Wishing

"Why do I have to take her?” my brother asked. He jutted his chin.

"I can’t take her, Carl, that’s why.” Years of operatic training had made our mother’s voice seem to sing everything. We were in the kitchen. I gave them each a look I hoped was pitiful.

"All the other kids get to go,” I whined. Disney movies were everywhere now that the war was over. The Portola Theater was showing a double feature: Pinocchio and the Roy Rogers movie Carl wanted to see, Roll On Texas Moon.

"She can’t go alone,” said our mother. “She’s only seven.” She sipped her morning coffee. In the evenings, when she was all made up for her piano-playing job, she looked like a movie star, but now she wore her white terry robe. Her coppery hair was pulled back, fastened with a rubber band, and her face was bare.

"I have a heart. I also have to clean house, do the wash, get a Halloween pumpkin, fix dinner....”

"Other guys don’t have to take their sisters,” he interrupted. "Their bawl-baby sisters.”

"And iron something to wear,” her words flowed on, melodiously. Five evenings a week our mother played piano at McGarrity’s, making ends meet, she said, until she could get back to singing. We had moved to Portola three months ago, when her job in Reno ended. In Reno, she had sung at a restaurant in what she called a floorshow. According to her, though, that wasn’t real singing; only opera was.

"It’s not fair!” Carl fumed.

"It’s not fair that I don’t get money from your father, Carl. It’s not fair that I don’t have a vocal studio.” Our mother’s voice rose. "You just take Rosemary and bring her back. In the theater you can sit anywhere you choose. I’ll make a chocolate cake for tonight,” she added in a sweeter tone.

"But,” he began.

This time she set her cup down on the table with a clatter. Coffee slopped over the sides and dripped onto the wood. “God Almighty couldn’t do everything I have to do today, Carl.” The music vanished from her voice. “So don’t give me any more argument! Rosemary, go get your jacket—and no popcorn fights,” she warned Carl.

All the way to the theater, as I ran to keep up, Carl reminded me that I’d ruined his day. In the theater, though, he chose to sit right next to me. He was quiet enough through Roll On Texas Moon, his thin body hunched forward at the edge of his seat. He waited for Pinocchio to begin before releasing his first belch. This was my punishment.

I got up and moved. Carl followed me and belched again. He followed and belched each time I moved. I shrank down in my seat, trying to ignore him and concentrate on the screen where wicked Stromboli had waylaid Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket, but Carl gave a new belch.

"I’m telling!” I said.

He grinned. “Go ahead.” We both knew our mother would just fuss at him and then say, Carl, Carl, what am I going to do with you!

But Diane Porter turned in front of us, pigtails flipping. “Shut up!” she said. Two other swiveled faces belonged to Betsy Abbott and Shelly Wing. My stomach knotted up. This was the group I wanted more than anything to belong to in my second grade class. The thought of Monday filled me with dread. Diane could make someone look stupid in seconds.

"I’ll tell the usher,” Diane told Carl. He snickered.

"He’ll throw you out.” She said it with a confidence I had never felt. I slid a glance at Carl to see what he would say.

He sucked in his breath and gave another frog-like croak.

Diane and her friends sprang to their feet. The three of them pushed down the row accompanied by grunts and sounds of shifting feet, then marched up the aisle to the lobby, Diane in the lead, her pigtails bouncing. Onscreen, the Blue Fairy lectured Pinocchio on the perils of lying before restoring his nose to its normal length.

A moment later I saw the trio heading back down the aisle with the usher in tow, and I burst into tears. It was just like Carl to get us thrown out!

The usher, following Diane’s pointing finger, shined his flashlight onto Carl’s face. Betsy and Shelly huddled behind Diane, whispering.

"You the kid making noises?” The usher bent nearer, his voice mean, like a man in a gangster movie. In his red theater jacket, holding his flashlight, he seemed a force to be reckoned with. Carl must have thought so too. He nodded and didn’t say anything smart.

"Well... don’t do it any more,” said the usher, waving the flashlight for emphasis so that the beam zigzagged across my brother’s face, glinting off his glasses. “I don’t like complaints.”

Carl tilted his head ever so slightly, carelessly tapping the ends of the armrests, as if it wasn’t worth a reply. The usher didn’t look impressed. He snapped off the flashlight and strode back up the aisle. Diane and her friends stumbled back over feet and bodies and sat down.

My brother leaned forward. “Tattletale!” he taunted. It was a name that could strike me cold with shame and often did, but Diane wore a satisfied smile.

"Do you want me to tell the usher?” she asked.

"Nah.” Carl waved a hand to show the smallness of her question, then drummed his fingers on the armrests again.

A new knowledge stole over me. I’d been tattling to the wrong person all these years. A swarm of remembered slights rose to mind. For a moment I forgot about Pinocchio—presently weeping as he fingered his donkey ears—and imagined the next time Carl took a spoonful of my desert when our mother wasn’t looking. Do you want me to tell Mr. Campbell? I could say. Mr. Campbell was the minister at the church we attended so that our mother could use the church piano when she practiced her singing. Do you want me to tell Mr. Stroud? Mr. Stroud was the school principal. Do you want me to tell Mr. Ashby? Mr. Ashby owned the corner market by our rented house where our mother sometimes ran up a tab.

For the rest of the movie, the only off-screen noises were the crunching of popcorn here and there, and periodic smooching sounds from older kids in the balcony. I gave myself up to the movie, weeping with relief when Pinocchio saved Gepetto from Monstro the Whale; weeping again when Gepetto picked up Pinocchio’s little puppet corpse.

Carl jabbed me with his elbow. “Quit bawling. It’s only a story, you dope.”

I couldn’t stop snuffling until the Blue Fairy revived Pinocchio and turned him into a real boy and Jiminy started to sing again: "When you wish upon a star....”

Then it was over. The lights came on and I blinked. Mothers bundled up toddlers. Older kids yawned and stretched. I sighed, pulling on my jacket, and stood up with Carl, trying not to look at the row ahead, as if that might make me invisible to Diane and her friends. But, as we made our way to the aisle and into the stream of bodies moving toward the lobby, a hand fell on my shoulder.

"Rosemary?” It was Diane’s voice. I turned, feeling sick. She edged up beside me, flanked by Betsy and Shelley, their faces eager not to miss anything.

"Your brother is such a drip,” Diane said loudly. At that, Carl wheeled around. She flashed him a satisfied smirk.

"Dry up,” Carl told her.

She put her hands on her hips. “My brother wouldn’t like to hear you say that.”

Carl raised his brows, pulled in a deep breath, and belched, which made her gasp.

"I don’t see how you even stand him,” she told me. “See you Monday,” she added in a friendlier voice, then flounced up the aisle with Betsy and Shelley, leaving me to wonder: Were we friends now, because she didn’t like my brother? Maybe I should have said something friendly back: Okay, see you Monday.

"C’mon,” Carl muttered, jerking my arm. I followed, hoping he remembered I wasn’t the one who called him a drip. Maybe I should have been a better sister and said, Aw, he’s okay. Suddenly he stopped, and, still puzzling, I bumped into him. His forehead crinkled up the way it did when he was plotting something. He tapped his finger against his lower lip.

"Here’s what we’ll do,” he said.

We’ll do. As if a tiny cricket figure had leaped from the curtain to the back of one of the theater seats and snapped his crickety fingers, changing me from a dopey bawl-baby sister to a valued partner in crime.

"You hide in the bathroom,” Carl explained in the lobby, “until the lights go off. Then we’ll see the show again for free.” (The management was trying a new policy: Customers could only see one show unless they paid again.) “Get it?” asked Carl. We stood to one side, away from the door, as the crowd spilled out of the lobby onto the street.

"How will I know when to come out?” I asked.

"You just wait in there until everyone leaves, and then count to, oh, two hundred....” I frowned. “Okay, one hundred. Then count to one hundred again.”

"I can count to two hundred,” I said.

"Only start counting after everyone leaves,” he cautioned. “Then meet me in the middle of the back row. The center back row.”

In the ladies’ restroom, I stood quietly at the end of a line of jostling women and children, listening to flushing toilets and splashing sink faucets and the braaaack of the paper towel machine. Carl never included me willingly in anything. I clasped my hands together, excited. I wished the two teenage girls applying lipstick and combing their hair would hurry up and leave. A mother pointed at me.

"Such a polite little girl,” she told her doll-faced daughter who sucked one finger and stared. “See how she folds her hands?”

Finally the restroom was empty. Feeling like a spy, I started counting. When I reached one hundred, I hesitated, then started at one again. When I reached two hundred, I peeked around the door: Three boys about Carl’s age were at the popcorn counter. There was no sign of the usher. I tiptoed out, opened the door to the darkened theater, and met Carl as planned.

It was his idea that we shouldn’t sit in the same row as before. We sneaked over to the fifth row from the screen on the left side of the theater, just as the Loony Tunes were announcing Porky Pig. We waited through Movietone News, the reporter’s voice cheerfully announcing disasters and sports plays over choppy background music. And then Roll On Texas Moon came on. My brother seemed as entranced the second time, watching Roy Rogers make peace between the cattlemen and sheep men and then sing. I managed to watch Pinocchio this time without tears.

By the third showing there was a new usher, so we sat in our old seats. More parents were in the audience. The smell of buttered popcorn made my mouth water. Carl searched his pockets and I went through my patent leather purse, until between us we had the ten cents for Jujubes. For the rest of the show my attention was torn between Pinocchio’s adventures and the itchy feeling of sweet jelly wedges stuck between my teeth.

When at last we stumbled, bleary-eyed, out of the theater, it was early evening. A sickle moon hung low in the ink-washed sky—a Walt Disney sky, with a single bright star like the one Jiminy had sung to.

"Gee, we’ve never been this late before,” said Carl. He frowned, looking as uneasy as I was beginning to feel. He set off at a fast pace, and I trotted beside him as we covered the four blocks to our small rented house. Lights blazed from every window we passed. I chewed my lip, wondering what our mother would say. It was understood that Carl would do the explaining.

Carl opened the door slowly. Our mother stood at the wall phone inside the kitchen doorway, her face was frantic through tear-streaked make-up. When she saw us, her expression changed to wild relief.

"Here they are now! Thank God!” she cried into the receiver. "Yes. No. I don’t know.” We trudged into the living room, across the frayed carpet, into the kitchen with its beat-up yellow linoleum. I folded my hands together in front of me and waited. Carl stuffed his hands in his pockets.

Our mother peered around at us. “They seem okay,” she told someone. “Yes. Thank you.” She hung up, dabbed her eyes with a wadded Kleenex, blew her nose, then, breathing deeply, she squared her shoulders before turning to us.

" Where...have...you...been?” she asked. It sounded like what she called recitative on the opera records she played over and over—those warning chants before the big song. I twiddled with my thumbs, looking at her mussed curls, her smeared mascara, her tear-splashed chiffon blouse with silver sequins. On the kitchen table a burnt meat loaf leaned toward the chocolate cake Carl had been promised. An uncarved pumpkin sat on the counter.

I looked at Carl.

"At the show,” he said. It was true, but even I could hear how strange that sounded.

"Do you realize I was talking to the police?” Our mother’s voice crept up a half tone. “Do you realize that for all I knew you could have been hit by a car? That you could be in the hospital?”

"Do you realize....” She clasped and unclasped her hands, chopping the air with them as she ranted. “No one had seen you! No one knew where you were! I called all the neighbors. I called the theater—they couldn’t find you!”

She tried more calmly. “I called the police. I was just calling them again because I was sure both of you had been kidnapped! You could be lying dead somewhere!” she shrieked.

"We were at the show, Mom,” said Carl. “I told you.”

"I don’t believe you!” She burst into tears and reached for a fresh Kleenex from the box next to the phone. “Tell me the truth.”

"I just said,” Carl growled. He clamped his jaws.

"Don’t you tell me that!”

"We were,” I offered timidly. “Honest.” I crossed my heart.

"Don’t lie for him, Rosemary. I came looking for you,” she told him. “I came to pick you up. I was going to take you both for lemon meringue pie with some of the extra tip money I made last night.”

"Aw....” Disappointment rippled through me; lemon meringue pie was my favorite.

"I waited there at the door when the crowd came out,” our mother said. “But the usher told me I was a little late and had probably just missed you. He remembered you.” She wiped her eyes and blew her nose again, then looked at my brother. “Why is that, Carl?”

"Huh?”

"Why did he remember you? He described you: skinny kid with curly hair and glasses, he said, sitting by a little girl with braids….”

Carl shrugged.

I couldn’t help thinking about the lemon meringue pie. That was how things happened with us. Our mother would plan a nice surprise, and that would be the day when I missed my bus stop and ended up on the other side of town; or the principal would call with the news that Carl hadn’t been at school all day.

"So I came home,” she went on, “but you didn’t come, and you didn’t come....” The tears started again. “That was when I called the police….” I glanced guiltily at Carl. He was staring at the floor, his chin thrust out.

"I was so wor-wor-worried….” Our mother’s voice shook out the word. “You can’t even imagine!” She took a new Kleenex.

"We were... in the alley behind Stop-N-Shop,” said Carl, as if she had pried it out of him. “Shooting marbles with Billy Jenkins,” he added. I opened my mouth, then closed it.

"WHAT?”

"Beat him, too,” Carl told her.

"I thought I told you not to play with him!”

"He dared me,” Carl said, and his eyes lit up from some inner excitement, as if he were winning at Parcheesi. I kept my lips pinched together.

"I’m sorry,” mumbled Carl. He sounded sincere.

"Carl, Carl, what am I going to do with you!”

"I said I’m sorry.”

Our mother folded her arms, and a hard edge came into her voice. “That Doreen Jenkins is so snooty to me. You’d think I played piano at some bar, instead of a nice restaurant and cocktail lounge—Jesus God,” she interrupted herself, smacking a palm to her forehead.

She grabbed the phone again and dialed, muttering, “I need to call Mac!” Mac was Mr. McGarrity, the restaurant owner.

"Hello, Mac? Yes, they’re home. Yes, thank God, safe and sound. I certainly did! I gave them a real piece of my mind! Did they ever learn a thing or two!” The look she threw us didn’t seem so sure. “Yes. I’m on my way, I’ll call a cab.” She hung up and dialed the taxi. Usually she rode with Lulu, one of the waitresses who lived down the street from us, but Lulu must have gone on without her.

"You shouldn’t be playing so late in an alley, young man,” said our mother, replacing the receiver in the cradle. “It’s not safe. Was anyone else around?”

Carl shook his head.

"You see what I’m talking about? Anything could happen.” She turned to me. “And you, were you playing marbles too?”

"Not very well,” Carl sneered before I could answer.

"Don’t make fun of your little sister like that! Really, Carl! I don’t know, I don’t know…. We’ll talk about this later,” she warned. She swept out of the room to go redo her face and hair.

I smirked at my brother, tapping my lips to show I knew when to keep my mouth shut. I had even stood up for him, like a true partner, when she didn’t believe we were at the movies.

But Carl had a faraway look on his face. He scuffed his foot against the linoleum a couple of times, then gave the doorjamb a little kick. He wandered over to the kitchen table and stood, one hand on the table edge, staring at the pumpkin on the counter.

"If Dad was here, he’d carve that thing in ten minutes!” Carl’s voice had the boastful tone he used with boys in the neighborhood.

"Really?” I frowned, trying to conjure up a memory of our father, apart from the annual birthday visits. “I don’t remember him carving pumpkins,” I said finally.

"Nah.” Carl said, after a moment, his voice flat. “I guess he didn’t.”

Our mother reappeared in the doorway again, her make-up fresh, her curls in place. She wore a pair of sparkling rhinestone earrings, and she fluffed at a sprinkle of face powder on the gauzy collar of her blouse.

"Rosemary,” she directed, “you set the table. I’ll have to grab a bite at the restaurant. Be sure and wash the dishes,” she chattered. “And eat the meat loaf first,” her voice was going musical again, “the cake is just dessert—”

The cab horn honked outside. She stepped carefully across the carpet in her high heels to peer out the living room window. "Damn, I wish I could stay home tonight!”

My brother wiggled his eyebrows at me, then eyed the cake.

"Remember, Carl, the radio goes off at ten,” she said.

Carl nodded, even though I knew he would play it later than that.

She slipped on her black wool jacket, then rustled through her evening bag, muttering. “Key… taxi money… they charge you an arm and a leg… it’s such a waste of tips....” She sighed and looked at us, her face anxious. “You two get along, now, okay?”

"We’ll be good,” I promised.

Carl didn’t answer.

At the door she turned again to blow kisses at us, just like a movie star—or maybe that was what opera stars did—then she rushed out.

As soon as the door latched shut, my brother started whistling the first six notes from The Whistler, his favorite program. I hated that program; it scared the wits out of me. Any minute, now, he’d start walking around the room with heavy thudding steps, pretending to be the Whistler, just to give me the creeps.

Suddenly he scooped a glob of icing on his finger and stuck it in his mouth, smacking his lips.

"You’re supposed to eat the meat loaf first. Mom said!”

"You can’t make me,” he scoffed.

I was no partner after all. Nothing had changed. I planted my hands on my hips. “Do you want me to….” I stopped, baffled. There was no one to tell. Mr. Campbell and Mr. Stroud and Mr. Ashby were all in their own houses. They were probably eating unburned dinners or carving Jack O’Lanterns. I sped to the window and lifted the curtain edge to see if our mother had left yet.

Outside, she stood at the open door of the cab, gazing up at the star-filled night. Under the street lamp, her face wore a strange expression. For the second time that day, I felt like a spy. The sliver of moon had risen higher; the evening star gleamed like one of her rhinestone earrings.

In the kitchen Carl started to whistle again. His footsteps were loud on the linoleum, falling softer on the carpet as he moved into the living room. Our mother looked down briefly and I saw her hand brush her face. Shoulders slumping, she climbed into the back seat of the cab and closed the door. I felt Carl’s arm nudge against mine as he joined me at the window. The taxi pulled away from the curb.

"What?” Carl asked. “What are you looking at?”

"She was wishing,” I said.

"Wishing!” Carl gave a snort of contempt. He stared out, his face blank, his posture stiff, as if he’d changed from a living boy to a figure of wood. A wave of despair washed over me and I turned back to the window, watching the taxi halt at the corner, its red taillights gleaming, before it disappeared into the night.