“And now,” the principal said, “for the second part of this program we have a special treat. For the next two weekends, as you know, our music and drama departments will be giving performances of a great musical, Guys and Dolls …”
What? I thought. This assembly was going to be fun?
“… And we’re hoping that all of you will attend and bring your friends and families. To give you a taste of the music, we’ve asked the understudies of the four major parts to sing a few songs for you …”
Cheers and clapping. The understudies? That means Pamela!
“… So may I present, Guys and Dolls!”
There was a drumroll, and I realized that Patrick and the other orchestra members had taken their places just below the stage. Mr. Kleingold, the conductor, brought down his baton, and the music began.
The guy who was playing the gambler, Sky Masterson, came out first in his slick suit and shoes, and he sang “Luck Be a Lady.” He didn’t have quite the voice of the guy who had been chosen number one for the part, but he’d do in a pinch, and he got a hearty round of applause. The understudy for Sister Sarah Brown came next and sang “If I Were a Bell.” Then the crap game operator, Nathan Detroit, sang “Sue Me.”
But it was Pamela who got the cheers when she came out from behind the curtain in a chorus girl’s cat costume, complete with whiskers, ears, and a tail, and sang “Pet Me, Poppa” in her Brooklyn accent.
Guys stomped their feet and whistled, and just before she left the stage, she flirtatiously twirled her tail at the audience.
The principal said he’d see us all at the musical. The assembly was over, and Gwen and Liz and I rushed backstage to tell Pamela just how great she was. But Tim had got there first and was hugging a happy, glowing Pamela.
“You were fabulous!” we told her, and I think she actually began to believe us.
I did have a lot of fun with my feature on teachers’ secrets, except that I changed the title to “Would You Ever Guess That …?”
The first line was: Would you ever guess that journalism teacher Shirley Ames once ate eleven and a half hot dogs to win a contest?
I’d spent the whole week going to classes early to ask teachers for contributions, stayed late, stopped teachers in the hallways, interviewed them in the faculty lounge.… Some said they’d think it over and get back to me but never did. Others called me at home after I’d given them my number.
Would you ever guess that …
Bud Tolliver plays the ukulele?
Linda Jackson can belly dance?
Corina Galt owns a Model T?
Ernie Shepherd survived an avalanche?
Myra Bork raises ferrets?
“Kids are going to love this,” Miss Ames said. “They’ll never think of us in quite the same way. Every time they look at me, they’ll think, ‘Mustard and ketchup.’”
“Except there’s so much more to each teacher than this,” I said. “Next year maybe we could feature different teachers each month—every other issue—and tell about their backgrounds, families, hobbies… .”
“Yeah. I want to know how that sexy French teacher spends her Saturday nights,” said Tony.
“Let’s put that feature—no, not the French teacher—on the agenda for next year, Alice,” Miss Ames said. “You’ll have to help us remember, though, because all our seniors will be gone.”
“Just my luck,” said Tony.
The last week of rehearsals was wild. School in the morning, rehearsals each afternoon till eight or nine at night, stuff to write for the newspaper, leftovers to eat when I got home, then homework till midnight or later, and I was up again at six.
“You’re trying to do too much,” Dad told me one morning when I appeared zombielike at breakfast and knocked over my orange juice.
To tell the truth, I had one of the better jobs on stage crew. The art department had pitched in on most of the sets, and we’d rented a couple backdrops for select scenes, so all I had left to do was a little more painting: a lamppost here, a few bricks there, a table—things like that—extending a set or filling one in.
I didn’t have to be one of Molly’s prop girls who dashed onstage between scenes and moved stuff around, and being careful not to leave out something important, something a character needed in one of the scenes.
But I was supposed to help out as needed, so I made myself Pamela’s personal costume changer between scenes. I had copies of Adelaide’s costumes at the ready in case the original Adelaide broke an arm or something and Pamela had to go on. A lot of the time, though, I sat far back in the auditorium and did homework during rehearsals, waiting to see if I was needed.
I was actually glad not to be spending more time with Patrick right then, seeing what Pamela was going through. Tim hung around some of the rehearsals, and the minute Mr. Kleingold or Mr. Ellis called it quits for the night, he would whisk Pamela away and drive her home. Or they’d go somewhere to eat.
If I’d still been going out with Sam Mayer, for instance, his hovering would have driven me over the edge. It’s nice to get a back rub when you’re tired or a kiss when you’re discouraged, but sometimes you just need time to get stuff done, and the less demands on you, the better.
Everyone on stage crew was allowed to take off one of the six performances to watch the show from the audience, as long as he had someone cover for him. One of the prop girls said she’d look after Pamela’s costumes for me, so I decided to attend the musical on the first Saturday night, which would be the third performance. I wanted to sit with Liz and Gwen, and that was the night Molly was going to be included in the curtain call; she had chemo again the following week, so she wanted to attend when she felt her best.
Dad had let us put up one of the Guys and Dolls posters in the window of the Melody Inn, and I mentioned it to every customer who came in that day.
David, I noticed, was unusually quiet and seemed absorbed in some order sheets that Dad had asked him to tally. Except that when I stopped by the office on my ten-minute break, he didn’t seem to be looking at the papers in front of him at all—he was just sliding his thumbnail up and down the edge of the account book.
I knew then.
“David?” I said. “You ended it with Connie, didn’t you?”
He slowly raised his head and looked in my direction. “Yes,” he said.
“Is that what you’re thinking about? Whether you did the right thing?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No. I’m at peace with that. I’m just wondering if I did it the right way, and I’m sorry she’s taking it so hard. And sorry that when we broke up the first time, I didn’t make it stick, so she wouldn’t have to go through it again. But this time I’m sure.”
I waited. How do you know what to ask? How do you know when to just listen? Your gut feeling, that’s all. But I let my curiosity get the better of me. “Did you go camping together? Is that when you told her?”
“You guessed it,” he said.
“Only because you told me you probably would. Go camping, I mean.” And I thought about David and his girlfriend sitting out under the stars on a romantic night and then David telling her it was over.
“You told her that night, or the next morning?”
“Actually, we talked all night long,” he said.
“I don’t understand love,” I said after a moment.
“Neither do I. Human love, anyway,” said David. “But I understand love of God, and that’s why I’m at peace.”
“I don’t think I’d ever be able to make that choice.”
“You don’t have to. Not everyone is called to be a priest or a nun, and you’re not even Catholic.”
“But if the pope changes his mind and says it’s okay for priests to marry, won’t you be mad?”
“No, because if Connie was the right girl for me, maybe I would have decided differently,” he said.
This wasn’t making any sense, because how did David know that he just hadn’t found the right girl yet, that she wa
sn’t still out there somewhere, just waiting to be discovered?
“Listen, David,” I said suddenly. “Does the fact that you’re going into the priesthood mean that you can’t have any fun?”
“Of course not!”
“Then what are you doing tonight?” I asked.
“What?”
“Tonight. Do you have any plans?”
“I hadn’t thought much about it, actually.”
“Then how about going to see Guys and Dolls with me and my friends? We’ll pick you up around seven, and I’ll even pay for your ticket.”
He looked surprised. “Well, hey! How can I refuse? That had a long run on Broadway, didn’t it?”
“Yes, and it’ll be a blast tonight because one of our friends is in it. Where do you live?”
“In the District. I think I’ll stay here at the store, though, and put in some overtime. Pick me up at seven. I’ll be ready,” he said.
14
The Diner with David
“You did what?” asked Liz.
“I invited a priest to go with us tonight. Well, a priest-to-be, and we’re picking him up at seven,” I said. “He’s cool. I already told Gwen. She’ll get him after she picks up Molly.”
“This is wild!” Liz said. “You’re not trying to tempt him, are you?”
“No, Liz. I’m saving him from another night of beer with the boys, that’s all.”
Liz and I were on the porch when Gwen pulled up, and David slid over in the backseat to make room. He was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a black turtleneck, and a jean jacket.
“Hi, Molly! Hi, Gwen!” I said. “Liz, this is David, and tonight he’s our guest for … Yay! The high school musical!”
“Bet it’s been a while since you’ve seen one of those,” said Liz.
“Seen one? I’ve been in one, and not so long ago, either,” David told us. “You may not believe this, but I was the Royal Canadian Mountie in Rose Marie.”
“What’s that?” asked Molly.
“A musical so old that nobody does it anymore. We did it in a sort of camp style. The year before we had done Hair, and several of our more conservative citizens were upset, so we did the revival of Rose Marie to placate them.”
“And you sang?” asked Gwen.
“Did I sing? You bet’cha. In full uniform. I was even in The Mikado in community theater.”
“The Secret Life of David Reilly,” I said, and we were on our way to the school.
Molly refused to wear a wig. She had on her trademark baseball cap, but she chose one with sparkles and spangles for this night. She’d even glued some sparkles on her sneakers. She had no eyebrows or eyelashes—those fall out too temporarily from chemo—but she wore makeup and had glitter on her cheeks that made her eyes dance.
“I want a good look at those lampposts—see if they got them right,” she said. “And the low curtain in the Save-a-Soul Mission. I told them it’s got to look faded. I found a storefront church in D.C. that said we could use theirs.”
At the school Molly went backstage to sit with the crew while Gwen and Liz and David and I found ninth-row seats. The full orchestra was in place, and the auditorium was packed. The assembly had been good advertising for it. David seemed as eager for the curtain to rise as we did.
The overture began. I didn’t have a good view of the orchestra pit, but my ears were tuned to percussion—I’m better at that than the melody—and I knew that Patrick was there. Finally the curtain went up, and the scene was New York City, with actors and actresses parading around Times Square. Pamela, as a member of the chorus, looked great.
There were no big mishaps that I could see—the girl who played Adelaide didn’t break a leg or anything that would have given Pamela the role—and the enthusiasm of the audience made the singers perform even better. At the curtain call, after the whole cast had taken their bows, Mr. Ellis called the crew onstage, and I felt tears in my eyes when Molly was introduced as the prop manager. When she stepped out from behind the curtain, I grabbed David’s hands and made him clap extra loud. Everyone stood and gave her a standing ovation.
Pamela was going out with Tim after the show, and we didn’t want to keep Molly up too late, so as soon as we could collect her from backstage, we got in the car. David said, “Molly, when’s curfew for you?”
“No curfew,” she said, “but I fold around eleven.”
“Then how about some food? My favorite place, and it’s on me,” David told us.
“Great!” said Gwen. “Just give me the directions.”
Twenty minutes later, after many twists and turns, we pulled up in front of the Tastee Diner in Bethesda and piled out.
It was one of the old original diners, modeled after a dining car on a train. A backboard of shiny fan-shaped aluminum stood behind the stacks of plates and saucers, and the short-order cook expertly tended to fried eggs, burgers, sausages, and fries, all cooking at once on the grill.
“Hi, David!” the grill man said. “How’s it goin’?” Then he looked at us and said, with a wink, “Pretty good, huh?”
“David!” called the waitress who was holding the coffeepot and filling a customer’s cup. “Nice to see ya!”
“You must come here pretty often, huh?” I asked as we took a corner booth, all five of us squeezing in.
“As often as I can,” David said. “Some friends introduced me to the Tastee Diner last year, and I’ll take any excuse I can get to come out here.”
It was popular with everyone else as well. Teen couples on first dates, apparently—a little too polite and self-conscious; gangs of girls in hooded sweatshirts, with private school logos on the front; guys and girls back from a game; a homeless man or two with matted hair and just enough money for some coffee and bacon; an off-duty bus driver ordering the turkey dinner, with extra gravy; and a small seventy-ish woman eating chipped beef on toast.
We eyed the menu and the coconut layer cake there on a pedestal beside the cash register. The middle-aged waitress was smiling as she came over. “Well, I knew you must have a love life, David, but I never suspected four girlfriends,” she joked. “Coffee’s on us tonight. Where y’all been?”
We told her about the musical.
“Oh, I loved that show!” she said. “And who would have thought that Marlon Brando could sing?”
Gwen was checking out the menu, and I could tell by the funny rise of an eyebrow that everything on it was a caloric disaster. Pork chops and gravy, ribs and fries, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken and biscuits… .“David, how do you stay so thin?” she asked. “Wow, but it looks good.”
We settled for a club sandwich, two burgers, a couple of chocolate malteds, and a short stack for David. When the food arrived, miraculously fast considering that the waitress gave the order in code, it was exactly right.
During a lull, the cook came over to chat. “What’s the occasion?” he asked David. “Night on the town?”
“Went to see Guys and Dolls at their high school,” David answered. “Lots of fun.”
“What’s it about? Gangstas?”
“Deceit, deception, redemption …”
“And the Salvation Army,” Molly added.
“Huh,” said the cook, puzzled. “No accounting for taste.”
When the cook went back to his grill and we were savoring our malteds, I noticed how skillfully David kept the conversation on the present. He seemed to be taking his cues from Molly. If she talked about what courses she was going to take next year, then he talked about next year. If she focused on school productions in the past, David went with that. He was usually future oriented, and if Molly hadn’t been with us, he would probably have asked about Liz’s plans for college, what Gwen hoped to become. He had the ability to look straight into your eyes when he talked to you, as though you were the most important person in the world.
He’ll make a good priest, I thought. At the same time, He’d make a good husband and father.
We watched the parade of night owls come
in—an old man wanting a plate of bacon and toast; father and son for cheeseburgers; a slightly drunk woman for coffee; three college girls back from a movie.
“A microcosm of humanity,” said David.
Molly smiled with satisfaction and took one last swallow of her malted. “Whatever,” she said. “It’s been a fun evening.”
When I got home at last around midnight, Dad and Sylvia had gone to bed. I’d turned my cell phone off during the performance, so I checked it just before I went to sleep. Only one call. From Patrick. No message.
I slept until noon the next day. Dad and Sylvia were at church. I toasted an English muffin, buttered it, set the saucer on the floor when I was through so that Annabelle could lick the remaining butter. Then I read the comics and finally picked up Heart of Darkness to finish before class on Monday.
By mid-afternoon, when Patrick still hadn’t called, I punched in his number.
“Hi,” I said when he answered. “What’s up?”
“Oh,” said Patrick. “Hi. What’d you think of the performance? Not that you haven’t watched it a dozen times.”
“Not from out front, though—not all the way through,” I said. “I thought it went pretty well. Pamela looked so natural up there, I think she was born for the stage.”
“You didn’t see me wave at you?” Patrick asked.
I paused. “When? From the orchestra pit? No, I guess not. It was sort of dark in there.”
“Oh,” said Patrick. “Thought you saw me.”
“I didn’t see you wave,” I said.
“My mistake.”
Where was this conversation going? I wondered.
“I guess I thought you’d be hanging out after—with Pamela and everything,” Patrick went on.
“No. She went out with Tim. We’d brought Molly.”
“Well, I’d thought maybe we could go somewhere after, but I guess you had other plans.”
“Sorry, Patrick! I didn’t know you wanted to! I’m not a mind reader.”