How High the Moon Read online

  There were about a dozen people standing in the dark area just off to the side, most with clipboards, whispering that Les Paul and Mary Ford were going to pull a “no-show.” They were worried, but I wasn’t. Paul and Ford were professionals. They’d come. So while they fussed and Mrs. Derby wailed like Ethel, I ditched between the worrywarts and stood on my tiptoes trying to spot Brenda on the other side of the stage.

  “Hey, Pip Squeak, get back with the other girls. You’re in the way,” Jay said as Beulah and Morris Farthing headed out from the other side, then posed like mannequins behind the red curtain while Mr. Carter announced them. I didn’t budge though, because I knew that if I was going to be a singer, I’d need to learn a few extra dance steps.

  The curtain went up and the whole theater filled with “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White.” It sure was magical, the way the Farthings glided across that stage like Fred and Ginger, Beulah’s dark pink skirt, light as butterfly wings, floating in big circles around her legs. The crowd liked the Farthings a lot more than Mrs. Derby, which wasn’t exactly a shocker.

  “I said get back to your dressing room, Pip Squeak,” Jay snapped, crabbier this time, because he was trying to clear a path for Mimi Hines and Phil Ford.

  “Brenda said I didn’t have to stay in there,” I told Jay, which wasn’t exactly a lie. He didn’t squeak back at me, though, because he was too busy smiling at Mimi Hines, waiting for the curtain to drop and Mr. Carter to have his next blab so the stagehands could move the grand behind the curtain for their act.

  When the piano and Mimi and Phil were in place, Jay cued Mr. Carter and the red curtain lifted.

  I couldn’t keep from clapping when the crowd saw Mimi Hines, dressed in elbow-length gloves and a white dress that sparkled every bit as much as the sliver moon that hung above her, while Phil Ford played on our baby grand.

  That Mimi. She sure was a stitch, talking like a chipmunk and being funny as all get-out. When she slipped into her first number, though, her voice sounded radio-beautiful. I slid over and peeked out from the edge of the curtain, because I wanted to see if Ma and Teddy and Charlie were enjoying the performance as much as me. But with the stage lights so bright, and no lights in the auditorium but the dim ones at the edge of the aisle seats, I couldn’t see nothing but dark shadows. And I could barely see those. I knew they were there, though. Teddy dressed in his new suit, Charlie not looking like Humphrey Bogart but still looking nice. And Ma, prettier than any lady in the seats or on stage, people gawking at her and whispering, Isn’t that Catty Marlene, the star of Attack of the Atomic Lake Lizard movies? even though they were supposed to be doing nothing but clapping because Mimi Hines and Phil Ford had put on a show so good that those twenty-five minutes felt like two.

  The second Mr. Carter announced that there would be a twenty-minute intermission and the lights brightened some, I slipped out from behind the edge of the curtain. There were so many people already on their feet—because they had to pee, or stretch, I suppose—that I couldn’t even see the folks in the first few rows. So I headed down the steps.

  Maybe it was the slick black bottoms of my shoes. Or maybe Johnny had used one too many coats of varnish. Whatever it was, when I hit the second to the last step, I went hurling like a piece of potato shot from a Spud Gun. Right into a small group of people standing and talking. A lady yelped as my head rammed into her butt, almost knocking her over, right before I hit the floor.

  I landed on my knees, which hurt, and the lady’s clutch purse landed on the floor beside me. “Sorry,” I said as I scooped it up and scrambled to my feet.

  She yanked her purse from my hand, and when I looked up, I was looking at Mrs. Miller. Susie was beside her, that snooty smirk on her face.

  “You,” Mr. Miller said. “Don’t you ever watch where you’re going?”

  “She doesn’t,” Susie said. “And she hums and sings all the time, too.”

  That’s when a hand came down on my shoulder. “Oh, don’t be too hard on her. I think we’ve all had the experience of running into someone we didn’t see was standing there, don’t you?”

  I turned and saw Walking Doll, who was looking hard at Mr. Miller.

  Mr. Miller got so flustered you would have thought he was the one who’d just gotten head-butted.

  “You okay, Teaspoon?” she asked, without looking at me. I told her I was, and she patted me on the shoulder. “Hello, Frank,” she said, her tongue coming out to lick her bottom lip, like maybe she thought she had Kool-Aid on it. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting your lovely wife just yet.” Walking Doll held out her hand to Mrs. Miller. “Since the cat seems to have caught Frank’s tongue, I’ll introduce myself. Dolly,” she said. “Dolly Walker.”

  Dolly Walker? That sounded like a stage name to me.

  “Your husband gave me a car dirt-cheap. But then I could expect such generosity from him. He and my mother were quite close back in their day, weren’t you, Frank?”

  I didn’t have time to sit around while they chitchatted about olden days, so I interrupted. I told Mrs. Miller again that I was sorry I ran into her, then I dodged around the slowpokes clogging the aisle.

  And there was Teddy, Charlie on one side of him, Mrs. Fry next to Charlie, but an empty seat where Ma should be. I squeezed my way between the feet and chairs of the people who must not have had to pee. “Hey, Teddy, wasn’t that a great first half? And if you liked that, wait until the rest of the show. It’s going to be even better! Where’s Ma?” I asked, gawking at the backs of ladies heading toward the back of the Starlight.

  “She’ll be along,” Teddy said.

  “She go to the restroom?”

  “I got to go to the bathroom,” Charlie said.

  “I’m going to go find Ma,” I said. “Come on, Charlie. We can walk together.”

  Teddy grabbed Charlie’s arm and said something to the side of his scabby head before letting go. “We don’t have time, Teddy,” I said.

  I weaved Charlie up the aisle. “In that line,” I told him, giving him a shove when we got in the back of the theater where the lines were strung long, especially the women’s.

  I ran up and down the ladies’ line, looking for Ma, and Brenda. I didn’t see either of them, but I did see Jennifer and Jolene. “How you liking the show so far?” I asked.

  “Good. Except you could have gotten us seats some closer. Everybody looks like ants from where we’re sitting.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that… have you guys seen my ma?” I asked Jolene.

  “Your ma ain’t here, Teaspoon,” Jolene said.

  “What are you talking about? Course she’s here.”

  “No she ain’t,” Jolene said. “She went someplace with Mr. Favors after you left, and when they got back, she came over to use the phone. She called some guy named Paul and asked him to bring her to the airport in Milwaukee. And she gave James and Jack each a quarter for helping her get her suitcases outside on the lawn so she’d be ready when that guy came. She said she didn’t have much time before her flight.”

  “You’re lying,” I said, blinking my eyes hard because tears would smear my makeup.

  “Am not. Am I, Jennifer?” Jennifer shook her head. “Go ask our ma if you don’t believe us.”

  But I didn’t go find Mrs. Jackson. Instead, I went to the boys’ line and asked Charlie if it was true. “I ain’t supposed to say,” Charlie said. Which did say.

  All around me, people were watching the line and their watches, and talking about how exciting it was to have a live theater in Mill Town, but I just stood there, my breaths hurting my chest.

  “I have to find Brenda,” I said, more to myself than to Charlie. And I didn’t care that the ladies’ line was long. I barged right in front of everyone and slammed open the restroom door. “Brenda?” I called. “Brenda!” The bathroom got quiet, so I knew I’d have heard her if she called back to me. But she didn’t.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I didn’t know where to go
, or where to look. But the lights were dimming slowly, and people were hurrying back to their seats.

  I went back to our dressing room, hoping Brenda would be there. She wasn’t, but she had been, Mrs. Gaylor said.

  “You’re pairing up with Joyce Ellis,” she told me. “Brenda isn’t feeling well enough to go on. And Betsy, Joyce’s Little Sister, got stage fright so her father took her home.”

  I could only stand there, trying not to smear my makeup. “I don’t even know who Joyce is.”

  Mrs. Gaylor clapped her hands to get the girls to listen up. “Big Sisters, head out. You’ll be going—quietly—behind the stage to line up.”

  “That’s Joyce,” Mrs. Gaylor said as the girls filed out of the room, pointing to a girl tall as Miss Tuckle. “Quietly,” she repeated to the Big Sisters.

  “When do we go?” Rebecca yelled, and Mrs. Gaylor made the shhh sign because the door was still open.

  “But Mrs. Gaylor, me and Brenda are pairs. We’re going to be dead-center.”

  “Teaspoon,” she said, her jaw going Mrs.-Carlton-twitchy. “It’s Brenda’s instructions…” Then, like she just recalled another order she’d been given, she told all the Sisters to be sure and come right back to the dressing room when our number was over. She picked up a sheet that had all of our names written in circles stuck together like beads on a necklace, showing the order we were supposed to line up in.

  For weeks I’d been dreaming about this night. Playing it over and over in my head until it became like a TV rerun of a musical. I knew how every line, every look, and every song would go. Only now the leading lady was missing, and her stand-in was about to step out of the picture, too. And it just couldn’t be!

  “Teaspoon, get back here,” Mrs. Gaylor shouted as I flew out the door.

  Mr. Carter’s voice sounded far away, even though he was using a microphone to introduce Louis Prima and Keely Smith, and I was running down the hall toward him, not away from him.

  I was squeezing between the suits and dresses crowded on the side of the stage, not even looking up to see who was inside them, just looking for Brenda, when Jay caught my arm. “Pip Squeak…”

  Jay didn’t have a chance to say another word to me, though, because Mrs. Bloom came rushing to us. “I just heard. Brenda’s not going on? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” Jay said. “I saw her about fifteen minutes ago. She told me she was sick, and to pair Teaspoon with Joyce.”

  Mrs. Bloom pressed her fingertips against her temples. “My God, what’s going on here? We have a light out and apparently no Uriah… Brenda says she’s not going on and has obviously crawled off by herself to nurse her nerves. This is spiraling into a disaster. A complete disaster!”

  It was Mrs. Bloom saying Brenda had crawled off to be alone—to find some solitude—that made me suddenly think of where she might be. “The catwalk!” I said.

  Jay caught my arm. “Teaspoon, where are you going? You have to line up.” But I didn’t want to listen to Jay. Or anybody for that matter. I only wanted to find Brenda. I shook Jay’s arm away and took off.

  I zoomed up the aisle, past a crowd of eleven hundred and fifty faces—minus one—that were facing the stage, their eyes scrinched from laughing as Keely Smith gave Louis Prima a hard time in their act. Clear up through the nosebleed seats and into the projector room.

  The door to the catwalk was open a crack, just as I thought it would be. I yanked it wide with my gala-gloved hand, and was just about to go up when Mrs. Bloom appeared, her upper lip damp from climbing the stairs so fast. “Hurry,” she said to me. “See if she’s up there.”

  The minute my head cleared the top of the stairs, before my feet did, I saw a smudge of blue on the metal flower center. In the dim light, I couldn’t see much more than Brenda’s gala dress bunched as she sat, her back against the railing, her arms, pale as moonlight, wrapped around her legs.

  I turned and peered down the ladder steps where Mrs. Bloom waited, her head tipped up. I didn’t want to be a ratfink, but I nodded anyway. What was I supposed to do? If anybody could force Brenda on that stage, nerves and all, it was her bossy ma. And I had to go on. I just had to.

  I headed down the stem to where Brenda sat, her shoes beside her on the catwalk, one tipped on its side. “What are you doing up here?” Brenda asked, her voice so sharp that I stopped. “Go downstairs with the other girls or you’ll miss your song.”

  “It’s our song, Brenda. ‘Sisters.’” I took another step forward. “We stick together through all kinds of weather. Remember?” It was hard to think of the lyrics, though, with Louis’s trumpet wailing out “Until Sunrise” downstairs.

  “No, Teaspoon. I can’t go on.” Brenda didn’t sound pukey. Just upset. “You go down and line up to do the number with Joyce.”

  Tears started blurring my eyes. “No,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Brenda?” Mrs. Bloom called out, her head peeking above the catwalk floor. Brenda groaned, her hands moving to hold the sides of her head.

  It didn’t look right, Mrs. Bloom stepping up on the catwalk, her long, fancy skirt bunched in her arms.

  “Brenda!” Mrs. Bloom said after she brushed her skirt down and kicked off her shoes, probably because her gunmetal heels were sinking down between the holes. “What on earth are you doing up here? We have chaos brewing downstairs. Randolph just got word to me that Paul and Ford aren’t here, and I called the motel. They never even checked in…”

  “They’re not coming,” Brenda said, her voice flat as bad singing.

  Mrs. Bloom stopped, even though she was only partway down the stem. “What do you mean, they’re not coming?”

  “They were never coming, Mother.”

  “That’s insane. Of course they’re coming.” Mrs. Bloom laughed like she was insane. “You told me they were booked.”

  Brenda’s voice shook as she tried to explain. “Yes. But booked elsewhere.”

  I could feel my neck stretch out, like my head was trying to get closer to what Brenda was saying.

  It was Mrs. Bloom’s turn to clutch her head. “You mean you knew this all along and you let me bill them? Not giving one thought to the humiliation we’d suffer for advertising them falsely? Brenda, how could you—”

  “I couldn’t correct you when you first misunderstood. Not with you in so much pain, and so anxious already. But I tried to tell you after that. Many times. And every time I’d start telling you, you’d just say, ‘I don’t want to hear about problems. I want to hear about solutions.’ Well, I didn’t have any.”

  “But… but…,” Mrs. Bloom stuttered, rushing forward. I followed her, but slowly. “There’s a vast difference between ‘problems’ and our big draw not coming. My God, Brenda. What were you thinking? I’ll be the laughingstock of Mill Town. And so will you. I trusted you to do this gala right, Brenda. I trusted you…”

  I don’t know if Mrs. Bloom heard Brenda, she was so busy fussing. Plus the crowd downstairs was busting their bellies over Louis Prima. But I heard her. She said, “But you shouldn’t have.”

  Brenda wasn’t crying. Not that I could see her face well, but there were no tears in her voice, only sadness, when she said, “I’m sorry I let you down, Mother.”

  “I’m sorry?” Mrs. Bloom said as she clutched the metal railing. “As if I’m sorry is going to fix this debacle?”

  Brenda uttered a few more sorrys, her head down so that they were muffled, while Mrs. Bloom uttered a few more my Gods and what are we going to dos and turned in tight circles. Downstairs, the crowd called Prima and Smith back for one more number, and Brenda lifted her head. “Go, Teaspoon. Or you’re going to miss your debut. You hear me? Go!” But I couldn’t go. I could only stand there and cry.

  “Damn it, Teaspoon. Don’t wait for me. I can’t go down there. Do you understand? I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  “I’m not going, Brenda. Not unless you come with me.”

  It was like time itself was standing suspended, as it’s called,
just like the catwalk. Downstairs the crowd cheered and whistled over Prima and Smith’s encore song, and then, after Mr. Carter drummed up a bit more applause for them, he started the Sunshine Sisters’ intro.

  Brenda groaned, then said, “I’ve let you both down. I’m so, so very sorry.”

  Brenda had been leaning against one of the black poles that served as a railing for the catwalk. But after her last sorry, she stood up. Slowly. She turned around and grabbed the long pole that went from the railing up to the tent-like middle of the ceiling. Then she lifted her long blue skirt, pretty as the sky, and stepped up on the bottom rail, her bare foot curling around it, her arms locked around the pole.

  “Brenda!” Mrs. Bloom snapped when she looked up and saw what Brenda was doing. Brenda pulled her other foot up on the railing. “What on earth are you doing?” I couldn’t move. My head couldn’t think.

  Mrs. Bloom took a step, her gloved arms coming out. “Get down from there. Brenda, get down!”

  And Brenda screamed, “Don’t come any closer. You hear me? Not one step closer. Either of you.” Mrs. Bloom’s arms were out now, her hands shaking.

  I looked at the polka dots of light shining up through the thin as paper Starlight sky. “Brenda. You’re scaring me. Get down. You could fall. It’s a forty-five-foot drop.”

  But of course Brenda knew that.

  Mrs. Bloom was probably thinking the same thing, because every bit of mad she had in her turned to shock and scared. “Brenda, don’t be foolish. Get down. We’ll make up an excuse… offer to reimburse them… anything. It’ll be okay. Just get down. It’s just a program.”

  “But it’s everything to you, Mother. And I’m sorry. Sorry I couldn’t be the perfect daughter you wanted me to be. And Teaspoon, I’m so sorry I couldn’t have been a better Big Sister to you.”

  “My God,” Mrs. Bloom said, worry as big as the Starlight sky in her voice. “Brenda. Come on. Get down. This is crazy. You can’t do something like this over a show.”

  Brenda’s golden waves swished against her back as she shook her head, then leaned it against the pole. She must have been shaking, too, because her skirt was fluttering even though she wasn’t moving. “No. It isn’t just about the show. And you can’t make this one right, Mother. Neither can I.”