Queen of the Oddballs (6 page)

“Well, yes, I think so,” the Realtor answers.

I continue probing. “Do you happen to know if the owners stayed in Laurel Canyon? Maybe we could look in the area where they moved?”

Greg rolls his eyes at me like I asked the lamest question in all the land.

“Yes, they did,” the Realtor responds. “They moved to Appian Way.”

HA!! SEE?! Boy, do I give Greg a look back. Then I say, “Thanks. Hey, could I get one of your cards, please?” I ask this for Greg’s sake, hoping that going one step further with the fake-out will amuse him and snap him out of his crabbiness.

The Realtor fishes a business card out of his coat pocket and hands it to me, then Greg and I stroll out to the street.

“You in?” I ask Greg.

“What the hell. Let’s check out Appian Way.” Then he adds, “Boy, that Realtor sure was a jackass, telling us everything like he did.”

“Either that or he was totally impressed by our balls.”

We pull out a map from my army knapsack. Appian Way is only about five streets away. At least that’s how it looks on a map where you don’t see steep hills. But walking those five blocks takes us more than an hour. By the time we reach Carole’s new street, I’m panting heavily.

Note: Rethink my diet of Sappho cookies, potato chips, and Dr Pepper!

“Now all we have to do,” I say, gasping for breath, “is go up and down the street and look for 545 APC or 812 BRD.” And we’re off….

DAY #29–DAY #40

Monday, July 19–Friday, July 30

We spend the next week and a half trudging up the canyon to Appian Way, looking for Carole and Charlie’s cars. When we don’t see them, I come up with Plan B to keep Greg interested. We begin to visit random houses, knocking on doors with fake excuses. “Sorry to bother you, but we’re lost. Can you explain how to get back down to Wonderland?” “We’re waiting for our friends, who
aren’t home yet, and we really have to use a bathroom. Would you mind?” “My mom ran out of gas. Could we use your phone?” Everyone is kind, and when they welcome us in, one of us goes into the bathroom or writes down directions or pretends to use the phone while the other looks around, searching for clues—a piano, family portraits, or a room that matches the pictures we’ve seen of Carole’s house. But, CRAP, we find nothing.

Between the hour-long hike up the steep hills and the door-to-door scheming, by the end of the day we’re exhausted. At the top of Appian Way we find a rest stop, a lookout point blanketed with orange trumpet flowers and stinky (good stinky) sage. There’s a tree that has low branches for us to sit on and a killer view of the city. The stillness is so unfamiliar and, well, kinda unsettling. At home there’s always noise: Howard banging on his drums; Mom and Dad’s blaring television, which they fall asleep to every night; my records constantly playing.

One afternoon I clear my throat and say softly, “Sorry.”

“For what?” Greg asks.

“For dragging you up here and ruining your summer vacation. It was a crazy idea.”

“Well, yeah….”

“Allright. Let’s go. We’re done.” I take Greg’s hand and pull him up from the ground. We’re brushing the sage off our pants when we hear a voice. I SWEAR. Right when we’re about to call it quits again. It’s so spooky how that keeps happening! The voice is unmistakable. No one else in the whole wide world has that voice, which the
Los Angeles Times
called “raspy, tender-tough, rawly whining-pleading, pulsing: delightfully unpolished. Real.”

IT’S CAROLE.

Saying good-bye to some friends at her door.

In the house……DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET FROM US!!!!!

Oh. My. GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We hear her front door close, and I grab Greg. “Come on.”

Her friends—two men and a lady—are dressed all in white. As they climb into a tan VW van, I call out, “Hey,” trying to sound as cool as possible. “Can we hitch a ride down the hill with you?”

“Sure,” the taller of the two guys says.

We hop into the backseat with the lady. On the dashboard are several pictures of an old, mystical-looking Indian man with a gray beard. Greg and I listen closely to Carole’s friends.

“She’s just so nice,” the driver says. (We knew that.)

“It’s not often you meet someone like that in yoga class,” the taller man adds. (Yoga?!) “And it’s really cool that she agreed to give some of the proceeds of her concerts to Swami Satchidananda’s work.” (Swami? Naturally.)

“She’s very special,” the lady coos. (DUH!!!!!!)

The van pulls into the Country Store parking lot and drops us off. We jump out, shouting, “Thanks for the ride.”

Greg and I are dizzy with excitement. As we wait for my mom, we clink our Dr Pepper cans together and toast our achievement.

DAY #43–DAY #47

Monday, August 2–Friday, August 6

For the last five days Greg and I have watched the house from our lookout point while we decide exactly what to do now that we’ve found Carole. And here at last, this morning we finally have an actual sighting!!! We hide behind the tree as Carole pulls her car—545 APC—out of the gated driveway. That’s why we never saw the cars. She and Charlie park behind a gate! DUH!

Once she disappears down the hill, we run to the front door and knock. Her eleven-year-old daughter, Louise Goffin, answers. Long wavy hair and blue, blue eyes, she looks older than she does in the photos I’ve seen. But she looks a lot like her mom.

Greg launches into our ploy, “Sorry to bother you, but we’re waiting for our friends who aren’t home yet and really have to use the bathroom. Would you mind?”

“I guess it’s okay.” Louise opens the door.

While Greg’s in the bathroom, I scope out the joint. And there it is, larger than life, in front of a stained-glass window in her rustic, cozy living room.
Carole’s piano. A grand piano. Dark black. Shiny. Dear God, Buddha, Mary—Swami Satchidananda—I pray silently in gratitude to all the forces at my spiritual buffet, THANK YOU!

THE DAY!!!!

DAY #50

Monday, August 9

X marks the spot, mission accomplished, case closed!!!

I wake before dawn and bake banana bread. It worked with Carly, why wouldn’t it work with Carole? Greg and I head into the canyon, and before we can chicken out, go right up to Carole’s door and knock. And as simple as that, after fifty-plus days on THE KING CASE…

CAROLE ANSWERS!!!!

There I am, standing face-to-face with the most talented woman not just on Earth, but in the whole entire universe.

“Hello,” she says in
that voice.

I manage to get out a shaky “Hi.”

“We just want to tell you that we really love your music,” Greg steps in. I pull myself together enough to add, “You’re a real inspiration.”

“Well, thank you so much.” She is as kind and lovely as I expected she would be. Though we knew Carole was pregnant, we aren’t prepared for how much she’s showing! She looks like she’s about to pop any second, though of course, as any good detectives know, she isn’t due until December.

I hold out our loaf of bread wrapped in one of my mother’s pink linen napkins. “We baked this for you, in appreciation. It’s banana bread.”

“How wonderful.” She smiles as she takes our gift, her hand brushing mine. And then the heavens smile down on us. Carole King says, “Why don’t you come in?”

Everything we’ve been working for is finally paying off!! We step inside.
Carole’s house is as colorful and warm as her most soulful ballads. We follow her into the tiled kitchen, where she serves us pink lemonade, and we chat for almost an hour. I tell her about how we discovered her before anyone else did, how I tracked down her
Dimension Dolls
album (well, I leave out that I had posed as a reviewer from a fake magazine to get the album! HA!). We play with her German shepherds, Lyka and Schwartz, while she keeps refilling our lemonade glasses.

Then she says, “I’d invite you to swim in our pool, but it’s full of algae.” God bless her for even considering the invitation! She’s a true star, worthy of every minute of our devotion. But the capper comes when Carole King,
THE NUMBER ONE SINGE
, lies down, right there on her tiled kitchen floor, and performs what she calls her
“Lamaze” breathing exercises!!!
I SWEAR!!! IT’S AMAZING!!! She wouldn’t do that in front of just anyone.
Only friends.

When it’s time to leave, I start to really bum out. Even though we’re now officially friends with Carole, we can’t keep coming back to her house, can we? This is the end of the road—the end of THE KING CASE. We say good-bye to Carole—she even hugs us—and I do everything I can to be strong and not cry.

We did it. We befriended Carole King. Wow.

Wednesday, August 11–Friday, August 13

So what happens after you hang out with Carole King? You have to tell all your friends about it, NATCH! And just in case they don’t believe us, Greg and I devise a scheme. As Hayley Mills constantly repeats in one of my favorite movies,
The Trouble with Angels,
“What a scathingly brilliant idea!”

I’d recently found a bootleg album of Carole playing a live concert. We pick the exact spots on the record where she speaks to the audience. We call each friend, and when they answer the phone, I tell them we’re CALLING FROM CAROLE’S HOUSE! Then Greg expertly puts the needle down on the record where Carole says from the stage: “I’d like to introduce you to a good friend of mine.”

“Oh—hold on,” I whisper into the phone. “Carole wants us to meet someone. How do you do? Nice meeting you, too.”

Then I call some more of our friends, and, when I cue him, Greg puts the needle down in another spot on the record where Carole asks for a glass of water. I reply, “Greg, you go get it for her—I’m on the phone.”

HA! All our friends totally buy it! Well, it isn’t that far from the truth. If not for that damn algae, WE’D HAVE GONE SWIMMING IN CAROLE’S POOL!

It’s Friday the thirteenth (BEWARE!), and I’m now sitting on my roof, where I’m writing my closing thoughts in my KING CASE notebook. I’m home alone, and it’s quiet, except for a Good Humor ice cream truck tinkling its music box jingle as it heads up my empty street. Summer’s almost over and soon I’ll be starting high school. And ya know what? I think it’s time to grow up and get real.

Face it.
I’m not friends with Carole King any more than I was friends with Carly Simon.
I know that. It’s been neat meeting these people, but why did I even want to be friends with them to begin with? It’s cuz I admire WHAT THEY DO. They’re so talented and creative.

So the question is, WHY DON’T I JUST DO THAT MYSELF??? Well, first of all, I don’t really want to be famous. I couldn’t take all that attention! Secondly, what would I do? My singing sucks!!! This was confirmed last month when I was rehearsing for a guitar class recital in front of Ava Atkins and her older brother. I sang Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Dangling Conversation,” and when I reached for the high notes on, “As we sit and drink our coffee…” they burst out laughing and continued uncontrollably until I stopped singing. At the recital I ended up playing an instrumental version of the song, just strumming a bunch of stupid chords. So singing is definitely out. And I know (thanks to cotillion) that dancing is out, too. I do love to write (as you can see by my windbaggy journal entries!! HA!!). Or maybe I could be an actress like my fave, Carrie Snodgress, who I discovered when she was a guest kidney failure patient on an episode of
Medical Center
months before she starred in
Diary of a Mad Housewife.
Or maybe an artist like another fave, Joni Mitchell, who paints all her album covers.

I don’t know…. But hey—if I could find Carole King, meet her, and watch her do Lamaze exercises on her kitchen floor, there is no telling what else I can do. Right?