Chapter 19

As soon as I walked in the door, my mother gave me the good news and the bad news about Gerri. The good news was that she'd slept through the night all night Saturday for the first time without banging her head. The bad news was that she'd wet her pants again, this time in public, at the zoo, when the elephant trumpeted and scared her out of her wits.

Other news was that Joe/Jason had called twice and wanted me to return his call as soon as I came home.

I was in no mood to dial Joe's number. "Aren't you going to call him?" my mother asked twice. "Too tired," I said. I didn't want to go into it about Joe. "Where's Gerri?" I asked. I wanted to tell them both about the fish.

"She's asleep. And you know what else, Neil?" my mother said. Her eyes opened really wide, like she was going to spring a biggie surprise. "When I was giving her a bath tonight after she messed herself up at the zoo, she started to sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, can you believe that? She sang it all the way through. Well, she did put her own lyrics to it, but you know what, Neil? She never went off key, not once!"

"No kidding, Mom?"

"No kidding."

***

Joe/Jason came to my home room to see me first thing next morning. "Why didn't you return my call, Neil?" he said. "I have some colossal news."

"You won an Oscar." I tried to get my voice sounding real ex-friend cool. Who knows how many more people he'd educated about Geraldine and what colorful yarns he'd spun all over school about her?

"Please, baby, I told you it was a slip of the lip about your sister. Can't we bury it?"

"Okay, it's buried. Now what's the news?"

"We all want you to play the Battle Hymn of the Republic in the Follies. All the kids who heard you Friday, that is. Everybody thinks you're great."

"What are you, putting me on? What happened, did Wendy break her fingers in a game or what?"

"She didn't break a thing, baby. She just thinks you'd be great doing that one number, that's all."

"What'd you do, pay her off or something?"

"Would I do that?" Joe/Jason said, and right away his ears flamed up pink as rose petals. I couldn't even imagine what he'd promised Wendy to get her to give up that plum piece in the show. A sterling silver candelabra for her piano?

Or–aha!–I just remembered I'd heard she was flunking math. Joe/Jason was a star in math and knew all the algebra ropes, didn't he? "It's too late," I said. "The Follies is this Friday night, isn't it, Joe...er...Jason?"

"Listen, you've got it down pat already, so what's the problem?"

"How long did you promise to tutor Wendy?" I wanted to say, but I didn't. I didn't want his charity, no kidding, but all the same I did. I kept thinking how Dad would come to the Follies, and maybe sit in one of the front rows and applaud like crazy when I'd finished the piece, and how everyone in the school would see me up there too and stop overlooking me all the time. Most of all, I'd become part of the music/drama group and have somebody to sit in the cafeteria with and walk through the halls with and just plain hang around with. I wouldn't have to be a singles act anymore.

"Can I practice on the school piano? Our piano is–hmmm–out of tune," I said. No point in telling Joe/Jason that whole story.

"Sure, any time," Joe/Jason said, and he looked so relieved, I felt like I'd almost done him a favor.

***

I guess I never worked so hard in my life as I did that week. Although I knew the piece pretty well, knowing I was going to have to sit out there and play in front of two million people (well, a couple of hundred, anyway) gave me a headache that spread from my scalp right down to my knees.

Every day after school I'd sit working at it in the auditorium and still worry I might mess it up Friday night. Joe/Jason and the rest of the music/drama group were really in there for me, and everyone said I was putting real glory and hallelujah into it and it was going to be the highlight of the show.

By dress rehearsal I was pretty confident I'd do a fair job. I guess if I live to be two thousand, I'll never forget how to play that piece, I'd played it so many times.

My number came just as Joe/Jason came down-stage and announced he'd won the election and four girls danced out and threw red, white, and blue confetti all over him and sang "Congratulations, President Pierce!" "You'll stop the show!" a couple of kids told me.

***

My mother had arranged for Mrs. Shrub to sit with Gerri so she could come to the performance, and of course I'd told Dad to come too. He sounded really pleased and said he'd pick Mom and me up Friday night and drive us to school very early to make sure he and Mom would get good seats up front.

My mother let down the sleeves of my old blue jacket that had gotten too small and sent it to the cleaners and bought me a new blue tie with little white musical notes on it, and left me a note in my room saying "Don't forget to shine your shoes!"

Gerri was still blamming her head against the wall, but now she skipped a night here and there, and her performances were down to about three or four blams per night. The night before the concert, I just lay awake waiting for her to start and that night she never did, but I hardly slept anyway.

I was jumpy all day Friday too and so was Joe/Jason–he said his mother was going to slip him one of her tranquilizers before show time–and the rest of the music/drama group was jittery too. Today for the first time, I sat with them in the cafeteria at lunch and even if I was no rajah, it was good to be in on everything and feel like part of a bunch.

***

My mother made my favorite casserole for dinner, but I hardly ate a bite. My eye was on the clock and so was my mother's. "Where is Mrs. Shrub?" she said a couple of times. "It's not like her to be late."

She hadn't arrived by the time my father came and buzzed from downstairs, signaling he was double-parked and wanted us to come down right away.

"I'll have to wait for Mrs. Shrub," my mother said, frowning. "You go ahead with Dad, and I'll follow in a taxi as soon as she gets here."

When I got downstairs and told my father, he said he'd hold a place for my mother but we'd better hurry or the best seats would be gone. He said he liked the way I looked and especially admired my shined shoes. He thought they'd be wasted under the piano and kiddingly suggested I plant them right on top where everybody would see them.

Everybody was in a frenzy of panic backstage. Joe/Jason was practically green with fright under his stage make-up because his mother had changed her mind about the tranquilizer and had given him milk with a shot of vanilla in it instead, which he said made him even more nervous. The only really cool performer was Wendy Wellington, who had tied her hair some crazy new way on top of her head, which made her look like her own older sister and gave her the look of someone without a worry in the world.

I took a peek out at the overflow audience through the side of the curtain and found my father, who had an aisle seat in the third row, but the seat he was saving for my mother was still empty. What if Mrs. Shrub didn't come? My mother would never get to see me play!

But there was no time for worry; it was show time!

The orchestra struck up, the curtain opened, and Joe/Jason marched out on the stage to do his opening number. He was great, he was terrific, he was better than he'd ever been, and his first number practically brought the house down. I peeked out and saw my father applauding, looking as if he was really enjoying the show. The seat next to him was still empty.

Now Wendy Wellington stepped out and walked to the piano like performing was something she did twice a week, and played, "Congratulations, Mrs. Pierce," and I did hear her make one or two little mistakes but I think the audience missed them, because she also got a great bunch of applause when she was finished.

By this time I was trembling wreck knowing I'd be on right after the next number, and starting to feel cramps that jumped from one part of my body to another. One minute I'd get this tight feeling in my neck and the next minute it jumped down into my wrist, then it landed in my fingers.

"Neil, you're on!"

I walked out of the side stage door to the piano, and right away Rich Whitefield, the kid in charge of lighting, turned the pink spotlight on me. My legs felt like a couple of paper drinking straws that might fold right up under me in any old direction. I don't really know how I made it, but here I was, sitting on the piano bench in the middle of the pink spotlight, the whole place quieter than the public library, everybody in the audience waiting for me to begin. I was to start playing and the action would begin onstage after I'd played eight bars, but now I felt as if ten million eyes were on me, ten million ears were tuned in my direction, ready for me to hit the first note. The auditorium was dark, so I couldn't tell if my mother had arrived, but it was too late to worry about that now.

I began to play, concentrating with every spark plug in my head, letting my fingers remember each plink and plunk, getting the horsepower into my hands, and, like Dad had told me, going easy on the right pedal. I relaxed...it was working! My fingers took over and zipped along like they belonged to someone else, maybe Tchaikovsky. The keyboard felt like velvet and the tempo was perfect. The cramps disappeared; I was really proud of myself.

Then!

I heard a laugh from the back of the auditorium: Ha, hee, hi, ho yeeeeeeee!

NO!

It was like someone shot me right in the stomach with an icicle.

YeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

The spark plugs exploded in my head, the horsepower went dead in my hands, and the plinks and the plunks turned into blangs and blongs. Gerri was somewhere out there (had my mother lost her mind, bringing her here?), and although it was dark and I couldn't see, I went cold as a corpse thinking she was headed this way–was going to try to–oh, good, grey grief–climb on this piano?

Sure enough, the sound came closer. YeeeEEEEE!

My fingers died on the keys. The audience stirred. Someone laughed.

I heard my mother's voice, whisper-calling "Geraldine! Come back here!"

More laughter. Feet scraped. People began buzzing. I heard Joe/Jason's voice snapping at me from behind the curtain. "Play, Neil, play!"

I couldn't play. I could hardly breathe.

"Geraldine!" cried my mother's anxious voice. Shuffle/shuffle footsteps came nearer.

Now I could see her dim form shuffle/shuffling right towards me. No hand from heaven was coming down to grab me; nobody was going to save me from this here-and-now, real-life nightmare.

"Play, Neil, for pity's sake, play!" Joe/Jason sounded pretty hysterical, but my fingers were finished and useless, like a steam-roller had just gone over them.

The audience was now out-and-out laughing, snickering, scraping their feet, even clapping.

Geraldine was practically at the piano. I saw my mother weaving through the standees in the aisle, trying to get at her to grab her.

I heard her say, "Come back, Geraldine!" and then–rock bottom–Gerri yelled, like an echo in the mountains, "Gelldeen. Gellydeen GELLYDEEN!" and it didn't take more than two seconds for three or four East-Enders in the first two rows to pick it up and yell, "Jellybean! Hey, Jellybean!" and pretty soon somebody from the back joined in and then it was all you could hear, Jellybean, Jellybean, HEY JELLYBEAN! until the whole auditorium was in pandemonium.

That was it. My mother grabbed Gerri just as she reached the piano, and Mr. Peck got up to restore order, but it was all over for me.

My hands were shaking like ashes in a wind, and Wendy Wellington had to come to the piano to finish the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The show must go on and the show did go on, but it went on without me. My sister had finally learned to say her own name, sort of, but at that point even if she'd recited the Declaration of Independence I wouldn't have cared.

***

I hardly remember how I got out of the school and into the car. My father drove us all home, and no one said a word except my mother, who explained that Mrs. Shrub's back went bad on the way over to our house and she called from her cellphone to say she was sorry she couldn't come but she was going home in a taxi to lie on a board. My mother apologized five times for bringing Gerri, but said she just couldn't miss the show. She said she'd warned Gerri about behaving and that she'd stayed way back and held Gerri's hand but that when Gerri saw me she went wild and tore away from her and practically whizzed down the aisle, squeezing between people who were standing there and squiggling through to where my mother couldn't reach her. My mother said she'd never forgive herself, never, and then she was quiet too, just looking out the window of the car as if she was letting the quiet and the dark sift right into her skin and bones.

That night, Gerri's head-banging was worse than it had been in weeks. While I was lying there listening to the thumps, I realized Dad had been right all along: I'd be better off living with him, and the sooner I moved out of here, the better. I couldn't face going back to school Monday anyway. Or ever. I'd call Dad first thing in the morning to tell him to come and get me as soon as possible. Right away Now.