Oh, if only I could have gone home after he was done. I was already on emotional overload. He put himself through all of that for you, girl. Get used to it.
“For our last act, please welcome Alejandra Perez from Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s homeroom, who knows that the two most important things in her life are the music and the mirror.” GET ME OUT OF HERE!!
I turned to Lee in a blind panic, but without any warning the lights blacked out while Mr. Disharoon played a long drumroll on the piano—and when they came up again, all that was lit was a bank of upstage mirrors that hadn’t been there before. Mirrors. My God, Augie actually got me mirrors! Maybe they were only the six-foot kind that you can buy at Target for $5.99, but they were mirrors! Ten of them hammered together, side by side, glittering like I doubt they ever did for Donna McKechnie. Okay, Augie. All is forgiven. In fact, I was so mesmerized by the dazzling visuals, I completely forgot that I was supposed to be a part of them. Then Lee shoved me out onto the stage bodily and it all came back in a rush—especially after I’d been hit with a spotlight that Augie had insisted on commandeering himself. At that point I stared out into the darkened auditorium at a silent audience that was waiting for me to do something—and that’s when I realized I had four choices: I could die, I could scream, I could run, or I could sing. There really didn’t seem to be any other alternative.
“Give me . . . somebody . . . to dance for,” I began tentatively, wondering whose voice I was hearing. It sounded a little shaky, but since Cassie is nervous anyway when she sings the song in the show, it’s supposed to come off shaky. (The Perez family knows how to rationalize on its feet, though nobody excels at it the way Carlos does.) Yet it was at that exact moment that I had my first musical comedy epiphany—such an Augie thing to do. What did Ethel Merman say in Gypsy? “Here she is, boys! Here she is, world! Here’s Rose!” And that was all it took. On some level I must have channeled her attitude, because the next five and a half minutes passed in an accelerating blur. “Play me the music—” Pivot, lunge, hitch kick, you go, girl. “Give me a chance to come through.” Anthony watching me from the wings with both of his thumbs in the air. “All I ever needed was the music and the mirror—” A red streak twirling in front of Augie’s mirrors. Is that me?? “And the chance to dance—” Center stage again. “For you!”
Lee told me at the party that when I stumbled into the wings at the end of the number, I was crying. I don’t remember that. I don’t remember the unending hug from Augie, I certainly don’t remember the kiss on the cheek from Anthony, and I have absolutely no recollection of the inexplicable noise coming out of the audience. Lee said it was something called applause. I took her word for it.
Now I know how you must have felt in Paris. I think we both surprised a lot of people—especially ourselves.
Fondly,
Alejandra
LAURENTS SCHOOL
BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS
* * * * * * *
PLEASE JOIN US IN CONGRATULATING
THE WINNERS OF OUR 2003 TALENT SHOW—STARS OF TOMORROW!
*
FIRST PRIZE
ALEJANDRA PEREZ
*
SECOND PRIZE
ANTHONY KELLER
*
THIRD PRIZE
BRUCE DANIELS
*
BEST DIRECTOR
AUGIE HWONG
*
Dear Jacqueline,
Augie’s parents and Anthony’s father took us to Bartleby’s for our own version of a post-Oscar party, along with Lee—my resident alibi for the evening—and the inevitable Andy Wexler. (Augie “sort of asked” Andy if he wanted to join us, and Andy “sort of said yes.”) Bartleby’s is smack in the middle of Kenmore Square and it’s almost always a safe call for hamburgers, celebrations, and Stevie Nicks—especially on a night like this.
“Say ‘Kenmore Square,’” I insisted.
“Kenmaw Sqway-ah,” replied Anthony automatically.
“Say ‘Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina.’”
“Nothing could be finah than to be in Caroliner.”
“You’re doing that on purpose.”
“I’m not. I sway-ah.”
We were out in the middle of the dance floor, and I’m still not entirely sure how we got there. An hour earlier I’d been ready to kiss off my toe shoes for the rest of my life, but shortly after we’d been seated, Anthony looked up awkwardly from a Coca-Cola and blurted, “Um, do you want to dance?”—and there was no way I could have turned him down. It was probably the “um” that did it. Men become vulnerable when they’re unsure of themselves, and “vulnerable” is the new “hot.” Besides, Alanis Morissette was blaring through the speakers, so I had an entirely different set of reasons for saying yes. Really. I did. (I also pretended not to notice the high five that Anthony and his father exchanged behind my back. They’re all such children.) Which is how we wound up shimmying shoulder to shoulder on the parquet floor while I tested the limits of his suddenly legitimate Kennedy accent.
“Just say it!”
“Okay! ‘Jackie, I’m out of underway-ah.’”
“You think that’s the way they sounded behind closed doors?”
“Oh, right. Like I’m so sure she did his laundry.” By now, Alanis had given way to k.d. lang, and we were drenched in swirling colored lights. Aqua is a dangerous shade for anyone who doesn’t want to get too close to Anthony—it brings out everything it shouldn’t: his teal blue eyes, how well he moves his body, how little it takes to make him smile, and how effortlessly he can be charming when he leaves the gray T-shirts and Gap easy fits at home. Be careful, Alejandra. It’s the same old Anthony who all but propositioned you on the first day of school. Don’t let the suit and tie fool you. He didn’t get us out of the Bay of Pigs mess, he didn’t insist on a nuclear test ban, he didn’t go after Big Steel, and he most certainly did not promise to put a man on the moon. He’s just Anthony.
Meanwhile, Lee had gotten so fed up watching Augie and Andy staring dejectedly at the D.J. and each other like two sock-hop wallflowers who’d just dropped in from the 1950s, she grabbed them by their respective arms and dragged them out onto the floor with us.
“Somebody’s going to dance with me,” she warned them, hiding her game plan behind a frown. Only then did they remember that they had feet. Augie was the better hoofer, but once Andy had loosened up, he got prolific fast. Never give your boyfriend an edge, even when he’s not officially your boyfriend yet.
“Dude,” insisted Andy, pulling Augie toward him, “show me how you did that.” By the third verse, Lee had them boogeying face-to-face and getting used to the fact that they were doing just fine without her—which of course was the whole idea. Only then did she edge over to where Anthony and I were trying out a new lockstep that we’d both seen on American Idol.
“Well, that only took ten minutes,” she mumbled into my ear. “Do you think they realize they’re actually dancing with each other?”
“Probably on some primal level,” I whispered back. “But don’t tell them that.” Lee thought about it for a minute before she shrugged in agreement.
Correction. They’re not teal blue. They’re azure.
Fondly,
Alejandra
INSTANT MESSENGER
AugieHwong: Oh, my God. Three times while we were dancing, our bodies bumped together. Once might have been an accident. Even twice. Not three times. I need to absorb this fast. He’ll be over for dinner in 6 hours and 43 minutes.
AlePerez: Anthony actually let me teach him how to say “Alejandra” instead of “Alejandrer.” I’m still reeling.
AugieHwong: Is there a rule on who’s supposed to say “I love you” first? I know it’s probably way too premature, but I want to be ready just in case.
AlePerez: Don’t be such a pushover. He needs to sweat a little. You can’t just hand him everything on a silver serving tray like that.
AugieHwong: Look who’s talking. Like you didn’t fall f
or Tick’s “um” routine.
AlePerez: You know, Anthony wears jackets and ties well. He might want to consider it more often.
AugieHwong: Maybe I’m reading into this whole dinner thing more than I should. What if he’s just hungry?
Dear Jacqueline,
I won first prize and fell for a premeditated “um.” All in the same evening. I played into his hands as though I were a viola. Whatever happened to my learning curve??
Lee insisted that I accompany her to Amory Park this afternoon, where Haller’s Hornets and T.C.’s Titans were evidently battling for the title of Most Appealing Butts. (One glance at the infield proved that the Hornets had no competition, but Lee insisted on keeping a detailed scorecard. She’s nothing if not thorough.) I’d begun to wonder if Lee’s pathological attachment to boys’ backsides deserved a conversation with a counselor, when Anthony’s name was announced as the lead-off hitter. As he grabbed hold of a bat and stepped confidently up to the plate, Lee promptly interrupted her own monologue on the Hornet shortstop’s crack to lean in conspiratorially and point toward Anthony crouched in the batter’s box.
“Does he look as dreamy to you in daylight as he did last night?” she whispered.
“For God’s sake, Lee,” I retorted impatiently, throwing her off the scent. “Nobody’s used the word dreamy since 1963!” Yes. He looked as dreamy to me in daylight as he did last night. So what?
That’s when I noticed the little blond boy sitting on the ground beside the on-deck circle, who’d been lost in a game of tic-tac-toe he’d been playing in the dirt with a Popsicle stick. But only until he looked up and realized that No. 25 was batting for the Titans. From that moment on, Anthony had his undivided attention. And Anthony knew it too. Before every pitch he glanced back over his shoulder nervously to check on the kid—and he went 4 for 4 while he was at it.
Ordinarily I would have been intrigued. But not today. I’d already been duped by an “um” and I wasn’t about to fall for another routine.
Oh, incidentally. Three sixth graders who were present at last night’s talent show came up to me between innings and asked for my autograph. I’m glad my fifteen minutes of fame are almost up. I do a lot better in the real world.
Fondly,
Alejandra
LAURENTS SCHOOL
BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS
TO: Diana Fitzpatrick, 9th Grade
FROM: William Koutrelakos, Principal
SUBJECT: Frosh/Soph Winter Play
Diana:
Pending approval by the PTA, the Arts Committee has decided on Kiss Me, Kate for the frosh/soph winter play. Generally, the tenth graders have first crack at all the parts—but in light of this year’s talent show, we’d like to invite Augie Hwong to audition for the supporting role of Bill and likewise ask Alejandra Perez to try out for the role of Lilli Vanessi. Since Lilli is the female lead, we may run into a few political problems with a couple of the tenth-grade parents, but if she performs it as well as she performed in the Follies, nobody’s going to complain for long.
Please find out if the kids would be interested. Thanks.
Dear Mama,
Augie and Alé got asked to audition for parts in the school play. They’re going to be stars but I’m not. I don’t care. I didn’t really want to be famous anyway. Why didn’t they ask me too?? I won second prize! Was it because of the JFK thing? Was it because Kiss Me, Kate has something to do with Shakespeare and they were afraid of my Two Gentlemen of Veroner accent? What a bunch of cheesers.
The little boy I told you about didn’t turn out to be you in disguise after all (even though I still think you had something to do with it). His name is actually Hucky Harper. For three games in a row he sat in the dirt by the on-deck circle and watched me play, and for three games in a row he kept shaking his head yes or no so I’d be able to tell whether to swing or not. It gets kind of weird when you think about it too long. I’m the only guy in Brookline who’s hit safely in fourteen at-bats. Even the real Tony C never had a record like that. So of course I’ve gone looking for him after each game to find out how he did it, but he’s always gone by then. And since you couldn’t see him from Augie’s seat in the bleachers because of the green pads on the bottom of the backstop, my brother thought I’d finally popped my top. (To tell you the truth, I wasn’t so sure I hadn’t either.)
Nehi was the one who proved that I wasn’t making up mirages after all. It’s not just that he understands most of the things I say, but also that he saw the kid watching me too. So at the beginning of game four of my hitting streak, he hopped off the bleachers where he was playing “Catch the Snicker Snax” with Dad and Pop and trotted over to the dirt by the on-deck circle. At first Hucky looked sort of nervous (even though Hucky’s a little bit bigger than a cocker spaniel, he’s got smaller teeth), but all Nehi had to do was flop down onto his stomach and put his head in Hucky’s lap to prove that he wasn’t really a velociraptor in disguise. That made it easy for me to wander down the third-base line while our side was up so I could hang out with my dog. One way or another I was going to find out how the kid knew what pitches I should swing on.
At first I thought Hucky had issues with people in general or with me in particular, because after I plopped down on the ground next to him, I said all of the usual things you say to somebody who you never talked to before.
“Hey.”
“What’s your name?”
“How old are you?”
“I’m T.C.”
“How did you know the second pitch was going to be a fastball over the center of the plate?”
But he never said anything back. He looked up into my face with a kind of half frown as if he’d never seen another talking person in his life, and he tugged on the front of his hair until I thought he was going to pull it out. By then I’d pretty much decided he was flipping me off, until there was a loud bang from Parkman Street where they’re putting in a new sidewalk. Nehi and I both yelped at the same time, but Hucky never even noticed—he just yanked on his hair some more and looked like he was wondering why I’d just jumped a foot and a half into the air.
“Hey, are you deaf?” I wondered out loud. Which is probably the dumbest question I ever asked anybody in my life. When all I got back was a different brand of frown, I figured the answer was yes. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t still up a creek. What do you say to a deaf kid anyway? So I went back to the dugout and watched him play tic-tac-toe in the dirt and not pay attention to anything else until my fourth-inning at-bat—when he looked up long enough to get me to swing on a third-pitch slider that probably landed in Canada (assuming it ever came down). Then he went back to tic-tac-toe like all of this was supposed to be normal. By now I needed answers.
For the next three innings I sat next to him near the on-deck circle, drawing pictures in the dirt of things like bats hitting baseballs with big question marks on them, and writing in capital letters “H-O-W?” as if that was supposed to clear up his hearing.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” I asked for the tenth time. The look he gave me was the same one I got from Augie when I told him I could never tell the difference between Ethel Merman and Esther Williams.
But at the bottom of the seventh, a lady in a green dress came down from the bleachers and interrupted us before I had a chance to use the sign language I’d seen once on Gilligan’s Island when a native showed up out of nowhere. (How come visitors never had a problem finding that place, but those seven ginks could never figure out how to get off of it?) First she kneeled down in front of him, and then she pushed the tugged-on hair away from his forehead.
“Who’s this?” she asked him (meaning me), while she moved her hands and wiggled her fingers at the same time. “A new friend?” (Usually I hate how adults get singy-songy voices when they talk to little kids, but this time I didn’t mind. I mean, it’s not like Hucky could hear her anyway.) After he shook his head no (NO?!) and did the finger things right back to her, she told me that she was
a social worker named Elizabeth Jordan and that she had to take Hucky home to the Boston Institute for the Deaf in the other half of Brookline so he could work on his arithmetic before dinner. She was also the one who filled in some of the blanks that Hucky couldn’t answer just with his face and eyes and hands. (1) His whole name is Hucky Evan Harper. (2) He’s six. (3) He was born without a father and when his mother found out he couldn’t hear, she gave him to the Institute because she didn’t know what to do with a deaf son. (4) They put him in three different foster homes that he liked a lot but they were only temporary. (5) Now he lives at the Institute in a big house with other kids, so he’s not alone anymore.
I guess I could have asked Mrs. Jordan how Hucky knew what pitches I should swing on, but I didn’t want to get him into trouble—or piss him off—if he turned out to be one of those weird little guys who says things like “I see dead people.” I have enough on my plate already.
I love you,
T.C.
INSTANT MESSENGER
AugieHwong: Andy’s family does Thanksgiving a lot earlier than we do, so he says he might stop by on Thursday afternoon and have turkey with us. You think it means anything?
TCKeller: Dude, you can’t do this every time you invite him someplace! He’s falling for you. Get over it.
AugieHwong: I’m not so sure. Maybe he just wants to hang out with us because he and Dad still have 40 more Patriots games to talk through. Maybe he has weird taste buds and he actually likes Mom’s bok choy casserole. Maybe he just wants to see the Fenway Park model that Pop has in the basement. Maybe I’m just the convenient excuse.