Doesn’t anybody but me keep any contact with the outside world?” I got to my feet. “Sidartha has broken up,” I sobbed. “They’re having one last concert at Madison Square Garden, and then they are no more!” I raised my eyes to the heavens and opened my arms. “Good night, sweet princes, may choirs of rock angels sing you to your sleep…!”
Pam slurped at a forkful of food.
My mother looked at me.
“Let me make a wild guess,” she said. “You want to go to the concert.”
Hope dried the tears that blurred my eyes.
“Yes,” I snuffled. “If I could see them play live, at least I’d have that memory to carry me through the long, empty years that lie ahead of me like a road in Kansas.”
“You mean go with your dad?” asked my mother.
Good God! I’d forgotten about him. There was no way I could involve my father in this outing.
For one thing, Ella thought he was dead; for another, he was the last person we needed with us when we crashed the party.
“Dad?” I moaned with the suffering of the misunderstood. “I can’t go to a Sidartha concert with my father. I’d die of shame.”
“Well, you’re not going to Madison Square Garden by yourself, and that’s final,” my mother informed me. “You can watch the show on MTV.”
But I wasn’t defeated – not yet.
“How can you treat me like this?” I cried. “I’m your flesh and blood, your first born. You used to lean over my crib in the middle of the night to make sure I was still breathing.”
“Exactly,” said my mother. “I’m concerned for your welfare. You can’t go.”
I tried to make a deal. “I’ll baby-sit whenever you want for the next six months,” I promised. “Free. Just let me go to the concert.
But would Karen Kapok relent? Do bears drive Volvos?
“Get off your knees, Mary,” said my mother. “You can’t go into the city at night by yourself and that’s the end of it. The answer is no.”
It was worse than mere mortal insensitivity. It was inhuman stubbornness.
What could one broken-hearted teenager do in the face of such parental pig-headedness? Sulking wouldn’t work. I once stayed in my room for a whole week (except for meals, baths, going to school, and hanging out with Ella) and she didn’t even notice. The silent treatment wouldn’t work either. I used the silent treatment when I used the week-long sulk. All that happened was that every so often my mother would look up from whatever she was doing and comment on how nice and quiet it was for a change.
“Please,” I begged. “If you don’t let me go, I’ll die. I swear I will. I’ll just wither away and die.”
“Well, if you ask me, that’s better than being shot at close range by some psycho in Manhattan,” said my mother.
My chair toppled over as, devastated, I fled from the room.
“If Mary dies, can we have the porch as a playroom?” asked Pam.
“Can you believe it?!” I complained to Ella the next day as we walked to homeroom. “I live in a house without pity, in a cheap temple to the meaningless frivolity of contemporary life.” I flapped my arms so my cape moved like wings. “She wouldn’t even listen to me, Ella. She wouldn’t even stop for one tiny little nanosecond and consider
Ella gave me a darting glance. “That means you asked your mother about the concert and she said no, doesn’t it?”
There was something about her tone that I didn’t like. A smugness. If Ella hadn’t been raised to be so polite and pleasant all the time, she would have stuck out her tongue and said, “Nahnahnah, I told you so!”
“Well at least I asked,” I snapped. “At least I made the attempt, instead of just throwing up my hands in defeat.” I raised my chin to the winter sun. “At least I do battle, Ella.”
“I asked,” said Ella quietly. “I asked them days ago.”
I came to an abrupt halt and stared at her as though I’d never seen her before. It may not sound like a big deal to anyone with parents less dedicated to perfection than Ella’s, but this kind of behaviour is unheard of in the Gerard household. Not only do the Gerards never argue, never shout, and never behave like their brains are asleep, they achieve this amazing state of perfection by avoiding even the most everyday confrontations. It’s kind of an unwritten rule that Ella never says or does anything to upset her parents. She does whatever they want automatically, and – consciously or subconsciously – doesn’t do things they wouldn’t want.
“Really?” I couldn’t have hidden my surprise if I’d wanted to. The more I knew Ella, the more I realized there was more to know. “You actually asked Marilyn and Jim if you could go into New York, the evil heart of the universe, and see Sidartha? You admitted that there are things that you’d rather do than watch videos and go to the mall?” Watching videos and shopping – two things that drive Karen Kapok wild if done to excess – are considered appropriate teenage pursuits by the Gerards.
Ella nodded. “Uh-huh. Well, I asked my mother.” She kind of shrugged with her mouth. “I never manage to stay up late enough to see my father most of the time.”
“And what did she say?”
Ella made a face. “She said no.”
I sighed and started walking again. “That, of course, was to be expected,” I said. “But I really thought my mother would come round. After all, I can understand your mother worrying about you. You’ve never even been on a subway. But me?! I know my way around the City like a rat. My mother knows she has nothing to worry about.”
“What does it matter?” asked Ella. “We can’t go and that’s the end of it.”
But I am not a “Que será, será” kind of person.
“No, it isn’t,” I informed her. “It’s just the beginning.”
It wasn’t as if Carla Santini exactly surrendered and signed the peace treaty after I confronted her in that first rehearsal. She pretended I was human when Mrs Baggoli was around and ignored me as much as she could whenever Mrs Baggoli was out of the room. But she had other ways of getting revenge.
Mrs Baggoli clapped her hands together. “Let’s have some quiet in here!” she shouted. “Higgins, Doolittle, Mrs Pearce, Eliza… Let’s try it one more time.” She pointed at me. “Start with ‘Don’t I look dumb?’”
I nodded. I raised my head. “Don’t I look dumb?”
“Dumb?” asked Professor Higgins.
“Mrs Baggoli,” said Carla Santini. “I’m sorry to interrupt again, but do you really think
Mrs Baggoli doesn’t tolerate rudeness or dissension among her cast, so no one groaned out loud the way they would have normally; but we all shot desperate looks at one another. It wasn’t so much that Carla interrupted
Mrs Baggoli sighed. She knew that she couldn’t yell at Carla because Carla wasn’t really doing anything wrong. She wasn’t goofing off, or snickering in the background, or anything like that. She was just trying to make sure that everything – and everyone – was as good as it could be. I know this, because it was something Carla said at every rehearsal, at least once, usually when Mrs Baggoli’s awesome patience was about to snap in two.
“Carla,” said Mrs Baggoli very slowly and distinctly, “we all appreciate your sense of perfection about this production, but it really would be helpful if we could get through at least one whole scene this afternoon.”
She could have added, “For a change”, but she didn’t.
Carla wrung her manicured hands. “Oh, I know, I know,” she said, her voice tormented and deeply apologetic. How could anyone be mad at her when she was suffering so nobly for all our sakes? “I know I’m being a
