Completely Clementine

by Sara Pennypacker

  But then Astrid stuck a paddle into the kiln and pulled out a tray full of my mom’s stars, which she had made for a new baby mobile. And my heart almost burst from the beauty.

  Astrid was right about the glazes: the colors gleamed like jewels!

  I held my breath as Astrid slid the paddle back into the kiln. I had used all the same glazes on my ashtray, but I had swirled them together. What if that made them turn back into mud? But when she pulled it out, there on her paddle was the most wonderful thing I had ever made. The blue and the yellow glazes met in lime green smears spotted with caramel and turquoise. Feathery purple patches glittered with lemon sparks, and tangerine curlicues crept through clouds of rose and gold.

  My mom and I thanked Astrid about a hundred times for letting us use her kiln. Then we tucked Bubble Wrap around our pottery, packed everything into boxes, and carried them out to our car.

  On the way home I kept staring into the open box beside me, where my ashtray sat.

  “You look a little sad,” my mom said, glancing back in the rearview mirror. “Is it going to be hard to give it away?”

  “No,” I said. “Well, a little. But it will be at Margaret’s, so I can visit it. That’s not it.”

  “So…”

  I sighed. “Don’t you wish we had all that stuff at home?” I asked. “A studio like Astrid has, with a kiln? We could make pottery every day. And other art, too—like stained glass, or papier-mâché, or wood carving—whenever we wanted!”

  “I’d have a drawing table ten feet long,” Mom said.

  “And big easels for painting at. And a place to do mosaics,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to do mosaics!”

  “And a forge for metal works, and a weaving loom, and a jewelry workshop,” my mom added. She was practically drooling.

  Once we got going with this dream, it was a little hard to stop. “How about a place to get a massage for when your back hurts from bending over your drawing table?” my mom suggested.

  “And someone baking chocolate chip cookies—I could always use chocolate chip cookies when I’m making art,” I said.

  Mom laughed. “Well, I’d settle for a good coffee shop next door.” She glanced back in the mirror again, and her face was serious. “You know, Clementine, you could have a studio of your own. There’s plenty of room in the basement. Your dad could set you up with a nice space—you should ask him.”

  “Maybe,” I said. Although even then I knew I couldn’t. If you’re really mad at someone, you don’t get to ask him for a favor. No, if I had to talk to my father, my first words were definitely not going to be Will you make me an art studio?

  Saturday morning at breakfast, Radish and I gave our parents their card, which they loved. Then I brought up the problem of our no-name baby again. “Have you decided anything yet?” I asked, being careful to point my words at my mother.

  “We’re talking about a few possibilities,” she answered. “Nothing definite.”

  “Remember, it should be a thing-name,” I said.

  “Well, I still like Noodle,” my dad said. He got up and scraped his plate into the sink. “It’s a thing, it’s a food, and what kid wouldn’t love to be called Noodle?”

  My brother sprayed English muffin into his apple juice, he laughed so hard at this. But my mom ignored my dad and so did I, although okay, fine—I thought he was pretty funny.

  Just then my father’s beeper went off. “The building inspector’s here to check out the new air conditioners,” he said. “I won’t be long.” As he was putting the beeper back on his belt, he stopped, frozen, staring at it. His face lit up. “That’s it! The perfect thing-name!” he cried. “Beeper!”

  Corn sprayed the rest of his English muffin into his juice at that. Then he slid out of his chair and wrapped his arms around my mom, laughing “Beeper! Beeper! Beeper!” into her belly.

  My mother rolled her eyes and waved my dad away, but she was laughing now too. I turned my head so nobody would see how much I wanted to join in the beeper-fun, or how lonely I must look because I couldn’t.

  “Of course it’s a shame,” my dad said, buckling on his tool belt, “to give up a great name like Noodle.” Then his face lit up again. “So we’ll hyphenate it: Noodle-Beeper. There, I’m glad that’s settled.” As the door shut behind him, we could still hear his voice in the hallway. “Or maybe Beeper-Noodle. Oh, yeah, that’s even better….”

  I let myself laugh a little bit as I cleared my plate off the table. When I went back to get my mom’s plate, I noticed something strange: she didn’t have one. “How come you didn’t eat breakfast?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” my mom answered. “Just not hungry.”

  “Well, what about Beeper-Noodle?”

  She patted her tummy. “The baby doesn’t seem hungry either. How about we put that mobile together now?”

  And for the rest of the morning, we strung the pottery stars with invisible fishing line, and then hung them from some driftwood branches we had collected at the beach last summer. Well, my mother and I did—my brother just stomped on the Bubble Wrap the stars had been wrapped in.

  It took a long time, because the stars were all different—different colors, different shapes, different sizes—and we had to figure out the perfect spots for them all. They had to balance each other, and be hung where each one looked its best. They also had to be far enough apart that when a breeze moved them they wouldn’t clack into each other and get hurt. When it was finished, we hung it in the window near where the crib was waiting.

  Okra had gotten pretty tired out from all that dinosaur stomping, so my mother thought it was a good time to wrestle him into a bath. I stayed in my parents’ bedroom, looking into the empty crib and trying to imagine it filled with a brother or a sister. “When are you coming?” I whispered. “Are you going to be a dud? Are you going to be half rat? And what’s your name going to be, for real?”

  Then I went back into the living room and took my ashtray out to admire it for the last few minutes before I had to give it away. It was even more beautiful than before, and I decided right then that I was going to make another one, one that would live in our house. The problem was, nobody in my family smoked.

  Just as I was trying to figure out what else could live in an ashtray besides a pipe, my dad came in. “Boy, I wish I had something like this to store my beeper in,” he sighed. He took it off his belt and tapped it down the slide to the swimming pool, then set it down on the bed. “This would be perfect, all right,” he said.

  I looked up and gave him a smile. But my throat hurt just from looking at him, and my eyes were getting a little watery. Remember the cow in the meat loaf, I told myself. Then I picked up the wedding present ashtray and headed for the door.

  “Time to give it away, Sport?” my father asked.

  I nodded—nodding isn’t speaking—and walked out to the elevator.

  “Don’t be long,” he called after me. “I need to talk to you about tonight. Your mother’s pretty tired, with the baby coming soon, so for dinner—”

  Luckily the elevator doors opened then, and I hurried inside. If the rest of his sentence involved Mrs. Jacobi and a meat loaf, I didn’t want to hear it. I pressed the button for Margaret’s floor.

  Because I knew Margaret would be dressed up in her new outfit and shoes by now, I practiced smacking my forehead and saying, “WOW!” on the way up to the room.

  It was Mitchell who opened the door, though, and I almost dropped the ashtray. He wore a suit and tie, and his hair was combed into perfect lines. He looked like a movie star, except one that was still thirteen.

  He said, “Hi,” but I couldn’t say Hi back. I could only stare at him.

  “I know,” he said. “I wanted to wear my baseball uniform, but Margaret insisted on this. Does it look dumb?”

  And I still couldn’t speak. I felt really strange. I felt…at first, I couldn’t even think of a word to describe it.

  And then I did: glozzled.
>
  Which could N-O-T, not be right, because I did N-O-T, not love Mitchell.

  Just then, luckily, I figured it out. When Mitchell says the word baseball, you can practically see the love stars beaming from his chest. Because I was standing right in front of him, I must have gotten hit with some of them.

  “Um, could you stand sideways, please?” I asked him, glad that my voice sounded only a little glozzled. “And don’t say baseball again, okay?”

  Mitchell gave me a funny look, but he turned sideways, and then I ran past him down the hall.

  When I opened the door to Margaret’s room, I saw her standing in front of her mirror. She looked like a big, pink girl-cake—a really fancy one, with frosting flowers and ribbons and bows trailing off her. I put the ashtray down so I could smack my head with both hands and say, “WOW!” And I wasn’t even pretending.

  Margaret spun around then, which was kind of a mistake in those shoes. Her ankles collapsed, and Margaret looked stunned to find them on the floor so suddenly. She snapped her ankles back up again and took a few steps toward me.

  “Wow,” I said again, and okay, fine—this time I was pretending a little bit. “Not too wobbly!”

  Just then Margaret’s mother came in. She must have been beaming love stars, like Mitchell, because looking at her also made me feel a little glozzled.

  “You look really nice,” I told her. It wasn’t just that she was wearing a pretty yellow suit and a hat. It was more that her face had an I-Must-Be-Dreaming look I had never seen on it before.

  Margaret looked a little glozzled now too, as if she’d been clonked by her mother’s beaming love stars. She hobbled over and gave her mother a hug. “She let me put some blush on her,” Margaret explained to me. “Coral Shimmer. That’s why she looks so great.”

  Margaret’s mother said it was time to go to the courthouse, and then she left to call for a taxi. I said, “Happy wedding!” and I got up to leave too.

  “Here’s the ashtray,” I said, handing it over to Margaret. “All baked clean.”

  And this time it was Margaret saying, “Wow!” She took it right into her hands without making me wash it in the sink, so I knew she really liked it. “Thanks,” she said. “See you this afternoon.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “I thought you were going to the hotel after the wedding.”

  “I am,” Margaret said, looking surprised. “You’re going too. Your father called my father a little while ago to ask if you could stay over tonight. He said he was going to tell you about it.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  Although, suddenly, everything felt the opposite of right.

  Back in my apartment, my dad was just coming out of my parents’ bedroom.

  “She’s resting, Sport,” he said as he closed the door. “I’m taking her out to dinner tonight to celebrate our anniversary—give her a treat. You kids are going to have a treat too. Your brother’s sleeping over with Uncle Frank and Aunt Claire, and you’re going to spend the night with Margaret in the fanciest hotel in Boston. Go pack a bag. Toothbrush and pajamas.”

  I ran into my room and stuffed my pajamas and toothbrush into my backpack. Then I added the rolled-up poster of my old cat Polka Dottie that I sometimes—okay, fine: almost always—need to look at before I go to sleep.

  I patted Moisturizer good-bye, then I walked down the hall. At my parents’ door, I knocked at exactly the right loudness: quiet enough that if my mom was asleep it wouldn’t wake her, but loud enough that if she was awake she could hear it. My mom said to come on in.

  “You look like a volcano,” I told her as I climbed carefully onto the bed beside her.

  “I know,” she said. She put her book down. “So you’re going to a fancy hotel tonight, I hear. Very la-di-da.”

  “Yep. How come you’re in bed?”

  “Resting. Being a volcano takes a lot of energy. I have to save up for the big eruption.”

  Then I thought of something I’d never thought of before. “Will it hurt?” I asked. “The big eruption?”

  My mom shrugged. “Mostly, it’s going to be a lot of work. So I really need to get some extra rest, especially if I’m going out tonight. You go on now, and have fun, okay?”

  I said okay, then I kissed her good-bye. A few minutes later, my brother and I got into the car with my dad and drove to Uncle Frank and Aunt Claire’s.

  “Tuna fish or egg salad?” Aunt Claire asked, holding out a platter of sandwiches.

  Cauliflower and I picked egg salad, but my dad took tuna. “Fish have feelings, too, you know,” I muttered into my sandwich, but my dad had gone off to eat with Uncle Frank on the deck.

  After lunch, I reminded Aunt Claire and Uncle Frank that my brother is allergic to peanuts, which they know, but I felt better saying it. And then my dad and I drove to the Park Plaza Hotel.

  On the way, my dad talked to me about some things we could do on our summer vacation—try all thirty-seven flavors at the ice cream shop, camp out on the top of our building to watch for shoot-ing stars, collect enough pigeon feathers to make a pair of wings. They sounded great, but I made myself remember the tuna fish in his sandwich and the cow in the meat loaf and didn’t answer him. And then, after we parked and were walking up to the hotel, he stopped to crouch down and look me straight in the eyes.

  “Not talking to each other doesn’t work—not in this family,” he said. “I appreciate that you feel strongly about not eating animals, but I don’t feel the same way. So how about a compromise? In our home, vegetarian is the rule. For the rest of the year, I’m willing to try that. But out of the house, when I’m visiting Uncle Frank, or we’re at a restaurant, I’ll choose what I want. That’s the best I can do, and you’re going to have to accept that. All right?”

  I shrugged and scooped my head around in a circle: not yes, but not no, either.

  “Well, at least promise me you’ll think about it.”

  For a minute, I did think about his compromise. Good: mostly my father wouldn’t eat animals. Bad: sometimes he still would. I felt like half of the dangerous lemon instantly disappeared from my throat. But here is the news about lemons: even with only half of one in your throat, it’s still hard to talk. So I just nodded about the “think about it” promise, and didn’t say a word.

  My dad stood up and then we walked up the hotel driveway together. A tall man in a uniform greeted us. “Welcome to the Boston Park Plaza,” he said with a bow. Then he held the door open and swooped his arm like a game show host to guide us in. “Will you be staying with us this evening?”

  I bowed back as my dad answered, “My daughter will be checking in.”

  The doorman smiled as if this was the news he had been waiting for all his life. He bowed again and asked if he could take my luggage.

  “My luggage?” I asked with another bow.

  He tipped his eyebrows to my backpack.

  “Oh, my luggage,” I said. I wriggled my backpack off and took out the poster of Polka Dottie. “I’d better carry this myself,” I told him as I handed the backpack to him.

  It was a good thing he’d taken my backpack, because when I saw the inside of that lobby, I almost fell right over. A huge, glittering chandelier hung from the golden ceiling, which looked a hundred feet high. The floors were marble, and there were shiny leather couches and satin drapes everywhere you looked. I gave my dad’s hand a squeeze in case the fanciness of this lobby was making him feel bad about our plain lobby at home, and he squeezed mine back.

  At the registration desk, the doorman handed my backpack to another man in a uniform. “This is Raoul, who will be your bellhop,” he said. “He will assist you to your room.”

  The lady behind the desk wore a name tag that said LINDSEY. We gave her Margaret’s father’s name and waited while she checked a list. I figured it was probably CRIMINALS WHO AREN’T ALLOWED INTO THE PARK PLAZA HOTEL. “You don’t have to worry, I’ve never been in jail,” I told her. “But if a kid named Baxter ever tries to get
in, watch out.”

  Lindsey said that was good to know, and then she handed me a tiny envelope with a plastic card inside and pointed us to the elevators.

  The elevator doors gleamed like golden mirrors. My dad must have seen me wondering if the condo association in our building would go for bronze elevator doors, because he shook his head sadly and said, “Not a chance.”

  Raoul followed us into the elevator. He tried to press the buttons, but I told him he could take a few minutes off, because I am an expert in operating elevators. On the way up, Raoul’s eyes kept glancing at my poster, so I unrolled it and let him look at Polka Dottie.

  “That is quite a cat,” he said, after he’d admired her for a few floors.

  “She was,” I said, rolling her back up safely. “She died last spring, and I’m still sad about that. But in the fall I got a new kitten, who’s having a birthday in the summer and then he won’t be a kitten anymore, he’ll be a cat. Like Polka Dottie was, except he’s different from her, which I’m glad about. My birthday’s in September…I’ll be nine. And we’re having a baby soon. Do you have a tattoo?”

  But before Raoul could answer my question, we were at the sixteenth floor. I told my feet not to run down the long hallway, and for once they listened to me, although they weren’t very happy about it. At the room, Raoul showed me how to slide the card down the slot in the door handle, and then a green light flashed and the lock clicked open.

  Margaret’s father welcomed us in and started talking with my father, while Raoul put my backpack on a luggage stand. Behind him, I saw Margaret sitting on a couch with her foot propped up on pillows. Her ankle was wrapped up like a mummy, and there was a pair of crutches beside her. “Margaret,” I gasped, “what happened?”

  From the way Margaret’s lips were pressed together, I could tell she didn’t want to tell me what happened. Which told me what happened: she fell off her shoes.