Close to Famous (5 page)

“I'm thinking I need to call Mr. Purvis, Foster.”

“I'm thinking you need to right now!”

She took out her phone and shooed me outside.

I sat in the blue chair and felt the wind blow gently all around me. Mr. Purvis didn't like kids much, but I had wowed him with my brown sugar brownies.

I hoped he remembered those brownies. Of course, they were hard to forget.

Elvis the cat was watching me. He meowed and I meowed back. He didn't like that.

“It's nothing personal,” I told him. “If your name was Fluffy or Princess I'd like you fine.” Elvis licked his paw.

Mama came out and lowered herself into the green chair like she was carrying a heavy load. “He doesn't have it.”

“He's lying!”

Mama crossed her arms. “Why do you say that?”

“Because he's mad at us for leaving like that! He's got it, I know he does!”

“I don't think that's true. He was very nice to me on the phone.” Mama sighed. “I don't know what else to do.”

“You could call the neighbors!”

“I don't have their numbers, Foster!”

“You could call Mr. Purvis back and tell him to put up a sign in the front hall about it!”

Mama put in the call and Mr. Purvis said he'd put up a sign. She gave him her phone number.

“Okay?” she said to me.

“Okay.”

She started humming a song she'd written for me last year on my birthday. It's called “Foster's Song.” Having a song named after you is this side of cool. She sang it soft and low.

I felt those words coming down on me like soft rain. She sang it again, and then I sang with her:

The new day wasn't too bright, it was cloudy, and when I asked Mama what would happen if we didn't find Daddy's pillowcase, she said, “Then you'll have your daddy safe in your heart, and that's a place where you can never lose any part of him.”

Mama went to take a shower, and I headed for the kitchen.

That's what Sonny Kroll always says on his cooking show. He'd been a marine. Eddington Carver, my best friend in Memphis, once asked me, “So how did you handle it when your dad got killed?” And I told him, “I watched Sonny Kroll's show.” Eddington's box turtle Brucie had just died and he needed something to feel better, so we started watching Sonny's show together, and before long we formed the Two Kids Cooking Club. At the end of our meetings we tapped our rolling pins and said, “We're on this road together.” That's how Sonny ended his show.

You really get to know somebody when you share a meal. Eddington's mama used to eat standing over the sink, but we got her sitting at the table and living right. That's what home cooking does. I'm going to talk about this when I get my show.

I got out my muffin pan and decided to practice. TV chefs have to cook, smile,
and
talk at the same time, which isn't easy. I gave Lester's daddy's stupid, dead fish my amazing TV grin.

“You know, people are cooking pretty complicated recipes today. In my opinion, you don't have to go crazy on ingredients.”

I mixed flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a bowl. “That's why I love this butterscotch muffin. You can make it up easy as one, two, three.” Easy recipes that taste great are big on cooking shows. I added the box of butterscotch pudding mix, three eggs, and milk, and stirred it up. “Don't kill the batter with overbeating, because holes can form in the muffin when it bakes.” I smiled, because smiling is important on TV. It doesn't matter how you feel inside, if the cameras are on you—
grin.

I put paper liners in the pan and winked at the dead fish. “Make sure the batter's even in each tin,” I said, filling them. “And now”—I opened the oven door grinning—“pop it in the oven.” I don't know why so many cooks say “pop it in the oven,” but they do.

I wiped my hands and stood at the sink. “I want to tell all you kids out there who are watching me, life gets hard sometimes. Just don't give up, okay? Don't give up on your dreams. And remember, when your heart is ready to break, that's the perfect time to bake. Okay. See you next time.” I waved. That's my close. I'm still working on it.

I made Mama coffee and set the little table for breakfast like it was a celebration. The table was tucked under the rounded window. It looked like a booth in a restaurant. I sat down on a yellow cushion. Part of me felt like a little girl in a grown-up playhouse, the other part felt like a doughnut that had just lost its hole.

I didn't hear the shower running anymore, but from inside the bathroom, I could hear Mama crying.

Ask any kid and they'll tell you how hard it is to hear your mother cry.

Mama loved the muffins, and I didn't once ask why she was crying. Like a multiple choice test at school where none of the answers seems very good, sometimes there isn't one right answer.

“Do you like it here?” she asked me. “The town and all.”

“There's not much to it, Mama.”

“I know.”

“I feel kind of different.” I sighed. “I guess I'd feel that wherever.”

She grinned. “You are different. The best kind of different. You up for staying a couple of weeks and seeing how it feels then?”

“It's cool living in the Silver Bullet.”

“And the price is right.”

Mama's real careful with money. When Daddy died, the army sent us a chunk of money called “death benefits.” She's got some saved for me to go to college, but I'm not sure she'll have to spend much on my education, since it took all I had to squeak through sixth grade.

“You think they have a grocery other than FOOD, Mama? ”

“I don't know.”

“How about a restaurant other than Angry Wayne's?”

“There's Pizza Hut and Arby's.”

“I meant one that would care about dessert.”

“Well now.” Mama laughed. “We're getting down to serious matters.”

FOOD WAS THE only grocery in town. Mama and I were there by the freezer section when the short boy I'd seen the other day ran down the middle aisle waving a piece of blue paper like it was the most important thing in West Virginia.

“Miss Charleena needs bug spray, Pepto-Bismol, and a big jar of chocolate syrup,” he shouted at Jarvis. “And she needs to order more of the . . .
”
He looked at his list. “. . . green tea eye-lift pads with mung bean concentrate.”

“Think that'd make you go blind,” Jarvis said.

I walked to the fruit and vegetable section. I needed carrots and zucchini for a muffin I learned to make from Marietta Morningstar. There was only one bag of carrots left. I reached for it.

“You can't have that!”

I looked up. The short boy was standing there, desperate. “Miss Charleena has carrots on her list, and I can't go back without them.”

I could have said, “I was here first,” but Mama taught me to be reasonable around unreasonable people.

“Here,” I said. “Take them.”

He took them and looked at me. “Thank you.”

I shrugged.

“Thank you on behalf of Miss Charleena.”

I didn't say you're welcome.

“You're new,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“You probably don't know about Miss Charleena.”

I never wanted to meet her. I knew that much.

He lowered his voice. “She's Culpepper's most famous person and I work for her. When she needs things, she needs them right away.”

I looked around for Mama, but I didn't see her. “Well, you've got the carrots.”

He turned the bag over in his hands. “I will tell Miss Charleena of your kindness.”

“It's no big deal.” But I was curious. “How famous is she?”

“She was a movie and TV actress. She's won an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and was nominated for two Oscars.”

Wow.

“Miss Charleena should have won those Oscars, too. Between you and me, she was robbed. She played an alcoholic wife of a murderer in
The Deepest Part of the Ocean
and a desperate immigrant mother in
My Name Is Tess.
”

“I never heard of those.” I like movies that make me laugh, like
Uncle Raymond's Bad Vacation.

He cocked his head and looked at me. I picked out a few tomatoes and some bananas. I hate being stared at.

“I make documentary films,” he said.

I'm not sure what a documentary film is, but I'm close to positive they don't get made by this boy.

“You have a very interesting face,” he added. “And you would look good on film. Has anyone told you that?”

“No.” I smoothed back my hair. I've thought about having a cooking DVD to go with my TV show and hugely popular restaurant. I walked to the checkout, where Jarvis was putting bug spray, Pepto-Bismol, and chocolate syrup into a bag.

The boy grabbed three rolls of toilet paper and followed me. “I'm Macon Dillard, Miss Charleena's assistant.”

“I'm Foster.”