Saturdays with Hitchcock

  “I can take care of myself!” Grandma says, but I don’t think she really believes it anymore. Now it’s just what she wants to be true.

  We give up on packing for the day and go home. It makes Grandma happy to cook for us, and she can still do that, as long as Mom stays with her to make sure she doesn’t forget what she’s doing and put salt in the soup three times or let the chicken burn in the frying pan. Sometimes she asks where my grandpa is, and sometimes she asks where Uncle Walt is. Mom and I both hate having to tell her they’re not here, but somebody has to answer her questions.

  When Dad gets home from work, he puts his arm around Mom and kisses her forehead. She slumps against him. None of us talk much, because what is there to say?

  We’re starting to appreciate the nights when Mr. Schmitz comes for dinner. Grandma doesn’t ask about the people who are missing when he’s around. And he’s not nearly as crabby as he used to be either—when he helps me clear the table and load the dishwasher, we sometimes talk about movies and he hardly growls at all.

  The other night I asked him why he never showed Frankenstein at the Lincoln. “It’s the best horror movie,” I said, “but I’ve only ever seen it on DVD.”

  He shook his head. “Well, you won’t see it at the Lincoln as long as I’m scheduling the shows.”

  “Why not? You don’t like it?”

  He sighed and put down the dish he had in his hand. “I think it’s brilliant, but I can’t bear to watch it again. It’s the saddest movie I’ve ever seen.”

  Huh. It’s true you feel bad for the monster. He doesn’t mean to kill the little girl.

  “I guess it’s pretty sad,” I said, “but I don’t know how else it could have ended. I mean, a monster isn’t going to get a happy ending.”

  “Why not?” Mr. Schmitz asks. “He’s had such a hard time already. Why can’t a monster have a happy ending? That’s the movie I’d like to see!”

  And I realized I’d like to see that movie too. It’s cool the way Mr. Schmitz makes me see things a little differently than I usually do. Sometimes I think I almost like him now.

  Tonight, as soon as dinner’s over, I escape to the den, which is beginning to feel like my own space now. I’ve made it look more cheerful by tacking up some old yellow curtains from Grandma’s condo over the brown wall paneling. The lamp Grandma didn’t want to get rid of makes the room feel brighter too.

  Mom knocks on my door and sticks her head in. “Phone,” she says, holding it out to me.

  I hope it’s Cyrus, but I’m not really surprised that it’s Gary.

  “I’ve hardly seen you all week,” he says.

  “Yeah, sorry. I’ve been helping Mom pack up Grandma’s stuff.”

  “Right,” he says. “But it seems like you’re avoiding me. I mean, me and Cy. Are you?”

  “Avoiding you?” I say it as if that’s the last possible thing I’d be doing. “I’m just busy right now is all.”

  “Okay,” he says. “But you’re not mad at me, are you?”

  “No! Why would I be mad?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes it seems like you are. You know, I really like hanging out with you, Maisie.”

  I swallow about eight times, but no words come out of my mouth. This is impossible. I can’t let him hope I’m going to like him back, but I can’t stand being mean to him either. Finally I manage to say, “Yeah, I know. The three of us are a great team.”

  He’s quiet for a minute, and then he says, “We can all hang out this summer, right? The three of us, I mean? Your grandma will be all moved into your house and you’ll have time, won’t you? We can ride bikes and go to the pool and stuff.”

  I imagine what it would be like to go to the pool with Gary. He wouldn’t be wearing a shirt, and I could look at his arms and his chest but pretend I wasn’t. Maybe I could get a new swimsuit too—something less babyish than the racer-back I’ve worn for three years. Something that doesn’t make me look completely flat-chested.

  But then I come to my senses. Of course I can’t get a new suit. There’s no extra money for that kind of thing, and anyway, what’s the point of looking…not-flat? I don’t want Gary to see me in a swimsuit that covers less than my underwear does. He might think…whatever boys think. It’s embarrassing just to imagine it, and I’m glad he can’t see me blush.

  “I guess we can hang out sometimes,” I say. It comes out in a whisper, as if I don’t actually want him to hear me.

  “And go to the pool?” he asks again.

  I consider hanging up right this minute so I don’t have to answer the question, but instead I say, “Maybe.”

  There’s a quiet sigh on his end. “Good. Three more days of school, and then we’re free for the summer. We’ll have so much fun!”

  “I guess we will,” I say, not sure if I’m pretending to be enthusiastic or if I actually am. Then I make an excuse and hang up so I can try to figure out what part of me is telling the truth—my mouth or my brain or my heart.

  It seems like ages since Cy and I have been to a movie on a Saturday by ourselves, but I guess it’s only been a few weeks. Gary was really disappointed he had to go to a family wedding today instead of coming with us to see Big. I guess Cy is probably disappointed too, though he hasn’t said anything. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I mean, the three of us together are kind of a disaster, but it feels wrong for Cyrus and me to walk into the Lincoln Theater without Gary, which is funny because we’ve come here without him a lot more than we ever did with him. But at least things are starting to feel normal between me and Cy again. I’m glad we’ll have a few hours alone to try and get our friendship back on track.

  There’s some young guy I’ve never seen before behind the concession stand. I guess Mr. Schmitz is with Grandma today, or maybe he just decided he’s tired of spending every Saturday afternoon vacuuming up popcorn kernels.

  The crowd is bigger than usual, but we manage to get our favorite seats in the front row of the balcony. Cy buys a large buttered popcorn for us to share because he knows my mom isn’t handing out much cash these days.

  The part where Tom Hanks makes out with the older woman is a little awkward to watch with Cy sitting next to me. Thank God Gary isn’t here. I guess I’m kind of like Tom Hanks’s character. This woman really likes him, and he looks old enough to be her boyfriend, but he’s really just a kid who’s too young to know what to do about it.

  The movie ends and the lights come on, but Cyrus and I are never the first ones out. We like to sit a minute with our feet up on the balcony railing and think about what we’ve seen.

  “Tom Hanks is a cool grown-up at first, when he’s acting like the kid he really is,” Cy says. “But then he changes. When he gets used to being a grown-up, he turns into a jerk. That was kind of depressing.”

  I nod. “He forgot he was a kid. He got too serious about everything.”

  “Yeah. I hope that never happens to us.”

  “Me too,” I say. “But maybe it happens even if you don’t want it to. Let’s promise not to turn into completely different people than we are now.”

  “Pinky swear,” Cyrus says. We hook our little fingers together like we’ve done a hundred times before, only this time I wonder if we’re fooling ourselves. Maybe everybody changes when they grow up, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  I’m not watching who’s walking up the aisle down below us, but something catches my attention—maybe the blue dress. Grandma’s blue dress—with Grandma in it! I lean over the railing to see. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Mr. Schmitz is right beside her. I sock Cy on the shoulder and point down.

  “Whoa!” he says. “Are they on a date?”

  Do you call it a date when people are so old? Mr. Schmitz has his elbow out in a triangle, and Grandma is holding on to it. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but she smiles this enormous smile and looks up at him like she’s looking at a rainbow.

  And then Mr. Schmitz laughs. Laughs really loud. It’s kind o
f shocking, as if somebody you’ve only ever seen in a wheelchair suddenly stands up and starts walking.

  “I think they put a coin in a fortune-teller machine, like the kid in the movie,” Cy whispers. “Only instead of asking to be big, they asked to be young.”

  He’s so right, it makes me shiver.

  We sit there a while until we figure Mr. Schmitz and Grandma have gotten into his car and driven off. The guy from the concession stand comes upstairs with a whisk broom, but he doesn’t tell us to leave. He looks so sleepy, I’m not sure he even knows we’re there.

  We get on our bikes, but we’re not ready to go home yet, so we ride to the park and sit on a bench. We’re silent, but not because we don’t want to talk. I think it’s more because we’re both trying to figure out how to say what we’re thinking.

  Finally I say, “Cy, do you think they love each other?”

  Cyrus shrugs. “I never think of old people being in love. But that’s kind of what it looked like, didn’t it?”

  “Can you tell by looking? At first I thought Mr. Schmitz was just an old friend who felt sorry for Grandma, but he comes over to our house all the time now, and last week they danced together.”

  Cy’s eyes get big. “At your house? You saw them?”

  “Yeah, we all saw them.”

  “Wow.” Cy looks down at his sneakers as he kicks his heels into the dirt. “Have you ever thought you loved anybody? You know, besides your family.”

  I shake my head. “I’m not even sure what the word means. If you’re talking about parents, sure, you love them, but sometimes you can hardly even stand them. So loving somebody your own age must be different than that, don’t you think?”

  Cy is quiet for a minute, and then he says, “Sometimes I think I love Gary.”

  On the one hand, I kind of knew he was going to say that, and on the other hand, I’m completely stunned to hear him say the words out loud.

  “Are you sure?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says, “but that’s how I feel when I’m around him. Is that how you feel too?”

  “No, I don’t,” I say, and that’s the truth. Although I think it might just be the truth for now, because I’m obviously a little bit behind Cyrus in figuring this stuff out.

  Cy keeps pounding holes in the ground with his heels. “I guess the only thing that really matters, though, is whether Gary loves you.”

  I screw up my face. “Cy, aren’t we too young to be talking about love? Isn’t there some other word for when you like somebody a lot but you’re only twelve?”

  “I don’t know what that word would be,” he says.

  I don’t know either, but I don’t intend to leap from friendship into love in a single bound. I don’t think love is going to be my superpower, at least not until I’m older.

  “You know what I think, Cy?” I look around to make sure there’s nobody within hearing distance. “Maybe you have to tell Gary you’re gay and see what he says. That’s the only way to know for sure.”

  He shakes his head. “Maisie, you know I can’t do that.”

  “I don’t know that. You surprise me all the time. Like when you chased Buffy down the sidewalk and caught her when Gary and I couldn’t. And you’re surprising me right now talking about loving people.”

  “Well, not just any people,” he says.

  “Gary. Saying you love Gary. You can do things I could never do! You have a secret strength, Cyrus.”

  Cy smiles and pounds his fist on my knee. “I wish that was true.”

  “It is true!”

  He leans his head over so it just touches mine. Up until that moment I would have said Uncle Walt was the person I loved most in the world. (Not counting my parents, of course, but that’s an ordinary kind of love.) But now I think Cyrus is in first place. Maybe it’s not love love, but it’s still kind of a big leap.

  School is out, and Grandma is completely moved in. At night I sleep in the small den surrounded by ancient yellow curtains. Mom spends most of her time repeating things to Grandma and looking online for jobs she can do from home. Uncle Walt has been gone for more than a week and hasn’t called once. He texted Mom that his plane landed, but that’s the only thing I know. I miss him every day and almost wish he’d give up on Hollywood and move back to New Aztec. Almost, but not quite.

  The only good thing that’s happened in a while is that I got an A on my history project, the video about Grandma. When Mom and Dad watched it, Mom hugged me and said, “I’m glad we have this. Especially now,” and Dad said, “I’m starting to think you might really turn out to be a filmmaker, Maisie!”

  This afternoon is muggy, with thunderstorms predicted. Mom is taking Grandma to a doctor’s appointment, so I ask Cy and Gary to come over to watch Rear Window. It’s impossible to ignore Gary—he’s always so nice to me. Besides, he doesn’t know Cy’s crazy about him, so if we don’t include him he’ll just think neither of us likes him anymore, and that doesn’t seem fair.

  Cy and Gary sit on opposite ends of the couch, with room left for me in the middle, but I sit on the chair instead. I can tell Gary is enjoying the movie, because he leans forward as if he’s going to crawl into the TV.

  When the credits come on, he says, “Wow, that was great! I think I liked it even better than Psycho. Now I want to watch all of Hitchcock’s movies.”

  “We should do that this summer,” Cy says.

  Gary looks extremely pleased about the idea, probably because it nails down a plan for the three of us to spend a lot of time together the next few months.

  “Do you think it was wrong of Jimmy Stewart to look into his neighbors’ windows?” I ask.

  “No,” Cy says. “He caught a murderer!”

  “Yeah,” Gary says, “but he was looking at people for a while before he realized there was anything bad going on. He spied on people who were just living their normal lives too.”

  Cyrus thinks that over. “That’s true. It was kind of weird at the beginning when he was sitting there staring at all his neighbors through binoculars.”

  “That’s the genius of Hitchcock,” I say. “He makes us feel uncomfortable watching Jimmy Stewart spy on people, but we can’t stop watching either. It’s fun to see people when they don’t know you’re looking at them. He makes us Peeping Toms too.”

  Cyrus has his socked feet propped on the coffee table and looks more confident than he has in a while. “So, is Stewart a hero at the end, or just a creepy guy who got lucky?” he asks.

  “Both,” Gary and I say simultaneously.

  And then, because apparently even saying a word at the same time as Gary embarrasses me, I jump up and yell, “Anybody hungry?” and the three of us pad out to the kitchen.

  There’s no ice cream or Dr Pepper or tortilla chips in the house—they disappeared with Mom’s paycheck—but there’s plenty of cereal and milk.

  We fill bowls and take them outside to the patio, where there’s a little breeze beneath an overcast sky. The geraniums Mom planted last month look spindly and thirsty, but I’m pretty sure they’ll get a drenching before the day is over.

  Suddenly Cyrus says, “We should work on the script again.”

  Gary and I do not look at each other. “Really? All three of us?” I ask Cy.

  He nods. “Yeah. It’s summer. We need to make a movie.”

  Gary and I dare to smile at each other. “Okay,” I say. “Can you bring over your mom’s laptop?”

  Cy puts his half-finished bowl on the table and heads for his house. “Back in a minute.”

  The second he disappears, I realize I’m sitting here alone with Gary. Neither of us knows what to say, so we just clank our spoons against bowls and teeth. Fortunately, our silence is almost immediately interrupted by a noisy argument that seems to be coming from my driveway. Car doors slam and I hear several voices, one of which is Mom’s and one that sounds like Mr. Schmitz’s. They’re coming in the front door of the house, but we can hear them pretty well out on the patio with the back
door open.

  “But didn’t you hear what else the doctor said?” That’s Mr. Schmitz for sure. “It wasn’t all bad news. Evie’s short-term memory has been affected, but her long-term memory may be good for quite a while. She has good years left, Cindy. We want them to be happy years.”

  “We shouldn’t have told her, Hank,” Grandma says. “She treats me like a baby. We should have just done it and kept it to ourselves.”

  “Not tell me?” Mom says. “How was that going to work? You’d get secretly married and none of us would ever know?”

  Married? Grandma and Mr. Schmitz are getting married?

  “Cindy,” Mr. Schmitz says softly, “try to understand. I’ve felt this way for a long time. Years. Now that I’ve found Evie again and she feels the same way, I want her to be my wife before it’s too late.”

  I sneak up to the door and peek inside. Gary comes up behind me because obviously this is too good to miss. Mom is leaning against the refrigerator, staring at Grandma and Mr. Schmitz. Mr. Schmitz has his arm around Grandma, who’s grinning like she just won the lottery.

  Finally Mom says, “Where do you think you’ll live? There’s no room for you to move in here with my mother, Hank. She’s in a small room and—”

  “Of course not,” Mr. Schmitz says. “We’ve talked about that. Evie will live with me at my place as long as she’s comfortable there. I have plenty of room, and I can stay home to help her as much as I need to.”

  Grandma interrupts him. “And I can cook him good meals so he doesn’t eat all those pastrami sandwiches.”

  Mr. Schmitz winks at Grandma, then turns back to Mom. “When I do go to the theater, Evie can come with me. Or she can come here if you want, but this will free you up, Cindy. And if at some point down the line we—or you—think she’d be better off back here…or someplace else…well, we’ll make that decision when we have to.”