Split Just Right (14 page)

It’s the last worry I have all night. Because
Tom!
turns out to be a play that explodes in front of everyone’s eyes like bright hot firecrackers. It’s a play I never could have envisioned myself; the effect reminds me of the quick, timed teamwork in a perfect basketball game, and finally I understand what Mom was talking about with all her wild gestures and explanations about space and athletes and movement.

There were a thousand perfect moments: Gray Fitzpatrick, as Becky, doing a send-up of her own boy-crazy self. And Esther’s accent. And Tonya Beirhorst’s double backflip. And Mom’s decision to use broomsticks as banjos in one ensemble number that had the audience laughing so hard it drowned out the singing chorus.

But I think my favorite moment was seeing Claire Knoxworthy’s face after her first solo. She deserved it, of course. She was probably the most talented person ever to step onto that stage since it had been built, and she deserved every second and decibel of that storm of applause that likely could have been heard from the parking lot. But Claire’s scared, proud little face—visible for just a second underneath Tom’s confident, cheery one—when people actually stood up and cheered: I’ll never forget it. It’s a story I can tell people one day when I see her name light up Broadway

Another great expression of the night belonged to Mr. Lemmon, when I saw him in the lobby at intermission. I was enjoying his undisguised shock so much I didn’t even notice Ty Amblin until he was standing right beside me, biting into a macadamia nut cookie. He must not have realized I was standing beside him either, because when he met my gaze he looked startled.

“Danny, hi.” One arm quickly swipes the crumbs from his upper lip. “You’re not in your uniform.” His eyes shift from my dress, my yellow Nyheim dress I would have worn to the Fling. He then checks his gaze over to his parents, who are standing by the front door talking to the Wilders. I can tell he wants to join them.

“I wear other stuff besides uniforms.”

“Sure, it’s just that … so the play’s pretty good, huh? Not like that yawn—was it
Saint Joan?
—last year.”

“My mom directed this one.”

“No kidding. Cool. She had the right idea, making Hannah play that Aunt Polly. Hannah’s so bossy.”

“She boss you around?” I ask. I wish I had a prop, a soda can or a cookie of my own. Something to make my arms not feel so long and floppy I cross my arms in front of my chest, even though Portia says you should never do that when speaking to a guy, since it makes you look unapproachable and defensive. Sure enough, Ty takes a half step back from me.

“Ever since we were little kids. But I didn’t realize that you guys weren’t that good of friends.”

“What do you mean? We get along okay.”

Ty looks down and rubs a gold button on his sports jacket. “Oh, I don’t know. She just told me some stuff about how you guys didn’t really click.”

Hannah. She probably told him I wasn’t good enough to go to the dance with. Probably made up stuff, told him I’d wear something ugly, those zip boots maybe. It makes me furious, thinking of them talking about me like that, and not knowing exactly what they said. Just ask him, I think. Just do it.

I think of Mom facing off against Mrs. Finzimer, the way she spoke so strong and clear, her voice hard as a brick wall against the little poison arrows of Mrs. Finzimer’s contempt. I open my mouth.

“Ty, I hope you don’t mind me speaking straight.” My voice is more polite than Mom’s and a little more wobbly I can’t make myself look straight into his eyes so I stare at his hand holding the cookie. His fingernails are just as clean and polished as always.

“Yeah?”

“Here’s the thing. What I was wondering was, if you really did have a family thing that Saturday, or did you just not want to go with me? Because if you didn’t—” I stop; Ty is practically backing into the refreshment table, trying to get away from me. I press my lips together. “It’s no big deal.” I shrug. “You can tell me.”

“You’re nuts,” he says lamely, his voice just breaking into the edge of a whine. “I told you it was my aunt—”

“Okay. I just wanted to know,” I say again. I remember what Mr. Paulson said about Ty’s being worthy of me. I look straight at Ty. The Smile has been dislodged in place of a worried, wimpy grin. I keep staring, waiting for him to turn and walk away from me. Which he does.

It’s not until I get back to my seat that I realize my hands are shaking.

“Saw you guys talking out there. You looked really defensive. What did he say to you?” Portia whispers from behind her program.

“Nothing,” I whisper back. “He’s got nothing to say He’s not worth talking about.”

The second act temporarily dissolves my bad mood, and when the final curtain falls, we’re all on our feet. Everyone gets a standing ovation, even the extras. It’s like the whole audience has turned into a crowd of Mrs. Paulsons. Then the cast makes Mom come up on the stage and they load her down with huge bouquets of flowers. Mom is in true form, waving and smiling and hopping around, kissing the girls on the tops of their heads. A few kids turn around in their seats to wave at me and give me thumbs-up signs, to show they know how proud I must be of her. I am.

After the play, with a face stiff as Gary’s extrastarched dress-up shirt, Mr. Lemmon shakes Mom’s hand and congratulates her a few times.

“But didn’t it look like he wanted to spit on me?” Mom cackles gleefully as we’re walking out to the parking lot afterward.

“He looked totally floored!” I laugh. “He looked like someone had been punching him in the stomach repeatedly, all night long. But Mom, where are we going to put these flowers?” My arms are heavy with the bouquets.

“The back seat’s too full. Stick the rest in the trunk.”

I pop the trunk to find it full of three enormous bags, lying in a row like a bed full of sleeping children.

“Are you a nut? There must be over fifty pounds of rock salt in here.”

“Oh, that’s right! I forgot, I bought it today.” She puts her fingers over her lips and smiles down sheepishly at the bags. “Your dream. I figured, maybe, if the sawdust didn’t work out, and we’re lucky it did … but, anyway.” She gathers a bunch of flowers from me and starts packing them over the salt. “I’d have done anything to save the show,” she says.

“You really think rock salt would have worked?” I am incredulous.

“Maybe it’s one of those things about being in a family of two.” Mom slams the trunk shut and rubs her hands together briskly to clean them. “But I put a lot of value on what you say, Danny. Even the off-the-wall stuff that comes to you in dreams. And sometimes those outrageous solutions work better than the obvious ones.”

“Like Claire Knoxworthy.”

“Yep, just like Claire. And to me, that’s the greatest thing about theater,” Mom says. “Its doors are open widest to the Claire Knoxworthys of the world. People who don’t belong anywhere always belong on a stage.”

Later that spring, Bradshaw offers Mom a full-time job as school arts coordinator, which she accepts. She’ll be working in all the classes, from the kindergarten to the twelfth grade, helping them put together their plays and recitals. Basically, it’s a job the school tailored to fit Mom’s talents. Since the money that
Tom!
brings in actually nets a profit instead of a loss for the first time in Bradshaw history, the school decides it would be a lucrative idea to keep Mom working there. She quits the Greenhouse the same day she signs the Bradshaw contract, and the first thing she does to celebrate is to book a mother-daughter dentist trip—four pulled wisdom teeth for her and four fillings for me, under our new insurance coverage.

I stay on at the Greenhouse, though, working the Sunday brunch shift. It’s good money, and I need to start saving for my own car. Old Yeller is not ever going to be a coolmobile.

But we don’t know any of that as we’re driving home, not that we need any cheering up. We stop at the 7-Eleven for root beer and vanilla ice cream, and we stay up late that night, sitting on the couch and talking about the play. I also finally spill out the whole entire Ty Amblin story to her, even though my chest blotches up the whole time I’m talking.

“Ty Amblin doesn’t seem to offer much more than a good haircut.” Mom points her ice-cream spoon at me. “He would bore you, Danny. He was a sweet boy, but he grew up to be a bland-o. A Celia.”

“A Rick Finzimer,” I add, which makes her laugh.

“You’re right. So don’t marry him. I mean, don’t marry him, but don’t do what I did, except I mean that I don’t regret—”

“I know what you mean, Mom.” I reach over and pat her knee.

The cream-colored business envelope arrives in our mailbox few days later. It’s neatly typed to Antonia de Ver White and stamped with first-class postage. I drop my barn jacket and book bag in a heap on the floor; already my face is tensed into a frown of preparation.

Dear Ms. de Ver White:

We are pleased to inform you that your submission, which we are tentatively titling “Dear Rick Finzimer (Dad):” has just won second place in
The Lilac
first page contest. The judges here all agreed that the poignant theme of the writing and your decision to use a letter format really breathed life into the fiction. It seems as though there’s quite a story there!

Please call our offices during business hours so that we can take your social security number in order to process your check for $500.00. The story will appear in the May issue of
The Lilac.

Sincerely,

The Editors

For a crazy minute I think about calling California, just to shout in Rick Finzimer’s ear, just to holler, “I won! I won!” and hang up. But the thought burns itself out fast. It would take two seconds to tell him that I won, but it would take forever to explain why the winning matters so much to me. And I don’t have that kind of time. Anyway, it’s not Rick Finzimer’s reaction that I particularly care about.

Before I go to bed, I put the letter in the refrigerator, taped to an empty milk carton, so that Mom will be sure to see it when she gets home from her
Lost in Yonkers
audition. I keep having to suck my head in the refrigerator, though, just to believe the whole thing’s for real.

The letter gets me thinking about Dr. Sonenshine and all her endless red-inked comments—all that advice about writing stuff that’s true to life. Mostly, though, I think about how five hundred dollars is more money than I ever guessed my life had in store for me right now. It’s a glamorous amount of money. I already feel my cheekbones poking out a little.

“That’s terrific, Antonia,” Gary says when he stops by with a big bowl of spinach salad he supposedly couldn’t finish, and I make him look in the fridge. Now he holds me by the nose, using it as a handle to shake my head back and forth. “You’re my hero.”

“You’re
my
hero,” I tell him. “What would I have done without my amazing computer setup?”

Gary flushes. “The computer?—that’s nothing,” he says.

“It’s more than just about computers,” I insist. “I couldn’t ask for anyone better as a friend and a fallback person.” I know he doesn’t know what I mean exactly, but he looks so proud and flustered, I bet even his frizzy hair would turn pink if it could.

I still think that when I get to college, I’ll legally change my name to Antonia de Ver White, but lately Danny Finzimer is turning out to be someone I might not mind being. At least I have a few years to think about it. I go to bed with a smile, ready to wake up at the soft jingle of Mom’s keys.

I was born in 1970 in my mother’s hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was the oldest of three children, and spent my early childhood as a “military brat,” moving between bases in North Carolina, California, Panama, and Rhode Island. I returned to Pennsylvania for high school, and then attended college at the University of Pennsylvania. After earning a bachelor of arts and sciences degree in 1993, I eagerly answered a “help wanted” ad in the
New York Times
and an “apartment rentals” ad in the
Village Voice
. That same week, I secured both my first job and my first apartment. I began working for Macmillan Children’s Books as an editorial assistant; living two blocks away from the office ensured that I didn’t get lost on my commute.

While balancing days working in the editorial department with nights writing fiction, I discovered my abiding love of New York City, and knew that I would want to live there for the long haul. At Macmillan, and later Hyperion Books for Children, I read old favorites and new favorite fiction for younger readers, and in doing so rediscovered classic stories that had been so riveting in my youth. I was particularly enthralled to connect with Robert Cormier, an author whose work I idolized when I was a child—years later, I got to spend a day with him at Simmons College. It wasn’t long before I completed my first novel,
Rainy Season
(1996), which was accepted by Houghton Mifflin & Co. A semi-autobiographical account of family life on an army base in Panama, the book was recommended by
Publishers Weekly
as a “Flying Start” notable debut. My second book,
Split Just Right
(1997), told the story of a bohemian single mother raising her daughter. My third book,
Sons of Liberty
, a drama set in New England that addressed child abuse, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1997. I followed this novel with a contemporary supernatural story,
The Other Shepards
(1998), and then
Dive
(1999), a novel that grappled with the real-life unexpected death of my stepbrother, Jason.

Turning to more lighthearted fare, I created a middle-grade series, Witch Twins, about identical twins living in Philadelphia (based on my nieces) who work to become “five-star” witches—with some help from their eccentric, spell-casting grandmother. The four-book series includes
Witch Twins
,
Witch Twins at Camp Bliss
,
Witch Twins and Melody Malady
, and
Witch Twins and the Ghost of Glenn Bly
. I also completed
Amandine
(2001), a novel loosely based on Lillian Hellman’s chilling play
The Children’s Hour
. Themes of friendship, deceit, and betrayal surfaced again in my next book,
Overnight
(2003), about a sleepover that goes horribly wrong.