Read My Most Excellent Year Online
Authors: Steve Kluger
My Most Excellent Year (5 page)
Diary
Augie Hwong, 9
th
Grade
Mrs. Norwood’s Class
Dear Liza with a Z,
I can’t believe you married David Gest and didn’t check with me first. All he wanted was your money and to find out if your mother sang “Over the Rainbow” when she put you to bed so he could tell his tacky friends about it. Trust me. David Gest is a gink. But you can still call me after the divorce if you need to borrow my shoulder. I’d never say “I told you so” to anybody except Nicole Kidman.
Incidentally, I know I have a big mouth—but why the hell did they pick
me
to direct the talent show?
AugieHwong:
I’m having an anxiety attack.
TCKeller:
Is it a new one? ’Cause I’m working on my diary.
AugieHwong:
Tick, it’s happening too quick, that’s what scares me. How did I get to be an A-list director already?? Where’s all the torture you’re supposed to go through before you click? And the hard knocks? And the setbacks you’re supposed to learn from? I haven’t suffered enough yet.
TCKeller:
Dude, it’s just a talent show!
My brother is enjoying this too much. He’s been waiting for the axe to drop ever since I found out that third grade wasn’t ready for my impression of Bette Davis in the Holy Grail of movies,
All About Eve
(“Why, Max—you sly puss!”). He also grew two more pit hairs during homeroom, so he’s finally broken ten, and now he thinks he’s bulletproof. That’s the last time I let him make more kicks than me in soccer so that people won’t guess who
really
rocks.
Okay. Maybe I’ll cave in after all. I don’t like making people beg. But I told Mrs. Fitzpatrick I’d only sign a contract if she agreed to my terms.
1. There’s just one prima donna in an Augie Hwong show, and that’s Augie Hwong. Everyone else is expendable.
2. A curtain made of gold tinsel, a silver disco ball, and my entire cast dressed in sequins. Blue for the boys, pink for the girls.
3. A pit band of exactly nine musicians. I’m not paying overtime for more than that.
4. A celebrity M.C.—either Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, or Coretta Scott King.
Liza, if you think George Abbott gave you a hard time in
Flora, The Red Menace
, that’s because you never worked with
me
before. I’m ruthless. The only act I’m pre-approving without a tryout is Tick and John Siniff and Andy Wexler and Grid Tarbell in a staged version of “Casey at the Bat,” which probably sounds like playing favorites with my brother. But let’s face it, sweetheart—when Judy let you sing with her at the Palladium, you weren’t exactly ready for the Big Time either.
I’m holding auditions after school all of next week. You can come if you want, but there might be no point. I get the opening spot and I’m singing “Maybe This Time.” It’s a cruel, cruel business.
Love,
Augie with an A
Alé,
I need you to co-produce my show with me. Even Florenz Ziegfeld couldn’t do it all by himself. I can also use you as property mistress, wardrobe mistress, and stage manager. What do you think?
—Augie
Augie,
I think you ought to read about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911. This is what happens when you employ slave labor. They jump out of windows to get away from the smoke. The answer is no.
I stopped by The Word Shop yesterday to see if they had any nonfiction on oppressed Filipino salmon packers in Alaska. How much is your father paying Phyllis to run the store? Because she knows more about books than the Library of Congress does. I asked her why
Huckleberry Finn
wasn’t on the Classic Literature shelf and she said, “Alejandra, no black man says ‘dem de d’wyne de goan’ unless he’s coming out of a coma—
that’s
why.” If your family is exploiting a minority, there will be pickets.
—Alé
Alé,
My family
is
an exploited minority. Our ancestors built the Union Pacific Railroad for twenty cents a day. If it was a good day.
Dad made Phyllis a partner in the store ten years ago and our insurance even paid for her mother’s cataracts. So she doesn’t need pickets.
What if I make you a producer all by yourself?
—Augie
Augie,
Maybe. But with top billing and a retirement plan. And as long as this isn’t just another one of your excuses to get me to run into Anthony. “I’m con-sidering a relationship with you.” Was I supposed to faint over that? Besides, he couldn’t possibly want to go there. I say awful things to him and whenever I see him coming my way I grab that boy with the curly hair and walk him to our next class.
—Alé
Alé,
That’s Andy Wexler. We’ve been bonding during soccer practice. We both like Swiss Miss and chocolate chip cookies, and he calls me Spidey because he says I’m lithe enough to swing from the Prudential Tower even without red tights and a mask. Have you ever met anyone who could use “lithe” in a sentence before? I’m teaching him how to improve his kick, and he’s going to be a shell of his former self when he finds out you’re just using him to make my brother jealous.
Can we schedule our first production meeting for tomorrow after school?
—Augie
Augie,
Not tomorrow. We’re having Bill and Hillary over
for dinner. Do you want to come? Carlos is bringing a date and Mamita hates odd numbers at her table.
Anyone with a cute quotient as high as Anthony’s deserves to suffer. Things come too easily to those people already. And no girl will ever break Andy Wexler’s heart. Trust me.
I can squeeze in a production conference on Saturday. Meet me outside of the Lycée Francais at 1:00 after my French lessons. (There’s no use telling Papa that I’m already taking French at school because as far as he’s concerned, if it doesn’t cost him money it can’t be worth much.)
—Alé
Alé,
Don’t tell that to anyone else. People will think you’re a stuck-up snob.
—Augie
Augie,
I
am
a stuck-up snob.
—Alé
Dear Liza,
I thought she was kidding. I thought she was making it up. I almost didn’t wear my suit because of it. Hillary Clinton spooned Hollandaise onto my asparagus! With her own hands! Alé’s beginning to scare me.
Mrs. Fitzpatrick got back to me with a counter-offer.
- No sequins, no tinsel, no disco ball.
- A pit band of Mr. Disharoon on the piano. Period.
- Two-hour rehearsals, not eight. And only three times a week.
- No prima donnas,
including
Augie Hwong. - Our adviser Lori Mahoney as celebrity M.C. Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang weren’t available, and Coretta Scott King costs $40,000.
There was a time when I would have had an artistic meltdown, but when you’ve had a former First Lady practically feeding you, you learn how to rise above it all.
Love,
Augie
| FROM THE DESK OF | LISA WEI HWONG |
Honey—
I tried to make you something special from
The Irish Cookbook
, but it backfired halfway through. So I invented sweet-and-sour mackerel. It’s on the top shelf in the fridge. If it still looks like it’s alive, Dad’s only allowed to take you to the Brookline Café or Huskies for dinner. They pay their people sixty cents an hour more than they have to.
Home late tonight, so kisses for bedtime. I have to review
My Fair Lady
downtown. Wish I could send the mackerel instead.
I love you,
Mom
THEATRE
M
Y
F
AIR
L
ADY
R
ETURNS TO
B
OSTON
BY LISA WEI HWONG
. . . and at this point in Act I, we’re forced down to the lowest rung of the social ladder, where the economically less fortunate are given their own anthem in “With a Little Bit of Luck”—a song designed to show us how much fun it is to be poor, in much the same manner that Stepin Fetchit proved for all time that African Americans were the toasts of the town as long as they tripped over their own feet and said things like, “Mah, mah, mah, dis sho’ is a crazy bunch of folks.” And if Henry Higgins is not the most reprehensible character ever written for the stage, that’s only because somewhere, somehow, someone is composing a musical biography of Ronald Reagan.
Dear Liza,
Your mother liked to sing and take pills, my mother likes to write and start riots. The day after her review came out, they had to shut down Tremont Street because the protesters in front of the theatre were blocking traffic. The State House even had to close early. I’m surrounded by rabble-rousers. If I ever introduce her to Alé, Boston is finished. Especially if it turns out that we have Filipino salmon packers living here. Besides, I have bigger fish to fry.
Tick talked about his mom. I know that doesn’t sound like the kinds of Oscar-winning headlines you’re used to, but you’re wrong. He hasn’t done that in six years. The last clue I ever had about her was the lost purple balloon that she promised was going to come back to him if he watched the sky long enough. He told me that story at the beach when we were eight, and nothing else until this afternoon. And it wasn’t even a special occasion. Has he been keeping it locked up all this time? Or did he only just remember it?
It happened at 4:11. We usually eat Sno-Kones on the overpass above Mass Pike after school and discuss the things we can’t tell anybody else—but Tick’s gotten so into this diary thing and trying to have some dead guy named Buck Weaver allowed back into baseball, and I’ve been so busy helping Andy Wexler with soccer, today was our first Mass Pike summit in almost a week.
Nehi sat between us with his head in Tick’s lap and his eyes on Tick’s Sno-Kone (he must have been in a root beer kind of mood), while we went through one of our usual quizzes.