Star Shine (13 page)

Her mother burst out laughing. “Jenny, you're too much!” she said. “Here you're doing something most kids, never mind adults, would give their eyeteeth to be involved in, and you think you're not being paid enough.” She got up, slopping her coffee into the saucer. “Wait for me, please, Jen. I'm going to rush upstairs and throw on some clothes. I want to go with you. You don't mind if I go with you, do you?”

“It's all right, I guess. They didn't say we couldn't bring our mothers. But you'll have to stay outside. No one but us actors is allowed inside the rink.”

“I promise I won't embarrass you,” her mother said. She had no sooner disappeared upstairs than Mary appeared, looking disheveled, rubbing her eyes.

“Me and Mother are going down to the rink when she gets her act together,” Jenny said. “You don't have to come today if you don't want to.”

“I'll be down later,” Mary said. “Did you tell her?” she asked unnecessarily.

“Of course. She thinks it's great. That's why she wants to come with me.”

“Then she didn't mind,” said Mary. “I thought maybe she'd mind that you were acting in a movie and she didn't get to play Emily. But I guess not. It was silly to worry. Worrying doesn't get you anywhere—it only gives you lines.”

A sudden, terrible thought came into Jenny's mind.

“Suppose Daddy decided he wanted to do his own thing? What then?” She and Mary looked at each other with long faces.

Just suppose.

“Well, if Daddy decided to go to Africa or Australia or New Zealand to study rock formations or something,” Mary said, “then we're in the soup. He never would do that, but if he did, we'd be smack in the middle of the soup. I don't know what we'd do. I wish you hadn't said that, Jenny. Now I'll worry about him taking off. I never even thought of such a thing before you said that.”

“Daddy
is
a rock,” Jenny said stoutly. “As solid as a rock. He would never leave us. Never, never would he leave us.” Jenny, the pessimist, became an optimist.

Mary, the optimist, said pessimistically, “You never know. The way things are going these days, you just never know.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Hey, Jenny Chisholm!” Norm Dubie cried, “slap me five!”

“Hey, Norm Dubie.” Jenny put out her hand and they slapped five. “This is my mother, Norm.”

“Ma'am.” Norm Dubie put his finger to his anteater cap. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Chisholm. Enjoy having your daughter aboard with her splendid hair. Really splendid. Don't know what we'd do without that hair. Jenny, I have a thought. How about if we give you a line or two of dialogue? Right at the end of the skating scene, we'd like you to shout, ‘Hey, wait up!' or something similar, and have the camera zoom in on you while you skate as fast as you can. Think you can handle that?”

“You mean you want me to talk?” Jenny asked. “And skate at the same time?”

“Well, yeah. I'll show you what I want when we get inside. Anna! You got that list?” and Norm Dubie took off.

“That's the director,” Jenny said. “He's my pal.”

“Jenny!” Her mother grabbed her by the arm. “Did you hear what he said? You're going to act! In a movie!” Jenny's mother's eyes snapped, and her fingers dug into Jenny's arm in her excitement.

“I don't know if I can handle it,” Jenny said. “I have to keep my mind on my feet.”

“Of course you can do it! Of course you can!”

“Hey, Mother,” Jenny said. “You're hurting me.”

“Oh! I'm so sorry.” Her mother released her and asked, “Did you tell Norm Dubie I was an actress?”

“Nope. Never even thought of it,” Jenny said briskly. Her mother looked crestfallen.

“Need some help with your laces today?” Scott Borkowski said.

“This is my mother, Scott. Scott's a friend of Mary's,” Jenny said.

“A friend of yours, too,” Scott said.

“So you're Scott Borkowski.” Jenny's mother smiled at him. And he blushed furiously, thinking, no doubt, she knew about the beer-drinking episode. Which she didn't. Jenny knew her mother probably remembered Scott's name due to all the talk Mary and Sue and Tina devoted to his adorableness.

“Yeah, I guess I could use some,” Jenny said.

“O.K. See you inside. Good-bye, Mrs. Chisholm.”

A bright red sports car pulled up, and out of nowhere a mob of women materialized; girls, oldsters, teenagers, all females surrounded the car and its driver. Laughing, protesting, the driver got out. He was tall and stood like a prince.

“That's the leading man,” Jenny said. “He's a jerk.”

“He looks pretty cute to me,” said her mother.

“He wears alligator shoes,” Jenny said. “Any guy who kills a poor little alligator to make shoes out of him has got to be a jerk.”

“Since when are alligators poor and little?” her mother said. “I thought they had big man-eating teeth and jaws that could crunch a person in one snap.”

Sue and Tina chugged up. “Did you see him?” They whistled through their teeth. “Did you talk to him?”

Who did they mean? The leading man? Scott Borkowski?

“Sure,” said Jenny, smiling in a maddening way. “Sure I did.”

The girls remembered their manners enough to ask, “Did you have a nice time, Mrs. Chisholm? Are you glad to be home? We all missed you!”

“Hello, all of you. Yes, I'm delighted to be home. But now I have to make my way to the grocery store and buy everything in sight. Good-bye, Jen, see you later. Good luck, darling. Good-bye, girls.”

“I have to go,” Jenny said.

“Wait.” Tina and Sue made a grab at Jenny to stop her. “Tell us what he said.”

“I have to learn my lines,” Jenny said, inspired, and was delighted when their mouths fell open in astonishment and they said, “Lines? Lines?” And Jenny ran from them as if she were catching a train that was just pulling out of the station.

“This is what we want, Jenny,” Norm Dubie said. “At the end of this shot, we want you to keep on skating, we want you to shout, ‘Hey, wait for me!' and keep on going. Holler, ‘Hey, wait for me!' as if you meant it. Can you do that?”

“I guess,” said Jenny, not at all sure.

On the first try she kept on skating but forgot to shout, “Hey, wait for me!” On the second try she came to a dead stop and shouted, “Hey, wait for me!” and on the third try she did it right.

“Splendid!” Norm Dubie said, clapping her on the back. “Absolutely splendid, Jenny. That makes it perfect!” Then he yelled to Anna, “You got the stuff I asked for?”

Anna nodded and, laying the back of her hand across her forehead, she said, “Where will all this end? I'm running out of steam.”

“Me too,” Jenny said.

“You did a good job,” Scott Borkowski said, coming up to her. “A real fine job.”

“Thanks.” She took off her skates and rubbed the bottoms of her feet together.

“How's things?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “We got a letter from my brother. He got promoted to corporal. He's going to be sent to Japan.”

“Boy, that's a long way, Japan,” said Jenny. “How old's your brother?”

“Nineteen. He enlisted when he was eighteen. I'm going to too.”

“Aren't you going to college?”

“Nope. I'm seeing the world. College costs a lot. It's better to learn by experience, anyway.” He turned away from her, but not before she'd seen the mournful expression on his face.

“Maybe your father will come back,” Jenny said.

“He better not try,” Scott Borkowski said in a rough voice. “I'll lock the doors if he does, but he won't.”

“You're the star of the whole school,” Jenny told him. “Everybody wants to be like you.”

“Maybe if they knew what being like me was like they wouldn't,” he said, but she could tell she'd said the right thing, that she'd made him feel better.

“I'm eleven,” she said, as if he'd asked how old she was.

“I was eleven once myself,” Scott Borkowski said, grinning. “I remember how it was back then.”

“Race you!” Jenny shouted, suddenly exhilarated.

“You're on!” he shouted back, and they both began to run.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Give it to me in all new one-dollar bills, please”, Jenny told the teller at the bank when she cashed her check.

“We're kind of short on new money,” the teller said, “how about if I give it to you part new, part old?”

“If I had known this bank was short on new money,” Jenny said, “I would've gone to some other bank. Only my mother and father use your bank. I don't think they'd like it if they knew you were snort on money. I think it might make them very nervous, as a matter of fact.”

“O.K., O.K.,” the teller said, doling out eighty new one-dollar bills. “Why do you want it all new?” she asked.

“It's my first real earned money, and I want it new, that's all,” Jenny told her. “All crispy new. It feels better, if you want to know.”

The teller felt her supervisor's eyes on her, telling her to speed it up; the line of people waiting was growing long and grumpy. The supervisor was a dragon bucking for a vice-presidency, and the teller didn't want to tangle with her.

“What're you gonna do, walk through it in your bare feet?” she couldn't resist sneering behind her hand, so the supervisor wouldn't get wise. She wouldn't have said that if Jenny hadn't been a kid and if her new contact lenses hadn't made her eyes bulge so her brother, only this morning, had called her “oyster eyes” and if her new fifty-dollar shoes weren't even at this moment carving out big blisters on her tender heels.

“Hey, that's not a bad idea!” Jenny exclaimed. “Thanks a lot. Maybe I'll do that when I get home. Walk through it in my bare feet. Not bad at all.”

This seemed to cheer up the teller considerably, so she was able to say, “Have a good day,” to Jenny almost as if she meant it.

Eighty bucks, all in new ones, made quite a tidy parcel. Good thing she'd brought along a brown paper bag to carry the money home in, Jenny thought. If a mugger got wind of the small fortune she was in possession of, she'd be dead meat. One clunk on the back of her head and that bandit would be off to South America. With her hard-earned funds.

Crouching low, to guard her money, she almost bumped into Scott Borkowski outside the bank.

“It's my money,” Jenny whispered, pointing to the brown paper bag. “It's all new one-dollar bills. I'm gonna walk through it in my bare feet before I decide what to spend it on. What're you gonna do with yours?”

“Give it to my mother,” Scott Borkowski said. “She needs it.”

A feeling of shame overwhelmed Jenny. She should've known. Hadn't he said his mother had two jobs? That college cost a lot?

“When'd your mother get home?” Scott Borkowski asked, making conversation.

“Last night. She wasn't planning on coming home so soon, but she didn't get the part she wanted. They told her she was too old, and she's not even forty yet. She was really upset. Well, anyway, she wanted to do her own thing, and she did it. So it didn't turn out so hotsy-totsy. The director's girl friend got the part instead.”

“Yeah, there's a lot of that going around,” Scott Borkowski said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“I thought you'd forgotten,” said old Mrs. Carruthers, beaming at Jenny. “I'd about given up on you.”

Jenny sat down on the porch steps, and Mrs. Carruthers set her chair to rocking with something approaching abandon.

“I didn't forget,” Jenny said. “It was just that I had quite a lot on my mind.”

“I understand. Skating finished then?”

“Yup. Want to see my money?”

Mrs. Carruthers nodded, and Jenny opened the top of the paper bag to allow Mrs. Carruthers to feast her eyes.

“Very impressive. I saw your mother driving by. She's finished with her acting, is she?”

“Yup. She was going to be Emily in
Our Town
, only the director's girl friend got the part and they told my mother she was too old. She was really upset.”

“I can understand that. It's not pleasant to be told you're too old for anything. Especially if you're in the theater. What are you going to do with your money?”

“I'm thinking of buying some stock,” said Jenny.

“Stock!” Mrs. Carruthers exclaimed. “Well, I must say that's a very grown-up thing to do. Stock can be risky. I remember the stock market crash in '29. Terrible, terrible, the things that happened to perfectly good people.” Mrs. Carruthers shook her head. “I knew a girl whose father lost everything and wound up selling shoelaces. You want to be very careful when it comes to stock.”

“Oh, I'm going to be, don't worry,” Jenny said.

Pebbles approached cautiously, unused to visitors. He sniffed at Jenny, sniffed at her paper bag.

“He thinks there might be something in there for him,” explained Mrs. Carruthers.

“Sorry, kid,” Jenny told Pebbles.

“You know what you said about star shine?” Jenny asked suddenly.

“Of course,” the old lady said.

“Well, it got me to thinking. There's this boy I sort of know. Actually, he's older 'n me, he's even older 'n Mary. I guess you could call him a star, sort of. I mean, he's a super athlete, and he's smart, and he's very cute. Well”—Jenny shrugged—“I don't think so, but Mary and her friends do, and they act silly around him and stuff.”

Mrs. Carruthers nodded, and Pebbles jumped into her lap.

“Anyway, this boy and two friends of his came to our house when my mother was away, and they drank my father's beer, and this boy I told you about—well, he drank so much beer he got sick.”