“Into the living room,” Mom says. “It’ll be tight in there, but I can’t bear to part with it.”
“And I won’t let her,” Uncle Walt says.
“Listen, if I wanted to, you couldn’t stop me,” Mom says. Sometimes I think the two of them enjoy their arguments.
“On my count,” Walt says. “One, two, three, push!”
The piano moves half a foot. But we do it again, and it moves another half a foot. Little by little, six inches at a time, we get it through the den door, into the living room, and up against the living-room wall. Coming through the front door, you practically bump into it, but we move the couch forward a little so there’s just enough space to walk through the room.
“It fits,” I say.
“Barely,” Mom says, looking doubtful.
“Barely is good enough,” Uncle Walt says. “Besides, now you can’t hide away when you play. You have to be on stage.”
“Yeah. Everybody will love that, I’m sure.”
“Play something now, Mom,” I say.
She puts up her hands in protest, but Uncle Walt insists too, and finally she sits on the bench and starts to play a medley of Cole Porter songs, starting with “Anything Goes” and then sliding into “Let’s Misbehave.” Pretty soon Uncle Walt and I start singing along with Mom, and before you know it, Grandma and Mr. Schmitz dance right into the living room.
“Now we’re cookin’!” Mr. Schmitz says. He twirls Grandma around, and her dress swings from side to side.
It’s so much fun to watch them circle and turn, their steps matching perfectly. I let myself forget for a few minutes that Uncle Walt will be leaving tomorrow, that Cyrus is mad at me, and that Grandma has a better memory of what happened fifty years ago than what happened yesterday.
Uncle Walt and I start our movie marathon at eight o’clock. Mom lays down the law, telling me I have to be in bed by midnight, so the marathon is really only two movies: Dead Poets Society, my choice because I’m feeling lousy anyway so let’s just dig in deeper, and Tootsie, Uncle Walt’s choice because it’s funny and for some reason he thinks I need cheering up.
I’m a little teary at the end of Dead Poets because Robin Williams was the best teacher ever and it wasn’t his fault the kid killed himself, and then when all the boys climb up on their desks to salute him—well, it slays me. And I wonder why people can’t understand each other better. Why do they hurt each other all the time, even when they don’t mean to? Which makes me think of Cyrus, which makes me have to get the tissue box from the bathroom.
I’ve never seen Tootsie before, so Uncle Walt launches into a big introduction. “Dustin Hoffman wanted to make this movie because the greatest challenge for an actor is to play the other gender. It took four makeup artists to figure out how to make him look realistically like a woman. Dustin said he wouldn’t do it if—”
I interrupt him. “You don’t actually know Dustin Hoffman, do you?”
“No, no. This stuff is just legend.”
“Uh-huh. Could we just watch the movie?” Even though normally I love hearing all the inside info that Uncle Walt knows, tonight I just want to drown myself in other people’s stories and forget about my own.
Uncle Walt is right. Tootsie is hilarious. Every single actor seems perfectly cast, and the scene where Dustin Hoffman takes off his wig and announces on live TV that he’s not really a woman has me choking on my popcorn.
As soon as the credits start to roll, Uncle Walt goes to the kitchen for another beer. He calls back to me, “Was I right? Was that a satisfying ending, or what?”
I agree it was. “But at the end of a movie, don’t you always wonder what happened the next day?”
Uncle Walt laughs as he sits back down next to me on the couch. “That’s the great thing about movies, Hitch. The end is the end; everything is resolved one way or the other. You feel joyful or peaceful or relieved, or sometimes disturbed or depressed. But if it’s a good ending, it satisfies you, even if it’s sad. The war is over, the guy gets the girl, whatever. Real life is a whole lot messier. It doesn’t end when things are at a good stopping point.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You don’t see the part where another war starts or the girl dumps the guy.”
“I admit I’m partial to the ones with happy endings,” Uncle Walt says. “What can I say? I’m an optimist. I like to believe the happy ending lasts forever.”
“I guess it’s hard for me to believe that,” I say. The sorrow I’ve been holding off for the past few hours begins creeping over me again. “I don’t want you to leave tomorrow. If you stay, we could do this all the time. You could teach me all the stuff I need to know.”
Uncle Walt puts his hand on my head. “Hitchcock, you already know more about movies than any twelve-year-old I ever met. Be patient. You’ll grow up soon enough.”
I pull away from him a little bit. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t even want to grow up.”
“Of course you do. Don’t be silly. Hey, you’re not whining, are you?” Uncle Walt starts throwing popcorn kernels at my ear. “There’s no whining in baseball!”
Which makes me half smile because that’s a takeoff on the best line from A League of Their Own, which is probably one of my top twenty movies ever. I put a few of the kernels that fell in my lap into my mouth.
“Since when do you not want to grow up?” Uncle Walt says. “You’re making such great progress at it.”
I shrug. “Since now. Since being twelve. I don’t want to be a teenager.”
“Well, you can pause a movie, Maisie, but you can’t stop time.” Uncle Walt is silent for a minute, and then he says, “I’m guessing this Peter Pan attitude has something to do with Gary and Cyrus.”
Since he already knows a lot of what’s been going on, I decide to go ahead and tell him about what happened at the Arch this afternoon. It’s my last chance to get some advice from him before he disappears back to California, so I might as well take advantage of it.
When I’m done, he shakes his head. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Maze. You’re right—twelve is hard. Did anybody make fun of you afterward?”
“No, but I don’t care if they do. It’s not like ‘lesbian’ is some terrible insult. It’s just annoying that they think it is.”
“See, you’re practically grown up already,” he says, smiling.
“But I’m afraid if Cyrus tells Gary how he feels and Gary tells other kids, people will say awful things to him, and it will hurt him more because he is gay.” I remember the terrified look on Cyrus’s face when he told me he liked Gary, and my eyes fill with tears. “I’m just as bad as those obnoxious boys! I’m Cy’s best friend, and even I didn’t say the right thing when he told me. I still don’t know what to say.” And then the crying is unstoppable.
Uncle Walt scoots close and puts his good arm around me. “We all make mistakes, Hitch. You were surprised and you got a little panicked, but you can make it up to him. If Cy ever needed a best friend, he needs one now.”
“I know,” I say, sniffling. “I’ll make it up to him. But what if he tells Gary—”
“Your grandma used to say, ‘Don’t borrow trouble.’ Maybe it will all turn out fine. Have you ever seen Gary be mean?”
“No.”
“Well then, let’s assume he won’t be in this case either. And if he is, you’ll be standing right there by Cyrus’s side.”
I hope Uncle Walt is right, but I’m still worried. The three of us are so mixed up together now. How can that ever work out?
And then I realize what I have to do. It’s obvious. I have no other choice; I have to make Gary not like me. Not like me at all.
Apparently I cried so much last night that I don’t have any tears left today for saying good-bye to Uncle Walt. I give him a hug while he’s putting the last few T-shirts in his bag.
“Don’t worry, Hitch,” he says. “Everything will be okay.”
I nod, but I take into consideration that Uncle Walt is an o
ptimist. He believes in happy endings more than I do. “When will you be back?”
“I’m not sure. But if your mom needs me to come back and help her, I will.”
“What if I need you?”
He bends over and kisses the top of my head. “Sweetheart, I’ll do the best I can.”
It’s pouring rain, and Mom offers to drive me and Cyrus to school so we don’t get soaking wet. I glance up at him when he gets into the backseat, but he doesn’t look at me. How could I have let this happen? Just because Cy is a little different than I thought he was, how could I forget that he’s still one of my favorite people on earth? Nobody gets me like Cy does. If Cyrus isn’t my best friend anymore, I’ll curl up in my dark little den—or whatever room I end up getting stuck in—and die of loneliness. I have to fix this, and I will as soon as my mother isn’t sitting two feet away. Fortunately she has enough problems of her own these days and doesn’t seem to notice that Cy and I aren’t speaking to each other.
At school we’re all herded into the gym, since the weather is too lousy for us to wait outside for the bell. Cyrus starts to walk away from me the minute we get inside, but I grab his arm and pull him into a corner. There’s so much noise in that big, echoing room that I’m pretty sure no one will be able to hear us.
“I’m sorry I didn’t want to talk about what you told me, Cy. I was surprised at first and a little mad that you were keeping a secret from me. But I get it now, why you didn’t want anyone to know. I’m sorry I was such a lousy friend.”
At first Cyrus just stares at the floor. “It’s okay,” he says.
“No, it’s not okay. You’re my best friend, and you always will be. You should be able to tell me anything.”
“I don’t think we can be best friends anymore, Maisie.” When he looks at me, I can see the hurt in his eyes. I hate that I put it there.
“Of course we can. Don’t say that, Cy! You’re the only best friend I want! Ever!” I guess I said that pretty loudly. A bunch of eighth-grade girls narrow their eyes at me and curl their lipsticked lips.
“What about Gary?” Cyrus says softly, his voice quivering.
I’m quiet for a second. “Sometimes I wish Gary would just disappear. Everything was fine before he showed up.”
A smile flickers over Cy’s face. “You don’t wish that, and neither do I.”
“Well, I wish I wished it,” I say.
Cyrus clears his throat. “I heard what happened yesterday at the Arch. I guess that was my fault, huh? I mean, you were sort of defending me.”
“Don’t be silly. Those boys were being idiots.”
“Anyway, thanks for, you know, sticking up for me and Andy Warhol. I’m sorry they said that stuff.”
I shrug. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Gary was mad when he heard about it. He told me he still likes you.”
I sigh and slump against the wall. “I’m sorry, Cy. I don’t know how to make him stop.”
“Do you want him to stop?” Cy asks. “It seems to me you like him back now.”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to lie to Cyrus, but I have to put an end to this thing with Gary, whatever it is. And I have to stop hurting Cy’s feelings.
“I don’t like him that much,” I say, willing it to be true. “I mean, Gary’s nice and all, but not as a boyfriend. Not for me.”
Cy nods. “Yeah, probably not for me either.”
“How do you know? He doesn’t even know you like him. Maybe if he knew—”
Cyrus interrupts me by leaning in and giving me a quick hug. “I can’t, but thanks, Maze,” he says, and then he scuttles off into the crowd before I can stop him. I guess that means he’s not mad at me anymore, which is great, but I know everything is still not quite right.
At lunch I see them, Cyrus and Gary, sitting together near the windows. I have no intention of going over to them, but I’m standing there so long, looking for some other table I can possibly join (one that doesn’t have Katherine sitting at it), that Gary comes up to me and lays his hand lightly on my arm. I wonder if he can feel the shiver race all the way up to my shoulder and down my back.
“We’re over there,” he says. “Come sit with us. Please?”
I seem to be powerless to refuse. In a daze, I follow him to the table. He’s wearing a dark red shirt, not a T-shirt but a button-down shirt with the long sleeves rolled up to his elbows. I don’t know why, but this makes me want to run my hand over the uncovered skin of his arm. Why did this happen to me when I didn’t even want it to? My heart is hammering away, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to swallow my food if I sit with them, but then Cyrus probably won’t be able to either.
After we sit down, Gary says, “I wanted to tell you I talked to those guys, Chris and Tyler, about what happened at the Arch yesterday. I told them they were really out of line to say what they did. I said they should apologize to you, but I don’t think they will.”
He did that? “Oh, thanks,” I say, trying to sound like the whole thing is no big deal. “You didn’t need to. I mean, they’re just jerks.”
“You were totally right to yell at them,” Gary continues. “When my cousin Max came out last year, some guys in his class made fun of him, and he got really depressed at first. I don’t know why people get so crazy about whether you’re gay or straight. Max is just a regular sixteen-year-old guy who has a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend.”
Cyrus and I lock eyes across the table. I hope my eyes say, See, what did I tell you? He’s not going to freak out about this! Even though I know that if the two of them become a couple, it’ll be ridiculously hard to pretend I don’t care.
“I was thinking maybe the three of us could do something after school today,” Gary says. “It’s stopped raining—we could ride our bikes up to Dairy Heaven or something.”
I would love to do that. “No, sorry, I can’t.” I say it fast to make sure I get it out, to make sure the truth doesn’t slip out instead. The truth that I want to spend as much time with Gary as I possibly can.
“You don’t have homework, do you?” Gary asks. “Our teachers aren’t giving much—”
“No, it’s my grandma. I’m supposed to help my mom move her into my bedroom. We have to pack up her condo and—”
Gary’s eyes brighten. “Cy and I could help, couldn’t we, Cy?”
“I guess.” Cy’s voice is so quiet, I can hardly hear him. I don’t look at him, but I know what I’d see in his eyes if I did. Disappointment that Gary wants to be with me.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “It’s a small house. It won’t take us that long.”
“Even a small house has lots of stuff in it. When my grandpa moved—”
“Look, Gary, my grandma is very…private. She doesn’t want a lot of people going through her stuff.”
“We won’t go through it. We’ll just help pack—”
“I said no!” I don’t mean to sound so angry, but he won’t give up and it’s hard to keep saying no when I want to say yes.
Gary gets quiet then. “Sorry, Maisie. I guess I’m an idiot too.” He looks out the window as if there’s something a lot more pleasant than me out there.
Cy gives me a little kick under the table, and when I glance at him, his cloudy eyes say, Thank you and I’m sorry.
“I didn’t mean to yell at you, Gary,” I say. But I can’t tell him what I did mean. “The thing is…I just can’t….” I want to say something to make him feel better, but I can’t afford to make him feel better. I stand up and grab my tray full of uneaten lunch. “I just remembered I need to go to the library,” I say. And then I slalom through the tables to make a fast getaway, no looking back.
I hate that I have to hurt either Cy or Gary. I don’t want to hurt anybody, including myself. But it has to be one or the other because we can’t all have what we want. Maybe none of us can.
Gary is right about how long it’ll take to go through Grandma’s condo and pack things up. Mom and Grandma and even Mr.
Schmitz work at it for days, and I go over to help after school. Grandma wants to keep tons of stuff that we don’t have room for in our house, so Mom ends up renting a small storage unit. We borrow a pickup truck from Dad’s friend Jack and drag box after box of dishes and papers and tablecloths and who-knows-what-all down to the storage space.
On Friday afternoon Grandma points to a tall standing lamp that leans to one side and wears a ripped shade. “That lamp,” she says. “I want to keep that.”
Mom sighs deeply, which she does just about every time Grandma opens her mouth these days. “You aren’t going to need it at our house, Ma. And besides, we don’t have room for it.”
“We’ll put it in the storage unit,” Grandma says, as if that settles that.
“That space is practically filled up already,” Mom says.
“Well, we should have gotten a bigger one, then! I told you that!”
It seems as if Grandma gets upset about more stuff on the days Mr. Schmitz isn’t here. He can keep her calm better than anybody else.
Mom mashes her lips together as if she’s keeping an angry reply inside. I know the storage unit is expensive, even the small one. Finally she says, “Fine. We’ll keep the lamp.”
“And my couch too,” Grandma says.
Oops. Last straw.
“We cannot keep the couch!” Mom yells. “I told you, someone is coming from the consignment shop tomorrow to look at the furniture.”
I keep wrapping stained napkins around mismatched silverware. I know already it doesn’t help if I get into the conversation. But then Grandma starts to cry, and I can’t pretend anymore that I’m just helping with normal chores. Nope. I’m packing up my grandmother’s whole life so it can be hidden away in a small, windowless room. And that’s just the stuff we aren’t getting rid of altogether.
Grandma slumps into a kitchen chair. “Why are we doing this?” she says, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t want to live at your house, Cindy. I want to keep my things!”
Mom puts down the roll of packing tape and kneels next to her mother’s chair. She’s had to explain this half a dozen times already, and I can tell it isn’t getting easier. “You’re forgetting things,” she says quietly. “You need to live with us now, Ma. We can take care of you.”