One Man Show (3 page)

“What’s your name? What’s your teacher’s name? What grade are you in? What school do you go to?”

Nurse Opal was hovering over me, firing off questions like a criminal investigator.

“Huh? Can you repeat that?”

She went through the same list again, but this time I paid closer attention.

“Dustin Grubbs, Miss Honeywell, sixth, Buttermilk Falls Elementary.”

“Excellent,” the nurse said, adjusting the ice pack on my forehead. “Now just lie still. You whacked your head but good. How
did that happen?”

“I guess I must’ve tripped.”

Ratting on someone was like extra-credit homework - it just wasn’t done.

“Well, you’re going to be fine, thanks to that little girl Ella something-or-other. You can thank your lucky stars she ran
to get me,”

“Who?”

“Skinny little thing covered in freckles. Braces make her talk funny.”

“Oh. LMNOP.”

“What’s that now?”

“Ellen Mennopi. Everybody calls her LMNOP. She’s this weird little girl who lives next door to me. I rescued her cat from
the roof of her garage a few years ago, and she hasn’t stopped bugging me since.”

“Sounds like someone has a little crush.”

“Yeah, my whole body just had a little crush!”

Nurse Opal sprayed something that stung like acid on my scraped elbow, but I didn’t scream - too loudly.

“So what’s the deal with Pepper?” I asked. “Is she all right?”

“She’s back in class. Strong as an ox, that one.”

“My head is frostbitten,” I said, removing the bag of ice.

“Leave it. It’ll help with the swelling.”

“I think the swelling’s doing just fine on its own.”

I put the ice pack back on my lump, which was the size of Pittsburgh, and took a deep breath. The tiny room we were in smelled
like the inside of a vitamin bottle.

“Nurse Opal, could you please hurry?” I said. “We still might be doing
The Castle of the Crooked Crowns.”

“Oh, you’re not going to be doing any play today, young man,” she said, sticking a Band-Aid on my elbow. “You’ve got yourself
quite a nasty bump on your noggin.”

“So? Whatever happened to ‘The show must go on’? Whatever happened to ‘in sickness and in health’? ‘Neither snow nor rain,
nor gloom of night…’”

“I think that’s the motto of the U.S. Postal Service - with wedding vows mixed in.”

“No play? Great,” I said, feeling even more white-hot hatred for Travis Buttrick. “Just great.”

Nurse Opal started shining a little flashlight in my eyes. Her face got real close to mine, and all I could see were her wiry,
gray nose hairs. She had mega coffee breath.

“Firemen running through the halls,” she mumbled. “Mrs. Klumpsky, that nice cafeteria lady, with a second-degree burn. We
can go for weeks at a time without so much as a stubbed toe, and then - lordy, when it rains it pours.”

She was staring into my eyeballs as if she were trying to see clear through to my brain. Then she switched off the flashlight
and sighed.

“Well, you don’t seem to have a concussion, thank goodness,” she said. “Now just lie back and rest for a while. Your mom’ll
be here to pick you up soon.”

“My mom?” I tried to get up, but she pushed me back down. She was unusually strong for such a doughy lady. “You didn’t tell
her I was in a play, did you?”

“No. I just said that you had a little accident. Nothing serious.”

“Good. I should get dressed. Where’re my real clothes?”

“Your little friend went to fetch them,” Nurse Opal said. “I won’t ask - but it seems to me any mother would be proud as Punch
to have their kid starring in the school play.”

Yeah, right. It’s not easy keeping secrets in a small town, but somehow I managed to hide the whole play thing from Mom. She
wasn’t a mean mom or anything, just still a little fragile from the divorce. Okay, a lot fragile. Once I heard her tell Gordy,
“The day your father stepped onto a stage was the day this family started falling apart.” I didn’t want to risk her knowing
that her only decent son was about to step onto a stage too.

“So, your mom works at Jack Sprat Donuts?” Nurse Opal said, tidying up. “On Clearwater Road?”

“Mm-hm. Just got promoted to assistant manager.”’

“How wonderful. That place has been around for years. We used to have a nickname for it - now, what did we used to call it?”

“The Donut Hole,” I said.

“Bingo!”

“Everyone still calls it that.”

Okay, no more small talk.
I stared at the door, hoping my clothes would make an appearance before Mom did. Finally LMNOP burst into the room, all hyper
and winded.

“Nurse Opal! Here’s his stuff!” she lisped. She practically tripped over herself coming toward me. “Omigod, Dustin Grubbs,
how’re you feeling?”

“Just peachy.” I grabbed my street clothes and sneakers from her and dashed behind the changing screen.

“Oh, crud,” I said. “My socks aren’t here.”

“Oops, sorry,” I heard LMNOP say.

“That girl is running herself ragged for you,” Nurse Opal said. “Not even a thank-you?”

“Thanks.”

“Too late. She’s gone.”

“What rotten luck,” I said, fighting into my stiff jeans. “I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

“Oh, you’re going to be just fine,” Nurse Opal said. “That lump’ll go down in no time.”

“Not that, the play. We came so close to doing it, and now -”

“Cheer up, hon. I’m sure it’s just being postponed. In the meantime, you must be excited about that famous kid transferring
into your class, huh?”

“What? Who?”

Did she really just say that, or were my ears hallucinating?

“Didn’t Miss Honeywell tell you?”

“No!” I said, shooting around the changing screen. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, Jiminy Cricket, maybe I wasn’t supposed to let the cat out of the bag.”

“Too late. Bag open, cat meowing. What famous kid?”

“Forget I said anything.”

“Please! You don’t have to actually say the name. I’ll ask twenty questions and you can nod yes or no.”

“Just keep icing your head off and on,” Nurse Opal said, ducking into the outer office. “Your mom’ll be here any minute.”

I chased after her and saw a white blur disappear into the faculty restroom across the hall.

“Is it a boy or girl?” I called. “Movie-star famous or National Spelling Bee-champion famous?”

I went back into her office and stretched out on the cot. Still a little woozy. No wonder Miss Honeywell was so wigged out
before. Someone famous was coming! I closed my eyes and saw the word
FAMOUS
spelled out in flashing light-bulbs. Then I shook my head like an Etch A Sketch to erase it. I didn’t have enough info, and
I thought my head might explode from the countless possibilities. I forced my mind to wander.

I thought about how “Jack Sprat” was a strange name for a doughnut shop since, according to the poem, “Jack Sprat could eat
no fat” and doughnuts are deep fried in oil. I wondered why someone with as bad a lisp as LMNOP’s would name her cat Cinnamon.
I thought about the look on Travis’s face when we mooned him, and about how Mom was right -
you have to wear clean underwear every day because you just never know.

I was about to drift off when I heard Nurse Opal from the other side of the door.

“Oh, hi. Nice to see you again. Dustin is doing just fine -and he’s good to go.”

Maybe Mom had brought me a dozen chocolate-covered cream-filleds to ease my suffering.

“I would ask that Dustin be examined by your family physician, though,” Nurse Opal said. “Simply as a precautionary measure.”

Oh, man!

“He’s right in there.”

Mom was going to be in one of her moods - not only for missing half a day’s work, but for having to dish out money to see
a doctor too.
I should sue Travis Buttrick.

“Come on, Freakshow. Move it!”

It wasn’t my mother standing in the doorway. It was my juvenile-delinquent brother, Gordy.

I should sue Mom.

Barf Breath got out of school an hour early on Fridays, making him the logical choice for chauffeur. The radio was busted,
so the ride home in Gordy’s rusty old make-out mobile was quiet - except that every time he hit a pothole, the tools in the
trunk clattered and I moaned in pain. I think he did it on purpose, to torture me.

“Nice dice,” I said, swatting the fuzzy pink blocks hanging off the rearview mirror.

“Keep your paws off’em!” he snarled. “Those are antiques.”

“Whatever you say, Elvis.”

That crack got me a knuckle punch on the leg. I figured we were even.

Gordy had met his latest girlfriend, Sheila, at the new diner in town, the Jukebox Café. I guess she was heavy into the 50s,
‘cause Big Brother had transformed himself into a full-fledged greaser: slicked-back hair, a tight white T-shirt.
There was even a pack of cigarettes rolled up in one of his sleeves. Gordy went through more girlfriends than Wally did cheeseburgers,
and his “look” changed with every single girl. His annoying personality, however, was a permanent feature.

Gordy said only four more words to me for the rest of the trip home: “Are you wearing makeup?” It was a good thing I’d changed
back into my pants.

Thanks to a little spit, Kleenex, and elbow grease, the red circles on my cheeks were gone by the time we pulled up to our
house. The whole school must’ve gotten dismissed early, ‘cause LMNOP was in her side yard, digging up dirt. (Yeah, us Buttermilk
Fallians are a real classy bunch.) I pretended I didn’t see her and sprinted up the porch steps. Mom was home from work already,
and naturally Gordy couldn’t wait to tell her what the nurse had said about my being examined by our physician - he knew I
hated doctors. So Mom carted me off to the Claremont Clinic.

The doc was nice enough, but he kept saying stuff like “Did you get hit with a fastball, sport?” and “Take a nasty slide into
home plate, slugger?” As if every boy my age was automatically a jock wannabe. Mom set him straight - sort of. “Dustin tripped
on the playground and bonked his head on a flagpole.”

Okay, I’d had to lie to her. Otherwise she would’ve shown up at school, seeking justice, and the subject of the play would’ve
come up for sure. The doc finally said that everything checked out okay, but that I should take the next day off to rest.
First I got excited, but then I realized the next day was Saturday. What a gyp!

But that was all “water under my bridgework,” as Aunt Birdie would say. The next morning I was up at the crack of eleven.
Just enough time to make a mad dash to the kitchen to grab some snacks before my favorite TV show came on.

“Uh-oh. Mom, what the heck are you doing?”

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” she said, planting herself midsofa with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the remote
control in the other. “It’s time for my program.”

“But
Double Take
is on! Why can’t we have five televisions, like a normal family?”

Usually it was Gordy I had to fight with for control of the TV. Fortunately, he was already out with his psycho friends, probably
plotting a rumble at the high-school hop. But in front of the TV set on Saturday morning was definitely a No-Mom Zone.

“Are you sure it’s on now?” I whined. “What’s the name of it?”

“I forget. It’s on the Home Sweet Home Network.”

“Not
Trash to Trendy!”
That’s the show where they teach you stuff like how to make a fancy serving tray out of an old garbage-can lid. But no matter
how many coats of gold paint or angel decals they cover it with, it still ends up looking like a garbage-can lid.

“No, a new one,” Mom said. “A cooking show.”

“Well, that’s not gonna help - unless it’s on the Miracle Network.”

“Listen, it’s not easy being thrown into the dating pool at my age,” she said, searching through the channels. “And you know
what they say: ‘The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.’”

“No offense, Mom, but find another route.”

“Dustin!”

I felt bad about that as soon as I said it, but cooking wasn’t one of Mom’s strong points. And listening to her talk about
dating made me itch. My aunts kept telling her to get on with her life, that it was high time. It did seem like Dad had been
gone forever - but it had only been three years, if you’re counting. He left us to be a stand-up comic. No joke. One weekend
he had an out-of-town gig and didn’t come back Sunday night. Or the night after that, or the night after that. He showed up
a week later and things went back to normal, except with a lot more yelling between him and Mom. A few months after that he
left for good. Whenever I get really angry about it, I force myself to think of the good times we had. I play those memories
over and over again in my brain, like an old black-and-white movie.

“Your show’s not even on, Mom,” I said, lunging for the remote. “Turn it to channel twelve.”

“Stop it!” she said, and clobbered me with a pillow.

“Oww, my lump!”

“Oh, I forgot,” Mom said, “See what you made me do?” She gently pushed my hair back to examine my head. “So how’re you feeling
this morning? Better?”

“I guess,” I said, looking up at her with hound-dog eyes.

“It looks like the lump has gone down. You have to stop being such a klutz.”

A shuffling noise came from the kitchen.

“Knock-knock. Dorothy?”

We turned to see Granny Grubbs wearing a robe, slippers, and a plastic bubble cap, huffing and puffing her way through the
living-room archway.

“Do you mind if I use your tub?” Granny asked.

“Umm-not at all,” Mom said, sounding unsure. “Help yourself.”

“I’ve been waiting all morning for Birdie to give herself a home perm so I could get in the bathroom for my ginger soak,”
Granny said. “You know, it helps when my arthritis flares up. Finally Miss America comes out and - whooey, I thought I’d pass
out from the fumes! I don’t know what kind of crazy chemicals they put in that concoction, but I’m not breathing them in.”