I catch them falling in my hands another year,
My senses suffused with beauty.
—Ava Hancock La Belle
“It’s good, Mommy,” I told her. I liked it all right, but it didn’t make me jealous the way anything Calpurnia Dove wrote did.
“Now, don’t exaggerate. Just tell me if it’s good, as one would-be writer to another.”
“It is good. I like it.”
“Is it really good?”
“Very good.”
She jumped up and ran across to me. “Oh, honey, they printed it!”
It didn’t do any good, it never did, to say please put me down.
She held me, dancing around the solarium with me, planting wet kisses across my cheeks, both of us laughing, finally, me squirming, though. I smelled the mint on her breath and knew she’d had a few from the crème de menthe bottle she kept at the bottom of her white wicker yarn basket.
“We’ll have a good time at the game!” she said. Then she began to sing: “We’re the Boots! Toodle toot! We’re the Boots of La Belle fame! We’re the Boots who win the game! Toodle toot! Feel our boot!”
She danced faster, with me in her arms, jiggling me up and down the way I sometimes danced with our cat. “Toodle toot! Feel our boot!”
She put me down and knelt to be face to face with me.
“Did you like my poem, honey? Oh, I know I’m not the greatest poet in the world, but it’s a nice little poem, do you really think so, Little Little?”
“I like it, Mommy.”
She wiped a tear away. “Oh, why am I bawling like a baby, hmmm? I guess I’m just so happy!” That sounded so insincere, even to her, that she rushed on to babble something truer. “I’m tired, too, I guess. All these plans for your big birthday! I can’t believe you’ll be eighteen, honey. I was married the year after I was eighteen. I was a young bride. And we waited. Purposely. We waited to have you because we were so young and we wanted some years together, just your daddy and me. And what years they were! All the midnight sails from the yacht club ended right at our dock! Everyone came here, everyone!”
She hugged me hard.
Over her shoulder, I saw Eloise Ficklin dance across the television screen dressed as a lettuce leaf. Even with the sound turned down, I knew what she was singing: “I’m dancing to the melody, Oh happy happy days, When I lie down I’ll have a coat of golden mayonnaise.”
9: Sydney Cinnamon
A SISTER OF ONE of the Bombers’ cheerleaders babysat for Digger and Laura Gwen while they went to the game.
About an hour before game time, they picked me up in front of The Stardust Inn, in a taxi I’d offered to pay for.
“Your shell needs dusting, Sydney,” Laura Gwen said, pushing it in front with the driver.
I sat between them and Digger said, “Did you know the man who owns the La Belle Boot and Shoe factory has a midget daughter?”
“I know,” I said.
“Which is the reason Little Lion is coming here on Sunday,” said Laura Gwen. “There’s going to be a whole convention of people like you, Sydney, coming in from all over. The driver just told us.”
“It’s a birthday party for Little Little La Belle,” I said.
“Are you going?”
“I’m the entertainment.”
“Are they paying you?” Digger asked.
“I’ll get something for it.”
“Well, that shell needs dusting, Sydney.”
“So dust it!” Digger said. “While I’m suiting up, you get a rag and dust it for him!”
“I can dust it myself,” I said.
“I’ll dust it for you, Sydney,” she said.
“Roach,” Digger said, “me and Laura Gwen was remembering the first time we ever seen you, that Halloween at the game. You’d just started going to Wilton High, and you came to the game with some of them from Twin Oaks, remember?”
“I remember,” I said. I wasn’t likely to forget it. A group of us from Mistakes had gone to the high school stadium in costume. It was my first try at getting myself up as The Roach. Bighead Langhorn had put a white sheet over his body and gone as the explosion of the atom bomb, and Cloud had gone as God, his body wrapped in cellophane. Wheels had rigged himself up as a Volkswagen convertible, and Wires Kaplan went as Reddy Kilowatt.
“I remember I said you’d be a helluva mascot that day,” said Digger. “You remember my saying that to you?” He reached for the can of beer between his legs and took a swallow.
“I remember,” I said.
“Sydney, why don’t you stand on the seat, to see,” Laura Gwen said.
“Stand up here on the seat,” Digger said, patting the seat.
“I can see enough.”
“You can see the rate card is all you can see. Stand up here.”
He gave the seat another pat and I stood up on it.
“That’s better,” said Digger. “I remember it was the first season The Bombers played after that year of austerity. That year was what ruined me.”
“That year wasn’t what ruined you,” Laura Gwen said. “What you’re swallowing down right now was what ruined you.”
“Oh yeah? How’s a scout going to recruit you if he can’t see you in action?”
“No scout was recruiting you,” Laura Gwen said.
“What about that day?” I said, trying to steer them away from another argument.
“I remember I told you you’d be a helluva mascot, and the school needed something like that to put it on the map,” Digger said.
“I remember that,” Laura Gwen said. “It was Digger’s idea.”
“Well, the band struck up ‘La Cucaracha’ and I just went into my dance,” I said.
“And you were good,” Digger said. “I said you’d be a helluva mascot.”
“I know,” I said.
“Just as long as you know that.” Digger took a pull of his beer. He said, “What I’m getting at is we’re pals, buddy. We pals?” He held up the can as though he was making a toast.
“Pals,” I agreed.
“So I was thinking, Roach, old pal—”
“Sydney, old pal,” Laura Gwen said.
“I was thinking this is my last
