Okay for Now

by Gary D. Schmidt

  Lil stood up. "No, and I won't be acting now."

  "She's really, really good," I said.

  Lil looked at me like she was going to throw the rest of her raspberry sherbet in my face.

  "Really," I said.

  Lil looked back at Mr. Gregory. She smiled sweetly—sort of. Then she pointed at me.

  "Do you have a part for him?" she said.

  Mr. Gregory shook his head. "No," he said. "Not for a young boy."

  I smiled at Lil sweetly—sort of.

  "Perhaps the voice of Bertha Mason," said Mrs. Windermere.

  "The voice of Bertha Mason?" I said.

  "Can you shriek like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years?" said Mrs. Windermere.

  "I've heard Doug shriek like that lots of times," said Lil. I looked at her. She smiled even more sweetly.

  "No," I said.

  Lil looked at Mr. Gregory and shrugged. "If he won't shriek like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years, then I won't be Helen Burns."

  "Then you're not Helen Burns," I said.

  "Fine," she said.

  "Fine," I said.

  I sure did wish we had gotten out of that kitchen as soon as we put the deliveries away.

  "Then that's that," said Mrs. Windermere.

  "That's that," I said.

  "I'll see you next week, Skinny Delivery Boy," said Mrs. Windermere.

  "I'll see you next week," I said.

  "Fine," she said.

  "Fine," I said.

  Lil and I dropped our bowls and spoons into the sink, and we went to the door.

  "Goodbye, Mr. Gregory," Lil said.

  And that was the mistake. She shouldn't have stopped to say goodbye. It's like those horror movies where the person about to be mauled to death could have saved herself if she'd taken only one more step but she stops to be polite or something.

  I took Lil's hand. We were almost through the door.

  "Gregory," said Mrs. Windermere loudly, "what have you done with the Snowy Heron I gave you?"

  I stopped.

  "I've already told you: I haven't done a thing with it. I hate birds. And I hate pictures of birds."

  "I wonder if we might find a better place for it than rolled up and put away in your closet?"

  I turned around.

  "Such as..." said Mr. Gregory.

  "The Snowy Heron?" I said.

  Mrs. Windermere turned to me. "Yes," she said. She turned back to Mr. Gregory. "I wonder if we might make a present of it to someone."

  "The Snowy Heron?" I said again. "Audubon's Snowy Heron?"

  "Excuse me, Skinny Delivery Boy. Yes, we could make a present of it to someone who, say, helped out in the performance."

  Mrs. Windermere cupped her chin in her hand.

  "Just a thought," she said.

  I looked at Lil. "Helen Burns is a great part," I said.

  "Wait a minute," said Lil.

  "Why don't we all sit down and have another bowl of raspberry sherbet?" said Mrs. Windermere.

  You remember the Snowy Heron, right?

  If you saw the Snowy Heron, if you saw how beautiful the Snowy Heron was, if you saw how perfect he looks in Audubon's book, then you would be willing to shriek like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years too.

  You would.

  It took more than a little bit of convincing to get Lil to be Helen Burns, which really is a great part, even though she dies. You might wonder how I finally convinced her. It happened on Monday. In geography. When Mr. Barber announced that we were going to be doing one more Team Project for the year. It was going to be on the Role of Transportation in a Country's Development. And when Mr. Barber asked, "Who would like to do the Transcontinental Railroad in the United States?" Lil raised her hand and said that she would do it with me. "Is that okay with you, Douglas?" said Mr. Barber.

  Lil looked at me and mouthed the words Helen Burns.

  "Terrific," I said.

  You might wonder who is going to have to do almost everything on this project because one of us has a real part in a Broadway play with real lines while the other one just has to stand offstage and scream like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years and that same one of us did diddly on the New Zealand project and so the one with the real part in the Broadway play figures that the one without a real part in the Broadway play has a lot to make up for.

  I'm starting to feel like a chump.

  But whenever I feel like a chump, I remember the Snowy Heron.

  If you saw the Snowy Heron...

  When Mr. Barber found out about the Broadway play, he said that since Lil and I were going to be working so hard to put on this play we only had to turn in a five-hundred-word report on the Transcontinental Railroad. (I didn't look at Lil when Mr. Barber said this. She couldn't have been smiling, but I was.) When Mr. McElroy found out about the Broadway play, he wanted to take a whole period talking about the role of actors in world history but the only actor that any of us could think of was John Wilkes Booth. "I guess actors aren't so important after all," said Mr. McElroy. "You can't imagine an actor ever becoming president of the United States, for example," which was true. We couldn't. When Mrs. Verne found out about the Broadway play, she took a whole period off from solving equations with at least two unknowns to talk about her own college acting career—which had a whole lot of lines in Greek that she could still recite and which I'm not going to write here because I don't even know how.

  When Miss Cowper found out about the Broadway play, I thought she was going to walk on air right there in front of us. She said that she hadn't heard such good news in a long time. We would have to stop the Introduction to Poetry Unit prematurely, she said, and move directly into the Modern Drama Unit so that the class could support Lillian and Douglas. Would we please pass forward our poetry anthologies?

  I'm not lying, the whole class loved us. You can only take so much poetry, especially when it's poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who is still going to get it right in the face someday.

  When Coach Reed found out about the Broadway play, he smiled and said he wasn't surprised.

  Maybe he's turning into a good guy too.

  When Mr. Ferris found out about the Broadway play, Clarence didn't stop rocking during the whole lab (which involved sulfur, which is something you really don't want to smell like but which we all did by the time we were finished but Mr. Ferris promised we wouldn't smell like that by the time the curtain came up).

  And when Mr. Powell heard about the Broadway play, he went over to Birds of America and turned pages until he came to the one he wanted. "Look at this one," he said. We did. "The Great Esquimaux Curlew. An actor if ever there was one."

  He was right. The Great Esquimaux Curlew looked like he was just coming onstage, his body leaning forward, his neck stretched out, his bill stuck up in the air like he was about to sing or something. The composition was stable, with his body right in the center against a mound of grasses—also in the center. And the only thing that upset all this was his bill, which you looked at first because it seemed to stick out above the scenery—and it was upside down.

  "Am I supposed to look like that when I come on stage?" said Lil.

  I'm no chump. I didn't say a thing.

  On Tuesday and Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons for the rest of May, Mr. Spicer drove Lil and me down into New York City and dropped us off at the Rose Theater, where Mr. Gregory was always standing outside waiting for us and making it look like we were late. On the drive down, Lil went over her Helen Burns lines again and again. And again and again.

  "'Miss Scatcherd is hasty—you must take care not to offend her.' Do you think it's Scatcherd, or Scatcherd?" she said.

  "Scatcherd," I said.

  She tried it out.

  She tried it out again.

  "Scatcherd," she said.

  That's how it was pretty much the whole way down
to New York City. And just so everyone knows the stats:

  Number of times I repeated Lil's lines with her: Something over six thousand.

  Number of times I had to correct her: Something over sixty thousand.

  Number of times we drove down to New York City before I had all her lines down myself: Six.

  Number of times she asked me to say my lines: Zero. (Which is probably because she didn't want me shrieking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years while we were locked inside a car.)

  And I'm not lying, I was a great shrieker. I'd been practicing too. If you're going to get this right, you can't just shriek. Anyone can do that. To shriek like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years, you have to practice.

  The first time I practiced was in our bathroom, and when Lucas heard it, he tried to roll his wheelchair right up the stairs because he figured there was a bloody, bloody murderer at my throat. He got three steps up before I heard him.

  After that, he said I had to practice outside.

  So I went to the green field on the way to Mrs. Windermere's house and hoped that no one was around.

  Here's how you practice shrieking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years:

  You stand in the middle of the field.

  You look around to be sure that no one is going to hear you.

  You breathe in a couple of times to get as much air into your chest as you can.

  You stretch your neck up like the Great Esquimaux Curlew.

  You imagine that it's Game Seven of the World Series and it's the bottom of the ninth and Joe Pepitone is rounding third base and the throw is coming in and the catcher has his glove up waiting for the ball and Joe Pepitone is probably going to be out and the game will be over and the Yankees will lose.

  Then you let out your shriek, because that's how everyone in Yankee Stadium would be shrieking right then.

  That's how you practice shrieking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years. And you keep doing it over and over again until all the birds in Marysville have flown away.

  I'm not lying, I got good at this. If you had heard me shrieking, you would have thought someone was being murdered too. It was so eerie, you might have thought that someone who had been murdered was shrieking. You might even have thought that someone who had been murdered had come back and was murdering the murderer, who was shrieking. That's how good I was.

  When the cast of Jane Eyre heard me shriek from offstage for the very first time, they all looked around to see who had done it, and then they started clapping.

  That's pretty good.

  Lil said I was a natural. It hardly sounded like I was acting at all. And how was I doing on the Transcontinental Railroad in the United States?

  Mr. Gregory said I might have to tone it down a bit since we didn't want people in the first two rows fainting away.

  Mrs. Windermere said I might have to tone it down a bit since we didn't want people in the first two rows wetting their pants.

  It got so that I liked the rehearsals, even though it meant that I couldn't be drawing the Great Esquimaux Curlew with Mr. Powell on Saturday afternoons. But I loved watching Lil on stage. I loved listening to her lines, which, as you might remember, I already knew by heart. (It was, for the record, Scatcherd, and I didn't say anything, even after Mr. Gregory had to correct her for the third time.) And I loved when Lil looked out into the seats to see if I was watching her—which I always was.

  In May, Lucas was hired for three stupid jobs.

  You can imagine how that felt.

  And you can imagine how it felt when he got fired from all three stupid jobs.

  The first time was from the Gulf station, and it wasn't his fault. Things started out all right, but then there were three stupid days of stupid rain in a row. When people drove up to get gas, Lucas would wheel out from the garage as quick as he could. He'd come around to the door to find out how much gas they wanted, then wheel around to the pump and pump it, then come back around to the door to get the money, then wheel back to the garage to get their change and their Genuine Crystal Goblet, since Gulf was running a special. By then he was pretty drippy. So when Lucas's boss was driving home and he saw one of his old customers at the Sunoco station instead, he stopped and asked him how come he wasn't at his Gulf station, and the jerk told him he couldn't stand to have a guy with no legs wheel himself out in the rain all that time just to pump gas and so he'd decided to go to the Sunoco station. Lucas got fired the next morning. "We can't be losing our most dependable customers," his stupid exboss said.

  The second time was from the A&P, when Lucas had to hold on to the edge of a display to shove some oranges high up and the stupid edge broke off in his hand. You can imagine what happened to all the oranges. His boss fired him right there, with all the oranges around him. He wouldn't even give him his salary, because who was going to pay for all those stupid ruined oranges?

  The third time was from the Bank of the Catskills, where Lucas was a teller for a whole two and a half hours on a Saturday morning until Mrs. Roethke came in and asked him to deposit three checks and to cash the fourth and he cashed the wrong one—she said. She complained loudly enough that the manager came over and Lucas explained that he had cashed the one she had asked him to cash and he was already fixing the problem and Mrs. Roethke said she wasn't going to be lied about by the likes of him and she had heard what soldiers did in Vietnam and he was probably so drug-addled that he couldn't take proper directions from anyone and how was someone like that to be trusted in a bank and it wasn't a bank's business to take up hard-luck cases like him, at least, not a bank that she would care to put her money into.

  Lucas didn't even wait. He wheeled himself out of the bank. Christopher was supposed to meet him after work to get him down the stairs out front, but Lucas decided he would take them himself.

  At the bottom, he wouldn't let anyone help him back into the chair. He told Christopher it took him half an hour. It was probably longer than that.

  I guess he wasn't actually fired from that job. I guess he quit. Sort of.

  When I got back from New York City that night, Lucas was alone in the living room watching some John Wayne Western where John Wayne was riding horses and climbing over fences and walking that way he walks. The television was the only thing on in the room. At the first commercial, I asked him how things were going.

  Swell, he said.

  I asked him how work was.

  He told me.

  We left all the lights off so that I couldn't see that he was crying.

  If Mrs. Roethke had been there, I would have punched her right in the face.

  The play was going to open at the Rose Theater in New York City on the last Friday of May.

  That week, you would have thought that Lil was blasting off to the moon, she was that nervous. She had stomachaches almost every day. She missed two of her Advanced Algebra assignments, which had never happened before even once. She forgot to read the first act of Our Town, which wasn't missing much, and I'm not lying. And she never even asked how I was doing on the Transcontinental Railroad in the United States, which, if she would have asked, I would have told her was going to get the Golden Spike Award, which she wouldn't have understood because, as you might remember, there's only one of us working on this report.

  During classes, she mostly held her stomach and chewed on her pencils.

  She bit all the erasers off and ate them.

  Then she gnawed on all the metal tips until they came off.

  Then she started in on the wood.

  There were yellow splinters all around her desk.

  Mrs. Verne said it was perfectly normal for an actress. When she played the tragic Jocasta, she had gone through three fountain pens.

  On that last Friday, Mr. Ferris set Clarence rocking on the lab table as soon as class started. "This is, if I am not mistaken, the day," he said
.

  Lil turned red, then white, then red again.

  "Lil Spicer," said Mr. Ferris, "what little I know of biology suggests that neither the gum of the eraser, nor the tin of the metal top, nor the wood of the pencil shaft, nor the lead of the interior will do much for your digestive system."

  "I can't help it," she said.

  Mr. Ferris went over to her desk. He took the pencil from her hand and examined it—and since there wasn't much left, it wasn't a long examination. "Lil Spicer," he said, still looking at the pencil, "perhaps during today's experiment, you should allow Doug Swieteck to handle the more toxic chemicals."

  Lil nodded.

  Mr. Ferris went back to the front. "A few days ago," he said, "Apollo Ten descended to eight-point-four miles above the lunar surface to practice a moon landing. The astronauts described the Earth as a tiny blue, brown, and white basketball suspended in the void of outer space. They said that the moon is pitted with holes, and that it is illumined clearly by Earth's reflected light. They said that some of the craters seemed to glow softly." He threw the pencil stub in the garbage can. "Lil Spicer," he said, "you and Doug Swieteck are doing something extraordinary in an extraordinary time. You are the first Washington Irving Junior High School students to perform in a Broadway play. As far as I know, you are the first citizens from Marysville to perform in a Broadway play. There is no need to be nervous." He leaned forward over the lab table. "The Apollo missions have already descended close to the moon's surface. And you two have already succeeded."

  If you could have seen Lil's smile. If you could have seen her relax into her chair.

  And if you could have seen my mother, in hat and white gloves, when she got into the Spicers' car to go see a Broadway play that her son was in. If you could have seen her.

  We recited Lil's lines together all the way down into New York City that afternoon.

  And even though she was so nervous that she had a stomachache again, she got every line right. Except Scatcherd.

  We stopped at a White Castle on the way down and ate about two dozen hamburgers. Lil gave me her onions, and I scraped my pickles onto her hamburger. But my mother and Mr. and Mrs. Spicer couldn't eat at all. They were too nervous, they said. And even Lil ate only one.