One Man Show (10 page)

That cap would raise some money, but probably not enough to repair a piano. There’s no real proof that it was his, anyway.
I should’ve gotten it autographed while I had the chance.

I flopped over on my stomach and started thinking about poor Miss Honeywell, racking her brain trying to think up ways to
raise the money - and losing clumps of hair from the stress of it. I wondered if the play was more trouble than it was worth,
as Jeremy had turned out to be - and I wondered about my life.

Me, an actor? Yeah, right - when piggy banks fly. I’ll probably end up working at the plastics factory when I grow up, just
like everybody else in this town.

“Knock, knock, it’s your aunt. The pretty one.” My bedroom door squeaked open, and Aunt Olive poked her head in. “Are you
awake? Can I come in?”

Obviously the
Enter at Your Own Risk!
sign on my door wasn’t working.

“So, how’s your science project coming along?” she asked.

“Swimmingly.”

Her eyes scanned my room, probably searching for Styrofoam planets or papier-mâché volcanoes.

“I’m still in the research stage.”

“Okay. Well, I’m off to the grocery store,” Aunt Olive said. “I was hoping there’d be some leftovers from the party, but all
that’s left is the turkey carcass.”

“The Grubbses like their grub,” I said.

“Can I pick you up anything special?” she asked. “You seem a little down in the dumps.”

“No, thanks.”

“Are you sure?” Aunt Olive said, putting on her denim jacket with the shiny beads across the top. “I clipped out a coupon
for that fishy cereal you like so much. What’s it called again?”

“Crustacean Crunch.”

“That’s it.” She started singing in her shaky soprano, “’Crustacean Crunch is fun to munch…’ How does the jingle go? Sing
it with me.”

“I don’t remember.”

I knew what she was doing, but I didn’t feel like being cheered up.

“Oh, you know! ‘Crustacean Crunch is fun to munch-’”

This could’ve gone on for days, so I joined in on “’-for breakfast, snacks, and even lunch.’”

Aunt Olive ended on a screechy high note, then launched into something operatic while she checked herself out in the mirror
on my closet door. The tip of my jester’s belt was sticking out of the closet.

I should hide it in case someone recognizes that it’s made out of Dad’s old ties - from when he had a real job.

“The curse of working at a bakery,” my aunt said, slapping her rear end.

“Aunt Olive, you used to work at Apex Plastics, in Lotus-town, right? Before the bakery? What was that like?”

“It was a paycheck,” she said, digging a perfume bottle out of her purse. She gave it two spritzes and twirled into the cloud
of perfume. “Why do you ask?”

“That’s probably where I’ll end up eventually,” I muttered. “That’s where most people from this town end up.”

“Not necessarily.”

Aunt Olive dropped the perfume into her purse and scooped out a handful of something crinkly. She sat at the foot of my bed
and tossed a rainbow of hard candies across my covers.

“Let me tell you a little story,” she said, hunting through the candies. “We Grubbses have greasepaint in our blood. When
I was your age, all I ever dreamt about was being on the stage. Sound familiar?” She unwrapped a butterscotch and popped it
into her mouth. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. You announced it to the world that you want to be an actor.”

I socked my mattress and the candies jumped.

“What? How did you -?”

“Gordy told me he saw something on a bulletin board when he picked you up from school.”

Motormouth strikes again! That must be the “juicy dirt” he said he had on me.

“Don’t worry, I won’t blab it to your mom. Anyway, singing is what I really loved. I had a legitimate voice.”

Aunt Olive began unbuttoning her jacket as if she was planning on staying awhile. I had a feeling she was about to launch
into one of her epic stories that I’d heard a hundred times before.

“So, after high school I auditioned for the Light Opera of Willowbridge, a semiprofessional company a few towns over. I was
green, and nervous as a cat. But you know what?”

They cast you in the chorus.

“They cast me in the chorus and made me understudy to Yum-Yum, the ingenue role. It was
The Mikado,
an operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan.”

“The Japanese one. I know - I saw the pictures.” The part about five curtain calls was just around the corner.

“Two weeks into the run, the woman playing Yum-Yum came down with a bronchial something-or-other, and guess what? I got to
go on in her place! Well, long story short -”

Too late.

“-I got five curtain calls that night. Five!” She high-fived the air. “I’ll never forget it - the girl playing Peep-Bo tried
to convince me to move to New York City with her and audition for the Met.” Aunt Olive fiddled with an earring. Her eyes were
twinkling. “Wouldn’t that have been something?”

That’s usually where the story ended. But this time I asked, “Why didn’t you?”

“What? Go to New York? Plenty of reasons.”

“Like?”

“Well, I met my husband around that time, and he didn’t like the whole idea. Things were different back then. After he left
me, I moved back into this house, and here I stayed. I still wonder what would’ve happened in New York.” Aunt Olive spat her
butterscotch back into its wrapper. “Funny how the sugar-free ones are way too sweet.”

I wasn’t sure where she was going with this trip down memory lane.
Get to the point!
I thought. I wondered if I’d said it out loud, because the next words out of her mouth were -

“The point is that dreams don’t die. They stick with you for the rest of your life. Your dad knew it.”

She stopped cold, as if a curse word had accidentally slipped out. It felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of
the room, just like at the party. That always happened when anyone in the family mentioned my father, which was mostly never.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Teddy and I were two peas in a pod when we were young,” she said in barely a whisper, glancing toward the open door. “Your
dad’s a good guy, in spite of everything. Oh, I’m not saying he should win any Father of the Year awards, Lord knows, leaving
your poor mom with two boys to raise. That was dead wrong. But he wanted to move to the city more than anything so he could
make some sort of living doing what he loved - stand-up. Any city. Your ma wouldn’t hear of it.”

“I know,” I said. “I remember those fights.”

“His timing was lousy, but I have to say, he followed his dream.”

“Yeah, and deserted us,” I grumbled. “Never even bothered to call. If that’s what it takes to chase a dream, then forget it.”

“Olive, are you still here?” Granny said, appearing in my doorway. I gasped. “I heard your caterwauling from downstairs! Sweet
Moses, they could hear it in New Jersey!”

I loved my gran, but she had a habit of butting in at the wrong time. A lot.

“Get the lead out, before the store closes.” Granny snapped her dishrag like a lion tamer cracking his whip, then disappeared
down the hall.

“Please
and
thank you
are just not in that woman’s vocabulary,” Aunt Olive mumbled.

“And don’t forget my Earl Grey tea,” Granny called. “Decaf!”

Aunt Olive rushed to the doorway and checked to see if the coast was clear. She paused for a second and quietly closed the
door.

“Oh, your mom would slap me silly if she knew I was telling you this,” she said, sitting beside me on my bed. “Your dad
tried
to stay in touch. After the separation, he called and called.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Yes. Your mother wouldn’t speak to him - she’d just hang
up the phone. Got an unlisted number and everything. Can’t say I blame her. She was in a real bad way.”

“She still is,” I said, “sort of.”

“Your gran, too. You saw how she reacted to his birthday card, right?”

I was wondering when that was going to come up.

“How come he never sends me any birthday cards?” I asked.

“He tried.” Aunt Olive’s voice dropped back down to a whisper and she scooted closer to me. “Just between you, me, and the
lamppost, I got a letter from him around Christmastime with his new cell-phone number in it. When I called, he told me he
missed you and your brother like crazy, for whatever it’s worth. He said he’d sent you kids cards and gifts -”

“We never got anything!”

“Your mom wrote ‘Return to sender’ on everything - and who knows where they ended up, with him gallivanting all over the country
like he does? But he told me he understood, and respected her wishes to cut off all contact. I could tell it was killing him.”

I felt like bawling, but I held it in. This was way too much information to absorb all at once. Dad had always been the bad
guy in the story; now it was sounding as if Mom was the bad guy.

“Well, where was he when you talked to him?” I managed to squeak out.

“Oh, the Funny Factory or the Giggle Garage or some such place.”

“Where?”

“Florida. Boca Raton, I think. That was three or four months ago, but I’ve spoken to him quite a few times since. He’s still
got the same cell-phone number.” Aunt Olive hooked a fallen wisp of hair behind her ear. “I know he’d love to talk to you.”

She stared into my eyes as if she were waiting for an answer to a question that she had never asked. I didn’t know what to
say. Truth is, everything went numb.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Aunt Olive said, more to herself than to me. She fished a little book out of her purse, hurried
over to my desk, and jotted something down in my spiral notebook.

“Don’t tattle on me, Dustin. Promise?” She came over to me, smiling, and waggled my blanket-covered toes. “Or your mother’ll
have my head on a silver platter.”

“Okay.”

“Well, I’d better get to the store before that old woman has a conniption.”

She gave the top of my head a quick peck and started for the door.

“Aunt Olive,” I called, “I’ll bet you were an awesome Yum-Yum.”

“You know what?” she said, bowing to me Japanese style. “I was.”

She left my room with tiny geisha steps, singing,

Three little maids from school are we,

Pert as a school-girl well can be,

Filled to the brim with girlish glee-eee
…

After hearing the
click
of the door’s closing, I threw off the covers, flew over to my desk, and flipped through the spiral notebook until I found
the page with the phone number on it. just staring at those ten digits made my heart gallop. I closed the notebook and shoved
it into my backpack, right behind
World History through the Ages.
Dad’s birthday card to Granny was hidden between pages 114 and 115. He didn’t write anything in it except “Teddy,” in black
ink. It was a stuffy card with swirly gold writing on the front that said, “Thinking of you, Mother, on Your Special Day,”
surrounded by roses. I would’ve expected something a little zippier from a stand-up comic - like bananas in top hats, maybe.

I sat on the edge of my bed, staring into space, trying to remember if I’d ever caught Mom going through my backpack.

The phone rang in the hallway, and I almost hit the ceiling.

“Dustin, it’s Pepper again!” Mom yelled.

I made a mad dash to the door.

“Tell her I’ll talk to her at school, okay?”

I waited a ten-count for an “okay” back, but it never came.

I bolted the door, then dived halfway under my bed, pulling out suitcases, a tangle of old sneakers, storage bins packed with
winter clothes. The red shoe box I was searching for was near the wall, and I managed to kick it out with my foot. I had a
sneezing fit from the dust bunnies while I unrolled the rubber bands that kept the lid on. The box had a few old pictures
of Dad in it - small ones that used to be in frames. And on the bottom of the box, under some frayed honor-award ribbons,
was a silver-star key chain that said
“Reach for the Stars!”
It was the last thing he’d given me before he moved out. On the back was scratched, “To Dusty. Luv, Da.” He’d run out of
space for the last
d.
Bad planning. Story of his life, I guess.

I lay back on my bed and closed my eyes, clutching that chunk of cold metal. A murky memory started to play out in my head,
like an old black-and-white movie.

It’s summer, I think, I’m sitting in one of our old vinyl kitchen chairs with my legs dangling. Dad is giving me a haircut
and he won’t let me look in the mirror until he’s all finished. Mom keeps saying, “Don’t make it too short, Ted,” and telling
him to stop getting hairs in her cake batter - or pancake batter; some kind of batter. And we’re all sort of singing along
with the radio. The Oldies but Moldies station, Dad called it.

Pretty soon the star points started pinching my hand, and I dropped the key chain on the floor.

“Dustin!” Mom called. “Dinner!”

I flung the covers over my head again. I felt hollow inside -like that ugly ceramic pig on my shelf.

I headed to school extra early the next day so I could grab Miss Honeywell as soon as she showed up. (Well, not really “grab.”)
We had to come up with a brilliant money-raising scheme to get the piano repaired if we wanted half a chance of getting the
play up and running again. Futterman was still dead set against it, but maybe Miss Honeywell could work her magic on him if
that dented piano weren’t standing in her way.

The playground was totally empty. Quiet too, except for the cheeping birds and my chattering teeth. It was chilly out, and
little cloud puffs were coming out of my nostrils.
I hope Futterman doesn’t see me - I might get accused of smoking again.
I sat on a swing with a direct view of the teachers’ parking lot, waiting for Miss Honeywell’s light blue convertible to
pull in. So far only the sheriffs car had driven by. Twice.