B Is for Beer (5 page)
One block later, she abruptly stopped the car at a strip-mall Häagen-Dazs ice cream parlor, led Gracie inside, and proceeded to buy her a hot fudge sundae as big as the Ritz.
Before Gracie could take her spoon to the treat, however, Mrs.
Perkel gripped the child ’s wrist. “Young lady,” she said. Her tone was stern. “There ’ll be no more nonsense about beer around here. Understood?”
“No more nonsense about beer,” Gracie vowed.
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She meant what she said, but even as she downsized the sundae, she caught herself wondering what vinegar eels actually look like, and how they would react if one day a reincarnated Uncle Moe showed up in their midst.
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For better or for worse, lots of kids these days have personal cell phones. Do you have a cell phone of your own? If so, is it one of those superphones, a genius phone that not only allows you to enjoy traditional audio telephone conversations, but sends text messages, takes photographs, checks e-mail, plays music, shows movies, tells time, protects you from vampires, wipes your bottom, and pumps up the tires on your bicycle?
The cell phone that Gracie Perkel wanted for her birthday had several attractive features besides its bubblegum color, including one that would have permitted her to watch Uncle Moe live, to look at his gravy bowl face and headless wood-pecker mustache while she conversed with him. As it was, however, when Gracie dialed her uncle late Monday afternoon it was on a landline in the den, an extension as far away from her mom as she could manage at the time, because she knew there was no way she could prevent herself from describing for Moe the little drama that unfolded during and after Sunday school the previous day. It had been just too… well,
dramatic
.
Delighted that Karla Perkel had stood up to what he called “yet another obnoxious theological bully,” Uncle Moe suggested 43
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that people such as Gracie ’s teacher are made smug by their absolute conviction that sooner or later they’ll be lounging night and day on a pile of puffy clouds up in Heaven. “Neither I nor anybody else has one pixel of verifiable evidence regarding what happens to us after death, but answer me this, my dear: supposing you die—and I hope you never do—would you, given the choice, rather come back to this life here on Earth as, say, a dolphin, or spend all of eternity as a cloud potato?”
Although concepts such as
eternity
meant little or nothing to Gracie, and even death seemed remote to her—as it must to you, as well—she didn’t have to deliberate very long before arriving at a conclusion. “A dolphin would be funner, I think.”
“I rest my case. Of course, you did mean to say ‘more fun,’
instead of ‘funner,’ but due to your tender age the grammar police won’t be writing you a ticket today. After your birthday, though, it could be a different story.”
“Uncle Moe, are you really gonna pick me up in a limo-scene?”
“Oops. Sorry, pumpkin, but I see by my crappy flea-market watch that it ’s already six o’clock. Madeline will be arriving any minute.”
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“Who’s that?”
“Dr. Madeline Proust.”
“Oh, your po-dock-a-mist.”
“Exactly.”
“She ’s coming to your apartment to check on your hurt foot?”
Uncle Moe chuckled. “Yes, I suppose she ’ll have a peek at my footsie, but mainly she ’s coming to bust a crust.”
“Busta…?”
“You know. Break bread. Share a meal. She dined with me last evening, as well.”
“She must like your cooking.”
He laughed again. “I think she does. I think she does. When we parted last night… umm, well, let me put it this way: Madeline has a way of kissing that could give a bald man a Mohawk.”
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Gracie squeaked a soft good-bye, and then just stood there holding the lifeless phone, puzzling once again over the mysterious customs of adults. What was the beautiful pok-a-dye-trist doctor doing kissing on Uncle Moe, who’s her patient and kind of unusual looking besides? It wasn’t merely their drinking habits that were weird, there seemed to be no end to adult strangeness. Would she be that goofy when she grew up?
She remained standing there like that, lost in thought, until, from behind, she heard footsteps enter the darkened den.
“Grace Olivia Perkel!”
Uh-oh. When a parent suddenly hits you with your full birth-certificate handle—first name, middle name, and last—
you know that what ’s coming next is not likely to be pretty.
Hasn’t that been your experience? It ’s bad enough when they address you as “young man” or “young lady,” but when they serve up the whole enchilada (
William Jefferson Clinton!
Oprah Gail Winfrey! Thomas Eugene Robbins!,
or, in this case
,
Grace Olivia Perkel!
) the odds are extremely high that you’re being strongly warned against the potential commission of some foul deed or other, if, indeed, you haven’t already crossed into the naughty zone.
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(Have you ever heard an agitated adult or older child exclaim,
“Jesus H. Christ!”? It ’s a vulgar oath, but it may be worth mentioning here that Uncle Moe—full name Morris Norris Babbano, by the way—has offered a ten-dollar reward to anybody who can tell him what the
H
stands for.) Mrs. Perkel switched on a lamp. In Seattle in October, the day is already so dark by six p.m. that the bats are out shopping for bug bargains and stars are striking wet matches in an attempt to mark a path through the gloom.
“You were talking to Moe, weren’t you?”
Gracie hurried to replace the receiver. “Yes, Mommy.”
“May I be confident, young lady, that you didn’t share any private information with him? Such as my little meltdown after church yesterday?”
So still was Gracie that she could hear her own heart banging.
And banging. And banging.
“Because, number one, I’m embarrassed by my outburst, and, number two, the whole mess got started by more of your beer 47
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talk, and you’ve promised me you’re keeping your mouth shut about beer from now on. So? Did you tell him or not?”
Oh dear. Gracie didn’t want to fib. Fibs were wicked, slippery things. Fibbers start out as spiders and end up as flies. On the other hand, she was equally reluctant to give an honest answer.
A truthful response would lead to nothing good. What could she do? Then she remembered something she ’d heard from a kid at kindergarten: if you cross your fingers when you’re saying words that aren’t strictly true, it cancels out the fib; the angels, when they notice your crossed fingers, are tipped off that you don’t really mean to be lying, so they sort of wink and let you get away with it.
Encouraged by that information, Gracie slipped her left arm behind her back and crossed her fingers there. “No, Mommy, I didn’t say nothing. We were just talking ’bout bald men getting Mohawk haircuts.”
Mrs. Perkel rolled her eyes. “Good Lord! That sounds like something that fruitcake would be blabbing about. Give us a break, Moe. Okay, honey, go wash your grubby hands. Your daddy’s working late, so you and I are gonna eat our tuna casserole in here where I can watch the news.”
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Examining her face in the bathroom mirror, Gracie saw a liar staring back at her. Apparently, crossing your fingers doesn’t necessarily guarantee protection against a guilty conscience.
In her defense, we might console her with the reminder that her fib, while definitely wrong, hadn’t really harmed anybody; that it was only a teeny white lie, not one of those huge, black-hearted wholesale lies like the ones important, powerful men are always telling; lies that can cost people money, their reputations, their freedom, or even their lives.
Nevertheless, Gracie was convinced that she was paying the penalty for lying when, four days later, the very day of her birthday, the wings fell off of her dreams, and her bright and bouncy little life seemed to lie scattered in pieces, like a disco ball after an earthquake.
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Adisco ball after an earthquake? Let ’s get serious, kids.
Needless to say, that ’s a ridiculous exaggeration. Yes, but as we ’ve observed, Gracie Perkel did have a bit of a flair for drama, and that ’s how she might well have described the dismal situation on her birthday—provided, of course, that she knew what a disco ball was. Do you? If not, your parents can tell you.
That is, if your parents are cool. Or
were
cool, once upon a time. Back in the day. In the event your grandpa happens to be reading this book to you (everybody’s aware that you’re quite capable of reading it all by yourself, but let ’s face it, grand-parents are simply mad for reading aloud to their grandkids), there ’s just no telling what response a question about disco balls might arouse in
him
.
Anyway, the first thing to go wrong was the party. It had to be canceled. It ’s no secret that every school in the country is a three-ring germ circus, and it seems there was an outbreak of stomach flu at Gracie ’s kindergarten. The friends she ’d invited were either home puking or had been grounded in order to prevent further exposure to the virus.
Then there was the matter of the absent father. Gracie ’s dad had to go to Tucson on urgent business. Mrs. Perkel 51
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rolled those big blue eyes of hers, eyes that her daughter had inherited, and remarked that he was probably playing “urgent golf ” with a bunch of Arizona lawyers. Gracie was sure it was a business trip, though, because otherwise why would he have taken his secretary along?
In any case, Mr. P. called to say that he ’d ordered Gracie a puppy, but he ’d lost the name of the pet store where they were to pick it up. “Next week, for sure,” he promised. It was Gracie ’s turn to roll her eyes. So hard did she roll them that a couple of teardrops fell out and crawled down her cheeks like sow bugs from under a log.
Following vanilla ice cream (she ’d requested rocky road) and chocolate cake (why only five candles?), shared with her mommy’s girlfriend who lived next door, they spent most of the afternoon driving from mall to mall—the Northgate Mall, the Alderwood Mall, even up north to the Everett Mall—
searching for one of those neon-pink cell phones for which Gracie had been pining. Alas, every store was sold out of them, and it was unclear when they would receive a new shipment.
Back home, Mrs. P. served Gracie another slice of cake to comfort her, then went out into the yard to discuss something important, so she said, over the fence with her friend. Gracie 52
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was sure that that “something” was her daddy. Had it been a different subject, one they didn’t mind Gracie overhearing, they could have discussed it on the telephone. She glanced at the phone then, and noticed that its red light was blinking.
Thinking the recorded message could possibly concern the whereabouts of the misplaced puppy, Gracie punched the voice mail access button. Sure enough, someone began to speak, to speak in a voice that stretched out its words with exaggerated attention, as if it were applying suntan lotion to the bare back of a Hollywood starlet, although sometimes it sounded more like it was milking a snake. True, she hadn’t been around much, but so far as she knew there was only one person in the world who talked that way.
“Stand by for a bulletin. A bull has just been seen entering a china shop. How’s that for breaking news? Ha ha! Greetings, earthlings.
Moe Babbano speaking. I’m out at Sea-Tac Airport, international terminal, passport in hand. Yes, yes indeed, I’m leaving the country again, and this time I don’t think I’ll be coming back. So to Charlie Perkel, my esteemed, ever-insensitive halfbrother, and to his weary, long-suffering, lovely wife, Karla, I now say,
adios
and thanks for all the opportunities you provided for me to fresco my tonsils with the cardinal brush: that is to say, to drink your beer. Mainly, however, this communiqué is for the birthday girl.