How High the Moon Read online

  “I am not. Johnny Jackson himself told me that they put so many coats of varnish on this stage that it would take a dinosaur’s toenails to scratch it.”

  “I’m not talking about the stage, stupid,” she said. “I’m talking about your shoes.”

  Mindy turned around and glared at Rebecca. “You’d better not talk to Teaspoon that way, or I’ll scuff your face!”

  I grinned at Mindy as I worked my legs like a drummer’s sticks. “Wow, Mindy,” I said. “I think you just lost another one of your afflictions.”

  “See you at rehearsal tonight,” Brenda said as she walked me to the door, carrying the empty shoe box that had my name written on the lid in marker. “Maybe you should put your shoes in here before you go outside.” I told her that I couldn’t scooter while carrying a box, so I’d just wear them home and leave the box at the Starlight.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Brenda,” I said, then out the door I went, my new shoes clicking and gleaming in the sun like they were made of magic.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It was August twenty-seventh, and I was zipping back from the Starlight, where I’d gone in the afternoon just to see if Brenda was around because I had nothing to do while Charlie did some work for Mrs. Fry. Brenda wasn’t, so I scootered around Bloom Avenue for a while, watching my patent leather paw at the sidewalk, then headed for home.

  Both of the Taxi Stand Ladies were on the corner when I got to Washington Avenue, watching me come down the street, which I was sure meant they were admiring my new shoes. But when I got to the corner, I could see they were watching my face instead. “Teaspoon?” Walking Doll said with a bit of a smile on her red-apple lips. “I think your ma is here.”

  I stopped, my whole head going blank like a TV station that just went off the air.

  “Short? Pretty? Auburn hair?” The Kenosha Kid asked.

  I couldn’t breathe to answer her. I couldn’t even nod my head. All I could do was stare down the street where Charlie was waiting, waving his arms like nuts.

  Charlie darted toward my house once he knew I’d seen him, and Walking Doll said in a teary voice, “Go on. Go see your ma.”

  I let my scooter fall against the sidewalk and I started running. Crying and laughing at the same time.

  Teddy was waiting on the second step when I got there.

  I stopped. “Teddy? Is it her?”

  He nodded, then came down the steps and put his arm around my shoulder to lead me into the house. Charlie held the door open for us.

  Once I got through the door, it was like my new shoes had Bazooka stuck to the heels, and I couldn’t budge. I looked on the couch. On Teddy’s chair. On the Starlight seats. But I didn’t see Ma. So I looked at Teddy to make sure it wasn’t just hope I’d been listening to when I asked if it was her.

  I heard a lady’s voice come from the kitchen. “Teaspoon? That you?”

  “Ma?” I called back.

  And then there she was. Standing in our living room, like she’d never left it. Shorter than I remembered, her hair spilled to her shoulders in Greta Garbo waves. She was dressed in pink and mint green, and prettier than six Glindas put together. I looked at her eyes, her smile, and I remembered her face like I’d never forgotten it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Oh my God!” Ma shouted. “Look at how much she’s grown!” I think she was talking to Teddy, but I wasn’t sure because I was the one she was looking at. “Come here and give your ma a hug!” she said.

  I ran to her and wrapped my arms around her waist, my face pressing tight against her balloons. I breathed the smell of her in so hard that my nostrils clamped shut, like they wanted to make sure they never let go of her smell again. “Ma… Ma…” That’s all I could say. Just “Ma.”

  Ma pushed me an arm’s-length away and spun me in circles while she gasped. “Look at you… just look at you! You’re a living doll!”

  She gasped again and shook her head. “Isn’t she a little doll, Teddy? She has my bone structure, don’t you think?”

  Teddy had his head tipped to the side and his eyes were watery. He nodded, then said, “Charlie, how about you and me take a little walk and let these girls visit.” He put his hand on the back of Charlie’s gouged head and they walked out the door.

  Ma took my hands, squeezing them and giving them a little shake. She leaned over so her face was in front of mine. “Did you miss me?” she asked, her voice high and hopeful.

  “Course I did, Ma. You were gone for a long, long time. Five years.”

  “Five?” she said. She straightened, cocked her eyes up and off to the left, her mouth moving silently, like she was counting behind her teeth. “Oh my God, I think you’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry, baby.”

  Ma grabbed her purse from the end table and took it to the couch. “Come sit with your ma and tell me everything,” she said.

  I ran to the Starlight seats. “Do you remember these, Ma?”

  Ma’s pretty eyebrows, arched like rainbows, dipped some. “No, I don’t remember those being there,” she said.

  “They weren’t. They’re seats from the Starlight Theater. We just got them. Want to sit over here?”

  “In a bit, honey. Right now I’m looking for something.”

  Ma started digging in her purse, and I wondered if she was going to take something out for me. Maybe a stick of gum, or a little toy. She pulled out a cigarette and put it between her lips, then kept digging, so I leaned over to watch her hand. I saw her scoop up something gold and shiny. Maybe a new barrette that I could wear to the gala so people could see my eyes. But it was only a cigarette lighter.

  Ma lit her cigarette than looked around the living room. “I suppose Teddy threw out all of the ashtrays. Get me that coffee cup over there, Teaspoon, will ya?” She was pointing to the one sitting next to Teddy’s chair.

  Ma watched me as she smoked, her lips going from banana-shaped smiles to circles that blew doughnuts of smoke above our heads. “Remember how you used to like those?” she said. “You’d jump like a puppy reaching for a stick, so you could poke your finger in the hole.” Ma laughed. “What a cutie you were. And still are.”

  I smiled.

  “Teddy told me you’re a part of some girls’ program or other, and that you’re gonna be in some kind of a show in a couple of weeks?”

  “In seven days,” I said. “At the Starlight. Can you believe it, Ma?”

  “The movie theater?” she said, looking confused.

  “It’s a live theater now, too. I thought it was a dream come true, making my debut at the age of ten, and at the Starlight Theater to boot. But now that you’re home and get to come, well…”

  My voice cracked on the last part of that sentence, and Ma tapped me under the chin with a curled hand. “Don’t go getting all teary on me now, Teaspoon. This is supposed to be a happy day, and I want to see my baby girl smile, not cry.”

  “I’m not going to cry, Ma,” I said, breathing in hard. “Jay, that’s the guy who is our chorusographer—”

  “Chor-e-ographer,” Ma said, laughing. “It’s choreographer.”

  “Oh. Anyway, Jay is teaching us dance steps for our big number. It’s really going to be good. We come on right before Les Paul and Mary Ford. Can you believe it? I can’t! And Jay’s putting me and Brenda Bloom herself smack-dab in the first row, right in the middle. That’s the best spot, isn’t it, Ma?”

  She nodded, then said, “Gloria Bloom’s daughter?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She’s my Big Sister. My mentor. Anyway, we’re dead-center. Well, except for when we do this little dance part and walk around in a big circle. But I come right back to dead-center when we’re done. Our number was my idea, too. Want to see me do the song?”

  I jumped off of the couch to sing. “Pretend my right hand is my fan, okay?” I held my fan hand over my face while I la-laed the beginning of the intro, nodding my head once to the right, then the left, then sashaying in a circle around an imaginary Brend
a. Then I started singing, “Sisters. Sisters…” I sang it to the part where the Big Sisters sang, “Never had to have a chaperone, no sir,” and the Little Sisters sang, “I’m here to keep my eyes on her.” Then I stopped because I didn’t want Ma to see the whole dance—especially the parts I liked best, where we dipped on one leg with a bounce, then kicked a foot to the side to sway and sashay some more.

  “Just like that!” I said. “Jay said he’s never seen a kid with lungs like mine. He said what I got is projection. And he said that with my voice, my looks, and my charisma, I got star quality. Imagine that, Ma. Star quality. Me! And he should know, because he was in some shows in New York City.”

  Ma smiled and said, “Of course you got star quality. You’re my daughter, aren’t you?”

  “The whole show is going to be great, Ma. You’re going to love it!” I hurried through the names of the stars, our acts, the songs, our dresses, the fans, everything. Putting it all in one long sentence, so that by the time I finished telling her about the moons, I had to pause to take a breath, because big lungs or not, I didn’t have any more air left in me.

  “Huh,” Ma said, “I’m surprised the Blooms are doing the big-band thing. That era’s come and gone. But I don’t suppose word of that has reached Mill Town yet, so folks around here will probably eat it up.

  “Teaspoon?” Ma said when I got quiet and stood still, staring at her. “Why you looking at me like that?”

  “Ma?” I said slowly. “Did you find your dream?”

  “Huh?” she asked.

  “The dream you went to find. Of becoming a star on the silver screen. Did you find it?” I almost felt like I was going to get Brenda’s pukes in those few seconds it took Ma to take a suck on her cigarette and blow the smoke out so she could answer me.

  “Well,” she said, the word trailing a smoke ring. “Come sit down and I’ll tell you the whole story of how I became the star of Attack of the Atomic Lake Lizard, my first film. And the sequel, Revenge of the Atomic Lake Lizard.”

  I let out a whoop. “I knew it! I just knew you’d do it, Ma!” I jumped into the air and came down on my butt, right beside my movie-star mama!

  “It took a while,” Ma said. “I didn’t have enough money to get all the way out to California. Story of my life, a day late and a dollar short. So I was held over in Denver for a few months, playing a piano bar and stashing every dime I made. And I needed it, too, because a month after I got there, that damn wreck of Teddy’s broke down and I needed another car.”

  Ma grabbed Teddy’s cup and put out her half-finished cigarette, then tucked one leg up under her other. “I worked my ass off, doing some bartending during the day, working the piano bar nights, but damn it, I did it. I got myself out to Hollywood, and after a lot of trying, I auditioned for the lead role in this movie. And you know what got me the role?” she asked.

  “Your acting ability and star quality?” I asked.

  “Well, besides those things,” Ma said, smiling. “This!” And she stood up, faced me, put her hands out like she was going to sashay, and then she screamed. Screamed so high and so loud that if my hair wasn’t already curly, it would have been by the time she got done.

  Ma laughed and fell onto the couch. “The director said I was the best screamer he ever worked with. I told him that’s because I’ve had a lot of things to scream over in my life.”

  She giggled herself silly, then moaned a happy sigh. “I got the movie poster in that mess of a car of mine, somewhere.”

  “Let’s go get it!” I said.

  Ma sank back against the cushion, her hair opening like a fan. “Not now, Teaspoon. Your ma is bushed. I drove over five hundred miles today. I need a nap.” She yawned, then turned her head lazily toward me. “God, it’s good to see you again,” she said.

  “It’s good to have you home, Ma,” I said, as I fought back tears because she wanted to see me happy.

  Ma reached her arm around my head, the warmth of her skin soaking right through my curls. She closed her eyes. “Teaspoon?” she said, her voice going sleepy. “Did Teddy find somebody else?”

  “Somebody else? What do you mean?”

  “Does he have another girl in his life?”

  “Oh. You mean besides me?”

  “A girlfriend,” Ma said.

  “Course not, Ma. You’re his girlfriend. He’s got a new lady friend, Miss Tuckle, but she’s only his Sunday school friend. Like Charlie is my friend. Mrs. Fry, it turned out, was a Benedict Arnold and tried to make Miss Tuckle and Teddy be more than friends. Miss Tuckle swore on a stack of Bibles that they weren’t, though, so it didn’t work.”

  “Sunday school friend,” Ma said, her voice sounding far away, like she was already halfway to dreamland.

  Ma didn’t let go of me after she dozed off, so I snuggled my head against the dip between her shoulder and the top of her balloon, and wrapped my arm around her waist, and listened to her breath rise and fall.

  I never was the kind who could sit in a hug for long before my feet wanted to get moving again, but I stayed right there, pressed up against Ma, sitting still so I wouldn’t wake her. Twice or three times, I lifted the bottom half of my legs so I could look at my new patent leathers, but other than that, I didn’t squirm.

  Outside a rain had begun. Not a storm. Just one of those kind of rains that feel like lazy. The window behind the couch was open, so I could hear the drops and feel the cool they brought. I closed my eyes, thinking about how I hoped Ma would let me take that movie poster to the Starlight so I could show it to Brenda and the Taxi Stand Ladies along the way. And how I was going to stand on my sidewalk and hold it up so the Jackson kids could see it while I stuck my tongue out at them.

  Only when I felt a small swish of air push against my skin as a thin blanket came down over us did I realize that I’d dozed off just like Ma. I looked up and there was Teddy, standing by the couch, looking down on us, his face sad, though I didn’t know why.

  I untangled myself from Ma, slowly so I wouldn’t wake her, then got up and followed Teddy into the kitchen.

  “Did Ma tell you, Teddy?” I asked, probably with too much projection, because Ma stirred and groaned a little.

  “Tell me what?” Teddy asked, as he filled a kettle with cold water.

  I backed my butt to the counter, and used my hands to hoist me up so Teddy could hear me when I made my voice get Brenda-singing-soft. “That she found her dream.”

  “Your mother and I didn’t really have time to talk, Teaspoon. She was only here about ten minutes before you got home.”

  “Oh,” I said, almost glad, because that meant I could tell Teddy the good news myself. “Well, she did it, Teddy. She went looking for her dream, and she found it. She’s a movie star now, just like I always knew she’d be. A lead role, and a sequel. We always knew she’d do it, Teddy, didn’t we?”

  Teddy got his paring knife out and got busy peeling dusty potato skins into long loops. He didn’t look up. Probably because he had a sharp knife in his hands. I watched for a bit, then said, “Boy, Teddy. I would have thought you’d be happier, having Ma back. But you look more worrywartish than ever.”

  “There’s a lot of things we don’t know yet, Teaspoon. Things only time will tell.”

  I didn’t know what things Teddy was talking about, and I didn’t want to know. I slid off the counter instead of jumping, so my new shoes wouldn’t click and wake Ma, and I told Teddy that I was going down to the corner so I could get my scooter.

  Teddy looked down at me. “Charlie and I already brought it home. It’s in the front.”

  “Then I’m going to go get Charlie. Him and me made a show for Ma. Soon as she’s up and we’ve had supper, we’ll perform it for her to celebrate her homecoming. Tell her that if she wakes up before I get back.”

  It was still raining some when I got outside so I ran fast so I wouldn’t get wet. Not that I cared, but I knew Mrs. Fry would!

  Mrs. Fry was cooking, too, and Charlie was sitting on th
e couch staring at a turned-off television set, doing nothing. I was going to get braggy about my ma being home, but when I looked at Charlie I decided that would be mean, since his ma couldn’t come back. I figured it was okay to talk about her movie, though, because as far as I knew Charlie was never waiting for his ma to become a movie star. “Guess what, Charlie? My ma was in a movie. Two of them. The leading lady.”

  “A real movie?” Charlie said.

  “Well, what other kind is there?” I asked.

  Charlie shrugged. “Does it have monsters in it?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  Charlie went back to staring at the black TV screen.

  “How come you don’t have it turned on, Charlie?” I asked.

  “Cause Grandma G says it has to stay unplugged when it’s storming.”

  I glanced through the worn-thin curtains. “It’s not storming. Just raining.” Charlie shrugged, and I shook my head. “I suppose because it’s storming you can’t go outside now, either.”

  “You got that right,” Charlie said.

  “Well, I’m going to hurry down to the corner and see the Taxi Stand Ladies. I won’t see Brenda tonight, so I might scooter down to the Starlight, too. I wish you could come, Charlie.”

  “Me, too,” he said.

  I headed to the door. “Hey, Charlie. Where’d you and Teddy go on your walk?”

  “To get ice cream,” Charlie said, his eyes still staring at the TV.

  “At the drugstore?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was Miss Tuckle there?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” I said, because even if her and Teddy were only friends, something about it wouldn’t have seemed right if they’d gotten together to be friends on the very day Teddy’s girlfriend came back.

  “We had our ice cream first, then we went upstairs to where she lives.”

  I raced back to the couch so fast that my patent leathers worked like ice skates on the bare floor.

  “Geez, Charlie,” I said as I fell down beside him. “You’re supposed to be my spy. Why didn’t you head right over and tell me as soon as you guys got back?”