by John Rowell
On Tuesday afternoon, three days before our Cabaret night on Friday, Lynette and I are in my room, pretending to study.
“What is an integer, anyway, Hunt Boy?” she asks me. She’s sitting on the floor of my room, on my cool new shag carpeting—checkerboard squares of light blue and orange—which I picked out myself at Sears. Our textbook, Explorations in Mathematics, is open in front of her, even though she has this month’s Tiger Beat right next to it, opened to a full-color photo spread of the Osmonds riding the water slides at Disneyland. She twirls her shoulder-length, bleachy, strawy hair with a pencil, something she has done ever since I’ve known her, which has been since third grade; it’s just a Lynette thing, as far as I’m concerned. But this little habit drives her parents crazy; they’re sending her to a psychologist twenty miles away in a bigger town in search of a cure. I wanted to ask Lynette’s mother why didn’t she just look for the answer to the problem in Modern Parent and save all that money, but I don’t think Mrs. McKinney likes me much anyway, so I kept that thought to myself.
Since Lynette came to my house directly from JV cheerleading practice, she is still wearing her blue and gold cheerleading uniform and black and white saddle oxfords; her crepe-paper blue and gold pom-poms are tossed onto my bed. It’s so sad that we even have to have a conversation about integers; I’d much rather be helping Lynette write new cheers, or planning what we’re gonna wear to the movie on Friday. Besides, what does it matter if we know what an integer is, anyway? This is the problem with the world, as I see it, because not only is Lynette a beautiful person on the outside, she is also beautiful inside, whether she can do eighth-grade math or not. What the world should know is that Lynette is a great humanitarian, and here’s why: she is the only white person in our class who bought a Flip Wilson as Geraldine (“Shut up, Killa!”) lunchbox and a Get Christie Love! composition book and brought them with her to school, which I thought was the coolest thing I’d ever seen anyone do. She said: “Now that our school is integrated, Hunter, we have to show the black students that we care about them and their culture.”
“Who cares what a blankety-blank integer is?” I say. The only thing I have open in front of me is last month’s issue of Photoplay magazine that I retrieved from the throw-out pile at my mother’s beauty shop, and I have it opened to a four-page spread on Liza Minnelli and Cabaret. “Integer … it sounds like something the doctor sticks in your mouth to look down your throat.”
My brother knocks at my door.
“What, Henry? We’re doing homework!”
“Hey, Hunter, I can’t get the knot out of my shoe.”
I open the door, knowing full well Henry just wants to hang out with us, something Lynette and I just cannot allow. I examine the shoelace of his sneaker.
“It isn’t knotted, Henry. You can do this,” I say, unlacing it for him anyway and tossing it back at him.
“What are y’all doing?” he says, peering into my room like a little thief, all nosey and inquisitive; he doesn’t often get such an easy entrance into my private lair.
“Homework,” says Lynette.
“Then how come Hunter was looking at a magazine?” he says, pointing to my opened copy of Photoplay.
“Because we’re taking a break,” I say. “It’s time for Speed Racer, Henry. You better go watch it.”
“I’m telling Mama you won’t let me in.”
“I let you in! Now go watch Speed Racer.”
He doesn’t move.
“You can play with my pom-poms if you want, Henry,” says Lynette. And then she and I both look at each other and break out laughing. I say: “I bet a lot of guys would like to hear you say that, girl.”
“Shut up, Hunt Boy, you’re so gross,” she says, but she keeps laughing anyway.
Henry doesn’t get it. “Pom-poms are for girls,” he says, which I don’t like hearing, and I take a swipe at his arm. It still makes me angry that my school once allowed male cheerleaders on the squad and now they don’t. I know in my heart I would have been the best male cheerleader Stafford Hills Junior High ever saw; Lynette and I would have made such a great cheerleading team. We tell ourselves we would have been the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of junior high cheerleading.
“Besides, Henry,” I say, “we’re going to play the Cabaret album, and you know how you hate that.”
“Gross!” He takes his sneaker and barrels off to the family room.
I shut the door again, and go over to my stereo. I start it up and the turntable starts spinning.
“‘Mein Herr,’” Lynette says, as I hold the needle above the whirling record, like a tease. It’s her turn to pick. I do wish Lynette could say it in the right German way, instead of making it sound like “Mahn Hay-yur,” but I don’t want to hurt her feelings by correcting her.
“This is the number with the chairs,” I say. I know this, because I pretended to be sick one day last week so I could stay home from school to watch Liza on The Mike Douglas Show. They showed scenes from the movie, and I tried to memorize as much of it as I could.
We sing along. We are pretty good, too, having honed our singing voices as well as our ability to “sell” a number last summer, when we played Louisa and Friedrich (“I’m Friedrich and I’m incorrigible”) together in the Second Presbyterian Church Chancel Choir’s production of The Sound of Music. We like Cabaret more, we’ve decided, because it deals with sleazier topics.
“You have to understand the way I am, mein herr … a tiger is a tiger, not a lamb, mein herr …”
Lynette had to ask her father what “mein herr” meant, but I went to the school library and looked it up in an English-German dictionary. “My man.” It means “my man.” I know I shouldn’t sing that lyric out loud, being a boy, but Lynette doesn’t care if I do. I just don’t sing it in front of other boys, not even in front of my little brother. Especially not in front of my dad.
Lynette and I dance around together, seriously at first, as if we were actually in the movie, but then we get tickled and start to laugh. But when we pull ourselves back together, we dance even more seriously and when the number is over, we hug each other and collapse onto the floor. Sometimes we kiss each other too, but it’s play kissing; we just giggle about it and make jokes. Lynette has a boyfriend anyway, Mark Perkins, who plays center on the JV basketball team. I don’t mind so much that she has a boyfriend; I just wish she had a better one than Mark. Mark personally hates me. I know this because Lynette says he’s insanely jealous of me because of all the time she and I spend together, and because we can talk about absolutely anything with each other, which to his warped-up, basketball-for-a-brain mind means that we are secretly in love with each other. Mark keeps threatening to beat me up, but he never will, because he knows Lynette won’t let him unhook her training bra ever again if he does. So he acts nice around me, and I know it’s totally fake.
“You have to understand the way I am, mein herr … you’ll never turn the vinegar to jam, mein herr …”
We close our eyes and keep singing, and all I can think about is how cool it will be to see Cabaret at the mall on Friday night, even if Mrs. McKinney is sitting there, worrying about non Presbyterian-like subject matter up on the screen tarnishing our innocent eyes and ears.
Suddenly, I hear my father coming in the house, home from the high school for dinner before going back out to teach his evening community college American history class. I shove the Cabaret album cover under my bed. I don’t think he cares what I listen to, I just don’t want him to see that photograph of Joel Grey wearing red lipstick and rouge on his cheeks. I look over at Lynette, feeling slightly stupid. Of course she has a stupid expression on her face back at me.
“You’re so crazy,” she says. “Why do you do that? What if it was an Alice Cooper album? He wears lipstick and stuff, and guys listen to Alice Cooper.”
“I don’t know, it’s just different,” I say, as I fold up the Photoplay and open my own hardly dog-eared copy of Explorations in Mathematics.
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Daddy just says hello from the hallway, doesn’t knock or come in. That’s fine, I guess. I didn’t have to hide the album cover after all.
“Would you have hidden Joel Grey from your mama?” Lynette whispers, still twirling her hair and making another stupid face at me.
“Shut up!” I tell her. “She doesn’t care. She’s seen it.” I feel my face turn red all of a sudden, an old habit from sixth and seventh grades that I’d hoped I’d gotten over.
Lynette is lately starting to ask me dumb questions like that, all nosey about stuff since she started seeing that psychologist. But I can always come back at her with things that I know get her goat—I’ve learned how to use her own stupid psychology against her. I can shoot her down pretty easily with stuff like “How come you sneak Moon Pies into your room so no one will see you eating them?” or “Did you know that Greg Winston saw you buying Kotex at the Winn-Dixie last week—and told?”
But I refuse to let her get to me. “Let’s just think about Friday night, OK?”
“OK, don’t get all upset.”
She throws one of her pom-poms at me and I throw it right back at her.
“Rah-rah,” I say.
She just looks at me and rolls her eyes. “You’re such a goofball, Hunt Boy,” she says.
“Shut up, you are too.”
The big sound of Liza Minnelli’s voice fills my room; we start singing and dancing all over again, and making complicated hand gestures (I make sure my door is locked)—choreography that we think might be close to what Liza does in the movie. The song ends and I get up to reposition the needle, to start it again at the beginning. Looking out my window, I see Daddy and Henry tossing a softball out in the front yard. I watch them for a minute, before starting the song again, wondering why they go out there every afternoon, just to throw that stupid ball around, back and forth, back and forth. Back and forth, over and over. And over again. They don’t even ask me to join them anymore, the way they used to. I guess they got tired of me saying no.
I turn back to Lynette and lift the needle. “What’ll it be now, girl?” I say. “‘Maybe This Time’ or ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’?”
On Friday afternoon, three hours and thirteen minutes before Cabaret begins at Park Point Cinema, the phone rings.
“Hey, Hunt Boy,” says Lynette.
“Hey, Lynette Girl,” I say. “Are you getting ready? I am.”
“Well … you’re gonna be mad at me,” she says, kind of sing-songy, and I don’t like the sound of that one bit.
“What?” I say. I feel an ominous sense of dread washing over me. I lay the Pop Tart I was eating on a napkin, suddenly purged of appetite.
“Well … I don’t know how I coulda done this, but I kind of forgot about this dance at Mark’s church that I was supposed to go to with him tonight. I can’t believe I just forgot all about it.”
“Tonight? Lynette! Have you lost your mind? This is our Cabaret night! We’ve been planning it for two months!”
“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry, but he gets all … it’s a stupid dance, I’d rather go to the movie. But Mama says I promised him, and his father is gonna pick us up and everything, so …”
“OK,” I say. “I hope you have a great time.” I swear, if she were standing in front of me, I would hit her over the head with the phone. Maybe I’ll just say: “Lynette McKinney, you’re the biggest bitch at Stafford Hills Junior High, and everybody knows it!” and hang up real fast in her ear.
“Are you totally angry at me?” she asks, trying to sound pitiful so as to make me less mad at her. I know her tricks.
“No.” I feel a lump in my throat. I just want to hang up. I can’t even call her a bitch.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I gotta go, my brother’s calling me.”
“Well … OK. I’ll see you at church on Sunday.”
“OK … Bye.”
Damn her and her stupid boyfriend, I think, as I slam the phone down hard into the receiver.
“Hunter, what’s the matter?” Mama asks, suddenly in the kitchen and starting to open up the cabinets and stare into them, which is what she does when she has no inspiration about what to make for dinner.
“Nothing.”
Daddy comes in from watering the azalea bushes.
“Who slammed the phone down like that?” he says. “What’s wrong, Hunter?”
How lucky, here I am about to cry and my parents descend upon me from all corners, like disciples rushing after Jesus upon news of the crucifixion. Can’t I ever get any privacy?
“Lynette can’t go to the movie, that’s what!” I yell. I can’t help it. I have to tell somebody.
“Oh, honey,” says Mama. “Well … that is a disappointment. Hmmm … well …” I can see she is thinking of a way to fix it, and I just wish she wouldn’t.
“What movie, Grace?” Daddy asks, washing his hands with lye soap in the utility room.
“That Cabaret that he’s been talking about for weeks.”
“Oh,” he says, and I can tell he is also trying to fix it. Oh, please don’t, I think. I’ll just stay home and watch Love American Style with all of y’all and won’t that be one hell of a good time.
“Who’s in that movie, Hunter?” he asks, drying his hands on a towel.
God, I’m so embarrassed to even have to say it, why is this happening in our kitchen, why do I feel like I’m on a stage with a hot spotlight shining on me?
“You know … I don’t know …” I say.
“Judy Garland’s daughter,” Mama says. “Lisa something.”
“Liza,” I mutter. “You always say it wrong, Mama!”
“Well,” says Daddy. “I can take you, son, if you still want to go. We can go after supper.”
“Can we all go?” I ask. “All of us?”
“Now I don’t think that’s the kind of movie to take Henry to, is it?” asks Mama, even though she knows it isn’t. She subscribes to Modern Parent too. “Is it a Walt Disney?”
“No, Mama, you know it’s not!” I say, slamming my hand down on top of the phone book, for dramatic emphasis.
“Well …” she says, folding her arms and looking at me hard, “maybe somebody with a bad attitude like that shouldn’t see any movie of any kind.” She turns back to the cabinets, which are mostly empty. “Who would like to pick up dinner from Hardee’s tonight?” she asks.
“You and I can go to the movie, son,” Daddy says. “I don’t mind. Mama and Henry can stay home.”
“You won’t like it, Daddy,” I say. “You never do.” God, anything but this.
I’m thinking of the previous year’s movie debacle. I got Daddy to take me to see Nicholas and Alexandra, not because I thought I would like it, particularly, but because I thought he would, being a history teacher. For reasons I still can’t figure out, he hated it, and we heard about it for months—the broken record of what a miserable time Daddy had at the Nicholas and Alexandra movie.
“Nah, nah,” says Daddy. “If it’s got Judy Garland’s daughter in it, it ought to be good. If she’s anything like her mother. Besides, y’all are too hard on me. I don’t dislike things.”
“Oh, Ed,” says Mama. “I still have to listen to how much you hated The Graduate.”
“That’s because I thought it was gonna be about teachers,” he says. “It sure wasn’t, not by a long shot.”
“Well … if you don’t like it, I’m telling you now that I don’t want to hear about it for a week. And I’m sure Hunter doesn’t, either.”
“Where is it playing? Down at the Miracle?”
“The Miracle?” Mama says. “Ed, you’re just plain out of it. They don’t show anything at the Miracle anymore except the Oriental Kung Fu movies. I thought you knew that. There hasn’t been a good movie down there for years.”
“It’s at the Park Point Cinema!” I scream. “Park Point Cinema! Park Point Cinema!!”
Daddy sighs. “What time?” he asks.
So that’s it, then. M
e, Daddy, and Judy Garland’s daughter at the Park Point Mall Cinema 3. That’s just about perfect.
I could just bag it, I guess, but it does seem like seeing the movie even with Daddy sitting beside me is probably better than not seeing it at all. Maybe he’ll just fall asleep anyway, like he often does. I try to decide if I should still wear the outfit I’ve been planning on, my favorite bell bottoms with the alternating burgundy and cream panels on the legs, and my new two-toned tan and brown ankle boots with side zippers. Damn Lynette, is all I can think. I hope Mark Perkins calls her a big fat whore at the dance and tells everybody that she stuffs her training bra on JV basketball game nights.
If he doesn’t, I will.
As soon as the lights go down, I start to glance over at Daddy, as slyly as I can, without turning my head, to check for any visible signs of disgust. It doesn’t seem like he’s gonna fall asleep tonight though, like he did when we saw Sleuth, which is too bad, because when he sleeps through a movie, he can’t rightfully claim later on that he hated it because he knows I’ll say, “Daddy, you can’t hate something you didn’t see.”
The movie starts to deal with some Nazi stuff, which I hope appeals to his love of war things. Now if only they would have some battle scenes or something, instead of so much stuff about trampy-looking women at the nightclub acting trashy, which is, of course, my favorite part. Actually, he seems to be enjoying it; I think it helped that when we were out in the lobby getting popcorn there were several friends of ours from Second Presbyterian Church whom he spoke to.
On the screen, Michael York and Liza are hanging out with their German friend, who is blond and really handsome; he looks like he could be in the J. C. Penney catalog modeling suits. The three of them are getting drunk or taking drugs or something, and dancing around, not caring if they knock things over or bump into each other. This is kind of a serious part, because nobody sings any songs. Suddenly, in the scene, the old-fashioned record player stops playing music and the needle scratches and starts to repeat. Michael, Liza, and the German guy are all kind of looking at each other, and they keep moving together, kind of as one—a girl and two boys. And the two boys’ faces get real close, and they kind of nuzzle each other, with their noses, the way Lynette and I sometimes do, and I can’t explain it, but, watching this, I feel kind of like I’m gonna faint or something, and I feel sweat break out on my upper lip, and my stomach starts to swim around. I shift in my seat, and cross my legs, and lean over on my elbows, for protection, so no one will notice anything. If the two men kiss each other, I know my father and some of the other people in this theater are gonna start heading for the aisles, screaming that this is filth and calling out for the manager. Please, God, don’t let me faint. Of course I don’t shut my eyes or anything like that. I wouldn’t miss this for anything, I don’t care who’s sitting next to me.
