Get Real (4 page)

“End of what?” says Denver.

“None of your business,” I growl, peeling off a paper towel and pushing it into the tiny speakers with a clean knife blade.

“But, what can you do?” I ask Jil.

She sticks out her right thumb and pinky and holds them up to her ear, like a telephone.

Denver does the same thing with his PB&J hand.

“No way,” I say. “You don't know her name or number.”

“Whose name or number?” asks Denver.

Jil points to our phone.

“Telephone,” says Denver, picking up the kitchen phone with his gooey purple and peanutty fingers and saying, “Hello. Denver's res-dence.”

Jil pries the now-yucky phone away from him. She dangles it with two fingers to minimize her contact with its freshly-coated peanut butter and jelly finish, and points to the small clear screen above the numbers.

“What?” I say, wishing we could just talk. Wishing we didn't have to dream up sign language to fool Denver. And hoping this disc player will play again when I finish scooping jelly out of it.

And then I get it.

Of course.

Jil's mother's number is saved on the Lewises' Caller ID.

Chapter Five

I don't understand Jil.

Not at all.

I gape at her while she grins expectantly at me, still pointing to the Caller ID window on my telephone. Would she really have the nerve to call up her long-lost mother? The one who's a total I-know-zero-about-you stranger?

Would meeting her be exciting, or creepy?

Brave, or dumb?

Would it make Jil's parents mad, or sad?

“Wh-what the heck will you say?” I stammer. “‘Hey, you don't know me?'” I toss the paper towel that's all icky with peanut butter and jelly into our trash can. “How about, ‘Hello, we met in the delivery room a long time ago, but you might not recognize me anymore because the brown birth hair that I had fell out and came back blond?'”

Jil's eyes burn into mine. “Dez,” she shouts. “This is
not
funny!”

Of course it's not funny. It's scary. That's why I tried to make a joke.

Blap!
A car door slams shut in our driveway.

“Daddy!” screams Denver, running as fast as his tiny, snow-booted feet will carry him. He reaches up, turns the handle, and flings open the back door just in time for Dad to stomp through. He's wearing an old canvas parka with an ugly plaid scarf wrapped around his neck. His funny, flat wool cap is flecked with snow. Dad says it's called a driver's cap, but lots of people drive, and Dad is the only person I've ever seen wearing a hat like this. It looks sort of like a beret but with a brim in front.

He stuffs his cigarette out in the ashtray that I keep just inside the door. It's there because I finally convinced him that I would die an early death from secondhand smoke if he puffed away in every room in the house. I try not to think about
his
early death.

He still smokes in his home office, though—the room right off our den that always smells like burned dirt.

Dad's tall and thin, with very pale skin and a red beard that covers his face like a worn-out scrub brush—short wiry bristles everywhere. It makes him look Scottish, but he's not.

“Ah,” exclaims Dad, “my
swift runner Achilles!
” He sweeps Denver up into his arms and hugs him.

“No, Daddy,” says my brother, giggling. “I'm Denver.”

“And,” continues Dad, smiling warmly at Jil,
“fair Helen—the face that launched a thousand ships.”

See what I mean? Who talks like that?

Nobody.

Except my dad. He teaches poetry. He translates poetry. And every chance he gets, he speaks poetry.
Old
poetry. Just like a foreign language.

Achilles, pronounced
Uh-kill-ees
in case anyone wants to know, is the hero that Brad Pitt plays in the movie
Troy.
And Helen is a woman so beautiful that a thousand ships got launched and a million guys jumped on board just so they could sail off somewhere and die trying to rescue her.

Dad did not see the movie. And he won't. He gets all his information straight from Homer. Not Homer Simpson. There is a less famous Homer who lived a very long time ago and wrote a thousand-page epic that Dad apparently memorized. It's called
The Iliad,
but I don't know why, because none of the characters are named that.

Jil's face is flashing splotches of red. Is that because Dad just compared her to one of the most gorgeous women who ever lived? Or because she's still mad at me for making fun of finding her mother?

I wasn't making fun. Not really. I wouldn't do that. I'm just nervous about what's going to happen next.

Dad lowers Denver to the floor, then stamps snow off his favorite shoes—Hush Puppies. The fakey suede is stained dark where they've completely soaked through. Who wears Hush Puppies in the snow? Who wears Hush Puppies, period?

Dad leans over and kisses me on the top of my head. “And how's my—”

“Not now, Dad.” I cut him off before he can call me his “fair nymph” or “fairy queen.”

“My player's busted,” whines Denver.

“I'd better go now,” says Jil.

“Me too,” I add.

“Wait,” Dad says. “Not so fast. What's wrong with Denver's toy? It looks fine to me.”

“That's because I fixed it.” I want to add that, also thanks to me, the kitchen counter is clean and the den carpet is free of grape jelly, but who would care?

I pop the Disney disc back into the plastic player and hope that it really is fixed. The opening
um-deedle-deedle-deedle
notes of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” fill the kitchen.

“Thanks, Dez!” shouts Denver.

Dad frowns. He's not an
um-deedle-deedle-deedle
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious kind of guy. But he can't figure out how to keep well-meaning relatives from giving us toys that aren't hand carved out of sacred wood by wise and ancient tribespeople.

“Let's read,” Dad suggests, pushing down the
off
button.

Denver follows him happily into the den. He insists that he actually loves it when Dad reads old and boring stuff out loud to him. Personally, I think he just likes sitting on Dad's lap so he can push his baby thumbs into Dad's prickly red beard.

I grab my coat and scoot out the back door with Jil.

“Be home
‘'ere the setting sun,'
” calls Dad.

“You bet,” I shout back.

“Your dad is so cool,” says Jil.

I shoot her a
Yeah, right
look.

“No, I mean it.”

“Are you really going to call your birth mother?” I ask.

“Yes,” she whispers, so quietly I almost don't hear it over the crunching of our feet on the snow-crusted ruts in our driveway.

“When?” I ask.

“Now,” Jil answers, only slightly louder.

I watch the word come out of her mouth in a small, round puff of cold white breath. For one whole second, it hangs in the air where, I swear, I can see it. Then it's gone. But it leaves behind a killer vibration that makes my stomach lurch, exactly the way it did one day last month when I saw Denver reach, on tiptoe, into a kitchen drawer and pull out a carving knife.

I plod with Jil toward her house, walking as slowly as I possibly can. I need time to decide if I should try and talk her out of calling her birth mom.

Half the neighborhood yards are trashed where kids have played, destroying all the smooth white covers of snow. Ugly faded grass shows through where almost every flake in the Muncys' front yard has been rolled into balls for making snow people. Seven of them. All wearing funny hats. Plus one bumpy mound that looks as if it is supposed to be a turtle. Or a football.

The sun has melted some of the snow, but enough will refreeze tonight to make the roads way too dangerous for school.

Yay!

And everybody's yard will form a hard crust that, if you jump on it, will break and stick up like huge pieces of broken glass.

Why do I feel like that's exactly what Jil is about to do? To jump on a big plate-glass window and break it into a hundred daggers, points up.

*   *   *

The smell of warm chocolate smacks both of us in the face as soon as we open Jil's front door. In her so-clean-it-squeaks kitchen, Mrs. Lewis has spread freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on a beautiful platter. Next to it are pear-shaped white dessert plates, draped with red-and-white checked napkins made out of real cloth.

“Hungry?” She smiles at us, looking like a model for a fitness ad. She and Mr. Lewis play tennis so much, they have tans all year.

She's daintily eating something white and soft out of a small crystal bowl. “Want some?” she asks.

“What is it?”

“Curds and whey,” she answers.

“Nuh-uh,” says Jil, rolling her eyes. “It's yogurt.”

“Same thing,” says her mom, winking in my direction.

“Really!” I exclaim. “Curds and whey is yogurt? Little Miss Muffet was eating
yogurt!
?”

“Um-hmm.” Mrs. Lewis nods as she glides another vanilla spoonful gracefully into her mouth.

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

I am so amazed. Now
that
is useful literary information. Way better than somebody's face launching a thousand ships.

Jil and I pile two plates with cookies. I thank Mrs. Lewis.

“Your mother is so cool,” I say as soon as we're out of the kitchen.

Jil shoots me a
Yeah, right
look.

“No, I mean it,” I say, spraying a few cookie crumbs out of my mouth. I bend over to pick them up off the shiny hardwood floor.

“Don't bother,” says Jil. “Mom vacuums three times a day.”

Even I know that's an exaggeration, so I ignore Jil, pick up the cookie pieces anyway, and head for the living room. And the piano. I can't wait to play it again.

“Not now.” Jil steers me away from the shiny black piano and up the stairs to her room—the room that has been decorated with a poppy-patterned fabric in tangerine and fuchsia on a white background. Cool throw pillows that look like flowers coordinate the look, along with striped fabric that makes it all magically come together. All created by some amazing new Japanese designer whose name I can't remember.

Who knew that stripes went with flower patterns? The ones at my house don't. Neither do the ugly plaids.

Jil, still chewing her last cookie bite, picks up her cell phone and starts to punch in numbers.

“Now?” I shriek. “You're calling her now?”

“Got to,” she says. “Or I'll lose my nerve.”

I dive across her bed and grab the phone.

“Hey!” Jil snatches it back.

“Please,” I say. “Think about this. Have you talked to your parents?”

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they might not let me do it,” she says defensively. Then she swallows, lowers her face so I can't see it, and adds, “and because it might hurt their feelings.”

“Well,
yeah!
” I say, way too loud.

Jil starts punching numbers again.

I watch, my eyes glued to her as though I'm watching an action movie—one where I know something colossal is about to happen, but I don't know if it'll be bad or good.

“Hello,” says Jil, sounding way calmer than she looks. She's stretching her earlobe a mile—as if it's made of taffy. “May I speak to … uh … I mean … are you…?”

She stops.

Oh, no! Jil doesn't even know her name.

Her red face-splotches pop back out like instant hives.

Jil's left hand, the one that was pulling her ear, is squeezed into a white-knuckled knot. Her right, the one that's gripping her cell phone, is trembling.

“This is Jil,” she says into the telephone. “Are you my mom?”

Chapter Six

Jil's face blotches glow, so inflamed it wouldn't surprise me if, any minute, they catch her cell phone on fire.

After asking, “Are you my mom?” Jil has said “yes” twice and “no” three times. I counted.

The rest of the time she's just listened. I've twisted my shirt into one gigantic knot, so scrunched up that the wrinkles will never come out.

What's her mom saying? What's Jil thinking? Why doesn't she talk? Or smile? Or cry? Why doesn't she hang up and tell me what's happening, for Pete's sake?

“Yes,” says Jil. That's yes number three. But this one's different. This one has a smile with it—a tiny smile. It looks like the kind that feels big on the inside, but that you try to hold back on the outside.

“I'd like that,” Jil whispers into the phone. “Very much.” Bigger smile. “Can I bring a friend?”

“What!” I screech.

Jil glares at me while jerking her index finger up to her lips.

Guiltily, I clap my hand over my mouth.

Jil scribbles something on a notepad, then clicks off her phone. Gently, she folds it closed. Her mouth spreads into a huge grin that lasts about two seconds before it contorts into a puckered mess, and tears stream down her face.

I rush to hug her. “It's okay,” I say, wrapping my arms around her. “Whatever she said, it's okay.”

“No, no,” she says, pushing me back gently. “It's good. It's all good. Honest.”

She's smiling again, but she's still crying, all at the same time. Kind of like a rainbow in a drizzle.

I back off, plopping down in the striped chair. “Tell me,” I plead. “Tell me everything.”

Jil's palms are facing her shoulders and she's jerking her fingers about a million miles an hour. I wonder if this is what a heart attack looks like. Do kids have heart attacks? Is she fainting? Fanning? What?