Hit the Road, Manny: A Manny Files Novel (5 page)

Chicago is a busy city with lots of museums, parks, and shops. The sound of car horns is all you can hear, and at night you can’t see any stars, only blackness above the tall buildings. Mom and Dad looked through a copy of
Chicago
magazine that was in the hotel room to decide what we should do. Dad kept suggesting things like baseball games and history museums. Lulu and the manny really wanted to go see a taping of the Oprah show. I watched an Oprah show with Mom after school once, and Oprah gave away new cars to everyone in the audience. She jumped up and down, pointed to people in the audience, and yelled, “You get a car! You get car! You get a car!” about a hundred times. The audience was screaming, and one lady was crying and shaking like she was having a nervous breakdown, the same way Belly cries and dry-heaves when she doesn’t get her way. At dinner that night Mom was imitating Oprah by pointing to each of us and saying, “You get a taco! You get a taco! You get a taco!” India screamed and pretended to be faint with excitement over her taco. They were good, too. Mom used taco seasoning.

The manny looked up the number for Oprah tickets and called, but they weren’t taping because Oprah was on “holiday.” That’s what the lady on the phone told the manny. She called it holiday instead of vacation. The manny said that holidays are the same thing as vacations except you take a private jet and get seaweed body wraps and hot stone massages. I want to go on a holiday.

“I bet Oprah is in Africa building schools to empower girls and women,” said Lulu.

“I bet she’s off with Nate the decorator shopping for antique chandeliers in Paris,” said India.

“Or she and Stedman are in Santa Barbara playing doubles tennis with John Travolta and Kelly Preston,” said the manny. Stedman is Oprah’s boyfriend. He’s really tall and has a mustache. If I ever get a cat, I’m going to name it Stedman.

Since we couldn’t get tickets to the Oprah show, we took the hotel shuttle to the Museum of Contemporary Art. Mom read in
Chicago
magazine that there was an Andy Warhol exhibition at the museum. The manny wanted to see it too. I wanted to go just so I could get some Andy Warhol postcards. Uncle Max would think that was cool, and it might inspire some of his paintings for his show.

The museum was crowded with people. Kids from summer day camps. Japanese tourists from buses. Ladies with matching pastel shoes and purses. The ladies weren’t really looking at the art. They were talking to one another about skin-care products and their kids who were home from college. I heard one lady say that her son was studying to become a Podiatrist. A Podiatrist fixes iPods.

We walked around the museum and tried to keep Belly from touching things. Mom told her that if she was really good in the museum, she could choose what we did that afternoon. We all got worried looks on our faces, even Dad. India said that Belly would probably make us all go back to the hotel to have a pretend tea party. Lulu said that we’d probably all end up skinny-dipping in the hotel swimming pool if Belly got her way.

“Oooh, fun! I love skinny-dipping!” said the manny.

Lulu rolled her eyes.

I looked around to see if anybody had heard the manny talk about skinny-dipping. Sometimes I wish he would use his inside voice. Not everybody gets his sense of humor.

I didn’t want Belly to pick our activity, so I kept a close eye on her, ready to point out anything that she might be doing wrong. I thought it would be easy because Belly is always doing something wrong. One time she glued both her hands to our dining-room table with Dad’s Krazy Glue. But Belly didn’t do anything wrong at the museum. In fact, she was even trying her hardest to do everything right. She picked up a program and handed it to an older woman who had dropped it. The woman thanked her and said, “Bless your heart.”

Belly called the museum security guard “sweetie.”

She even turned to a woman who was admiring a painting called
Aorta
by an artist named Julian Schnabel and said, “PRETTY.” She said it with her eyes closed, like the beauty of the painting was too much to take in.

The woman was startled because of Belly’s loud foghorn voice but said, “It really is, young lady.” Then she turned to Dad and said, “What a precocious little girl.” I asked India if “precocious” meant the same thing as “obnoxious.” She told me that “precocious” meant “wise beyond your age.” Belly is not precocious. A precocious girl wouldn’t ride an escalator ten times in a row like it was a carnival ride. Belly did that at the mall last winter when we went shopping for the manny’s birthday present. We got him sunscreen especially made for bald heads. I picked it out.

The woman walked away, and I turned to Belly and said, “Do you really think this painting is pretty?”

She said to me in an annoyed voice, “NO! HER WAS BEING GOOD, STUPID!” I looked around to see if Mom or Dad had heard her. We’re not allowed to call one another stupid or say “Shut up.”

They hadn’t heard her.

“Shut up!” I said to Belly. Mom looked over like she had heard me, so I looked up at the Julian Schnabel painting and pretended to be admiring the clumps of red paint. I even put my finger on my chin and said, “Hmm,” like I was deep in thought about why Schnabel had chosen to paint a big, messy heart. Maybe he had just had his heart broken.

I know who Julian Schnabel is because Grandma had a big book of his paintings at her house. He does really big paintings. Some of them are on broken dishes that are glued onto big boards. My favorite painting by him looks like a headboard of a bed and says
THE TEDDY BEARS PICNIC
on it. Grandma gave her copy of the book to Uncle Max before she died. Now it’s on Uncle Max’s coffee table next to a yellow bowl that I made for him in pottery class. It has my initials carved into the bottom: KRD.

Belly clenched her fists and shouted, “Yesssss!” when Mom told her she had been good in the museum and could choose what we were going to do. It made me nervous because I was scared she was going to pick the Build-A-Bear store. Belly always wants to go to the Build-A-Bear store. She has eight bears that she’s built already. They were supposed to be for her friends, but she can never part with them. “BUT HER LOVES HERMAN!” she said once about a scraggly bear with denim jeans and a Western shirt that she had made for her friend Analise but didn’t want to give away. Belly loved Herman so much that he spent last winter frozen in a snowbank in our driveway. Housman had dragged him out there and left him there. The manny pretended to arrest Housman for teddy bear homicide. He even paw-printed him.

Belly didn’t pick the Build-A-Bear store. Mom listed a few places for Belly to choose from.

“Lincoln Park Zoo to see animals?”

“NOOO,” Belly sang.

“Shedd Aquarium to see sharks?”

“NOOO.” Belly didn’t sing it that time. She said it like Mom was crazy.

“Adler Planetarium to see stars?”

“YES!”

A planetarium is a big dome room that has stars and solar systems projected onto the ceiling. I guess that’s the only way people that live in the city get to see stars. Belly wanted to go to the planetarium because she loves stars. She calls them magical. She also calls glue sticks and Fruit Roll-Ups magical. She calls anything that she likes magical.

The planetarium was freezing inside. The air conditioners were blowing, and it felt like we were in a wind tunnel. Luckily, Mom always makes us be prepared, so I had a sweater. It was cashmere. It used to be Uncle Max’s, but the manny accidentally put it in the dryer and now it’s my size. I told the manny to shrink Uncle Max’s green argyle sweater vest for me too, but he said he’s not allowed to do the laundry anymore. And then he winked, like it had been his plan all along to get banned from having to do the laundry.

Belly put her hands in her armpits and shivered and said, “HER WANTS TO BUILD-A-BEAR.” Then she started holding herself and jumping up and down without her feet leaving the ground. This is Belly’s sign that she needs to go to the bathroom. Cold rooms make Belly have to pee. We can’t even go to hockey games. Mom took Belly to the restroom. India went with them. She said she was going to stand underneath the hand dryer to warm up.

Dad, the manny, Lulu, and I went into the Sky Theater to look at the stars. I pointed out the Big Dipper, and Dad pointed out Orion. The manny pointed to a star that was very light and off by itself. “That’s my favorite one because it looks lonely and unpopular. I think I’ll call it Lulu.”

Lulu said, “Funny!
NOT!
” like they do in that movie
Wayne’s World.

Mom, Belly, and India came back from the bathroom and sat down next to us in the theater, and the lights dimmed. India put her toasty-hot hands on my cheeks to let me know that she really had stood under the hand dryers to get warm. Her hands smelled like sanitizing soap. I love the smell of sanitizing soap almost as much as I love the smell of Windex. I also love the smell of Cascade dishwasher soap. Sometimes I put a pinch of it in my jeans pocket so that it makes my hands smell fresh and clean. That’s a secret that nobody knows, not even the manny.

In the planetarium I started telling everybody about an interview that I had seen on
20/20
where a woman was talking about how she grew up homeless. “She said that on one of her birth-days she and her dad were lying on their backs and looking up at the stars,” I told them. “Her parents couldn’t afford to give her a party or buy her a birthday present, so her dad pointed to a star and said, ‘That’s your present.’ She’s rich today and rides in limousines to private parties, but the star that her father gave her is still her favorite present that she ever got.”

Mom said, “That’s a good story, Keats,” and she squeezed my hand like she really loved me just then.

Belly said, “A
STAR
?”

I squealed impatiently, “It was all he could give her and it’s really all she wanted.”

“NOT A BARBIE?” asked Belly.

“No. She just liked being with her dad,” I said, still squealing.

Mom squeezed my hand again, but this time it was to get me to stop arguing with Belly.

“WHAT STAR?” asked Belly, looking up at the fake sky, trying to guess.

I didn’t answer. Belly makes me mental. Mrs. House used to tell Sarah and me that we made her mental with our “side conversations” during class. We like to talk about who we think will be voted off next on
Project Runway
. Or where we want to live when we grow up. New York City.

As we left the planetarium, a woman in baggy clothes said hello to me. She was sitting against the building and had a little girl sitting in her lap. Next to her was a sign that said
PLEASE HELP
.

Dad reached into his pocket and handed her some money, but I was the only one who saw him do it. He walked behind everybody else so that they wouldn’t see. The homeless woman smiled and thanked him. I reached into my pocket and handed the little girl my butterscotch candy from the hotel lady.

Dad grabbed my hand and whispered, “That was very kind.”

That night I wrote on a postcard with a picture of Andy Warhol with his wild wig:

On a postcard with a Warhol painting of a banana I wrote:

I gave a postcard to the manny so he could write one to Uncle Max. The manny wrote on it and then gave it back to me so I could add the P.S. I pretended to be thinking about what I was going to write for my P.S., but really I was reading what the manny had written to Uncle Max, because I’m curious. That’s what Grandma called me when I sat behind her during a poker game and asked out loud if four aces was a good hand.