A Crooked Kind of Perfect (10 page)

"Next up, Victoria Dewsbury."

Victoria Dewsbury walks to the front of the room.

Dad must be in the hallway. He's probably too nervous to come in.

"Victoria will be playing 'Gettin' Jiggy Wit It' on the Perfectone J-70."

Victoria plays.

There is clapping. Victoria's parents cheer. The back-of-the-room people mutter.

"I'd hardly call that jiggy," says one.

A snooty-looking lady lowers her glasses. "It's a good thing the Perfectone people rewrite this music for the student songbooks. That girl never could have handled the original composition. Imagine if she'd attempted one of the classical pieces."

Classical pieces? Why didn't Miss Person tell me there were classical pieces?

The doors open. People rush in. Other people rush out.

I peek into the hallway. No Dad.

Swoosh!
No bang. Instead, a quiet
click.
The Perform-O-Rama Mama smiles.

"Andy Markowitz."

Andy Markowitz plays "Big Girls Don't Cry." His mother cries.

Now none of the back-of-the-room people are listening. They are flipping through their packets. They are reading
MEET
THE
PERFECTONES
! Their kids are playing hangman. One guy is sleeping.

The doors open.
Swoosh-click.
The doors close.

Still no Dad.

"Olivia DiMaggio."

Olivia is the first one to use the Perfectone M-80. She plays "The Theme from
The Young and the Restless."

The sleeping guy snorts.

The front of the room claps for Olivia.

The back of the room doesn't.

"Young and the Restless? More like the Old and the Comatose," one guy mutters.

"Shut up, Harry," says a lady sitting next to him. "How would you like it if people said things about Becky's playing?"

Thing is, I don't understand what Harry is talking about. All the kids who played sounded good to me.

Margaret Barstock plays Mendelssohn's "Spring Song" on the Perfectone M-80. It's a classical piece. A pretty one. And I don't hear any mistakes when she plays, except you can tell by her face when she turns around that she must have made some, because Margaret Barstock has tears in her eyes and her face is all red.

Harry starts to say something about spring coming late this year, but Mrs. Harry shoves a Tic Tac in his mouth.

Just keep playing,
I think.

Four more kids until my turn.

Three.

Two.

"Becky Depschak?"

Harry's daughter stands.

"Becky will be playing 'Istanbul (Not Constantinople)' on the Perfectone J-70."

Nobody is playing the D-60. Nobody.

And everybody has a parent here. Everybody.

Where's Dad?

Becky starts playing. Then Becky stops playing. I hear Harry whisper, "It's okay, baby. You can do it."

There 's no way Becky can hear him way up there, but Harry whispers anyway, and then Becky starts playing again. And when she's done, Harry claps and everybody else claps and Becky shuffles back to her
dad with her head down and Harry hugs her and calls her champ and says how about we go get a Bust-A-Burger? And Becky nods and the Depschak family leaves.

A few other people leave, too.

But nobody comes in.

Swoosh-click.

It's my turn.

Dad's not here and Miss Person's not here and Mom's not here, but it is my turn.

People have shifted all the chairs around in Meeting Room G and there 's not much of an aisle left, so I have to weave around people to get to the front of the room where the judges are. And when I get there I hand them my music, but I still have my competition packet in my hands. All the other kids handed their packets to their parents before they played. I didn't have anybody to hand my packet to.

"Which instrument will you be playing?" asks a judge.

"The organ," I say.

"Yes, of course," she says. "But which one?"

"Oh," I say. "The Perfectone D-60."

And then the judge tells everybody that I will be playing "Forever in Blue Jeans" on the Perfectone D-60. Somebody snorts. I hope it is the sleeping guy in the back.

Where am I supposed to put my packet?

I put my music on the music stand, but the packet is too fat to go behind it. I could sit on it. No. The floor. I drop my packet on the floor. Somebody laughs.

Okay.

I look at the music.

Okay.

Here goes.

I flip the Rock Beat #3 switch and get ready to count
oneandtwoandthree .. .

I can't hear Rock Beat #3.

I push the volume pedal all the way up.

Nothing.

I flip the rhythm switch again.

I flip it again.

Flip flip flip.

Nothing.

Now there is a judge by my side.

"Looks like nobody has used the D-60 today." She laughs. She pushes the On button and the Perfectone D-60 wheezes to life, with Rock Beat #3 booming so loud some little kid starts crying and has to leave.

Swoosh-click.

I turn off Rock Beat #3.

I fix the volume.

I take a deep breath.

I turn on Rock Beat #3.

oneandtwoandthreeandfourand ...

Bum

Bum

BumBumBum

My foot slips on the pedals.

Just keep playing.

I say it four more times—once for each mistake.

Just keep playing.

Just keep playing.

Just keep playing.

Just keep playing.

And then "Forever in Blue Jeans" ends.

I slide to the edge of the Perfectone D-60's vinyl bench and put my foot on the floor except I don't step on the floor, I step on my packet, which goes shooting out from under me and I almost fall, but I don't.

Just keep walking,
I tell myself.

I keep walking.

One of the judges picks up my packet and hands it to me.

And then I hear people clapping and I see Judy waving me over and I go to where Judy and Mona are and I sit down next to them and Judy gives me a hug.

"Nice job," she says.

"I made mistakes," I say.

"Everybody made mistakes today," says Judy.

"You kept playing," says Mona.

"Mona Kinzler?" calls a judge. Mona hands Judy her competition packet.

"Have fun, honey," says Judy. She gives Mona a hug.

"Mona will be playing Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor on the Perfectone M-80," says the judge.

Perfection itself is imperfection.

That's what Horowitz said.

I heard it on that show that I watched with my mom. The voice-over guy said that Horowitz meant that it wasn't enough to get all the notes right. When you play the piano, you have to get the heart right. Which is harder than getting the notes right.

Each note can only be right in one way. A B-flat is a B-flat is a B-flat. A robot can get a B-flat right.

But getting the heart right is something only a person can do. And the ways to do it are as many and as different as there are people in the world.

Hearing Mona play, I know that she has found one of them.

Everyone is smiling.

Judy is smiling and the judges are smiling and Mika is smiling and I am smiling and I bet if Harry Depschak and his family weren't at Bust-A-Burger, they'd be smiling, too.

Because when Mona plays you feel like smiling.

And singing.

No. That's not right.

It's not that you feel like singing actual words. Not lyrics.

It's that even though you know that Mona is reading the music and her fingers are pressing the keys and her feet are tapping the pedals and the sound is coming out of the Ultra-Gold fashion weave speakers of the Perfectone M-80, you feel like the music is coming out of you.

Like it does when you are singing.

Mona and Judy walk me to Room 415 at the Birch Valley Hotel and Conference Center.

We knock.

"Dad?" I call.

"Coming!" says Dad.

He opens the door just wide enough to stick his head out.

"Everything okay?" Judy asks.

"Fine," says Dad. He doesn't look at Judy. "Well. Well. Thank you for taking care of..."

"No problem. She's a delight," says Judy.

"See you tomorrow," Mona tells me.

"Uh-huh," I say.

"Eleven o'clock. Meeting Room G." Mona looks at Dad when she says it.

"Okay," I say. "See you tomorrow."

And when they get all the way down the hall and turn the corner and can't possibly see us anymore, Dad opens the door.

The hotel room looks like our house. Our kitchen tablecloth is spread across the table by the window and Dad's blue checkered sheets are on his bed. There is a set of red checkered sheets on the other one. There's a picture of Mom and me on the nightstand next to Dad's alarm clock. In the bathroom are our yellow towels and in the soap dish is a half-used bar of Zest that Dad must have brought from home, too.

"I was trying to get things comfortable," says Dad. "You never know how well these people clean." Dad's cleaning supplies are under the bathroom sink. "It's a good thing I did, too. You do not want to know what was hiding between the mattresses."

He's right. I don't.

"Well," says Dad. "Well, it was dirty. And I got dirty cleaning it. And it was late and I wasn't thinking and ... well..." Dad sits on the edge of the bed. "I washed my hands."

He holds up his hand. Where Miss Person had written
6:30—Meeting Room G
there is now a fat purple smudge.

"I'm sorry, honey," he says.

"It's okay, Dad," I say. "You can come tomorrow."

"Flying monkeys couldn't keep me away," he says. "You want to eat?"

"I'm starving," I say.

And then Dad drags his Living Room University backpack out of the closet. Inside are sandwiches on
Rolling in Dough bread, Bake Your Way to the Bank cookies, two cans of Vernors, and a bag of Better Made potato chips.

And we sit at the little hotel table with our tablecloth on it and Dad turns on the TV and we eat.

"Just like home," says Dad.

Dad's in the shower when his cell phone rings.

Mom,
I think.
Calling to ask how I did.

And I don't want to tell her.

I don't want to tell her about the organ not being turned on and my foot slipping on the pedals and making all those mistakes.

"Can you get that?" hollers Dad from the shower. "It's probably your mom."

I get it.

"Hello," I say.

"Hey, Goober."

It's Wheeler. Hooray for Wheeler!

"Zsa Zsa," I say.

"Listen, Zsa Zsa," he says.

I listen. I hear a weird squeaky sound.

"Did you hear that?" he says.

"What was it?"

"I burped. Upside down. I've been practicing."

I laugh. I can't help it. I laugh and I keep laughing.

"You called me so you could stand on your head and burp?" I say.

"I'm not standing on my head. I'm hanging off the side of my bed."

"Then you're not really upside down," I say.

"I'm almost upside down." He squeaks again. "How about that?"

"Very impressive." I mean it. Not everyone would put in that kind of effort.

"How'd it go?" he asks.

And I tell him.

I tell him about Dad doing such a good job getting us here and about the noisy lobby and the Upgrade man and Dad not making it to the performance room and how I goofed up so much. And how I just kept playing.

"Cool," he says.

And then I tell him what was really cool. I tell him about Mona and how when she plays you feel like your whole body is filled up with music—like singing.

And he says, "You play like that."

"What?" I say.

"You play like that. At school, when you played 'Green Acres.' And when you think nobody is paying attention. You play like that."

"I do?"

"That 's why me and your dad are always singing in the kitchen."

They sing in the kitchen?

"You can't hear us because you're singing, too," he says.

"You can hear me singing?"

"Of course we can hear you, Goober," he says. "Someday we 're all going to have to learn the words."

I laugh again.

Wheeler laughs, too.

And Wheeler's laugh sounds like singing.

The next morning, I'm sitting in the back of Meeting Room G again, but this time Dad is with me.

"How does this work?" he asks.

I pull the
HOW
IT
WORKS
sheet out of my competition packet. He reads it.

"So, if you do better today, one of yesterday's scores will be dropped?"

I'd told Dad about yesterday. After Wheeler called and Dad was out of the shower, I told him how I made all those mistakes.

"But you kept on playing?" Dad said. His eyes got wide when he said it. I could tell he was proud.

"Everybody does," I said. "You can't just get up and walk away every time you mess up. You'd never get anywhere."

I'd told him about Mona, too. How she played.

And I made sure we got here extra early today, so he wouldn't miss her.

Dad looks for Mona's name on the schedule. "So, she plays first?"

"Yep," I say. We go in the reverse order of yesterday, so Mona's first and I'm second.

"We 're just about ready to start," says a judge. "Would our volunteer please let the people in the hallway know?"

The white-haired volunteer is gone. Today's volunteer is a big guy in a red plaid shirt with a Perform-O-Rama Mama T-shirt stretched over it.

"We 're starting, people," calls the volunteer. "Allegro, kids. Speed it up."

People flood into Meeting Room G. Becky Depschak and her family. Mika and his parents. Andy Markowitz and his mom.

Swoosh-click.
The doors close.

Dad's leg starts bouncing. He rolls
HOW
IT
WORKS
into a tube and taps it on the back of the chair in front of us.