Saturdays with Hitchcock

  “I can’t remember what I came in here for,” she says. “Walter wanted something, didn’t he?”

  “Lemonade, remember? Everybody wants lemonade.”

  She turns and gives me a grateful look. “Thank you, Cindy. Lemonade for you and your brother.”

  My smile freezes on my face.

  Grandma gets out the pitcher of lemonade and stirs it up while I put five glasses on a tray. Forgetting Grandpa was dead, melting her teakettle, and now thinking that I’m my mother. Three weird things in a week. Should I tell Mom?

  I pick up the tray of glasses and push open the screen door, holding it for Grandma to follow with the pitcher.

  “Thank you, Maisie,” she says. “You’re my favorite grandchild, even if you are the only one.”

  I take a deep breath. Okay, Grandma’s back again. I don’t have to tell Mom. I don’t have to break my promise. I don’t have to think about what it means that sometimes Grandma can’t remember who I am.

  I call Cyrus the minute I see his parents’ car turn in to the driveway after church. We don’t go to church much anymore because Dad doesn’t like the minister, who he says is so arrogant he acts like he brought the tablets down from the mountaintop himself. And Mom can’t stand the organist, who has no sense of rhythm.

  “You didn’t make plans with Hackett today, did you?” I ask Cy.

  “Not really,” he says. “I mean, I said maybe we could get together.”

  “Well, tell him you can’t. Say you have to do something with your family.”

  “You mean, lie to him?”

  “Please, Cyrus! I know you don’t like to lie, but just this once. I really need to talk to you. Alone.”

  “I’m not a good liar, Maisie. You know that. What if he figures it out?”

  “He won’t. A lot of people get roped into family stuff on Sundays.”

  “Okay.” He sighs deeply, as if I’m asking him to rob an old lady or something. Cyrus really is the kindest person I know. He never lies, he’s never mean, and if I needed a kidney or just about anything else he has two of, I know he’d give me one. But sometimes I wish he could be just a little bit less perfect. (He probably wishes I could be a little bit more perfect, but I don’t see that happening.)

  He comes over as soon as he finishes lunch. I’m sitting at the picnic table in our backyard, looking at my favorite book, Cinematic Storytelling, but I have to read lines over and over because I’m too distracted to concentrate. Cyrus has a DVD in his hand.

  “What did you bring?”

  “Napoleon Dynamite. I thought after Psycho we needed a laugh.”

  I nod. “Okay. But later. First we have to talk.”

  “About Gary?”

  Ugh. I feel a little nauseated now. “That too, but something else first. You know how last weekend my grandma forgot my grandpa was dead? Two more crazy things like that happened this week. She doesn’t want me to tell Mom about it, but I don’t know. Do you think I should?”

  Cy doesn’t say anything, but he stares at his hands for a long time. I pass the time picking the dead leaves off Mom’s new geranium plants, which already look a little droopy. Finally I can’t wait anymore. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I’m trying to remember this movie I saw a while ago about a woman who had Alzheimer’s. Her husband put her in a home for—”

  “Cy, this isn’t a movie—it’s real! And I don’t want my grandma to get stuck away in some horrible nursing-home place.”

  He looks back down at his hands. “I don’t think they’re all horrible. In this movie—”

  “Forget about the movie and tell me what to do!”

  He sighs. “Well, I guess I think keeping a secret is sort of like lying. It doesn’t seem as bad, but it kind of is. Especially if it’s about something important.”

  I knew he’d say that. “But maybe I’m wrong. Everybody forgets things sometimes. And now that I think about it, Grandma remembered all these movies she’d seen when she was really young, so maybe she’s fine. If I tell my mother and she freaks out and puts Grandma in one of those places, it’ll be my fault. I don’t know. I think I should wait and see.”

  Cyrus shrugs. “You know your grandma better than I do. But you asked me, Maze, so you must be a little worried.”

  One thing is for sure: nobody knows me better than Cy. “I am, a little. But maybe I’m just worrying for nothing.” I thought of Grandma telling me about her father’s store and about dancing with Mr. Schmitz. And that awful story about Mr. Schmitz trying to save the drowning kid. If she could remember all that stuff that happened a million years ago, she must be okay. Right?

  “So, wanna go watch the movie?” Cy asks.

  “In a minute.”

  I stand up and walk to the edge of the patio, where the grass clippings from the lawn mower decorate the concrete slab. I try to brush them off with the sole of my sneaker, but it only makes a green smear.

  “You’re freaked out about Gary, aren’t you?” Cy asks me.

  “I’m not ‘freaked out.’ I just…I don’t want Hackett to like me. Is that so terrible?”

  “I think you should start calling him Gary,” Cy says. “If somebody likes you, you shouldn’t call him by his last name.”

  “Oh, come on, Cyrus. I like calling him Hackett. It’s the sound a cat makes when it throws up hair balls.”

  Cy gives me a disgusted nose-wrinkle. “Why are you making such a big deal out of this, Maisie? He just likes you. Why is that so hard to put up with? He’s a nice guy!”

  “He doesn’t ‘just’ like me. He like likes me, right?”

  “So what? It’s a compliment.”

  “But I don’t like him back. I don’t like anybody.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You know what I mean. Like like. It’s…weird to start feeling all that stuff. Don’t you think? You don’t have a crush on anybody yet, do you?”

  It looks like Cyrus is going to say something, but then he clamps his mouth shut and turns away from me.

  “You don’t, do you?” I ask him again. “I mean, you’d tell me if you did, right?”

  Without answering me, Cy wanders off toward my mom’s flowering cherry tree. He stands there, unconsciously pulling off petals. Mom would pin him to the clothesline if she saw him doing that, but fortunately she’s at the grocery store.

  I come up behind him. “You would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Maze,” he says quietly, “I can’t tell you everything.”

  “What do you mean? Of course you can! You always tell me everything.”

  His face relaxes into a smile. “Well, I tell you most things.”

  “What can’t you tell me?”

  “Well, I can’t tell you what I can’t tell you, can I?” He acts like he’s just teasing me, but something’s wrong. His voice sounds kind of shaky. Surely, he can’t…he doesn’t like me too, does he? No, I’d know it, wouldn’t I? I’d feel it, the way I felt it when Hackett (or Gary, or whatever) walked next to me and gave me that hopeless smile.

  “Cyrus, come on! Tell me what you mean. You’re the one who said a secret is almost as bad as a lie. If you don’t tell me, you’re lying to me.”

  “I know that, Maze. And I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  Oh my God, there are tears in his eyes. Honest-to-God tears! But he blinks them back and gives a little laugh.

  “You know what?” he says. “I’m gonna go on home. You can keep Napoleon Dynamite. I’ll get it from you later.”

  “Cyrus, wait a minute!” I yell after him, but he runs out of my yard and disappears. Maybe Gary Hackett is a better friend to Cyrus than I am. I almost made him cry, and I don’t even know why.

  I stumble inside, trying to figure out what just happened, but I’m distracted by the loud, pleading voice coming from the living room. Uncle Walt is on the phone. He sounds frustrated, so I figure he’s talking to his agent again.

  “Yeah, I know, Francine, but what am I supposed to do? I can
’t lift anything heavier than a fork for another five weeks. I’m just sitting around here getting rusty. There aren’t any acting classes or improv groups within fifty miles. I’m going stir-crazy!”

  He sees me leaning in the doorway and waves me into a chair, but he’s paying more attention to the woman on the phone than me.

  “If I just knew I had an audition lined up for when I get back—or maybe I could read for that pilot over Skype!”

  I sling my legs over the side of the big, cushy chair, something that Mom does not approve of, except, why? Am I hurting the chair?

  “Stars do Skype auditions all the time,” Uncle Walt says. “Benedict Cumberbatch did one for that picture he was in last—I know I’m not Benedict Cumberbatch, Francine. I’m just saying.”

  I’d really like some ice cream. When you’re confused and sad, ice cream is like a promise that things will get better, but I know we don’t have any, because I finished up the last frosty bites of chocolate chip a few days ago.

  Uncle Walt is pacing back and forth in front of my chair. “Okay, okay. I’m trying not to worry. But see if you can line something up, okay? Can I call you tomorrow? Okay, later in the week. But don’t forget, Francine. If you don’t call me, I’m calling you.”

  He clicks off and flops onto the couch, then winces. “Damn, I keep forgetting I’m injured.”

  “I wish you could drive,” I say.

  “I wish I could drive too. I wish I could do a lot of things.” He sounds as miserable as I feel.

  “Can you walk?” I ask him.

  “Of course I can walk. I didn’t hurt my legs.”

  “I mean, could you walk, say, half a mile? We could go to Dairy Heaven on Route 17 for chocolate shakes.”

  He holds out his good arm. “Help me up. I am in dire need of a chocolate shake.”

  I scribble a note for Mom so she doesn’t freak out when she gets back and nobody’s home. We lock the front door and walk down the sidewalk. I can’t stop myself from glancing up at Cy’s bedroom window.

  “You think Cyrus wants to come with us?” Uncle Walt asks.

  “No. He’s kind of…busy.”

  Uncle Walt nods. “Everybody’s busy except me.” He looks down at me. “Sorry, Hitch. I’m afraid I’m lousy company today.”

  I shrug. “It’s okay. I kind of am too.”

  “There’s a pilot in the works that I’d be perfect for. I know it. But they’re going to audition people before I get back. I probably should have just stayed in LA and paid somebody to drive me around and do my shopping and cooking and stuff. Not that I can afford that, but I’m missing everything. Not to mention, the longer I stay here, the more I annoy your mother.”

  “No, you don’t!” Obviously I’m a better liar than Cyrus. Mom is pretty much always annoyed with Uncle Walt, and this visit it seems worse than usual. “What’s the show about?” I ask.

  “It’s a drama set in an art museum where several big paintings have just been stolen. Not the usual hospital or law firm setup.”

  “It would be so cool if you got on a TV show!”

  “Yeah.” Uncle Walt works up an optimistic smile. A tossed-out soda can is lying on the sidewalk, and he gives it a careless kick. It flips over the curb and lands in the street. If Dad was with us, he’d pick it up and carry it all the way home to the recycle bin. He even does that on his mail route sometimes.

  “I’d actually be making a few bucks for a change,” Uncle Walt says. “And the exposure you get on TV is amazing.”

  “It’d be your big break!” I almost back up and go get that can, but I don’t want to point out that Uncle Walt didn’t do it.

  “Enough talk about my sorry career,” he says. “What’s going on with you? Did you love Psycho as much the third time through?”

  “Oh, sure. I mean, the lighting’s amazing!”

  He laughs. “I love that lighting makes you swoon. If you don’t turn out to be a director, you’ll certainly be a DP.”

  Which means director of photography. Which would be a cool job too. But it’s not Psycho I want to talk about right now.

  “Uncle Walt, when did you start, you know, liking people?”

  “What do you mean? I’ve always liked people. Most people, anyway.”

  “No, I mean—”

  He stops walking for a minute. “Oh, you mean when did I start liking girls. Having crushes, that kind of thing.”

  I can feel my face getting red, but there’s nobody else I can ask about this kind of stuff, and I need some advice. “Yeah, that kind of thing.”

  He’s walking a little more slowly now, thinking. “The first person I crushed on was probably Emily Katz. I was in middle school, and she was a year older than me. We rode the bus to school together, and I always tried to sit in back of her so I could watch her long black hair swing around when she moved her head. Finally I got up the nerve to talk to her, but it didn’t go well. I think she had a boyfriend already, and I was just some lowly sixth grader whose mother still picked out his clothes in the morning.” He laughs. “I haven’t thought about that in years.”

  “I guess she was pretty,” I say.

  “To tell you the truth, I can’t remember what she looked like. I think I just liked her hair.”

  “I don’t get why hair is such a big deal,” I say.

  “Search me, Hitch. All I can tell you is hormones like hair.”

  “So who was next? Who did you go out with first?”

  He smiles. “In high school I fell for Stacy Carmichael. Her I remember! We only went out for a few weeks, but if you’d asked me then, I would have said those weeks were the high point of my life.”

  I’m not sure how much I want to know about Stacy Carmichael, but Uncle Walt doesn’t go into any more details. “Is that what’s going on with you these days? You got a crush on somebody? Not Cyrus, is it?”

  “No! Cy and I aren’t like that. We’re best friends.” At least I hope we still are.

  Uncle Walt nods. “Okay.”

  “But I guess somebody has a crush on me, and I just…I don’t really want him to.”

  “Ahh. Gary Hackett, maybe?”

  Now I stop walking. “How did you know?”

  “Just a guess. I saw him looking at you the other day, and I wondered.”

  How humiliating! People could tell! “I don’t want him to like me! I don’t know what to say to him or how to act. How do I make him stop?”

  Uncle Walt puts his hand on my shoulder. “You can’t make him stop, Maze. I mean, you could be mean to him, I guess—but it looks like you’ve already tried that approach and it didn’t work. Sometimes it backfires, and the person just likes you more.”

  “Why? I wouldn’t like somebody who was mean to me!”

  He shrugs. “Sometimes you want what you can’t have. But it’s not like you to be mean, Hitch. I think it would be better to just talk to him.”

  “I can’t! It’s too embarrassing. What would I say?”

  “Well, I think you should stay as close to the truth as possible without breaking the guy’s heart.”

  Breaking his heart? The mere idea stuns me. Surely I don’t have that much power, do I?

  We’ve reached Dairy Heaven by now, so we stop talking to place our orders. “Two chocolate shakes with mint chip ice cream,” Uncle Walt tells the guy at the window. That’s what we always get, Uncle Walt and me.

  We don’t talk while the guy is scooping and drizzling and whirring the blender. My mouth waters, and I’m kind of hoping Uncle Walt will just forget what we were talking about so I can enjoy my shake. How can he help me, anyway? I’m sure he was never in such a stupid situation.

  But when we park ourselves at a picnic table, he starts in right where we left off.

  “Gary seems like a nice kid. What is it you don’t like about him?”

  It’s a hard question to answer. “It’s not that I don’t like him. At first I was just mad that he was getting in between me and Cyrus. I thought he wanted to be Cy’s n
ew best friend and push me out of the way. But then Cy told me it’s me Hackett wants to hang around with, and I think he’s right because yesterday Hackett tried to walk next to me on the way home from the movie.”

  Uncle Walt smiles and drops a spoonful of ice cream on his shirt. He hasn’t quite mastered getting food to his mouth with his left hand yet. “Sounds like he likes you,” he says as he wipes at the spill with a napkin.

  “I know! But I’m not trying to make him like me. I don’t wear tight clothes or let my belly button hang out like some girls do. I’d feel creepy dressing like that.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Uncle Walt says. “Which means Gary likes you for yourself and not for how sexy you look.”

  The word “sexy” makes me just about pass out. How can people talk about that stuff so easily? Like it’s normal. The whole idea makes me so nervous that I start to sweat. “What should I do?” I ask Uncle Walt.

  “Well, you could try to relax and enjoy it.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know how to enjoy it. It’s…scary.”

  Uncle Walt thinks about that for a few minutes while he slurps up more of his shake. “I get that. New experiences can be scary. But, you know, a boyfriend is just a boy who’s a friend, right?”

  “No. Cyrus is a boy who’s a friend. A boyfriend is somebody who thinks he can, I don’t know, touch you and kiss you. I’m not ready for that stuff!” I can feel my hot face radiating embarrassment.

  Uncle Walt puts down his spoon and looks serious. “You know, Hitch, the boy isn’t the only one who makes those decisions. I mean, he shouldn’t touch you or kiss you until you want him to do those things.”

  “But what if I never want him to do those things?”

  “Well, then he’ll just be your friend and not your boyfriend. But, Maisie, sooner or later you’ll want somebody to do those things. It might not be Gary Hackett, but it’ll be somebody.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m pretty sure.” He turns back to his shake, and I start to slurp up mine too. “And here’s one more thing for you to think about.” He points his spoon at me.