How High the Moon Read online

  I looked at Johnny standing in the street, his hands in his pockets, as Brenda gave a quick wave and sped for home. Johnny’s head was down so I couldn’t see his face, but something about him looked sad just the same. “Well, good night, Johnny,” I said, and he said, “’Night, Teaspoon,” then walked back to his side of the street.

  It wasn’t easy to shut off my thoughts. I thought about how many days until Ma came home, and I thought about the gala. Then right before I dozed off, I had one of those hey-wait-a-second thoughts that made me lie awake wondering why, if Brenda thought that car was going to smack them, she didn’t yank Johnny off the street with her. She already had ahold of his arm.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As the days passed, I got as jumpy and owly as Poochie, snapping at anybody who looked at me twice. “What’s the matter, Teaspoon?” Teddy asked me as we sat down to a late-Sunday-morning breakfast.

  “People are getting on my nerves,” I said.

  “What people?” Teddy asked.

  “That Jay for one. The guy who’s teaching us our song and dance. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell him not to call me Pip Squeak, he does it anyway. And then there’s those Jackson kids. They’re so dumb! Last night when Brenda brought me home, Jolene kept waving and saying, ‘Hi Brenda! Hi!’ like they were best friends or something. Then when I was waving to Johnny as they drove off, Jolene yelled, ‘He’s our brother, not yours, Teaspoon.’

  “And I said, ‘So? He brought me Starlight seats, not you! And Brenda’s my Big Sister, not yours.’”

  I made a point of not looking at Teddy’s face when I repeated what I said, because I knew his eyebrows would do a double dip over that one.

  “So what did that idiot Jolene say then? She said, ‘So what? Brenda’s our brother’s girlfriend.’ Now, how stupid is that, Teddy? I yelled back, telling her it was stupid, too. I reminded her that Brenda is engaged to Leonard Gaylor—whether I like him or not— so she couldn’t be Johnny’s girlfriend. Johnny’s getting paid to make the moons and Brenda’s helping him because she’s softhearted. That’s all.

  “So then that dumb Jolene said, ‘Oh yeah? Then how come Jack and Joey saw them kissing when they snuck up on Johnny’s car? And how come he took her up on River Road if they’re just friends, when everybody knows that’s where the big kids go to neck?’

  “Those Jacksons, Teddy. They’re nothing but liars and gossips. I wish I never had to look at them again.”

  Teddy poured me some orange juice and set a plate of French toast down in front of me. I was going to comment on the fact that Teddy had changed breakfast up a bit, but I couldn’t stop bellyaching long enough to tell him how much I liked French toast.

  “And then there’s those Sunshine Sisters who don’t know their right from their left foot for nothing! No wonder when Mrs. Bloom hobbles in to listen and watch, she keeps yelling, ‘Synchronize your steps, girls!’ And there’s one Big Sister who sounds like a dog who got hit by a car. I’m not kidding you, Teddy. And no matter how many times Jay tells her to tone it down—which means shut up because you sing like a wounded dog—she keeps bellering. She’s going to ruin our whole song!”

  I tore off a piece of French toast, dipped it in the Aunt Jemima, and stuffed it into my mouth, ignoring the dribble of syrup slipping down my chin.

  “I’ll tell you, Teddy. About the only people that aren’t getting on my nerves right now is you and Charlie. Probably because you both know when to shut your yaps.”

  “I’m assuming Brenda is included on your list of people who aren’t getting on your nerves?” Teddy asked.

  “I hate to say it, Teddy, but no, she’s not. The more rattled she gets, the more noodley she acts. That Leonard came to the Starlight the night before last, and he was nothing but nasty. I didn’t hear what he said because it was too noisy with our music going, but his face sure did look crabby. And when Brenda tried walking away because Jay was calling her back to the stage, he stuck his face right up against hers and snapped something. I’ll bet anything he got spit on her face when he was doing it, too.” Then I stuck my face up to Teddy’s, Leonard-close, and I shouted, “Am I getting spit on your face up this close, Teddy?” He told me I was.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I sat back down as Poochie started barking at God knew what.

  “I asked Brenda what Leonard was so crabby about when she was driving me home, but she didn’t say. Must have been about wanting to take her on a date, because Johnny was waiting for Brenda when we got back here, but she had to tell Johnny she couldn’t work on anything because she had to get home. She didn’t tell him why, but by last night Johnny knew, because Dumbo Doug told him he saw Brenda and Leonard at the Starbright Drive-In. Johnny doesn’t like Leonard. I know because I asked him. And know what I think, Teddy? I think that Johnny told Brenda to tell Leonard to take a flying leap, because when Johnny came across the street last night, he looked as owly as I’ve been feeling. And the first thing out of his mouth to Brenda—even before he said hi to me or picked me up to give me a little play-shake—he said to Brenda, ‘You didn’t tell him, did you?’ And Brenda said, ‘It’s not that simple, Johnny.’ Then Johnny just did one of those about-faces and headed back home. Brenda called after him, ‘I have to get through the gala first, Johnny.’ Who knows if Johnny heard her, though, because he had already jumped on his new motorcycle—well, it’s not new, but new to him—and started it up, and you know how noisy that thing is.”

  Teddy sat down and watched me scoot the last square of French toast through my puddle of syrup. He said something, but by this time Poochie had been barking and snarling for a good five minutes. Finally I said, “That dang dog. I can’t take it no more!” I got up and stomped through the kitchen and out the back door.

  Charlie was on his knees weeding Mrs. Fry’s flower bed, which explained why Poochie was barking. But I didn’t care why he was barking. I shot right across the yard screaming at the top of my lungs. “You want me to slug you, you stupid, mangy, afflicted, yapping mutt? Because I will if you don’t stop barking!” I pointed to his doghouse. “You get your butt in there and shut up, Poochie. Now!”

  I could hear Teddy yelling behind me to get back, and see Mrs. Fry rapping on her window. But I just kept right on yelling until he tucked his tail between his legs and skittered into his doghouse, going so fast that some of the dog hair dangling from his doorway tore loose and floated off.

  Afterward, Teddy made me go in the house, where he sat me down on the couch. I pushed his arm away and sucked the snot back up my nose.

  “Teaspoon. I don’t think your mood has much of anything to do with any of these things. I think you’re just anxious about your ma coming.”

  “It’s taking forever, Teddy,” I said, my voice cracking.

  “I know, I know. I probably should have waited before I told you, but I wanted you to have time to adjust to the idea.”

  Teddy pulled me so close to him that I could smell his armpits, which weren’t very respectable at the moment. “You’re nervous about seeing your ma again, aren’t you?”

  When he said that, I started bawling harder.

  “Do you know why?”

  His bony chest was hard against my ear as I shook my head.

  Teddy didn’t say another word. He just kept his arm around me as I cried, his hand rubbing my curls down.

  It must have been a crying kind of day, because when I got to the Starlight, more crying was what I found.

  I went through the whole theater looking for Brenda but didn’t see her. So I headed up to the lit meeting room. It was empty, but the door to the catwalk was open. I figured Mr. Morgan was up there doing some work or other, so I headed up, thinking he could tell me where Brenda was.

  But it wasn’t Mr. Morgan on the catwalk. It was Brenda. Sitting at the end of one petal, her arms wrapped around her legs, her face resting on her knees. “Brenda?” I called. “What are you doing up here?”

  Even in the dim light, I could
see that she was crying. Still, she smiled at me. “I come up here from time to time. I have since I was little. I don’t know why. I guess I just like the solitude.”

  “Solitude?”

  “The quietness. Being alone.”

  I sat down beside her. “Oh. Can I be alone with you?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “You sad, Brenda?”

  She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Brenda shrugged and turned away, like she wanted to cry in solitude some more.

  “You worried about the gala? Because if you are, you shouldn’t be. Teddy told me this morning that people always get rattled when a big event is coming, worrying about every little detail, but that in the end, everything comes together. It’ll come together, Brenda.”

  Brenda kept her face turned away and nodded.

  “Last week when I was on vacation, I made Charlie go over ‘Sisters’ so many times that even he got sick of the song. And Charlie never gets sick of a song. I just want everything to be perfect, so I can make my ma proud. That’s all. You worried about not making your ma proud, too?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, her face still turned away. “At least today. Other times, I don’t care anymore.”

  “And I heard Johnny get mad at you, Brenda. You feeling bad about that, too?”

  Brenda didn’t answer me, but she didn’t have to, because her eyes started leaking lots then.

  “Charlie’s sensitive like you are, too,” I told her. “But just for the record, Johnny was just trying to be a good friend. He just happens to be a tad on the hotheaded side.”

  Brenda got busy mopping her face. “Hey, Brenda,” I said. “You know how after the gala’s over and you start showing regular movies again? Sometimes can I come up here to watch? You know, just for old times’ sake? I miss not doing that.” Then I pointed out the petal where I always used to lie, and which hole I used to look down.

  “Sure you can,” Brenda said. Then she rubbed the skin under her eyes and tilted her wrist toward the little bit of light there was. “I suppose we’d best get downstairs. There’s a few who always come early.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Three weeks of days came and went, and I can’t really tell you much of anything about those days because they were nothing but a busy blur, with everyone around me having nerves stretched tight as a fat man’s belt. Until finally it was the middle of August.

  I was sitting on my porch steps waiting for Ma in case she decided to come a couple of weeks early when Mrs. Fry came out with Poochie’s food and water. She looked over at me and said good morning, told me Charlie would be out as soon as he cleaned the oatmeal off his shirt, then she said, “Teaspoon, a watched pot never boils.”

  I suppose I looked confused because she explained what that meant. And by the time Charlie came outside, his shirt polka-dotted with wet spots, I’d thought of the perfect way to keep busy until Ma came. Me and Charlie would make a show for Ma.

  Charlie thought that was a good idea. “What songs does she like?”

  “Anything except funeral songs,” I told him. So we spent the whole rest of the morning testing out songs for our program.

  We were right in the middle of “Shake, Rattle, and Roll,” because best I could recall, snappy songs were Ma’s favorites (though I wasn’t sure how snappy this one was going to be since Charlie kept playing it slow-Moe), when I looked up and saw the time. “Holy cats, Charlie,” I said. “I’ve got to get to the Starlight! Mrs. Campbell and her daughter are coming to fit the Little Sisters for our dresses today.

  “Brenda tried warning me about how I’d have to stand still while they tugged on our half-made dresses and put stickpins here and there, but I told her I know all about that, and as long as they have good eyes, I’ll be fine. Oh, and we’re getting our shoes today, too. I hope they make clickity noises when we walk. Gotta go, Charlie. You keep working on speeding up that song until I get back, okay?”

  When I got to the Starlight, the Campbells were on the stage, two racks of bright sea-blue dresses beside them. Mrs. Campbell was pulling stickpins from a pretend tomato on her wrist and poking them along the hem of Alice Limpkins’s dress while Alice spun ever so slowly on an overturned crate. Mrs. Campbell’s daughter, Miss Campbell—both of them with faces as round as the Campbell Soup kids, so remembering their names was easy—was busy dropping one of the blue dresses over another Sunshine Sister’s head, but I couldn’t see who because her face was covered.

  I slipped into the shorter line, behind Mindy.

  “See that dress that’s hanging in the front… right there on this rack?” Mindy said. “I heard that girl up there telling her friend that that’s what our dresses are going to look like when they’re all done. Only they’ll stick out more because we’re going to wear something under them to make them do that.”

  The Little Sisters dresses weren’t going to look exactly like the ones Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen wore. Ours had lace from the waist up, like theirs, but the sleeves were short little ones like the brims of baseball caps, not tight ones that went down past the elbow. And instead of a lace sash that hung down the front, kind of on the side, ours were going to get tied in the back, like a baby’s. Ours were shorter, too.

  “Where’s our gloves?” I asked Mindy.

  “They’re not done yet. Mrs. Campbell got a McCall’s pattern to make them with so they could be the same blue as our dresses. But it takes a long time to sew so many gloves.”

  Rebecca heard us talking and said, “My ma offered to sew some, and so did Alice’s mom.”

  They were going to blab about those gloves forever, but I was done listening. Especially when I noticed that everybody was holding shoe boxes but me.

  “Brenda handed them out,” Mindy told me. “She was over by that table there.” She pointed to the table that had been set up below the stage. There weren’t any boxes left on the table, though. And no Brenda. “See?” Mindy said, opening her lid to show me a pair of shoes, shiny and white as pearls, with a skinny strap and a white button that was just for looks. “I think they’re patent leather,” Mindy said, even though I thought patent leathers had to be black.

  I told Mindy to save my spot, then I went to find my new shoes.

  Brenda wasn’t in the theater, nor upstairs. She wasn’t in the furniture store part, either. I didn’t know where to look next, so I decided to head back to the stage and get in line in case any other girl was tardier than me and didn’t care if my place was saved or not. But first I had to pee.

  I barely got through the restroom door when I heard somebody puking. Smelled it, too. And whoo! I was just about to turn around to go find a grown-up to make the sick kid go home before she gave us all the pukes when I recognized the shoes in the stall. Flats, as Brenda called them, with a little string bow tied by the rounded toe. Her favorite pair for regular days.

  I bent over to talk under the door. “Brenda? That you in there puking?”

  A ribbon of toilet paper slipped to the floor, then disappeared. “Just a minute, Teaspoon,” Brenda said, her voice hoarse. She coughed, then blew and flushed.

  “Man, Brenda. You don’t look so good,” I told her when the stall door opened. “You don’t smell so good, either.”

  Brenda went to the sink and used her hands like a cup. She rinsed out her mouth, then splashed water on her face. She yanked the cloth towel and dabbed her face with the clean part. She still didn’t look so good, though, with her face popcorn-pale, but for two patches of red blotching her cheeks.

  “I’m okay,” she said, as she dabbed at her eyes; puffy on the outside, cherry-red on the inside.

  “You pick up a stomach bug?” I asked. “If you did you should have some ginger ale and broth. That’s what Teddy always gives me when I get that bug.”

  Brenda shook her head. “I just get like this when something big is going on. Before my first recital, I threw up on and off for a week straight.”

  “Man,�
�� I said. “Glad that doesn’t happen to me. I just get butterflies. Happy ones.”

  “You have to go?” Brenda asked, looking at my legs that were crossed at the ankles.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you in a bit.”

  “Hey, Brenda,” I called, my voice echoing. “You have my new shoes?”

  “I do. You get in line for your fitting and I’ll bring them to you.”

  Boy, that bathroom echoed good when you talked loud, so I sang a little bit of “Sisters,” smiling as I did, because I was remembering how Jay told the Little Sisters that they should take a lesson from “Pip Squeak here” and work harder on the song and steps. And how after he said that, he leaned down and said in my ear, “You sing like a dream, Pip Squeak.”

  I ran through the whole song, my toes tapping against the floor tiles, before I remembered that I was supposed to be in line so I could get my new shoes. I left the bathroom without washing since no one was looking, then raced out and up the aisle to squeeze my way between Mindy and Rebecca. “Hey, no butting in line,” Rebecca said, giving me a shove. But then Brenda handed me my shoe box and told Rebecca, “No shoving.” Rebecca really wanted to deck me then, because she was still afflicted in that way, but she didn’t.

  The whole fitting thing took forever and a day, so it was a good thing I had my new patent leathers to keep me busy. Boy, they sure were pretty, glossy as piano ivories, the little heels making tippity-taps every bit as noisy as a lady’s high heels.

  “You’re going to make scuffs,” Rebecca told me as I tapped make-it-up-yourself steps while standing in place.