Get Real (3 page)

“Money doesn't grow on trees,” says Mom.

“Remember the violin,” says Dad.

In fourth grade, I begged them to buy me a violin and swore that I would play it forever. That I would practice every day. That someday, I would sit in the first chair for the New York Philharmonic.

And I might have, too. But nobody had clued me in about how violins work. You have to push one set of fingers down on the strings while the other hand slides a long bow back and forth over the strings, pulling notes out.

But they're not precise notes. Because there is no guide, or button, or ivory key that tells you the exact spot that will produce a B-flat or an A. Your fingers just have to know that somewhere on that long string, between some lines that are way too far apart to help, is an E, or an F-sharp.

My fingers never knew how to find such demanding places. One day I could put my finger high up on the second string and get a good sound. The next day, out would squeak some off-key note that wasn't right at all. The whole thing seemed messy to me.

But a piano! Each white key, each black key—an exact note. No guesswork. All I have to do is hit the ivory rectangle to the left of the two black keys, and out comes the most perfect C you ever heard.

A piano is precise. Neat. Everything in its place. Every day.

Jil pulls up the bench and begins to play a stream of beautiful notes.

“You've been practicing.”

She shrugs. “Some.”

It's so unfair. I would kill to have a piano and lessons, and Jil could care less about it. What really slays me is that Jil is adopted, which means that she totally
lucked
into this awesome house and family.

“What is that?” I whisper.

The sound flows out from her fingers, a smooth river of notes, ascending, repeating, over and over. Then, lower. Suddenly punctuated by a bright splash of new sound. Higher.

Just like the smooth expanses of snow rolling across the lawns that I saw on my way over here. I'd spotted a bright red cardinal landing in a tree, a sudden fluttering flag of amazing color against the smooth, clean white.

The music sounded just like that had looked, surprising my heart and making it swell up the exact same way.

“‘Moonlight Sonata,'” Jil answers.

“Teach me.”

“Sure.” Abruptly, she stops playing.

I put my left hand where she tells me. Then I hit three notes. Pinky, to middle finger, to thumb. Ascending.
Tah-dah-dah. Tah-dah-dah. Tah-dah-dah.

I sound almost like Jil! Cool! This is easy.

“Okay,” I say, excited. “Now, show me the right hand.”

This part is harder. I can't make the happy splash of sound come in at the right time, so I go back to practicing the low, smooth
tah-dah-dah
s that my left hand is loving.

“Dez,” says Jil.

“Yeah?” I answer, happily
tah-dah-dah
ing.

“There's something really important I have to do,” she says.

Plink-plunk-plunk.
My fingers lose their rhythm.

Not now, I think. I pretend I don't hear her, and try to find the right notes again.

Tah-dah-dah. Tah-dah-dah.
Yes!

“Dez,” she says louder. “Listen to me. Please.”

I rest my hands on the keyboard. Trying to hold my place. Hoping I'll get to come back. I can't remember the last time anything felt so perfect to me.

I turn my head toward Jil, sitting beside me, looking weird. Pulling her earlobe.

“You know I'm adopted. Right?”

“Of course I know you're adopted,” I say. But my brain is spinning into the far reaches of the stratosphere, trying to grasp what that could possibly have to do with me learning to play her piano.

As it turns out, it has nothing whatsoever to do with it, because the next thing she says is, “I've decided to find my birth mother.”

“Your what?” I drop my hands from the keys and twist my whole body to face her.

“My birth mother. You know. My
real
mother. The-one-who-actually-gave-birth-to-me-but-didn't-keep-me.”

The last part spills out of Jil's mouth like a thumb racing across the piano keys in one long, fast, jarring note. Her face is flushed a hot, sweaty pink.

I stare.

“And Dez,” she whispers. “You
have
to help me.”

Chapter Four

Jil and I are back at my house, ready to babysit my brother. Mom is lecturing me on the how-tos of Denver-duty.

1. How to get Denver to eat if he doesn't want to.

2. How to get Denver to nap if he doesn't want to.

3. How to get Denver to breathe if he doesn't want to.

“Mother,” I say. “It's only for one hour. I can do this.”

“His blinkie's in the dryer,” she continues. “Make sure he washes his hands. Don't cut his sandwich in half or he won't eat it.”

“Mom!”

“I just want to make sure—”

“Go!” I say. “You'll be late for your meeting.”

She rolls her eyes and adjusts the blouse under her suit jacket so that the collar comes out over the lapels. I'd bet anything that shirt still has yesterday's mustard stain on it, and that she's covered it up by buttoning her jacket. My mom, the scientist, whose clients think she's neat, tall, smart, and professional.

Well, she is smart, professional, and tall. But neat—ha! She's never worn anything neat in her life, except to meetings, because she has to. Her home and everywhere-else uniform is gloomy gray sweats in the winter, and ankle-length cotton shifts with no waist in the summer. Accessorized with clunky tennis shoes and a fanny pack slung low on one hip. She looks like a tourist.

Comfort is the fashion creed at my house.

The way I see it, Mom and Dad were born at the wrong time. They should definitely have grown up in the sixties, when they would've had so many more creative outlets for their hippie genes. They were totally made for flower power, war protests, and living in communes.

Instead, they were teenagers in the eighties, when the best they could do was follow The Dead. The Grateful Dead, that is. That's how they met. Love at first sight, over a VW bus. My mom spotting my dad, a body-pierced soul mate selling green-and-yellow tie-dyed T-shirts.

And then there's the part that came later, when they got married and named their kids Destiny and Denver.

If I could've had my choice, would I rather have been tagged with a town in Colorado, or the touchy-feely drama-noun that I got stuck with?

I don't know.

Either way, it's embarrassing.

Did I mention that my father wears shirts that look like pajama tops and quotes poetry in the middle of conversations?

Which is why I don't understand Jil at all. She has an incredible mom, an incredible dad, an incredible everything. And now she wants to go round up some woman who is a total stranger so that she can have … have what? Two mothers? A spare? Just the new mom? Can I have her old mom?

As the kitchen door closes behind my mother, I pick up a sponge that looks as if it cleaned up World War I and toss it into our garbage can. I open a new pack and wipe the kitchen counter where Mom spilled jelly while she was starting to make Denver's sandwich.

“Jil,” I say as I pull out a clean knife and spread peanut butter on a piece of bread, “why do you want another mom?”

“It's on the wrong half,” says Denver.

Huh?

I look down at the slice of white bread on the counter. The one I just spread with peanut butter. The piece next to it, the one that Mom prepared, is covered with grape jelly.

“The jelly goes on the other one.”

“It's important,” says Jil.

“That the jelly goes on the other one?!” I exclaim.

“No,” she says. “That I find my mom.”

“Oh.” I slap the two halves together.

“Don't cut it!” yells Denver.

“Don't worry,” I tell him, plopping the sandwich on a chipped plate and sliding it across the island to where Denver sits perched at the bar counter, his feet dangling two feet off the floor. He's still wearing his snow boots, and there's a puddle of water where the ice he dragged in has melted onto our scarred fake-tile floor.

“I thought there was a law,” I say to Jil. “I thought you couldn't find out the identity of your birth parents until you're eighteen.”

“What are birth parents?” asks Denver, staring suspiciously at his sandwich as if he's trying to decide if his tongue will fall off if he eats it with the peanut butter on the wrong side.

Jil makes a zip-it motion across her lips and glares at me.

“Eat your lunch,” I tell Denver. Then I reach across and flip his sandwich over. “See?” I say. “I fixed it.”

He picks up the sandwich and looks underneath. Then he takes a tiny bite. What Mom doesn't know is that I can make Denver do things he doesn't want to without all her tricks. I have my own tricks. But my best one is not putting up with his weirdness.

I pour apple juice into a bright green sippy cup and set it down beside his plate. “Let's go in the den.” I motion Jil to follow.

“You can't leaf me,” Denver complains.

“I'm not leaving you. I'm just going in the other room. So you can prove to me what a big boy you are.”

Then, for his dining entertainment, I pop a Disney song disc into his blue plastic player.

“'Kay,” he answers happily, taking a bigger bite of his sandwich.

“She called my house,” says Jil as soon as we get out of earshot of bigmouth boy. Denver has a bad habit of repeating things he's not supposed to know.

“
Who
called your house?”

“My real mother.”

“You mean, your birth mother.”

“Same thing.”

I gape at Jil. I'm not so sure it is the same thing.

Jil sits down on our sofa and looks up at me. Expectantly. Excitedly.

I slump onto the seat of Dad's recliner, careful to keep it upright. Crinkly bulges greet my butt. I lean forward slightly and sweep the lumpy pile of magazines and weeks-old newspapers to the floor.

“I heard them talking on the phone,” says Jil. “Mom and my real mom. Only I didn't know it was her until later.”

Jil is sitting on the edge of our couch, leaning forward and moving her hands as if she's telling a ghost story.

“I heard Mom saying stuff like ‘But we agreed. No contact until Jil is older,' and ‘I'll send more pictures. Please. Don't call here again.' When she hung up, I asked her who it was, and she said, ‘Wrong number,' with her face all red and splotchy-looking. Then she flew straight up the stairs to where my dad was reading in their bedroom, and slammed the door.”

Wow. I couldn't imagine Mrs. Lewis slamming anything. “You listened,” I state.

“Of course I listened. Mom told Dad, ‘Jil's mother called again.' She said it as if she'd called before. And her voice was all quivery, like she was about to cry.”

No kidding, I think, imagining what a colossal surprise all this would be to Mrs. Lewis. Mr. Lewis. And to Jil. I stare at the messy pile of papers I'd dumped on the floor and try to imagine how upset all of them must be. I also think about how every one of these old newspapers should have been thrown away a week ago.

“Then they said a bunch of legal stuff that I didn't totally get,” Jil continues. “But here's the deal. I know I have something called an independent adoption. Mom and Dad told me that a million years ago. It means they actually met my mom. Briefly. She was a friend of our next-door neighbor's cousin's girlfriend, or something like that. They arranged my adoption through a lawyer, not an agency, because agencies take forever and they wanted a baby so much. Right away.”

“They know your mother?” I look up, stunned.

“Yeah,” says Jil, her eyes locked onto mine. “They even send her pictures of me, at least once a year, with a letter telling her stuff I'm doing, like tying my shoes or learning to ride a bike. But—no contact.”

“No contact,”
I echo. “I always thought, with adoptions, nobody knew anybody, forever.”

“Most adoptions,” says Jil. “Nobody knows anybody. Forever. Or, sometimes, until you're at least eighteen and really want to know. But mine's different.”

Jil sits straighter. She clenches her fists in front of her heart. “She wants to meet me. I just know it.”

If eye expressions could burn, hers would burst into flames. “Dez,” she says, “I want to meet her, too.”

Oh, no. That sounds like a mistake to me, but I've seen that look before. Like the time she decided she wanted to learn to play tennis and nine months later she won the club championship for her age group.

My head is swimming with questions and doubts. I stare down at the paper pile and try to straighten it a little with my feet.

“Stop cleaning up!” snaps Jil.

“Sorry.” I jump as if I've been caught cheating on a test. I know I can be a little nutty about my neatness thing. Sometimes it's a curse.

“But your mom told her not to call anymore. Right?”

“Right.” The energy pulsing out of Jil's eyes right now could launch a rocket ship to the moon.

“So, that's the end of it. Right?”

“It's broke!” Denver whines from the kitchen. He marches into the room holding out his toy disc player, which appears to be pretty much swimming in grape jelly. His hair is filled with peanut butter. And his fingers are a combination of both.

“Noooo,” I groan, snatching up the player before it oozes permanent purple onto the carpet. I head for the kitchen sink. As I wipe away the mess, I wonder if Mom and Dad will make me pay to replace it.

“Wrong,” says Jil, her eyes narrowing to two tiny slits.

“He's only three,” I answer.

“No, I mean you're wrong about this being the end of it.”