A Crooked Kind of Perfect (8 page)

And what good is a stupid framed diploma to anybody anyway if after you learn how to scuba or fly or plan parties or bake you never go out in the world and scuba or fly or party or bake for anybody, anyway?

And that's what I say. Then I say, "What good is
working hard and learning to play the stupid Perfectone D-60 if nobody ever hears me?"

And Dad says, "I hear you."

And I say, "That doesn't count."

I am hiding in my room, listening to one of Mom's Horowitz CDs. Loud.

Someone knocks on the door.

"Go away," I yell.

It's Wheeler. "I've got cake, Goober," he says.

I let him in.

"It's Zsa Zsa," I say.

Then we eat cake.

And when we finish, Wheeler goes out to the kitchen and gets us each another piece and we eat that, too.

Wheeler turns off my CD player. "He's gonna take you," he says.

"He'll try, but he won't be able to. He'll get nervous and we'll get lost and then we'll end up back here." My voice cracks and Wheeler thinks I'm choking on cake so he goes and gets us each a glass of milk.

Which we drink.

"I was mean," I say. "It's not his fault. He can't do this."

"He can do it," says Wheeler.

"He can't. It's like he physically can't. It's like..."
I try to think of something that Wheeler can't do so he'll understand. "It's like if you wanted to burp upside down. But you can't. Your body just won't let you. That's what it's like for him."

"He'll do it," says Wheeler.

We sit there for a while, pushing cake crumbs around our plates.

"You were pretty mad out there," Wheeler says.

"You were pretty mad yesterday," I say.

"Was not."

"You punched a bird."

"A fake bird," he says. He shoves his hands in his jacket pockets.

"I thought you might not come back here ever," I say.

"You should have known I wouldn't miss your birthday, Goober."

"I should have known you wouldn't miss cake." Wheeler laughs and for a second I feel like everything is okay, and then we hear Dad in the kitchen talking to himself.

"I-94 to Huron Avenue exit. Take a left. Seven miles north past the Birch Valley Mall. Right at Bixby. Left at Erie."

And then he says those words again.

And again.

And again.

They are the directions to the Perform-O-Rama.

Wheeler stands up.

"Come on," he says, but I don't move.

"Come on," he says again and he grabs my hands and pulls me up and out of my bedroom and into the kitchen and onto a kitchen chair. He sits next to me.

Dad sits next to Wheeler. He has the Perform-O-Rama info sheet in his hands and keeps rolling it up in a tube and then flattening it out on the table and rolling it up and flattening it out again.

"Where 's your cell?" Wheeler asks, and Dad gives him the cell phone.

"And your
Yellow Pages?"
Dad gets him the
Yellow Pages.

Wheeler pushes up his jean jacket sleeves. "Okay," he says. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"We could get lost," Dad says.

Wheeler punches in the phone number for Marty's Eastside Wreck and Tow. "Marty's is now speed dial number one," he says.

"There could be bad weather," Dad says.

Wheeler looks up the number for the National Weather Service. "Speed dial number two."

"A crazy truck driver could try to run us off the road," says Dad.

"State Police, speed dial number three."

"We could run out of gas or get a flat or..."

"Got that covered with Marty," says Wheeler. "What else?"

"We could run late and the hotel could give away our reservations," says Dad.

"Birch Valley Hotel, number four."

"I could run out of cash."

"Michigan Independent Bank, number five."

"We ... we could get really hungry?" says Dad.

This is ridiculous,
I think. "Or monkeys could descend from the sky."

Wheeler pages through the phone book. "Bust-A-Burger, speed dial number six. Detroit Zoo, number seven," he says.

Dad laughs. "You think the zoo handles flying monkeys?"

"I'll add the Humane Society, just in case," says Wheeler. "That's number eight."

"Tsunami," I say.

"Arnold's Rent-A-Lifeguard, number nine."

"Alien invasion," says Dad.

"Squash-Um Pest Control, number ten."

"We could forget which speed dial is which," I say.

"Just remember number eleven. That's me. I'll remember the rest," says Wheeler.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump.

Dad is hauling a giant wheelie suitcase up from the basement. I remind him that he only has to pack for one night.

Thump.

"You never know what you're going to need," says Dad.

I roll my eyes but Dad doesn't see because he is already halfway down the hall, his suitcase wheels clicking over the linoleum.

"I have to go," says Wheeler.

I nod.

"He's going to do it," says Wheeler. I nod again.

"So what's the matter with you?"

"My mom can't go," I say.

"Big deal," says Wheeler.

"It
is
a big deal!" I say. "She was supposed to go. She was supposed to hear me play!"

"She 's heard you play," says Wheeler. "A couple of times, at least."

"She missed my birthday," I say. "My eleventh birthday! How many birthdays has your mom missed?"

"All but the first one," he says.

And even though he smiles his lopsided smile and tells me, "Good luck, Goober" and "Remember number eleven," I feel like Wheeler Diggs has punched me in the stomach.

It is dark.

I am in bed.

It is dark and I am in bed trying not to think about Wheeler's motherless birthdays.

I can hear Dad in his room repeating the directions to the Perform-O-Rama while he packs his suitcase. "I-94 ... Birch Valley Mall ... Erie..."

And then I hear the rumble of the garage door and Mom's Saturn chugging into the garage and the garage door closing again.

Clink.
Mom's keys on hook.

Creeeeeeeaaaaak.
Closet door open.

Scrape.
Coat hanger.

Another creak. Closet door closed.

Mom's heels thud on the linoleum.
Thud thud thud.

She is walking into the kitchen.

She is looking at my cake, I bet.

Now she is going to come to my room and wish me a happy birthday and try to make up with me by giving me some lame present. Which I will not accept.

Here she is, thudding down the hallway.

Past my door.

Down the hall to her own room, where I hear her tell my dad that he can finish packing in the morning and she has had a hard day and can't they just turn off the lights already?

And then everything is quiet.

No "Happy birthday, honey."

No lame present.

Not even a card.

A card. Wait. I got a card today.

I flip on the lights and look for my spelling book—there it is. Colton Shell's yellow envelope.

I remember how he gave it to me. "It's a card," he said.

It was kind of nice how he said that. Thoughtful. Like he didn't want me to think that maybe it was something else. Something unimportant, like, well, I don't know. But anyway, he wanted me to know it was a card. Which is sweet.

And probably he also said it because Emma Dent was right there and he wanted to send me the signal not to open it in front of her. He wanted me to know it was a card and it was special and he had written something personal in it for my eyes only and he thought that if I didn't know it was a card, I might open up the envelope right there just to find out what was inside and then that nosy, buggy little gossip Emma Dent would have seen his deep private thoughts about his feelings for me.

The envelope is sealed, so I shove my finger in the little space at the top and that tears the envelope a bit, but I know Colton doesn't mind. He understands things like this. Colton Shell understands.

On the front of the card is a fat hippopotamus. The hippo is holding a piece of birthday cake in one hand and a giant fork in the other. It is wearing clogs.

This is what the card says:

Hip-hippo-ray for you today!
Let's cheer and cheer again!
We'll have a hippo-lot-o'-fun
Because today you're ten!

Except Colton has scribbled out the word
ten
and written in the number eleven and added a bunch more exclamation points. Like this: 11!!!!!!!!!!

And then he signed it.
Colton.

Not
Love, Colton.

Or
Happy birthday, Colton.

Or
Best wishes, Colton.

Just
Colton.
And a couple more exclamation points.

I hate exclamation points.

Dream #1

I am at the Perform-O-Rama.

I am playing "Forever in Blue Jeans."

I am wearing a tiara and I am playing "Forever in Blue Jeans" and I am perfect.

Dream #2

I am at the Perform-O-Rama.

I am playing "Forever in Blue Jeans."

I am wearing a tiara and I am playing "Forever in Blue Jeans" and my tiara slips down over my eyes and I can't see my music and I make a huge mistake.

I make a huge mistake and everybody hears it.

And then Colton Shell pops out of the Perfectone D-60 and starts singing.

Bum

Bum

Bum

Bum

"Hippo-ray

You'll have a happy happy hippo-day

You'll cheer and cheer and cheer and cheer again

Because you're ten

Forever in blue jeans."

Dream #3

I am at the Perform-O-Rama.

I am playing "Forever in Blue Jeans."

I am wearing a tiara and playing "Forever in Blue Jeans" but the judges can't hear me play because Colton Shell is singing and Emma Dent is sitting on a couch and telling the judges how nobody wears tiaras anymore and how cute Colton Shell is and how lucky I am that he likes me because really Colton Shell could like Lily Parker, who wouldn't be caught dead in a tiara.

The judges are nodding.

One of the judges is my mom.

Dream #4

My mom is judging the Perform-O-Rama.

I am wearing a tiara and playing "Forever in Blue Jeans."

I am perfect.

I think I'm perfect.

I'm not perfect.

My mom shows me her judging sheet. It is filled with red marks—one for each wrong note.

And then a phone rings and everybody turns and looks and there in the audience Vladimir Horowitz is pulling a cell phone out of his tuxedo pocket.

"Hello?" he says. He looks at me.

"It's for you."

One of the ways you can tell that Vladimir Horowitz was the best ever piano player was that when he screwed up, nobody cared. They loved him anyway.

One time, my mom played me a CD of Vladimir Horowitz screwing up. He had retired twelve years earlier and then changed his mind and said he wanted to play concerts after all and he was going to do this big comeback concert at Carnegie Hall. People went crazy. Rock-star crazy. They camped out on the street to get tickets—fancy grown-up Carnegie Hall people stood in the cold all night because they wanted to see Horowitz play.

Which is a lot of pressure to put on a guy.

And on the day of the concert, Horowitz showed up six minutes before he was supposed to go onstage and that made everyone nervous and he was nervous and when he finally did get onstage the audience cheered and then he sat down and it was totally quiet.

Nobody said a word.

They didn't even breathe.

They waited.

They waited.

Then he started playing.

And then he made a mistake. Actually, he made a couple of mistakes.

"There," said my mom, "and there."

I wouldn't have even known they were mistakes if my mom hadn't told me. But she did. And then she said those mistakes didn't matter because it was Horowitz. And Horowitz was not about perfection. He was about joy and art and music and life. And those things have mistakes in them.

"I make mistakes, too," I said.

"And when you are as good as Horowitz," said my mom, "yours won't matter, either."

We're in the lobby of the Birch Valley Hotel and Conference Center and my dad can't move.

He was moving fine a minute ago. He was cha-cha-ing through the parking lot singing about how he didn't get us lost once and Wheeler should have put the
Birch Valley Sentinel
on his speed dial because this is frontpage news.

Then we walked into the lobby.

Then Dad froze.

The lobby of the Birch Valley Hotel and Conference Center has cathedral ceilings and marble-looking floors and every sound you make in it echoes.

Phones ringing.

Elevator bells pinging.

Wheelie carts thumping.

There are kids pulling suitcases and kids riding suitcases and kids unzipping suitcases and trying to shove other kids inside them. There are kids with balloons and kids yelling that they want balloons and kids getting yelled at for popping other kids' balloons.

And there are teenagers standing around in circles
and whispering and squealing and then looking around and whispering again.

There are parents, too. Parents in the registration line. Parents in the
RESTROOM
line. Parents pulling kids out of suitcases.

People walk fast around us and between us, saying every year it is the same thing and can't anybody figure out a better system for getting these packets distributed and there's no way that Lindsey girl is only nine years old and Peter has moved on to his own private instructor now and where 's the john and I swear if you pull on that ficus tree again you will not go swimming in the hotel pool tonight, do you hear me, mister?