The teacher gets up. Ronni and Robert settle in the front row. From there Ronni bestows her most radiant smile on the young Miss Ellison, who confessed, the first time they met at the beginning of the year, that she was an enormous fan and had seen all her movies. She even asked if she—could she—if she might—would it be possible, and please don’t think this inappropriate, but might Ronni autograph a black-and-white photograph of herself that Miss Ellison had bought some time ago?
Miss Ellison keeps looking at Ronni, who smiles encouragingly as she steps up to the small riser.
“Welcome, all my second grade parents. We’re very excited to have you here to listen to our poetry readings. The children have all worked very hard and spent a huge amount of time practicing their poems.” She pauses for the parents to applaud, which they do, complete with a small amount of whooping from a couple of fathers in the back.
“First up, we have Nell Sunshine.” She turns to welcome Nell up onto the stage before leaning into the microphone again. “I just have to say that we are all incredibly blessed to have Nell’s mother here today, the wonderful actress Ronni Sunshine.” She extends an arm to Ronni, before clapping and casting a glance around the room to encourage the other parents to clap too. Which they do, although it is slightly more muted than before. This is Hollywood, after all. As Ronni rightly said to her husband, half of this room are directors or soundmen or caterers for the studios. It isn’t such a big deal for them, even though it seems to be for their child’s teacher.
Miss Ellison pauses, an idea striking her at that moment. “Ms. Sunshine, I wonder if we might ask you . . . I hope this isn’t too presumptuous, but I once heard you do the most wonderful recital of a poem on a radio show. I think it might have been by Roald Dahl? I’m just wondering whether you might still know it? Whether you might give us all an enormous treat by introducing today’s performance with that poem? If you remember it . . .”
She trails off, stepping back with a big smile, for Ronni has already stood up, gliding to the riser, lifting her long skirts to step up, taking the microphone with assumed humility and a smile that seems embarrassed, as the room applauds again.
“I’m so embarrassed,” Ronni starts, with a laugh and her signature throaty purr, and everyone sits up. They recognize that voice! That deep English accent! Now they know who she is!
“I didn’t expect to be performing today, and I haven’t rehearsed at all. Goodness, I’m not even sure I can remember that poem. It was Spike Milligan, I believe. Does this sound familiar?” She turns to Miss Ellison and recites the first line.
Miss Ellison nods dreamily, enthusiastically, as Ronni turns back to the microphone, playing up to the crowd, flinging her scarf off, delighting in performing in front of a live audience, delighting in the laughter she hears, in the rapt attention of a room full of people who all love her! They all seem to love her!
All eyes are on her. She is mesmerizing. No one notices the tall blond child standing next to the riser. They do not see her lips stop moving, nor the way she looks at the floor. Even if they had noticed before how nervous she was, they do not now realize that she no longer cares about stepping up to perform. No one, least of all Ronni, notices what is so clear on her face: that she knows she could never be as good as her mother, and that her day is now destroyed.
1991
four
The bell rings as a sea of bodies emerges from classrooms, teenagers swarming through the wide corridors and shouting to each other as the tide moves toward the exit doors.
Outside they go, great big football-playing boys throwing balled-up papers to friends and cheering when their misses are caught; studious kids keeping their heads down, making their way to the line of yellow buses waiting to drop them all off at the ends of their streets.
When Nell is with Emily, they sit together, near the back. On days like today, when Emily has an appointment with the orthodontist and was an early pickup, Nell sits by herself, toward the front of the bus, plugging in her father’s old Sony Walkman so she doesn’t have to engage with the rest of the kids.
The irony is, despite her expectations—and fears—there is much she loves about her new school and living in Connecticut. When her father’s real estate company merged with another, bigger, company, in New York, and he announced they were moving to the East Coast, she was the only one who didn’t want to leave Los Angeles. Leaving meant starting a new school for her senior year of high school. Not that she had a fantastic social life or tons of friends—Nell has always been something of a loner. But it was her life; it was the only life she knew.
Meredith, who always seems to go with the flow, seemed perfectly happy to make the move, although even if she wasn’t, she wasn’t likely to complain. If her parents were happy, Meredith was happy.
And Lizzy was positively thrilled! A whole new school to charm! New friends! An entire new coast to conquer! She is only ten, but she is a natural charmer, and change has always been exciting for her.
The only one who struggled with the decision was Nell.
They settled on the town of Westport, Connecticut. It was an easy commute into the city for her father, and the town had the famous Westport Country Playhouse, not to mention Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. As soon as her mother heard that, her mind was made up. They stopped trawling around the towns in Westchester and Dutchess Counties in New York. If it was good enough for Paul and Joanne, it was good enough for Ronni Sunshine. She refused even to think about looking anywhere else after that.
Her parents found a majestic Colonial on a private street opposite Longshore, the town’s country club. The neighborhood was near the beach and filled with kids on bikes and skateboards. Apparently they were all going to be blissfully happy.
Before the move, Nell had looked at all the pictures of the house, pictures of the room that was going to be hers, the description of the town, but she hadn’t been able to get excited. She was leaving behind her best friend, Sandy, and she wasn’t good at making new friends. She had been so lonely before she and Sandy had found each other, and she couldn’t bear the thought of going back to that loneliness again.
Thank God for Emily Sussman. Small, petite, and interesting looking, Emily walked up to Nell on her first day, curious about the new girl she had spotted on the bus that morning. She introduced herself, and invited Nell back to her house after school to do homework.
Emily lived a few streets down from Nell, in an old yellow house on a little island that you could access only by foot, walking over a small wooden bridge. There were no cars on the island, but a parking lot just before. Residents pulled their groceries to the houses on small wooden wagons.
“This is so cool!” breathed Nell, walking along the pretty path, feeling like she was back in California, water everywhere she looked.
Emily’s mom was in the kitchen when they arrived. She had a platter of chocolate chip cookies on the counter that were warm and chewy, just out of the oven. They ate them while they drank tall glasses of ice-cold milk, and it struck Nell, that day, looking out the window at the sun glinting off the waters of Long Island Sound, that this might be the best day of her life.
Emily was so relaxed and curious and at ease in her own skin, it helped Nell feel at ease in hers. Her house was funky and cozy and cool, sitting right on the sand, with magnificent views of the water, and little beach cottages sitting in the distance.
And her mom! Her mom who was a real mom! Who’d baked fresh chocolate chip cookies even though she didn’t know Emily was bringing a friend over, who poured them milk and came to sit with them at the table and talked to them, really talked to them, about their day, and how they felt about life, and did Nell find it overwhelming to be new here, in such a big school, surrounded by people she didn’t know.
After that, the joke was that Nell had moved in with Emily, in the little yellow house that was only supposed to be a summer rental, until Mr. and
Mrs. Sussman got divorced and Mrs. Sussman had ended up staying, so delighted by the sun rising over the water outside her window every morning that she knew she’d found her new home.
Emily and Nell became inseparable almost overnight. Emily helped Nell fall in love with Westport. Growing up in Los Angeles with a father who traveled so much and an actress mother who lived for the adoration of her fans, Nell had no idea what a normal suburban childhood was like.
Discovering Westport, and Emily Sussman, was a revelatory experience for Nell. Not only did she learn what a normal childhood could be but she could experience one at Emily’s side. In Nell’s eyes, Mrs. Sussman was a perfect mother, with her giant wooden-sided station wagon parked in the parking lot at the end of Compo Mill Cove; and the way she cooked for her daughter and whatever other friends might be around (usually just Nell, but sometimes Claire and Jennifer D., and even Jennifer R. and Jennifer S.); and the way she stopped what she was doing to give Emily a ride, or pick her up, or both. You could talk to Mrs. Sussman about anything, unlike her own mother, who was far too busy going to auditions, or getting her beauty sleep, or rehearsing for another role, to talk to her daughters about anything ever. This was the Leave It to Beaver mother, and Nell had always believed she’d only been imagined by Hollywood writers. Now Nell knew such a mother existed in the real world, and she knew this was the kind of mother she wished she had.
Indeed, Nell trusted Mrs. Sussman and Emily so much that she had told them—and no one else—about how she felt when she had first seen Lewis Calder. He was the tallest boy in the school, towering above everyone at six foot five. She had seen him gliding through the corridors with his distinctively short hairdo, and thought he was so handsome he looked like he belonged in the pages of Seventeen magazine. He was, she confessed, probably the most handsome boy in the world.
Mrs. Sussman worked on Fieldstone Farm over in Easton. It was part-time, so she could be home every day by the time Emily got out of school. She ran the barn, which incorporated a farm stand where they sold fresh produce and pies made by local cooks using that same produce. Everyone within a ten-mile radius came to them for their apple and rhubarb pie, pear caramel pie, and cinnamon peach tart.
Nell and Emily would go up to Fieldstone after school sometimes and help out. Nell fell in love with the farm the first time she went. It was only twenty minutes away from Westport, but it felt like another world. It was peaceful and quiet, and when she was there Nell felt as if she had stepped into the deepest, darkest countryside.
She loved working there, whether it was helping Mrs. Sussman out at the farm stand and ringing up the cash register, or cleaning out the chicken coop. This is what I want, she would think to herself as chickens were pecking at her red-painted toenails in flip-flops. This is what I’m going to have when I’m an adult.
Now Nell sits on the bus without Emily, her headphones on, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and the Grateful Dead playing on the cassette that sits inside her Walkman, when she finds herself looking at a giant pair of legs. She looks up to see Lewis Calder, who slides in next to her, giving her the faintest of nods.
And she is so thrilled she thinks she might throw up.
“Hey,” he says. “Aren’t we in math together?”
“I think so,” she says, although there is no doubt they are in math together. She lives for math class, the highlight of her day, knowing that Lewis Calder always sits in front of her, slightly to the right, where she can gaze upon him throughout the class, with no one seeing, no one knowing. At least she thought no one had noticed her.
Nell’s hair is blond, long, and straight. It falls on either side of her face from a perfect center parting. If she pulls it forward, it acts like a curtain. She can gaze out from behind the waterfall of hair, with no one seeing what she is gazing at, namely, Lewis Calder.
Every day for the past seven months has been highlighted by a glimpse of Lewis Calder in math. But it’s never enough. Each time she leaves a class, she unconsciously scans the corridor for his head, high above the sea of people beneath him. He doesn’t notice her, doesn’t seem to look at anyone as he walks from class to class, lost in some other world.
Emily has known Lewis all her life. She has told Nell that he is quiet, not particularly sociable. He rows, she says, at the new rowing club by the railway station. He’s the only kid in school she knows who is rowing there, but has heard he’s good, good enough that he goes to the rowing association every day after school, good enough that even though they don’t yet have a proper junior program, there is already talk that the University of Washington has been in touch and talked about recruiting him for crew.
He was in a pack of boys through elementary and middle school, Emily says. Was popular and well liked. But his friends have gone on to be football and lacrosse players, and they’re loud, boisterous, and rowdy. They like to party. Lewis Calder is fixated on rowing, on being the best at his sport that he can possibly be, so those friendships have drifted away over the years.
“You’re Nell, right?” says Lewis Calder, pulling his own Walkman out of his backpack. “What are you listening to?”
He looks her over as she hands him her headphones, her heart pounding. She can’t believe he’s sitting next to her, can’t believe he’s so casually chatting with her. She wishes she could find the words to answer him, but in lieu of finding the words, silently offering her headphones to him will have to do.
He puts the headphones on, a slow smile spreading over his face as he nods his head along with the music. He looks at Nell, still smiling. “Nice.” He takes the headphones off and hands them back. “You don’t look like a Deadhead.”
“I’m definitely not a Deadhead,” says Nell. “Just someone who appreciates great music.”
“What else is on that tape?”
“The Rolling Stones. Neil Young. It’s just a mix. What are you listening to?”
Lewis Calder reaches out and puts his own headphones on Nell’s head as she flushes a bright red, not looking at him until he presses play and she hears the sounds of Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl.” She looks at him, delighted.
“Nice. I expected Nirvana.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I expected Janet Jackson on yours.”
Nell grimaces. “You don’t even know me. What would make you think I like Janet Jackson?”
“An assumption. That I’m very relieved to find out is wrong. So what’s your story, Nell Sunshine?”
Nell just stares at him. How does he know her last name? When did he notice her? What does this mean? If he knows her last name, surely he has noticed her, even though she has never seen him so much as glance at her, even though she has never seen him so much as glance at anyone.
“How do you know my name?”
“You just told me you were Nell. I guess I’ve been paying attention.”
Nell laughs. “You’re not paying attention. I’ve seen you walking through the corridors. You’re always staring straight ahead.”
“That’s because I’m freakishly tall, which means everyone’s always staring at me, and I don’t know what to do with my face when I make eye contact. It’s easier to look straight ahead.”
“Do you actually feel freakishly tall?”
Lewis Calder shrugs and nods.
“I kind of feel freakishly tall too. Although people don’t stare.”
“What are you, five-ten?”
“And a half. It’s pretty freakishly tall in this town. Most of the girls in school are tiny.”
“You hang out with Emily Sussman, right? She is tiny.”
“She is. So how’s crew?”
He smiles. “You know I row?”
“I hear things,” she says, astonished to find she is relaxed, and chatting, and it is easy, and nice. He’s nice. For the past few months she has had a huge, mad crush on him and has built him into some sort of demigod, with otherwor
ldly qualities that would mean he would never have a normal, human conversation with someone like her.
In her fantasies, and there had been many, she dreamed of something exactly like this happening, except in her dreams the conversation wouldn’t be as prosaic as this one, and he wouldn’t be looking at her now with an amused twinkle in his eyes. But she did always imagine him with a large smile on his face, like he has now, and she dreamed their conversation would be this easy, and there would be maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe . . . just a hint of flirtation, like there is now. Is there? This is all so far and beyond her wildest hopes she can’t quite believe it is actually happening.
“You should try it,” he says. “They’re starting a women’s team, and you’d be good. You’re tall and strong. You have the perfect physique for a rower.”
He’s noticed my physique, thinks Nell. He has noticed me!
“Maybe I’ll come along and try it.”
“What are you doing today?” he says. “I’m going to the boathouse now. You could come too. I’ll show you around. Maybe you could try it out.”
Nell turns to look out the window, making sure he can’t see that she is so happy there are tears in her eyes. “Sure,” she says nonchalantly.
“We could get off the bus before it turns down Compo and walk. How does that sound? You okay with that?”
“That sounds great,” she says, grinning like a lunatic as she looks out the window and issues a silent prayer of thanks for Emily having her orthodontist appointment today.
• • •