How High the Moon (22 page)

And when Charlie and I made our way into The Pop Shop to get refills for our Mickey and Minnie Pez dispensers, Pop had two fans rattling air on him but was still grouchy enough to tell Charlie and me to hurry because we were taking up store space.

Mr. Perkins was extra-grouchy during the bad heat streak, too. Every time he stopped at the Starlight he yelled at Johnny and Doug more than usual, calling them slackers, even though the stage was done but for a couple more coats of varnish, and they had the hallway leading to the furniture shop mostly done.

Yep, most all of the grown-ups were extra-grouchy during that bad heat streak, but of all of them, Mrs. Bloom was the grumpiest.
With her ankle still paining her, and the Starbright Drive-In opening July 1, she wasn’t coming to the Starlight much, but she had the phone ringing off the hook harping at Brenda about this and that, until Brenda was wired tighter than my curls. Heat and wired like a curl or not, Brenda didn’t get ornery. But I couldn’t say the same for the Jackson kids.

Across the street, the boys fought like alley cats with the toy Spud Guns they’d bought with the money from their new lawn-mowing business. Cussing up a storm as they peeled the sides of potatoes and poked the plastic nozzles into the white meat to pull out a potato “bullet,” then chasing each other to get a closer shot, because the bullets didn’t go all that far and they hurt more up close. Aiming at their sisters’ bare legs or each other’s heads until the whole yard was filled with potato bullets and Jolene’s and Jennifer’s shrieks. Mrs. Jackson came out onto the steps now and then to beg them to play nice, but she didn’t have the zip to yell hard, so they just kept on shooting and screaming.

Me and Charlie, though? We didn’t lose our zip. And we didn’t get ornery.

Well, I did once.

“You want to play marbles when you get back?” Joey yelled when I hurried down the steps on one of those hot-as-blazes mornings.

“She’s not gonna come over,” Jolene shouted to Joey, plenty loud so I could hear. “She’s a snob now, just like Brenda Bloom. She thinks she’s too good for us—even if her best friend now is a fat, dumb little boy.”

It took everything I’d learned from being a Sunshine Sister to keep me from marching across the street to pound that smirk right off Jolene’s freckled face. Instead I yelled, “You’re just jealous because I’m going to sing at the Starlight Theater, and because your brother likes me better than he likes you.” I knew this last part would get her goat the most, because she’d been extra-snippy with me ever since Johnny brought me those seats from the Starlight.

“Yeah, right,” she said. “Brenda Bloom… my brother… they’re just nice to you because they feel sorry for you. All because you don’t have a mom.”

“I have a ma,” I screamed. “She’s in Hollywood, and she’ll be home as soon as—”

“Yeah, we know,” Jolene said, her hands on her hips. “As soon as she gets to be a famous movie star.” Jolene struck what she thought was a movie-star pose.

That was it! I glanced up and down the street, then back at my house and Charlie’s to see if anybody I had to be good around was watching me. They weren’t, so I did what no respectable girl should do. I headed across that street, my fists bunched.

“Fight! Fight!” Joey called and Jack and James came running into the front yard.

Jolene tossed
my
jump rope down and spread her legs. “Don’t you even dare, Teaspoon!” she warned. But I dared all right. I grabbed a fistful of her sweaty hair and yanked it so hard she screamed. “Take it back!” I shouted, my hand twisting so that Jolene had to stay bent over if she wanted that wad of hair to stay on.

“Let go!” Jolene cried as she flopped her arms to try to get ahold of me.

“Take it back first!”

I didn’t even notice that Jennifer had run into the house until I saw her come out, her braid in her mouth, Mrs. Jackson right behind her.

“Girls!” Mrs. Jackson yelled, hair so messy you’d think someone had been pulling hers, too. “Teaspoon, you go back on your side of the street, and you stay there.”

“Yeah!” Jolene said, all brave now that her mommy was there to protect her.

“Well, you keep your fat lip on your side of the street, and I will!” I yelled as I crossed the road, even if Mrs. Jackson was standing right there.

I grabbed Charlie and my scooter and we headed to the
Starlight—even if it wasn’t time for a Sunshine meeting—me grumbling the whole way about how I hated Jolene for making me get afflicted again.

I stopped grumbling when we got to the theater, though, because there was a delivery truck backed up to the ramp outside the old furniture store. Four guys were sweating up a storm as they rolled a crate the size of a car up the ramp. Brenda was watching from inside. “The grand piano!” I shouted. “It’s gotta be, Charlie. Come on!”

I had to help tug Charlie up the ramp because the rollers on it kept wanting to push your feet backward if you didn’t go fast. Finally one of the delivery guys reached down and yanked Charlie up. “You could have used the steps,” he said, pointing to the ones next to the ramp.

The furniture store’s warehouse room was nothing but a big mess, with a high ceiling and cement floor. There was a long wooden table in the back, some shelves lining both sides of the corner near it, scraps of wood, upholstering material, broken arms and legs from chairs and tables, and enough dust on the floor that the piano crate scraped like a shovel, dragging a path through it when the delivery men moved it to the center of the room.

It took about forever before that piano was unloaded and unpacked, but finally there it was in all its glory, the black wood so shiny Charlie and I could see our teeth.

“Wow, look in here, Charlie!” I said, as I leaned over and peeked under the lid Brenda propped open. “Did you ever think there was so much junk inside a piano?” Brenda told us what a lot of the inside parts were called, and struck a couple of keys so we could see how the hammers worked.

“Play it for us, Brenda! Play us a song and sing!” I pestered.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Well, yes, I guess I did. Brenda Bloom was the Sweetheart of Mill Town. Pretty and talented
enough to win the Miss America contest if she entered it. So I guess I was expecting her voice to be radio-singer good. A voice that made me get goose pimples on my arms and tingles in my stomach.

Brenda had to go into the theater to get one of the music books the Mill Town City Orchestra was going to use, because she couldn’t play by ear. I was hopping in place while I waited for her to get back.

“What you going to play?” I asked, peering over her shoulder when she sat down and started paging through the book. “Oh, Irving Berlin… hmmm,” I said. I didn’t know most of those songs, but when I saw one called “They Say It’s Wonderful,” I said, “Play that one, Brenda. With a title like that, it’s got to be good.”

Brenda straightened her back and her skirt, then pulled her chin up like Teddy and started the song.

Oh man, did that grand piano sound pretty when she played the intro. So pretty it made my eyes want to sting. I glanced over at Charlie, and his eyes looked like they
were
stinging.

Brenda didn’t fumble a note in that introduction, and her timing was perfect. But still…

And when her voice came in? Well, I wouldn’t exactly say Brenda had a voice that would worry the ears off a rabbit, but it wasn’t exactly one that would make them perk up and take notice, either. It was soft, kind of pretty, but like that soup you have to drink when you’re pukey. The kind where you can scoop with your spoon all you want, and you’re not going to find any meat or vegetables at the bottom of the bowl to fill you up.

I looked down at my arms, willing the little hairs to stand up like I thought they would when I heard her sing for the first time. But they were laying down asleep. Even when Brenda hit the chorus, which was usually the most magical part of a song, they still didn’t wake up. But Brenda was good.
She had to be
. She’d had lessons in voice and music from the time she was four years old, and everybody in Mill Town said how talented she was. Well, except Dumbo Doug, but what did he know?

When Brenda finished the song, I clapped and elbowed Charlie to do the same. Brenda brushed off our applause. “I’m really not that good,” she said. Brenda was right about that, but I wasn’t about to agree with her. So I told her she sang real good, and then I asked Jesus to forgive me for fibbing again.

“You want to play a song, Charlie?” Brenda asked.

I thought Charlie was going to pee his pants right on the spot. He glanced up at Brenda, like he was trying to figure out if she was kidding. “Go ahead, Charlie,” I said. “But wash your hands first.”

While Charlie headed into the Starlight to use the restroom, I leaned over and whispered to Brenda. “His hands are always grubby because he’s got a bit of a sweating problem. And a picking-scalp affliction.”

Charlie got back in such record time that I had to check to make sure he’d really washed. He had, because his hands looked clean as bread dough and smelled like soap, but they were still a little damp, so I made him rub them on his shirt.

Brenda scooted over and patted the bench. Charlie sat down, his cheeks red like Christmas. “Go on, Charlie,” I said.

Charlie looked up at me and said in a whisper, “I don’t know what to play.”

“Play something grand, like the piano,” I told him.

I didn’t know Charlie knew a real fancy song, but he sure did. One so grand that there were letters in the title, instead of just words.

Charlie was a little shaky at the start, I suppose because he hadn’t played the song in so long, or because Brenda Bloom was watching, but after a few notes, he was moving like the wind.
That’s
when the hair on my arms
and
the back of my neck woke up. Standing so straight that it was like they were on their tippy-toes to get a better look at Charlie’s hands.

Brenda’s mouth fell open, I think because she was expecting him to play a sloppy version of “Chopsticks.” “Oh my,” she said when he finished. “Who taught you to play like that, Charlie?”

Charlie shrugged, so I told Brenda that it was his dad. “Ain’t
that something, Brenda? Who would ever think that a crook could teach a kid to play like that.”

“He taught you Canon in D?” she asked.

“No. Some guy that used to come by the house did.”

“Oh, Charlie. What a gift you have. That was beautiful. Just beautiful.” Charlie ducked his head and grinned.

“Now do one for me to sing, Charlie,” I said. I looked at the ceiling and did a lot of hmmming before I figured out a song fancy enough for such a fine piano. “Oh, I know, Charlie. Let’s do that classy Etta James song. ‘At Last.’”

That piano sounded so fine that it was like I was singing the melody and it was doing the harmony. And while I sang, I felt chills on
my
skin. Brenda must have got them, too, because she started fanning her face. When the song ended, she put her hand over her heart and said, “I don’t even know what to say. You children are blessed. Just blessed.”

“And we got a gift, too? Both of us?”

“Yes. Yes.”

Brenda asked us to do another one, and I told Charlie we should do something snappy now, so how about “Maybellene.” We didn’t have it down pat yet, but like I told Teddy, to Charlie’s hands and my throat, that song worked like a tickle.

Charlie and me hardly got the song off the ground, though, when a voice boomed from the hall, “Brenda!”

Mrs. Bloom hopped in on her crutches, then stopped, her wrapped foot held up like the pink, plastic flamingo bird Mrs. Delaney had propped in her yard. “Brenda!” she shrieked again. “What on earth is the piano doing here? It wasn’t supposed to be delivered until every bit of work was done in this building.” She circled the grand with short hops. “My God, the dust circulating in this place… what were you thinking letting them unload it, much less unwrap it?

“Uriah!” she bellered. “Uriah, get in here!”

She looked back at Brenda. “I leave you in charge and can’t
reach you, then come in to find the phone is ringing off the hook, people are waiting in the theater to talk to you, and no one knows where you are. Then I find you back here, letting children play on an expensive piece of equipment that shouldn’t have even been unpacked. What’s the matter with you, Brenda?”

Mrs. Bloom looked at Charlie, sitting on the bench, his head tucked turtle. “And you? What are you doing touching this piano? This is
not
a child’s toy!”

Mrs. Bloom’s mad was firing like a machine gun in a war movie. “And you…,” she said to me. “Weren’t you just here yesterday? Your meetings are to be twice a week tops, as it says in the handbook. We have businesses to run, and situations on our hands. We don’t need to be tripping over kids while we’re handling them.” She pointed to the door by the ramp and told Charlie and me to leave. “Now!”

“Geesh,” I said.

Charlie was out the door before me, running like Mrs. Bloom was hot on his heels—which she wasn’t. Not only because she couldn’t run, but because she was busy yapping at Mr. Morgan even if he wasn’t in the room yet, telling him to find something,
anything
, to cover every inch of that piano.

My scooter was on the other side of the furniture ramp, so I called to Charlie to wait up while I got it. He didn’t, though. He was halfway across the parking lot, heading for the alley. Running as fast as a skinny kid.

Johnny was outside cutting boards, the table saw squealing like bad opera, his bare back brown and shiny. He was reaching under the table to shut the saw off when Charlie whizzed past him. And before the saw stopped buzzing, I heard him shout, “Charlie, stop!”

Johnny dropped the board he had in his hand and ran to where the corner met the alley. That’s when I saw Charlie lying on the cement, right in front of the nose end of the Perkins’ dinged-up truck.

“Charlie!” I screamed. I dropped my scooter and ran.

“Jesus Christ, he came out of nowhere!” Dumbo Doug was shouting as he circled the front of the truck, his hands holding the top of his head.

Johnny ignored Dumbo Doug and got down on one knee at Charlie’s side. Brenda must have heard the ruckus because she came flying across the parking lot, shouting, “My God! My God!”