by KD McCrite
At least we weren’t getting out there on the gym floor doing twirly toes and pirouettes in front of one another and looking like complete goofs. Yet.
When Myra Sue and I got off the bus that afternoon, I walked toward the mailbox to pull out the day’s mail, but ole Myra nearly flattened me like she was a steamroller with arms and legs.
“Hey!” I yelled, getting up and brushing the dirt off my pants. I picked up my scattered books. “Are you crazy?”
She pulled every bit of mail out and flipped through it. Then she frowned real big and stomped off toward the house.
Boy, oh boy. “What were you lookin’ for, Myra? A love letter?”
“Be quiet, April Grace!” she snarled, and just kept walking.
“Who’d be writing to you, anyway?” I hollered at her. “The president of the Drips of America Society, wanting you to join?”
She turned around and walked backward, glaring at me good and proper. It was then I noticed she was wearing so much makeup, it was a wonder her face didn’t fall off. With bright-blue eye shadow, mascara so thick her lashes looked glued together, and bright-red blush with matching lipstick, that girl looked like some of those women on the soap operas.
“I am not expecting any letters from anybody, so just drop it, you brat.”
“Then what’s the big deal? You went skulking and sneaking out here Sunday—”
“I did not, and you better stop spying on me.”
“Myra Sue Reilly, if you’re doing something you hadn’t ought to be doing, Mama and Daddy are gonna pitch a fit when they find out.”
“They aren’t gonna find out!”
“Wait till Mama gets a load of you and that makeup, Myra Sue. What were you doing, practicing to be on Silver Linings?”
“I want to be on Days of Our Lives, April Grace!” Then, as if my words soaked into her tiny brain, she stopped dead in her tracks and slapped one hand to her face. Then she screamed.
“I forgot to wash it off!” She gave me a wild-eyed look. “Don’t tell Mama! I’m going down to the washroom in the barn to scrub it off, and if you tell, I will make you sorry.”
“What do you do, Myra, put on five pounds of makeup when you get to school every day?”
“I have to look glamorous!” she squealed, then took off toward the barn. If Daddy happened to be in there and caught sight of that mess, she was gonna get it.
I stood right where I was for a good long minute. Everyone always told her how pretty she was, so it seemed to me she wouldn’t want to go around looking like a reject from clown school with all that junk on her face. Maybe she thought wearing lots of makeup would make her glamorous and impress Johnny Brittain or somebody. I don’t know what was going on with her, but I’m telling you, that girl was up to No Good.
Myra Sue’s Room: The Pit of the World
That very same Tuesday night, Ian and Isabel had supper with us to celebrate Isabel’s first day as a teacher. Mama was in the other room changing Eli’s diaper, and Grandma had gone to the movies with Reverend Jordan. I hoped they didn’t go see something all romantic because I really did not want to witness any kissy or moony-eyed business in this house when they came back. It is Totally Embarrassing.
“I have never had such a case of nerves!” Isabel declared. “The stage is not nearly so frightening as a class of sixth graders.” She glanced at me. “What did you think, April Grace? Did you enjoy my class?”
Uh-oh.
I squirmed.
“Well, um, Isabel, you did fine,” I said. “First days are always hard, and none of us are used to sitting still on the bleachers for PE. But you kept everyone nice and quiet while you talked.”
She smiled. “Thank you, dear. Did my nerves show?”
“Nope! You looked very calm.”
My little comment seemed to satisfy her.
Isabel tilted her head to one side and looked at my sister, who was poking her food with a fork. “Are you feeling all right, darling?” she asked.
Myra Sue glanced at her. “Yes’m, just fine, thank you.”
Mama gave that girl a steady look, even reached over and laid her hand against Myra’s forehead. “She’s not warm,” she said, dropping her hand.
“I feel fine, Mother,” Myra Sue said.
Isabel and Mama exchanged glances.
“The high school drama classes begin tomorrow,” Isabel reminded Myra. “I hope you’re looking forward to it.”
“How about that?” Daddy said with an encouraging grin. “You’ll like that class!”
Would you believe my sister just shrugged, as if she did not live and breathe drama and all sorts of theatrical baloney? But you know what? At the Christmas play, she got even more nervous than I did and flubbed her small part pretty badly. She was so embarrassed that even I felt sorry for her. I wondered if that experience changed her mind about becoming a world-famous actress.
Isabel blinked twenty times or thereabouts, laid down her fork, and gazed at Myra Sue.
“Aren’t you eager to start the class, Myra?” she asked.
Myra poked at her broccoli with the tip of her fork, then she sucked in a lungful of air and heaved it out.
“I might not take your class,” she mumbled.
Well, this was news to every last one of us. Isabel sort of reared back in her chair.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
Myra Sue finally lifted her head and met Isabel’s eyes.
“I might not take your class.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . because . . . maybe I want to be a TV star instead.”
“Oh brother!” I hollered. “TV stars are actors, Myra.”
“Oh, darling,” Isabel said, looking kinda snooty, “television performance is not on the same level as real acting. For that matter, neither is being in movies. Live theater is the only real acting.”
That was news to me, ’cause I thought acting was acting, even if you’re selling toilet paper on a commercial.
“Even Days of Our Lives?” Myra asked in a voice so quivery you’d swear she had a mouthful of Jell-O.
“Oh, darling, goodness yes. Soap operas are, well, lowclass.” You shoulda seen my sister. Her lip pooched out, then she drew it back in. Then she blinked a hundred times because I think she was fixin’ to cry but didn’t want Isabel to see. With her back as straight as a board, she said, “Maybe I will be a brain surgeon or join the navy instead of being an actress.”
“Are you kiddin’?” I hooted. “Number one, you would never make it in the navy because you puked up your socks that time you were in Mr. Brett’s rowboat on Bryant Creek, and number two, to be a brain surgeon, you have to have a brain.”
“April Grace,” Mama said. “No more talk like that or you’ll be doing the supper dishes every night this week without any help from your sister.”
I crimped my mouth. “Yes’m.” I don’t understand why I get scolded for telling the truth.
“But you’re already enrolled in Drama I, aren’t you?” Daddy asked my sister.
“Yes, but it isn’t a required class, like history,” she said, kinda snippy.
Then, so uppity it would make your toenails curl, she said, “May I please be excused now? Mr. Harmony wants us to choose topics for our term paper by the end of the week, so I need to decide what I want to write about.”
Mr. Harmony was the ninth-grade history teacher, and I had never heard Myra ask to be excused from the supper table to do homework. It sounded fishy to me, but Daddy nodded and Mama said, “Yes, you may go.”
Myra said good night to everyone, just as polite as anything, then she walked out of the dining room so stiff you would’ve thought Mama starched her drawers the last time she did the wash. When Myra Sue leaves the room like that, you know she’s in a Mood. But we were all used to Myra Sue and her moods, so it didn’t mean a whole lot, although I noticed Isabel looked a little hurt and a lot confused. But her expression cleared when her glance fell on Eli, and she reached for
him. Mama handed him right over with a big smile. That poor kid only sleeps in his bed when no one is awake to pass him around.
As soon as I finished my supper, I said, “Mama, I’ve got homework, too. May I be excused?”
“Yes. I’ll wash the dishes tonight.”
I told everyone good night and trotted off upstairs. I had good homework that night. Mrs. Scrivner had assigned us a story to read, and tomorrow she was going to give us a list of questions to answer in class. But, wouldn’t you know, right in the middle of my reading, words and music hammered right through the wall that separated my room and Myra Sue’s. I liked Huey Lewis and the News well enough, but not so loud, and not when I was trying to read. I got off my bed and went to Myra Sue’s door. I knocked on it, but I reckon she didn’t hear because she did not say a word.
I opened the door, and guess what? My sister was sitting on her bed, reading and writing. But she was not reading history or writing down topics for a term paper—unless all those dumb magazines with celebrities’ pictures in them were what they were teaching in world history. Plus, she had a dreamy smile on her face, and I don’t believe people have dreamy smiles while they are doing homework.
I also noticed a dress I’d never seen before lying across the foot of her bed. It was red and spangly and sparkly, and Mama would never in a million years let her wear something like that. Or the spiked high heels that were on the floor next to it. That awful outfit looked like something one of those girls on the soap operas might wear, but not girls who live on Rough Creek Road.
“Hey!” I said, above the sound of horns, drums, and singers hollering about how hip it was to be a square.
Myra looked like she’d been caught. She yelped and splayed herself across her notebook and all those magazines and that dress as if she thought I was going to swipe them. Yeah, like I care about who is doing what on Another World or Growing Pains.
“What are you doing, you brat?” she shrieked. “Can’t you knock? Get out of my room!”
“I knocked, but you didn’t hear me! Where’d you get that dumb dress? And why are acting like you’re hiding money in your mattress?”
“You shut up about my dress, and you better stay away from my mattress, April Grace Reilly!” She was grabbing up all that mess on her bed like a starving man grabbing every biscuit on the table.
I eyeballed her mattress. “Why? You hiding somethin’ under it?”
“Quit spying on me! I’m not hiding anything. And stay out of my closet, too!”
I was nowhere near her closet, but since she warned me, I figured she had something hidden in there, and if you think I wasn’t going to prowl around in it as soon as I got the chance, you need to think again.
Of course I couldn’t do a bit of snooping with her in there, and I had homework to do, so I said, “Will you turn down your radio?”
“No!” By this time the papers were mostly under her blankets. “I’m listening to my music, so get out of here.”
“But it’s too loud, and I need to study.”
“No!” she shouted, so I just went right over to that radio and turned it off. She launched herself off the bed at me, but I stepped back, and she ended up on the floor like a big goof.
“What’s going on?” Daddy called, and we heard him coming up the stairs.
Myra scooped up the magazines on the floor and threw them under the bed so fast, my eyeballs whirled.
“Don’t you say a word about my magazines,” she hissed at me like a nasty, old snake.
Daddy came into the room and glared at us.
“What in the world is going on up here? It sounds like you’re tearing down the house.”
“No, sir, Daddy,” I said, gulping, ’cause he looked pretty put-out.
“No, sir, Daddy,” repeated Myra.
He narrowed his eyes. “Then what’s going on? Why all the racket?”
“I have a story to read for my English class, so I just came in to ask Myra to turn down her radio.” I pointed at the silent thing, wishing now ole Huey Lewis was belting out his squareness so my daddy could see how hard it would be to read with all that mess going on.
“I need the radio on so I can study, Daddy,” Myra said, looking all big-eyed and innocent.
And that right there, my friends, is how Myra Sue Reilly gets away with so much. By looking pretty and innocent.
But Daddy didn’t fall for it. He gave her a hard look, then he gave me one.
“Go to your room, April Grace. And Myra, keep your radio turned down to a reasonable volume. If you don’t, I’ll have to take it away from you.”
Myra pouted, and I went to my room and didn’t utter a sniveling word about that dress and those shoes, or her reading magazines instead of her history book or hiding things or anything. I kept quiet for three good reasons. Number one: Daddy looked irritated enough that I did not want to rile him. Number two: She’d tattle on me. Number three: Who cares if she does flunk history this semester? Maybe when she was twenty years old and still in the ninth grade, she’d study more.
The next day after school, the moment she got off the bus, ole Myra was airborne, heading toward the mailbox.
“Boy, oh boy. What is it with you and the mailbox?” I said as she pulled out the handful of mail that was in here. “Are you in love with it?”
“Don’t be so dumb,” she muttered, then looked up. “Just because I want to be a help around here, April Grace Reilly, is no reason for you to get snippy. I don’t see you going out of your way to help anyone.”
So now she was Miss Happy Joy Sunshine, full of good deeds.
“At least you aren’t covered with clown makeup.”
She snarled at me but kept rifling through the mail.
“All I want to know is why you’re all of a sudden so interested in the mail. ’Cause to tell you the honest truth, I’m not so all-fired sure you ordered a present for Grandma. I think that is probably just a big fat lie.”
Boy, she got mad. I’m not sure if she was mad at me, or the fact that she did not get a speck of mail for herself. That silly girl stomped over to me and thrust every bit of mail into my hands and yelled, “There! You may carry it, since you’re so desperate to show your intelligence and good-deed doing!”
“Are you expecting a love letter?”
“I am saving all my love for Bo Brady,” she sniffed.
“Who? Is he that new boy with those big blue glasses?”
“Bo Brady! On Days! Get real, April Grace. Why would I want a boy from this horrible neck of the woods when I can have a boyfriend from Salem?”
“Huh?”
“And I’m not expecting love letters, anyway, so turn blue.”
Then with a royal sniff of disdain, she turned and marched to the house, leaving me to shake my head at the way her mind works.
As soon as we got in the house, we found a note from Mama stuck to the fridge. She said she had taken Eli for his checkup, but she’d be home soon, and we could have some of the banana pudding Grandma brought over.
I got us each a bowl and spoon from the cabinet as Myra Sue took the pudding out of the refrigerator. I shoved aside the books we’d plunked down on the table and noticed on the top of Myra’s stack was one titled Theater for the Young Mind.
I reached over to pick it up, but Myra nearly dropped the pudding in her rush to slap her hand down on the book.
“Do not put your grabby little fingers on my books, April Grace Reilly!”
“I was just looking,” I said. She knows how much I like to look at books. “I thought you weren’t taking Isabel’s class.”
She gave me a look so snooty you can’t possibly imagine it, then got a serving spoon from the drawer. She plopped it down right smack-dab in the middle of that banana pudding so that the handle was half-buried.
“I changed my mind,” she said. Boy, if her voice got any more hoity-toity, her larynx would probably freeze that way.
“So you aren’t mad at Isabel anymore?”
Myra Sue
blinked twenty times and laid one hand against her chest. “Moi? Mad at Isabel?”
“Duh, Myra Sue. You used to follow her around like a homesick puppy, and now you practically ignore her.”
“I do not. Don’t be daft.” She shook back her hair and stuck her nose in the air. I sincerely doubted she even knew what daft meant.
“You do so! And don’t think she hasn’t noticed it.”
Her gaze flew to me, and for a moment she forgot to be a snotty snoot.
“Nuh-uh!”
“You either ignore her or you’re cool to her, but you aren’t all adoring like you used to be. It’s plain as day you’re hurting her feelings.”
She got all teary-eyed and lower-lip-poochy.
“Well, that’s just peachy!” she squealed. “First I flub up in that play and then Isabel says the kind of acting I want to do is low class. I don’t want to take her class and embarrass her with my low-class presence, and now I hurt her feelings. Isabel must hate me!” She ran out of the kitchen and upstairs to her bedroom.
I stared down at the mess she made with the pudding. I could only see part of that spoon sticking up, but I didn’t care if I got pudding on my hands to get it. There’s not much you can do to ruin banana pudding for yours very truly.
The Romantic Appeal of Certain Reilly Women
When we got home from school on Thursday, we had phone service again. And it rang right at suppertime. Myra nearly broke all her metatarsals and both femurs to get to it. You woulda thought she’d been dying of thirst in the desert and the phone was a jug of water.
She chattered into the mouthpiece, giggling and hollering, “No way!” and “Like, I’m so sure!” and “What did she say?” every three seconds.
You know what else happened that very night? I’ll tell you. We got another one of those weird phone calls where the caller hangs up the minute someone answers. Daddy got upset, and he did something that surprised us all. He hung up the phone and came into the living room where Mama, Myra, and I were watching The Cosby Show. We are allowed to watch one hour of TV a day, and I have to tell you, I was surprised as anything that my sister sat right there on the floor next to me, giggling as Sondra and Elvin tried to convince the family how well they were getting along.