by Claire Cook
After a six-hour morning that dragged on for what felt like six days, our lunchtime flew by. I was trying to decide if I really should go back for dessert. I knew I couldn’t eat it, but I thought I could probably get away with wrapping it up and putting it in my pocketbook so I could eat it for dinner. I bet people who worked on movies never even had to go to the grocery store. I was surprised I didn’t see lots of really fat people, and when I looked around the tent I noticed everyone was in relatively good shape. I didn’t see many actors around either. Maybe there was a no-cal trailer somewhere. I’d have to find out, because by midweek I’d be ready for it.
“How long does lunch last anyway?” I asked the people sitting around us.
“Thirty minutes after the last person is served,” somebody said.
“Thanks.” I lowered my voice to talk just to Riley. “At least you’ll get to do something else this afternoon. That maypole thing is getting old.”
“You can say that again,” Riley said.
“That maypole thing is getting old.”
Riley laughed. “I knew you were going to do that, Aunt Ginger.”
We dropped off our trays on our way out of the tent. “Maybe just one tiny bit of chocolate,” I suggested.
Riley saw them first. A whole row of gumball machines. One was filled with peanut M&M’s, one with cashews, another with a kind of snack mix. And, get this, you didn’t need any money to make them work. “Score,” Riley said. “I’m glad I have pockets.”
Riley and the other kids went back to their circle, and Allison Flagg stalked me to our cozy little picnic table. I ignored her and focused on my M&M’s. As soon as I ran out, it was déjà vu all over again. One of my old boyfriends was always quoting Yogi Berra, and I still had occasional flashbacks. He’d say the one about the future not being what it used to be or something about when you come to a fork in the road, take it. It wasn’t really why we broke up, but by the fourth or fifth time he rolled over after making love and said, “I usually take a two-hour nap from one to four,” I was pretty much over Yogi. Not to mention the boyfriend.
They’d only done that stupid maypole dance about a million times, and now they had to do it about a million more times to get the close-ups. Why would anyone even want to be a movie actor? I was ready for a two-hour nap from one to four myself, but apparently lunch had had the opposite effect on some of the kids.
One of the little boys started jumping up and down. “Sugar high, sugar high,” he kept saying.
The director pushed himself out of his chair, and once he was out of the way I could see that it said MANUEL MUSCADEL. He walked over to the technical advisors for what looked like a consult. The educational consultant pulled the sugar-high kid out of the circle, and one of the ADs took his place.
“What happened to the other kid?” Riley asked him.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be back in a minute,” the AD said. “Just do everything I do, okay?” He was well over six feet tall and looked like he’d wandered off the set of Big and into the wrong movie.
I leaned over to Allison. “I don’t think that’s going to work.”
“It’s a close-up. You won’t see him at all. He’s just in there to try to control the kids who are amateurs.”
It worked pretty well. Until they brought a boom mike in and held it over the kids. “Just talk for a while,” the director said. “Say the normal kinds of things you would say.”
One of the little girls jumped up to touch the microphone.
“Don’t touch that,” the dance guy said.
“Are you the teacher?” the same little boy asked.
“I’m the teacher,” the educational consultant said. “Don’t touch that.”
“Testing,” another kid said to the microphone. “Testing one two three.”
One of the twins stood up. “Tomorrow,” she belted out. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow’s a day today . . .”
“Somehow that doesn’t sound quite right,” I said to her mother.
Riley jumped up. “And now it’s time for a commercial break.”
“She was still singing,” Allison Flagg said to me.
The sugar-high kid was back. “Sugar high, sugar high,” he chanted as he hopped around.
Riley stood on his tiptoes to get closer to the boom mike. “In the rare case an erection lasts more than four hours,” he said, “seek immediate medical attention.”
Chapter 7
“HE SAID WHAT?” GERI ASKED AFTER RILEY WAS OUT OF earshot and I could tell her. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope.” I opened Geri’s refrigerator and closed it again. I couldn’t possibly be hungry. “He’s a natural mimic, that’s all. I think he gets it from my side of the family.”
Geri shook her head. “You’re the aunt. You don’t have a side of the family. But it’s not like they don’t show the commercial all day long.”
“Yeah, I think I even saw it on Nickelodeon once. Anyway, he got a big laugh, and I heard somebody say he thought the kid was ready to direct.”
“Do you think he knows what it means?”
“Directing?”
Geri gave me a look. “Uh, no.”
“Oh, that. How would I know? He’s your kid. I just drive him.”
“Well, it’s certainly a teaching moment. And one I’m going to hand right over to Seth as soon as he gets home.”
I refused to allow myself to picture Seth discussing four-hour erections with Riley for even one millisecond. Geri sat down at her kitchen counter and opened a plastic file bulging with newspaper clippings and computer printouts. I knew I’d better wrap it up quick or Geri would be obsessing about her fiftieth again. “Well, anyway, Riley was fine, especially compared to the sugar-high kid. After listening to that one, I was thinking maybe I’d get my tubes tied, just for extra insurance.”
As soon as it came out of my mouth, I regretted it. Geri’s eyes lit up. “You know, if you got rid of Noah now, you could still have kids,” she said.
I wondered if my sister and Allison Flagg were in cahoots. “What is it with the kid stuff today? Is there something in the water? Plus, if I wanted to have kids, which I don’t, why couldn’t I have them with Noah?”
“Come on. Noah’s far too self-absorbed to have children. He can’t even remember he has you.”
“Thanks,” I said.
She nodded. “Of course, it’s your fault as much as his. People treat us the way we let them.”
“Why do you hate Noah so much?”
Geri flipped through her file for a minute, then looked up again. “It’s not so much that I don’t like him personally. I just can’t stand his type. You know, artsy-fartsy, full of himself, too-cool-for-school. He thinks he’s such an original, but he’s really just as much of a cliché as the rest of us.”
“Wow,” I said. “You have way too much time on your hands. Maybe you should have a few more kids yourself, just to keep from overanalyzing people who are none of your business. You’re not even close, by the way. Noah’s nothing like that. And, just to set the record straight, from where I sit, Seth isn’t exactly a prize.”
Geri didn’t even have the good sense to be insulted. She just leaned toward me the way brides do when they’re throwing a bouquet. “It’s not too late if you change your mind, you know. How about that fifty-six-year-old woman who just got pregnant?”
“Give me a break, I’m only forty-one. And, anyway, didn’t it turn out she was faking it?”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”
When it came to these conversations with my sister, you pretty much had to give her something. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll have kids.”
Geri’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Sure, if you take care of them for me. I mean, fair’s fair.”
Geri put her hands on her hips. “As if you could afford my rates.”
“Okay, listen. For the very last time, not that it’s any of your business, let me say that I absolutely do not want children. Basic
ally, I just want to still be one.”
Geri got up and turned the burner on under the teakettle. “It’s quite possible that you’re beyond help,” she said. She turned around to face me and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Why exactly would you like to return to your childhood?”
I’d thought this through before. “So that when Mom sat down beside me like she did a couple of times a week practically from the moment I was born and said, ‘Ginger, never forget, you can be anything you want to be,’ I could turn to her and say, ‘Mom, knock it off. It’s not true. It’s too much choice. It’s too much pressure. And if you don’t stop it right now, you’re going to mess me up for life.’ ”
“She said the same thing to me and look how I turned out.”
“Oh, puh-lease.”
“Well, look at Mom. She’s exactly who she wants to be. And I think she and Dad are happier than they’ve ever been.”
“Are you crazy? Dad’s flipping out because he doesn’t want to move. He’s hiding stuff in my apartment.”
Geri shook her head. “That’s just how they do things. Mom gets the big ideas and Dad freaks out, but Mom pulls him along anyway, and when he gets there he acts like it was his idea in the first place.”
“That’s so twisted.”
“No wonder you’re single.”
It was time for a quick subject change followed by an even quicker getaway. I clapped my hands together. “I know. Let’s talk about your birthday.”
“Really?” Geri made us each a cup of tea without asking me and placed mine on the counter in front of me. She picked up her overstuffed folder and held it to her chest as she sat down at the kitchen island.
I held out my hand, and she handed over the folder so I could flip through it. “Where do you find all this stuff?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Magazines. Newspapers. And I go online at work and print things out.”
I gave her a shocked look. “You? On company time? Aren’t you too perfect for that?”
“Everybody does it. I mean, we’re a nonprofit.” Geri took a sip of her tea. “Well, do you see anything?”
I closed the folder. “Boring,” I said. “Why don’t you get a Brazilian bikini wax to celebrate? I saw an ad for a place called Hot Cheeks that just opened in the mall. You could invite all your friends and put aftershave and painkillers in the party bags.”
“Have you ever had one?”
“Not that I can remember. But I bet it would hurt enough to make you forget about fifty.”
“Good point. Okay, I’ll add it to the list.”
I stood up to leave. I wasn’t planning to say it, but it just slipped out. “So you really don’t think there’s any hope for Noah and me?”
Geri reached out, and I handed her the folder. “Well, maybe,” she said, “but I think one of you would have to hire a dating coach first.”
WHEN I FINALLY GOT HOME, my father and my cat were seated on the floor of my apartment. Boyfriend gave me a disdainful look that clearly said, Don’t look at me, I didn’t let him in.
“Hiya, Toots,” my father said without looking up.
I bent down to scratch Boyfriend behind his ears. “Hi, Dad,” I said. “Thanks for stopping by.”
“Anytime,” my father said. “Champ and I have been having a fine time for ourselves.”
“Whatcha got there, Dad?” I asked as casually as I could manage.
My father finally looked up at me. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Keep it under your hat, but I think we have at least one original here.”
“Dad, is that more stuff?”
“Toots, you would not believe what people give away at the Take It or Leave It.”
“Dad, did you bring those back from the dump?”
My father shrugged. “Don’t look at me. Your mother’s the one who keeps loading up the car and sending me over there.”
Marshbury still had a landfill, and “going to the dump” was a big part of the town’s social life. Politicians campaigned there, Girl Scouts sold cookies there, and hordes of seagulls dined there on a daily basis. It was pretty disgusting if you stopped to think about it.
Take It or Leave It was just what it sounded like, a section of the dump where you could drop off the junk you no longer needed, and help yourself to other people’s junk. Which, of course, you didn’t really need either. It was the most popular part of the Marshbury landfill, and there were people who seemed to hang around all day, and would even come over to help you unload your car when you pulled up. It was possible that my father was turning into one of these people.
I took a few steps over to my bathroom and pushed the door open. There were so many garbage bags jammed into my little square shower that it looked like some new style of Dumpster. I wished it were an oversize trash compactor instead, since at least then I’d stand a better chance of taking a shower in the foreseeable future.
I turned back to my father. “Dad,” I began.
“Listen, Dollface, this is no time to be a party pooper.”
I sat down on the floor between my father and my cat. At least my father was wearing two white socks today, though one had two bands of hunter green near the top, and the other sock was circled twice in brown. In front of him were several old toys and what appeared to be a hose from a vacuum cleaner. “Dad,” I began again.
He leaned forward and picked up one of the toys. It looked like an earless plastic cat collapsed on a wooden guitar. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that what we’ve got here is an authentic Tailspin Tabby.” He pointed to a string. “Here, pull this.”
I did, and the earless cat stood up. “Amazing,” I said. Boyfriend ignored the imitation feline and started licking his paw.
“I know,” my father said. “It’s one of the original Fisher-Price toys. Early 1930s, I’d say. It drives me bananas to think this could have fallen into the wrong hands. It’s a piece of history, for crissakes.”
“Well, it is a little bit broken.” I picked up the hose. “What’s this for, Dad?”
“A vacuum cleaner. The rest of it’s still in the car. Just the ticket if yours goes on the fritz.”
It was highly unlikely my vacuum would ever be overworked enough to do any fritzing. I nodded at the jack-in-the-box and the rusty red scooter leaning up against my couch. “Dad, what’s Mom going to say when she sees all this stuff?”
“Your mother,” my father said, “is nothing but an old fart. She wants to move me into a place with a julienne balcony. What the heck am I going to do with a julienne balcony?”
“I think it’s called a Juliet balcony, Dad.”
“And those devil friends of hers in those red hats of theirs. One of them tries to kiss me every time she comes over to see your mother. On the lips.”
A car backed out of the garage underneath us. My father reached for the scooter and used it to push himself back into a standing position. Then he climbed on and took a wobbly ride over to the window. “Looks like the coast is clear. Grab a flashlight, we’re digging it up.”
For what it was worth, I tried playing dumb. “Digging what up, Dad?”
My father parked his scooter over by my door. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s move.”
It was easy to tell where to dig, since a circle of grass sat on top of the hole like a hat. My father shoved it off to the side with the tip of his shovel while I held the flashlight and looked over my shoulder a few times like a good lookout should.
It was a lot easier digging a hole in the same place the second time around, I observed. “Just wondering,” I said, “but what are you going to do with whatever it is when you find it?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Toots.”
I looked over my shoulder again. I considered whether I should let my father in on the whole St. Joseph story or not. I mean, what if he brought the statue to Take It or Leave It, and the dump sold it instead?
“Hey, Toots,” my father said, “can you wipe that grin off your face and
give me a hand? I’m afraid somebody might have gotten here first.”
I took the shovel from my father and handed him the flashlight. First I sifted through the dirt pile, careful not to injure any hiding saints. Then I dug into the hole and scraped away at the hard-packed edges.
St. Joseph had disappeared.
Chapter 8
I WAS CURLED UP ON THE COUCH WITH BOYFRIEND ON my lap, not really watching something on TV, when I heard the first pebble on the window. Noah hated the phone. I had to admit I wasn’t too crazy about the pebble thing either.
“Hey,” Noah said when I opened the door. He was holding a pizza box in one hand and a gallon of milk in the other, and his hair was wet.
“Oh,” I said. “Did we have dinner plans?”
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry. I probably should have stopped by first to ask. I guess I figured if you weren’t here, then I’d just catch up with you tomorrow or something.”
“And if I were here, you’d already have the pizza.”
He managed to shrug and nod at the same time. Boyfriend came over to eye the gallon of milk. Noah reached into his pocket and took out a little tin frog with a key sticking out of its side. He wound it up and reached across the threshold to place it on the floor. Boyfriend stalked it from a distance as the frog chugged its way into the room.
I stepped back and let Noah in, too. I mean, what else could I do? It’s not really that rude to just show up, if you bring a gallon of milk and a toy for somebody’s cat, is it? “Cute,” I said. “But aren’t frogs supposed to hop?”
Noah took the two steps required to reach my kitchenette and placed the pizza box and milk on the counter. “I guess it depends on the frog,” he said. “Maybe we could go out for an ice cream later? You know, dessert? Or we could just leave the pizza here for the cat and the frog, and go get dinner somewhere.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “But, I’m just curious. Do you remember the last time you were here, when we discussed the concept of advance planning?”
