If it had ended there, it would have been one of the better days of my year. But around 2:30 in the morning—right in the middle of a dream about Augie playing left field for the White Sox—it got really cold at Comiskey Park. That was because Nehi had pulled off all my blankets and sheets while he was poking his nose into my neck like he always does when it’s time for me to get up for school. But now he was also yanking on my sleeve too, and by the time I woke up enough to figure out it was still dark, I was also awake enough to hear Hucky crying. It wasn’t very loud and it almost sounded like coughing—but it got me up on my feet pretty fast anyway. Nehi had already jumped back onto Hucky’s bed and begun pacing back and forth like he was saying “Do something!” Do what? Mama, his hands were clenched into two little fists and his whole body was scrunched up and shaking like a catcher who’s just been really badly hurt—but he was still sound asleep. So I couldn’t even laugh him out of it the way you used to do whenever I had a bad dream. The only thing I could think of was to wrap his arms back around Shut-the-Door and then sit on the edge of his bed and keep patting his head to see if it made a difference. T.C., you’re SO out of your league here! Get Pop. Call Mrs. Jordan. Anybody who knows what they’re doing! It felt like we were there for most of the night, but the sobbing finally got quieter and quieter until it stopped completely—and Nehi even lay back down, keeping one eye open like he was still at Orange Alert. I guess I didn’t fix what was broken, but it was the best I could come up with in the middle of the night. And any hoser probably could have done better.
Mama, I really need some help here.
I love you,
T.C.
www.augiehwong.com
PRIVATE CHAT
AlePerez: How many times did it happen?
TCKeller: Three. I finally got the idea to fall asleep next to him and Nehi so he wouldn’t be left alone. It worked. At least he didn’t cry anymore.
AugieHwong: He could have been homesick. Sometimes you do that when you’re little and in a strange bed.
TCKeller: Or maybe it happens all the time, but since Mateo’s deaf and can’t hear him, nobody knows about it.
AugieHwong: Please don’t go there. It reminds me of you when we were seven.
TCKeller: I cried in my sleep??
AugieHwong: All the nights I stayed over you did. I never felt so clueless in my life.
AlePerez: Maybe Hucky misses his mother too.
TCKeller: How? He never knew her.
AugieHwong: No, it’s the Mary Poppins thing. He really thinks she’s going to rescue him. Tick, remember his face when Aunt Babe bought him the picture from the movie?
TCKeller: That’s what I thought. So I tried to hint that maybe she’s too busy with kids in England to come to Brookline but—
AlePerez: Anthony, you can’t do that. She’s all he’s got.
AugieHwong: Yeah, but we also can’t let him think that she’s really going to float down in the middle of Commonwealth Avenue. That’s not fair either.
TCKeller: I know, I know. The only person who’s going to convince him that Mary Poppins isn’t coming to stay with him is Mary Poppins.
AlePerez: You lost me.
TCKeller: Aug, how much do you know about Julie Andrews?
AugieHwong: Real name Julia Elizabeth Wells, born October 1, 1935 with a five-octave range, loves kids, has three of her own, wrote a couple of children’s books, and incidentally knows the British version of American Sign Language (assuming that’s what she was doing with her hands while she was singing “My Favorite Things” on the Tony Awards). Why?
TCKeller: Look, I know she’s famous and all, but if we FedEx her a letter and tell her about Hucky, she’s got to write him back, doesn’t she?
AugieHwong: First of all, where are we going to find her? You can’t send something like that to an agent and think they’re going to forward it. I know. I tried writing to Anne Bancroft that way. Six times. I kept getting form letters from the Creative Artists Agency and one of them included an autographed picture of Candice Bergen.
AlePerez: I can get Julie Andrews’s home address from the Secret Service. But I’ll need a day.
TCKeller: You’re kidding, right?
AugieHwong: No, she’s not. I’ve seen her Outlook Address Book. She’s got the FBI in there too.
AlePerez: Who’s going to write it?
TCKeller: We all are. I don’t do well with letters to famous people unless they have batting averages.
LAURENTS SCHOOL
BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS
VIA E-MAIL
Dear Ted:
Floor-level Celtics seats are the private property of the people who own them, even when they don’t show up. Sneaking downstairs at halftime and sitting in the empty ones is no different than breaking into a neighbor’s house to use the swimming pool while the neighbors are out of town. See if you can finger-spell M-I-S-D-E-M-E-A-N-O-R. We should have been arrested.
As of this morning, I have half a faculty and an entire ninth grade at various stages of proficiency in American Sign Language—and it’s not even on the curriculum. The teachers don’t have a choice. Learning it is the only way they can figure out what the kids are saying.
Clayton Landey claims that he’s never seen anybody pick up ASL as quickly as Anthony has, which probably accounts for the overall change in his grades. Including yesterday’s algebra quiz, his GPA is 98. Evidently, American Sign Language drains all of the energy necessary to keep the lid on a B+ average. Please don’t say “I told you so.” Just because you wear “stubborn” well doesn’t mean you’d look good in “smug.”
Lori
KELLER CONSTRUCTION
BOSTON • GLOUCESTER • WALTHAM
ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION
Dear Lori:
I never attained enough emotional maturity to graduate to the level of smug. The best I can do is “nyah, nyah.”
Sneaking downstairs into the expensive seats is a tradition as old as the seventh-inning stretch, Fenway Franks, and tossing out the first pitch on Opening Day. Not only is it an accepted fact of life, it’s considered unpatriotic not to make the effort. Get used to it.
Craig, Wei, and I are taking the kids skiing in Vermont from December 26–30. (“The kids” is a category that hereafter includes Hucky, now that I’ve been deemed morally competent by the Commonwealth of Mass-achusetts.) We’re staying at the Briar Hearth Inn in Woodford, and due to an unexplained mathematical brain fart, I somehow managed to book an extra room by mistake. Gee, it’d be a shame to waste it. “Kids, look who’s staying at our hotel!” What could be more credible?
Ted
Dear Angie,
Remember when you started rehearsals for Mame and you discovered muscles that hadn’t been invented yet? Because I have one in my left butt that even scientists couldn’t know about.
In Kiss Me, Kate I play a scoundrel who loves Lois (Lee Meyerhoff) but who can’t stop gambling—so in between dances, he’s dodging mobsters and getting everybody else into trouble right along with him. It’s definitely a stretch for me. I mean, the kids are so used to my Katharine Hepburn, they never knew what kind of a range I had before.
But the star of the show is definitely Alé. When Mrs. Packer blocked her in “Wunderbar” and “So in Love With You Am I,” me and Andy and the rest of the cast just sat on the edge of the stage to watch and listen. (We found out later that you could hear her as far away as the cafeteria, which is why about thirty civilians snuck into the back of the auditorium for a closer look too.) She has the kind of smoky voice that’s part Lena Horne, part Juanita Hall, and the rest of it like nobody you ever heard before in your life. And she knows how to sell “hot.” Tick had better move fast before the competition drowns him. And speaking of drowning, I qualified as a near-fatality at swim practice this afternoon. Tick was butterflying in the lane next to me, but I got assigned a half a lap behind Andy. Imagine the view every time I looked up. I accidentally discovered that it’s not a good idea to hyperventilate in e
ight feet of chlorinated water.
We finished our letter to Julie Andrews. Tick, Alé, and I each wrote our own drafts, but since I’m the authority on divas, it was my job to choose the best parts and put them all together.
Dear Ms. Andrews:
(ALÉ)
Please forgive the intrusion, but we’re three ninth graders who live in Brookline, Massachusetts, and who find ourselves with a problem that only you can help us solve.
(TICK)
When Hucky watches Mary Poppins, he doesn’t see special effects or make-believe houses. What he sees is a world he thinks is real.
(AUGIE)
Sooner or later somebody’s going to adopt him—but until that happens, you’re all he’s got. So if you can remember how Jane and Michael looked up to you in the movie, maybe you’ll consider writing him a short note. It could make a lot of difference.
I really hope she comes through. At first I thought Hucky was just another one of my brother’s long-term, generally weird projects (e.g., Free Buck Weaver and Save Fenway Park), but the more I hang out with this kid, the more I remember what it was like to be the same age. And since Hucky doesn’t have to worry about getting confused by words, sometimes he zeroes in on the bottom line a lot faster than I do—especially when I try to con myself into or out of things.
HUCKY:
Who’s in the picture?
ME:
That’s Andy and me at Thanksgiving.
HUCKY:
Why are you smiling at him that way?
ME:
Uh, because I love him.
HUCKY:
Does he love you too?
ME:
I don’t know.
HUCKY:
Why don’t you know??
Maybe I’d be smarter with only four senses.
Love,
Augie
www.augiehwong.com
PRIVATE CHAT
AugieHwong: I just e-mailed you the final draft of the letter. I’m signing off on this, so let’s rock and roll.
TCKeller: Hold it. I just got to the end. Hucky does not need an autographed copy of Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall.
AugieHwong: No, but I do.
TCKeller: You said you were going to lose that line.
AugieHwong: I did. And then I hid it in a P.S.
TCKeller: Alé, how does the rest of it look?
AlePerez: If you cut the P.S. and get rid of the question about Richard Burton’s drinking, it’s a done deal.
TCKeller: Sweet. Then both of you guys e-mail me your signatures so I can paste them below mine. I’ll FedEx it out this afternoon. Alé, please thank Clint for Julie’s address.
AugieHwong: And while you’re at it, find out if he knows where I can get ahold of Carol Burnett.
Dear Angie,
Nobody remembers that when you sang “We Need a Little Christmas,” it wasn’t supposed to be because you were happy. The stock market had crashed, you had to sell all of the paintings in your Beekman Place apartment, and the only present you could afford to buy your nephew was a pair of long pants. But as soon as you finished the song, the doorbell rang and it was a Southern gent named Beauregard. You both discovered love, got married, and lived happily ever after (until he fell off an Alp).
So while I was standing in front of the Coolidge Corner Theatre yesterday afternoon waiting for Andy, I should have known that everything was going to work out as soon as I heard “We Need a Little Christmas” twinkling through the box office speakers. Up until that moment, my mood was so right out of Dickens and Sondheim, I didn’t even notice the first couple of snowflakes, the Xmas lights, or the smell of roasting chestnuts from the vendors on every corner. How could I? Andy’s going to Cleveland tomorrow. For eight days. EIGHT DAYS! That’s 192 hours. 11,520 minutes. 691,200 seconds. 1 one thousand, 2 one thousand, 3 one thousand . . . Right around “103 one thousand,” I saw him weaving his way through the crowd of second-to-last-day shoppers on Harvard Street. He hadn’t noticed me yet, so it gave me a chance to take my favorite kind of inventory from an anonymous point of view.
His hair curling out from under his wool cap.
His red nose from the cold.
His right hand jammed into his pocket because he’s always losing one of his gloves.
His scarf hanging around his shoulders because he doesn’t understand that you’re supposed to wrap it around your neck. (“It’s not a fashion statement, you dope—it has a function!”)
His eyes darting all over the place—looking for me!
His eyes finding me and smiling before his mouth even does.
“Hey, Spidey.”
“Hey, Aquaboy.” We stood there for a second just looking at each other. How come it’s so easy to talk on the phone and online but so impossible in person??
“You get the tickets?”
“Yeah. They’re almost sold out.”
“We’d better go inside then.”
“Let’s do it.”
As usual, Andy went ahead to find us seats while I stood in line at the concession counter—which gave me a good chance to get un-neurotic before the movie started. Look, it’s not like you’re going to be sitting on your hands while he’s in Ohio. You’ve got Vermont. Skiing with Tick!! Toboggan rides with Mom and Dad! Snowboarding with Pop! Hot chocolate in front of the fire with Hucky! 691,200 seconds’ll be over before you know it. No, they won’t. 211 one thousand, 212 one thousand . . . Just then my cell phone rang.
ME:
Hello?
ANDY:
Did I tell you I want Junior Mints?
ME:
Yes.
ANDY:
Did I tell you I miss you already?
ME:
No. But it’s only for 192 hours. I know. I’ve been working on this since last week.
ANDY:
Dude. Who hasn’t?
ME:
You know, Irving Berlin once wrote this song about us called “My Defenses Are Down” and—
ANDY:
Hold it. Did a girl sing that one too?
ME:
No. A guy.
ANDY:
Then okay. As long as we’re on the same page for a change.
Naturally, by the time I got to our seats with the popcorn, the red Twizzlers, the Junior Mints, and the Slurpees, we were back to single syllables again. “Here.” “Thanks.” “Gum?” “Sure.” If you and Beau had started out this way, you’d still be selling off your paintings.
But I finally decided to do something about it. Maybe it was because Hucky had made me realize what ginks we were or maybe it was because I knew I’d never be able to sing a torch song with any real authority until I took some affirmative action. So as soon as the lights went down, I gave my right hand permission to storm the beaches at Normandy. Which is exactly what it did. Reaching across the armrest, it deliberately took hold of Andy’s five left fingers—no accidental bumping this time, but sure and confident like it knew just what it was doing. Andy instantly squeezed back, and that’s the way we stayed for two and a half hours.
LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
Reviewed by Augie Hwong and Andy Wexler
PLOT: Lots of very short people running around onscreen. WHO REMEMBERS??
RATING: Four thumbs up. Best time we ever had at a movie.
When we left the theatre for cookies at the café, the snow was falling all over a winter wonderland of our own, and “We Need a Little Christmas” was still serenading the people lined up to get in. That’s when I knew for sure that I was going to survive the 192 hours without him, and that sooner or later we’d wind up as happy as you and Beau (assuming Andy doesn’t fall off an Alp). Besides, I’d already started a new page in the Augie Hwong Journal of Modern Anxiety called “Will He Ever Kiss Me?”
The Word Shop
BROOKLINE’S FAVORITE BOOKSTORE
E-Memo From the Desk of
Phyllis Bryant
Augie Hwong, anybody can see how much that
boy likes you, so don’t go looking for trouble where there isn’t any. He’s the best Christmas present you ever got, so keep quiet and enjoy yourself.
Phyllis was right. I made it through the first 43½ Andy-less hours without even counting them.
Christmas Day was mostly about getting ready for Vermont, but we had a truckload of packages under the tree that we had to plow through first. Half of them were for me and Tick, and half of those were from Aunt Babe—who always finds a way to blend our Christmas presents into our birthday presents without a gap. (Tick is February 16 and I’m March 24, so Aunt Babe’s figured out how to blend our birthdays into Easter too.) Best Reactions to Christmas Gifts 2003? Mine when I opened the actual authentic original reproduction All About Eve poster from my brother, and his when he got a good look at the autographed photo of Carlton Fisk in the 1975 World Series that I’d even framed in gold. (I still don’t know what he sees in that guy. So he hit a home run. Big deal. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?) Andy and I already decided that our present to each other was just knowing we’d be together on January 2. Alé thought it was “achingly sweet,” but I never told Tick about it. He’d have puked all over me.
Since we’re leaving for Woodford early tomorrow morning, Mrs. Jordan brought Hucky over to our house in time for dinner. That’s when he scored the bonanza he’d been coveting through three weeks’ worth of pilgrimages to Toy Mart: an electronic sing-a-long keyboard with a mike. Go figure. Tick says that deaf people can feel music the way we can hear it, and Hucky proved the point. He gave three sold-out concerts between the plum pudding and bed.
“What song was that”
“‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’! Don’t you know anything?”
I have a boyfriend and I’m going skiing with a 3½-foot Bruce Springsteen. Haul out the holly.
Love,