How High the Moon Read online

  “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.”

  “Gala?” I said, when my ears perked to another new word.

  “A big party. In this case, a live show on the new stage,” Brenda said in almost a whisper, spelling it out for me, then adding a “shhhhh” as the last word of her sentence.

  And I would have shushed up, too, except that I had a question. “Wow, you mean, like the big show Bing Crosby put on in that movie White Christmas? You mean like that?”

  Brenda nodded and tapped my leg to hush me. “Sorry,” I whispered back, my eyes still on Mrs. Bloom, who looked ready to cry even as she divvied up stacks of what had to be enough dollar bills to send Teddy to electricity school.

  “Every day that passes lessens our chances of getting one of the better acts. Yet I have so much to do in regard to the drive-in that I can hardly think straight. I should have just let Mildred’s nephew put one up in the first place, rather than outbidding him for that land.”

  Wow, those Blooms were a wealth of good surprises! “A drive-in theater? Mill Town is getting a drive-in theater? The Jacksons went to one last year when they visited their grandma. Joey said they watched the whole movie from the roof of their car. Well, he did anyway. Jack and James spent their time on the roof watching teenagers neck. Must have been true, too, because when I asked James what show they watched, he didn’t even know the name of it.”

  “Brenda!” Mrs. Bloom said, as if Brenda was the one talking. A phone rang from somewhere just then, and Mrs. Bloom nodded toward the stacks of bills wrapped with rubber bands—I think because she thought one of my afflictions might have been stealing—then she hurried off to a small room I didn’t know existed, alongside the second concession stand.

  While she was gone, her voice nothing but a mumble behind a closed door, Brenda leaned over and whispered that I should just work quietly and not interrupt while her mother was there.

  “Because she’s upset today?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” I said, putting the box I just made onto the stack Brenda had moved over by the popcorn maker. “Brenda? You have the Starlight, why do you need a drive-in?”

  “Because they’re the rage, and we have to stay competitive. Also, because the Starlight will be closed while we renovate.”

  “Oh, so your ma is afraid that if she doesn’t put one up, people will just drive over to Milwaukee and stop coming to the Starlight? If so, she shouldn’t worry. The Jackson kids came home from that drive-in with more mosquito bites than freckles. Who’d want to go to a movie and get all bit up like that?”

  I stuck my head into the empty and burn-stained popcorn maker, pulling on the handle and making the big round pan tip sideways, which I imagined was how they got the popcorn out. “Well, someone who wants to neck, I suppose. Or someone who wants to watch people neck. But folks who just want to see a good movie, they’ll come to the Starlight.”

  “Are you done with the straw dispensers?” Brenda asked.

  “No, I got one left,” I said, and Brenda suggested I finish up because our time together was almost over.

  I opened a new box of straws and pulled out a handful. “Boy, this gala sure sounds special. Brenda, do you think you and me could have a meeting that night so I could see it? I’ve never seen anyone famous before—well, except my ma, but I don’t think she’s famous yet. I wonder who your ma will get? Probably anyone she wants if she sticks a picture of the Starlight inside
her invitation. Who wouldn’t come here?”

  Brenda smiled, then said, “Well, it’s not exactly that simple. The bigger entertainers mostly stick to the big venues—um, places, v-e-n-u-e-s—and they cost a fortune. Their schedules are set for months in advance, too.”

  “Wow, that V is worth four points.”

  I grabbed another handful of straws and patted them in the last dispenser. “Well, when I’m a rich and famous singer, I’ll come sing here anytime you ask me to, Brenda. Even if you only give me one week’s notice and I’m booked in New York City. I’ll just call New York then and say, ‘Sorry Lou, no can do,’ and I’ll come to the Starlight instead.”

  Mrs. Bloom wasn’t on the phone long, and when she got back she told Brenda that it was Mrs. Miller on the phone. “She wanted to make sure I was joining their cause. Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Gaylor, Mrs. Delaney, my bridge club… every one of them are in a complete tizzy over those two…” She looked over at me and shut her trap again, then said, “Which, if you ask me, is sort of like worrying about what the rats at the dump are doing. I wouldn’t bother, but I’m hoping to rope a few of them into coming to our gala organizational meeting this afternoon. Now, where was I?”

  I didn’t mean to stare, but it sure was interesting the way Mrs. Bloom’s whole hairdo—sprayed stiff and Bakelite-hard—moved like a wig loose on the scalp when she scratched her head. Not one curl wiggled.

  “Speaking of meetings. Is there coffee in the conference room for the organizational meeting this afternoon? Check on that and have Uriah pick some up before he comes in today if not.”

  “What about the bakery?”

  “Yes, please,” Mrs. Bloom said, then she kissed Brenda’s cheek. “You’re a dear, Brenda. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I know this is overwhelming to you, too, all the responsibility I’m giving you, but you’re a woman now, and you’ll soon be a wife. These are all skills that will help you learn how to juggle your social responsibilities with your obligations at home.”

  Mrs. Bloom put small stacks of bills into the till, picked up the rest, and turned around. I leaned to the side so I could see what she was doing when she crouched down. “Is that a safe?” I asked. Mrs. Bloom turned the black dial knob first this way, then that, and the door popped right open. “Wow,” I said. “I can’t wait to tell Teddy that you’ve got a real safe in here.”

  Mrs. Bloom’s wiggy head snapped up, her eyes almost as big as Brenda’s, and I could tell what she was thinking. “Oh, don’t worry, Mrs. Bloom. Teddy’s not a bank robber or a crook. He’s real respectable. He doesn’t even need to go to church, he’s so good. And if he was a little girl instead of a man, he wouldn’t even need to be a Sunshine Sister. I just want to tell him because he likes to watch a western at Mrs. Fry’s now and then. They have a lot of safes in those shows, so he might find it interesting.”

  Mrs. Bloom shoved the rest of the money into the safe, shut it fast, gave the knob a few more twirls, shut the cupboard, then stood up. She was staring at me as she straightened her jacket down over the belt of her skirt, and her mouth was puckered lemon-sucking sour. “Miss… Miss…”

  “Isabella Marlene,” Brenda reminded her.

  “But you can call me Teaspoon,” I told her.

  Mrs. Bloom blinked hard. “Miss Marlene. I do happen to know that Mrs. Gaylor issued you girls a Sunshine Sisters code—which you should have memorized by now—that says that a Sunshine Sister should strive to be well mannered at all times. Well mannered, so she can be a good reflection on her family, her community, and the Sunshine Sisters’ organization. Part of having good manners is not butting into other people’s conversations or their business. Do you understand?”

  “Yes… I mean, I don’t have that code stuff memorized yet, but I know what well mannered means. It’s the same as being respectable, ain’t it? If it is, then good thing, because that’s exactly what Brenda is gonna teach me.”

  “Teach her to use proper grammar while you’re at it,” Mrs. Bloom said, and I piped up, “Yep, I already told Brenda that I want to learn that, too.”

  “Young lady!” Mrs. Bloom shouted. “Did you not hear one word I just said?”

  “I heard you,” I said, rubbing my finger over my bottom lip like I could erase the words that spilled out, because suddenly I was feeling like a flunky, even if my report card said I wasn’t.

  Mrs. Bloom slammed the till shut and turned to Brenda. “Like I told you, you have your work cut out for you. Now, if you can only get her to be quiet long enough for us to finish our business so I can get to that ridiculous town meeting on time…”

  “I’ll be quiet,” I said to Mrs. Bloom. Mainly so she’d hurry and go away because she was making my hands want to fidget like Charlie’s. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, then took a pen and a little notepad thing out of her purse and handed them to Brenda.

  So while Mrs. Bloom delegated to Brenda, I picked up the box of candy and pretended not to listen. “Oh, and don’t forget your hair appointment on Saturday. I set it for two o’clock. We’re expected at the Gaylors’ at seven, but you and Leonard have your photo shoot at four.”

  “Okay,” Brenda said.

  Mrs. Bloom stopped yakking for a minute and bunched her lips in that way that sometimes makes people cry happy tears. “My baby. Almost engaged. I’m so proud of you, honey,” she said.

  “You’re gonna get engaged?” I asked.

  “Saturday,” Brenda said, quietly and fast.

  I stuck a fistful of straws into the last dispenser and shut the lid. It wouldn’t lock into place, though, so I had to jam on it a little. When that didn’t do the trick, I bent over so I could see what the problem was. While I eyed the latch Mrs. Bloom gave a quick, huffy sigh, “Okay, now where were we?” And they slipped right into all that business talk again.

  “Hmmm,” I said when I couldn’t see a reason the lid wouldn’t shut. I decided it just needed a harder shove, so I started pounding on it with my fist.

  I didn’t notice that I was making so much racket until Mrs. Bloom said I was, and Brenda’s hand came down over my fist. “Teaspoon, I’ll get that. Why don’t you walk up and down the aisles and make sure there’s no litter under the seats. Would you do that for me?”

  “Sure thing, though I bet there’s not gonna be, because that’s Mr. Morgan’s job and he’s real fussy.”

  I wasn’t but a handful of seats into the aisle, bending to look under each one and finding nothing, when I heard my voice boomerang back at me like it was coming from a speaker. I looked up and saw that I was standing underneath one of those big domes, the light spilling down on me. I hummed a little louder. Wow, that sure did sound nice! I glanced over at the counter to see if I was being too loud, but I must not have been because Mrs. Bloom wasn’t glaring at me. She was leaned over the counter staring at something with Brenda.

  So I tested the sound out a little more, singing a few do, re, mi, fas, like we learned in music class, instead of just humming. Oh man, did that sound professional! Next thing I knew, I was singing the first song that popped into my head, one I had been bananas for when it first came out—“How High the Moon.”

  I sounded like I was using a real microphone, I swear! Even the snap of my fingers sounded as loud as two drumsticks banging together. So how could I help belting out the tune? Especially when I got to the part that always felt like I was singing it to my ma:

  The darkest night would shine

  If you would come to me soon…

  I sang it snappy and loud, so that my voice filled the whole Starlight, sending those notes to every corner of the castle walls and sprinkling them over the balcony seats where I could see people sitting in my play-mind. I sang every verse, my fingers snapping, my body swaying like dance. When I got to the end and my voice rose with each ah, ah, ah, I lifted my chin and spread out my arms, shooting my voice clear up to the stars, which were lit (at least in my mind), and I didn’t stop on that last ah, until every teaspoon of air I had in me was
poured out.

  When I got done with my fourth bow (because the crowd was still cheering), it took me a second to remember where I was. And when I did, I was scared to look over at the concession stand for fear that Mrs. Bloom would be fit to be tied, because Lord knows with that much echo going on, they probably heard me clear over at The Hanging Hoof. I tucked my head into my shoulders like a Charlie and looked over at the Blooms, ready to apologize.

  Now, I can’t say for sure, because I don’t have my own recollection of what that old jukebox man’s face looked like when he heard me sing for the first time, but I’ll bet that gobsmacked look my ma claimed he was wearing was the same look Mrs. Bloom and Brenda had on their faces. There they stood, edged near the aisle, their eyes and mouths hanging open like doors on a safe someone forgot to close.

  Mrs. Bloom turned to Brenda, suddenly as excited as if she’d won the jackpot at bingo, and she all but shouted, “That’s it! Les Paul and Mary Ford—‘How High the Moon’! I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. You know how I love that song, Brenda. And what a perfect theme!” Mrs. Bloom was grinning like a cartoon cat, and Brenda was bouncing, her dimple deep as the Grand Canyon.

  “Oh, I’ve seen the The Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home Show!” I shouted as I ran back to them. “And I still hear that song on the radio, and ‘Via Con Dios,’ and ‘Tiger Rag.’ They play lots of their hits!”

  When I reached them, Mrs. Bloom tossed her arms around me and gave me a hug. It was as quick as a blink, but it was a hug. And she said, “You’re a lifesaver, you know that?”

  She turned to Brenda. “We’ll call the show How High the Moon, and we’ll get Les Paul and Mary Ford to perform it. Imagine the crowd we’ll draw. We’ll fill every seat in this place.”