How High the Moon Read online

  “The second you heard me tell Teaspoon I wasn’t going to be her mentor anymore, you decided I was being a self-centered, spoiled bitch. One who had grown bored with her little pet. Just like you thought I was looking down my nose at you in the hospital, or when I drove into your neighborhood. It would never have dawned on you that maybe in telling Teaspoon what I did, I was just trying to be kind.”

  Brenda started crying harder then, choking on her words. “Kind, because every day I spend with her, I see her losing another little piece of who she is, and replacing it with who she thinks she should be. Well, maybe I can see that all I’m teaching her is to have shame. And maybe, just maybe, I don’t want her waking up one day to realize that she’s turned into nothing but a miserable imitation of an imitation.

  “Go ahead. Smirk at that, too. You think you march to your own drum. But you know what, Johnny Jackson? You don’t! I’ve seen you with Teaspoon and Charlie and I know that underneath that tough exterior is someone far softer and more decent than what you show everybody else. And do you know why you don’t show that part of yourself to others? Because like me, you do what’s expected. People just happen to have different expectations of you.”

  Brenda took off then, hurrying up the theater aisle and disappearing around the corner of the concession stand. And Johnny turned and headed toward the door, not stopping as he bent down to scoop up a tool—like that was the reason he’d stepped inside in the first place.

  I found Brenda in the ladies’ restroom, standing in a stall with the door open, blowing her nose into a wad of toilet paper.

  “Brenda,” I said. “Please don’t cry. Yeah, I meant some of the things I said, but not all of them. Just don’t cry, okay?”

  Brenda bunched the end of the toilet paper wad and twisted it up one nostril.

  She threw the paper in the toilet, sniffled, then came out of the stall, dabbing at her puffy eyes with the backs of her hands. She put her arms around me, pulling me to her and kissing the top of my head. “And I meant all the things I said, too, except for the part where I said I didn’t want to be your Big Sister anymore. I do. I just don’t want you turning into me.”

  I rested my face against Brenda’s shirt, which was warm and smelled like soap. “Don’t say that, Brenda. There’s lots of good things about you. Sure, you’re just a bit on the noodley side. Most days, anyway. But you weren’t just now.” I looked up. “Holy cow, Brenda. If I hadn’t been hearing those words come out of your mouth with my own ears, I wouldn’t have believed they came from you.”

  Brenda laughed, and her eyes got teary again. “Still,” she said. “I think I have more to learn from you, than you from me.”

  “Well, maybe you could watch me and learn those things. But I wouldn’t recommend you copying the afflicted parts.”

  Brenda and me decided that I should go home and check on Charlie. She gave me a handful of candy bars for Charlie, then she walked me to the door. “Oh,” I added, because I just thought of it. “Brenda, you should talk to Jesus. He helped me with my cussing, so He’d probably give you a hand with your noodleyness, too.”

  Brenda opened the door, and there he was. Johnny Jackson. He had his hands in his pockets, his shoulder was leaned against the side of the Starlight. He looked up when the door opened, and his face read like a sorry card.

  He didn’t tell Brenda that he wanted to talk to her. He didn’t need to. Brenda gave my shoulder a pat and said she’d see me in the morning for our regular meeting. Then she backed up from the doorway and let Johnny inside.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Lots of things changed after Dumbo Doug ran Charlie over. For starters, Charlie couldn’t follow me like a duck to the Starlight anymore, because Mrs. Fry was afraid he’d get run over again. So after a couple of days of lying on the couch, ouching and walking penguin-slow when he had to get up to pee, he went back to his old Humpty-Dumpty ways. Planting his butt on their steps when I left for a meeting.

  I told Teddy that Charlie might as well get sent to the clink like his dad if all he had to do while I was at my meetings was to stay a prisoner to those steps. So Teddy went over and talked to Mrs. Fry about letting Charlie come over to our house and play the piano when we were gone. “You sure you wouldn’t mind?” Mrs. Fry asked, her face nothing but a wad of old wrinkles. “I do feel bad for the boy. I know this isn’t much of a life for a him.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t mind,” Teddy said. “As long as he’s careful to close the door tight behind him when he leaves.”

  “And washes his hands first,” I added.

  So that’s what Charlie did. Three times a week. And it didn’t matter if I was gone for one hour or four, when I got back, there he’d be, playing like I’d only been gone five minutes.

  Things changed for me and Brenda after that, too. When others were around, we were as respectable as we had to be, and stuck to acceptable topics for Sunshine Sisters. But when we were alone, we were, well… more like ourselves you’d have to say. I talked too much, and sang or hummed when we weren’t talking, and I asked too many questions. And Brenda, she started talking louder, and when I sang, sometimes she sang along, doing the melody when I asked her to so I could practice my harmony. Brenda was definitely happier. Giving me lots of quick hugs and popping kisses on my cheek when she thought I was funny.

  Yep, lots of things changed after Dumbo Doug ran over Charlie. Not just for Charlie and Brenda and me, but for Brenda and Johnny, too.

  A couple of days after Brenda yelled at Johnny and the guys, me and Brenda were standing on the new stage looking it over to figure out how we could decorate it for the big night. Johnny, who was down below digging in a toolbox, hopped right up on stage with us and said, “How about a big moon suspended against the back wall? I could make it for you.”

  “Hey, that’s a good idea,” I said. “You could paint the moon silver, then we could add glitter to it so it’s all sparkly. It would probably take a mess of glitter, but wouldn’t that look swell?”

  That very night, about two hours after the Perkins crew left, Brenda and I were sitting under a dome, having a soda pop and taking a rest before Brenda drove me home. Brenda had her knees propped on the seat in front of her, her pony-tailer on her wrist like a bracelet and her hair hanging waterfall over the back of her seat, when the door by the stage opened. Brenda startled and jumped to her feet—probably because she thought it was her ma, who would yell at her for being a slacker—but it wasn’t Mrs. Bloom. It was Johnny Jackson. The regular Johnny, not the Perkins Johnny, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans instead of green Perkins clothes, his hair combed shiny in place. “Hey, what’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” Brenda said.

  “I’ll go find out,” I said, my insides happy as I skipped down the Starlight steps, Johnny grinning at me.

  “I wanted to let Brenda know that Glen said it was okay if I use the shop after hours, and to find out what size she wants the moon,” Johnny said while looking up the rows of seats to where Brenda was standing, her hair messy and bright on her shoulders under the lights.

  I hopped up the stairs behind Johnny. I didn’t expect him to stop while he was still about six steps from Brenda, so when he did, I ran into his back. Johnny laughed a little as he fumbled his arm behind him to catch me. With his arm around my middle, he lifted me crossways like a sack of potatoes and gave me a little shake before he set me down.

  “Hi,” he said to Brenda in a quiet, but not noodley, way. Brenda clasped her hands together and swayed a little from side to side as she said hi back.

  Brenda asked me if I’d pour Johnny a drink, too, and then she invited him to sit down. Side by side as they were, they looked like a couple at Bugsy’s Car Hop, so I slid my feet against the carpet to their seats and asked Johnny what kind of soda pop he wanted, then play-roller-skated over to the concession stand to get his Coca-Cola. “Take a candy for yourself if you want to, Teaspoon,” Brenda called after me.

  After I got his drin
k and a box of Jujubes for me, I sat down on the other side of Johnny and shared my Jujubes with him. First I was thinking about the moon Johnny was going to make, then I started humming a little of “How High the Moon.” “Hey, Johnny,” I said between verses, “how high is the moon, anyway?”

  “Oh, about three hundred thousand miles away,” he said. “Something like that.”

  “Huh, imagine that,” I said, as I poured the last two Jujubes into my hand and told Johnny to pick one. He took the red one, so I popped the yellow one into my mouth and hummed as I chewed it gone. Johnny and Brenda weren’t doing much but laughing, so I went over to the other dome to sing a little “When You Wish Upon a Star” like I had a microphone. I spun in lazy circles as I sang, stopping after the second verse so I could ask Brenda if we could turn the stars on.

  “Sure. Why not. Be right back,” Brenda said. Johnny went with her.

  The minute those stars lit, I lost my lazy and ran up one aisle and down the other, my arms spread wide and my head tipped back so I could watch them twinkle over me as I sang.

  I expected Johnny and Brenda to come right back to sit under the stars, too, but three songs later, when they still weren’t back, I went looking for them.

  I got up to the projection room, stopped to peek at the stars out the windows with no glass, then peeked in the light switch room. They weren’t in there, so I headed up the ladder steps because the attic door was open, which meant Brenda was probably showing Johnny the catwalk.

  I could hear Johnny and Brenda talking as I went up, and I heard my name, so I stopped and got spy-quiet.

  “Teaspoon’s crush on you is so adorable,” Brenda said, like a ratfink.

  “She’s a terrific kid,” Johnny said, and my insides sparkled and I didn’t feel mad at Brenda for being a tattletale anymore. “My old man walked out on me when I was five, too. I guess that’s why I have a soft spot for her.”

  What?

  “My stepdad doesn’t treat me any different than his own kids, but, well, when you have a parent who agitates the gravel on you like that, it makes you wonder what you did that was so bad they didn’t want to stick around.”

  Holy cats! I didn’t know that Mr. Jackson was Johnny’s stepdad. But how could I, with Johnny having that lightbulb shape to his head just like his ma and the rest of the Jackson kids? Even if Johnny’s was a hundred-watt, while most of the rest were twenty-five-watt bulbs, at best, they still looked like a set.

  “It probably feels the same when you have a parent die when you’re a kid, huh?” Johnny said. “Because leaving is leaving.”

  “Or maybe you can’t miss what you’ve never had,” Brenda said. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you remember him?” Johnny asked.

  “Sometimes I think I remember him singing to me once, but Mother said she’d never heard him sing. Who knows. I guess we all remember things as we want to remember them.”

  Johnny gave a soft laugh. “Man, I don’t believe that I’m having these kind of conversations with Brenda Bloom.”

  “I don’t believe I’m having them, period,” Brenda said.

  They were quiet for a good minute, so I got super-still. I didn’t hear more than a soft giggle from Brenda.

  “I don’t hear her down there anymore,” Brenda said. “Maybe we should get back.”

  “Oh, she’s probably getting more candy or pouring herself some more soda pop. Teaspoon’s pretty independent,” Johnny said.

  “I think she just likes to work the fountain, because she doesn’t drink half of what she pours. Either that, or she forgets she’s poured it.” They both laughed, but I didn’t. The way Brenda said it, it almost sounded like she was calling me afflicted.

  Yep. A lot of things changed after Dumbo Doug ran Charlie over. Mostly, Brenda. And I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Brenda and me were at the Starlight, about two weeks after Charlie got hit. It was a Saturday. Mrs. Bloom had delegated the job of cleaning the warehouse part of the furniture store to Mr. Morgan. Like Brenda said, Mrs. Bloom was obsessed with the thought of dust ruining the new grand, even though Mr. Morgan had wrapped it like a mummy in old blankets and sheets of plastic. “And don’t stir up the dirt while you’re cleaning,” Mrs. Bloom ordered, though how he was going to clean that place without making dust fly was beyond me.

  Mr. Morgan wasn’t real happy about having to come in and clean after he’d asked to have the weekend off since his ma and dad were coming to Mill Town for a visit and the Starlight was closed anyway. So Brenda told him she’d come in and help so it could get done faster. I said I’d help, too.

  Brenda looked like Cinderella before the animals got her respectable, dressed in blue pedal pushers with a stain on the leg (I didn’t even know Brenda could get a stain!), a short sleeveless blouse that, to tell the truth, was ugly enough to have come from a Jackson sack, and a scarf tied Aunt-Jemima on her head. Even with the ramp door open, we were sneezing like nuts from the dirt we weren’t supposed to stir.

  Brenda and Mr. Morgan said I was a good helper, but I don’t think I was because every time I picked up a tool, I’d ask them if it was a bargaining tool, because I remembered Teddy saying something about needing one a while back, and as far as I knew he still hadn’t gotten one. Then Brenda or Mr. Morgan would have to tell me all over again that it was an upholstering or carpentry tool. Then maybe I’d pick up one of those books that Brenda said was a ledger and page through it, looking for a new fancy word I might have to read out loud, or want to toss in a Scrabble game, even though all those books seemed to have in them was numbers. And while I was working, I’d sing a little of this song or that, and now and then Mr. Morgan would join in.

  I was holding up a metal something-or-other and asking Brenda if it was an upholstering tool, too, when Brenda went stiff. I turned, thinking I’d see Mrs. Bloom standing there on her crutches, scowling at the dirt swirling from Mr. Morgan’s broom. Instead, it was Leonard picking his way across the room, watching his white shoes like he might step on one of those land mines like in Bridge Over the River Kwai.

  “Leonard, what are you doing here? You didn’t tell me you were coming home this weekend.” Brenda dabbed at her sweaty, dusty face with the backs of her hands, like a cat trying to clean herself. All she did, though, was make smears.

  “You’d have known if you’d picked up your phone last night.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear it.” Brenda grabbed a coffee can filled with rusty nails and tossed it in the garbage can. “I was exhausted, so I went to bed early.”

  Leonard looked around the room. “No doubt you were, if this is the sort of work you’ve been doing. Isn’t that what you’ve got him for?” Leonard said, poking his thumb toward Mr. Morgan.

  I didn’t want to listen to Leonard because I didn’t even like the sound of his voice, so I tried to ignore him like Mr. Morgan was doing. It didn’t work so well, though. Not when he got up close to Brenda and started growling at her, asking her what the deal was… why she’d acted so different on the phone all week.

  “Maybe because I was trying to figure out why you were calling every night, when ordinarily you only call once a week.”

  “What? A guy has to have a reason to call the girl he’s going to marry?”

  Brenda didn’t say anything. She just went back to her work, using one hand like a broom and the other like a dustpan to get the upholstering tacks off the workbench.

  “You didn’t answer my question. What’s going on?”

  “I did answer. I fell asleep early because I was tired,” Brenda repeated.

  Leonard grabbed Brenda’s arm then, and the stray nails she had in her fist pinged against the cement floor. He grabbed her tight enough that her skin went pale around his fingers. The whites of Mr. Morgan’s eyes turned to half-moons as he glanced over at Leonard without moving his head or slowing his broom. “Go wash your face and hands. You’ve got some explaining to do,” Leonard said.


  “You’re hurting her arm,” I snapped. Mr. Morgan stiffened.

  Leonard looked over at me, the skin around his pinchy nose wrinkling. “Who does this kid think she is, anyway?” he said.

  “Teaspoon. Brenda’s Sunshine Sister,” I reminded him.

  “Well, mind your own business, Tablespoon. Or whatever your name is,” Leonard said.

  Brenda told me to keep working, and she followed Leonard out of the room and down the new hallway

  As soon as they left, I looked at Mr. Morgan. He was wiping his sweaty face with a grubby-looking handkerchief. “You hot?” I asked. “I’ll go get us a soda pop.”

  “You mind your own business, Teaspoon,” Mr. Morgan warned.

  “I know. I’m just going to the concession stand,” I said, even if that was a lie as big as the grand.

  The Starlight was dark, but for the little lights glowing from the ends of each aisle seat and a smudge of light showing through the empty projection windows. I hurried to set two paper cups under the spouts of the fountain, just to make it look good. Then I headed up the stairs, glancing back twice, hoping my dusty shoes weren’t tracking, because what kind of a spy leaves footprints?

  I figured no one would see me if I stayed outside the projection room door on my hands and knees and peeked around the corner. After all, who would think to look on the floor across a dark room for a pair of snooping eyes and ears?

  “What in the hell’s going on here, Brenda? And don’t tell me nothing, because I know better. You’ve been acting odd all week.” Leonard had Brenda up against the wall, his hands braced on both sides of her like clink bars, his legs spread.