The Son of Someone Famous (5 page)

“We're supposed to weigh this stuff now,” I said.

“You weigh it,” she said.

“I thought we were partners,” I said.

“We are. I'll record the weight.”

“You can't record the weight while you're looking across the room,” I said.

“He's different from Storm boys, isn't he?” she said.

“Is he?”

“Not just his clothes,” she said.

“What about his clothes?”

“He wears really nice clothes,” she said. “Expensive clothes.”

“He does?” I said. His clothes didn't look all that special to me; in fact, I'd never noticed his clothes.

“He has a certain self-assurance,” she said.

“Miss Early is watching us,” I said.

After we'd recorded the weight, while we were waiting for Miss Early to tell us how to graph the results, Christine Cutler said, “What are you doing Christmas Eve, Brenda Belle?”

“I haven't made up my mind yet,” I said.

“I'm having a small party,” she said. “Why don't you ask Adam Blessing to come to it with you?”

“I didn't know I was invited.”

“I'm inviting you now.”

“I'll try to make it,” I said. That was the understatement
of the year. I had never been invited to the Cutlers'. I wondered if she'd been afraid to invite me because I might not be able to think of anyone to ask. Her crowd was always paired off. I supposed she thought Adam and I were a pair.

‘“Come about eight o'clock,” she said.

“No talking about anything but the assignment!” Ella Early said. “This isn't a social hour!”

After the bell rang, Adam was waiting for me just outside the door of Science class.

I decided that if Christine Cutler couldn't see anything wrong with my face, chances were that Adam Blessing wouldn't, either.

It was a wrong decision.

As I glanced up at him, full face, and smiled, he said, “Is that what that stuff did to your face? I was wondering why you were trying to hide it.”

“Lower your voice, creep!” I said angrily.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“You're really stupid about some things,” I said.

“I'm sorry,” he repeated. “I didn't know you were sensitive about it.”

“You've been going to all-boy schools too long,” I said. I was close to tears, but I wasn't going to let him know that. I thought of Marilyn Pepper's pimples, Sue Ellen Chayka's broken nose, and Diane Wattley's bowlegs—anything I could think of to keep from feeling sorry for myself. I told Adam, “You're no great prize, you know. I was just asked to a Christmas Eve party on condition that
I don't bring you.” The words just came out.

He looked really surprised. “You were?”

“I was,” I said.

“Whose party?”

“Never mind,” I said, hating my own big mouth for really fixing things for me that time.

He walked beside me silently for a while, and then he said, “I'm doing something Christmas Eve, anyway.”

Fine, I thought to myself; at least I spared myself the humiliation of being turned down.

“I don't like parties, anyway,” he said. “I've been to so many parties where people mouth other people's opinions that it all bores me. All you hear at parties is a lot of manifest knowledge.”

“A lot of what?” I asked him.

“Manifest knowledge,” he answered.

“I know it,” I said. I had no idea what he was talking about. “Oh, that's the truth, all right,” I said.

“I've got this friend coming in from New York City to spend Christmas with me,” he said.

“Did he go to school with you?”

“It's a she,” he said.

“Great!” I said, nearly bent double by a sudden stab of disappointment. “I hope you have a fabulous time.”

“It's nothing like that,” he said. “She's old enough to be my grandmother.”

I would have to go to Christine Cutler's alone. It wasn't a place you took just anyone.

“I don't particularly like old people,” I managed to carry
on the conversation. “They meddle with your life.”

“Not Billie Kay,” he said. “She isn't a meddler.”

“Oh, la-di-da,” I said. “I gather you mean Billie Kay Case of Hollywood fame and fortune.”

“How did you know?” he said.

“The movie star
I'm
spending Christmas Eve with told me,” I said.

“But Billie Kay Case
is
who I mean,” Adam said.

“We must all get together and drop names,” I said.

“Honestly, Brenda Belle, she really is coming to see me.”

“I'll roll out the carpet down Central Avenue,” I said. “Do bring her into Corps for a Manhattan with an olive in it.”

“You don't put olives in Manhattans,” he said. “Olives go in Martinis.”

“Keep your mouth shut about my upper lip,” I said as we came to the end of the hall. “Don't spread it around.”

“You can trust me,” he said. “Have you told anyone I was expelled?”

“No.”

“Brenda Belle, I don't know why I confide in you, but I do. I'd appreciate it if you'd keep it quiet about Billie Kay coming to Storm. She doesn't like a lot of bother now that she's getting older.”

“Knock it off,” I said.

“I mean it.”

“A joke's a joke,” I said, “but an all-day running joke is a bore. I can't be ‘on' all the time. You'd better know that
about me right now. Very few female comediennes have happy lives.”

“Brenda Belle, listen to me,” he said. “Billie Kay is really coming here. Please believe that.”

“You may wear expensive clothes,” I said, looking at his clothes and not seeing any difference from other people's clothes, “but you have big problems. You not only cheat, you lie.”

I saw the look of disappointment on his face. “All of those things,” he said, and then he walked away from me.

That was fine as far as I was concerned. I had enough not going for me, without having a sickie tailing me around. It was funny, because I'd really liked him up until that conversation. But after that conversation, I thought, No wonder he's interested in me—he's slightly crazy. Whacked out. He'd probably been expelled from that school because of trouble with his head, I decided.

What I was looking for at that point in my life was normal companionship, not a misfit. I wanted someone who fit, so I'd feel I fit, too.

After struggling all through Algebra with problems in polynomial multiplication, I bumped into Christine Cutler in the hall.

“Did you ask him?” she said.

“Yes,” I said, “but he said he didn't want to come, because it'd just be a lot of people mouthing other people's opinions, which bores him. I'll be there, though . . . around eight-on-the-dot.”

That night before supper, Christine Cutler called to say
that she simply had to cut her party list down, that she was only having very close friends.

“You understand, don't you, Brenda Belle?”

“Absolutely,” I said, “I understand.”

I had the dream again, that night, about Omaha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

From the Journal of A.

I'll never forget the Christmas my father's photograph was on the cover of
Time
magazine. It was during the early years of his marriage to Billie Kay. It had been a terrific year for my father. It had been the first year he'd ever been asked to the White House for dinner, and the year his photograph began appearing in newspapers and his name mentioned in gossip columns. We were trimming the tree, and my father was gulping down eggnog laced with brandy. When all the fancy decorations were tied to the tree's branches, my father said, “Now for the finishing touch.” He took the photograph of himself on the cover of
Time
and pinned it to the very top of the tree. “There's our star!” he said. Then he fell over backward and knocked the tree down, and everything broke.

I was remembering that on Christmas Eve afternoon, while I helped my grandfather paint empty beer cans gold and silver.

My grandfather had an awful hangover. The night before he'd phoned
Late Night Larry
to tell him he'd found a publisher for his book. (“When you become famous, Chuck
From Vermont, don't forget your friends in Radioland!”).

“You look down in the dumps, A.J.,” my grandfather said.

“I'm not, though,” I answered him. I was down, I guess. I often was at Christmas. One of the reasons I was down that Christmas was because I'd found out who was giving the Christmas party Brenda Belle had mentioned—the one she'd been invited to, on condition she didn't bring me. It was Christine Cutler.

I was genuinely surprised. Maybe it had been my imagination, but I'd thought Christine Cutler took to me in some strange way. It was nothing I could put my finger on; it was a feeling I got sometimes when I'd see her in the hall or across a classroom. I'd thought there was just the slightest spark, no bells ringing or rockets going off, but the tiniest kind of undercurrent. I'd get her eye and she'd hold my eyes with hers, and I'd definitely feel this slight charge passing between us.

After Brenda Belle told me what she did, I crossed it off to wishful thinking on my part. Still, to tell someone she couldn't come if she brought me didn't do a lot for my ego. I wondered if it had something to do with the rift between my grandfather and Dr. Cutler. I wanted to blame it on that, but a part of me said to just face facts: The only time someone like Christine Cutler noticed yours truly was when she knew whose son I was. . . . In addition, Brenda Belle's attitude toward me had changed. I knew she took me for this stupid phony; I knew she thought I made up things like Billie Kay's coming so I could get attention.

I was beginning to feel like an outcast in Storm; I was beginning to wish they all knew who I really was.

“Doesn't anyone in this town remember my mother's marriage to my father?” I asked Grandpa Blessing.

He said, “First of all, no one knows you're Annabell's son, A.J. And secondly, no one remembers who she was married to. Your mother met your father in New York City. He wasn't anyone in those days. She died a year after she married him. It's all forgotten.”

“I'm glad,” I lied. I didn't want him to know how much trouble I was having making it on my own.

“If you're worried about anyone finding out who you are, stop worrying,” he said. “I never mention your father's name around here. I hardly knew him, anyway, and I don't believe in reflected glory.”

My grandfather was busy tying the painted cans to the tree we'd made.

He said, “Of course, I don't know how you're going to explain Billie Kay Case's visit. Someone might recognize her, never mind the phony name she's registering under down at the hotel. A lot of her old movies are showing on TV.”

“If someone should recognize her,” I said, “I'll just say she's a friend.”

“Or a distant relative,” he said. “After all, there's quite an age difference for her to be your friend. How old is she, A.J.?”

“I'm not supposed to say,” I said. “She's fifty-eight. She doesn't look it, though.”

“She's only nine years younger than I am,” he said.

“She's had her face lifted.”

“Why'd she do a fool thing like that?”

“She didn't want to look older than my father.”

“Your father let her do that?” he said.

“By that time he was hardly ever home,” I said. “He didn't know what we were doing.”

My grandfather stepped back to look at his handiwork. I did, too. I had to smile. It was a crazy-looking tree we'd made—not beautiful, but unique and zany, with a certain brave and punchy spirit, like someone who'd come to a formal dinner party in the wrong clothes and turned out to be the life of the party.

“We did a good job, A.J.!” my grandfather said. “Now, that's a Christmas tree! We didn't destroy anything living to make it, and we didn't waste money to trim it. . . . Speaking of money, A.J.,” he said, reaching into his trouser pocket, “I've managed to come up with a few dollars I completely forgot I had. How about you running out and buying that girl a gift? Corps Drugs is still open, and they've got gift boxes of candy or toilet water—I don't know why they put something to sell in a bottle and call it by that name—but here, A.J.” He shoved the money at me.

“No,” I said. “Save it for your telephone bill. I already bought Billie Kay a box of chocolate-covered cherries. She loves them.”

“I don't mean Billie Kay. I mean the Blossom girl. You sort of take to her, don't you?”