MY MOST EXCELLENT YEAR
Conclusion
After putting up with my leading man’s stagnant breath for three consecutive nights in Kiss Me, Kate, I was somewhat surprised to discover that his mother was a talent agent. (Let’s just say that I knew for sure she wasn’t a dental hygienist.) She offered to represent me after Kate closed, and twelve weeks later I had my Equity card. But Bye Bye Birdie turned out to be a stroll in the park compared to what Augie and Hucky put me through first.
INSTANT MESSENGER
AlePerez: The audition’s not ’til Tuesday. I’m going to sing “One Boy.”
AugieHwong: Oh, you are so not going to sing “One Boy.” Every Kim in 19 languages sings “One Boy.” Directors hang themselves when they hear “One Boy.” Do you want the part or don’t you?
AlePerez: I dare you to do this to me again.
AugieHwong: There’s a rehearsal space above Dad’s tae kwon do studio. We can use it whenever nobody’s there. You’re going to sing “Two Ladies in the Shade of the Banana Tree” and I’m choreographing it. We only have four days, so don’t make any other plans until I say so.
AlePerez: I detest you.
Augie showed me the steps, I did them, and Hucky said they needed work. So we started all over again. They made a deadly team. I had no idea why I was hanging my career on the artistic sensibilities of a six-year-old, except that he happened to be right. I performed “Two Ladies in the Shade of the Banana Tree” at the audition. The other eleven Kims performed “One Boy.” I got the part.
Since then I’ve been pretty lucky to stay employed between semesters at school. After Birdie, there was Carnival, The Sound of Music, The Fantasticks (does anyone know what this show is about??), Li’l Abner, Gypsy, and Merrily We Roll Along. Mamita was the first member of my family to convert. She began keeping a scrapbook of all my clippings and even has them cross-referenced on an Excel spreadsheet. And Carlos loves hanging outside the theatre so he can say, “That’s my baby sister” to whoever will listen. “Whoever” is generally tall, raven-haired, anywhere from twenty-four to twenty-eight, buxom, and usually connected to international affairs. My brother has turned opportunism into both a social and political science.
Papa held out for as long as he could, but he knew I was going to be a pain in the ass until he caved in, so he didn’t have much of a choice.
“I should have had another son,” he grumbled.
“But Papa,” I reminded him, “he’d still have been a chorus boy. It’s in our blood.” That usually ended the argument. It also dawned on him that I might be turned into an asset—as a face already familiar to some of the local dignitaries who attended the theatre regularly.
“Señor Perez, I saw your daughter onstage. You must be so proud of her.”
“Indeed I am, Mme. Ambassador.” Suddenly, I was actually enjoying diplomatic receptions after all—but in a black, backless floor-length gown with a rhinestone bracelet that Anthony and Hucky had given me when I was fifteen. I functioned far better as an ingénue than as an ambassador’s daughter. At least nobody had to hide me in the cloakroom anymore. And if Korea wanted to behave like a brat, let it. I’d learned how to keep my mouth shut. Besides, this is what we have a U.N. for.
Not that I’ve given up on politics completely. Lee Meyerhoff became the first junior to win the presidency of the Student Council, though she possesses one Achilles’ Heel that’s going to get in her way: She likes to tell the truth. So she made certain I was elected Madame Vice President right along with her. Now whenever she paints herself into a corner, I distract the masses with an impromptu demonstration or a protest. It doesn’t really matter what it’s about. Believe me, when pushed, I can still make an issue out of just about anything—even if it’s mayonnaise.
Tom Hirasawa (D-Calif.) and Ruth Mellick (Anthony’s aunt-Mass.) have been chairing the Congressional Committee on the Restoration of the Baseball Diamond at the Manzanar National Historic Site since the summer of 2004, and Anthony and I were asked to serve on the advisory board. After conducting an eighteen-month archaeological study (for a baseball diamond??), the Committee proposed a formal bill that ought to be going to the floor some time this session. Fred Hoyt retired as assistant superintendent of the Manzanar Site because he’d developed an ulcer. Anthony and I sent him a get-well card and flowers. I hope he didn’t think it was sarcasm.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] I have an idea. Maybe you could come to my school with me and tell them that it’s dangerous to make kids eat cream chip beef on toast at lunch. They do it every Tuesday. Yesterday Jack Eller threw up onto his plate and it looked the exact same as it did before he ate it. Isn’t that against the law?
Mateo says that when you get famous they’ll make you move to Hollywood and wear sunglasses and punch out people who take your picture. He’s wrong, right? Because why would you want to do that? I wouldn’t. Like you can’t be famous right here? So tell them no. Please?
I picked Emerson College because (a) its performing arts school is one of the best in the nation; (b) it’s on Boylston Street; and (c) Anthony’s grown way too handsome to be left unchaperoned in full-semester increments.
INSTANT MESSENGER
TCKeller: If you have to do Bye Bye Birdie again, could you at least wear baggy jeans? I hated the way guys were looking at you last time.
AlePerez: Hello? You’re the one who’s going into politics. Who was a bigger romantic security risk—Ann-Margret or Bill Clinton?
TCKeller: Say something to make me feel secure.
AlePerez: I’m always true to you, darling, in my fashion.
TCKeller: Yeah, well, that didn’t exactly work.
In spite of what I’d brought myself up to believe, it turns out that I didn’t know everything after all. But what I was missing is what I picked up when I was fourteen—through Augie’s trust and Anthony’s heart.
And the “um” definitely had something to do with it.
English Assignment
T.C. Keller, 11th Grade
Ms. LaFontaine’s Class
MY MOST EXCELLENT YEAR
Conclusion
I was only grounded for four weeks, and after that Pop asked Mrs. Jordan at the Deaf Institute if she could send us papers to fill out so we could adopt Hucky ourselves. (It was bound to happen sooner or later anyway. Even Nehi knew that.) He slept in my room for the first couple of months and then Pop and I cleared out the guest bedroom and made it Hucky H.Q. We even put in an extra bed, an extra chest of drawers, and an extra bulletin board for Mateo’s sleepovers. After all, we have traditions to pass down to the next generation. (Speaking of traditions, Hucky’s the only Keller male not named for a Red Sock—at least so far. A month after he moved in with us, Aunt Helen called from Portland and said, “Thank God. Now maybe Bobo will let me name our next one Jeremiah.”) Phyllis is his godmother, Augie’s his godfather, and Nehi’s his guardian. No kid ever had better backup.
He’s pulling all A’s in school except for one B in social studies, but big brother Augie’s taking care of that by volunteering to be his tutor. They’ve already been through the Revolutionary War (disguised as a movie called The Women), and Hucky turned an eighty-four into a ninety-two on his first test after that. He’s also kept up with his drawing, which somewhere along the line went from “cute” to “yikes!” I think he’s going to be a graphic artist when he grows up, Alé thinks he’s going to be an illustrator, and Pop hopes he’ll be an architect. (“He can design the houses and then I’ll build them.”) He even tried out for T-ball a year ago and made the squad in the first-round draft. Now he’s his team’s ace at second base. But he insists that I call him Stuffy McInnis whenever I’m in the Amory Park bleachers watching him play. So maybe he’ll end up with a Red Sox name after all.
Hucky still hears from Julie Andrews at least once a month, and he always sends her his newest drawings, his report cards, and pictures of him in his unifo
rm. But right after we met her, he saw The Sound of Music and figured out that she was an actress and not a nanny—so she began signing her letters “Love, Julie” instead of “Love, Mary Poppins.” It didn’t make any difference to Hucky, though. A spoonful of sugar is a spoonful of sugar.
INSTANT MESSENGER
AugieHwong: Why don’t we go to Emerson with Alé?
TCKeller: Because that’s a song and dance college, you gink! Who’s going to take me seriously with a degree in Ethel Merman??
AugieHwong: Tick, do you realize what a name you could make for yourself as the first president who ever sang his inaugural address? Maybe it sounds a little out there, but you won’t know until you’ve tried. It’s worth thinking about.
TCKeller: No. It isn’t.
A couple of things made me decide on a career in politics: (1) Alé and I are already on a congressional committee (and we weren’t even trying), (2) Major League Baseball finally got pressured into convening a panel to decide whether or not Buck Weaver should be reinstated, so Pop and I are looking for candidates for our next crusade, and (3) once you find yourself saying “Let the word go forth from this day on to friend and foe alike” in a blue suit in front of an auditorium filled with people, it kind of gets in your blood. Besides, Aunt Ruth is the front-runner to replace Ted Kennedy as the Democratic senator from Massachusetts when he retires, which means her seat in the House would be wide open. We might as well keep it in the family, like Grandma Lily’s china.
Pop and Lori have been “together-together” for two years. (This differs from regular together because now when they have dinner, Lori calls it a date and not a coincidence.) I hope they wait until Augie and I are in college before they actually get married. I mean, I can definitely picture her as my mother, but seeing my adviser in a bathrobe is still a concept I haven’t been able to wrap my mind around. Even if she does drag Pop down to the empty fifty-yard-line seats during halftime.
The Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, and Bucky F. Dent can kiss my Boston ass. Pop and Hucky and I were in the grandstand for Game 2, even though tickets were going for as much as $2,000 apiece. We didn’t have to worry about that because Clint Lockhart was made head of the Secret Service last year. It always helps to love somebody who has friends in high places.
INSTANT MESSENGER
AlePerez: Do you have any interest in meeting the president of Brazil?
TCKeller: None. Why?
AlePerez: There’s an embassy party for Papa in Washington that he wants me to attend. But I won’t go without you.
TCKeller: Any chance we could duck out early and walk around the Jefferson Memorial holding hands?
AlePerez: Don’t we always?
Even though I didn’t notice it while it was happening, I got reminded in ninth grade of a few things I guess I should have known all along:
1. A first kiss after five months means more than a first kiss after five minutes.
2. Always remember what it was like to be six.
3. Never, ever stop believing in magic, no matter how old you get. Because if you keep looking long enough and don’t give up, sooner or later you’re going to find Mary Poppins. And if you’re really lucky, maybe even a purple balloon.
Thanks, Mama. I love you.
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