Before They Rode Horses (6 page)

We all had to smile, shake Miss Martin’s hand, and curtsy when she gave us our awards. It wasn’t easy—the smiling part, I mean.

VI

I
WAS ABLE
to put lesson number two to work every bit as quickly as number one. We were working on the part of the scene where the young Scrooge breaks up with his fiancée, Belle—

“A beautiful name!” Stevie interrupted. Carole and Lisa giggled. Belle was the name of Stevie’s horse. Deborah just glared. Lisa continued.

This is another point in the story where Scrooge gets all upset. He’s supposed to beg me to take him home and stop showing him all this painful stuff from his early years.

“Spirit!” he read from his script. “Show me no more!”

“One shadow more!” I say, meaning one more shadow from his past.

Larry got that look in his eyes. I knew he was about to try to throw me off track and say something like, “What part of ‘no’ didn’t you understand?”

He turned to face me, that look in his eyes. My mind flashed. Suddenly I felt as if I had two books on top of my head. I drew myself up to my tallest possible self and there I was, looking down at Larry Titus. It’s possible that I might not want to be taller than “uh gentleman who catches muh fay-uncy,”
but that definitely didn’t include Larry Titus. I was only too happy to be taller than he was. He smirked. I glared.

Then, just like it said in the script, I took his arms, held them to his sides, and led him to the next scene. He didn’t kick me. He just went with me. It was a little strange. In fact, while he walked next to me over to the next scene, the wicked twinkle in his eye seemed to melt and he smiled softly.

“Larry! You’re supposed to try to cover your face!” Ms. Stevens called out. Larry did cover his face then, but not before I had seen that real, honest, true smile come across it—aimed directly at me!

I’m not proud to say this, but I know I’m with friends and I can trust you and I think it’s important to be honest about the past, so I have to say it. Larry Titus got a crush on me. I don’t know if it was because I was charming, because I hated him, or because I was suddenly taller than he was, but it’s true. From that moment on, he was always totally nice to me.

When the rehearsal was over, I gave him my button that said “Fast Learner.” I knew I was in trouble when he clutched it in his hands as if it were a precious prize, looked at it fondly, and then slipped
it into his pocket. Big trouble, but I didn’t know how big the trouble was.

By the next rehearsal, he’d memorized all of his lines. He said them all perfectly and never missed a cue. That was a relief, but the problem was that there was no meanness to it. He was sweet and kind to me and to everybody else. When he said things like, “If the poor people would rather die than go to poorhouses, they had better do it and decrease the surplus population,” he said it as if he really loved poor people and actually loved everybody—and for that matter all the creatures of the earth. He was all sweetness and light, no grump, no grouch, no Scrooge at all. It was a disaster.

There was nothing anybody could do. The Ghost of Jacob Marley yelled at him. Ms. Stevens tutored him. Bob Cratchit begged him. But none of it worked. Larry couldn’t be mean and cantankerous anymore. It was as if Scrooge had had a weird personality transplant. Larry Titus spent all his time at every rehearsal smiling at me with these big brown goo-goo eyes of his. It was all I could do to keep from running out of the auditorium in horror.

The following two Tuesdays came and went without any help for me from The Martin Academy. In Animation, Miss Martin wanted us to be bright and
witty. She showed us how to draw attention to ourselves in a positive way. It seemed to me that I’d managed to do that very well already—just by being tall—and look where it had gotten me. Even though it wasn’t helpful, I loved that animation class because (a) Miss Martin never once mentioned bathing, and (b) because it was when she showed us what to do with scarves.

I suppose you’ve always wondered what to do with a scarf. Now I’ll tell you: If you’re being animated, you fiddle with it. This was apparently what she was doing when she tossed her chiffon scarf over her head or across her front and over her shoulder so that it would flow. The message I got was that if you are in constant motion, people notice you. You can’t be fidgeting—that just makes people nervous. But an extended arm here or a tilted chin there, plus a “fetching scarf” flung over your shoulder, will surely get you the man of your dreams. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell her that I’d managed to become the girl-of-his-dreams to the boy-of-my-nightmares by listening in class and then doing the exact opposite.

I, personally, found everything she did with the scarf totally irritating. In fact, it was so irritating to
me that I was sure Larry would find it irritating, too. So I borrowed a chiffon scarf of my mother’s and tried fiddling with it in the same irritating manner. To tell you the truth, by that time I think I could have been chewing on my hair and Larry would have found it “chahmin’.” That’s how far gone he was. He seemed bedazzled by the scarf. I didn’t bring it again.

The following week was Radiance. That was Miss Martin’s code word for makeup. Some of the girls were old enough to wear lipstick, but we all would be eventually, so it was kind of fun to have Miss Martin give us a complete lesson.

She explained that the secret to good makeup was accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative, highlighting the weak and masking the overstated.

I sat next to Elissa at the makeup table. There was a whole array of colors, like a painter’s palette, only they were all different shades of flesh tones. Miss Martin had hired a makeup specialist to give us this lesson. I have to tell you, it occurred to me that maybe she thought some of us were such beauty challenges that it would take a real professional to overcome “nature’s oversights.” That’s
what she called it. I’m not kidding you. Miss Martin was one of a kind. At least I hope she was—I wouldn’t want to meet another of her kind.

Anyway, Elissa and I were sitting in front of the mirror and the makeup lady came over. She smiled at Elissa, but her face sort of froze when she looked at me. I was sure she was saying, “Honey, we’ve got our work cut out here!”

It took her about forty-five minutes to meet the challenge. In the end, she decided that a little bit of pink lipstick and some blusher was all I needed. I’ve got to tell you, it made me feel like a failure. She had a lot of fun highlighting Elissa’s “fine bone structure.” Me, I was a hopeless case.

I wasn’t feeling too good when I left that lesson. It didn’t help when Miss Martin gave me another Most Improved. Shows you I had no radiance at all.

VII

B
UT LESSON FIVE
, that’s the one I remember the best. Manners. I’d been having manners drilled into me by my mother since I could walk. I’m a polite person. I’ve always been a polite person. I’m considerate, sensitive, and naturally kind. In case I hadn’t noticed that, it all became clear when Miss Martin told me that at the very start of the class. To be
honest, she said it to all of us. She said she’d gotten to know us well over the previous four lessons, and she was convinced that that was true of all of us. It occurred to me then, even as an innocent ten-year-old, that she was buttering us up to sign up for her advanced charm class—a ten-week deal—but it wasn’t going to work for me. Five weeks of charm were all my mother could possibly force me into. Anyway, as I listened to Miss Martin tell us how wonderful we already were, I could see she was leading up to how much better we’d be.

Since I also already thought I knew most of it, I was prepared for the fact that this week, at least, I wasn’t going to get the Most Improved award. Something had to go right for me!

At first, there were few surprises. She taught us to shake hands firmly. “No dead fish!” she exhorted us. We also learned to look people in the eye when we spoke with them or greeted them. I didn’t have any problem with that. I’d already learned those things.

She had a place set for each of us at her dining table and showed us which fork to use, how to hold our knives, when to begin eating, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All old hat to me, though I must say I’d never seen so many forks and I doubt I ever will. Imagine four forks and five spoons at a meal! I
can’t eat that much. Oh, that was another thing she said. We were to be proper ladies, and proper ladies never ate too much. Forget everything you ever heard about cleaning your plate. Miss Martin said we were to leave food on the plate.

I tried that on my mother one time when she served spinach. She didn’t buy it.

Anyway, after we ate our imaginary meal—don’t think that stingy old Miss Martin actually gave us food to eat with all those utensils—she got to the section on being considerate.

We were always to remember that other people had feelings and we should try to put ourselves in their shoes and hear what they were saying. It was never acceptable to hurt somebody’s feelings. In fact, she made it an absolute: “A lady never insults anybody.” That sounded fair to me. I try not to hurt people’s feelings or insult them. Then she said it again, only she finished it in a kind of joking way.

“A lady never insults anybody. Unintentionally.”

Everybody laughed. It was kind of funny, but it was really mean, too. It meant that she thought it was all right to be snide, to put people down and hurt them, you just had to be subtle about it. It made me wonder. For one thing, it made me wonder about the collection of Most Improved certificates
I was getting from Miss Martin. Were those actually insults? Was she trying to hurt me? That kind of remark makes you wonder, and it made me think about what it really meant to be sensitive to other people. What I’m saying is that Miss Martin taught me a lesson without meaning to teach me a lesson—much stronger than the lesson she’d already given.

I couldn’t wait until the end of class. Miss Martin had invited our mothers to come to the tea party she was giving for the graduates. What it actually was, was a sales pitch for her advanced course.

We served the tea, poured carefully, ate cookies neatly—without soiling our white gloves!—shook hands, and curtsied to everybody.

“Oh, barf!” said Stevie.

“I think I feel a pain coming on,” said Carole, clutching her stomach as if she were about to vomit.

“I do feel a pain coming on,” said Deborah. The girls looked at their watches. Still fifteen minutes apart. They watched while Deborah rubbed her stomach gently and breathed soothingly. “Okay,” she said when it was over. “Go on.”

I was still upset about what Miss Martin had said about insults and worried about whether she meant anything personal to any of us by it. I was so upset
that I spilled some tea on my dress and dropped a cookie. My white gloves got soiled when I tried to pick it up. As if that weren’t enough, I put way too much milk in my mother’s cup of tea, so it dribbled into the saucer and onto my dress while I was walking over to give it to her. The net result of all this is that when I graduated from The Martin Academy, my dress and my hands were as dirty as they were on my first day when they were smeared with axle grease. I certainly wasn’t going to get a Most Improved certificate that day!

When we were finally done with our tea, we each got a kind of diploma from The Martin Academy. I had the feeling that if Miss Martin hadn’t already filled out the forms before the class, she might have been tempted to flunk me. But my mother was there and the classes were over. It was time to move on. My diploma simply said that I was a graduate of the academy and fully prepared to go on to the full course that they offered. My mother looked at the thing in surprise and began to say something, but I gave her a look that Miss Martin didn’t teach us. So Mom never mentioned the idea of me going on to the full course of charm. In fact, now that I think about it, she’s never mentioned The Martin Academy
again at all. I think she may have decided that it was a waste of time and money in the first place, but, as you’ll find out, she’d be wrong. It wasn’t a waste at all.

The day after I graduated from The Martin Academy, fully prepared to be as charming as anybody you’ll ever know, was the day we had the dress rehearsal for
A Christmas Carol.
Ms. Stevens loved the idea of me wearing my black tutu. I added a pretty red-and-green cape that they had in the costume room, and I put some holly in my hair. I also wore some pink lipstick and a little bit of blusher, just the way I’d learned in Radiance. I looked good and I knew it. I also knew all my lines and all my cues. I knew where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to do at all times. I was ready.

I can’t say the same for Larry. Oh, he’d learned his lines and he’d finally remembered where he was supposed to be, but he couldn’t act worth a darn and that splendid mean quality that had won him the part in the first place was totally gone. He was sweet and gooey from the first. He even sounded apologetic when he told Bob Cratchit that he didn’t want him to take Christmas off!

We made it through the rehearsal, but everybody
in the cast, except Larry, was glum as could be. This was going to be a disaster unless somebody did something and did it fast.

I went home that night feeling lower than I had since the day I’d learned I was going to have to go to charm school. Larry Titus was the wild beast who had been tamed by my charms. Our play was ruined and it was all my fault—well, my mother’s fault maybe, because she’d been the one to make me go to The Martin Academy.

VIII

I
DON
’
T KNOW
what made me think of it. It was probably that awful thing Miss Martin had said about insulting people and how it upset me so much that I’d spilled tea and dropped my cookie. I’d really let her get to me and it had made me behave in ways that I didn’t usually behave. I mean, I couldn’t believe what a klutz I’d become just because I was upset by what she’d said.

School that day was very long. I don’t know if I heard anything at all. I had to learn the whole sevens multiplication table on my own later because I didn’t hear any of it that day—but that’s another story. Ms. Barnard had to call me three times before I realized it was my turn to read a paragraph. It was
a disaster. That didn’t bother me, though, because I knew however bad the day was, the night was going to be worse. It was the night of our first performance.