Calli Be Gold (4 page)

I’m curious about whether the man combs his hair to get it like that, or if it naturally grows that way, and if the woman puts on the eyebrow pencil every morning and how it stays untouched all day.

At last, the game has only a few seconds left. After some more fouls and free throws and time-outs, when my stomach grumbles are sounding as loud as thunder, the game finally ends. Alex’s team wins by two points. Do I need to say who made the final shot?

Finally, the four of us are walking through the dark parking lot to Mom’s van and Dad’s car. Dad is more leaping than walking, really, as he slaps Alex on the back and punches his fist upward in the night air. “Now that’s how it’s done!” he shouts ecstatically. “You dominated that entire game. Alex, my boy, that might have been the best of your career!”

Then, right in the middle of the parking lot, Dad stops and grabs Alex’s shoulders. “I’ve never been more proud of you, Son,” he says. He chokes up a little and his eyes look misty. I wonder if he’s going to cry.

Mom’s eyes are shining too as she beams at Alex and pulls a tissue from one of her purse compartments. “Remember this moment,” she tells him, dabbing at her eyes. “They don’t get any better than this.”

“That shot, at the end …” Dad glows. “It was amazing.
I thought it might hit the rim but it was right on target.” Dad starts talking about different shots and defensive moves that Alex made throughout the game. He always does this—relives every single second of Alex’s games, or Becca’s competitions—for days afterward sometimes, like everything else in life isn’t worth a sentence.

Alex listens and nods and smiles; then Mom and Dad both lean toward him and give him about twenty-five hugs apiece. Finally, he shrugs them off and says, “I’m hungry. Let’s go.”

I look up at my brother. “Good job, Alex,” I say, and he swats me softly on the back.

“Hey, Cal,” he says. When he smiles at me, my heart feels a little lighter.

We start walking again and I see how many red and yellow leaves have fallen around the parking lot, trampled on in the rush of everyone leaving the game. The air feels cooler and I make a secret wish for an early first snow this year so Wanda, Claire, and I can go sledding on our favorite hill across from the junior high.

On the car ride home, Mom calls Grandma Gold to tell her about Alex’s victory. I can hear Grandma’s voice clearly from the speakerphone, because wouldn’t you know it, she’s pretty loud too.

“Well, of course! I wouldn’t have expected anything less,” Grandma Gold shouts. She then says that Alex’s basketball talent definitely comes from the Gold side of the family. “My Joel could have played in college, you know.”

Mom looks a little annoyed. “Larry played basketball too,” she says.

“Not past freshman year in high school,” Grandma Gold reminds us. “Joel had the goods. But what can you do? Medicine was calling.”

I met Uncle Joel only a few times, when I was little, and I don’t remember him. He lives in California. Dad says he’s very busy being a plastic surgeon to the stars.

“E-mail me Alex’s schedule,” Grandma says. “I’ll see if I can get to a game one of these days when I’m not tied up with mah-jongg.”

“Okay,” Mom replies. Then she ends the call and I hear her mutter, “Joel never really could have played in college. What is she saying?”

“Mom?” I ask as we pull into the garage. “Don’t forget I need that spiral.”

“I didn’t forget,” she says.

When she turns off the car, she sniffs suspiciously like she’s some sort of police dog, then exclaims, “Something’s burning!” She runs into the house, drops her purse onto the counter, and races to the oven.

“Becca!” she yells, jerking open the oven door. Smoke pours out and fills the air, and Mom starts waving her hands frantically through the thick haze. “Did I or did I not tell her to turn the oven to ‘warm’ at seven o’clock?” she groans, looking at me.

“You did,” I answer quietly, coughing a little from the
burning cloud of smoke hanging in the air. The oven clock says 8:15.

Becca stumbles into the kitchen and says, “Oops,” as Mom removes a glass pan holding a very burnt, very blackened, very crisp-looking lasagna.

“Would you look at this?” Mom fumes, setting the pan down and parking both hands on her hips. Her glasses fog up and her eyes sort of disappear for a minute. She pins her lips together tightly and marches over to a drawer. She pulls out a spatula and jabs at the top of the crusted lasagna.

“So what! Aren’t I allowed to forget something once in a while?” Becca stamps a foot. “You don’t understand! I’m under a lot of stress right now!”

She flounces from the kitchen, tripping on her way out, as Dad and Alex come in from the garage. The four of us stare at the lasagna.

“Well,” Mom says sharply, “we’ll just have to deal with it. This is dinner tonight, because I don’t have time to cook anything else.”

Within five minutes, we are all sprawled around the table. Alex is shoving crackers into his mouth, Dad is still beaming about the last shot of the game, Becca contorts her face and props her ankle on an empty chair, and Mom is sawing off uneven chunks of the hardened lasagna and plunking them onto plates.

Despite the fact that we are struggling to cut off a bite of lasagna, let alone chew it, Dad says we should make
the best of the situation and he begins the usual dinnertime ABC game. We are named in alphabetical order—Alex, Becca, Calli—and every night, Dad goes from child to child, asking us what we accomplished that day.

There have been times I’ve wanted to ask my parents if they thought this through fully when they named their children. Didn’t they consider the consequences of having a third child who would forever be branded a
C
? I know they thought it was cute and clever. But I bet if one of them was number three with a
C,
they would see things quite differently.

“A-man,” Dad calls to my brother, who answers, “Wha?” and dribbles cracker crumbs from his mouth, which makes Becca cringe and moan, “Ew! Do you have to be so disgusting?”

“Huge accomplishment today.” Dad compliments Alex for the hundredth time. “Winning a critical game. Playing your best. I’ll tell ya, Son, you’re the whole team.”

“Yeah.” Alex grins, slurping from his glass of soda pop. “Plus I got an A on my biology test.” He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.

“Alex, your napkin is right in front of you.” Mom picks it up and waves it near his face.

“Way to go,” Dad says, and high-fives Alex. He turns to Becca and peers over at her ankle. “Injury? That’s the life of a skater. You need to be tough. To skate with the big girls, you gotta take the pain.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Daily accomplishment?” he says to her, as if we are all in one of his big company meetings.

“My skating team finally got the pass-through down,” Becca announces, smiling for maybe the first time today. “Ruthless was actually happy with us.”

I lick my lips and swallow. My turn is coming. My forehead feels hot and my palms grow sweaty.

“In fact,” Becca adds, “she pulled me aside today to tell me how well I’m skating. She said if I continue like this, I’ll move up to the higher team next year for sure.”

“There you go,” Dad says, banging his fist on the table. The dishes and glasses clatter. “See? Hard work, determination, never giving up. That’s what it’s all about. Don’t I always say you can do whatever you set your mind to in this world?

“And,” he continues, looking in my direction, “what kind of accomplishment can you report today, Miss Calli?”

Everyone looks at me.

What should I answer? I tried to help some kid lying under the hockey-game table but he didn’t want my help. I finished all my homework at school, then I rode around with Mom in the van and watched Becca’s practice and Alex’s game and noticed the streaks of color in the sky.

“Well,” I say.

“Yes?” Dad asks, gnawing on a piece of the lasagna.

“Um …”

He smiles and reaches over to rumple my hair like he did at the basketball game. Then he tucks his hand under
my chin and lifts it a bit. “There’s always tomorrow,” he says kindly. “I know you’ll have something big to report one day.”

The thing is, I’m not so sure anymore.

On my fourth-grade report card, my teacher described me as “nice and pleasant, an average student.” Dad hit the roof. “We are the Golds! We’re golden!” he boomed at me. “No Gold is average!” His face was flushed and puffy, like I had done something really wrong, something against the law maybe. Not the real law, but the Gold law. That was when they started me on all the activities—the gymnastics and violin and all that. Even though nothing has worked so far, Dad says finding a passion can take time and he keeps reassuring me that I just haven’t hit on the right thing yet. Soon, he says, I will have lots of Post-its and accomplishments too.

Alex stabs his chunk of lasagna with his knife and raises it above his head, making Dad and Becca laugh. “Ladies and gentlemen, here we have the first ever radioactive lasagna,” Alex says, and even Mom laughs then. The rest of them pick up their lasagnas with their knives and they all crack up in unison, but I just sigh to myself.

Being a part of this family reminds me of the baby chicks I saw once at an exhibit at the science museum in the city. On one side of an incubator were eggs that hadn’t hatched yet, but on the other side, there were lots of newly hatched baby chicks. They were funny and fluffy and I could have watched them for hours.

A girl was shaking a charm bracelet close to the window, and the chicks were going crazy, chirping and running around and bumping into each other. But there was one chick that was simply sitting in the middle of the commotion, huddled in its feathers, not moving, just blinking its tiny eyes. I wanted to reach inside and gather up that quiet little chick in my hand and tell it I understood completely.

Mom opens the tub of margarine and smears a glob across a piece of bread. I can tell she’s ready to burst out with her list of accomplishments, because, as she often reminds us, even though she’s not working outside the home, that doesn’t mean she’s not achieving things too.

She clears her throat proudly and we all look her way. “My turn,” she says. “I found out the PTO raked in over one thousand dollars on the school clothing sale. The sale I coordinated, mind you. And, the costume company sent us the wrong costumes for Becca’s skating competition, but we brought it to their attention and they’re making the right ones for free. So the girls will actually have two costumes!”

Dad applauds for her and she stands up at the table and takes a bow.

“Way to go, Karen,” Becca drones.

“Thank you,” she says, “and by the way, ‘Mom’ would be just fine.”

A few minutes later, the usual after-dinner rush begins. Mom starts clearing dishes. Alex’s cell phone rings,
and I gather from the lowering of his voice that one of the cheerleaders is on the other end. Becca begins to complain again about her ankle and asks me in an overly sweet voice to get her a cookie.

I bring her the package of Oreos and she takes the last two. “Mom,” she moans, pulling one apart. “Do we have any crutches?”

Mom purses her lips. “No, we do not, and I doubt you need crutches. Your ankle looks fine. It’s not even swollen. Rest up and you’ll be good as new tomorrow.”

“How do you know?” Becca huffs. She licks the white Oreo filling and dumps the cookie ends onto her plate. “When did you get your medical degree?”

Mom doesn’t reply to that. Everyone knows better than to start up with Becca at a time like this.

“Help me with the dishes, Calli?” Mom says. “As long as you’ve got nothing else to do.”

Alex and Dad drift away, and Becca finally hobbles out of the room. My sister is way past being a drama queen. She’s more like a drama empress.

At last, the kitchen is calm, with just Mom and me. I carry a stack of dishes from the table and set them to the side of the sink. “Mom?” I ask. “Can I tell you about what we did in science today?”

She nods absentmindedly and starts filling the lasagna pan with water, sloshing it around with her hand.

“We talked about how all the ice is melting in the Arctic.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she says, reaching for the bottle of soap.

“It’s scaring me,” I admit. “What will happen to the polar bears and all the other animals?”

She pushes a strand of hair out of her face with the back of her hand. “I’m sure they’ll find a way to survive.”

“No, see, that’s just it. They won’t. They need the ice to live. That’s what they said in this movie we watched.”

She tips the pan over and dumps out the murky water.

“All those animals could become extinct,” I tell her.

“That’s probably an exaggeration. I doubt it will really happen.”

I clutch her arm. “But it could. Scientists are saying it could.”

She fills the pan again, turns off the water, and looks at me with a tired expression. “Oh, Calli,” she sighs. “I know how you worry about things like this. I’m sure the polar bears will be fine. Truthfully, honey, what can we do about it, anyway? I have too much on my plate right now to think about saving the world.”

I place a couple of glasses in the sink.

“Oh, thanks,” she says. “Could you get the rest of the things from the table?”

I go back to the table and gather up the silverware.

Just another normal day in the life of the Gold family.