Chapter 13

My father and I decided if I got the first follies piece absolutely perfect I'd have at least an even chance of getting the piano part, in spite of Wendy Wellington. There was always the possibility that Wendy wouldn't show up, or that she'd sprain a finger playing ball since she is also on the baseball team, or that just for once she'd hit all the wrong keys and I'd hit the right ones.

My father put aside his firecracker song to help me practice this one piece, which was called, "Mrs. Pierce, You Have a Lovely Baby Boy," when my mother came in to tell us that she hated to disturb the practicing but that she couldn't get Gerri to sleep until I stopped playing; the music was keeping her wide awake and making her very excited. I said okay and closed the piano. I felt I had the piece down pretty good except for the one really tough part with a lot of sharps and flats in the left hand, and I was getting pretty tired anyway. My father got up and walked around the room and said that it definitely needed more work.

I told him I'd planned to set the alarm to go off early tomorrow morning to get in some more practicing before tryouts, and he agreed that that was a good idea. As for his own song, he told me he'd met a man who lives on Lafayette Avenue who said he'd let him use the piano now and then, and he was going over there now to work on the release so he wouldn't disturb anyone here.

He took his music out of the piano bench, went in to kiss my mother good-by, and told me to go easy on the right pedal. He wished me luck at the tryouts and he left.

In the middle of the night I heard Gerri's head whamming and blamming, although my mother had moved her bed way out in the middle of her room, hoping that getting her away from a wall would help. I guess Gerri just climbed out of bed and found a wall to use anyway, but I must have been getting used to it; it didn't keep me awake that long, just long enough to hear my father come home and take the phone off the hook when it started to ring.

When the alarm went off at quarter to five, I didn't much feel like getting out of bed, let alone practicing piano. My body felt like somebody had tied a couple of weights to it, and I yawned about fifty times.

I guess I'm not at my best at that hour in the morning because when the piece was supposed to go plink, plong, plang, rest, plinkity plong, I kept hitting the wrong key and it came out sounding like plink, plunk, flam, rest, plinkity, flam, flam. I must have played it seventy times and every time it started right and ended wrong.

All of a sudden, mixed with the plinks and the plunks, I thought I heard a bling-blang, but I kept playing. I heard it again: bling and blang. The doorbell! The doorbell at five in the morning? Following the blings and blangs came a whang and a bam-bam-bam, no kidding, it sounded like a gorilla was out in the hall trying to knock our door down with his feet.

I was really scared, although the chain was still on and both locks were locked. I got up from the piano bench and went to the door, "Who is it?" I asked. The banging and ringing stopped. A man's voice said, "Mfmdnsk!" "I can't hear you!" I called.

My mother appeared in her robe, which she'd buttoned wrong, her face looking like she wasn't really awake. "What's going on, Neil?" she said in this voice that sounded like it was coming from down in a well. "What's happening?"

"Someone's out there–" I pointed at the door.

"At this hour?" My mother started waking up. She went to the door. "Who is it?" she said.

"Frtrskd!" said the voice.

"What do you want?" said my mother.

"FRTRSKD!"

My mother opened the door a crack, just the length of the chain, and we both peeked out.

Mr. Rasmussen! He was standing there in a blue-and-white striped bathrobe and a pair of slippers. His Scottie dog was not with him.

"You took the telephone off the hook!" he said. He was red in the face.

"I'm sorry–" my mother started to say. "I took a sleeping pill–"

"I'm up half the night listening to the drumming on the walls, the pounding, the crashing, and now–" his face got even redder, sort of like instant sunburn–" you expect me to put up with the piano at five in the morning?"

"What happened was–" I started to say, but he cut me right off.

"I hardly slept twenty minutes since eleven o'clock last night!"

My mother tried to tell him again that she was sorry, but he wouldn't let her finish a sentence.

"I've had it up to here!" he said. He made a sign with his hands like he was going to cut his head off at the neck. "Up to here!" he said, and without another word, he turned on his heel and marched off, his slippers slapping against the corridor floor.

My father had come into the living room, had heard the last few of Mr. Rasmussen's remarks, and now flopped himself into a chair and stared at the floor.

My mother closed the door and turned to look at him. "Poor man, I can hardly blame him," she said.

"He's going to make trouble for us, Margery," my father said.

"What can he do?" I asked.

"I don't know," my mother said.

"Plenty," my father said.

***

When I got to the school I got the shock of my life. The minute I walked into the home room, the teacher called me right to his desk. "Don't go to your first-period class. You're to go directly to Mr. Guttag's office. He's waiting for you."

Waiting for me? Good, grey grief! Hadn't Beef fixed that cut slip? Waiting for me! Those words had an end-of-the-world ring that took the wind right out of me. The principal of the school, stopping everything to wait for me!

I made my way down to his office, but I practically had to hold on to the walls. My legs felt so weak, it was like I'd been sick with the flu for a week and was now allowed out of bed for the first time. I held on to the bannisters going downstairs and tried to take deep breaths for courage. I found out that taking deep breaths for courage doesn't work.

Mr. Guttag's secretary hardly looked up from her typewriter when I came in. "Sit down and Mr. Guttag will be with you in a minute," she said.

I sat and imagined what was in store for me, a second offender. I imagined the screams that would come out of Mr. Guttag's throat, the punishments he would invent for me. "Go in now," the secretary said, too soon. My stomach jumped right up into my throat. Another kid had just left Guttag's office and I wondered about him. He didn't look as if anything too awful had happened. On the other hand, he wasn't smiling either.

I went straight into the office and stood in front of Mr. Guttag's desk. He put down the cut slip he'd been reading like it was his favorite book and stared at me for what seemed like ten years. "Okay, Oxley, what's the matter?"

I didn't know what to answer, so I didn't answer.

"Did you hear me? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Mr. Guttag."

"You were in here a couple of days ago for causing a disturbance in Mrs. Bowring's class. What is the matter with you, boy? Is something wrong at home?"

How was I going to answer that one? I didn't answer. I looked at the little golf club paperweight holding down the papers on his desk and I swallowed a couple of times. I kept thinking how Beef had taken my dollar and flimflammed me but good.

"This school has a strict cutting policy. Are you aware of it, Oxley?"

I said I was aware of it.

"Then why did you cut English class?"

"I didn't have my report."

"And why didn't you have your report, may I ask?"

"It got messed up."

"Messed up?"

I shut right up, I don't know why. It would have been impossible to tell him about Gerri. If I told him about Gerri, he'd call my mother and father and make a big thing. Then for all I know they'd send Gerri back to the Training Center. Did I want that on my conscience?

"I'm not going to waste any more time. I'm going to suspend you from classes today. You'll sit right in that chair in the outer office until it's time to go home at three o'clock. You may leave only to go to the cafeteria during fifth period for half an hour, to eat your lunch."

I got up and moved to the outer office thinking that there was absolutely no reason for me to go to the cafeteria for lunch since it was almost a sure thing I'd never be able to eat even one bite.

But I did go to the cafeteria during fifth period and it was one of the biggest mistakes I'd ever made in my life. It got me into even worse trouble than I was in already–and if Mr. Guttag was tough with second offenders, he was practically frothing at the mouth the third time around!