me even more anxious; with Larry gone, there was no one around to distract me.

  About a third of the people had left by the time I was called. Gina wished me good luck as I faced my first audience. I did not look at Brian. I was planning on doing “Honestly Sincere,” a rock number that relied heavily on bass guitar, but I knew after two hours that Mr. Steiner couldn’t make that upright sound like a guitar, so I asked him to play “A Lot of Livin’ to Do.” In the movie, Birdie opened the song, Kim sang the middle, and Hugo finished it up.

  Mr. Steiner looked at me, owl-eyed. His face sagged, like he’d had enough of high school students for one day, but he knew the tempo right from the beginning. I’d never spoken or sung into a microphone before; the volume surprised me. I looked into the darkness and gave it my best shot, snapping my fingers like Conrad did in the movie.

  There are chicks just ripe for some kissin’

  And I mean to kiss me a few!

  Man, those chicks don’t know what they’re missin’

  I got a lot of livin’ to do!

  The lyrics were just this side of lame. I hoped people wouldn’t start laughing. But at least I sounded good, strong, and clear.

  Brian interrupted me before I could sing the second stanza. “That’s fine, Nicky.” I stepped away from the microphone, mortified. I was being sent home. I checked to see if there were steps on that side of the stage so I wouldn’t have to walk past Brian. I was about to leave when he said, “Where are you going?”

  I stopped, unsure of where to go or what Brian wanted.

  “Take the mike out of the stand and do it again,” Brian said.

  I squinted into the overhead light and removed the mike, making a crackling sound as I did. Brian directed me away from the mike stand, closer to the piano. Now I knew what Brian wanted: to see if I could move like Birdie. So I just pictured him as he was on screen, legs spread in a come-hither stance, shoulders loose, one finger tucked in his belt loop. I felt the weight of my body move into my hips.

  I raised the mike and went through the song again, shaking my hips on the beat and snapping my fingers at the audience the way Conrad did in the movie. Wolf whistles, from the back of the gym.

  When I was done, there was some scattered applause. My face flushed as I came down from the stage and saw Mr. Testagrose smiling. Brian grabbed my arm. “Good job,” he said.

  My armpits and forehead were damp. I smiled when I saw Gina.

  “You were great,” she said, eyebrows raised in surprise. “I think you definitely have a shot.”

  I should have thought to take the microphone out of the stand. “I think I was too slow on the uptake.”

  “No, don’t be ridiculous,” Gina said. “The director clearly likes you. He helped you. And you had fun, right? It’s supposed to be fun.”

  I sat back and watched the next audition, for the part of Kim. Gina’s eyes were riveted on the stage. I looked at my watch; it was almost six. “When do you think they’re going to call you?”

  “Not anytime soon, looks like. I should call my mother and tell her I’m still here.”

  I hadn’t even told Mom I’d be staying after school. Trying to keep everything top secret, in case it fell through. I decided to leave.

  Supper was on the table when I came in—spaghetti and meatballs: my favorite. Mom was eating with us in the kitchen. Himself wasn’t there and we had stopped asking why.

  Mom went over to the stove to make up my plate. “Well, the dead arose and appeared to many,” she said. “Where have you been?”

  “School,” I said, dumping my books on the dining room table and draping my jacket on the back of one of the chairs.

  “Since when do you stay after school?” she asked knowingly, with an amused expression.

  I gave Maureen the Flynn Look of Death. “You told her.”

  “I had to. I couldn’t take it anymore. She was about to call the police.”

  “Told her what?” Patty said, twirling spaghetti with her fork.

  “I auditioned for the school play,” I said.

  Patty stopped eating. “What? Which one?”

  “Bye Bye Birdie.”

  “You mean, the one from The 4:30 Movie?”

  I nodded and began to wolf down the pasta. Patty was the biggest fan of The 4:30 Movie. She never missed Gidget Week, featuring her favorite, Gidget Goes to Rome, or Troy Donahue Week, featuring A Summer Place. We all watched Bette Davis Week, featuring What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Dead Ringer, and Hush . . . Hush Sweet Charlotte, back to back. Bette Davis feeding rodents to Joan Crawford, Bette playing twins, and Olivia de Havilland pushing Agnes Moorehead down a flight of stairs. You could not beat it.

  “So how’d it go?” Mom asked, smiling.

  “Well, I don’t know yet,” I said, wiping my mouth with a napkin. “There were a lot of people there. Like even Gina Martinucci.”

  “Really?”

  “My English teacher is
directing, and I don’t know if I’ll get a part, but it was fun watching everybody.”

  “Did you have to sing?” Dee Dee said.

  I nodded. “You’ll never guess which part I tried out for.”

  “Not that loser Bobby Rydell played, I hope,” Patty said.

  I swallowed. “Oh, come on. Give me some credit.”

  Maureen brought her plate to the sink. “I know,” she said. “The guy in the gold pants. Conrad Birdie.”

  Leave it to the seamstress in the family to remember him by his costume. “That’s the guy.”

  “I don’t remember him,” Mom said.

  “How could you not?” Maureen said. “He wore this gold lamé outfit, really tight. He was gorgeous. Oh, Nicky, you’re kidding. If you get the part, can I make your costume?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But I don’t know who else tried out for it.”

  Mom cleared the other plates. I was just about finished eating. “I just remember Maureen Stapleton and those squeaking shoes,” she said. “Remember when she put her head in the oven? That’s how I feel sometimes.”

  “How come I never saw this movie?” Mary Ellen said.

  Patty stroked her arm. “That’s right, you’re too young to remember. We’ll have to check TV Guide to see when it’s on next.”

  “When is the show gonna be on?” Mom asked.

  “Easter time.”

  “We’ll have to tell everyone to come.”

  “I think you should wait until I know if I’m in the play. I might wind up building sets backstage.”

  But I didn’t wind up building sets backstage. At the end of the week, Brian asked me and Larry to stay after English class and told us we were going to be in the play. Larry held out the palm of his hand and I slapped it with mine. He said, “Well done, my man.”

  My hand hurt. It all seemed too easy. I couldn’t have been the best singer for Birdie at the auditions; I had just gone there because Larry cajoled me for a couple of weeks. And now I had what I wanted and it was too late to say no. I knew we were going to have a good time, me and Larry and whoever else wanted to hang with us, but as I cut through Holy Cross, I thought Gina was right. Brian was going to give me a part anyway, no matter which one I tried out for.