It All Comes Down to This

by Karen English

  Some of the kids laughed nervously and looked at each other.

  I swallowed.

  Carla looked back at me and rolled her eyes.

  Miss Marburn continued, “I just want you to have fun! Remember, this is meant to be fun!” That’s the way she wanted us to think about this audition—​each and every one of us, according to her. She stopped and gave us all a special stare. When her eyes alighted on me for the second time, they lingered just a tiny bit, but I caught them. Then she gave me a big, fake, bright-eyed smile. And I thought, That’s what they can do. They can think bad things about you and plaster over it with a big false smile.

  The first scene was in the cafeteria where Julie is asking Chet, her boyfriend, to get her another piece of cake and he’s telling her that the last time he did that for her, Miss Brown, the cafeteria lady, caught him and threatened to write him up. Olivia, from her place in the attic, does her soliloquy about how Julie uses the doting Chet and what Julie really thinks of him. Tish, Best Friend Number Two, is also in the scene and, doing Julie’s bidding, urges Chet to get the cake. Miss Brown, the cafeteria lady, is standing at the register.

  A girl I didn’t recognize was called up as Julie, some boy I’d never seen before was Chet, and Carla was Olivia. Carla suddenly didn’t look quite so glib. And I didn’t feel so glib, either. My mouth felt dry. And was Anthony Cruz going to show up to try out for anything or not?

  They all had their scripts in their hands. Even with scripts, the kids playing Julie and Chet had to be prompted several times. What was with them? Had they just heard about auditions this morning and decided to mosey on by? How could people be so casual?

  A girl whom I’d seen at the center the first time Jennifer and I had gone there was trying out as Julie’s friend Tish. She’d been called up for the scene where Tish asks Julie if she could please take a babysitting job for her so she can go to her grandmother’s eightieth birthday celebration, and Julie says she already has to babysit her niece. It’s a lie, of course.

  Then Deidre was called up for the role of Olivia. I stopped breathing for a few seconds. When Jennifer was called as Julie, I sat up straight and willed her to do great. Two more kids trying out for the roles of Miss Ornsby, the English teacher, and Chet, the boyfriend were called up as well.

  I was on the edge of my seat. Deidre gave an absolutely wooden performance. She didn’t know her lines. Even when prompted, she couldn’t find her place. Miss Marburn had to point it out to her. It was a beautiful thing to watch.

  And it was wonderful to see Jennifer give a perfect audition as Julie. She got the scene where she approaches her teacher for the recommendation while Chet waits in the hall. When Miss Marburn attempted to hand Jennifer the script, Jennifer said sweetly, “Oh, I don’t need that. I know all of Julie’s lines.” Miss Marburn stepped back, turned to the assembly, and said, “I’m impressed.”

  A shiver passed through me. If she was impressed with Jennifer, she was going to be doubly impressed with me because I knew my lines and everyone else’s too. I could prompt them each time they stumbled. I sighed and felt a warm sense of satisfaction. I just had to wait.

  And wait, because I wasn’t being called up. I was watching everyone else get summoned to the stage to audition for the roles they’d signed up for, but I wasn’t hearing my name. Then Mrs. Milay was thanking everyone for coming and trying out and that the results would be posted in about a week’s time and everybody should be patient and . . . Jennifer looked back at me and frowned. She jumped up and motioned to me to join her. Then she led the way to where Miss Marburn was writing something on a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard.

  “Miss Marburn, Sophie didn’t get called,” Jennifer blurted out.

  Miss Marburn looked up. “What, dear?”

  Jennifer, her face flushed, and seemingly almost overcome with emotion, said, “You didn’t call Sophie. She’s trying out for Olivia.”

  “Oh?”

  I couldn’t speak. I could only stand there swallowing again and again and breathing fast. I was trying not to cry. Because whatever mean thing she was going to do, she would cover it up with smiles and “dears,” and “I’m so sorrys.”

  Instead, she slapped her forehead and said, “Oh, my mistake!”

  I was filled with relief. I watched Miss Marburn look around a bit helplessly. Kids were filing out of every exit door of the auditorium. She turned back to me, shrugged, and widened her eyes as if helpless.

  “No, no,” Jennifer said hurriedly. “We can do the scene where Julie is trying to decide which outfit to wear to her sister’s graduation dinner and Olivia reveals that Julie’s always been jealous of her older sister and how she managed to steal her journalism award—​an engraved ink pen. We can do that!” Jennifer said with such a look of pleading in her eyes, Miss Marburn shrugged and said, “Okay. I guess we can do that.”

  She looked over at Mrs. Milay. “We have one more.”

  It was flawless. I did my own stage direction. I said my lines without a script. My timing was perfect. And all the while only Mrs. Milay was paying attention. Miss Marburn was packing up and noting something on her clipboard that I suspected had nothing to do with me.

  Mrs. Milay clapped when I finished. A polite clap. “Well,” she said. “You did a good job.” Then her voice seemed to wander off as if she was speaking to herself and maybe to us at the same time. “Such a shame you couldn’t do a scene with more participants.” She sighed. “Well, you do know the results will be posted in a week’s time.” She smiled. “Check back then and . . .” She held up crossed fingers on both hands. “Fingers crossed!”

  I would not cry in front of Jennifer, who kept chattering on and on about how we were going to get the parts and how this was just the beginning because now she knew she wanted to be an actress and wasn’t it great that we lived so close to Hollywood and . . . She must have sensed my morose silence because she stopped and looked over at me. “Don’t worry, Sophie. We were the best. They have to be fair!”

  That was the problem. They didn’t have to be fair at all. They could do whatever they wanted.

  CHAPTER 21

  Peach Preserves

  * * *

  MRS. BAYLOR MUST have noticed me moping around the house over the next few days because she pulled me aside and said, “You didn’t get that part you was counting on, did you?”

  “The results are going to be posted in four days.”

  “You thinkin’ you not going to get it—​aren’t you thinkin’ that?”

  I nodded.

  “Well.” She put a freshly peeled potato in the colander and picked up another one. “You gonna have to develop a thick skin and don’t let nothin’ stop you. You keep on pushing and you keep on tryin’ and you’ll get what you workin’ for.”

  “The role of Olivia?” I asked, a little bit hopeful.

  She looked at me and shook her head sadly. “I don’t think that’s for you, child.”

  I felt a flash of anger. It was as if her words took the role away from me.

  “Now’s the time to be grateful for what you do have. Don’t look at what other people have. You be grateful for what you have. Are you sleeping on the street? You going around hungry?”

  “But in this country, nobody’s sleeping on the street or going hungry.”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “They just not sleeping on the street or going hungry in this neighborhood. Plenty of hungry people here. And they don’t know where they gonna get their next meal. You put your mind on that.” She rinsed the colander of peeled potatoes and stuck it in the refrigerator.

  “Now. We gonna get your mind off that play and I’m gonna teach you how to make peach preserves. It’s a sin to let them peaches in your yard go to waste. It’s like you’ve forgotten all about that poor tree down there on the lower level. I think the gardener’s been takin’ peaches home—​so at least they’re not all going to waste.”

  So we were going to make peach preserves. I didn’t want to.
It felt like it was going to be a lot of work: the picking and the peeling. And I’d have to think of the peaches rather than the bad blow that I’d been dealt. And I might want to go over in my mind the situation with Jennifer. Because she hadn’t been dealt a bad blow at all. In fact, soon she was going off somewhere with Linda Cruz. I think Linda’s mother was taking kids to the movies again. Jennifer would get to see Anthony Cruz. And maybe she would sit next to Anthony and share popcorn. She and Linda were getting oh-so-tight now that they’d been to the same sleep-away camp.

  I had a lot of sulking to do, and this peach project might just get in the way of that.

  “I forgot the Mason jars, so listen for the doorbell. Nathan’s bringing them this morning.”

  My ears perked up at the sound of Nathan’s name. I looked down the hall toward my room, trying to remember if Lily had to work today or not. In my mind, I was pushing them together.

  Mrs. Baylor went out to the yard and then backed through the door with a mound of peaches in her apron a while later. She was careful not to let a single one fall. Nathan hadn’t arrived yet. What was taking him so long?

  “So many going to waste,” she said. “So many on the ground.” I hoped that wasn’t directed at me. Mrs. Baylor had a knack for preaching under her breath, and you felt ruined if you thought she was preaching about you.

  I was eating my Cheerios and reading The Bobbsey Twins and the County Fair Mystery. I’d already read it—​in sixth grade, I think—​but I was desperate. I’d finished Footlights for Jean and had found myself without a new book. Mrs. Baylor, usually a stickler for manners (“No books at the kitchen table” and “The kitchen is for eating”), didn’t say anything.

  She just let the peaches fall from her apron into the sink. We did take our peach tree for granted. I thought of it standing there, all lonely, at the bottom of our small hillside, producing its peaches for nobody. Then I thought of the ficus hedge that bordered our yard, and the distant skyline of Los Angeles. I liked sitting at the top of the hillside on clear days and staring at the high-rises and imagining the hundreds of stories of the people who lived there. I didn’t even think of our peach tree.

  “Now, you get your mind off that play. What will be will be. I’m going to show you how to make peach preserves on this day. You ready to learn?”

  I turned my book face-down and yawned. “Okay,” I said.

  Then I wondered if she would tell me more about her very interesting life. Maybe she would tell me how she’d met Nathan’s father. Or how she got the scar on her wrist, right where a watch would go.

  Instead, she said to me out of the blue, “You don’t get much mothering, do you?” She stood at the kitchen sink, rinsing, while I stealthily checked the scar she wore on her wrist like a badge. I didn’t say anything. It felt like she was arranging her thoughts in her head.

  “How are you doing without your father?”

  “Fine,” I said carefully.

  “Uh-huh.” She filled a big Dutch oven with hot water and placed it on a burner, seeming to have set aside all personal topics. “Now when the water is boilin’, you’re going to use this here slotted spoon and dip the peaches one by one into it for ten seconds, and then place them in a bowl of cold water. Get me a big bowl out of the pantry.”

  When the water was boiling, she showed me how to do it.

  “This way, the skin will slide off and then you can slice the peaches off the pit.”

  We soon had almost all the peaches peeled and sliced.

  “See how easy that part was?”

  I nodded. I finished the rest of the peaches—​slicing them and filling the Dutch oven.

  The doorbell rang.

  “That must be Nathan with my Mason jars,” Mrs. Baylor said. “I don’t know why he insisted on bringing them today. I won’t need them for a while.”

  I washed my hands and started for the door just as I heard Lily come out of our room. I hung back on purpose, without even knowing that was what I would do. I got there just in time to see her standing in the doorway, reaching for the box of jars and accidentally touching Nathan’s hand. She looked at him for two long seconds, and turned scarlet. I saw his helpless, fragile look. Then she backed away to hand me the jars and I knew that was all it took. Soon they would be back together.

  As Mrs. Baylor stood at the sink, washing and rinsing the jars, I brought over the bowl and slotted spoon and stood there waiting, looking at the scar on her wrist—​how the light from the kitchen window made it look like new baby skin.

  “Mrs. Baylor?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How did you get that scar? On your wrist?” I wondered if she would tell me.

  She didn’t hesitate. “I was your age. Maybe a little older.” She dried a jar with a towel and set it on the table. “I was taking care of my baby sister and I did a very careless thing.”

  “What did you do?”

  She smiled oddly. “One day I was playing with Kate outside my mother’s little cottage behind the hotel where she worked. In that house, I slept on a small pallet on the floor in my baby sister’s room.”

  I did not like to think of Mrs. Baylor sleeping on the floor next to that sister in her nice bed.

  “We were playing on the lovely grass in front of the cottage. Kate liked to be swung around and around and I loved the sound of her laughter. I began to swing her by the arms—​spinning around in a circle. Luckily, when the accident happened, I wasn’t swinging very fast. So when I lost hold of her, it was mainly a drop and a thud on the soft grass. But there was a bit of exposed jagged root, and she cut her chin on it. Not enough to make a scar, but enough to break the skin. And there was blood. Kate lost a baby tooth, as well.

  “My mother went crazy, thinking Kate would be marred for life and how would she get a good husband when it was time for that with her face all scarred up. My mother had been ironing one of her work uniforms and was still holding the hot iron. She grabbed my hand and burned me with the pointy part of the iron. She felt I needed to be punished.

  “I put a cold, wet cloth on it as soon as I could, but it was destined to make a scar. Always to remind me of my carelessness.”

  And that little Kate was her mother’s favorite, I thought as she bustled around the kitchen, cleaning up and putting things away. Mrs. Baylor added the sugar and spices and some water. She placed the pot over medium heat.

  “We will bring it to a boil,” she said. “Then we will let the peaches cool and repeat the process five times over two days. It’s something that takes patience.”

  I had patience, and the thought of the peaches turning into preserves over two days seemed magical. Something I could count on.

  The next evening, I sat in the kitchen, admiring the jars of peach preserves, which were neatly lined up on the counter. Mrs. Baylor had labeled them: PEACH JAM AUGUST 8TH 1965. I touched one. It was still warm. She had poured the preserves into the jars hours earlier. Their golden color made them look as though they were full of sunshine and happiness. I wanted a piece of bread with warm peach jam. My mouth watered, not just from imagining the taste but also from knowing how much better I’d feel with warm, sweet jam in my mouth. I needed some sunshine and happiness.

  CHAPTER 22

  It All Comes Down to This

  * * *

  THE DAY THE RESULTS were to be posted, Jennifer and I decided we wouldn’t run over to the community center first thing in the morning. We’d wait until early evening. We didn’t want to stand among a bunch of other kids, craning our necks and maybe elbowing people out of the way or being elbowed out by them.

  No, we would wait until early evening to see the results. Then we could be alone, together—​to be happy or sad. Or maybe we’d wait until the next morning. That way, we’d be even more sure of having privacy.

  But then, while I ate my Frosted Flakes in the den and watched Rocky and His Friends, I heard a car pull up in front of Jennifer’s house. I looked out the window to see her climbing into the back
seat of Linda Cruz’s dad’s station wagon—​with her beach towel. Soon, I saw Jennifer and Linda in the back seat with their heads coming together like a heart. Even from where I stood in the shadow of the den, I could see the intimacy between them and the happiness of new friendship.

  Linda Cruz’s dad—​the very one who’d just turn me around and send me on my way if I dared approach their house—​backed the car out of the driveway and headed toward Olympiad.

  I checked the sky. Yes, it was a good day for the beach. But why hadn’t she told me? She could’ve just told me that she and Linda were going to the beach and that was why she’d suggested putting off walking to the community center. She could’ve just told me.

  Now what was I going to do? Walk over to the center? Take Oscar out? Get back to The Outside Child? I could write the scene where Minerva’s mother takes Minerva to her real father’s house and her father’s wife gives her lemonade, but she has to go around the back to get it.

  The binder was under my bed. I had to be extra quiet because Lily was still asleep. She was off work today. But as soon as I dropped to my knees to reach for it, she sat up and asked, “Did you get it?”

  I pulled out my notebook and shrugged. “I don’t know yet. They’re posting the cast list today, but I don’t want to go look when there are people around. Maybe I’ll go early tomorrow morning.”

  She looked at me closely. “Mmm. I guess. You want to go out to breakfast?”

  “I just ate some cereal.”

  “Lunch?”