How High the Moon (12 page)

“I ended up getting a bag of candy anyway that day, because Johnny pulled a candy cane out and while he was snapping the hook part off with his teeth, he looked over at me and said, ‘You get a bag, too?’ And I said no. So he handed me the whole bag. ‘Compliments of Jack, the little thief,’ he said. Anyway, that was a real nice stash you Blooms gave away. And I’ll bet the movie was real good, too.”

Brenda frowned. “Well, this year I’ll see to it that you get your own bag, and that you get to see the movie.”

“That would be swell, Brenda. Can I sit in the front row, smack-dab in the middle?” I asked, knowing it would get Jack’s goat, since he makes Mrs. Jackson get to the theater practically the day before so he can get that seat.

And Brenda said, “You can sit anywhere you want.”

I fit the popcorn box I’d just put together into our stack of boxes that was growing as tall as the Eiffel Tower. “I’m gonna get up here so I can reach the stack easier,” I said, then hoisted myself up on the counter and started swaying my legs like a
metronome
, which is what our music teacher said that gadget is called that helps you keep time if you don’t practice with the radio. While I hummed and made boxes I answered a whole lot of Brenda’s questions about my ma, and Teddy, and school. But the whole time I was answering Brenda, I was thinking about how nice Johnny Jackson had always been to me, and how I wanted to marry him when I grew up. Course, I couldn’t get married for a long time, and in
the meantime, I knew, I’d have to put up with Johnny having his share of girlfriends whether I liked it or not. Because like I heard Mrs. Delaney say to the butcher’s wife when she was complaining about how much grief her teenage son was giving her, “Well, Mary. Young men need to sow their wild oats before they settle down,” which I decided was another way of saying that they needed to have lots of girlfriends and drink lots of beer and drive their cars fast before they could get married, because that’s what Johnny was doing. And sometimes he sowed two or three oats in the same week. I knew this for a fact, because Mrs. Jackson was always yelling at Johnny about necking with some girl over at Bugsy’s Car Hop, or sometimes right in their driveway, where anybody could see. And once while Mrs. Jackson was outside, Johnny brought a girl through the front door and took her right up to his bedroom, and we saw them. Well, not Mrs. or Mr. Jackson, but the rest of us.

Me and Jennifer and Jolene were coming out of their room and saw her brothers outside Johnny’s door, looking through a crack, their cheeks all red and puffed out from trying not to make noise. Course, then we had to see what was going on, too, so Jolene shoved the boys out of the way. Jack would have slugged her good and shoved her back, but he knew she’d scream bloody murder and Mrs. Jackson would hear all the way in the backyard where she was hanging laundry. So we squirmed our way to the crack and there they were, Johnny and some girl lying face-to-face on his bed, kissing movie-star hard. I thought they were playing a game where the object was to try to shove each other off the bed without using their hands, because they had their hands up each other’s shirts and were only pushing with their hips. I decided they’d been playing it for a long time, too, because they were breathing real hard, like they just ran ten laps around a track. About the time the bed started squeaking, though, Joey whispered, “Holy crap, they’re gonna do the Juicy Jitterbug.” We didn’t get to see that part, though, because Johnny heard us and threw a shoe at the door to make us scatter.

Mrs. Jackson found out about it, too, and she screamed at Johnny, “Look what you’re teaching these kids! I’m going to tell your father!” And as Johnny was grabbing his keys off the counter and heading out the door, he said, “First you’d have to find him,” which didn’t make any sense since Mr. Jackson was sitting right in front of the TV where he always was when he wasn’t at work.

Back when I saw Johnny and that girl “petting”—which is what Joey said couples do before they do the Juicy Jitterbug—it only made me giggle behind my hand. But thinking about it while I made popcorn boxes made my insides get all tingly. Like when your foot wakes up after it falls asleep because you’ve been sitting on it too long. Something like that, only better. I blinked a couple of times, then said, “Hey Brenda, do my eyes look all goofy?”

She leaned over and examined my face. “No. Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said, even though I did. “I was just wondering.”

I thought for about two seconds, then said, “Brenda, as my Sunshine Sister, you’re supposed to teach me stuff I don’t know because you’re older and know more, right?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, can I ask you anything at all?”

“I have a feeling you will,” Brenda said.

I wasn’t sure what that meant so I ignored it. “What does it feel like to be in love?”

“Are you in love?” she asked, and I think she wanted to smile again but didn’t, which was a good thing.

“Maybe. But I’m not sure. That’s why I’m asking. You know how in the movies, the leading lady’s eyes get that foggy look, like they might melt, when she’s in love? Well, that’s why I asked if my eyes looked weird, because if they did, then it might help me figure out if I’m in love or not.”

“You have beautiful blue eyes,” Brenda said. “Kind of a mix between a deep turquoise and navy.” She said this like I’d asked her what color my eyes were, which I hadn’t.

Brenda was standing close to where I was sitting, so I leaned forward.
So far forward that I almost tipped off the counter. I looked hard into her eyes. Nice as they were, they looked pretty normal to me. Brenda looked away and got busy turning our giant stack of made boxes into two shorter ones.

“That’s just in the movies, Teaspoon,” she said. “They use special lighting to give eyes that soft look.”

“Oh,” I said. “Figures. Well, what about the weird tingling you get inside your belly… well, lower, too, I guess… when a boy you like looks at you or you remember him giving you a goodybag, or whacking his brothers for you? Does that mean you’re in love?”

“Could be,” Brenda said with a grin, then she got busy saying how we should only put together about ten more boxes, since extras would just be in the way after that night’s show. “You can fill up the straw dispensers next if you’d like. I’ll show you how.”

But I had one more question. “Brenda,” I said. “If you get a boyfriend, do you have to let him rub your balloons?”

“Balloons?” Brenda asked.

I patted my chest where my balloons were going to grow. “Yeah, these.”

Brenda’s lips bunched and her cheeks puffed out, because she was trying to hold some giggles inside. Then her eyes got that teasy kind of sparkle in them and she said, “Why are you asking? You afraid they’ll pop?” There was no locking her giggles in then. She laughed until her face turned popcorn-box-red and she was hanging on to the counter to hold herself up.

“It wasn’t that funny, wise guy,” I snapped.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she finally said, as she dabbed at her eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that. In fact, we shouldn’t be saying any of this. Mrs. Gaylor wouldn’t exactly find any of these appropriate topics for Sunshine Sisters to discuss, so let’s change the subject.”

“Okay,” I said. “But too bad, because I really want to know. I’ll ask the Taxi Stand Ladies.”

“The Taxi Stand Ladies?” Brenda asked, and I reminded her that she’d met them. When I got done refreshing her memory, Brenda
bunched her lips all over again, like maybe Mrs. Gaylor wouldn’t think the Taxi Stand Ladies were an appropriate topic for Sunshine Sisters to discuss, either, which had me wondering what
was
an appropriate topic for us to discuss? Then I thought of something that might be.

“Hey, Brenda. I noticed that you talk real respectable, using words like
appropriate
and stuff, and not saying
ain’t
and
gonna
, like I do. You think you could help me learn to talk more respectable? Teddy sure would be happy if you did, and probably my next teacher, too. It drove Mrs. Carlton up the wall when I used those words. She’d get this little twitch on her face, right here,” I said, pointing to the spot right under my eye, above the bumpiest part of my cheekbone. “Anyway, maybe you could catch me when I use them and correct me.”

Brenda winced. “I think there’s enough
correcting
going on in this place,” she said. “How about if you just listen and catch yourself when you’re using them.”

One of the first things I learned as a Sunshine Sister was that respectable people act different around different people. Take Mrs. Bloom, for instance. Whenever I ran into her around town, there she was, walking ironing-board-straight, her feet gliding her along, her head moving side-to-side like a beauty queen going down the runway. She didn’t say
Darlingggggggg
when she met up with another fancy lady, like they did in the old movies they played on Channel 12 on Sunday afternoons, but every single word she said sounded like she was saying it as she talked about Brenda this, Brenda that. But when she was talking to Brenda and nobody else was around but me, there wasn’t any
darlingggggggg
in her voice at all.

I was still sitting on the counter, four metal straw dispensers lined up beside me, putting straws into the first one like Brenda showed me, when Mrs. Bloom came in, her purse and a First National Bank bag dangling from her arm. Her face looked like Mrs.
Jackson’s when she came through the kitchen lugging a basket of laundry and stopped to peek at a pot of something cooking on the stove,
while
she yelled at Jack and Joey for roughhousing. Yep, that’s just how Mrs. Bloom looked—only her hair was fixed a whole lot nicer.

Mrs. Bloom gave Brenda a quick peck on the cheek, right in the middle of a sentence about “securing a band director,” and she didn’t even wait for Brenda to say anything back before she was telling her that they had a lot of details to go over. I think she was about to say what those details where, but instead, she stopped and blinked. “Brenda, why are
you
stocking the concession stand? This should have been done by the crew before they left last night.”

“Well, Melissa is having her graduation party tomorrow, a week late because her grandparents couldn’t come last week, and Cindy—”

Mrs. Bloom didn’t let her finish. “Honey, I’ve told you a hundred times, you are here in the capacity of a co-manager now. You’re to orchestrate the operation, not to operate it yourself. Employees always have an excuse, but when it comes to work, there are none. You’re too softhearted for your own good. Delegate, Brenda. Delegate.”

“
Delegate?
Hmmm, that’s a new one,” I said. “What does that word mean, Mrs. Bloom?”

Mrs. Bloom blinked at me like I’d just appeared on the counter like magic. “Excuse me?” she said.

“Oh, I just like learning a new fancy word now and then,” I said. “You never know when you’re going to have to read them or get the right letter tiles.”

Mrs. Bloom looked confused, like she didn’t know if she wanted to answer me or to yell at me—or maybe she just didn’t remember who I was, because Brenda quickly reminded her that I was her Sunshine Sister. “Farm out tasks… assign them to others…,” Mrs. Bloom said, waving her hand, her words short and sharp, like high heels on a wood floor.

“Oh,” I said. “How do you spell it?”

“D-e-l-e-g-a-t-e,” Brenda said quickly, then I shut up so I could run the word around a few laps in my head so I wouldn’t forget it.

Mrs. Bloom looked down at the opened, half-put-away candy cartons. “What are those doing on the floor?”

“Oh, I did that, Mrs. Bloom. I forgot I was doing the candy.” I gave my mouth a quick pop with my hand. “I’ll put them away as soon as I have these dispensers filled.”

“Well, pick up the boxes until then. Food doesn’t belong on the floor… and butts don’t belong on the counter. Get down, please.”

“Did you just swear at me?” I asked.

“Of course I didn’t!” Mrs. Bloom said, which proved right then and there that
butt
wasn’t a cussword. Then she gave Brenda a look that meant,
Make this kid respectable already, will ya?

Mrs. Bloom dug in the First National bag, taking out rows of coins and clunking them on the counter. “Perkins and his crew will be here to get started in about an hour. I’m fit to be tied that Glen himself won’t be working on this job—something about expanding his operation down south. If I could find someone on this late notice, I’d do it. Sure, he assured me that this Mel character is the best man for the job, claiming he made a stage or two in New York City and that he’s run crews before, but who knows. Anyway, you’ll have to let them in, Brenda, because I have to get over to the town hall for a meeting this morning about those two…” She glanced over at me and stopped talking right in the middle of her sentence, like she was about to say a cussword in front of me or something. “Glen said he’d personally check on the crew from time to time. If he doesn’t, Brenda, then I want you to call him and complain. We’re under such a time crunch already, we can’t run the risk of something needing to be redone because it wasn’t done right in the first place. After the town meeting, I have to get out to the site. They’re erecting the screen today.”

“
Mrs. Bloom delegated the job of calling Perkins Construction to Brenda,”
I said out loud, happy because I was sure I was using the word right.

Mrs. Bloom looked at me, her penciled eyebrows bunching. She picked up a roll of dimes and cracked it against the side of the money drawer, breaking it open like an egg. “Young lady,” she said. “We are having a little meeting here. Do you mind?”

“Oh. That’s what me and Brenda are having, too. A meeting. And no, I don’t mind.” I jiggled the dispenser to get the straws to stack nice and flat so I could squeeze more in, then looked up. Mrs. Bloom was still staring at me like she couldn’t believe her eyes. I wasn’t sure why, and would have asked, but Brenda was shooting me shut-your-trap looks, so I didn’t.

Mrs. Bloom tore at a band of paper that wouldn’t let go of some dimes, and when her picking didn’t free them, Brenda reached over and took them from her to finish the job. “Oh, I know I’m being a bear these days, Brenda,” Mrs. Bloom said, “but I’m a nervous wreck. I had coffee this morning with Mrs. Devon and Mrs. Rhine, and both of them were pumping me for details. What could I do but tell them that I’m saving them like a delicious surprise? And this project and all the headache that’s given me…” She turned to Brenda, her eyes pleading like a kitty’s when it wants milk. “I don’t know what to do. The gala is Labor Day weekend and I don’t have a theme, an opening act, or even a stage to put them on if I did. And I’m trying to set up a new business. I’m overwrought.”