Calli Be Gold (6 page)

’m a walker. My house is right over the small hill behind the school, at the end of the block. When I get home this afternoon, it’s Grandma Gold who greets me, not Mom.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, dropping my backpack on the kitchen floor. I glance at the Calendar and the flurry of Post-it notes, wondering if I’ve forgotten something.

She closes the newspaper and folds her arms across her plump chest. “Now, is that any way to say hello to your favorite grandparent?” she asks, motioning me toward her for a hug.

Grandma Gold is my only grandma, since the other one died before I was born, and my grandpas are both
long gone too. So technically, she has to be my favorite. There’s no contest.

“I only meant, where’s Mom?” I say as she wraps her fleshy arms around me. When Grandma Gold hugs me, she squeezes me right down to my lungs, so I can’t get a good breath. Plus she always wears big metal necklaces and they press sharply into my chest.

“I’m here to watch you while she took your sister for an X-ray on her ankle,” Grandma Gold informs me. “That sister of yours kept insisting she needed crutches, so now your mother’s all worked up. Lucky I’m so close by, I ran right over.”

Grandma Gold lives in a senior citizen building about a half hour away from Southbrook.

She grins at me. “It’s just you and me for now, cookie. You know how long it takes at those godforsaken emergency rooms.”

“Oh,” I reply, even though I really want to remind her that I do not need to be watched. Do they think I’m going to run to the stove, turn on the dial, and burn the house down? Or open the window in my bedroom and jump out, just for fun?

“So, whaddya say, how about a game of Scrabble?” she proposes, winking an eye heavily coated with violet shadow. “You been practicing?”

Grandma’s talent is Scrabble. She brags that she once used all her letters in two separate words in the same game. Dad says it was only one word, but she insists it
was two. They got into a big argument about it, and now Dad won’t play Scrabble with her anymore.

“Well,” I say hesitantly, “I do have some homework.”

“Oh, homework, schmomework.” She waves her hand in the air. “I always say you learn more about life outside of school. I’m sure you have time for one little game. C’mon, get the board.”

There’s no saying no to Grandma. She doesn’t give up. When I walk back into the kitchen with the Scrabble box, she’s pulled out her lipstick and mirror. I’m not sure why she needs to put on lipstick to play Scrabble, but even so, while I’m setting up, she slathers on a few layers of glossy red.

“There,” she says, smacking her lips. “Cookie, let me share something with you. I’m going to tell you my motto of life.”

“Your motto?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “You know, my guiding principle.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“Speak loudly and carry a red lipstick.” Her mouth spreads into a wide grin; then she bursts into laughter and slaps her leg several times.

“I don’t get it,” I say when she quiets down.

“What do you mean you don’t get it?” she snaps. “You haven’t heard of Teddy Roosevelt?”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Don’t you know he was famous for saying ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’?”

“No.”

“See, that’s what I mean,” she says. “What do they teach you these days in school?”

“I think we learn that in junior high,” I tell her.

“Carry a big stick … carry a red lipstick.” She raises her eyebrows. “Oh, forget it. Pick your letters.”

I reach for the bag of letters and pull out all vowels. Grandma’s first word is “flower.” “Six letters,” she mutters. “Couldn’t have gotten an ‘s,’ now, could I? Would’ve been an extra fifty points right off the bat.”

I make the word “are,” building on her “r.”

“That’s all you’ve got?” she says, shaking her head. Her long beaded earrings swing back and forth.

She places some letters on the board and makes another long word, then tallies up the score so far. “Now, my Joel, he plays a mean game of Scrabble,” she says. “Beat the pants off me once, and I think he was only fourteen at the time.”

“Do you ever talk to Uncle Joel?” I ask.

“Oh, sure, all the time. He calls me from that convertible of his. Of course I can’t hear a thing he’s saying with all that wind in the background. Your turn.”

“Can I get a snack first?”

“Fine, but not something messy,” she says. Grandma Gold doesn’t like it when crumbs get on the board and the letters.

After a few more words (big ones from her, little ones
from me), she grabs her purse. “I have to go out to my car for a minute,” she says. “I’ll be right back.”

I can pretty much guess what she’s doing, so she doesn’t have to pretend. I know she’s going out for a cigarette. Grandma Gold swears she quit smoking years ago, but we all know she sneaks one whenever she gets the craving.

Sure enough, when I peek out the front window, there she is in her car, puffing away. I’m sure there is a mark from her red lipstick on the white end of the cigarette.

This makes me think about what she said her life motto is—speak loudly and carry a red lipstick—and I realize that Dad has the same motto. The part about speaking loudly, not about carrying the red lipstick. And as I’m standing there, this timid little voice somewhere inside me asks … Why? Why do you need to speak loudly? If you speak quietly but have something important to say, won’t people still listen?

The little voice melts away, though, when I trudge back to the kitchen table and realize how badly I’m playing. Now I have all consonants. Peering over at Grandma’s letters, I see that she already has the word “night” spelled out on her rack. A lot of points.

I wait and wait. She’s taking an awful long time. She must be having a second cigarette.

Suddenly, a terrible thought jumps into my head. I could switch my letters, couldn’t I? She wouldn’t know. If
I just had one or two vowels, then I could make a word, at least. Maybe a high-scoring word that Grandma Gold could brag about to Dad. I could quickly dump my seven letters back into the bag and pull out seven new ones and no one would know. Well, no one except me.

I start to feel the way I do when Dad goes around the dinner table and asks us for our daily accomplishments—hot and sweaty, with a mouth so dry it seems like I can’t speak or breathe.

I reach for the bag of letters and hold it in my hand and swallow several times.

Just when I’m about to plunge my hand inside, I hear the front door open. I toss the bag back into the middle of the table and quickly start shuffling the letters on my rack.

“Okeydokey,” Grandma says, coming into the kitchen with a burst of cool air. “I’m ready.” Her breath stinks. “I think it was your turn.”

“Yeah,” I say, my voice coming out a little shaky.

“You got anything?” she asks.

I look down at my letters and it hits me: I really was going to cheat. I really was going to do it. If Grandma hadn’t come barreling through the door at that very moment, I would have. I bite my lip. On how many occasions has Dad hammered in his belief about turning tough times into triumph? How you never give up, or give in, and all that stuff. Alex does it in basketball games, and Becca in skating. Me? I was ready to crumble within
minutes, over a dumb Scrabble game. Maybe I should change my last name.

“Need any help?” Grandma Gold asks.

“No,” I say sullenly.

Now not only do I have the guilt of knowing how easily I would have cheated, but I’m also stuck with the letters I picked.

Like today, when Noah asked me why I picked him.

At first, I didn’t say anything. Why did I pick him?

I thought about it for a minute; then I simply told him, “Because I did.”

He stared at me, his mouth a bright small circle. Then, in a tiny squeaky voice, he said, “So now you’re stuck with me.”

What things to be stuck with. All consonants and Noah Zullo.

ecca’s ankle turns out to be fine, and Mom is completely aggravated about wasting three hours getting it X-rayed. She’s slapping things around the kitchen, grumbling about being off schedule, and muttering how she didn’t get anything done this afternoon. We all know that when she gets like this, it’s best to stay out of her way.

Grandma left in a rush, refusing the offer to stay for dinner. “I have just enough time to get to my Zumba class,” she said as she hurried out.

At dinnertime, like usual, Dad asks Alex for his accomplishment of the day, and Becca for hers. I’m barely listening. I’m pushing my corn around on my plate, creating a pathway for the broccoli to wade through, when
Dad calls out, “Calli! I had a brainstorm today, and it concerns you!”

“A brainstorm?” I repeat, dropping my fork. “What do you mean, a brainstorm?”

“Now, don’t say anything right away,” he tells me, smiling broadly. “Just hear me out first, okay?”

“Okay,” I say hesitantly.

“Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, Dad, I’m ready.”

He sits back in his chair and clasps his hands together. “Okay.” He pauses dramatically. “Improv.”

“Improv?” I echo.

“Bingo.”

Becca snorts before I have a chance to react. “You’re not saying you think Calli should try acting now, are you?”

He nods. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Acting?” I scrunch up my nose and shake my head. “Dad …”

“Consider it, Calli,” he says. “You’ve always had a terrific imagination. You think so much about all the characters in the books you read. Some of the world’s greatest actors are really shy people inside, you know.”

My heart flutters. “You think I’m shy?”

“Well,” he says, chuckling, “I suppose it’s no secret you’re a little quieter than the rest of us.”

“I guess,” I answer softly.

My hands fall to my lap as I try to imagine what an improv class would be like. People pretending to be animals, slithering around the floor like snakes or flapping their arms like birds? Or making up skits and telling really funny jokes? Or imitating famous people while everyone else has to guess who they are?

“I don’t know, Dad,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat.

“You know what your father always promotes,” Mom pipes up.

I recite it in a bored-sounding voice. “ ‘Try anything once,’ I know.”

“Hey, you could move to Hollywood, Cal,” Alex offers, grinning at me. “Ride around in a limo and go to lots of cool parties.”

Becca snorts again.

“Look,” Dad says. “All I’m asking is that you give it a shot. You know, your aunt Marjorie had a little stint in the theater … before she went crazy and ran off to New Zealand, that is.”

“She did?” Aunt Marjorie is my dad’s younger sister. I’ve never met her. She lives farther away than Uncle Joel. Grandma Gold says something went wrong with her but it certainly isn’t
her
fault that Marjorie turned out to be a lunatic.

“She acted in college,” Dad says, nodding. “Even had the lead in one of the big plays. Had such a bright future
ahead of her. Agents were calling. I never could understand why she did what she did.” He raises his eyebrows. “Maybe you take after her.”