Princess in Pink (21 page)

and porters' unions strike.

Because if she hadn't, the prom might never have been cancelled, and Lana and the rest of the Prom Committee would have gone ahead and had it at Maxim's instead of being forced to have it on the observation deck of the Empire State Building - something arranged entirely by Grandmere, who is like this with the owner - and Michael would have continued to refuse to

go to the prom at all, and so instead of standing under the stars in my totally rocking Jennifer Lopez-engagement-ring pink

prom dress, listening to MY BOYFRIEND'S BAND, I'd be stuck at home, instant messaging my friends.

So as I stare out at the twinkling lights of Manhattan, all I can say is:

Thank you, Grandmere. Thank you for being such a complete freak. Because without you, my dream of entering the prom

on the arm of my one true love would never have come true.

And OK, it kind of sucks that we can't dance because the only time there's any music is when Skinner Box is playing.

But the band took a break a little while ago, and Michael came over with a glass of punch for me (pink lemonade with Sprite

in it ... Josh tried to spike it, but Wahim totally caught him and threatened him with his numb-chucks) and we went over to

the telescopes and stood with our arms around each other, gazing out at the Hudson River, snaking silverly along in the moonlight, and . . .

Well, I'm not sure, but I think we got to second base. I'm not sure because I don't know if it counts if a guy feels you up THROUGH your bra.

I will have to consult with Tina on this, but I think the hand actually has to get UNDER the bra for it to count.

But there was no way Michael was getting under MY bra, given as how I am wearing one of those strapless ones that are

so tight it feels like you are wearing an Ace bandage around your boobs.

But he tried. I'm pretty sure, anyway. There really is no doubting it now. I am a woman. A woman in every sense of the word.

Well, almost. Probably I should go into the ladies' room and take this stupid bra off so if he goes for it again I might actually

be able to feel something . . .

Oh, my God, somebody's mobile is ringing. That is so rude. And in the middle of 'Princess of my Heart' too. You would

think people would show some respect for the band and turn off their—

Oh, my God. That's MY mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday, May 11, 1 a.m., St Vincent s Maternity Ward

Oh . . . my . . . God.

I can't believe it. I really can't. Tonight, not only did I become a woman (maybe) but I also became a big sister.

That's right. At 12:01 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, I became the proud big sister of Rocky Thermopolis-Gianini.

He is six weeks early, so he only weighed four pounds, fifteen ounces. But Rocky, like his namesake - I guess Mom was too weak to argue for Sartre any more. I'm glad. Sartre would have been a lousy name. The kid would have got beaten up all the time for sure with a name like Sartre - is a fighter, and will have to spend some time in an 'isolet' to 'gain and grow'. Both mother and Y-chromosomed oppressor, however, are expected to be fine . . .

Though I don't think the same can be said for the grandmother. Grandmere is slumped beside me in an exhausted heap. In

fact, she appears to be half asleep, and is snoring slightiy. Thank God there is no one around to hear it. Well, no one except

for Mr. G, Lars, Hans, my dad, our next-door neighbour, Ronnie, our downstairs neighbour, Verl, Michael, Lilly and me,

I mean.

But I guess Grandmere has a right to be tired. According to my mother's extremely grudging report, if it hadn't been for Grandmere, little Rocky might have been born right there in the Loft. . . and with no helpful midwife in attendance, either.

And seeing as how he came out so fast, and is so early, and needed a hit of oxygen before his lungs really started going,

that could have been disastrous!

But with me away at the prom, and Mr. Gianini having left the Loft to go 'buy some Lottery tickets down at the deli' (translation: he'd needed to get out of there for a few minutes, not being able to stand the constant bickering any
more),

only Grandmere was around when Mom's waters suddenly broke (thank God in her bathroom and not on the futon couch.

Or else where would I sleep tonight????).

'Not now,' Grandmere apparently heard my mother wailing from the toilet. 'Oh, God, not now! It's too soon!'

Grandmere, thinking Mom was talking about the strike, and that she didn't want it to end so soon because it meant she'd be deprived of the delightful company of the Dowager Princess of Genovia, of course went bustling into my mom's room to ask which newscast she was watching . . .

Only to find that my mother wasn't talking about something she'd seen on TV at all. Grandmere said she didn't even think

about what she did next. She just ran out of the Loft, screaming, 'A cab! A cab! Somebody get me a cab!'

She didn't even hear my mother's mournful cries of, 'My midwife! No! Call my midwife!'

Fortunately our next-door neighbour, Ronnie, was home - a rarity for her on a Saturday night, as Ronnie is quite the femme fatale. But she was just recovering from a bout of the flu and had decided to stay in for the night. She opened her door and stuck her head out and went, 'Can I help you, miss?'

To which my grandmother apparently replied, 'Helen's in labour and I need a cab! And that's Your Royal Highness to you, mister!'

While Ronnie ran downstairs to flag down a cab, Grandmere ducked back into the apartment, grabbed my mom, and went, 'Come on, Helen, we're going.'

To which my mother supposedly replied, 'But I can't be having the baby now! It's too soon! Make it stop, Clarisse. Make

it stop.'

'I can command the Royal Genovian Air Force,' Grandmere supposedly replied. 'As well as the RoyalGenovian Navy. But

the one thing in the world I have no control over, Helen, is your womb. Now come on.'

All of this activity was enough to wake up our downstairs neighbour, Verl, of course. He came running out of his apartment thinking that the mother ship was finally landing . . . only to find a mother of quite a different kind waddling down the stairs in front of him.

'I'll run to the deli and get Frank,' Verl said, when he learned what was going on.

So by the time Grandmere got my mom all the way down three flights of stairs, Ronnie had secured a cab, and Mr. G and

Verl were racing up the street towards them . . .

They all piled into the cab (even though there is a city ordinance that there are only five people, including the driver, allowed

in a cab at one time - something the cabbie apparendy pointed out, but to which Grandmere replied, 'Do you know who I am, young man? I am the Dowager Princess of Genovia and the woman responsible for the current strike, and if you don't do exactly as I say, I'll get YOU fired, too!') and sped off to St Vincent's, which is where Lars and Michael and I found them (in the maternity waiting area - minus my mom and Mr. G, of course, who were in the delivery room) half an hour after they

called me, waiting tensely to hear if my mother and the baby were all right.

My dad and Hans joined us a little while later (I called him) and Lilly showed up a little after that (Tina had apparently called her from the prom, feeling bad for her, I guess, sitting around at home) and the nine of us (ten if you count the cabbie, who stuck around demanding somebody pay for the damage Ronnie's stilettos did to his floor mats, until my dad threw a hundred dollar bill at him and the guy grabbed it and took off) sat there watching the clock - me in my pink
prom dress, and Lars and Michael in tuxes. We were definitely the best-dressed people at St Vincent's.

If I had any fingernails before, I certainly don't now. It was a VERY tense two hours before the doctor finally came out and said, with a happy look on her face, 'It's a boy!'

A boy! A brother! I will admit that I was, for the teeniest second, a little disappointed. I had been hoping for a sister so hard!

A sister I could share things with - like how tonight at the prom, I had maybe got to second base with my boyfriend. A sister

I could buy those cheesy plaques for - you know, the ones that say, 'God made us sisters, but life made us friends.'' A

sister whose Barbies I could still play with, and nobody could accuse me of being a baby, because, you know, they'd be

HER Barbies, and I'd be playing with HER.

But then I thought of all the things I could do with a baby brother . . . you know, make him wait on line for Star Wars tickets, something no girl would ever be stupid enough to do (we'd use MoviePhone instead). Throw rocks at the mean swans on the palace lawn back in Genovia. Steal his Spiderman comic books. Mould him into a perfect boyfriend for some lucky girl of

the future, like in the Liz Phair song 'Double Dutch'.

And suddenly, the idea of having a brother didn't seem so horrible.

And then Mr. G came stumbling out of the delivery room, tears streaming down either side of his goatee, gibbering like those rhesus monkeys on the Discovery Channel about his 'son', and I knew . . . just knew . . . that it was right and good that my mom had had a boy ... a boy named Rocky - after a man who, if you think about it, was really very respectful and loving of women (Adrian!) . . . that my mom and I had somehow been divinely chosen for this. That together, Mom and I would raise the most kickass, non-sexist, non-chauvinistic, Barbie-AND-Spiderman loving, polite, funny, athletic (but not a dumb jock), sensitive (but not whiny), second-base-getting-to, non-toilet-seat-leaver-upper that there had ever been.

In short, we would raise Rocky to be ...

Michael.

Only I hereby swear, on all I hold sacred - Fat Louie; Buffy; and the good people of Genovia, in that order - that I will make sure that when Rocky is old enough to attend his Senior Prom, he will NOT think it is lame to do so.

Sunday, May 11, 3 p.m.

Well, that's it. The strike is officially over.

Grandmere has packed up her things and gone back to the Plaza.

She offered to stay until Rocky comes home from the hospital, to 'help' my mom and Mr. G with him until they get on some

sort of schedule. Mr. G couldn't seem to say, 'Um, thanks so much for the offer, Clarisse, but no,' fast enough.

I have to say, I'm glad. Grandmere would only get in the way of my moulding Rocky into the perfect boy. Like you can so

tell she'll always be saying stuff to him like, 'Who's my big boy? Who's my gwate big widdle man?'

Seriously. You wouldn't think it of Grandmere, but when we finally got to see Rocky in his little incubator last night, that's exactly the kind of. stuff she was saying. It was revolting.

I kind of know now why my dad has so many issues with forming lasting relationships with women.

Anyway, the restaurateurs finally caved in to the demands of the busboys. They will now all be receiving health benefits and sick leave and vacation pay. Well, all except for Jangbu, of course. He collected the money from his life story and flew back

to Tibet. I guess city life didn't really work out all that well for him. Besides, in Tibet, all that money will provide him and his family with financial stability for life -not to mention a palatial mansion. Here in New York, it would have barely bought him

a walk-up studio in a bad neighbourhood.

Lilly seems to be getting over her disappointment of not having gone to prom. Tina gave her a full report — about how after Michael unceremoniously abandoned the rest of
the band in order to escort me to the hospital, Boris took over lead guitar, even though he'd never played the guitar before in his life.

But of course, being a musical genius, there is no instrument Boris can't pick up almost instantaneously . . . except for maybe like the accordion, or something. Tina says after we left, things got a little out of hand, with Josh and some of his friends leaning over the side of the observation deck and seeing if they could hit stuff below with their own spit. Mr. Wheeton caught them though, and gave them all in-school suspension. Lana supposedly started crying and told Josh he'd ruined the most special

night of her life, and that this was how she was going to be forced to remember him when he went off to college next year . . . hawking loogies off the Empire State Building.

Sweet.

As for me, well, I don't have to worry: when Michael goes off to college next year

a) it will be just uptown, so I'll still see him all the time, anyway. Or at least, a lot of the time, and

b) the memory I'll have of him is not hawking loogies off the Empire State Building, but of turning to my dad in the maternity waiting room and saying (after I'd asked Dad, for the millionth time, if, now that I had a baby brother, I could stay in New York for the whole summer and get to know him, and Dad, for the millionth time, replying that I had signed a contract and had to stick to it), Actually, sir, legally, minors can't enter into contracts and so, according to New York State law, you cannot hold Mia to any document she might have signed, as she was under sixteen at the time, making it invalid.' WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RIGHTEOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You should have seen my dad's face! I thought he was
going to have a coronary then and there. Good thing we were already

at the hospital, just in case he keeled over. George Clooney could have rushed right over with the crash cart.

But he didn't keel over. Instead, Dad just looked Michael very hard in the face. I am happy to report that Michael just looked right back at him. Then Dad said, all grimly, 'Well. . . we'll see.'

But you could tell he knew he'd been beat. Oh, my God, it is so GREAT, going out with a genius. It really is.

Even if he hasn't, you know, mastered the art of strapless bra removal.

Yet.

So I've finally got my room back . . . and it looks like I'll be staying in the city for at least the majority of the summer ... and

I have a baby brother ... and I wrote my first actual story for the school paper, AND had a poem published . . . and I think