Starry-Eyed (52 page)

“Well,” Goose said, “maybe I want you to be stuck with me too. Maybe I'm a little stuck to—on—you.”

Stringbean fought to avoid rolling her eyes.

“Come on, dude, think about this. Don't you think it's kind of weird? I mean, we've literally known each other since we were toddlers.”

“I don't think it's that weird,” Goose said, looking more crestfallen than Stringbean would have preferred. “I mean, how do people get together with people they don't know first?”

“What exactly do you mean by
get together
?” Stringbean asked suspiciously. “I'm just saying, don't you think there's a point at which you know someone too—”

Stringbean was cut off, abruptly, by Goose's mouth on hers. She was appalled. In any of the few imaginings of this moment that she'd ever permitted herself, she'd never dreamed that her first kiss would happen as she was literally midsentence.

A moment went by, Goose's lips still pressed to hers. Cautiously, Stringbean pressed back. Goose happily pressed a little more. Stringbean moved her lips some.

No one was more surprised than Stringbean herself to discover that she liked it.

18. Interlude: How Stringbean Met Goose

It was back when Stringbean still had a dad, way back. There was a meeting he went to every Thursday night in the basement of the church where Reverend Gerald H. Nelson preached. And because Little DeeDee had a shift on Thursday nights, Stringbean came with her father and played with the ladies in the church playroom upstairs while he went to his meeting. Goose's mom was there, and so was Goose. Goose introduced Stringbean to the kaleidoscope, Stringbean figured out how to break into it and mess it up, and that was it. They were inseparable. When Stringbean's dad left about a year later, Goose's mom just picked up Stringbean every Thursday night, out of habit or kindheartedness or both, and they kept playing with the kaleidoscope.

One night, Goose's mother had run out to the grocery store, and the pair went exploring in the church—before the days of the video camera,
but a portending of them. After successfully jimmying a lock into the office belonging to Reverend Nelson's associate Reverend Andresson, the two discovered a cavern of wonders. Reverend Andresson was an avid hunter, and his office was crowded with mallards and pheasants, stag heads and foxes, a gaze of raccoons and a brood of chicks. In the center of the room, above the desk, was a majestic Canada goose, wings spread and neck darted as if in eternal flight, clearly the prize of the collection.

Young Goose was so transfixed, he reached up to pet the goose, to feel the avian feathers of its giant wingspan—and promptly snapped off the bird's wing. It took a frantic thirty minutes of Krazy Glue, dental floss, stick pins, and other effluvium to repair the wing before Goose's mom returned, during which Stringbean laughed so hard that the nickname affixed.

The fact of Stringbean's becoming Stringbean was much simpler. According to Goose, it was just how she looked.

19. Roam Free

Stringbean and Goose were as tangled as the roots and vines poking through the hotel's ancient, mottled parquet floor, rolling around together on the ground as they were. Stringbean had rationed herself so little anticipation of this moment that it had never occurred to her that she might enjoy it, but suddenly the possibilities of her body seemed to extend beyond dragging herself through the dirt (though, in a sense, that was also what they were currently doing) and bringing Big DeeDee ice cream, beyond her daily boob-bindings and other mummifications.

And it was Goose, Goose whose smell she knew, Goose who had spent his life down in the dirt with her, Goose who had previously accepted the boundaries of what she would and would not discuss, Goose who could not possibly be fooled into thinking Stringbean was anything but what she was: a strange, rangy, curious girl who rarely remembered to brush her hair,
an apprentice eccentric, the girl who loved ugliness because it sang to her. Goose, for whom she sang, even through the veil of the camera; Goose, for whom she could be brave enough to sing.

For all these reasons, Stringbean had decided to keep kissing Goose. He had wrapped his arms all the way around her as things progressed into tongue-touching territory, his chest pressed to her layers of breast-suppression. Rubbing her back under her shirt, Goose brushed the ring of duct tape.

“Sweet Jesus, Stringbean,” Goose breathed, “what the hell have you got going on there? Is that duct tape?”

Stringbean hid her hands with her face, but for the first time, her impulse to dodge was intercepted by her own laughter.

“Yes.” She giggled. “It's so embarrassing. There's, like, nothing I can do to contain them.”

“Why would you want to?” Goose said, gape-mouthed.

“Because they just get in the way of
everything
.”

“But how do you know, if you've never let them, um, roam free?” Goose laughed with her.

Stringbean cocked her head. “Huh. I never thought about it like that. I think I was just hoping that if I could just sort of get a hold of them, they'd stop growing.”

Goose snorted. “I mean, I'm no expert, but I don't think that's how it works.”

They giggled for another moment, then silence fell again in the gathering darkness.

“Take your T-shirt off,” Goose said quietly.

Stringbean looked at him in horror.

“Relax. Haven't you got like an undershirt and a billion other layers underneath that? You look like you're wearing a bulletproof vest most of the time,” Goose reassured her. It was totally flabbergasting how relieved Stringbean felt by just having this discussion. Leave it to Goose to be the one to dig it out of her.

Slowly, Stringbean shucked off the used-to-be-white T-shirt, tossing it aside.

“Can I?” Goose asked gently.

Taking a deep breath, Stringbean nodded. With poignant care, Goose picked the end of the tape ring free and began peeling off the tape, going two full revolutions around Stringbean's torso. Stringbean took another deep breath, delighting in the unhindered expansion of her diaphragm.

“Does it feel better? Didn't it hurt, the way you had it before?” Goose asked.

“I'd gotten used to the way it hurt,” Stringbean said. “But I gotta admit—it does feel better now.”

It felt so much better that she leaned in and kissed Goose again, and there they tangled for another immeasurable while, Stringbean's bare arms still warm in the full darkness.

20. Interruption: Phone Call

Neither of them had any idea what time it was when Stringbean's cell phone rang.

“String,” Little DeeDee said on the other end of the line, her voice troublesick. “I think you'd better come on home.”

21. Soon

When Stringbean got home, Junie Mae was asleep on the floor and Little DeeDee was crying at the table. She looked up and saw Stringbean, filthy and wild-haired, and rolled her eyes in an expression that reminded Stringbean of herself.

“I'm not even going to ask where you were,” Little DeeDee said, running a tired hand over her eyes and through her hair. “The nurse just left.
They think—with BeeDee—they think it's going to be soon.”

Stringbean looked bug-eyed at her mother. “They think
what's
going to be soon?”

Little DeeDee gave her a hollow look, a
don't make me spell it out for you
look, and lit a cigarette. “I think you should go in and spend some time with your grandmother.”

22. The End of Ugliness

Big DeeDee's breathing didn't sound right when Stringbean walked into the living room. Her breathing in sounded like a lot of work, and her breathing out came with a terrible rattle, a rattle that sounded like the insides of a broken machine.

Stringbean could transpose that ugly music of Big DeeDee's. She had to. Big DeeDee had said it herself: not so many days to sing. Today, on the island, Stringbean had sung until the room was wreckage. Now, even though she was afraid of wreckage, she could feel her harmony was needed here.

When Stringbean sang for Big DeeDee, she left the camera out of it. Big DeeDee was at the end of ugliness, and it was Stringbean who was in the thick of it, anyway. She sang, through the tears, all of Big DeeDee's favorites: “Amazing Grace” and “You Made Me Love You” and the song Carol Burnett sang at the end of her shows that went, “I'm so glad we had this time together.”

Afterward, Stringbean snuggled into Big DeeDee's crook. Big DeeDee moved slightly, her head resting on Stringbean's.

“BeeDee,” Stringbean whispered, “can you hear me?”

Big DeeDee made a humming sound:
yes
.

“I came to tell you that—” Stringbean said, her throat catching, “it's okay to die, BeeDee. You can let go.”

23. Letting Go

In the morning, she was gone. Stringbean watched the medics take away BeeDee and the bed and the big beeping machine. In Big DeeDee's honor, that afternoon, Stringbean went to Wal-Mart and bought her first nonsports bra.

24. The Wreckage of Stringbean and Goose

Stringbean and Goose called the Grand Hotel Sault St. Marie video “We Killed Room 15.” It got 13,274 unique hits and 5,024 new subscribers the week they posted it.

“That's the weirdest thing I've seen today, but I can't say I didn't like it,” commented johnmonroe54.

“That girl sounds kind of like Janis Joplin,” wrote chcltbnnyxoxo.

“DUDE WHEN THAT KID FELL OFF THE BED I ROFLD MY ASSS OFFFF!!!!!” wrote mrsquashhocker1979, echoing the sentiments of many others in the thread.

Stringbean and Goose refreshed the page endlessly, screaming with laughter as they watched the bizarre, anonymous commentary unfold. They were working on a new concept for a series of webisodes, “The Wreckage of Stringbean and Goose,” in which Stringbean sang along with the sounds of Goose destroying various abandoned things.

Junie Mae had excitedly reported back about an old hunting shack in the woods that looked ripe for this afternoon's destruction, and tomorrow, they were going out to the auto graveyard on Route 40 to see about a car. The kissing continued in manic, stolen fits and spurts, still unpredictable, still undefined. Sooner or later Goose would probably make Stringbean talk about it, but for now, they had to find a tractor or four-wheeler to borrow. Stringbean hummed with happiness, imagining the crunches and crackles of the hunting shack as they razed it to the ground. Its broken song.

ANECDOTE: TELLY LEUNG

My love of musicals came about in a very unexpected way.

When I was eight years old, my parents made it clear that they wanted me to focus on my studies. They forbade me from watching “junk cartoons” after school. Instead, I was expected to do my homework, practice the piano, and I was only allowed to watch PBS—because the programming was educational. My TV diet consisted of
Sesame Street, Square One, 3-2-1 Contact, Nova
, and lots of nature shows.

One day, I'm watching PBS and a life-changing event occurred.
Great Performances
came on, and they were showing the live telecast of the original Broadway cast of
Into the Woods
. I had found a new religion (Broadway), and I found a new god to worship (Stephen Sondheim). To this day, when my parents try to convince me to quit acting, I tell them it's their fault! They were the ones that forced me to watch PBS!